“I’m going to find out what he’s hiding.” She spoke matter-of-factly. “And I don’t comprehend your reluctance to believe he might be the murderer we seek.”
“Lennox isn’t a friendly man, but that doesn’t make him a killer. I’ve worked with him since he arrived.”
“When?”
“Mid-December.”
“Ha. It fits the time frame.” They danced faster to the slow music.
“I couldn’t have missed the signs,” Pike said.
“Your intuition is unscientific. The facts point elsewhere.”
“Once you get an idea in your head, you don’t let it go, do you?” He pulled her tighter.
“No. I suggest we continue waltzing or else we’ll have another row.”
“What?”
“An argument.”
He pointed a thumb outside. “Let’s have that right now.”
“At your service, Sheriff.” She emphasized his title because the entertainment part of the evening was indeed over.
He led her outside, past the horses and carriages. The music faded away.
“I don’t care whether the mighty Scotland Yard does call you a good amateur detective. You’re a willful know-it-all in a whalebone corset,” Pike said.
“And you’re an obstinate oaf with a star.” She pressed her finger at his badge.
“Your mind’s a steam engine.” Their voices rose.
“Your head is filled with the same material covering the streets.”
“Oh hell. Can I kiss you?”
“No.”
He blinked in surprise. And much to hers, she grabbed his collar and kissed him hard. She hadn’t envisioned her first kiss. She had never had the time. Not that this was the right time, smack in the middle of a murder investigation, but there was a necessity to feel life after so much death, so she kissed him. It was nothing like she had read in books.
It was much better. She tasted him. She breathed him. She shared herself. She tried another kiss, this one slower and gentler. It was good science to repeat the experiment. And, well, just good. The words of Christopher Marlowe came to her as Pike kissed her again, his arms encompassing her. Make me immortal with a kiss! Her lips suck forth my soul: see, where it flies! … Come give me my soul again. Here will I dwell, for heaven be in these lips.
Tom Pike might not have had heaven in his lips, but he had enough to make her fingertips heat up.
“Why, Miss Felicity Carrol,” he said, and smiled.
As he was about to kiss her one more time, Felicity pushed away and steadied her breath. “Now that that’s out of our systems, can we get back to working on this case?”
He laughed so hard he gasped for air, and she slapped his back to help him catch his breath.
CHAPTER 22
Sheriff Tom Pike flipped eggs with great prowess. Felicity drank his good coffee and sat at the table in his white two-story house a few streets from the courthouse. Surrounded by a white picket fence and a carpet of daisies in the front, the place appeared to belong to someone other than this tough lawman. The sitting room projected hominess with a black couch and a shelf of books, including plays by William Shakespeare. The open door to his bedroom showed a worn rug on the floor and a blue-and-white quilt over a brass bed.
After their argument and kisses, Pike had invited her to his house to talk, though not necessarily about arguing and kissing, he said. There, she still felt the vibrations in her stomach from his embrace. But she also thought of Jackson Davies and was distressed—as if she had somehow betrayed him. Her attraction to the sheriff was clear, yet when she had seen Davies so ill, she had realized she would do anything for him. That included traveling all the way to Montana.
Mostly, she felt very far from home and bewildered over her feelings about these two men. Such emotions had no chemical formula she could study or chart. They didn’t add up like mathematical equations. Sipping more of the strong coffee, she decided to put away the confusion and the kissing for now, although the latter was very pleasant. A killer had to be caught.
She did laugh at one thought.
“What?” Pike said.
“A young woman of English society kissing a man not her fiancé in the middle of a street is considered most shameful. Not to mention going to his house unchaperoned at night.”
“I’m sorry to have compromised you.”
“Luckily, I’m not that type of society woman, and this isn’t England. In this place and in this time, the old rules seem ludicrous.”
“Then hallelujah for America.” He flipped the egg again.
“Not only an upholder of the law but a good cook,” she said after tasting what he had prepared.
“You should taste my beans.” He winked. “And I can’t believe you called me an oaf.”
