Leather Apron
Sir Cedric Hughes was a legend in the world of the occult, a nineteenth-century boffin of arcane knowledge and one of the finest mesmerists of his day. A medical doctor by training, he often used hypnotism to relieve pain, aid in childbirth, help nervous conditions and cure sleeping disorders. There are even some accounts that allege he could stop the heart and control the flow of blood of a patient under hypnosis; however, these claims have never been scientifically documented.
Alas, Sir Cedric died in 1911, and most of what is written about him is based on rumors and hearsay. What is known to be fact is that he was an uncommonly successful doctor, popular with the royal family and the peers of the realm and renowned for his many charitable works. It is also true that in his later years, he became a recluse and rarely left his ancestral home.
After Dr. Hughes passed away, his family estate stood deserted for decades. Then in the early 1970s, an enterprising couple from London had the idea of turning the manor house into an inn. Once they realized the enormous cost involved in renovating the large place, however, they quickly abandoned the idea. The estate went back on the market until it was eventually purchased by Bennett Honeywell, a rich, eccentric American businessman who wanted the main house disassembled, shipped across the Atlantic and then reassembled on his property in Texas. After all, Bennett reasoned, if the London Bridge could be successfully transplanted in Arizona, why couldn't an English manor house be relocated to Texas?
While in the process of tearing the Tudor-era mansion down, workmen discovered an underground chamber, located beneath the main cellar. Inside they found a small collection of wax figures similar to those on display in Madame Tussaud's famous London museum. Since he had no wish to destroy anything that could potentially be valuable, Bennett hired a prominent American wax sculptor to travel to England to appraise the pieces.
En route from O'Hare to Heathrow, Heather Bannister read an old magazine article written about Sir Cedric, the only information she was able to obtain from her local library. Although she had been excited about the all-expense-paid trip to England, she was less than enthused about the assignment. An accomplished artist, she thought it was beneath her talent to act as an appraiser, but Bennett Honeywell was both persuasive and generous.
When Heather arrived at the former Hughes estate, the workmen were busy packing sections of the manor into large wooden crates. Most of the house had already been taken down. What remained reminded Heather of photographs she had seen of England after the Blitz, illustrating the damage done by German bombs.
The foreman took her down to the cellar and showed her the opening to the newly discovered chamber. She borrowed the man's flashlight—or "torch" to use the vernacular of the area—and went inside the dark, damp room that had probably once been used as a wine cellar. Inside were five wax figures depicting famous people in Britain's history: Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, Charles Dickens and William Shakespeare. Heather was unable to identify the sixth figure, but she assumed that since it was dressed in Victorian-era clothing, it was probably the likeness of someone who lived during the time of Sir Cedric.
Although their clothes were moldy and rotting, the wax figures themselves seemed in remarkably good condition. Heather estimated that they had been down in the cellar for at least a century, probably longer. When she examined the figures more closely, she was surprised by the craftsmanship of the artist who had sculpted the five famous Brits, but it was the artistry of the sixth figure that most impressed her.
Although its surface was cold and smooth to her touch, the figure of the unknown man, unlike the other five, was not made of traditional wax. Perhaps, she surmised, the sculptor had been experimenting with some unique combination of wax and either rubber or plastic. Even seen close up in the harsh glare of the flashlight, there was no shiny, waxy look to the skin. It appeared to be as soft and pliable as human flesh. Another noticeable difference was that the sixth figure had what appeared to be human or animal hair embedded into the scalp rather than a synthetic wig placed atop his head. Overall, the sculpture was so real-looking that Heather actually had to reach out and touch the face to prove to herself that it was not an actual man dressed up and standing among the wax figures, waiting to shout out, "Smile! You're on Candid Camera."
Heather was sure Bennett would want the figures shipped to Texas along with the house and its furnishings. When dressed in new costumes, the mannequins would add a touch of atmosphere to the old place, a bit of Jolly Old England in the state of Texas. Perhaps Bennett should dress the unknown man as a beefeater and place him in a prominent location in the front hall to welcome guests to the restored manor.
