It took a moment, amid the great volume of books and papers, for the figure of a very thin man in his fifties with white, flyaway hair to come into view. He was hunched over the desk with a lamp at his elbow that infused the room with a strong odor of camphor. He had his spectacles low on his nose and was reading intently from a large book, which William saw had to do with the etymology of birds.
“William Chester Minor,” said Maudsley, “our resident lexicographer. William James, professor of philosophy and psychology at Harvard College.”
Minor looked up. “Professor James!” he exclaimed. “Psychic, psychologist, psychosis, psychological, psychosomatic—all words gleaned from your papers and relayed to my correspondent, Sir James Murray, editor of the Oxford English Dictionary, currently in the process of being compiled, and for which I am an indispensable resource. I also understand that I am afflicted by a debilitating psychological disorder, for which work on the dictionary, intense and unrelenting, has been a soothing and reclamatory activity.”
“You have medical training?” William asked. He sensed that the man understood his own affliction in a way that a mere layman would not.
Minor, whose hands had been rifling nervously through the pages of the book before him, paused a moment and then spoke in a surprisingly measured, thoughtful manner. “Yes, I am a trained physician. The training itself posed no problem. Indeed, I was a superlative student. My difficulty came with the practice. There, you see, there were problems of another dimension. In the end, I found them insuperable.”
William gazed at Minor with fascination. “The human dimension,” he murmured.
Minor’s hand shot to his forehead, as though he had suffered a sudden pain there. “It requires a kind of…thought. I must confine myself to the rote and the methodical, that which imposes order on that great furnace that produces our souls, be they our souls or merely the engines of our being. I cannot rest if I think on it. I cannot think on it, or I go mad.” His gaze remained fastened on William as he spoke, as if to say, You understand.
Indeed, William did. His own work on mental process, a huge enterprise on which he had been laboring for years, was a compendium of sorts, a way of organizing the chaos of mental life for the underlying end of preserving his own sanity. He knew to be true what Minor said, to think too much outside established forms and habits was to see the chaotic—and demonic—potential of the mind and be catapulted into the abyss.
William felt himself recoil at the kinship he felt with Minor, who, reciprocally, seemed disturbed by the human connection he had fleetingly established with his visitor. The calmness with which he had spoken began to give way to physical signs of distress. His shoulders twitched, and he shifted uncomfortably in his chair until, finally, shaking himself, as if throwing off a confining garment, he ducked his head and returned to his books.
“He is helping compile a dictionary?” William whispered to Maudsley as they backed away from the desk.
“It appears so,” said their host. “There is regular correspondence between Minor and this Dr. Murray. I wonder if Murray knows he is writing to an inmate in a lunatic asylum. His letters are simply addressed to Broadmoor, Crowthorne.”
“And you see no reason to illuminate him on the matter?”
“No. The work should speak for itself.”
William nodded in agreement and continued to gaze around the room, impressed by the care and method with which Minor had organized his materials. He would have liked to examine some of the bits of paper in the cubbyholes, but Abberline was looking impatient.
Leaving Minor’s room, they climbed the stairs to the floor assigned to prisoners believed to be dangerous. The atmosphere here was different from below—the air hot and stale, and the cells arranged closer together. Sharp, unsettling eyes peered out through some of the barred windows; invectives were hurled at them as they passed, and behind some of the doors, loud shrieks were punctuated by angry, garbled speech. Occasionally guards would enter a cell; there would be a few heavy thuds, and then silence.
“We put Pizer up here,” explained Maudsley, “less because he has proven to be dangerous than to protect him from others. He nodded to Abberline. “As you mentioned, many still hold to the idea that he is Jack the Ripper, though he’s been under lock and key since the second murder. The poor man—and I use the adjective with a certain latitude—is the victim of a kind of thinking that keeps half our population mired in falsity and superstition. They hit on an explanation that supports their prejudices and, despite all proof to the contrary, are unwilling to let it go.”
William nodded. In this, he and Maudsley were in complete accord.
They came to a cell at the end of the corridor. Maudsley knocked and then turned the key. A man of short but powerful build was sitting on the cot in the corner of the room. He had a broad, flat face and a shaven head with small eyes. His lips were closed in a thin, straight line, except when they twitched spasmodically to reveal a set of even yellow teeth. He did not look at the visitors directly. His gaze moved restlessly about the room.
It seemed to William that the man resembled a snake. He had a feverish alertness and a hard, coiled muscularity. He was not a prepossessing-looking individual, but confined to the small space, there was something profoundly vulnerable about him, much as a beast in a cage seems vulnerable in its uncomprehending captivity.
Maudsley introduced the visitors, but Pizer made no acknowledgment. He sat unmoving, only his eyes continuing to dart about the room.
“Perhaps if I could speak with him alone,” suggested William. It occurred to him that the presence of three men, one a police inspector and one the head of a lunatic asylum, was not conducive to intimate chat.
Maudsley considered this request and then nodded. “We’ll wait outside with an ear open in case you need us,” he said, and he and Abberline left the cell.
William sat down on the stool near the bed and addressed the inmate gently. “I want to speak to you about the Whitechapel murders,” he said.
The side of the man’s mouth twitched, but he said nothing.
“I came here in the hope that you might help us find the man responsible.”
Pizer’s eyes darted up for a moment.
William continued. “You were called Leather Apron and suspected of these crimes yourself. Could you tell me why?”
“Bloody sows’ll say anything,” Pizer burst out in a guttural accent.
“You are referring to…?” prompted William.
“Disgusting pigs, the lot of ’em,” Pizer snarled.
William paused. “Is your mother alive?” he finally asked, thinking this might be a way forward.
“Don’ know,” said Pizer morosely.
“Do you remember her?”
Pizer shrugged.
“What about your father?”
“On’y saw the bloody bastard when ’e was drunk and came round t’ beat me.”
“Who raised you?” asked William.
The man gave a shrill laugh. “Bloody pigs raised me.”
“Pigs?”
“Whores. Indentured to whores. I’d kill ’em all if I could.”
“You worked for prostitutes?”
“Washed their chamber pots. Beat me if I didn’t make up their filthy beds. And the gentlemen were worse. Kicked me if they felt like it, bloody, stinkin’ bastards. Saw ’em do filthy things, but they treated me as if I was the one as was dirt.” The man’s eyes darted about the room angrily.