Aaron's Serpent

[Carrotty Nell]

Aaron's Serpent is currently trying to find a home with literary agents/publishers. I hope it finds one soon as it has virtually put me in Colney Hatch and I want to see the back of it. I want to post some extracts here because Casebook was one of my main sources of research and inspiration and I owe a lot to you guys. Although based on Greek Tragedy I wrote it more for a joke, or at least, tongue in cheek. The detectives do a Greek Chorus which I wrote when I was drunk on new year's eve. N.B. I was more concerned with what I thought would make a good story than plausible Ripperology. I do not personally subscribe to many of the ideas/theories which were used for plot purposes.

[Carrotty Nell]

The food Wolek brought was the same as yesterday and that morning: salted herring. Aaron was too ill to enjoy it or be revolted by it however. Since the boat had left sight of the safety of land and their destiny lay with a capricious and watery new foe of wave and deep, Aaron had reacted by being ill. It was their third day on board and he had not moved, so far as Wolek knew, from a moody and supine repose with arm clutching stomach which told everyone that he had cramp in the kitches, and diarrhoea, and that every lurch of the vessel made it worse. It was the height of summer and the water was quite calm. Wolek had been more storm-tossed in the bath-tub.
“Do try and eat a little of this fish Aaron. It is all we will have to eat, until we dock in London, so we may as well make the best of it. Let’s think of the great feast Ellen and Sarah will prepare for us. Think of kugels with raisins, and potato and carrot tsimmis stew with challah loaves … and this grotty fish won’t seem so bad.”
“If we find them,” Aaron grumbled from the depths of his coiled depression. “Thanks to your stupidity, as you have forgotten, obviously, we don’t even have a direction.”
“We’ll find them. God is guiding us, I know. Every prayer I have made since we left the stetl has been to see us safely delivered. And you cannot say that things have not gone well for us thus far.”
“All I know is that I am going to hate England and hate London.”
He glanced about him at the dark hull, and that at least was not an imagined or exaggerated horror. The deck was below water-level, two feeble oil lamps illuminated the few square feet of which their light made a circumference. In one such pool of light Aaron counted twenty-two individuals huddling. Multiply those by the known deck area and he estimated that over three hundred sorry dregs were sharing this ride. Impatient and hungry youngsters crying and complaining; consumptive coughs polluting the air; uncomfortable sleepers reposing on spread cloaks, snoring and sleep-talking; one ghastly woman had even spewed out a new infant yesterday and the fright of a father had the gall to name it Jonah.
At least half of the crowd in the hull were, he thought, Jews. One heard pogrom horror tales traded: “So they killed your husband. Oy, this is sad. But they chopped the wheels off my cart and I could not get it repaired anywhere!”
There was a group of black-robed, black hatted, black bearded Chassidim who had colonised one corner of the deck where they danced and chanted. Inevitably there was a Rabbi who called the faithful to morning and evening prayers in a central spot of the deck. Wolek joined them, and Aaron caught up on the sleep of which he was deprived at night.
Wolek was right about one thing though. Wolek’s God had not been against them. Their set-backs had been few on the Odyssey. The only one-eyed monster so far encountered was sitting a few paces away and had designs on their share of the salt herring. But they were wise to him.
When the goods train had shuddered to a halt in Hamburg they had clambered out careless of who saw them, caring for nothing but the immediate ease of bladder and bowel. No-one had seen them apparently. No cry of “Hie there! Stowaways!” had pursued them.
Around the docks they found the filthy lodging-houses of which they’d heard tell in travellers’ tales: dosses which existed on the exploitation of emigrants. When they had bought their boat tickets, with a night to go before the sailing, they considered how many kreutzern they would have once something to eat and a bed for the night was accounted for. They shared a mattress in a room with three strangers, friendly cockroaches and less friendly bed-bugs.
They had seen more humans on the waterfront of the port in an hour than in a day in the stetl. Many of them were their own people, here for the same reason, driven out of the lands ruled by the grieving, vindictive young Czar and seeking friendlier lands. Within the hour they had found a ship which was sailing for London the day following, and whose tickets, because they had saved on the rail fare, they could afford. Otherwise, they could see, they would have had weeks of hauling cargo to save. They could see some young Jewish men doing just that.
Of course, they had not safely docked yet, Aaron told himself. There was still opportunity for the passengers to be tossed overboard leaving their meagre belongings to enrich the crew. That was just the kind of unscrupulous skulduggery which was not a mere product of a paranoid imagination. There were, Aaron knew, some very simple souls within this hold who were going to embark on the London gangplank optimistically singing ‘Marching through Georgia’ because some wretch of a ticket agent had sold them a London ticket for the price of a trans-Atlantic one.
