DARK NIGHT OF THE RIPPER

A Historical Time Travel Mystery

by

Helen Pilz

Santa Fe, New Mexico, U.S.A.

August 7, Present Day

CHAPTER ONE

At the Costume Shop

The Enchanted Costume Shop’s aged, earthy red, one-story adobe building sat on a narrow street just a block off the four-century-old Santa Fe plaza. The unassuming store nestled between a clock repair establishment and a boutique selling power crystals and gemstones.

Two signs hung above the turquoise blue door.

This structure was built in 1610 A.D. by Spanish Conquistadors.

Change your clothes, Change your life.

Buy or rent outfits for plays, parties, & other special events.

Open year-round.

Passing beneath the sign, Rachael Spielman moved from the warm, piñon-scented breeze into the shop’s air, welcoming with hints of sandalwood and cedar. The top of the door brushed against bronze chimes, emitting deep tones that reverberated in her chest. She scanned the rows of bins and shelves for a clerk to assist her.

Failing to spot anyone, she moved deeper into the store between racks of costumes, including velvet Elizabethan gowns, silky geisha kimonos, and shiny chain mail. Navigating through the labyrinth of clothing, she approached a jewelry case of sparkly crowns and beaded purses, when a costumed mannequin by the back wall caught her attention. She should have expected to see a macabre Halloween favorite: a top hat and a Victorian black opera cape lined with red silk over a gentleman’s tuxedo; a simple, iconic symbol of murder, fear, and social unrest.

Rachael’s chest tightened, and her muscles tensed; yet, like a ship drawn to the center of a dark and sinister whirlpool, she was captivated by the figure clutching a bloodstained knife in its raised fist. He was one of history’s most notorious serial killers, and she had recently read dozens of reference books about him. Never identified or caught, he had been given a name taken from the signature on taunting letters sent to the media and the police, including one written in blood.

Jack the Ripper.

Rachael slid her fingertips down the cape’s glossy fabric. Static electricity in the dry New Mexico fall air sparked, stinging her hand. The shock caused images to swirl in her head of eerie Victorian London nights and bodies tainted with freshly spilled gore. Her gaze clung to the shiny top hat like fog to a gas lamp.

Something brushed her shoulder. She flinched, and her body collided with the mannequin. It toppled forward, the cape engulfing her like a funeral shroud. The prop knife plunged down at her. She thrust the heel of her hand out to deflect the weapon, then dropped and rolled under a round clothing rack.

“My goodness,” a woman said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

Rachael poked her head out from under the rack, rubbing her face to hide the embarrassment heating her cheeks. She got to her feet and helped the shop clerk set the figure back up. “Sorry.”

“It’s all right. Can I get you some water?”

Rachael shook her head.

The woman wore a cream-colored blouse, a southwestern broomstick skirt, and low-heeled pumps. Tortoiseshell reading glasses swung from her neck on a multi-colored beaded chain. “Given your interest in the Ripper costume,” the clerk said, reaching up on tiptoes to straighten the top hat, “might you perhaps be the customer who called about a Victorian lady’s dress?”

“Yes, I’m Rachael Spielman.”

“I’m Margaret. Welcome to my humble little shop of dreams, fantasies, and adventures.” With a flourish, Margaret swept her hand in an arc at the kaleidoscope of colorful apparel. “Your voicemail said the costume was for a Jack the Ripper conference in London.”

“Yes, and I am in a bit of a rush, so . . .”

“Jack the Ripper. That’s a serious subject for a young woman.”

Rachael may have been young in Margaret’s eyes, but she felt like she had lived a lifetime. At twenty-six, she’d already completed an undergraduate degree in psychology, gone to the police academy, and become an officer, only to leave that job and return to school to pursue an advanced degree she was now at risk of failing to acquire.

Margaret tilted her head to the side. “Is something wrong?”

Rachael shrugged one shoulder. “You don’t need to hear my problems.”

“The more I know, the better I’ll be able to pick the perfect costume for you.”

