The Name of the Star - Maureen Johnson [83]
A painting appeared on the screen. It was a dark room, a bed in the middle. Plain, brooding, dark.
“Another reason,” Mark said, “was the fact that in 1908, Sickert painted a series of paintings based on a real-life murder, the Camden Town Murder. The murder had taken place the year before, and the scene was similar to that of the last murder victim in the Jack the Ripper murders, Mary Kelly—certainly in the setting.”
A click. A new painting. A woman lying on a bed, naked, her head turned away. A man sitting on the edge of the bed, mourning over what he had done.
“Art of a murder scene,” Mark said. “Death is a common theme in painting. The Crucifixion has been painted thousands of times. The executions of kings. The killings of saints. But this painting is more about the murderer than the victim. It even encourages us to feel mercy for him. This painting from the series is called What Shall We Do for the Rent ?”
Mark went on, telling us all about English impressionists and the brushstrokes and the light. I just kept staring straight ahead at the still figure on the bed—the shaded, almost forgotten figure of the woman.
I didn’t have any mercy for the killer.
An hour and a half into class, we had a bathroom break. I was the first one out the door.
“I’m not going back in there,” I said to Jerome. “I don’t know if you can . . . prefect-arrest me or something. But I’m not going back.”
“I’m not going to prefect-arrest you,” he said. “But I should walk you back to your building. I’ll tell Mark you were ill.”
So Jerome walked me the thirty or so feet back to Hawthorne. We had just about reached the door when he stopped.
“Only a few more days,” he said. “It’s almost over.”
Jerome hesitated, then put his hand on the side of my head, leaned down, and kissed me.
When I looked up, I just caught sight of Stephen. He was sitting on a bench in the square, pretending to read. He wore a sweater and jeans and a scarf, no uniform. He immediately removed and played with his glasses, turning away from the sight of the kissing. But he had seen it, and that felt weird. I stepped away from Jerome.
“Thanks,” I said. I meant for the walk back to the building, but it sounded like I meant the kiss.
“Did you see the thing on the news?” Jerome asked. “About the message? How everyone thinks it’s from the Bible, and it might be about terrorism? I don’t think it is—neither do any of the people on the Ripper boards. The name of the star . . . it’s not from the Bible—he means the name Jack the Ripper. That’s the name of the Star.”
“What?”
“Jack the Ripper never called himself Jack the Ripper. The name came from a letter sent to the Central News Agency. It was a hoax, and almost definitely written by a reporter from the Star newspaper. That was the paper that made the Ripper famous. The whole thing was kind of a media creation. When he says ‘the name of the star is what you fear,’ he means it—everyone’s afraid of this idea of the Ripper, this thing that gets bigger and bigger because of the news. And he’s the star of the show, right? It’s a joke. It’s a sick one, but it’s a joke. It’s bad, but . . . it’s not terrorism or anything. At least, I don’t think so. If that helps.”
He raised his hand and walked back toward the classroom building. I had nowhere to be. I’d just ditched my only Saturday obligation, and everyone else was in class. All was quiet in Wexford’s little square of London. I could hear various instruments being played in the music rooms. Jazza’s cello was certainly among them, but I couldn’t pick it out of the general noise.
I walked away from school and to the main shopping road, which was crowded with people out doing Saturday errands. I went into our local coffee shop, for lack of any better destination, and stood in the stupidly long line and ordered myself the first drink that came