As Heather stood back, trying to imagine the figure dressed in one of the famous red and gold Tudor state dress uniforms worn by the Yeoman Warders of the Tower of London on state occasions, she was drawn to the beauty of the subject itself. If he were human, the wax man would be considered extremely handsome, even by modern standards. Dressed as he was now, like a wealthy young gentleman circa the late nineteenth century, he resembled a hero in a Victorian romance.
When Heather left the chamber and ascended the cellar steps into the daylight, she immediately phoned Bennett. As she had expected, he was delighted with her evaluation of the pieces. For a higher fee, Heather agreed to oversee the packing and shipment of the six wax figures. She would also arrange to have new costumes made and make whatever repairs were necessary when they arrived in America.
* * *
Since the manor house was still in pieces waiting to be reassembled, Heather had the figures shipped to her studio in Chicago. She could more thoroughly examine them there in the well-lit loft than she had in the dark subterranean chamber. One at a time, the five wax figures were stripped and their damaged areas patched with new coats of wax. Then Henry VIII, Elizabeth I, Queen Victoria, William Shakespeare and Charles Dickens were dressed in appropriate period clothing and new wigs Heather had specially ordered from a theatrical costuming company. As an added touch, she placed an old, hard-cover edition of A Christmas Carol in the wax Dickens' hand and a quill pen in Shakespeare's.
Finally, the artist turned her attention to the beefeater, as she had nicknamed the sixth figure. After carefully removing the worn, moldy jacket, vest and shirt, she was surprised to see not a smooth, mannequin-like torso similar to those of the other figures, but one that looked almost human. The beefeater's chest had muscle tone, definition, color and even nipples. There were also hundreds of tiny hairs embedded in the faux flesh.
Why would any sculptor go to such detail? she wondered. No one would ever see the figure's chest beneath its clothing.
As she started to undo the trousers she saw a navel, and as she pulled the pants down further, she discovered just how much detail had gone into the figure.
"He's like a life-sized anatomically correct doll!" she laughed, irrationally blushing at the sight of the figure's nakedness. "Alive or not he deserves his privacy."
From the supply closet, Heather took out an old pair of overalls and a flannel shirt that she used when she was painting. They were far too big on her, but they would probably fit the beefeater without any problem.
The surface of the beefeater needed no patching. The unusual material the original sculptor had used on him held up extremely well over the years.
If I knew what the artist used when making this figure, I could use it in my own work. It's far superior to anything available now.
Heather took an Exacto knife from her worktable and scraped off a sample of the substance, which she then put in a small container and FedExed to a friend who taught chemistry at the University of Illinois.
Within forty-eight hours, Heather's friend Grant phoned with the results of his analysis.
"What's the joke?" he asked. "You told me you were sending over a sample of a wax compound."
"You mean there's no wax in it?"
"No. It's ectodermal tissue. You sent me a sample of human skin," he told her.
"That's impossible!" Heather insisted. "I scraped it off a figure I found in a private wax museum in England."
"I don't know where it came from, but I do know what it is. It's skin tissue."
"But this guy would have to have been dead for more than a hundred years. Surely, he would have decomposed long ago."
"Heather, the sample you sent me wasn't taken from a corpse. Are you sure you didn't scratch yourself by mistake?"
"I didn't scratch myself!"
"Did you leave the sample lying around where someone could have tampered with it?"
"No. I immediately put it in that small plastic container, put the container in the box and sealed it here in my studio before taking it to the FedEx drop-off box."
"Then are you certain the knife was clean before you took the sample?"
"I think so, but right now I'm so confused that I'm not certain about Jack sh—"
A loud crash startled Heather. She spun around and saw that, for no apparent reason, the beefeater had fallen to the floor. Oddly enough, he had not toppled over, as a wax figure or mannequin normally would have. Instead, he lay sprawled on the tiles, his arms and legs bent at sharp angles. But that was impossible; his body was rigid, or at least it had been only minutes earlier. Now, however, it seemed to have a good deal of flexibility.
As Heather bent over the fallen beefeater to examine him for damage, she saw his eyelids begin to flutter. Her initial fear was soon replaced with wonder. This was not a wax figure at all, but a real, living, breathing man! Then why hadn't she noticed the gentle rise and fall of the chest before? Why had his skin felt so cold and lifeless when now it was warm to her touch?