Rachael did need a good one. “Okay. Last month, I turned in a draft of my master’s thesis in criminal psychology.” Rachael couldn’t help but frown. “My major professor told me it needed major revisions if I wanted to graduate this year.”

Margaret raised her eyebrows. “What was wrong with your thesis?’

“He said it didn’t have enough vivid background history.”

“What is the subject?” Margaret asked.

“Late-Victorian era crime and society.” Rachael pointed a thumb at the Ripper mannequin. “With so many suspects and no convictions, the Ripper is the perfect cold case for a study in criminology.”

“Sounds fascinating. And if you don’t graduate?” Margaret asked.

“I’ll lose my best chance at my dream job.”

“Which is…?”

“Criminal profiler.”

While the Ripper served as a symbol of Victorian-era crime, the world was still too full of psychopaths, serial killers, and men who committed violent acts against women. She’d seen it herself, much closer than she ever wanted. “I intend to help bring offenders to justice.”

“From the stern expression on your face, it looks personal.”

Rachael bit her lip. She’d come to the shop to get a costume, and now here she was laying bare her hopes and aspirations. It was odd, but there was something about Margaret that made her feel like she could open up to her without fear of judgment.

“Killers like the Ripper aren’t just something from the past.” Rachael fought against a tide of memories that threatened to overwhelm her.

“I understand. I’ve seen man’s inhumanity toward man.” Margaret stared into the distance as if looking into another place and time. She shook her head and motioned for Rachael to follow her to the service counter. “Now, what does this costume have to do with your school, career, and mission?”

“As I said in my voicemail, it’s for the conference’s murder site tour. Professional re-enactors stage it, and everyone wears Victorian costumes.” Rachael glanced at an English police officer’s blue outfit, including the blue, round-domed hat. “For my paper, I need a better perspective on life from back then. That’s why I need a great costume. And if I can learn just one thing to stop a present-day murderer, the whole trip overseas will be worth my time.”

“I like the sound of that,” Margaret said.

Rachael checked the clock on her cell phone. She had already been here longer than planned.

Margaret gave a conspiratorial smile. “In a hurry to meet a gentleman friend?”

“That would be nice, but I haven’t had time for dating in a while,” Rachael admitted.

“A nice man about your age is picking up a late-Victorian era gentleman’s costume later this afternoon. Maybe he, too, has an interest in the Ripper. Alexander is his name.”

Rachael shrugged. It didn’t ring a bell. “I’m just meeting some friends for a drink. No dates on the radar.”

“If that’s the case, can you spare a few more minutes?” Margaret raised an eyebrow. “I’m selective about whom I let rent my premium costumes.”

“Premium?” asked Rachael, intrigued by the notion of something extraordinary.

“They’re rare. Some are irreplaceable,” Margaret explained. “They only go to someone who really needs them.”

The city’s afternoon traffic would already be starting to back up, and the bar where Rachael was supposed to meet her friends would be getting super crowded. If she didn’t head out soon, it probably wouldn’t be worth going at all.  She glanced towards the front door.

“Ah, too bad.” Margaret sighed. “It’s not often I get someone in here with your interest in history. The Ripper case is puzzling. Wasn’t one of the victims named Martha?”

“You’re probably thinking of Martha Tabram.” Rachael’s mind went to the widely published grainy black-and-white photo of Martha’s corpse. In the image, a dark sheet covered the thirty-one stab wounds in her body, leaving only her head visible. Martha’s eyes were closed, her mouth partially open, her head listing to one side—once a wife and a mother, not only had her physical shell been left devoid of life, but also of dignity.

“Yes, Tabram.” Margaret nodded. “Poor Martha. Why do you think they never caught the killer?”

Rachael considered what she knew about the case: Police investigations were primitive in the 1880s. Fingerprints weren’t universally accepted for identification. Crime scenes were accidentally contaminated. Evidence lost.

“The police did their best with the tools they had at the time, but it wasn’t enough.” She glanced back at the mannequin. “With modern techniques—computers, DNA analysis, criminal profiling—they would’ve analyzed the evidence and caught him.”

