I judged that Vanessa was trying to let the prostitutes die as humans before they became monsters.
Otherwise, there would be no reason for Vanessa to commit murder.
But even so, there were still unresolved questions.
First.
According to records, Jack the Ripper was known to have used a “surgical knife” as a weapon.
However, I had never seen Vanessa use such a knife even once.
Second.
Jack the Ripper didn’t just kill prostitutes.
As if with some kind of intent, Jack the Ripper “extracted” the victims’ organs.
The Vanessa I knew was not the kind of woman who would do such a thing.
To get answers to all these questions, I sought out Conan Doyle.
“Who are you to come looking for me at this late hour?”
“I’ve come to make a request, Conan Doyle.”
Conan Doyle looked at me warily and asked.
“If you wanted to make a request, you should have made an appointment. Why have you broken into my room?”
“I apologize for the rudeness. The matter is too urgent to wait for an appointment. I simply had no other choice. I cannot solve this on my own.”
“You cannot solve it?”
“Yes, there is something I must find out.”
Curiosity flickered in Conan Doyle’s blue eyes.
He was known to be a peculiar man who couldn’t resist a mystery.
Sure enough, he forgot that I was an intruder and asked about the mystery instead.
“What is it that you want to find out?”
“I’d like to ask about the East End gang annihilation incident.”
The curiosity on Conan’s face immediately vanished.
“I’m busy. Please leave. I have no interest in gangs.”
Turning his back on me, Conan picked up his fountain pen and resumed writing Sherlock Holmes.
But at my next words, his pen froze mid-stroke.
“It was the work of a single person.”
Conan Doyle stopped writing and turned to look at me.
His blue eyes were now filled with curiosity.
“I formally request your help, Conan Doyle.”
Clatter.
A pouch of money was placed on the table.
“Please find the suspect behind the Crime Pub annihilation incident.”
The Crime Pub incident had been concluded as a gang war.
The East End was a lawless zone where gangs formed and disappeared every month.
The disappearance of a large gang wasn’t unusual.
But when Conan Doyle got involved, the direction of the case changed.
“This was the work of a single person.”
Looking around at the ruined pub, Conan reached a conclusion.
“The weapon used was a knife… No, scissors?”
Just by glancing around, he deduced what weapon Vanessa had used.
It was a remarkable feat, fitting for the creator of Sherlock Holmes.
“A person with awakened abilities… Was it an act of revenge?”
“She was likely trying to stop the spread of Blossom Poison.”
“The disease rumored to be spreading among prostitutes?”
“That’s right. Crime Pub was selling the Poison.”
“It wouldn’t have been the only place. The gangs must all be involved.”
“Most likely.”
In the East End, there were five other small and large gangs aside from Crime Pub.
To them, the Blossom Poison was a profitable business.
“Mr. Conan, here is the requested evidence.”
A detective in charge of the case handed Conan the weapons collected from the pub.
There were various weapons, but Conan picked up a bag containing scissors.
“Cheap scissors. Judging by how they were discarded after use, they weren’t reused.”
“If she were a seamstress, she wouldn’t want to use bloodstained scissors for sewing. That means she’d need to buy new ones.”
With just the clue of “scissors,” Conan deduced Vanessa’s next destination.
On the very day of the incident, he found the general store where those scissors were sold.
He summoned everyone who had met Vanessa even once to gather information.
“The culprit will remain in the East End until she has eradicated the Blossom Poison. She’s probably within this area.”
Swoosh.
Conan marked Vanessa’s area of activity with a red circle on the map.
“There’s only one gang left in this area.”
Conan tapped a location with his fountain pen.
“Dublin Pub. An Irish gang, it seems.”
It took Conan only three hours to find the scissors and deduce Vanessa’s whereabouts.
And most of that time was spent gathering people for questioning.
Jeanne’s eyes widened at Conan’s deductions.
“Did he use an ability?”
“No.”
Conan Doyle was known to be a non-awakened individual.
He had achieved a level beyond the awakened purely through his deductive reasoning.
Even witnessing it firsthand, his abilities were astonishing beyond belief.
Modern profiling techniques were merely a systematization of Conan’s natural instincts.
The god of deduction.
But even he had failed to catch “Jack the Ripper” in real history.
So did that mean Conan had failed?
I would find out soon enough.
Jeanne and I followed Conan to the Irish gang’s hideout.
The gang’s base was in the basement of a pub.
A place that should have been heavily guarded with layers of security.
But now, an eerie silence filled the hideout.
Vanessa was there.
Standing in the middle of a sea of gang members’ corpses,
Holding blood-dripping scissors.
“Don’t move!”
A detective aimed a gun at Vanessa.
“Vanessa.”
