The Adventures of Holds and Wayson

The Lodgers

"What are we doing in White Chapel," I asked my thin friend.

With enthusiasm, he proclaimed, "Wayson, we are going to catch Jack The Ripper!"

I always thought he was out of his mind, but this confirmed it. I started to walk away, but he grabbed me by the collar. 

"Now, Wayson," he said, "there is no need to fear. I have a plan."

His plan included me dressing up as a prostitute and walking through dark alleys at night until the murderer approached me and then just as he was about to kill me, my partner, Samuel Holds, would get the drop on him.

"You can't be serious," I asked him.

He was.

Because this was going to take place over several days, my friend suggested we find a place to stay in White Chapel.

"And what do you think is going to motivate me to stay in this dreadful place?"

"Why, the money and fame we will receive as a reward when we catch The Ripper, of course."

It wasn't a good reason. The police hadn't been able to catch The Ripper, I don't understand what made him think we were going to. I still had all kinds of serious doubts about all of this. I asked Holds where we would be staying.

"Here," he pointed to a sign telling us of rooms for rent.

It was a two-story home, the outside was nothing special and neither was the inside. In fact, the inside was rather plain, only having a large dining table and the chairs around it for furniture. A rug covered the carpet up to the door. The stairs were bare and coming down them was a man the size of a bear.

He was dressed all in black and said nothing to us. In fact, he walked right past us. In his hand was a doctors bag, which couldn't have weighed more than a few kilograms. 

Coming down the stairs after him was a rather round lady with an apron on. She was apologizing profusely to him, blaming herself for something that went wrong up the stairs.

"Ah, ha," my partner professed, "a prostitute. Surely, you'll make a better-looking one than her."

"I'm no street angel," the lady protested. "I'm Mrs. Langley. My husband and I own this place."

Holds was embarrassed. I tried to relieve the tension by asking, "Oh, well, was that your husband?"

"Oh, no," she said. "That is our newest lodger. He lives upstairs. A very quiet chap indeed. He likes his privacy. A very religious man too. He doesn't like the paintings of the women we have upstairs. He says they give him lustful thoughts."

Holds was about to head upstairs, but I stopped him. "Well madam, if that's the case, then we should like a room too." That came out way worse than I had hoped it would.

She told us the price per month and Holds agreed to it before he forced me to pay it.

I still wasn't convinced to do this, but all the convincing I needed soon came through the door.

Her name was Kitty Langley, a tall, skinny woman, whose curly dark hair looked like black roses on top of her head. She said she would be staying at the lodge and that was what sold me to stay.

When I asked her what she did for a living, she told us she was an actress and a very famous one. She told us of her routine and invited us to see.

I was seconds away from accepting the invitation when my partner informed the women that we had work to do.

I let out a heavy sigh.

"Oh, can't it wait, Mister Holds?" I am introducing a new act in my show tonight. A girl named Mary Kelly will be performing with me.

"Oh," I said.

"Yes! In fact, here she comes now. "

Mary Kelly wasn't as beautiful as Kitty, but she was still a looker. She was twenty-five years old and had this look of hope in her eyes. Her hair was darker than Kitty's and because of that, many people called her Black Mary.

The introductions were quick because Holds was insistent that we go upstairs and get ready for our evening.

"What is it with everyone in this house having to work at night," Mrs. Langley asked the walls of the house.

Holds told me to stay put and he ran from room-to-room looking for anything that would make me look more feminine.

When he returned to the room with a few items he had found, he remarked to me about how strange our companion across the hall seemed to be. "A very odd fellow indeed, Wayson. He has all of the pictures facing the wall and all of the doors of his dresser are locked. There is a strange smell coming from his room. It is almost as if somebody died in there."

He started to dress me and as soon as I had my disguise, he checked to make sure no one was in the house before he told me to come down.

I will not mention my costume because it is too embarrassing for words, but let's just say that I looked more like a homeless hag than a lady of the evening.

We went out into the night. Holds sent me down a few dark alleys hoping something would happen to me. I was hoping for the exact opposite.

But something did happen. A man, dressed all in black with a cape and a top hat approached me. He grabbed me by the shoulder with one hand and when he did, Holds leaped out of the darkness and grabbed him with both of his hands.

"Now we've got you," he said as he saved my life.

We turned the man around and to our surprise, it was our fellow lodger. Holds asked what he was doing out in this neck of the words.

He was nervous but yet he did not speak.

Holds told him, "We are out to catch The Ripper. We were hoping to catch him and get the reward. We are so sorry we thought you were him. We best let you go on your way."

As Holds patted him on the shoulder, a scream came a few meters away from us. We dashed past the man to see what had happened while our fellow lodger took off in the other direction.

We passed through the crowd to see what the commotion was all about and there she was, Mary Kelly had been killed. She had been sliced to bits by The Ripper.

The next morning, our fellow lodger was not there. Holds wanted to leave as well, believing we had failed in our quest to find Jack The Ripper. I insisted that we stay for Kitty's sake, to comfort her during the death of her friend.

"What is it with you always wanting to be around beautiful women," he asked me.

I wanted to tell him but I thought if I didn't, there would be more of them for me to enjoy.

Mary Kelly was buried ten days later on November 19, 1888. After the funeral was over, I professed my feelings to Kitty Langley, but she didn't reciprocate. She said I was too old for her and the stress of all these women being murdered was just too much for her to handle.

"Where will you go?" I asked.

"I am moving to America," she said. "To a place called Chicago. There is a man there and he is building a hotel. He plans to have it finished before The World's Fair. His name is H.H. Holmes."

I wished her the best of luck.

"Oh, don't worry about me, doctor," she told me. "If it's one thing America doesn't have, it's a man like Jack The Ripper."

AUTHOR'S NOTE

On November 9, 1888, Jack The Ripper claimed Mary Kelly as his fifth and final victim. While this story is a parody of the many Sherlock Holmes VS Jack The Ripper stories as well as a parody of the book "The Lodger" by Marie Belloc Lowndes, these murders were none the less real. It is in remembrance of these women that the author would like to dedicate this story of humor too.