She would have to face what she should have known to be true all along: that on the stage that was her life, there were no other principal actors. She was entirely alone.
Chapter 43
William was seated in Abberline’s shabby office, going through photographs of the murder scene. Sickert had been released upon delivery of the statement by Jane Cobden, and William and the inspector were back where they started: a vicious killer on the loose and no apparent suspects. The delivery of the gruesome specimen to Alice, which had initially seemed to William a sure indication of Sickert’s guilt, seemed now to have a different connotation. After all, it was widely known that William had been asked to consult on the case; a little digging by the cunning murderer would have revealed that he had family in London. What better way to mock his efforts than to terrorize his invalid sister?
Abberline returned to the office that afternoon and immediately began to study the details of the Kelly murder, poring over the photographs of the scene that had been delivered by the police photographer a few hours earlier.
“What’s the point of looking at photographs when we saw the room firsthand?” asked William.
“Because,” Abberline explained, “at the scene of a crime, it is impossible to see things in any perspective. The details overwhelm the whole, especially in a case as vicious and bloody as this one.”
William nodded, remembering his difficulty taking in the room when he had first arrived on the scene. He also recalled the tirade he had earlier directed at Abberline. Seating himself at the table where the photographs were spread, he gently touched his colleague’s shoulder. It was his way of apologizing. He sensed that Abberline understood that he had briefly gone mad and had now come back. There was no need to speak about it.
William saw at once the value of the photographs. They presented an entirely different view from what he had looked at that morning. At the time, his mind had moved in and out, from horror to a kind of reverie, incapable of engaging for any sustained period with the scene itself. The pictures, however, placed him squarely in a middle ground—at once more bearable and more horrible. He had felt it when he had looked at the photographs of the other victims. Here, the effect was amplified. He had the image, freshly imprinted on his memory, of the scene as it had actually existed; these pictures were a kind of overlay on that. He saw again, though more clearly now, the hollowed-out eyes, the pools of blood where the breasts had been, the carved-up torso, the bespattered room. The photograph eliminated color, texture, odor—all the distracting variables that had overwhelmed his senses. It provided instead a simple clinical representation: the body laid out, the head propped up, the left knee bent, and the tatters of nightdress showing here and there amid the blackness that designated the soaking blood. He was again struck by the paradox of what constitutes reality. The photograph was a representation, without color or dimension, much of the detail subsumed in darkness or blurred images, yet it made the scene available in its entirety in a way that being there could not.
He and Abberline stared together at the image of the eviscerated woman in the darkly shadowed bedroom. It was like peering through a keyhole into hell.
Chapter 44
Two days after the murder of Mary Jane Kelly, Sickert appeared at the door of Alice’s bedroom holding Archie’s hand. The boy had let him in, and they had come up to the room quietly, “as a surprise,” Sickert had whispered, placing his finger to his mouth.
Alice, propped up in bed writing in her journal, looked up over her spectacles as though her visitor’s presence were the most normal thing in the world.
“Our young man informed me that you were awake,” said Sickert jauntily, “so I told him that we should sneak up on you. But you do not seem surprised.”
“Do you want me to be surprised?” she asked, returning automatically to the teasing tone that she had been used to taking with him. So much had happened in the interval, and yet at the sight of him, it all seemed to melt away.
“I don’t know if I want you to be surprised,” said Sickert, “or to be so anticipating my visit that you are not. Since you’re not, I’ll assume the latter.”
“You look well,” said Alice.
“I’ve had a hard few days, but I’m recovered.”
“And how was Cornwall?”
He held her eyes for a moment. “Oh, I didn’t go as planned. Something came up. But I’ll be leaving tonight; this time it’s certain. Still, I wanted to drop this off before I left.” He held up the canvas, its back facing to her. “I promised to hang it on the wall for a proper viewing, and I try to keep my promises, when I can.”
Without further explanation, he took out a hammer from his satchel and a nail from his pocket and strode over to the wall opposite the bed. He stood back a moment to establish the position and then hammered in the nail. “Now, close your eyes,” he said.
“I recall your telling me to do that once before,” said Alice, complying. “You said it would relax my face.”
“And it did. As you’ll see. Now open.”
She opened her eyes and looked at the picture. It was dark. She had heard he had a dark palette. In this case, he had painted her as though it were twilight. Much of her figure was blurred in the impressionist manner, but the head, though not in the style of high realism, had been delineated with a greater attention to detail. The face itself was pale and stood out against the dark background. The eyes were bright and hooded, and the mouth straight, but with the faintest touch of a smile. Her head was bare; he had painted the cap where he had thrown it to the right of the bed. The effect was of her having uncovered herself for the observer, if only in a slight way, but with a certain passionate determination.
“It’s an interesting portrait,” she noted ruminatively. “I look like one of those ecstatic saints or martyrs.” It was true that the frame of the bed might have been an altarpiece, and flecks of yellow used to highlight the dark background gave a suggestion of fire.
“Do you think I have made you look spiritual?” asked Sickert.
“You have made me look otherworldly,” said Alice.
“But you are otherworldly,” he insisted. “You are a woman beyond my reach.”
She laughed.
He had been looking at her as she looked at the painting, and Alice felt herself shiver slightly under his gaze. Neither one of them had noticed that Katherine had entered the room until she crossed over to seat herself in the chair next to the bed.
“And what do you think, Miss Loring?” said Sickert, with a trace of irritation in his voice.
“It’s not my place to say,” said Katherine in her usual mild tone. “It’s Alice’s portrait.”
“You don’t like it!”
Katherine shrugged. “We see the subject differently.”
“And how, pray tell, do you see her?” He asked the question automatically, as though not really wanting to know the answer.
“I see her as an island of reason in a world of irrationality, cruelty, and turmoil,” responded Katherine.
“An island of reason who lives her life as a professional invalid?”
“It’s how she pays for her rationality,” said Katherine quietly.
“And how do you think Mr. Sickert sees me?” Alice asked, intervening and addressing her companion.
“As a feral animal, caged,” said Katherine shortly.
“I thought he made me look like an ecstatic saint.”
“Perhaps it’s the same thing,” said Sickert. He turned quickly to Alice. “I’m sorry that I have not pleased your friend, but perhaps that is inevitable. One cannot please everyone.” His voice had grown distant, and he seemed to have become restless and less at ease.