Portrait of a Killer Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  CHAPTER ONE - MR. NOBODY

  CHAPTER TWO - THE TOUR

  CHAPTER THREE - THE UNFORTUNATES

  CHAPTER FOUR - BY SOME PERSON UNKNOWN

  CHAPTER FIVE - A GLORIOUS BOY

  CHAPTER SIX - WALTER AND THE BOYS

  CHAPTER SEVEN - THE GENTLEMAN SLUMMER

  CHAPTER EIGHT - A BIT OF BROKEN LOOKING GLASS

  CHAPTER NINE - THE DARK LANTERN

  CHAPTER TEN - MEDICINE OF THE COURTS

  CHAPTER ELEVEN - SUMMER NIGHT

  CHAPTER TWELVE - THE YOUNG AND BEAUTIFUL

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN - HUE AND CRY

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN - CROCHET WORK AND FLOWERS

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN - A PAINTED LETTER

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN - STYGIAN BLACKNESS

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN - THE STREETS UNTIL DAWN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN - A SHINY BLACK BAG

  CHAPTER NINETEEN - THESE CHARACTERS ABOUT

  CHAPTER TWENTY - BEYOND IDENTITY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE - A GREAT JOKE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO - BARREN FIELDS AND SLAG-HEAPS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE - THE GUEST BOOK

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR - IN A HORSE-BIN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE - THREE KEYS

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX - THE DAUGHTERS OF COBDEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN - THE DARKEST NIGHT IN THE DAY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT - FURTHER FROM THE GRAVE

  MY TEAM

  APPENDIX - MITOCHONDRIAL DNA RESULTS

  BIBLIOGRAPHY

  INDEX

  BK4173 PORTRAIT OF KILLER FRAUX

  America’s #1 bestselling crime writer solves the case that has baffled experts for more than a century.

  Between August and November 1888, at least six women were murdered in London’s Whitechapel area. The gruesome nature of their deaths caused panic and fear in the East End for months, and gave rise to the sobriquet that was to become shorthand for a serial killer—Jack the Ripper.

  For more than a hundred years the murders have remained among the world’s greatest unsolved crimes, and a wealth of theories have been posited which have pointed the finger at royalty, a barber, a doctor, a woman, and an artist. Using her formidable range of forensic and technical skills, bestselling author Patricia Cornwell has applied the rigorous discipline of twenty-first-century police investigation to the extant material, and here presents the hard evidence that the perpetrator was . . .The answer lies within.

  PORTRAIT OF A KILLER

  JACK THE RIPPER

  CASE CLOSED

  Praise for Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta novels . . .

  THE LAST PRECINCT

  “Ignites on the first page . . . Cornwell has created a character so real, so compelling, so driven that this reader has to remind herself regularly that Scarpetta is just a product of an author’s imagination.”

  —USA Today

  “Plots within plots, fraught atmosphere, and unrelenting suspense keep readers on tenterhooks while one trap after another springs under unwary feet. Cunningly designed, ingeniously laid out, composed with Cornwellian skill, this far from The Last Precinct is a model of the art.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  BLACK NOTICE

  “Brainteasing . . . one of the most savage killers of her career . . . [a] hair-raising tale with a French twist.”

  —People

  “The author’s darkest and perhaps best . . . a fast-paced, first-rate thriller.”

  —The San Francisco Examiner

  POINT OF ORIGIN

  “Cornwell lights a fire under familiar characters—and sparks her hottest adventure in years.”

  —People

  “Packed with action and suspense.”

  —Rocky Mountain News

  UNNATURAL EXPOSURE

  “Relentlessly intense . . . Stark and gripping . . . Scarpetta is back on her game and in peak form.”

  —The New York Times Book Review

  “Thrilling . . . Once again we see the ingenuity and bravery that have made [Scarpetta] so appealing.”

  —San Francisco Chronicle

  CAUSE OF DEATH

  “Gripping reading . . . So hard to put down your arms will tingle with intimations of rigor mortis before you reach the smashing climax.”

  —New York Newsday

  “Cause of Death describes cutting-edge forensic techniques in fascinating detail. Dr. Scarpetta herself continues to fascinate, with a sensibility in which clinical objectivity and human concerns coexist convincingly.”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  FROM POTTER’S FIELD

  “A terrific read, perhaps the best entry in the Scarpetta series yet.”

  —New York Daily News

  “Complex and convincing . . . fascinating and original.”

