I Was Jack the Ripper by Michael Bray

Author:Michael Bray
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: alternative historry, thriller, suspense, horror, victorian horror, jack the ripper, whitechapel, crime, crime thriller, biopic
Publisher: Michael Bray
Published: 2018-01-02T00:00:00+00:00

HAPGOOD SET HIS PEN down. ‘The double event. Widely reported as the boldest of the murders. Both occurring within minutes of each other.’

Miller nodded but gave no reply.

‘You’re saying Abberline triggered this?’

‘I had to prove a point. His words were a personal insult.’

‘You acted, even at the risk of being caught?’

‘Capture wasn’t a consideration. Understand, Hapgood, that back then, this demon beast inside me had full control over my actions. Over the years I have learned to tame it, although it still lives there, whispering in the night.’

The comment was enough to bring a moment of silence to the room. Both men contemplated as the fire crackled in the fireplace.

‘So you acted on it based on your anger at Abberline?’

‘Not immediately. Even enraged I was cautious. I knew the police investigation was at its height and there were many patrols in the streets, for all the good it would do.’

‘I don’t understand.’

‘I wonder, Hapgood, have you, as part of your research frequented Whitechapel? Have you explored its streets after dark?’

‘No, I’m afraid I haven’t.’

‘I thought not. People without the need wouldn’t frequent such squalid areas.’

‘I have been there, of course, but not at night. I did wonder how you could so easily avoid detection.’

‘It was different then, Hapgood. There were none of the lamps on the streets that are there today. At night, Whitechapel was a maze of shadows and filth. If you remained quiet and still, you could stand a few feet from a passing police patrol and they would never see you. Even so, the public was on alert, and so I decided it was best if I delayed my work until a later date.’

‘And what did you do to fill the gap?’

Miller shifted in his seat, uncomfortable at the line of questioning. Hapgood noticed his discomfort.

‘You don’t have to tell me of course. I was under the impression that you wished to give a full account of your story.’

‘Fear not. I will tell it as it happened, I am simply organising my thoughts. In order to keep that demon inside me at bay, I acquired some opiates from the hospital. I took these in combination with drinking in an effort to keep my demon from taking control. That, Hapgood, was perhaps the darkest period of my younger years. Alone in my lodgings listening to that thing whisper in my mind or drinking away the pain in some hovel amid the vile creatures I had vowed to destroy. It was during one of those drunken stupors that my path was shaped. It was the end of September, the twenty eighth as I recall when I lost control to the demon and two days later would commit what you refer to as the double event. By that time, of course, I had the name I would become known by.’

‘Yes. The letter you sent to the police. You gave yourself the name Jack the Ripper.’

Miller smiled, the expression coming as more of a grimace. ‘That name had nothing to do with me, Hapgood, I can assure you.

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