Alone with the now beaming inspector, Bell got down to business. “May I ask you a favor?”
“Name it.”
“If you would indulge a hobby of mine,” he opened with a self-deprecating smile. “A sort of ‘Sherlock Holmes’ hobby.”
“Sounds like a busman’s holiday.”
“Perhaps for a real detective, but for me it promises excitement I don’t often find in the insurance business.”
“What sort of Sherlock Holmes case excites you?” the inspector asked with unconcealed condescension.
“I’ve become obsessed with solving the identity of the long-ago mysterious perpetrator of the Whitechapel murders—I am referring, of course, to Jack the Ripper. I am fascinated by the case.”
“Many are.”
“It’s an astonishing mystery.”
“You could say that.”
“Would you happen to know anyone I could interview who served Scotland Yard that long ago? Acquaintances who might recall details of the case not found in the newspapers?”
“You flatter me. I was serving then. Still only a constable.”
“A young constable,” said Bell, laying it on thick. “I’d never have guessed. Well, this is my lucky day. Do you have a theory?”
“Of what?”
“The mystery of how the greatest police detectives in history never caught the cruelest murderer in England?”
“There is no ‘mystery.’ The solution is simplicity itself.”
“I am all ears,” said Isaac Bell.
“The Whitechapel Fiend committed suicide.”
“When?”
“He drowned himself in the Thames in December 1888. Three weeks before Christmas. One month after committing his last outrage.”
15
“Who was he?” asked Isaac Bell.
“His name was Druitt,” said the inspector. “Montague John Druitt, a barrister of good family. It was recognized by senior investigators that his brain had collapsed under the weight of accumulated horror. You see, the armor that deflects emotion in the lower classes wears thin as men advance up the scale. Druitt being of good family, his outrages were more than he could bear. He had no choice but to do the gentlemanly thing and hurl himself in the river.”
“I see . . . But how does your theory explain—”
“It’s not a ‘theory,’ Mr. Bell. It is fact. Just as it is a fact that if Druitt hadn’t killed himself, we’d have very soon had him dead to rights.”
“You mean that Scotland Yard was closing in on him?”
“It was only a matter of time.”
“Fascinating . . . But how does your . . . ‘fact’ explain the Ripper murders after Christmas?”
“The Ripper’s last murder was committed November ninth, 1888.”
“Kelly.”