The Word Cloud

“Inspector Lawrence can I have a word?”

“What is it Carl?”

“What else. A Man was found dead this morning in Whitechapel.”

The Inspector sighed. Another murder in Whitechapel; did anything else happen in that cursed place. It had been a year and still the citizens of London regarded the police force as a laughing stock. Especially in Whitechapel for that was where it happened. The place where Jack the Ripper had killed, butchered, and terrified five prostitutes, the last of them a young woman named Mary Jane Kelly. This had been the only murder that the detective had been involved in. He had been there at the crime scene and the sight of what he saw scarred his life forever.

Mary Jane Kelly lay on her bed; her face was mutilated beyond any form of recognition. Her neck had been viciously severed and her organs had been ripped out and put on display around the poor girl’s body. Her clothing had been completely removed so all of the wounds were in plain sight. The position she lay in made it seem as though the ripper had deliberately made her look like this as his twisted work of art.

The vision of Mary Jane Kelly’s body had left such a horrific image in the detective’s mind that he, according to conversations with his wife had been writhed in terror in his sleep. But it had been a year since and he had more or less overcome the goriness of Mary Jane Kelly’s body, more or less.

“So then,” said the Inspector in a low gruff tone. If it were not for the look his wife would give him if he returned home unemployed, Lawrence would have given up his job there and then. “We’d better get moving hadn’t we?”

The two men sat in the carriage that headed towards Whitechapel. As Lawrence waited with baited breath, Edward ran through the details of the case.

“Well, his wife found him this morning,” he explained. “She was the one who reported it anyway and…”

Edward spoke for a long time, so long that Lawrence found himself listening to only half of what he was saying. Edward had always admired how eager Edward was with the work, but sometimes it just got a little annoying. That was the only problem with the younger members of the police force. But their energetic nature came in very useful when chasing criminals, something that Lawrence was becoming increasingly bad at.

“Ah, we’re here sir.”

Both men stepped out if the carriage and as soon as he had done, the foul stench of Whitechapel made Lawrence’s nose twitched. The stench of Whitechapel was the foulest of thing, even now it was almost Christmas; the foul stench would still never leave. It was the stench of death, vermin and corrupt crime. Whitechapel was the worst place in the whole of London, there wasn’t a night that went by without a murder, robbery or vandal.
Lawrence would give anything to never go to Whitechapel for the rest of his life, not just because of the stench or because of the way police were treated. Whitechapel was the one place where the gruesome image of Mary Jane Kelly came back to haunt him once more.
“Right then sir, it’s just round the corner from here,"
Carl led Lawrence around the corner to which he had pointed out and it led onto a busy street filled with people rushing up and down the streets some yelling, others crying, yes Whitechapel was always full of misery, even at Christmas.
"Right then," said Lawrence straightening his collar. "Let's get this over with shall we?"
Lawrence opened the front door of the Alchemists and stepped inside.

"Ugh!" Carl wrinkled his nose with disgust. "That stench is foul!"
Sure enough, the stench of death, on top of the stench of Whitechapel engulfed the room. It was so strong that Lawrence could even taste the foul rotting corpse in his breath. It may have just been him, but he was sure that bodies decayed twice as quickly in Whitechapel. The stench was coming from the desk in the centre of the room; it looked out of place to Lawrence, as though it had been moved quite recently. But at the moment, the only thing that caught his full attention was the body that lay back on the table, glaring up at the ceiling into blackness. The victim's face was contorted with a mixture of pain and horror, his skin was pale and white. Sticking out of his chest was a large sword that had gone so far inwards; Lawrence suspected that it had gone right through the table.
"Any idea when this happened, Carl?" Lawrence asked as he moved closer to examine the body.
"Dunno," Carl replied. "But judging by the smell I'd say a week."
Lawrence noticed the pile of scrunched up letters beside him and he took one at random and read it allowed.

Dear Mary,

I know that you must be feeling really hurt by what I did, but I swear to you that I never meant to harm you. I just did what I felt was right. Those women were worthless, they meant nothing to me. I know what I did was unforgivable and t fills my heart with guilt when I look back on it. All my life I've been surrounded by women like that. Even my mother was one, I just wanted rid of them, all of them, but then you came back to me and since then I have had a change of heart. I visited the five women and gave them flowers; I apologized many times to them and begged god himself for forgiveness. Please Mary, come back to me, and I promise that I'll never..."

"The letter finishes there," said Lawrence. He took up another letter and it read something similar to one of the others, he must have read at least ten of them before he concluded.
"Well our victim here was obviously adulterous, and upon reading this letter it would seem that he met with five women behind his wife's back."
Carl raised his eyebrows. "Do any of the letters have an address sir?" He asked.
"Yes there is Carl," replied Lawrence, smiling he held up one of the envelopes. "Let's go and meet our victim’s wife then."