Jack the Ripper: Case Closed by Gyles Brandreth

Author:Gyles Brandreth
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781472152336
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group

23

Olga

‘I’m not sure I’d call that interview “helpful”, Oscar,’ I said, as we climbed back into our two-wheeler. ‘We learned nothing.’

‘On the contrary, Arthur. We learned a great deal.’

‘Did we?’ I protested. ‘I don’t think so. The wretched man is dead to the world.’

‘Yes. And firmly under lock and key – and consequently incapable of committing this week’s killings in Chelsea. At least we learned that.’

‘True enough,’ I conceded. ‘But we learned nothing about his life in Whitechapel.’

‘Not so,’ purred my friend complacently. ‘I visited his barber’s shop in Whitechapel once, as you know, and I remember nothing about it. What does that tell us?’

‘That you have a poor memory?’

‘No. It tells us that nothing occurred that was out of the ordinary. Kosminski was simply a nondescript Whitechapel barber. Now he’s a wreck of a man, dead to the world, locked in a trance. What trauma was it that induced so great a change in him?’

Having asked his question, Oscar closed his eyes and left me to ponder it. I did so, as we journeyed back from Colney Hatch to central London. Was Kosminski our murderer? Had an eventual realisation of the horror of his crimes brought him to his present state? I did not know the answer. Nor, I reckoned, did Oscar.

As finally we reached our hotel once more, my friend, beaming blithely, evidently refreshed by his further sleep on the homeward journey, announced that he had ‘business to attend to’ and, without further explanation, proposed that we meet, ‘after dinner, at around ten o’clock’.

‘What’s happening then?’

‘Our promised interview with Michael Ostrog. Kosminski told us nothing and everything. What will we learn from Ostrog, I wonder?’

‘Where’s this interview to take place?’ I asked.

‘At the office of Ivan the Terrible.’

‘Where’s that?’

‘Somewhere at the circus. Up in the rafters of the Agricultural Hall, I suppose. Olga will show you the way, I’m sure.’

Until that mention of her name, I had had no more than fleeting thoughts of the young Russian acrobat who had so charmed me at our first brief encounter at the circus on Constance’s birthday a few days before. Now, all of a sudden, and to my amazement, I could not get the beguiling girl out of my mind’s eye! It was six o’clock: I heard the church clock in Portland Place strike the hour. I went up to my hotel room and failed to settle. I ordered a glass of ale and a sandwich and thought to read some more of Stevenson’s novel. Before the refreshments had arrived, I had tossed the book aside. I began a letter to my darling Touie, but abandoned it even as I was writing her dear name. I decided that work would be the answer – as it so often is – and took out the notes of a story I had in mind and began to write. I had done with Sherlock Holmes. ‘The Final Problem’ had appeared in The Strand Magazine before Christmas. Now I was planning something in a different vein.

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