Supposing this is true, was it another Sickert coincidence that he just happened to be wandering along St. Paul’s Road when he noticed a swarm of police and wanted to see what all the excitement was about? Emily’s body was discovered about 11:30 A.M. Not long after Dr. Thompson examined it at 1:00 P.M., it was removed to the St. Pancras mortuary. There was a relatively short time period of maybe two to three hours for Sickert to have happened by while Emily’s body was still inside the house. If he had no idea when her body would be found, he would have had to case the area for many hours – and risk being noticed – to make sure he didn’t miss the show.
A simple solution is suggested by the missing three keys. Sickert might have locked the doors behind him as he left the house – especially the inner and outer doors to Emily’s rooms – to make it less likely that her body would be found before Shaw came home at 11:30 in the morning. Had Sickert been stalking Emily, he certainly would have known when Shaw left the house for work and when he returned. While the landlady might not have entered a locked room, Shaw would have, had Emily not responded to his calling out and knocking.
Sickert might have taken the keys as a souvenir. I see no reason for him to need them to make his escape after Emily’s murder. It is possible that the three stolen keys could have given him a curtain time of approximately 11:30 A.M. So he just happened to show up at the crime scene before the body was removed and innocently ask the police if he might have a look inside and do a few sketches. Sickert was the local artist, a charming fellow. I doubt the police would have refused him his request. They probably told him all about the crime. Many a police officer likes to talk, especially when a major crime is committed on his shift. At the most, police might have found Sickert’s interest eccentric, but not suspicious. I found no mention in police reports that Sickert appeared at the crime scene, or that any artist did. But when I’ve shown up at crime scenes as a journalist and author, my name has never been entered into reports, either.
Sickert’s appearing at the scene also gave him an alibi. Should the police have discovered fingerprints that for some reason or another were ever identified as Walter Richard Sickert’s, so what? Sickert had been inside Emily Dimmock’s house. He had been inside her bedroom. One would expect him to have left fingerprints and maybe a few hairs or who knows what else while he was busy moving around, sketching, and chatting with the police or with Shaw and his mother.
It was not out of character for Sickert to sketch dead bodies. During World War I, he was obsessed with wounded and dying soldiers and their uniforms and weapons. He collected a pile of them and maintained close relations with people at the Red Cross, asking them to let him know when uniforms might not be needed any longer by ill-fated patients. “I have got a capital fellow,” he wrote to Nan Hudson in the fall of 1914. “The ideal noble 6c somewhat beefy young Briton… & I have already drawn him alive 8c dead.”
In several letters she wrote to Janie in 1907, Ellen inquires about “poor young Woods” and wants to know what happened when his case went to trial late that year. Ellen was overseas, and if she was referring to the eventual arrest, indictment, and trial of Robert Wood, accused and later acquitted of being Emily Dimmock’s killer, she may have gotten the name slightly wrong, but the question was an atypical one for her to ask. She did not refer to criminal cases in her correspondence. I have found not a single mention of the Ripper murders or any others. For her to suddenly want to know about “poor young Woods” is perplexing, unless “Woods” is not really Robert Wood, but someone else.
I can’t help but wonder if by 1907 Ellen secretly entertained doubts about her former husband, doubts that she dared not articulate and did her best to deny. But now a man was on trial, and should he be found guilty, he would be hanged. Ellen was a moral woman. If the slightest thing disturbed her conscience, she might have felt compelled to write a sealed letter to her sister. Ellen may even have begun to fear for her own life.