The very memory made his private and unique anatomy ache.
So . . . he must find Polly Nichols, obtain her letters, then cut her up the same delightful way he had cut Morgan, as a message to all blackmailing whores walking these filthy streets, and he must do it without being remarked upon or caught. He would disguise himself, of course, but John Lachley’s was a difficult face to disguise. He looked too foreign, always had, from earliest childhood in these mean streets, a gift from his immigrant mother. Lachley knew enough theatrical people, through his illustrious clientele, to know which shops to visit to obtain false beards and so on, but even that was risky. Acquiring such things meant people would recall him as the foreigner who had bought an actor’s bag of makeup and accouterments. That was nearly as bad as being recalled as the last man seen with a murdered woman. Might well prove worse, since being remembered for buying disguises indicated someone with a guilty secret to hide. How the devil did one approach the woman close enough to obtain the letters and murder her, afterwards, without being seen?
He might throw suspicion on other foreigners, perhaps, if he disguised himself as one of the East End’s thousands of Jews. A long false beard, perhaps, or a prayer shawl knotted under his overcoat . . . Ever since that Jew, what was his name, Lipski, had murdered that little girl in the East End last year, angry Cockneys had been hurtling insults at foreigners in the eastern reaches of London. In the docklands, so many refugees were pouring in from the Jewish communities of Eastern Europe, the very word “foreigner” had come to mean “Jew.” Lachley would have to give that serious consideration, throwing blame somehow onto the community of foreigners. If some foreign Jew hanged for Lachley’s deeds, so much the better.