  —Los Angeles Times

  THE BODY FARM

  “The Body Farm is Cornwell at her chilling best . . . A murdered child, a distraught mother, and clues that suggest the return of a serial killer . . . This one is chock-full of the very latest in dazzling forensic technology . . . [will] keep the reader pinned to the chair.”

  —USA Today

  “Convincing . . . chilling.”

  —Time

  Praise for Patricia Cornwell’s police precinct thrillers . . .

  ISLE OF DOGS

  SOUTHERN CROSS

  HORNET’S NEST

  “Move over Carl Hiaasen, you’ve got company. Patricia Cornwell has switched to Hiaasen’s world of black humor and nearly conquers it.”

  —The San Francisco Examiner

  “Cornwell has coined a new penny.”

  —USA Today

  “A pluperfect page-turner that surpasses everything she has produced thus far.”

  —The Columbia (SC) State

  “Awe-inspiring.”

  —The Durham (NC) Herald-Sun

  “Cornwell brings an edgy authority, a gimlet eye for her city, and a taste for nonstop conflict to the police novel.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  TITLES BY PATRICIA CORNWELL

  SCARPETTA SERIES

  Book of the Dead

  Predator

  Trace

  Blow Fly

  The Last Precinct

  Black Notice

  Point of Origin

  Unnatural Exposure

  Cause of Death

  From Potter’s Field

  The Body Farm

  Cruel & Unusual

  All That Remains

  Body of Evidence

  Postmortem

  ANDY BRAZIL SERIES

  Isle of Dogs

  Southern Cross

  Hornet’s Nest

  OTHER FICTION

  At Risk

  NONFICTION

  Portrait of a Killer: Jack the Ripper—Case Closed

  BIOGRAPHY

  Ruth, A Portrait: The Story of Ruth Bell Graham

  (also published as A Time for Remembering:

  The Story of Ruth Bell Graham)

  OTHER WORKS

  Food to Die For: Secrets from Kay Scarpetta’s Kitchen

  Life’s Little Fable

  Scarpetta’s Winter Table

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  PORTRAIT OF A KILLER

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with Cornwell Enterprises, Inc.

  Copyright © 2002 by Cornwell Enterprises, Inc.

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  To Scotland Yard’s John Grieve

  You would have caught him.

  There was a general panic, a great many excitable people declaring that the evil one was revisiting the earth.

  —H. M., ANONYMOUS EAST END MISSIONARY, 1888

  CHAPTER ONE

  MR. NOBODY

  Monday, August 6, 1888, was a bank holiday in London. The city was a carnival of wondrous things to do for as little as pennies if one could spare a few.

  The bells of Windsor’s Parish Church and St. George’s Chapel rang throughout the day. Ships were dressed in flags, and royal salutes boomed from cannons to celebrate the Duke of Edinburgh’s forty-fourth birthday.

  The Crystal Palace offered a dazzling spectrum of special programs: organ recitals, military band concerts, a “monster display of fireworks,” a grand fairy ballet, ventriloquists, and “world famous minstrel performances.” Madame Tussaud’s featured a special wax model of Frederick II lying in state and, of course, the ever-popular Chamber of Horrors. Other delicious horrors awaited those who could afford theater tickets and were in the mood for a morality play or just a good old-fashioned fright. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde was playing to sold-out houses. The famous American actor Richard Mansfield was brilliant as Jekyll and Hyde at Henry Irving’s Lyceum, and the Opera Comique had its version, too, although poorly reviewed and in the midst of a scandal because the theater had adapted Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel without permission.

  On this bank holiday there were horse and cattle shows; special “cheap rates” on trains; and the bazaars in Covent Garden were overflowing with Sheffield plates, gold, jewelry, used military uniforms. If one wanted to pretend to be a soldier on this relaxed but rowdy day, he could do so with little expense and no questions asked. Or one could impersonate a copper by renting an authentic Metropolitan Police uniform from Angel’s Theatrical Costumes in Camden Town, scarcely a two-mile stroll from where the handsome Walter Richard Sickert lived.

  Twenty-eight-year-old Sickert had given up his obscure acting career for the higher calling of art. He was a painter, an etcher, a student of James McNeill Whistler, and a disciple of Edgar Degas. Young Sickert was himself a work of art: slender, with a strong upper body from swimming, a perfectly angled nose and jaw, thick wavy blond hair, and blue eyes that were as inscrutable and penetrating as his secret thoughts and piercing mind. One might almost have called him pretty, except for his mouth, which could narrow into a hard, cruel line. His precise height is unknown, but a friend of his described him as a little above average. Photographs and several items of clothing donated to the Tate Gallery Archive in the 1980s suggest he was probably five foot eight or nine.