Wolek fed the weltering invalid some of the fish and soothed the sweating brow. “You are making more fuss than it warrants,” however, he warned him. “I do not think you are as ill as you are showing. This is not the gymnastics master you are trying to fool. I know you too well.”
“That pipe smoke of yours is making it worse,” was the snapped reply. To which provocation Wolek responded by taking a deep inhalation and giving Aaron the full benefit of the exhalation.
“If you had not squandered our hard-earned money on tobacco,” Aaron continued, “We might not have had to travel steerage. You call me a shikerer, but I did not buy any liquor in the port, and I could dearly use some.”
Something else caught Aaron’s attention then. “That family sitting close by the hatch, the fellow in the blue jacket. You see them?”
Wolek looked without making it obvious that he did and said yes, what of them. The hull was gloomy with its miserly lamp and his eyesight deplorable, but he saw four blobs one of them blue.
“The couple keep looking at us two. They have had their eyes on us since we embarked. They have two daughters, about our age. Do you think they are interested in us as potential bridegrooms?”
“It would not be so strange,” Wolek ruefully replied. Two quite good-looking, fit, healthy… well, maybe not the latter in Aaron’s current state… young men would make a Matchmaker’s eyes gleam. “And, sadly, we are single men for I doubt we will ever see our intended brides again.”
Aaron returned the looks the family were giving them. Presumably the younger of the two girls was the one they were eyeing up for himself and the canopy. When he saw her looking he pulled a vicious face.
Aaron was dozing when the blast of the ship’s horn woke him. Wolek smiled and said: “We are here Aaron, our new home.”
All around them passengers were bustling, collecting belongings, seeking absent children, getting in each other’s way, congesting the passage to the upper deck and fresh air and so they hoped, liberty. Wolek pulled Aaron up, shook him awake, tightly clutched the bundle of belongings which had survived the adventure, and arm-in-arm they joined the back of the disorderly exodus.
As Aaron stepped out of the hatch onto the gangway he was assaulted full in the face by a howling blast and stinging wet rain; rain which blew to the left, blew to the right, fell perpendicular, blew into his ear, rain which had singled him out personally and followed him whichever way he turned. The disembarking crowd had stalled on the narrow gangway and Aaron was exposed to the pelting wet enemy for such a period of delay that black hair was stuck saturated to his face in interesting artistic random fronds and a drip formed on nose and chin. A charming crew member who was waiting by the hatch to give a helping hand to women and children as they emerged grinned at Aaron and said: “Welcome to England my friend. A refreshing little summer shower, what? My, you should see one of our winter storms.” The rivulets tracking down Aaron’s face from brow to chin were indistinguishable from the rivulets of tears joining them.
As he and Wolek began the slow shuffle they could see all of the quayside of London pool. Inevitably someone observed a dockside crane and commented that the Statue of Liberty was smaller than they expected. Aaron meanwhile pointed to the London skyline and asked what the thing that looked like an outsized tit was. Aaron’s triple insult to London, Christianity and Sir Christopher Wren was heard only by Wolek who frowned disapprovingly.
The quayside was swarming with dockers, sailors, civilians meeting expected relatives… and others who had no business there. One swarthy fellow was propped against the railing and carefully watching the passengers disembarking. Then his gaze alighted on the two young brothers. His gaze intensified, and he stood upright. As Wolek and Aaron stepped onto the quayside the swarthy fellow was beside them.
“You have friends to meet you?” He spoke Yiddish in a southern Polish accent.
Surprised, Wolek and Aaron looked at each other. “No,” Wolek admitted. “We have a brother and sister in London but we do not know their addresses.”
“Maybe I can help. I am Daniel and I came from Krakow three years ago. Where are you from?”
“Kielce Province.”
“Hah! Country bumpkins! You will easily lose your way in a city without friends to help you. Perhaps I can help you. What is your brother’s name?”
“Iciek… Isaac Kozminsky.”
“By the merciful God, I know him. We attend the same schul. How much money do you have?”
Wolek looked at Aaron and desperation overcame caution and astonishment. “We have five kreutzern left between us in the world.”
Daniel made a compassionate expression. “Ah, but not for long. Isaac is a good fellow, he will soon replenish your empty pockets.”
“You mean… you want our five kreutzern to take us to our brother?” Wolek said with distaste, and Daniel smiled reasonably. The brothers looked at each other long and hard. They were wet, tired, fed-up, frightened and desperate.
