Whitechapel

September 4th, 1888

     In eternal slumber, a woman lays bare beneath the critical gazes of four men. Her skin as ashen as the metal slate she lays upon, cerulean eyes agape but seeing nothing. The air in the room was frigid, stale, and heavily permeated with the stench of rotting flesh, iron, and excrement. The morning smog cast a blue hue over the metallic furnishings of the mortuary, reflecting an azure shadow over both the deceased and living within. Silence is nonexistent between the cacophony of English life on the other side of the gaping windows and the clattering of surgical tools being placed on metal trays as the corpses are made ready for their funerals.
Curious onlookers peered through the foggy glass of the charnel house, mystified by the plethora of bodies laying tidily in row towards the gaping window panes. The crowd was especially large this morning, talk of the murder had spread and the people of London could not help but to sate their morbid curiosities. Glancing at the horde of onlookers, Lead Detective Abberline steps in front of the woman, causing a rumble of discontent from behind him. "Not much privacy here, is there?" he comments with a tight smile. "Good morning, gentlemen. Inspector Swanson, if you'd like to begin?"
Without a missed beat, Chief Inspector Swanson retrieves a cleanly folded page of notes from his breast pocket, "Here is the analytic report." He reads, furrow-browed, from the page, "As before, evidence suggests that the victim, now identified as Mary Ann Nichols, was found murdered on August thirty-first close to three-thirty in the morning in Buck's Row, Whitechapel. She had likely only been dead for a half-hour upon her discovery. She had a twelve inch deep laceration to the throat as well as an incision going straight down her abdomen. She was disemboweled. The neck was attached by a thin strip of skin and flesh, not bone. Injuries likely caused by a dagger and pocket knife. No sign of sexual indecency had harmed the body pre or post-mortem."
     "Poor dame," Sir Charles Warren, Chief of the Scotland Yard, mutters solemnly. "The man who did this is damned for all eternity for terrorizing a defenceless lass like her."
     For a moment, Assistant Police Commissioner Monro pulls his handkerchief away from his nose, sniggering. "You mean to say that the murderer can't be on a heaven-bound path for eternal joy?" he gasps with faux surprise, sweet venom dripping from every syllable. Wide-eyed, the rest of the officers listen with dismay at Monro's outburst. "No shit he's going to hell, you fat knacker!" James Monro snaps, mahogany eyes brazen.
     Warren casts his gaze upon Monro, sneering,                "Exactly what I'd expect of you, James. You're lashing out like a child. This behavior is exactly why you are never going to be anything but a subordinate." The chief scoffed
     "Why you--"
     "Enough!" snaps Abberline, "If you must bicker, leave."
     Chief Warren bows his head slightly, "I beg your pardon, Detective Abberline."
     "Apologies, Detective," Monro huffs, averting his gaze. He covers his nose with his green handkerchief again, eyes fixed blazingly on the Chief. Tearing his attention away from his superior, he questioned, "Could it be possible that the murderer was on his way to work?"
     "Right," Abberline hummed with a frown, glancing between the argumentative pair before addressing the entire team. "Well, it's definitely possible. The earliness of the crime suggests that this could have been premeditated, yeah?"
     "Do you think that this is linked to Martha Tabram?" Warren examined, cupping his chin with his hand thoughtfully.
     Swanson frowns perturbedly, crossing his arms "Linked by what means?"
     "They were both discovered, expired, in Whitechapel this month. And while this may be a bit far fetched, but wasn't it that Martha's murderer also used multiple weapons to brutally assult her? She could have been the test subject whom he got carried away with?
     The group falls silent, contemplative.
      "It is most certainly within the realm of possibility."
      "Well lads, I do suppose we have a Whitechapel killer on the loose."