Rachael rechecked her phone. “I do have to get going. I’m running out of time.”

“Timing is everything.” Margaret nodded. “To paraphrase my friends, Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, people should take time and make space for what they need.

Rachael laughed. “Do you hang out with theoretical physicists often?”

“I have.” Margaret smiled. “Speaking of time, if you’d been in London in 1888, how would you have identified Jack the Ripper?”

Rachael opened her mouth but then shut it. She wished she could confidently say she could have caught the killer, but her personal history proved otherwise. It was what had led her to leave her street officer job. She fiddled with a stack of business cards bearing the shop’s "change your life" slogan. “The Ripper murders took place over ten or so weeks. Of the hundred suspects, I’d narrow the list to about ten. I’d collect evidence and combine that with criminal profiling to ID the killer. The Ripper victims deserved justice. They still do.”

The wrinkles on Margaret’s forehead deepened briefly, then she snapped her fingers, and her aging eyes brightened. “I like helping people who help others.”

Rachael laughed. “You sound like a fairy godmother.”

“If I can make the glass shoe fit . . .” Margaret grinned. “You said the event starts on the last Thursday in August. Do you have a hotel room booked yet?”

“No. The conference is in Whitechapel.”

“Whitechapel? I should have guessed. I spent time there a few years back.” Margaret typed into a computer on the counter and adjusted the screen so Rachael could see it. “This is the best place if you want Victorian-era ambiance.”

“The Saint Christopher Hotel, London, United Kingdom.” Rachael scrolled through a few pages. “I like the old building and antique furniture. And it’s only a block from the conference venue.”

Margaret took out her cell phone and dialed. “Hi. Sorry to call so late at night there. Do you have any rooms available for the week beginning August 30? Yes, I know about the convention. Sold out? Your hotel is the place my client needs to stay.  Please look again. This is Margaret in Santa Fe. Yes, I’ll wait.” She hummed for a few seconds while on hold, then grinned.  “Brilliant. Please hold the room in my name. Cheers.” Under the counter, a printer made a copy of the hotel contact information. Margaret held it out.

Rachael looked at the paper skeptically.

“Go on,” Margaret coaxed. “Take a little risk.”

“Taking risks hasn’t exactly worked for me in the past.”

Margaret fluttered the document. “Our pasts do not have to control our futures.” Overhead light glistened on her gray hair like a halo.

Rachael took a deep breath for courage. She’d come this far. “Okay.” She accepted the paper. “Thanks.” When she got to London, she could change hotels if the place looked iffy.

“Great. I like you, Rachael. You’re officially one of my special clients.” Margaret smiled. “I had a normal, mass-produced costume picked out for you ahead of time, but now that we’ve talked, I have a better idea.”

Margaret rubbed her hands together, reached under the counter, and hefted out a large, cracked and faded leather-bound book. She retrieved the reading glasses from around her neck. “I need to check my exclusive costume inventory first.” She leafed to a page toward the back and ran her finger down a handwritten column.

Rachael craned her neck, but the cursive was too small to read.

Margaret’s finger stopped at an entry. She nodded in a satisfied way and returned the book. “You’re in luck. The costume is in the vault.”

“Vault?” Rachael asked, amused by the idea that a shop this size had a secure room hidden somewhere. “The outfit must really be something.”

Margaret toed off her pumps and eased her feet into slip-on, canvas sneakers. “It’s in the back. It’ll take me a few minutes. It’s one of a kind, but I can make alterations to fit you if needed.” She winked and disappeared through a curtain-covered door behind the counter.

Waiting for Margaret to return, Rachael took out her phone and noted the date: August 7. The date sparked a vague recollection that hid at the back of her mind, fuzzy at first, as if lingering on a dark stairwell landing, but then it emerged into the light, and Rachael’s breath caught.

In the early hours of the morning of August 7, 1888, in the Whitechapel district of East London, England, Mrs. Martha Tabram was murdered by Jack the Ripper.

Rachael shivered.

