“Yes,” said William impatiently. “As I said, it’s clearly the work of someone trying to disguise his hand.”
“But it’s more than that!” exclaimed Alice. “It’s not the sort of handwriting in which the writer is simply trying to deceive. It suggests someone accustomed to using the pen in unorthodox and original ways. The writing is more graphic than it is orthographic, if you follow me.”
“Not really,” said Henry.
“Let me clarify, then, with something I discovered this afternoon. Look at that.” She pointed across the room, where Sargent’s painting had been hung back on the wall.
“One of John’s Venetian scenes,” noted William.
“Not among his best,” said Henry.
Alice ignored them and proceeded. “John took that painting home the other day because he said it looked dull and he wanted to revarnish it. When he sent it back, it was wrapped in newspaper. Some of the varnish dripped onto the paper. Look here.” She took a piece of newspaper from the bed table and indicated a few small shiny spots on the surface. “I sent Katherine to the Sargents’ to inquire about it. The substance is called megilp, a mixture of linseed oil and turpentine commonly used to varnish paintings. Now,” she said, taking one of the Ripper letters from her bed table with a flourish, “look at this!” She pointed to the spot on the page that they had noted before.
“They resemble each other,” acknowledged Henry.
“It’s a shiny, clear substance,” said William peevishly. “It could be anything.”
“I’ve had Katherine purchase a variety of gluing materials. Nothing except megilp dries this way. So the question is this: why would our writer have reason to employ megilp? This brings me to another observation. The reddish smudge on the other letter that you said yourself did not resemble dried blood. It does, however, resemble dried paint.” She took out a sheet of paper, on which there were multiple splotches in a variety of reddish hues. “While Katherine was at John’s, I asked her to have him put together a sample of some of his reds, which he did with his usual thoroughness. Kindly take a look. This one on the right, which John has marked ‘dark amber,’ is an excellent match. I will have to show him the smudge for verification, but it seems to me reasonable to assume that the smudge on the letter is paint.”
“Let me see that,” said William, grabbing the sample sheet. He had fleetingly considered that the smudge on the Ripper letter might be paint when he first saw it. He knew what dried paint looked like; he had been a painter, but he had instinctively pushed the idea out of his head because he had no wish to recall that period of his life. He knew the mind could work that way. Elements relating to one thing could slip, without one’s awareness, into affecting another.
“So the murderer is an artist,” ruminated Henry. “It would explain the fair Lancaster’s assertion that his fingers were stained!”
Alice waved her hand. The idea of giving credence to a spiritualist almost made her want to dismiss her theory.
“It would also explain this,” said William quietly, taking the photograph of Polly Nichols out of an envelope in his pocket.
Alice studied the picture a moment. “Where did it come from?” she asked.
“From the police. They found it in a book that a Jewish bookseller had for sale in his shop. It was probably delivered to him by one of his vendors. I will try to find out where he got it.”
“Please do,” said Alice. “There’s no mark of a photographer’s shop on the back. I suspect that it was taken by the murderer.”
William nodded. As soon as his sister had mentioned her theory, he realized that it could account for the pride on Polly Nichols’s face in the photograph. She was posing in the manner of a painter’s model and was proud to be using her body in the service of art.
He mused, “Mary Wells said Polly used to do something in the area that she thought was refined, but came back with her sweater misbuttoned.”
“She was posing for an artist who decided to kill her,” agreed Alice. “It explains the gashes under the eyes of Catherine Eddowes and the symmetrical gashes on the abdomens of the other women.”
“He was painting her body with a knife,” concluded William softly. The idea was grotesque but stunningly obvious. It amazed him that he had not made the connection before.
“Do you think all the women killed by Jack the Ripper were his models?” asked Henry.
“Not necessarily,” William responded quickly. “Polly could simply have set the acts in motion.” He realized that his sister’s revelation was compelling, not only because it fit with the pieces of evidence they had gathered, but also because it resolved his theory about the inner workings of perversion, the way it repeated itself in the form of a habit and linked to the instruments associated with the perpetrator’s vocation.
“If the murders are the work of an artist, what does that tell us?” asked Alice, as though she were quizzing a group of bright students.
“Artists are inclined to sign their work,” suggested Henry. “They crave recognition.”
“The letters reflect this,” she agreed.
“And every artist has a distinctive style,” William noted.
“So what is Jack the Ripper’s style?”
“Hardly traditional, I would say,” said William. “He’d be in the modern impressionist school.”
“But not one of the pretty impressionists,” qualified Alice. “Not lily pads and sunsets.”
“No,” agreed William. “His palette would be dark. We will have to ask John Sargent. He knows everyone.”
“Yes,” Henry added, bemused. “We can certainly trust John. His pictures are pretty, he loves his sister, and he is too fastidious to commit murder.”
“Though sisters may drive even the most fastidious man to murder,” William couldn’t resist noting.
“This is no time for jokes,” Alice intervened sternly. “This is an important discovery, and we must act on it, quickly, each of us according to our abilities.” She spoke with the authority of a commander laying out a plan of battle. “I will continue to study the evidence and consider how it may bring us closer to the murderer. William, you are to learn what you can from Scotland Yard and trace the source of Polly Nichols’s photograph. Henry, you must inventory the art world and consider who has the motive and opportunity to commit these crimes.”
“But Wilde’s dinner party is tonight,” complained Henry. He suddenly imagined being trundled off to thumb through the membership lists of the minor art clubs and having to dine late on Mrs. Smith’s unprepossessing fare.
Alice happily contradicted his assumption. “No need to miss your party,” she said. “I want you in society, mixing with the fashionable world, but alert, if you don’t mind my adding, which means indulging in less wine than you are probably used to.” She gave him a severe look and continued. “Wilde has a wide circle of friends and knows artists, high and low. Keep your eyes and ears open for anyone who seems suspicious. As a novelist, you have an instinct for the incongruous detail; bring this to bear now, where the stakes are the highest.”
Having spoken, she laid her head back on her pillow. The exertion of the past hour had taken its toll. “We are dealing with an artist of murder,” she murmured. “We must use our much vaunted intelligence and creative skill to catch him.”
Chapter 23
Despite the momentous discovery of the afternoon, the identity of the murderer was far from Henry’s mind as he prepared to attend Wilde’s party that evening. He had heard from some of his friends that his countryman, Samuel Clemens, had just arrived in England, and that Wilde, who had met Clemens during his American tour, had invited him to be the promised surprise guest. As much as Henry enjoyed Wilde’s dinners, the thought of sitting across the table from this much touted personage did not appeal to him. He did not like the homely demeanor that Clemens affected, and he liked even less the man’s great success with it. Clemens was selling books and giving lectures, while Henry had stacks of unsold volumes moldering in a warehouse somewhere and had not been asked to lecture to anyone.