As Heather stared at his animated face, she saw the beefeater's eyes focus on her own. Then his lips opened and he tried to speak.
"Tired," he mumbled.
"Wait!" she cried when she saw his eyelids close again. "I need to talk to you. Who are you?"
Before he drifted off into a deep sleep, he muttered something that sounded to Heather like "leather apron."
* * *
When Heather phoned Bennett with the news of her discovery, he immediately boarded his private jet and flew to Chicago.
"Who is he?" the Texas billionaire asked, staring down at the sleeping man.
"I have no idea. Maybe when he wakes up, he'll enlighten us."
After sleeping for several more hours, the mysterious man awoke.
"Where am I?" he asked softly with a pronounced English accent.
"In my art studio in Chicago," Heather replied.
"In the States? How did I get here?"
"We found you in England in the home of a man named Sir Cedric Hughes. Have you ever heard of him?"
"Of course I have. He's my father."
"But that's impossible!" Bennett emphatically insisted. "Cedric Hughes has been dead for ninety years."
"Ninety years! I was just ... What year is it now?" he asked, noticing from his surroundings that he was no longer in his own time.
"2001. What year did you think it was?" Heather asked.
"1888. At least that's the last year I remember."
"I don't suppose you can explain how a man can live in a cellar for more than a hundred years and apparently not age?"
"My father is, or rather was, an extraordinary hypnotist. I once saw him put a patient into such a deep hypnotic state that the man appeared to be dead. His breathing and heartbeat were so faint that only a doctor could detect them. He must have hypnotized me and put me in a death-like trance for all those years."
"And just how did he manage to do that?" the billionaire demanded to know.
Bennett obviously did not buy the man's story and wanted to get to the bottom of what he surmised was either an elaborate practical joke or a highly imaginative scam.
"I don't know. I never could understand my father's art."
Suddenly, the Englishman put his hand to his head, looking somewhat pained.
"What is it? Is something wrong?" Heather asked anxiously.
"I'm a little weak. I haven't eaten anything in a century."
"My apartment is right upstairs. I'll fix you a sandwich. It'll only take a few minutes." As she started to walk away, she called back, "Oh, by the way, what's your name?"
"John. John Hughes."
As John devoured the sandwich and salad Heather had hastily prepared, Bennett took the young woman aside.
"Do you believe him?" he asked.
"I know his story sounds crazy, but yes, I do believe him. When I first saw him down in that cellar he looked completely inanimate—just like a wax figure. He didn't blink or move a muscle. He didn't even appear to be breathing."
"These con men can be quite convincing," Bennett argued.
"If he is scamming you, what could he hope to gain?"
"Money. Maybe he wants to claim ownership of the manor."
Heather looked skeptical.
"All right, publicity then. Think of what a story that would make! Can't you imagine the headlines? MAN WAKES UP FROM CENTURY-LONG SLEEP. He would be a modern Rip Van Winkle."
"Don't go jumping to conclusions. Let's stick to the facts. We do know Sir Cedric was a very accomplished hypnotist."
"Yes, but he was also a kind and compassionate man. Why would he hypnotize his own son and leave him to rot in a cellar?"
"But Sir Cedric became a recluse as he grew older. Maybe his mind was going. Wait a minute. If Sir Cedric had a son, wouldn't there be a record of it somewhere?"
"There might be. I'll call a friend of mine in England. He can do some checking for me. It'll probably be the most exciting thing he's done since he retired from Scotland Yard," Bennett laughed. "But even if we find out Sir Cedric did have a son, how will we know our boy's the genuine article?"
"Let's take this one step at a time, okay?"
"I think we should call in a doctor to examine him," Bennett suggested logically.
"Good idea. Do you know one who can be trusted to keep quiet? If the papers get hold of this, it'll be a media circus."
"I'll call my niece; she's a doctor. Of course, we have no guarantee that a medical examination is going to turn up anything."
"It might not, but we have to start somewhere. While your Sherlock Holmes is checking the records in England, your niece can determine John's physical condition."
