Chapter 57

“If this matter is not to become public, we must give ourselves certain powers, and resolve ourselves into a small private court-martial.”

-Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The three Students

Friday morning

The shadows of the night had disappeared and dawn broke on another cloudy day. Driving had been smooth, but now traffic was much heavier on I-90, and I couldn’t use the cruise control. Wolfie had been asleep for some time. I was still mesmerized by the Doyle notes and the revelations, but I was also worried as we got closer to Chicago. Was Dodd somewhere out there coming for us? Would the Cook County Sheriff have a roadblock waiting for me?

Tom turned off the overhead light and sighed. “So Doyle and Bell were sure it was James K. Stephen, and they told Scotland Yard but they never publicly revealed it.”

“Doyle said their first premise was that the case went much deeper than the public or the police suspected. And that was the reason for the Royal Pardon and the police cover-up. The other suspects named by the police didn’t have the connections for something like that.”

“You know DD, the first thing that came to my mind was a verse from a J. K. Stephen poem:

“I have no time to tell you how

I came to be a killer

But you should know, as time will show,

That I’m society’s pillar.”

“That’s positively chilling,” I said. “It’s like a confession. He does sound insane.”

“That part was totally accurate. Insanity ran in the male line of the Stephen family. Did you know that Virginia Woolfe was James K. Stephen’s first cousin?”

“No,” I admitted.

“She wrote a compelling description of him calling him, ‘That great figure with the deep voice and the wild eyes.’ She recalled that, ‘with his madness on him; he would burst into the nursery and spear the bread on his swordstick. He was mad then. He was in the exaulted stage of his madness. I suppose that made him believe he was all powerful. And soon he ran naked through Cambridge; was taken to an asylum and died. This great mad figure with his broad shoulders and very clean cut mouth, and the deep voice and the powerful face - and the very blue eyes - this mad man would recite poetry to us... and he always brings to mind some tormented bull.’”

I was impressed Tom could recite that word for word in his exhausted condition.

“It sure sounds like the eye-witness descriptions,” Tom added.

“It does,” I nodded.

“I never took J. K. Stephen too seriously as a candidate for the Ripper because of a well accepted handwriting analysis published a few years ago in the World Association of Document Examiners by a professional named Thomas Mann. He compared that ‘from hell’ Ripper letter with James K. Stephen’s known handwriting and concluded the handwriting in the letter was not that of J. K. Stephen.”

“I was reading about the letters the other night. One of the people who wrote fake Ripper letters was a guy named Peter Kurten. When he showed them to his wife, even she didn’t recognize his handwriting. And from my own professional experience in the insurance business, there are numerous examples I’ve run into of handwriting changes that occur when people are under great emotion or great stress. Doyle did mention some handwriting tricks he thought the Ripper letter writer used. And there certainly are similar personality profiles between the Ripper and J. K. Stephen.”

“You may be right, DD. Taking into account the strong personality of James K. Stephen is crucial, even in handwriting analysis. We know he had a real talent for pranks and games and that he taunted a lot of people in his writing, the same as the Ripper taunted the police and the Vigilante committee.”

“Of all the suspects mentioned, James K. Stephen seems to be the one suspect who truly fits the character of the Ripper.” Who was I to disagree with the creator of Sherlock Holmes when solving a mystery?

“Stephen, I believe, could easily have written the real Ripper letters with all those internal rhymes - rhymes exactly like ones in his own poems.”

“Does Mann take into account disguised handwriting?”

“He did, but again, it’s a difficult point and Doyle took cognizance of it. He believed that someone as clever and as strong willed as Stephen could have disguised his handwriting, even though, as Mann says, it’s something very difficult to accomplish.”

“Debra said she was going to contact her friend, Sheila Lowe, to work up a personality analysis on the Ripper. I’ll tell her to also do one of J. K. Stephen. That should prove interesting in today’s psychological terms.”

“So Doyle and Bell didn’t reveal the name because they were promised Scotland Yard had control over James K. Stephen,” Tom said.

“And then,” I added, “both Stephen and the Prince died 3 years later within a few weeks of each other. Since they could cause no more harm, Doyle’s reasoning might have been based on something like the ‘who benefits’ construct we use in insurance where we ask four questions. One. Who would it hurt if this information wasn’t known? The answer: No one. Two. Who would it hurt if this was known? The answer: The Queen and possibly the realm. Three. Who would it help if the name was never known? Answer: The realm. Four. Who would it help if it was known. The answer is: No one. The police had already been ridiculed, and the top cops were in a conspiracy. It sure wouldn’t have helped them.”

I could see Tom getting a slightly glazed look as he turned his eyes to the ceiling. I knew he had to be at the end of his strength. His lips moved slightly until he suddenly looked down and said, “Perhaps you’re right. In a number of the Adventures, Doyle allowed Sherlock Holmes to pursue a higher justice than that provided by the law and the courts. Springing immediately to mind are The Boscombe Valley Mystery, Abbey Grange, The Illustrious Client, The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton and even Lady Hilda Trelawney Hope in The Adventure of the Second Stain. It may very well be that Doyle was following the same precepts he propounded in these works.”

“You know the Sherlock Holmes canon better than I do, Tom. It’s true that Doyle was extremely patriotic, and recognizing that the murderer was insane, it’s possible to imagine that he and Bell agreed to keep the secret for the good of the country so the Prince would not be involved.”

“We’ll never know the exact motive or details,” Tom said, “but somehow he must have gotten Prince Eddy to witness one or more of the murders. Those eyewitness descriptions fit Eddy and James K. Stephen to a tee.”

“And all that testimony was suppressed by the police, and the Royal Pardon got Prince Eddy off the hook,” I said, looking over at Tom. He’d finally closed his eyes and was resting.