Whitechapel District, London, England

August 7, 1888

CHAPTER TWO

Dead Over Four Pence

The Ten Bells Tavern—smoky, bustling, and cheap—was one of Martha Tabram’s favorite nightly stops. Patrons scraped chairs on the wooden floor. The clink of glasses mixed with shrill laughter and heated arguments created a tinny cacophony.

Standing at the bar, she wiped a dribble of rum off her chin. Her fourth drink of the evening. The comforting burn went down smooth as mother’s milk to a babe and made her hard life a bit more cheerful. But the pockets of her second-hand dress were as empty as her ex-husband’s heart. Time to look for work.

She wove through the crowd, paying no mind to the reek of stale beer and body odor. A man reached out and pinched her bum.

“Piss off, ya sewer rat,” she yelled over her shoulder as she left out the front door.

Martha trudged through the darkness between pitifully dim smudges of streetlight. Her gait was unsteady from drink, and the stabbing ache in her middle-aged hips. She sideswiped a building’s soot-encrusted brick wall. She didn’t bother trying to wipe the new dirt off the old.

Rough-clothed men passed by on their way to the docks to unload early-morning cargo ships or perhaps to work a night shift at a slaughterhouse. Surely, one bloke had a few minutes and the money for her services. Men liked her thick brown hair and the extra meat on her bones.

She rubbed her sore back. Blimey, she’d had enough of harsh labor in workhouses, thank you very bloody much.

She crossed the road. Cobblestones pressed without pity against her thinning boot soles.

A horse-drawn cart rattled by, loaded with cut flowers and crated oranges. It headed toward Spitalfields Market. Martha paused to breathe in the rare fresh scent.

An orange fell off the cart. She grabbed it and hid it next to her body. Her mouth watered while looking at the rare treat. She readied her thumbnail to pierce the orange skin but stopped. How much could she sell it for? That might be the smarter thing to do.

A girl sitting on the curb, face smudged with dirt and wearing a ragged dress, stared up at her.

Martha had borne two sons but always wanted a rosy-cheeked daughter. But here she was, separated from her husband, her sons dead from disease and accident, with no one to love and support her. Martha ruffled the child’s hair. “It’s late, love. Shouldn’t ya be home?”

The girl just shrugged.

With only a moment’s hesitation from the thought of the fruit’s precious juice and flesh, Martha handed the harvest to the girl, who hugged it to her chest.

“Thank you, ma’am. I haven’t eaten all day.”

 Martha nodded and moved on. She only needed to make four pence. Just enough for a night’s lodging in a rundown doss house. She snorted. Four pence for a small cot in a large, overcrowded room. Highway robbery. At least I’ll have a roof over me head.

A disheveled man slept in a doorway, a weather-beaten fedora over his face, his legs stretched out on the sidewalk. A bloke like him wouldn’t have no money to pay her for a knee trembler. She detoured around him.

She’d seen this one before, skulking around Whitechapel. He belonged in a madhouse, but, because she’d been born and raised a few blocks from London’s Bedlam asylum, she’d not wish that on anyone. Growing up, she’d heard screams from within the high walls. Her brothers had terrified her, saying they were going to throw her in and have the Bedlam guards take her away. Oh, how she’d cried.

Martha raised her chin. She didn’t cry anymore. She’d lived long enough on the dodgy streets here not to fear anything.

But her brave thoughts drained as she neared the site of a recent murder in Whitechapel. Martha hadn’t known Emma Smith well, except she was a poor widow who took hard to drink, and, like Martha, had been looking for work to afford a bed for the night. Emma had been brutally attacked and died from the injuries. Martha glanced around warily and pulled her shawl tighter around her shoulders.

Strolling along Commercial Street, she met Mary Connolly, who had recently taken to calling herself Pearly Poll. The hem of Pearly’s pale green dress was stained with dirt, but her gap-toothed smile still charmed the men. The woman was stout and solid as a brick privy. Martha and Pearly linked arms. Martha grinned. No one would dare hurt her while she was with Pearly.

This might be me lucky night. Murders. Bah!

They joined people bustling along the thoroughfare. Martha inhaled deeply. Someone was frying fish and chips.