* * *
John finished his meal and tried to stand up, but he was wobbly on his feet. Heather reached out to steady him.
"Why don't you just sit there and relax? We've called a doctor to have a look at you. She'll be here soon."
"She? The doctor's a woman?" John asked with a good deal of surprise.
"This is a new age. Women do everything today," Bennett said, humoring the man.
"You know," Heather pointed out, "if you have been in a hypnotic trance since 1888, you're in for quite a surprise. This world is a very different place from the one you knew. You'll have to learn about airplanes, televisions, computers ...."
She stopped when she saw John staring at her as though she were speaking Greek. If he was a fake, she decided, he gave a very convincing performance.
"Don't worry, you've got plenty of time to learn about this brave new world of ours," Bennett said, taking control of the conversation. "For now, let's talk about you. Why would your father put you under a trance and stick you in a cellar with a bunch of wax figures?"
John seemed disturbed by Bennett's question.
"I don't know," he replied unconvincingly.
It was clear he was hiding something.
Heather attempted to change the subject by asking a seemingly innocent question.
"When you first came out of the trance you said what sounded to me like 'leather apron.' What does that mean?"
The color suddenly drained from John's face.
"Are you all right, Mr. Hughes?" she asked.
"I think so." Then he smiled at her, and she was reminded of just how handsome he was. "Mr. Hughes sounds so formal. Why don't you call me what my friends call me?"
"What's that?"
"Jack," he said, flashing another gorgeous smile.
Just wait until the women get a good look at him, Heather thought with more than a slight twinge of jealousy.
Bennett was about to question John further when his niece arrived. Dr. Julia Honeywell looked more like a college coed or society debutante than a practicing physician. She was young and pretty, and although petite in stature, she had the well-developed figure of someone who spent a good deal of time at the gym.
"If what you claim is true," Julia predicted, "you're bound to make a name for yourself in the history books and medical journals."
Dr. Honeywell went through a routine medical examination, checking John's pulse, respiration and blood pressure. Then she checked his ears, eyes and throat.
"He seems to be in pretty good health for a man of his years," Julia pronounced with a smile. "His blood pressure and body temperature are both a little low and his heartbeat should be a bit stronger, but other than that, I can't find anything wrong with him. Even still, I think a few tests over at Northwestern Memorial would be wise."
"Sure. But is there any scientific way of proving or disproving his story?" Bennett asked.
"A DNA test would do it, but you'd have to get the English courts to give you permission to exhume Sir Cedric's body so we could get a sample from him. Then we could compare his DNA to John's. There would be no doubt then."
Neither Julia nor Bennett thought there was much chance of their getting permission to exhume a body based on such an outlandish story.
"Let's wait and see what Trevor turns up," Bennett sighed.
"Who's Trevor?" Julia asked.
"An old friend of mine. I met him when I was working in London several years ago. He was with Scotland Yard then, but he's retired now."
Julia, whose attention during this conversation had been directed toward her uncle, didn't notice the drastic change in her patient. She was unaware that his heartbeat and respiration had accelerated or that he had broken out in a sweat. The young doctor had no way of knowing that John Hughes was terrified.
"There's nothing more I can do now. I'll phone the hospital and arrange to have him admitted for a few days." Julia announced, taking her cell phone from her open doctor's bag.
"Heather, let's go upstairs and call Trevor again," Bennett said. "Maybe he's found something."
Bennett and Heather waited for the former Scotland Yard detective to answer the phone, all the while debating what they should do about John.
"It's not up to us to decide his future," Heather argued. "We don't own him. He's free to make his own decisions."
"And if he is telling us the truth, how will he cope in a world so different from the one he's used to? He could walk out that door and be run over by a car or a bus."
"We'll just have to teach him a few things for his own safety."
"Has he even so much as looked out the window since he's been here?"
"No, but your niece said he would probably be in the hospital for a few days. I could go over there and begin his orientation to our century."
"Maybe then he'll wish he was back in the 1800s. This can be a pretty frightening place," Bennett said, referring to the modern world.
The conversation ended when Trevor came on the line.
"Found out anything yet?" Bennett asked.