Daniel offered his hand. “I have been Eyeless in Gaza like you. I know how it is. Come. Stick close to me.”
“Does our brother live far?” as they followed him from the docks.
“Oh no!” Daniel assured them. “Not far along Whitechapel Road. And this is it!”
Exposed again and in blew the rain stinging Aaron’s face and soaking his coat, and the first step he took onto Whitechapel Road was into a gutter lake which responded gleefully to contact with a human foot by swamping boot, sock and trouser half way up the shin. “Do mind that puddle,” Daniel advised helpfully.
The boys just stood and stared. Whitechapel Road was as wide as the river. You could not make yourself heard by someone standing directly opposite you on the other side and not just because of distance. The noise was a heterogeneous cacophony; the rolling of wheels, on all sides, small wheels, great wheels and wheels in need of oiling; the click of hooves on cobbles in each direction, small hooves, great hooves and hooves dragging lamely; the shouts of men everywhere warning trespassers out of the danger of the road, selling wares; and singing and music. The small band was gathered in a circle about the bugle player who accompanied them. One of them played cymbals. They wore uniforms and sang ‘Guide me Oh Thou Great Redeemer, pilgrim through this barren land.’
Daniel said: “The Salvation Army. Do not linger. They will make a goy of you and have you eating pork chops.”
Across the road a chasm beneath an arch lead down into darkness. Above was a signboard with the word ‘Aldgate’. People were heading down into the Cimmerian chasm. Aaron remembered Isaac had talked of underground trains in one of his letters and Aaron had scoffed.
Carts and carriages were crossing his vision almost unceasing. One cart would pass and he would see a shop-sign: Samuel and Gluckstein, Quality Tobacconists, and another cart would close the shutter, and when it opened again he would see a pub. Hoop and Grapes. Then the shutter closed as a horse pulled along a massive gabled advertising construction mounted on the cart behind bearing the legend Pears’ Soap. The shutter opened again and there was an organ-grinder with a monkey on one shoulder and hurdy-gurdy on the other, and then the shutter closed as a double-decker omnibus with the words London Omnibus Company on its side passed in the opposite direction. When the shutter opened again a costermonger in a black pearly coat and red neckerchief and fruit barrow was in the window… Three carts, different directions…. A stall where they were handing out tea; it read 'Church of England Temperance Society'….They gave no respite on tired eyes and when he closed his eyes he could still see them, small carts, great carts and smart carriages with liveried coachmen.
He could not distinguish one shout from another. “Violets! Lovely violets! Fresh baked muffins! Fish! Get your fish… violets… muffins… fish…” Ergo the warning shout went unheeded. Aaron, soaked with rain, was now soaked with blood up to the thigh. He gasped, looked in the direction from whence came the drenching fountain, and the butcher merely looked at him as if to say, I did shout a warning. The blood had gone all over the cobbles as well as Aaron and was a permanent stain already from many previous dousings. The bloody cobbles extended for the distance of at least two shop-fronts ahead of them.
“This is Butcher’s Row,” Daniel said. “The sooner we get you to your brother’s house the better. You need to change.”
As Aaron still stood shivering in the rain a monster vehicle was approaching pulled by two galloping beasts. A passenger was leaning from the side and hammering a bell so that everything got out of the way. Everything except Aaron, who, still stunned into immobility was showered with puddle as the fire engine’s wheels churned by.
Wolek put an arm about his shoulder and said not to cry; they were nearly home. “And if all the wonders of this city our brother wrote of are true you and I will be having a hot bath tonight. Come Aaron,” as his brother’s cries went unchecked, “Onward.”
They passed a woman sitting in a doorway so thin that she barely filled her ragged clothes, and worse, in her arms was a child-bundle; what kind of God, Aaron thought, would give a young soul life in such desolation. As the thought occurred, above the rooftops on the northern side of the road an appalling grey structure bulked like the Pawniak in Warsaw. Daniel pointed and said: “That is somewhere you must never go. Workhouse. Or the Spike as the Londoners call it. Make sure you do not end up like that old hag we just passed in the doorway, else you will see the inside of the Spike.”
Then Daniel took an abrupt left turn into a side road away from the thoroughfare. The boys dumbly followed him. There was a railway viaduct ahead of them. The road was quiet. There were not many houses here, not many shops. No-one else besides themselves. They were too surprised at first to know what happened. They lost control of their feet and went tumbling down a short embankment to the edge of the railway track. Dazed, Wolek raised his head. Aaron, bewildered, did the same. Looking up the slope they saw the gap in the fence through which their guide had pushed them. He had taken the last of their money and fled.