“I meant every word. And your term for me? Ah yes, a know-it-all in a whalebone corset.” She laughed.
“You really live in a castle back home?”
“Not that big. I do believe my grandfather had wanted to be a duke or lord when he built the monstrosity. He bought thousands of acres of gardens, pastures, and woods.”
“Thousands?”
“I know. Disgracefully aristocratic.”
“My house must be a disappointment.”
She took in his kitchen, which was painted the color of a sunflower. “Your home is quite charming.”
“Whatever you do, Felicity, please do not call this house charming in front of my deputies. I won’t be able to hold up my head in a saloon on Saturday nights.”
“Agreed.”
“Is England as green as I’ve read?”
“Like residing in one immense pastoral painting. Sometimes it can be a bit annoying. I do like variety.”
He looked out his window. “A helluva change from all this black metal and smelter stacks.”
“London has its share of smokestacks. What makes up for it is the history under your feet. You could be tracing the very steps of Henry the Eighth, Queen Elizabeth, Keats, and of course, Shakespeare.” Her head motioned toward his parlor. “And you’re an admirer of the Bard, as evidenced by your books.”
“When I was a boy, Edwin Booth and his company performed Hamlet at the Majestic on Main Avenue. My ma took me. The play caught me like a bear in a trap.” His eyes illuminated at the telling. “The swordplay and intrigue. When I got home and told my father, he rolled his eyes. That is, until I mentioned how four people died in the final act. He liked that action. ‘Better than a dime store novel,’ he said.”
“Where’s your mother now?”
He brushed a hand to rule his hair. “In San Francisco, I last heard. She loved to laugh and read. But this place is tough on women. She had tried with all her guts but couldn’t handle the winters or the mining fever. So she boarded a stagecoach and left when I was ten. She told me I belonged in Placer with my pa. That was the only thing I agreed with. Once in a while I get letters from her.”
Felicity put her head on one hand and listened to his animated storytelling. Although she disagreed with the way he approached the crimes, he was a decent, bright, and wise man. An orphan like her. “Why’d you become a lawman, Tom? Did you really want to follow in your father’s footsteps, or was it something you were expected to do?” He sat up at her question. “Has no one ever asked that?”
“You’re the only one.”
“Well?”
“I used to watch my father as he walked down the street. He was the very figure of the law and right and helping others. After he was killed, I wanted justice for him by finding his killers, and I came to like the idea of serving up justice for anyone who needs it.”
“That is well said.”
“Although lately the notion has kind of slipped away.” He topped off their coffee. “Speaking of parents, just how did your ma and pa ever allow you to head off to America and get involved in such foul goings-on?”
“My parents are dead.”
“I’m sorry.”
“My mother died when I was
young. My father passed more than one year ago.”
“Was he an investigator too? That why you took it up?” The question sounded playful.
“No, a businessman. Now, I must be getting back.” She wanted to stop more inquiries about her family.
“What about this Scotland Yard inspector fellow? He your fiancé?” He placed her wrap around her shoulders.
“Jackson is my friend. If I was engaged, I wouldn’t have kissed you.”
He smiled at that. “Well, he has a good friend to come all this way and put herself in danger.”
“He would have done the same for me.”
The sheriff put his hands on her face and drew her to him.
She gently stepped away. “I admit you’ve inspired in me an urge to become more intimate. And I do have a spectacular curiosity, especially after my readings in medical school, but I don’t have the time to indulge. Not with what’s before us—the finding of the Whitechapel killer.”
His arms fell to his sides. “You make spooning sound like a science experiment.”
“Spooning?”
“Courting. Kissing.”
“Ah, another American term.”
“But you might be right. This isn’t the time. But I wish it was.” He smiled, and she returned it.
“Tom, what of my theory about Dr. Lennox?”
He kissed her cheek. “I think you’re wrong as hell.”
