In the Dark: The True Story of the Blackout Ripper by Simon Read

Author:Simon Read
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Penguin Group US
Published: 2006-11-07T07:00:00+00:00

FEBRUARY 12, 1942

NINE

When Florence Bartolini returned home from work on the evening of the eleventh, the package outside Miss Lowe’s front door still sat unclaimed. She paid it little mind, but found her curiosity slightly aroused when leaving for work the following morning. The parcel, simply wrapped in brown paper, had yet to be taken in.

Even before Henry Jouannet took his wife’s hand in matrimony, the sixty-seven-year-old hotel manager knew of his betrothed’s sexual proclivities. He’d met Doris—thirty-five years his junior—on Oxford Street in September 1935. The sidewalks were crowded, as well-to-do shoppers jostled in and out of Selfridges, John Lewis and the street’s other high-end retailers. Henry had been shopping for nothing in particular that day; he merely enjoyed the city’s vibrancy and was taking an afternoon constitutional. He caught sight of Doris as she stood at a bus stop, examining herself in a handheld mirror. Henry was taken by her looks, which were not unlike those of a stern headmistress, for Doris appeared somewhat older than her years. He had seen her before in the West End, in the company of different men. Now she stood alone, and he took it as an opportunity to introduce himself. The meeting was not one of innocent circumstance. Henry knew Doris to be a prostitute, though he sought to soften her reputation by later telling investigators “she was not a street-walker.” It just so happened that “she had a few male friends who visited her for the purpose of intercourse.” And so, on that September afternoon, Doris took Henry to her flat at 240 Edgware Road for sex. Following this paid-for encounter, the two became friends, a whirlwind courtship ensued, and the two were married at the Paddington Register Office on Harrow Road two months later.

Henry had been born in France, but came to Britain in 1904 and became a naturalized citizen. When he married Doris in November 1935, he was not in the hotel business. He had, in fact, retired and was receiving an annuity of ten pounds a month from the sale of the Grand Hotel in Concarneau, Brittany, which he had owned for five years. He had sold the property for more than two thousand pounds and was quite happy living on the monthly allowance provided by the sale. He thought Doris could live happily on it, too, and asked her to end her prostituting ways. She said she would and moved into Henry’s home at 14 Bathurst Street, near Sussex Gardens. They lived there for nearly three years, during which time Henry had no reason to believe Doris was selling herself on the streets. It did not take long, however, for Doris to grow bored with the role of devoted housewife—and it was boredom that Henry feared would push Doris back into bed with strange men.

At about this time, Henry’s mother died and left him an inheritance of thirteen hundred pounds. He used the money to buy a café and gave Doris a job as co-manager. The restaurant business, however, was not to their liking.

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