Police Constable Neill strode towards her. Her steps faltered. He’d arrested her twice last month for being drunk and disorderly. She didn’t want no trouble tonight.

He continued past her along his route and touched his domed hat. Martha delighted in the respect she seldom received.

Pearly knew someone looking for women to hawk baskets of potatoes in the streets.

“You can count on me.” Now Martha had plans. A job, even if temporary, held promise. Her life was turning around, it was. She wouldn’t have to rely so much on the kindness of her friends for drinks.

Besides the job lead, Pearly also had a few pennies, so she and Martha patronized several local pubs. Whitechapel and Spitalfields, two of London’s poorest districts, boasted a pub or two on every major block. Some self-righteous gents said the numbers was disgraceful, but it was ol’right with her and her mates.

Pearly Poll raised her mug of ale. “To our friend Emma Smith. Dead four months now, and I still miss her.”

Martha had switched from rum to gin and raised her glass. “And to hell with the bloody bastards what killed ‘er.”

“Ain’t safe around here.”

“I’ll be sure to tell Queen Victoria next time we have tea.”

“Good one, Martha.” Pearly slapped the table, and both women laughed so hard and loud the owner threw them out.

Near midnight, they moved on to the Two Brewers and met a pair of soldiers on leave. After a coupla of pints, Pearly and one soldier left in one direction, Martha and hers in another.

Acquainted with all the secluded places, Martha led him to a dark alley with something sturdy to brace against. Wooden fences was better than damp brick walls that accumulated a thicker coating of grime and grit. She wasn’t about to lie down for him on the filthy ground. After all, she had her pride, she did.

The man grabbed the top of the fence for leverage. The City’s humid summer air slicked his skin. He was vigorous but quick. Martha had been with enough men; she knew it wasn’t personal. The worst part was this man’s onion breath. She turned her head and wondered at the cost of a small bag of peppermints.

Minutes later, coins in hand, Martha shuffled toward a common lodging house near Flower and Dean Street. She groaned over how, at only thirty-nine, she could have such sore feet. She rubbed her aching back. Scarcely one short block from her destination, the sign for The Frying Pan Pub called to her. She shook her head. What she really needed was to rest her tired bones. She licked her parched lips and nodded. Maybe just one to lift her spirits. Inside the warm and cheerful establishment, she exchanged her earnings for a sweet liquid burn in her belly.

The Christ Church Spitalfields’ bells rang three in the morning. Martha, broke and alone again, staggered back out to Whitechapel High Street.

Ahead, a man stepped out of the shadows.

She hesitated, thinking again of Emma Smith’s violent death.

The man jingled money in his pocket.

Bless ya, poor, sweet Emma, but you don’t need no four pence for your bed in the graveyard. Martha took his proffered arm.

They turned the corner at The White Hart Pub and proceeded up a narrow alley. Within a minute, they’d reached the arched entrance to the George Yard tenement building and climbed to the unlit, first-floor stairwell. Streetlamps and windows provided a meager bit of light.

He stopped. “You girls shouldn’t be out here on the streets.”

“So, how’s we unfortunates suppose ta make money, then. Sell crochet doilies and matches? That ain’t enough ta live offa.”

“You should be by a cozy fire, serving tea to your man.”

“Ain’t gotta man.” The alcohol’s effect in her stomach changed from cozy to queasy. “Me boyfriend left me a coupla weeks ago.” Who is this chap to judge me! Something weren’t right with this bloke. Loony as a Bedlam inmate. Martha shrugged. Best get it over with. She turned to face the wall, lifted her skirt, and shut her eyes.

Strong hands gripped her throat.

Martha clawed at his fingers, gasping for breath.

No! Her heart pounded.

Not me! She had things she still wanted to do. The promise of a job. Friends who would miss her.

Roiling hatred seemed to increase his strength.

A raised knife blade flashed in the weak light.

Her gut burned with poker-hot pain.

The glint of the knife flashed again and again in her blackening vision.

Her feet slid out from under her, and her knees hit the stairwell floor, now slippery with thick, warm blood.