* * *
The next morning Felicity sent a telegram to Morton & Morton asking the London solicitors and their staff of excellent investigators to check on whether William Lennox had graduated from the University of Edinburgh Medical School in Scotland as well as provide any other information on his background. She also requested a photograph of Dr. James Drury.
In her excitement at the best lead so far, she almost sent a telegram to Jackson Davies, but decided against it. She didn’t want to raise his hopes only to splinter them before she had proof that even the sheriff couldn’t dispute. A few days before, she had received a letter from Mrs. Joanna Davies, who reported that her son was improving each day, although he was still plagued by nightmares. Since her arrival in Placer, Felicity had written regularly to Davies about what had happened so far in the investigation, but she was careful not to send his illness into relapse with news of the continued murders and lack of a viable suspect. Until now, anyway.
At the telegraph office, Felicity chewed the end of her pen. In order to convince Tom Pike that the doctor was indeed a viable suspect, she had to break open the mystery of William Lennox.
Stopping by her house to gather her investigative tools, she headed to the physician’s office. After tying up her horse, she watched the front door from a corner. Within an hour, Lennox came out and locked the door.
She rushed to the back door and knocked. If his servant answered, her plan would have to be postponed. She knocked again. There was no reply, but there was a locked door. From her satchel, she took out a rolled piece of cloth holding a slim file and skeleton keys on a ring. She sighed at her good fortune. Dense trees around the yard hid her intentions. Felicity inserted one of the skeleton keys into the lock of Lennox’s office, but the door didn’t budge. Withdrawing the key, she used the file to shave off bits. She kept filing and trying the key until the door opened. To prevent leaving traces of her visit, she got on her hands and knees and blew away the shavings into a lush hydrangea bush to the side of the porch. She had learned the trick from reading Scotland Yard narratives about robberies.
Sneaking inside, she had to hurry. The sun filtered in through linen curtains and crept along the floor with each passing minute. She tightened her hand on the satchel.
She had noticed the doctor’s preoccupation with neatness on her first visit. In glass cabinets, medicine bottles had been organized by size. Forceps, syringes, bandages, and other equipment were in orderly rows. In Lennox’s surgery, she opened a cabinet drawer.
“Eureka,” she dared to say aloud.
Surgical knifes of all shapes and forms lay on white cotton fabric. Her interest pinpointed the double-edged catlin, an inch wide and six inches long with a short ebony handle. The knife definitely could have made the wounds in the prostitutes. She reached out to touch it but quickly withdrew her hand, as she didn’t want to leave her fingerprints on the polished handle.
At Lennox’s desk, she opened more drawers, using care so as not to disturb a stack of papers neatly arranged there. She reviewed the documents, which were reports on various patients. She hooted an exasperated breath. They were typewritten. She had no samples of his writing to compare with the Jack the Ripper letter and note to Pike.
As upsetting, the names of Rose Johnson, Mattie Morgan, and Lily Rawlins weren’t among his patients.
Felicity, she asked herself, when has this ever been easy?
Another drawer held blank sheets of paper, along with ink and a pen. She took out one of the sheets to match it with the note sent to Pike. She also scraped off the dried substance on the pen’s tip and placed it into an envelope to determine later if the pen had been used to write the note in blood.
Another drawer held medical journals. In the last drawer were clipped newspaper articles about the deaths of the three women. This was good proof, but not enough.
Like his parlor and office, Lennox’s private residence was sterile. There were no portraits of family. Nothing personal demonstrated he even lived there. From a hairbrush, she lifted several strands of his hair for comparison to those she had picked off the clothing of the victims.
In his bedroom hung two more watercolor paintings—one of a castle in a meadow and another of a lonely stretch of beach. She leaned in. Lennox hadn’t signed the paintings, which she thought strange.