[Carrotty Nell]

Aaron went into the lavatory and furtively peeped out at the kitchen window to make sure Sarah was not attentive. No, she was not at the window. She was at the mangle with the laundry and would not have occasion to be suspicious. He closed the lavatory door, bolted it, then put the seat down and stood on it. He had many reasons for regretting he was not taller and this was one. He had to stand on tip-toe to see from his spy-hole. This was a natural hole in the wood with a fine view of the neighbouring back-yard. Presently the subject of his espionage emerged into the yard carrying a basket of laundry and singing from The Mikado:

But though the night may come too soon
we’ve yet a month of afternoon.

He was drawn to women old enough to have mothered him, old enough and stout enough to be a tableau vivant representing Golda, Sarah, Ellen and all the other harridans against whom he had some real or imagined grudge. This woman was younger than the women who usually attracted Aaron. She was four or five and twenty.
It was her plumpness which appealed to him. She bent with her back to him, took up some laundry, and straightened to affix it to the line. As she was bent double he could see the outline of her draws and the round, ripe melons of her buttocks. As she straitened her hair swirled to curtain the quick peep-show he had been granted. Her hair was so long it covered the buttocks. In the early morning light it was the colour of a peach, in the afternoon the colour of harvested hay, and by night the silver of moonlight. She bent and straightened three more times as she hung up laundry singing very sweetly.
A man came out from the house to sit on the back step and clean his boots. He too accompanied himself tunefully from The Mikado:

Young man despair, likewise go-to,
Yum-yum the fair, you must not woo…

Aaron did not care for him, though he had never spoken to either of his sister’s neighbours. They were goyim and Sarah did not approve of them, but not because they were goyim. Sarah had lived in England long enough to have some Gentile friends. She disapproved of these two, rather, on moral grounds, because they were living together when not lawfully wed, because they came home drunk and obstreperous from the pub, and because the woman was even rumoured to be on the game just for the fun of it, not even dire economic necessity. Aaron though was wary of the man for quite other reasons: he was sulky-faced with a scarred temple and Aaron did not care to conjecture what he would do to someone spying from a lavatorial command-post upon the rotundity of his lady-friend’s rear.
She went back in with her basket, past her sweetheart sitting on the step. He meanwhile finished his boots and finished his song:

She’ll toddle away, as all aver
with the Lord High Executioner.

When the man too had gone inside, Aaron got down. He flushed the lavatory for authenticity and went casually into the kitchen. Shoshannah, now aged five, was playing there, and another baby boy was sleeping in the crib by the hearth. Sarah looked up from the mangle and said, suspiciously, “You were a long time out there.”
Aaron clutched his belly groaningly to suggest constipation, and then made himself scarce as the castor oil came out of the cupboard.
The man next door went into the kitchen, tossed aside the clean boots, flopped into a chair and lit a cigarette. “Do we have anything to eat here? Or will it be shepherd’s pie at the Prince Albert again?”
“I’ve nothing to offer you here Joe,” the woman said folding dry laundry.
“Jesus! Pub food it must be then unless I eat me own toenails. The God-damned English cannot make better than shepherd’s pie for a hungry man. And the Welsh sacrificed their taste buds the day they invented Rarebit. Now I‘m remembering that darkie from the Sub-Continent we met in the docks that time, shared a right fine dish with us, what was it called… curry. By God, I‘d like some of that right now so I would.”
“So what’ll you do, then, when you and your friends free Ireland? No more darkies…”
“That’s where you’re wrong. Half of the Empire was conquered by good Irishmen and we’ll be taking our darkies with us.”
“Now, look you, Joe Fleming, if you wasn’t such a lazy layabout you’d be earning twice what you do, see, and you’d be wining and dining me up West which I deserve.”
Joe Fleming inhaled and exhaled several times and said: “You’ll be going to the brothel again?”
“And why not? It is a warm house, clean sheets, sweet soap and perfume, and Mrs Bookey is a lady. She looks after her girls. And me especially, see. I’m young and pretty and the punters pay more. Mrs Bookey says I’m her most valuable asset and she pays me more than any of the other girls.”
“So why don’t you be wining and dining me then?”
“Because you aren’t worth it, Joe Fleming. There’s better men than you for me to be spending my money on.”
“Hah! A slut that’s good for one thing only, that’s what ye are, and there’s no decent man would touch you.”
“That’s where you’re wrong, see.” She took on the air of someone who knows something her verbal opponent did not. “Next door, Joe Fleming; the Yid woman who is always looking down at us? Have you seen that young brother of hers who is around there so much? Shining, black, flowing hair, sweet baby-face…”
“That one looks as if he still wakes up wet of a morning!”
“So it is Joe. But he is clean, you must admit, and innocent as the fresh new dawn, to be sure. But he fair has fallen for me, look you. Only now when I was hanging out the washing he was in the lavatory spying on me and thinking I didn’t know. So I made sure he enjoyed me bending down for him.”
“If you sticking out your arse is all it takes to give him a peg in his pants then he is welcome.”
“But I was thinking I might give him a bit more, see, just for fun, because I’ve not been with a Yid.”
“Bloody Yids! Coming over here, taking our jobs, and our women…”
“Be reasonable Joe Fleming! I’ve got something in mind, not just a tumble with a Yid to satisfy my curiosity. No, Mrs Bookey’s been looking to recruit a boy for some time. Your politicians and your leaders of the land, they’re ruined if they’re caught in a brothel. But it is even worse, see, to be caught in a male brothel. So Mrs Bookey wants a boy, to offer to punters, because it would be safer for them than in a male brothel. She says they like them educated, because part of the enjoyment of going with a boy is that they can have an intelligent conversation with him afterwards which they cannot with empty-headed female whores! Ha! I’m thinking the Yid-boy next door would be perfect. We could call him the Boy David…”
“So what will you be planning to do Mary Jane Kelly? Kidnap him?”
“Don’t be absurd Joe. No, I was thinking of something more subtle. And I’d be needing your help, see. Oh, you’ll get your share of the profits, cariad.”
He rose suddenly and put a hand on her throat. There was dark fire in his eyes, and his grip was the hold which could strangle with only a little more pressure. But their love-life was one of beautiful pain and violence and she thought this paroxysm an extension of that. Besides, the dark fire died just as quickly and left cold dead embers. He let his grip loosen. “You are mine, Kelly, mine, and I’ll not be sharing you with no Yid, nor any other, you know that?” he said unsteadily.

