Free The Return of Moriarty by John E. Gardner Page B

the identification or capture of Leather Apron, the person or persons concerned will receive a bounty of five hundred guineas.”
    The amount offered was staggering to the impoverished hard-core floating element within the territory, and the certain promise of such a sum ensured both gravelike silence toward the police and renewed efforts on the part of the terrified whores, cracksmen, dippers, bullies and rampsmen. Daily, Moriarty spent several hours sifting through the fragments of rumor, accusation and gossip that passed his way, through Spear and Paget, from people on the ground. *
    It came to nothing until the day before the next tragic bloodletting, the double murder of September 30. And it was after that ghoulish night’s work that the killer became known by the name he chose for himself—Jack the Ripper.
    On the evening of September 29, it being a Saturday, James Moriarty was giving himself a treat: a private selfindulgence to which he succumbed on an average of twice monthly. Earlier in the week he had arranged with Sal Hodges for her latest toffer, a splendidly tall, elegant girl, some twenty-four years of age, named Mildred Fenning, to attend on him at his house off the Strand.
    As was his custom on such evenings, Moriarty made certain that Spear, Paget, and any other members of his dubious family, were out on business, making it clear that he did not expect to see them back until at least midday on Sunday. Those who spent much time close to the Professor were in no doubt about his habits, knowing exactly what the form was when they were ordered to spend the night away.
    While none of Sal’s girls who were chosen to entertain Moriarty were paid in cash, they seldom regretted an assignation. It was strange, but Moriarty was a shy man who did not rate himself as a ladies’ companion, hence his consistent recourse to the better-class whores, who, in effect, found him charming, delightful company, both in bed and out, and extremely generous. Seldom did they leave without some gift of jewelry, or fripperies of the finest style; nor did they go hungry, for Moriarty delighted in good food, and his little evenings at home always began with an excellent supper.
    On the evening of Miss Fenning’s visit the Professor had provided an hors d’oeuvre of oysters, caviar, sardines, pickled tunny, anchovies, smoked eel, salmon, and eggs in aspic, followed by an assortment of chicken darioles, mutton cutlets in aspic, beef galantine and zephires of duck with tomato and artichoke salad, macédoine salad and an English salad containing lettuce, watercress, mustard and cress, radishes, spring onions and tomatoes, dressed after the French manner, the whole washed down with a fine champagne—the Royal Charter from Wachter & Co., Epernay.
    While Moriarty was preparing his evening and actually enjoying it, other matters were taking place in the Whitechapel area. On that Saturday night there were many among those grim streets who would not eat hors d’oeuvres, nor even cold meats and salad, neither would they quaff champagne. One among them would, however, like hundreds more, consume an overabundance of gin.
    Two days earlier a couple who went by the name of Kelly returned from a strenuous month’s hop picking in the fields of Kent. The man was a market porter called John Kelly; the woman, who wore a dark green print dress with a pattern of Michaelmas daisies and golden lilies, a black cloth jacket trimmed with imitation fur and three metal buttons, and a black straw bonnet decorated with black beads and velvet in green and black, was known variously as Kate Kelly and Kate Conway. She was forty-three years old, small, birdlike, an alcoholic suffering from Bright’s disease, a doss-house woman who hired her body for the price of a bed. Her real name was Catherine Eddowes and she had, on and off, been cohabiting with John Kelly for the past seven years. She did not know Moriarty, even by name,