In a tall wardrobe hung six black suits and several white shirts. The pockets were empty. According to the labels, the suits were made by Harbingers in London. Putting the suit fabric to her nose, she smelled alcohol. Not surprising, given Lennox’s occupation. Below the suits were four pairs of black leather shoes in a perfect line. Dress shoes. Shoes that could have made a bloody print at the King mercantile. A dark coloration stained the sole of one. From her satchel, she withdrew a dropper and applied to the spot a mixture of hydrogen peroxide and tincture of guaiac from the guaiacum tree. The resulting robin’s-egg blue indicated blood.
Although excited, she could hear Pike’s contention. The doctor had probably tramped in the spilled blood while inspecting the bodies. Unfortunately, that was a good explanation. She measured the length of the shoe. An inch longer than the bloody print at the crime scene. Sitting back, she chewed her lower lip at the discrepancy.
Still, his knives and the blood on his shoes gave her cause to continue the search. Add to that his disposition of detachment fitting the makeup of a pitiless killer. Besides, he might have used different shoes when he killed those women.
Impulsively, she swept her hand over Lennox’s hanging suits and shirts. Her father’s wardrobe had had the same tidiness. A memory brushed over her like a dry wind. Her father had always insisted his shoes be lined up like soldiers on a field. She was seven. During a rambunctious game of hide-and-seek with Helen, Felicity hid in her father’s wardrobe and displaced the shoes. Her father, not Helen, opened the door. His neck muscles pulsated as he yelled, “You careless child. See what you’ve done.”
She never again played hide-and-seek.
“Get your head into what you are doing,” Felicity whispered.
A black physician’s bag sat on top of the wardrobe. Inside were bandages, balms, tweezers, small scissors, and a folded single-edged surgical knife. No sign of blood. Most unusual for a doctor’s bag and exasperatingly contradictory for the bag of a killer.
And the shoe size. The shoe size.
The front door creaked. She froze. A most unwise thing to do, she admitted.
Move.
She couldn’t make it to the back door in time, so she slipped beneath the four-poster bed and barely took in air to slow her
heart’s frantic beating. Halfway under the bed, she couldn’t push forward. Her skirt became entangled in the metal springs. She jerked at the fabric. A rip, but she freed herself. Felicity slid toward the headboard up against the wall and held her satchel close to her body.
Lennox marched into the room. She recalled his brisk walk, as if he always had places to go. He paced in front of the bed with raps of his shoes. After a few minutes, he went into the other room. Perspiration covered her forehead. He can’t kill you in his own house, she reassured herself. How can you be so sure? an inner voice answered.
The light through the curtains turned a dusky orange with the coming sunset. He clicked on an electric light in the bedroom. Felicity pushed herself closer to the wall and wished she could disappear into the dark wood. Someone knocked at the back door. Different footsteps sounded, lighter and rushed. Must be his servant.
“About time. I have an appointment and want my dinner now,” Lennox said.
“Yes, sir. Sorry, my wife …”
“I don’t care. Get my dinner.”
“Yes, Doctor.”
“And your fingerprints dirtied the glass doors on the cabinet in my surgery. You know how I loathe that.”
“Sorry, sir.”
Her head went into her hands. Those were her fingerprints.
The clattering of dishes and pans came from another room, along with the smell of cooking beef. The doctor paced in the bedroom. What had made him so agitated? Guilt over the murders? Worry he might be caught? Most likely, his ache to kill thrashing about in him attempting to break loose. Six weeks had passed between the murder of Lily Rawlins and Mattie Morgan, then two weeks between Mattie Morgan and Rose Johnson. Why so many days between the first and second? The answer was logical, even for a killer. He wanted to gauge whether he had gotten away with the crime. So he waited until he believed it safe enough to stalk another girl.
Felicity scooted back against the wall.
Silverware clinked against dishes in the other room. Then came the sound of the dishes being cleared away and washed. Lennox said nothing in all that time. Within an hour, the servant left Lennox with a “Good night, sir,” which the doctor didn’t acknowledge. Lennox returned to the bedroom and changed his shoes. He sat on a chair across the room for a time. Felicity didn’t breathe when he stooped to tie his laces. He turned off the lights and walked out. The front door closed.
Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace Page 21