“So you’re saying that the murderer may be viewing the body from a context which is not clinical but has its own logic.”
“Precisely.”
“A ritual murder, perhaps? Something with political or religious symbolism attached?”
“Possibly. There was the incident, which you may have read about in the papers, of a message written on the wall near the site of the Eddowes murder. It was a strangely worded piece of writing.” William flipped open his notebook and thumbed through until he arrived at the desired page. “‘The Jews’—spelled here, J-u-w-e-s—‘are the people who will not be blamed for nothing.’ Those were the words written on the wall.”
“Perhaps the work of a Jewish cabal,” Henry suggested.
“Please!” said Alice irritably. “It’s obviously not the work of Jews, but of someone venting hatred against Jews.”
“But the wording of the message is odd,” said William. “It sounds like a formal proclamation.”
“On the contrary,” protested Alice vehemently, “its syntax is common to the lower orders of society.”
“And how do you know that?”
“I know because I read the newspapers and listen to people.” As she spoke, she picked up the little bell on her night table and rang it. “But I don’t need to argue this with you. I can demonstrate.”
A few seconds after the ringing of the bell, a strapping girl of perhaps sixteen, whom Alice and Katherine had hired from one of the local orphanages, came bustling into the room.
“Did you call, mum?” asked the girl, making an awkward curtsy.
“Yes, Sally dear. Would you mind if I ask you a few questions?”
“I’m not agin you asking me nothin’, mum.”
“You’ve been here six months now, dear, and I must say you’ve done fine work. Do you think you would like to stay on?”
“I woulden want to be goin’ nowhere, mum.”
“So you would like to stay?”
“I’m far from unhappy, mum.”
“Let me be perfectly clear on the matter now. You’re satisfied with your employment?”
“Oh yes, mum! That’s what I said. Everything at your house is so lovely and refinedlike, and you treat me so nice and polite. I’ll be grateful till my dying day, mum.”
“Well, you’ve been a great help in the household, Sally, and a great comfort to me. Now there may be a boy coming by to help you with some of the housework. I know there’s not much for him to do, but he’s a poor soul who needs to be occupied. His mother did away with herself, you see. I trust you’ll be kind to him.”
“I woulden be nothing else, mum, seein’ as I’m a poor soul myself.”
“Thank you, Sally. And by the way, what are we having for dinner tonight?”
“The oysters with mushrooms, as Miss Katherine taught me, if yer not agin it, mum. I know Mr. James likes it. I think he diden say no to two helpins last time.”
“The oysters with mushrooms?” recalled Henry, pleased. “I think I didn’t say no to three helpings, now that you mention it.”
“You mayn’t be wrong there, sir.”
“Thank you, Sally. I think that will do for now,” said Alice.
“Extraordinary!” exclaimed William, after the girl left. “I’ll have to write a paper on the use of the double negative locution in lower-class British speech.”
“It could be a boon to your social reformers,” said Henry. “Teach the unfortunate to speak in positive declarative statements and eradicate poverty.”
“There’s something to that, you know, language as social destiny,” mused William. “I wonder what Spencer and the Darwinians would make of it—”
“Yes, well, you can debate the linguistic fine points of the impoverished classes another time,” Alice intervened. “I was only proving the point that the message you mentioned was probably written by an illiterate cockney with a conventional grudge against the Jews. The Jews and the Irish are always useful scapegoats when there’s no one else to blame.”
“But there was also the odd spelling of the message,” noted William. “As I said, Jews was spelled J-u-w-e-s. Warren thinks that it may be some secret reference, perhaps from some book used in the inner circles of the race.”
“Nonsense!” asserted Alice angrily. “It’s simple illiteracy. Besides, the point could be easily checked. Don’t you know any Jews you can query on the subject, Henry?”
“I could ask Lady Asbury. She was Jewish once.”
“Not Lady Asbury!” said Alice. “She’s the last person who would know. Either the chief rabbi of London or Samuel Isaacson, who owns the pawnshop down the street. But certainly not Lady Asbury.”
“Perhaps the murderer is an anarchist,” Henry proffered, changing tacks. “Very unpredictable sorts of people. Or a member of one of the purity leagues. Some of those women are lunatics; give them a knife—”
“I believe your imagination is running away with you,” chided Alice brusquely. “As I see it, the idea of a conspiracy is unlikely. The letters printed in the newspapers make no mention of a cause or an allegiance. And there hasn’t been any of the secret insignia or code words that such groups go in for. No—as I see it, the murders are the work of a singular, demented individual. But even a demented mind must have a motive in order to kill with such regularity and pattern.”
“Yes.” William nodded. “There is generally a method in madness if one supplies the right context. Knowing childhood influences, forms of abuse, disappointments, rivalries, and so forth can provide the logic for seemingly incoherent behavior. There is never an effect without a cause.”
“That’s a law to be respected in the writing of fiction,” piped in Henry, who was feeling left out. “It’s Louis Stevenson’s problem, in my opinion. His effects exceed their causes.”
Neither his brother nor sister appeared to care.
“When you see the letters, perhaps you’ll be able to supply the context and deduce the cause,” Alice instructed William. “Pay special attention to the quality of the paper and the ink. Look for patterns in the formation of letters. Note the sentence formation, the use of fragmentary exclamations, and repeated words.”
“I think, as a trained scientist, I know what to look for,” William responded. “I am familiar with standard methods of research and investigation.”
“Yes, but it’s always good to be reminded. And you’re not trained in the investigation of murder.”
“And you are?”
“No,” acknowledged Alice, “but I’ve had more time to think about it. I lie in bed and imagine what might have happened. I have been doing such things since childhood.”
“Are you saying that you have feared being murdered by us?” Henry laughed.
“Yes, and of murdering you,” she added gravely. “It is in the nature of the nervous invalid to create such extreme scenarios. We get ill because imagining them is enough to scare us out of all action.”
William considered the comment. “And Jack the Ripper is somehow empowered to live out the fantasy that frightens the neurasthenic. He is the obverse of what you are, your imagination turned real.”
“Yes,” said Alice, “which is why I am the person to catch him.”
Chapter 11
With luncheon concluded, William rose and announced that he was going back to the East End. “Half of problem solving has to do with posing the right questions,” he explained. “The other half with listening to the answers. It’s what I learned teaching undergraduates, which qualifies as a form of detective work, the goal being to figure out how to make mostly uninterested students learn. I hope to bring some of this skill to the interrogation of witnesses. After that, I will proceed to Scotland Yard to examine the letters.” He nodded to Alice, whom he knew was eager for a full report on this aspect of the case.