I
respond to calls for submissions a lot, especially ones that touch on an period
of history I liked and about which I know something. I had written in response
to a call for stories on Jack the Ripper, the notorious serial killer who terrorized
London in the late 1800s. I knew a lot about that era from spending hours
reading Victorian novels in graduate school:
Dickens, Thackeray, the Brontë sisters, George Eliot, and a whole parade
of lesser lights. These gave me a feel for the era and the culture of the time.
I thought I would try my hand, read up on Jack the Ripper, and sent the story
off. Like so many stories, the publisher rejected it. But, like Winston
Churchill, I never, never, never give up. I sent it out to a magazine called Alt Hist, which deals in variations on
well-known historical incidents. The story made it into this journal.
 |
| Newspaper illustration of a murder victim of Jack the Ripper |
Jack
the Ripper is one of those perennially fascinating figures. Maybe he's so
fascinating because we don't know who he was. There are endless speculations on
the matter, and some fantastical candidates have been put forth in the attempt to
identify him and solve the murder mysteries that have never been solved. My
story, "The Silent Judge," attempts the same thing, though it carries
no claim whatsoever of being true. It is entirely a fiction. But, when the Yiddish
writer Isaac Bashevis Singer described village women crying when straw dolls
were thrown into the raging river at harvest time, and speculating that once
real live young women were the objects of this practice, he has one of the women muse, Was straw all that different from flesh?
Is speculative and imaginative writing all that different from forensic
investigation?
I
don't know, but I like the story. A man who was a customer to Mary Jane Kelly,
a prostitute and the last victim of the Ripper, finds out about her death. Like
many Victorian men who consorted with "free women" (as prostitutes
were euphemistically referred to) he is respectably married, in business, and
the father of children. But Mary had held a place in his heart. When he reads
of the brutality of the murder, he resolves to do something and begins his
investigation.
He
finds a young woman who shared a room (and a common occupation) with Mary and manages
to track her down. She has a letter the killer wrote to the murdered woman. It gives
some leads, though not many. He notes the angry down-slant of the handwriting,
the educated vocabulary, and, most importantly, a location, Notting Hill—though
it does not supply an address.
Using
techniques he learned from reading Conan Doyle and Edgar Allan Poe's "The
Purloined Letter," he begins to collect evidence. The same man who wrote the letter patronized whores,
so he decides a brothel would be the best place to start looking. He finds one
in Notting Hill that caters to high-class men and pays for one of its younger women.
 |
| Whore in the Killers video "Mr. Brightside" |
I
got the idea for the brothel from the video for "Mr. Brightside" by the Killers.
The exotic girls sumptuously dressed and made up in sexy, exotic costumes inspired the
high-class place the narrator goes to. He does business with several of the
women there, returns one night and sees one is missing, asks, and is told the
girl has been beaten. He finds her and she tells him about a man who comes
every two of three months and beats and chokes her. She says that if he plans
to kill the man, she will tell him no more. After he tells her about Mary and says
the man will eventually kill her, his informant tells him all she knows: that
the man lives in Saint David's, a section of London.
He
finds the killer, trails him, and is puzzled that he visits Mary's grave. After
analyzing other behavior, he realizes that Jack the Ripper wants to be caught.
He wants to be identified so his deeds and name will be known forever. This,
the narrator resolves, will never be.
He
follows Jack into a sleazy, run-down section of London—the kind Dickens wrote
about in Bleak House and Hard Times—and confronts him. The Ripper
asks him if he is from the police. He says no and then this exchange takes
place:
Private
investigator?”
“A
lover of Mary Jane Kelly,” I replied.
His smile faded.
He looked fearful.
“Are you
arresting me?”
I shook my head.
“No. I am going
to kill you—right here and now. No one will ever find out who you are. You will
not have the notoriety of which you have dreamed. No one will ever know your
name.”
Several
factory whistles go off and the narrator shoots, making certain he kills the
man. He absconds and is never a suspect. The police cannot identify the body
and assume it was a robbery and murder. The matter ends there.
The
story is being written as the narrator near the end of his life. His wife has
gone on. He has the satisfaction of having left a better world for his children,
one in which the name of a brutal serial killer is not spoken. He writes of
Jack the Ripper, "His name will ever be unknown. The name of Mary Jean
Kelly lives on in peoples’ hearts and peoples’ sympathies."
The issue of Alt
Hist featuring
"The Silent Judge" is available in print
at this link.
For
more titles see my Writer's Page
Read The Prophetess for some
New Testament horror,
exorcism,
and suspense.
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