[Carrotty Nell]

Constable Walter Dew would be famous one day. He would be the detective who would chase suspected wife murderer Dr Crippen half way around the world. In Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-Eight he was a young constable on duty at Commercial Street Police Station. Half a century later in his autobiography he would recall that long-ago November morning, the day of the Lord Mayor’s Show, when Indian Harry Bowyer ran into the station. The door banged open. Thump, as the stricken man stumbled over the step and tumbled face forward.
Constable Dew looked in alarm at his superior officer Inspector Beck, who was equally astonished. “Be careful, sir, take your time. You’ll do yourself an injury.”
The stricken newcomer got to his feet. He swayed. He staggered towards the desk. His face was burning. His eyes were blazed as if the had seen the Devil.
“Please be calm, sir,” said Inspector Beck soothingly, “And tell us slowly what has happened.”
“Murder!” The word came out as a gasp. “Murder!” Another gasp, and choking for air like someone trapped in an airless shaft. “Murder!” It began as a gasp, the third utterance, and rose to a shriek. He put trembling hands to his bright brow.
“Dew, fetch the gentleman a drink of water. Now, sir, why don’t you sit and wait until you are a little calmer before you tell us the story?”
The trembling hands spilled much of the water Dew brought for him. His eyes burned glittering ice, staring far away from the scene, and barely aware of the two Police officers listening to him by his side.
“I work for Paddy McCarthy. He is a landlord in Dorset Street… owns the rooms in Miller’s Court. My name is Bowyer. I am the Messenger.
“Down in the court there lives a woman named Mary Jane Kelly. Feisty wench. Some’ as say she is Irish, some ‘as say Welsh. But no-one really knows her.
“Now this morning, McCarthy, he summons me to do a job for him. ‘Bowyer,’ he says, ‘That Kelly owes me six weeks rent. I’m not allowing her to get away with it no more. Either she pays, now, or she’s out on her meaty backside.’ So he tells me, McCarthy does, to go around to Kelly’s room and get the money from her.
“So I went to the room. I knocked. There was no answer. I shouted ‘Tis the rent man, Kelly, no use you pretending to be asleep still. I’m waiting here until you appears.’ But still I hears nothing. So I goes to the window. The window is broken. She broke it herself, quarrelling with her sweetheart what don’t live with her no more. Kelly chucked him out. She had covered this broken window with an old coat making like a curtain with it.
“I pushed the coat aside and looked into the room. Oh Holy God, I never seed such a sight. Nor has you, nor any man, not if you was to live to be a hundred. That is the room of the Devil himself, make no mistake.
“I staggered away and I ran for McCarthy. He fetched his spare key and we both go back to the room together. McCarthy and me, we just stood together in that room with our arms around each other, and McCarthy, he begins to sob. Never can I describe that room, never. It is every nightmare you ever had when you was a child. It is the room of every demon and goblin who haunts the Earth on All Hallow’s Eve.
“Kelly, she is there, though, on the bed with her legs up as if she is giving birth. We know ‘tis her by her golden hair. But of her pretty face there is now no more.
“In the grate there has been a fire. A great fire. So great that the embers are still hot to the touch, and that inferno must have burned so high, so hot, and so fierce that it has burned the spout off the little kettle. Such a fire it must have been that the tower of Christchurch must have glowed blood-red in its light.
“And of Kelly herself… she is no woman any more. The fiend has taken those things which made her a woman, her womb, her breasts… and he has taken her heart too.
“McCarthy, he collapsed upon the floor. ‘Go Bowyer!’ he says. ‘Go to the Police Station! Do not tarry!’ And so I came, running all the way from Dorset Street and begging you to come straight away. For I swear by the starry arch of Heaven, the very Devil came to Miller’s Court last night.”