"Sir Cedric did have a son. I was able to locate a birth certificate for a John Ashford Hughes, born December 9, 1856. There's something else I think you should know. While I was searching the register, I checked the death records as well. There was never any death certificate for John Hughes. Well, I'm as curious as the next fellow, so I phoned one of my mates from the Yard. Apparently, there are reports on file indicating that Sir Cedric's son disappeared sometime in 1888."
"Did Sir Cedric himself report his son missing?" Bennett asked.
"No. The reports were from friends—lady friends—who claimed that the young man had simply vanished without a trace. When an inspector questioned Sir Cedric, the old man insisted his son was traveling on the continent. Whether that's true or not, I don't know, but there's no trace of young Hughes after that. He didn't even come forward to claim his inheritance when his father died, which was a considerable one."
"If what John says is true, and his father did hypnotize him, Sir Cedric certainly wouldn't want Scotland Yard snooping around," Bennett theorized. "Claiming his son was traveling in Europe would be a good way to get investigators off the trail. Back then they couldn't confirm the story with a few phone calls."
"Right," Trevor agreed. "And you have to remember that Hughes was a friend of the royal family. An inspector wouldn't take the word of a few common women over that of a prominent figure such as Sir Cedric."
"Do you think this fellow here just might be who he claims he is?" Bennett asked.
"All I'm saying is that the official records don't disprove his story."
Heather and Bennett went back downstairs, and as Heather opened the door to the studio, she almost stepped in spilled paint.
"What a mess!" she exclaimed.
Then she realized with horror that the spreading red puddle wasn't paint at all. Dr. Julia Honeywell lay on the floor, bathed in her own blood. Her throat had been cut and her abdomen sliced open.
* * *
After the police questioned Heather and Bennett for two days, they came to the tentative conclusion that the two of them were innocent of complicity in Julia's death. Homicide detective Salvatore DelVecchio handed Bennett and Heather a printout of the computer-generated composite drawing of John Hughes based on their description.
"I'll fax this picture to Interpol and New Scotland Yard and see if anyone can identify him. My guess is this John Hughes is either a known criminal or an escaped lunatic. He was most likely hiding out on Hughes's property when the workmen got there. When you arrived, Miss Bannister, he probably thought he could avoid detection by pretending to be a wax figure."
Heather didn't agree with the detective's rationalized hypothesis.
"But he had plenty of time to escape before the figures were packed up and shipped to Chicago. Why didn't he?"
"Why would he want to escape? You were inadvertently doing him a great favor by bringing him into this country."
Heather merely shook her head. Policemen were notorious for seeking out logical explanations and ignoring anything that even hinted at the occult.
"Frankly, my money is on an escaped lunatic," DelVecchio continued. "That's probably why he killed your niece, Mr. Honeywell. You said she wanted to put him in the hospital for observation. A hospital is the last place an escaped mental patient would want to go."
After leaving the police station, Bennett took Heather's arm and hailed a taxi.
"Where are we going?" the artist asked.
"To the airport to pick up Trevor. His flight should be arriving soon."
"Why is he coming here?"
"I sent for him after I found Julia's body."
Trevor Locke, a former chief inspector of Scotland Yard's CID, accompanied Heather and Bennett back to the Texan's hotel suite. None of them wanted to go to the studio, the site of Julia's gruesome murder.
"Sorry to drag you over here, Trevor," Bennett apologized, "but I feel responsible for my poor niece's death. I'd like you to help me find out who that monster really is and, hopefully, help me to track him down."
"We already know who he is," Trevor replied. "He's John Ashford Hughes."
"No, he isn't. He's just some psycho who was hiding out on the Hughes estate."
"What makes you so sure of that?" Trevor asked suspiciously.
"How could a man wake up after a hundred years and just walk out the door into the twenty-first century and disappear? Where would he go with no money, no friends and no knowledge of the modern world?"
"It's possible that he was so scared after murdering your niece that he just ran out and vanished in the crowd. Chicago is a big city; there must be thousands of places he could hide."
"But wouldn't he be covered with blood?" Heather asked.
"Not necessarily, perhaps he cut her throat from behind."
