and self-possessed. I look back on the autumn of ’88 and that one other night and I think it was a spell of madness. Yet I regret none of it. On those nights I breathed fire. I outstared the basilisk. I lived .
Not again, perhaps. Never again.
I am thinking I shall burn this book.
It is a new year and I feel something growing in me. The old familiar urge. I had thought it was gone for good. But there may be life in me yet. Life for me, death for others.
Last night I again walked the streets of the East End. Little has changed. Little ever changes there.
I saw few policemen.
Many whores .
From the transition to shorter sentences and more jagged script, she knew what would come next.
Under the railway arch I took her—glorious—I was wrong to think I ever had lost my spirit—the knife felt so right in my hand, a part of me—the first incision like a lover’s kiss—the hot stink of her, the charnel-house reek—
But I left it uncompleted. Left her dead but mostly intact. Sheer bad luck, a constable coming by. I heard the clop of his boots and ran. He found her moments later. It was a near thing.
But glorious .
This had to be Frances Coles, dead on February 13, 1891. The day before Valentine’s Day.
Some say too much time has passed. They say this is the work of some other fiend.
Let them prattle. The next one will bear my signature.
I see now that I can never return to what I was. One spark animates me. One engine moves me. I can not deny my deepest nature. I must do what I am called to do. I am a sleepwalker otherwise. I am awake only on nights like these. To desist is to die.
Never again will I be less than what I am.
And shortly it will be Kitty who feels my knife. Her time has come. I will do her as I did the one in Miller's-court.
But the timeline listed no more victims. The killer’s plans must have changed. Jennifer turned the page and saw why.
Disaster . How could they know ? I made no mistakes, not one.
They don’t know. If they did I should have been arrested by now. They are only sniffing round. I am patient. I can wait them out.
And now I see. It was Vole. Dull Vole, sleepy Vole, smirking Vole. He slipped out of his bedchamber and went carousing in the city. He saw me there on the night of the whore’s death. He saw me and he talked , not to the police but to his stupid chattering friends who contacted the authorities.
And so they came by to speak with me. And they continue coming by.
Wisp has put me on leave. The noose tightens.
How much did Vole see? How much has he told ?
They shadow me. Two inspectors. They dog my footsteps. But I will outmanoeuvre them. I have packed my essentials in a trunk small enough to carry by hand.
I will consign this memoir to the fire. Then slip away in the night, when my watchers have dropped their guard. Book passage on a steamer under an assumed name. America is a large country, large enough to get lost in. Once there I will cover my trail, change identities again. They’ll not find me.
And Kitty, dear Kitty, must wait. But not forever. I shall come back for her.
That was the final entry. Obviously, he had been unable to destroy the precious record of his crimes. Perhaps it was then that the name on the inside cover was blacked out, the early pages removed, to preserve some degree of anonymity. The diary would have gone into the trunk, to be carried across the Atlantic. And farther west, all the way to California, to this house. The House of Silence, which had kept the secret all these years.
She stood up. Her mind was working fast—running like a millrace, as the diarist put it. The man who filled these pages with his thoughts showed the classic symptoms of schizophrenia, the cyclical swings between lucidity and manic paranoia. In the acute phases he was hostile, violent, homicidal. He went out every night, came back late, paced the floor. Women shrank from his gaze. People feared
Not again, perhaps. Never again.
I am thinking I shall burn this book.
It is a new year and I feel something growing in me. The old familiar urge. I had thought it was gone for good. But there may be life in me yet. Life for me, death for others.
Last night I again walked the streets of the East End. Little has changed. Little ever changes there.
I saw few policemen.
Many whores .
From the transition to shorter sentences and more jagged script, she knew what would come next.
Under the railway arch I took her—glorious—I was wrong to think I ever had lost my spirit—the knife felt so right in my hand, a part of me—the first incision like a lover’s kiss—the hot stink of her, the charnel-house reek—
But I left it uncompleted. Left her dead but mostly intact. Sheer bad luck, a constable coming by. I heard the clop of his boots and ran. He found her moments later. It was a near thing.
But glorious .
This had to be Frances Coles, dead on February 13, 1891. The day before Valentine’s Day.
Some say too much time has passed. They say this is the work of some other fiend.
Let them prattle. The next one will bear my signature.
I see now that I can never return to what I was. One spark animates me. One engine moves me. I can not deny my deepest nature. I must do what I am called to do. I am a sleepwalker otherwise. I am awake only on nights like these. To desist is to die.
Never again will I be less than what I am.
And shortly it will be Kitty who feels my knife. Her time has come. I will do her as I did the one in Miller's-court.
But the timeline listed no more victims. The killer’s plans must have changed. Jennifer turned the page and saw why.
Disaster . How could they know ? I made no mistakes, not one.
They don’t know. If they did I should have been arrested by now. They are only sniffing round. I am patient. I can wait them out.
And now I see. It was Vole. Dull Vole, sleepy Vole, smirking Vole. He slipped out of his bedchamber and went carousing in the city. He saw me there on the night of the whore’s death. He saw me and he talked , not to the police but to his stupid chattering friends who contacted the authorities.
And so they came by to speak with me. And they continue coming by.
Wisp has put me on leave. The noose tightens.
How much did Vole see? How much has he told ?
They shadow me. Two inspectors. They dog my footsteps. But I will outmanoeuvre them. I have packed my essentials in a trunk small enough to carry by hand.
I will consign this memoir to the fire. Then slip away in the night, when my watchers have dropped their guard. Book passage on a steamer under an assumed name. America is a large country, large enough to get lost in. Once there I will cover my trail, change identities again. They’ll not find me.
And Kitty, dear Kitty, must wait. But not forever. I shall come back for her.
That was the final entry. Obviously, he had been unable to destroy the precious record of his crimes. Perhaps it was then that the name on the inside cover was blacked out, the early pages removed, to preserve some degree of anonymity. The diary would have gone into the trunk, to be carried across the Atlantic. And farther west, all the way to California, to this house. The House of Silence, which had kept the secret all these years.
She stood up. Her mind was working fast—running like a millrace, as the diarist put it. The man who filled these pages with his thoughts showed the classic symptoms of schizophrenia, the cyclical swings between lucidity and manic paranoia. In the acute phases he was hostile, violent, homicidal. He went out every night, came back late, paced the floor. Women shrank from his gaze. People feared
Similar Books
