“A wild animal.”
“I’ve been calling him a monster. The trouble is, believing he’s a monster doesn’t get me any closer to stopping him.”
“That would be the same as calling him evil, wouldn’t it?” Marion asked.
Bell agreed. “It’s not enough to think he is evil. In fact, it’s not even helpful.”
Marion said, “I’m beginning to understand why the newspapers keep referring to Jack the Ripper. He’s like an explanation for the unexplainable.”
“Even though we don’t know a thing about Jack the Ripper.”
“What do we know about him?” asked Marion.
Bell had already observed that the further back Research delved into newspapers, the more recent the memory of Jack the Ripper, the more their reporters invoked the connection. Now he asked Grady Forrer for information on the actual Jack the Ripper. Forrer had anticipated the request. Waiting for him was a thick packet of yellowed clippings from the Sun, the World, the Herald, and the Times. The top sheet’s headline read
CARNIVAL OF BLOOD CONTINUES
POLICE PARALYZED
“What do they boil down to?” Bell asked.
“Theories,” Grady told him, “all unfounded. Speculation, all imaginative. Conjecture, all fanciful. Guesses, all hopeless. Jack the Ripper is said to have been a nobleman or a surgeon or a Freemason, or a Polish radical, or a merchant seaman, or a leather worker, or a butcher. All that is known for sure about him is that eventually he stopped killing women in London. Although exactly when he stopped—whether 1888, or 1889, or 1891—is hotly debated. Also debated is why he stopped. Did he kill himself? Did he die of natural causes? Did he get bored? Did he immigrate to Australia? Did he flee to Brazil? Did he settle down to a quiet life in the country?”
“Do they debate whether he ever stopped at all?”
Grady shrugged. “The consensus seems to be that if he didn’t die, at some point he must have run out of steam.”
Bell slung the clippings under his arm and found an empty desk in the bull pen.
“Where is the Boss?”
“Went downstairs for supper.”
Downstairs was the palatial dining room of the Knickerbocker Hotel. An orchestra played. Every table was taken and conversation was animated. Bell waved to Enrico Caruso, who was dining with coloratura soprano Luisa Tetrazzini, but continued on a beeline toward Joseph Van Dorn, who was reading the menu at a corner table with his back to the wall. Bell eased onto the banquette, catty-corner to him, with his back to the other wall.
“Welcome,” said Van Dorn. “We haven’t broken bread in a long time. How are you?”
“Intrigued,” said Bell.
“Good Lord. We better order first.” Van Dorn looked up, and the table captain came running.
“Cocktail?” asked the Boss.
“Not yet,” said Bell.
Van Dorn ordered a Manhattan.
“With Bushmills Irish Whiskey, Mr. Van Dorn?”
“Always— You’re sure nothing for you, Isaac?”
“I am sure.”
Van Dorn ordered oysters and roast beef.
“And for you, Mr. Bell?”
“Pollo Tetrazzini.”