“I don’t understand why these people never face the judgment of the law.”
Vanessa looked indifferently at the officer pointing a gun at her.
“So, I decided to judge them myself.”
Vanessa turned to me and smiled.
“Was I wrong?”
I could not answer.
The British government had always “neglected” the East End.
No matter how many people died, no matter how many crimes occurred, the government always looked the other way.
Vanessa had chosen to become an executioner in place of a government that merely stood by.
Unlike Jeanne, she didn’t have the power to help the victims, but she could at least send those who caused their suffering to “hell.”
Bang!
The detective fired, but by then, Vanessa had already vanished.
The ghost of death,
No.
The one who chose to execute justice in the face of negligence had disappeared without a trace.
On August 31st, at 4 a.m., a woman’s body was found in an alley in the East End.
The dead woman stared blankly into the void with lifeless eyes.
Her name was Mary Ann Nichols.
A prostitute.
This was officially recorded as Jack the Ripper’s first murder.
I decided to track down Mary Ann Nichols before she was murdered.
If I followed Mary, I would surely meet Vanessa.
Late at night.
As I waited in front of the hotel where Mary was staying, she stepped outside.
I quietly followed behind her.
Drunk, Mary staggered through the alleys of the East End.
About ten minutes passed.
A woman appeared from the opposite corner.
Even in the dark night, her golden eyes gleamed.
It was Vanessa.
Vanessa also saw me and stopped walking.
Our gazes crossed in the empty night air.
“Aaahhh!”
A scream rang out.
Vanessa vanished the moment she heard the scream.
“A-a body!”
Mary, who had fallen on her backside, stared in horror at the alleyway Vanessa had emerged from.
There lay the corpse of a dead woman.
Jack the Ripper’s first murder was not Mary Ann Nichols.
Was this a parallel world?
In this world, Jack the Ripper’s first victim was a different prostitute.
The police treated the case as just another murder.
After all, murders and robberies were common in the slums of the East End.
But…
“This is strange.”
Conan, who was investigating the scene, tilted his head.
“What do you mean?”
“Do you really think this was her doing?”
“Are you saying it wasn’t?”
“The method is completely different.”
“What?”
“This was done by someone else. A surgical knife was used. And it was handled with expertise.”
What was he saying?
Vanessa had emerged from the crime scene.
I had seen her vanish, and I had seen the corpse appear.
Yet Conan was convinced it was the work of another.
—I saw it. A person with red hair…!
Meanwhile, the first witness, Mary, was describing Vanessa’s appearance to the police.
[The Mastermind Behind the Dublin Pub Massacre, A Prostitute Killer!]
[The Brutality of the Murders is Shocking…]
[The Butcher of the East End, Jack the Ripper!]
[Could She Be the Same Suspect as the Crime Pub Killer?!]
This was the moment Jack the Ripper became known to the world.
A week later, another prostitute was murdered.
The killings continued, and London was gripped by fear under the name of Jack the Ripper.
The newspapers fueled the hysteria, publishing sensational articles about Jack the Ripper.
But since Jack the Ripper always operated in darkness, no one ever got a clear look at them.
Many people were named as suspects.
From medical professionals to high-ranking dukes—even a British prince.
More than a hundred people were falsely accused of being Jack the Ripper.
As London suffered under the terror of Jack the Ripper, I came across a strange article.
[Jack the Ripper: A Protest Against the Government’s Prostitution Encouragement Policy?]
“Prostitution encouragement?”
That was strange.
The government hated the growing population of the East End—why would they encourage prostitution?
“No, not prostitution… Blossom Poison.”
People addicted to Blossom Poison turned into monsters.
It was a convenient way to naturally reduce the skyrocketing population of the East End.
But Blossom Poison was, at its core, a “monstrosity.”
It was related to the despairing entity, Astaroth.
What kind of confidence did the British government have to promote something like this?
“Do they have a way to control the monsters?”
Or…
Was Blossom Poison not a natural phenomenon, but something the British government had artificially created to reduce the population?
Everything started to fit together.
If Blossom Poison was an engineered phenomenon by the British government,
There must be a “host.”
A source that produced the poison.
If that host was cooperating with the government, it would make sense why they encouraged prostitution.
A “controllable monster” was an effective tool for population control.
This could also explain why Conan Doyle never found Jack the Ripper.
If the enemy was the government itself, even Conan would have had to remain silent.
In the end, I reached one conclusion.
“Vanessa is not Jack the Ripper.”
History recorded her as Jack the Ripper, but that was a label placed on her by the British government.
[Complete Jack the Ripper’s ‘work.’]
Perhaps this “work” didn’t refer to prostitutes at all.
Maybe it referred to the host.