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Whiskey Creek Press
Category:
Horror
Publisher: Whiskey Creek Press
ISBN-10: whispersinthewind
Type: Fiction
Pages: 254
Copyright: Sept. 10, 2007
WHISPERS IN THE WIND
The Search for Jack the Ripper
by Del Garrett
Horror - 72,200 Words
Release Date: December 2008
“The witch! The old hag, she did it. Taught him her secrets, she did. Right nice of the old gal, considering it was she what did him in for misery’s sake. An’ what matter of conjuration d’yuh suppose she was up to when she told him what her payment would be? An eye fer an eye, she wanted. But it wasn’t jest an eye that she wanted. The witch. She wanted ‘er payments in blood. Livers and lungs, she wanted; and the heart, especially the heart.” --The Blind Man
~~~
Chief Inspector Lionel Diggins’ wife dies after a lengthy illness. Losing her, he also loses his will to live and tries to ease his pain by drinking himself nearly to death. Recovering from the bottle, he finds he has lost favor in the eyes of his superiors at Scotland Yard. During Inspector Frederick Abberline’s sudden bout with pneumonia, his superiors assign Diggins to take over the investigation of a string of grisly murders purportedly the work of the world’s first serial killer – Jack the Ripper. When he begins his investigation ghostly warnings urge him to be careful. His dead wife, Alice, is reaching out from beyond the grave to protect him.
Excerpt
Chief Inspector Lionel Diggins had barely lifted his glass to his lips when one of the young constables he had met earlier that night burst through the door and headed straightway for the inspector’s table.
“Uh, we have another one, sir.” The officer shifted his weight from one foot to another like a schoolboy caught looking up a young girl’s petticoats. His fingers danced around the outer rim of his helmet, which he had removed and had now cradled before him. He kept his eyes lowered to the table with only a quick glance upward to see if Diggins had heard him.
“What did you say?” The glass in Diggins hand remained upright at his lips without tipping. He faced straight ahead, but he had shifted his eyes sideways to look at the city constable.
“I said we found another one, sir, over on Mitre Square near the large warehouse.”
“Bloody rot!” Diggins slammed the whiskey glass down on the table sending its smoky brown contents shooting straight up into the air. Another prostitute had been murdered.
“Show me the body,” Diggins yelled as he stood up.
He had already seen one murdered body earlier that evening. He had arrived on the scene quite by accident. Seeing a man running away, Diggins' attention was focused more upon the body of a woman sprawled upon the ground. Her clothing had been mussed and she lay perfectly still. A first glance at her did not show how she had suffered. Looking closer, Diggins saw the thin blood line that formed a crimson necklace lightly decorating her throat. It was the last present she would ever receive from a gentleman of the evening. While Diggins was bent over examining the unfortunate victim, he heard the shrill bleating of a policeman’s whistle cutting through the dense fog surrounding Whitechapel Square. It came like the cry of a wild animal caught in a trap. Ghostlike figures with their rounded helmets and short capes loomed like dark angels breaking through the gray mists covering the area. The fog robbed them of their depth of vision, forcing each policeman to strain his eyes to see beyond his reach. Over the cobblestones they clattered, a bobby here, a bobby there, truncheon and torch in hand, congregating toward the yard where the woman’s body lay.
“You there, stand up and let me have a look at you,” said the first uniform on the scene.
Diggins stood upright. He turned his short, wiry frame one-quarter around toward the police officer. Silhouetted in the faint glow of the street lamp, and emblazoned by the refractive nature of the fog, his silver colored hair, his somewhat bulbous nose, and his Van Dyke moustache and goatee gave simple enough clue as to his identity.
“Oh, terribly sorry, Chief Inspector Diggins. Didn’t know it was you, sir. I dare say, I thought for once we had our man.”
“And so you might if you had continued up Ellen to Christian Street instead of turning up Berner.”
“What? And how, sir, could you know which path I’ve been with all this fog about?”
“Quite simple, Sergeant Clancey. I heard your footsteps on the cobblestone. You are the first to arrive on the scene, after me, of course. A man bumped into me as I passed by the alley, then he disappeared in the fog. I heard his footsteps leading away from here up Christian and they never slowed in their pace; hence, unchallenged. I heard no such footsteps in the opposite direction on Back Church Street or Commercial, whence I came. The only other path leading toward this yard over cobblestones is Ellen Street, which obviously makes that the way by which you came.”
“Blimey!”
It was a game they played. Two veteran police officers playing Sherlock Holmes, London's newest fictional hero had become the talk of the town and everyone was imitating Conan Doyle's master detective. Diggins and Clancey had worked together on other cases in the district, none of them particularly interesting – a mugging here, a knifing there – so in the past few months since Conan Doyle's "A Study In Scarlett" had captured eveyone's attention, they had found ways to view the evidence just as Holmes himself might have done. The game was just something to break up the boredom. Here was such a case. A simple murder, no doubt. The murderer had struck with just a quick slice across the throat and an even quicker grab for the few pence the woman carried. He had then slunk away into the night, probably headed toward the nearest pub for a quick drink to still the chill of the cold, London fog. Bumping into Diggins, the killer had grown afraid and had taken to flight up Christian Street. He, no doubt, needed his drink now even more than ever before.
“All right, boys, wrap it up and get the lady out of here,” Diggins said to the two policemen who had just joined them. “That is, Sergeant Clancey, unless you would like to inspect the body.”
“No, thank you, sir. I’ve seen enough unfortunate souls like this since being assigned to the East End.”
“Quite right,” the chief inspector agreed. Having done what he could, which is to say nothing but to confirm that the woman was dead, he left her in the hands of the two police constables and the disgruntled coroner being hustled to the scene in just his trousers, shirt and waistcoat. The woman’s throat had been cut, but her body had not been mutilated like the two previous murders in Whitechapel at the beginning of the month. Still, three murders in the district in thirty days was a major concern to Diggins and the other detectives at Scotland Yard. True, the first two had been prostitutes, and this one likely as not was in the same business. Londoners wouldn’t concern themselves with one or two fallen women in the East End, but this third one might get their attention. Goodness knows he didn’t need sightseers coming around mucking up the murder scenes. The London press was already taking up residences in cheap lodging houses and what few casual wards still had open dormitory space.
Diggins wiped his shoes on a clump of wet grass a good distance from the body. He hadn’t actually looked at the soles of his shoes, but experience told him there were probably traces of blood underneath. Hardly the thing any street policeman might object to since nobody could see the underside of his shoes unless he propped them up on a desk, and he wouldn’t have done that. Still, it was somewhat tasteless to walk about with another person’s blood upon you, so he cleaned them out of instinct and a sense of propriety. He then strolled down Church Street to the Queen’s Head pub on Commercial leaving the carnage behind. He was not an apathetic man, but he had earned a reputation for impartial observances at crime scenes with no expression of emotion. Nineteen and a half years at the Yard, the last four with the Special Branch (formerly the Special Irish Branch) had taught him to keep everything inside and to not get emotionally attached to the victims.
Besides, he needed a drink.
Ever since his darling wife, Alice, had died, Diggins had been hitting the bottle more and more to dull the pain of loneliness. It didn’t help really, temporary at best. Tomorrow he would drop in on the coroner to seek out any clues an autopsy might reveal. Clues he hoped would lead him to discover the identity of the fiend being dubbed by the London press as Jack the Ripper.
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