[Carrotty Nell]

Hyde Park was bleak on the day before Christmas Eve as the two men wandered its leafless avenues. The piles of leaf-mould were sodden with winter rain.
“We believed we knew who Jack was, you know,” Swanson said. “What I’m telling you goes no further, you understand. I’m telling you because, well… it’s so long ago now, and the file is closed, and that case damn near ruined your health old chap, so I feel if anyone has a right to hear this, it is you, Fred. But as I say, it goes no further.”
“Oh, you have my word. Who was Jack?”
“Aaron Kozminsky.”
Abberline stopped, stared, and looked up into the skeleton trees seeking a face to put to a name. “You mean… that barber in Tyrannus Court? Good Lord! I remember him, naturally. We had him under surveillance. But we had a lot of people under surveillance. I don’t recall there was anything…”
“It was kept completely secret. Only me, Sir Robert and three very senior officers knew about it. We got Israel Schwartz in to see if he could identify Kozminsky. We needed it completely secret, away from prying eyes, so we took Kozminsky to the Met’s Convalescent Seaside Home at Hove and got Schwartz down there too. We took Kozminsky illegally of course, off the street, without a warrant. Schwartz recognised him, no question. ‘Oy, yes, that’s the schmuck I saw attacking Long Liz in Berner Street.’
“I just wanted to get the wretched soul shut away in a loony bin as soon as possible. As it turned out, his family saved us the bother and did it for us. Sir Robert, though, wanted Kozminsky hung, drawn and quartered and his head sticking on London Bridge. He was furious with Kozminsky’s brothers, accused them of thwarting Gentile justice.”
Abberline had been staring in astonishment. He paced about the path. “Israel Schwartz was remembering something he had seen on a dark, stormy, autumn night more than two years earlier. And Schwartz was terrified. He thought he was about to get attacked also. Do you seriously think he could reliably recognise someone after all that time?”
“Oh, he did. I am confident.”
Abberline fixed him with a piercing look. “I also seem to recall… was not Kozminsky already committed to the asylum when Frances Coles died? I was off the case by then of course, but I followed it in the newspapers. Unless Kozminsky escaped the asylum that night, made his way back to Whitechapel, and got back to the asylum afterwards before anyone missed him… I doubt he killed her.”
Swanson lead him to a nearby bench.
“As soon as I saw Carroty Nell in the mortuary,” Swanson said, “I thought she was not killed by the same man who killed the others. Frances’ killer drew the blade across the throat three times, forwards and backwards, rather like the way you saw a log. Jack as you will remember aimed straight at the carotid artery. Frances’ killer was, for want of a more apposite word, an amateur. He had never killed anyone in that way before. As you’ll know if you followed the case, we suspected her estranged sweetheart Tom Sadler. For what it’s worth, I still think he was her killer. Though the jury did not agree with me.
“We had kept the Kozminsky investigation completely secret for a good reason. You remember the outbreak of Jew-baiting following the Leather Apron scare? Imagine that magnified into a full-blown pogrom. That is what we feared we might get if it got out that we thought Jack the Ripper was a Jew. And despite our secrecy I discovered at least one reporter had been asking awkward questions about Kozminsky.
“When Coles died and everyone could see Kozminsky could not have killed her, we made a lot of public noise about her being the latest victim of Jack. We fed a lot of information to the press to that effect. And we made it public also that we were investigating Tom Sadler not just for Frances’ murder but for the whole Ripper series. We even got one of the other witnesses, one of the chaps from Mitre Square, to try and identify Sadler. Which he naturally failed to do because Sadler was not Jack the Ripper, but we made sure the press knew all about it.
“We were confident, you see, that Sadler was going to swing for the murder of Carroty Nell, and we figured tossing some extra dirt in his direction would not harm him.”
“Dear God!” Abberline exclaimed.
“I know. I am not proud of it, none of us were. We did it, we thought, in the public interest, trying to protect the Jewish community from the expected back-lash, tried to turn prying eyes from Kozminsky and stave off a major outbreak of Jew-baiting in the city. We did not think Sadler would walk, you see.”
Abberline sat in silence, deep in thought, staring at the leaf-sodden path.
“I suppose I can understand why,” he allowed at last. “It was a terrible thing to do. But I can understand why. And it does you credit, in a way. But I do not think you were right about Kozminsky. You will never convince me that a Jew would shout an anti-Semitic insult at another Jew and write some anti-Semitic graffiti in the doorway of a Jewish tenement block. At least, that is how I interpret it. I think Jack was the fellow who called himself George Hutchinson and sat opposite me making that clearly bogus witness statement.”
“Don’t you think that would be rather out of Jack’s character? Seeking publicity like any common time-waster?”
“I think he had a reason. He had been spooked. I think he was the man Sally Kennedy saw outside Miller’s Court. And when he read an account of her witness statement in the press, he panicked, because there was something in it that would identify him to some third party. So he came forward as George Hutchinson to provide a plausible explanation, and identity, for the shadowy figure Mrs Kennedy saw, and put any suspicious acquaintances off his own scent.”
“Fred,” Swanson said benignly, “Sally Kennedy saw a short, stout man wearing a wide-awake hat. It isn’t as if she said he was wearing a Maharaja’s kaftan and had ’Arthur Gerald Somerville’ tattooed on his knuckles. Jack’s mama could not have recognised him from that description.”
“All it would take is someone at the Working Men’s Home to say ’hey George’, or whatever his real name was, ’Didn’t I see you heading up Miller’s Court way that night? And weren’t you wearing a wide-awake hat?’ and he would panic. And invent George Hutchinson to get himself out of trouble.”
“We’re not going to agree, are we,” said Swanson with a twinkle in the eye. “That was one thing I always enjoyed about working with you.” He looked away into the distance. “And Jack, I think, is safe. If Kozminsky where he is now blurts out ‘I am Jack the Ripper’ I think it will elicit the same response from his warders as ‘I am Czar Alexander the Third’.
“Jack was one of the best social reformers the East End ever knew, you know. The publicity drew world attention to the terrible poverty and some of the worst of the slums have been cleared in consequence. I can envisage a day when he will be a tourist attraction too. Ah, listen!” Swanson said in delight, at sound of sweet, young voices. “A youth choir singing carols. Come, let’s go listen.”