  Sickert was fluent in German, English, French, and Italian. He knew Latin well enough to teach it to friends, and he was well acquainted with Danish and Greek and possibly knew a smattering of Spanish and Portuguese. He was said to read the classics in their original languages, but he didn’t always finish a book once he started it. It wasn’t uncommon to find dozens of novels strewn about, opened to the last page that had snagged his interest. Mostly, Sickert was addicted to newspapers, tabloids, and journals.

  Until his death in 1942, his studios and studies looked like a recycling center for just about every bit of newsprint to roll off the European presses. One might ask how any hardworking person could find time to go through four, five, six, ten newspapers a day, but Sickert had a method. He didn’t bother with what didn’t interest him, whether it was politics, economics, world affairs, wars, or people. Nothing mattered to Sickert unless it somehow affected Sickert.

  He usually preferred to read about the latest entertainment to come to town, to scrutinize art critiques, to turn quickly to any story about crime, and to search for his own name if there was any reason it might be in print on a given day. He was fond of letters to the editor, especially ones he wrote and signed with a pseudonym. Sickert relished knowing what other people were doing, especially in the privacy of their own not-always-so-tidy Victorian lives. “Write, write, write!” he would beg his friends. “Tell me in detail all sorts of things, things that have amused you and how and when and where, and all sorts of gossip about every one.”

  Sickert despised the upper class, but he was a star stalker. He somehow managed to hobnob with the major celebrities of the day: Henry Irving and Ellen Terry, Aubrey Beardsley, Henry James, Max Beerbohm, Oscar Wilde, Monet, Renoir, Pissarro, Rodin, André Gide, Édouard Dujardin, Proust, Members of Parliament. But he did not necessarily know many of them, and no one—famous or otherwise—ever really knew him. Not even his first wife, Ellen, who would turn forty in less than two weeks. Sickert may not have given much thought to his wife’s birthday on this bank holiday, but it was extremely unlikely he had forgotten it.

  He was much admired for his amazing memory. Throughout his life he would amuse dinner guests by performing long passages of musicals and plays, dressed for the parts, his recitations flawless. Sickert would not have forgotten that Ellen’s birthday was August 18th and a very easy occasion to ruin. Maybe he would “forget.” Maybe he would vanish into one of his secret rented hovels that he called studios. Maybe he would take Ellen to a romantic café in Soho and leave her alone at the table while he dashed off to a music hall and then stayed out the rest of the night. Ellen loved Sickert all her sad life, despite his cold heart, his pathological lying, his self-centeredness, and his habit of disappearing for days—even weeks—without warning or explanation.

  Walter Sickert was an actor by nature more than by virtue of employment. He lived on the center stage of his secret, fantasy-driven life and was just as comfortable moving about unnoticed in the deep shadows of isolated streets as he was in the midst of throbbing crowds. He had a great range of voice and was a master of greasepaint and wardrobe. So gifted at disguise was he that as a boy he often went about unrecognized by his neighbors and family.

  Throughout his long and celebrated life, he was no
torious for constantly changing his appearance with a variety of beards and mustaches, for his bizarre dress that in some cases constituted costumes, for his hairstyles—including shaving his head. He was, wrote French artist and friend Jacques-Emile Blanche, a “Proteus.” Sickert’s “genius for camouflage in dress, in the fashion of wearing his hair, and in his manner of speaking rival Fregoli’s,” Blanche recalled. In a portrait Wilson Steer painted of Sickert in 1890, Sickert sports a phony-looking mustache that resembles a squirrel’s tail pasted above his mouth.

  He also had a penchant for changing his name. His acting career, paintings, etchings, drawings, and prolific letters to colleagues, friends, and newspapers reveal many personas: Mr. Nemo (Latin for “Mr. Nobody”), An Enthusiast, A Whistlerite, Your Art Critic, An Outsider, Walter Sickert, Sickert, Walter R. Sickert, Richard Sickert, W. R. Sickert, W. S., R. S., S., Dick, W. St., Rd. Sickert LL.D., R. St. W., R.St. A.R.A., and RDSt A.R.A.