What Alice Knew by Paula Marantz Cohen Page A

and be haunted by them. It was a grotesque sort of immortality.
    He was flipping back through the pictures, musing about these things, when a young officer entered the room, walked quickly over to Abberline, and whispered in his ear.
    The inspector’s face grew taut as he rose quickly from the table. “There’s been another murder…or at least, the suspicion of one. I try not jump to conclusions, but it’s imperative to investigate. You’re free to come along.”
    He was already halfway out the door before William grabbed his hat from the hook and followed rapidly on his heels.

Chapter 9
    The two men arrived by police carriage at the corner of Hanberry and Latham streets and descended with their destination still a block away. A large crowd had gathered in the vicinity, drawn by the rumor that another Ripper murder had taken place, and Abberline decided it would be faster to get to the scene on foot. While the inspector, whom the officers recognized, was ushered quickly to the front, William was left behind to make his way forward alone. As he moved through the crowd, he saw that a number of policemen were pushing people back in a brutal, unthinking manner. It struck him as an example of the psychological dimness that operated on so many levels in governance and that, left unchecked, could incite revolutions.
    He explained his presence to one of the policemen, who took him by the elbow and led him through the crush of onlookers. There were catcalls of “Who’s the fine gent?” and “What’s he seeing Jenny for, when us who knew her can’t get a glimpse o’ the poor girl?” He finally made his way to the front, where a phalanx of policemen were attempting to shield the view in front of the alley where the body had been found, kicking away the smaller children who were attempting to peek through their legs. William’s escort said a few words to one of these sentinels, and an opening was provided for him to slip through.
    He had already been shocked at the sight of Catherine Eddowes’s stitched body and of the grotesque photographs that Abberline had shown him of all the victims, but what greeted him now was more deeply moving. It was death in its most profoundly immediate form. The chief inspector was standing with two officers, along with a white-smocked gentleman whom William assumed to be the medical examiner. They stood around the body of a young woman lying on the pavement near the alley, behind a row of tenements. One of the woman’s legs was extended, the other leg bent. One arm lay near her body; the other was outstretched, the palm open. The posture was oddly graceful, almost balletic, and the effect was enhanced by the appearance of the face pressed to the pavement in profile. The dead woman could not have been more than thirty years old, with finely etched features and an abundance of auburn hair that lay spread like a luxurious drape to one side of her head. But what gave the image its most compelling aspect was that around the head and merging with the thick hair was an almost perfect circle of blood. There was no indication that the clothes had been disarranged or ripped, and from the angle at which the face lay, it looked entirely unblemished. William assumed that the woman’s throat had been cut on the side on which she was lying, so that all one saw was the roseate halo of blood. She might very well have been a rather plain sort of person in life, but in death, laid out in this dramatic pose, there was something breathtakingly beautiful about her.
    As he gazed at the body, he noticed that the outstretched arm was turned up, exposing a thick scar on the wrist above where the delicate fingers lay unclasped.
    He approached Abberline, who was standing with the physician over the body.
    “Sorry to have brought you out for this,” said Abberline. “One of my men heard her throat was cut and assumed we had another Ripper murder on our hands. I encourage them not to make assumptions, but it’s