[Ben]

Excellent work, Nell!

Blissfully devoid of all the usual royals and masons that usually get woven into any fictional treatment of JTR.

Hope you find a publisher soon.

All the best,
Ben

[Carrotty Nell]

Superintendent Briars held up a framed print admiringly and showed it to the attendant, Mr Robinson, who was waiting in his office. “Another for the gallery. Fine, is it not? It is called The Pretty Baa-lambs by Ford Maddox Brown.”
Robinson studied the picture. There were double maidens in a rural idyll. One was kneeling in the grass and picking herbs and flowers and ferns. The other wore a red rose on the front of her frock. She was holding her infant towards one of the pretty baa-lambs whose woolly tail was raised to the viewer. It was as if she was offering the child to a life of innocence and joy which she could not provide for it. The sacrifice of losing the child would rip her heart but she would do it for the child’s sake.
“You have seen the other pictures I have put out in the hall?” Briars asked. “I am making a gallery, you see.”
“Yes sir, very pleasant. May I ask why?”
Briars smiled. “I want to brighten the place up a bit. It is good for the patients, to make them happy. Therapeutic, you see. Also, it makes the place less sinister for visitors. More cheery. Bit more welcoming.. make our visitors feel at home.”
“At home?”
“Well… you know what I mean, I hope. A few pictures in the hall as they come in and they won’t feel scared.. or threatened. Pictures are… well… civilised.”
“That is true, sir. And it is only a hundred years since we were still keeping the insane in cages and letting the public watch their antics at fair-grounds.”
“Oh, we still do that sometimes Mr Robinson. I believe today it is called Stranger’s Gallery. I’m wondering where to put The Pretty Baa-lambs,” Briars continued, looking at it again. “I guess on the wall on the left of the window. That was where the picture of the Kaiser was well-hung, but sadly had to come down when the Lady Mayoress saw it. A shame there’ll not be many to appreciate art, though. We don’t get many art critics coming here. Not as visitors anyway. Patients maybe.”
At this moment the motor car arrived and parked in the forecourt before the porch. The Superintendent’s office was to the side, overlooking the front drive. Briars peeped from behind the curtain and turned to Robinson with a beam. Not many motor cars came to Leavesden and certainly not gleaming new Bentleys.
“Take at look at this piece of art, Mr Robinson. That cost more than you’ll earn in your lifetime, my boy.” As the attendant went to the window and looked Briars continued: “It is the Kozminsky brothers here to settle their brother’s last affairs.”
“As a matter of fact sir,” Robinson said, “That was what brought me here today.”
“Ah yes… your day off is it not? I wondered why you were here. Truth be told, I was fearing you might be here to give me your notice. Could hardly blame you if you did. Hardly a job for heroes.”
“Oh no sir,” Robinson said swiftly. “That is not why I am here. It was about the old timer who passed away. Thing is… I was with him when he died, it was on my turn of duty, and I would kind of like to meet the family… pay my respects.”
“Of course… very welcome, dear fellow,” Briars said. He had truly doubted that this was the kind of vocation a returning veteran would willingly choose. The fact was, however, Robinson had been sent home from the Front because half his leg was smashed to pulp and he was no use to anyone there any longer. A career tending His Majesty’s lunatics was about as good as he could expect now, and Briars would not have been surprised if he had resented it and shown his resentment with neglect of the patients and surliness to the staff. Not so. To sacrifice his day off just to pay respects to one dead patient’s family showed actual dedication.