"Why didn't he simply hit her over the head and run?" Bennett asked rhetorically. "Why go through the trouble of strangling her, taking her scalpel out of her bag, cutting her throat and then disemboweling her?"
"He strangled her, too?" Trevor asked with mounting excitement.
"That's what the police told us," Bennett explained.
"Let's just hope they catch him before he kills again," Trevor said.
"What makes you think he'll kill again?" Heather asked.
"Because I don't believe this was his first murder. I think there were at least five others. Maybe more."
"You mean we've got a serial killer on the loose?" Bennett asked.
Trevor nodded.
"I think Sir Cedric discovered who his son was and rather than turn him over to the authorities, he put him in a deep hypnotic trance and kept him hidden on the estate. It was certainly a more humane treatment than hanging or being sent to a Victorian-era asylum, those places were hell holes back then."
"What makes you think John murdered anyone back in 1888?" Heather asked.
"I had my first suspicion when Bennett told me what John mumbled when he emerged from his trance."
"All he said was 'leather apron.'"
"That was one of the killer's nicknames. He was also known as the White Chapel Murderer or, more commonly, as Jack the Ripper."
Bennett laughed with unconcealed skepticism.
"You think this guy is one of the most infamous killers in history just because he mumbled what Heather thought were the words 'leather apron.' That's not much to go on. I'm sorry, but you need more evidence than that to suspect someone of such brutal crimes."
"Like your niece, the Ripper's victims were all women. Most were strangled and then mutilated. All of them had their throats cut."
"Coincidence," Bennett said, although not with much conviction.
"The Ripper's last victim was found in November 1888. That was right about the same time John Hughes disappeared."
* * *
A few days after Dr. Honeywell's murder, another body was discovered. A young prostitute had been killed in the same way Julia had. Although Bennett, Heather and Trevor went to the police and presented their theory on the identity of the murderer, no action was taken. The police had more important things to do than listen to their wild ravings. It was even suggested that they tell their story to the National Enquirer.
The three had better luck in England, however. Trevor, who still had a few influential friends at New Scotland Yard, received permission to exhume Sir Cedric's body. His DNA was compared to that found in the skin tissue Heather had sent to her friend, Grant. The tests conclusively proved that the young man calling himself Jack Hughes was, in fact, the son of Sir Cedric Hughes. Officials from New Scotland Yard passed this information on to the British government, who then spoke to members of the U.S. Embassy in Great Britain. The final decision was to put a lid on any further investigation of Jack the Ripper.
"What did you expect?" Heather asked. "That the British or American government would announce that Jack the Ripper was still alive and was now slaughtering women in the Windy City? What a pretty panic that would cause! Before long people would be seeing Jack the Ripper on every street corner. Police would get reports from crackpots claiming they'd seen him having coffee with Elvis down at the local Dunkin' Donuts."
"At least the police have a good description of him," Trevor pointed out optimistically. "They'll catch him; don't worry."
Bennett shared Trevor's conviction.
"That's right. Police across the country will be looking for John Hughes in connection with the two murders he committed here in Chicago. He'll be caught without anyone having to know his true identity."
* * *
Heather kept a watchful eye on the news as the days, weeks, months and finally years passed. However, there was never an arrest in the case of the Chicago Slasher, as the press had dubbed the killer. From time to time, she would read about an unsolved murder in another city, the discovery of a mutilated body in a dark alley or a serial killer preying on prostitutes, and she would wonder if John Hughes was up to his old habits.
Bennett and Trevor had both been sure that Jack would be caught quickly. They reasoned that a man from the 1880s could not go undetected for long in our high-tech society. But all that Jack had to do was learn a few basics about communication and transportation. No doubt there were plenty of women eager to help the handsome, charismatic man. Once he had that knowledge, he could join the ranks of modern man with little difficulty—men such as Ted Bundy, Kenneth Bianchi and Angelo Buono (the Hillside Stranglers), Gary Ridgeway (the Green River Killer) and Richard Ramirez (the Night Stalker). Heather had no doubt that John Ashford Hughes, history's infamous Jack the Ripper, would blend right in.
You can bet this apron didn't belong to Jack the Ripper.