Feeling well-disposed towards him therefore, Briars perched on the edge of the desk and offered a decent brand of cigarette. When they were both smoking he asked: “So you were with old Aaron at the end, were you? I guess I got quite fond of him eventually. Not the troublesome type, you see. Never had to use a strait-jacket or anything like that. Type that did as he was told. If only they were all as docile. How did you find Aaron Mr Robinson? Did you like him?”
Robinson was not sure whether he liked Aaron Kozminsky or not. You neither liked nor disliked someone whom you had to feed his food with a spoon, who relied on you to change his undergarments, who wept great rolling tears when one of the younger, heartier patients made fun of him, and who hid when there were female visitors on the wing. Now that had been odd behaviour, certainly, which Robinson had wondered at. Lady Beatrice, having found in the County Lunatic Asylum at Leavesden a suitably worthy cause upon which to lavish her aristocratic munificence, had gone on a serjeant-majorish tour of inspection of the establishment and its inmates and staff, demanding of the patients if they had any complaints about their treatment which she could take up with the management on their behalf. Aaron had gone at break-neck shuffle into his room and hidden beneath the blanket until she’d gone. Come to think of it, so had one or two of the other patients. He had certainly had no female visitors since his sister Sarah died. That had been many years ago, back in the old King’s time.
Robinson remembered Aaron as a bow-backed, emaciated figure shuffling along lonely corridors in Colonus Wing which now seemed bleaker without him. His shuffling gait was lop-sided towards the end with the tumour in one leg which had killed him. The other patients called him Crooked Foot. The once glossy black love-locks were no more than a few wispy white strands. The fat which he had acquired through alcoholism was long-stripped by the ravages of mental illness.
Robinson recalled when he had first been introduced. The charge-attendant had brought them together on Robinson’s first day and said, patronizingly, and with the raised voice which suggested a strange belief that deafness is a symptom of mental illness: “Helloooo Aaron! This is Mr Robinson. He’s come to look after you. He’s come home from the Front especially. Yeeees he has! He received a special dispatch from Field Marshall Haig ordering him to return to England at once in order to come and look after you!”
“Aaron just stared at me with those great dark eyes,” Robinson recalled. “I suppose I was rather taken with someone who didn’t know there was a war on.” Not that it had entirely passed Aaron by however. When he had been muttering to himself in Yiddish one day another patient had gone to Superintendent Briars and reported Aaron as a Hun spy.
“There was something very odd about Aaron, though, you know,” Briars said thoughtfully. “Very strange indeed. Let me tell you. Well… there was nothing unusual in his background really… he came to this country in Eighteen Hundred and Eighty-One, from Poland I believe, fleeing the pogroms over there I expect. He worked as a barber in the East End… was declared insane in Eighteen Hundred and Ninety-One and has been here ever since. Longer than me. As I say, nothing remarkable you might think.
“But I made a strange discovery once… oh, years ago, when I was a junior attendant here like you. I saw a letter in Aaron’s file. It was from Scotland Yard. It was imperative, they said, that they must be informed should Aaron ever be well enough to be released. Never any chance of that of course! But the writer of this letter was a fellow named Donald Swanson. Now… this Swanson was not some tiddler of a desk sergeant, oh dear me no! He was a Superintendent and very senior at Scotland Yard.
“Well! I was curious of course. When I was promoted to Superintendent here I made a few discrete enquiries into Aaron’s background."
“And you found?"
“Regrettably, not much. There were a few complaints about indecent exposure, nothing more. Good Lord, the Prince of Wales has a worse record than that. So it remains a mystery. Ah well,” rising from the desk, “Here are the brothers."