by Paula Guran
He unlocked the hut as pale rays of dawn rolled languidly across the September sky, and stepped inside, conscientiously latching the door behind him. The ever-burning lantern glowed in a corner, and Kit could make out muddy boot-prints on the pale birch of the floor, signs of other comings and goings. The interior of the lock-up would have surprised anyone who didn’t have a key to it: it was (muddy prints notwithstanding) a tidy room, lined with a series of securely locked leather-bound wooden steamer trunks. Even the worst of the reprobates who used this place wouldn’t dare break faith with either fellow key-holders or their Chinese hosts; it wouldn’t be worth the strife. In one corner was a trapdoor, also locked. Kit didn’t have a key to that.
His chest was located nearest the trapdoor, so he’d had plenty of time to study it in the past three months, which was also, not so coincidentally the same amount of time he’d been working for the Metropolitan Police Service. He lifted the heavy lid once the lock had been disengaged and sighed as he drew forth a dress in navy, almost as dark as his uniform, complete with bustle and ridiculously tight sleeves, and shook it to encourage the wrinkles to leave the bombazine.
The advantage of the color, she thought, was that it didn’t look as if it had been folded in the bottom of a case for almost a whole day. She couldn’t quite recall how, or indeed if, she’d ever sat comfortably in a bustled skirt. Kit—Katherine—Caswell slid the police helmet from her head and rubbed her scalp with long fingers. Her hair was cropped, a ruddy brown like her father’s had been. She was thankful, in a small way, that she’d had to sell her tresses to the wigmaker so she could afford Lucius’ medicine; they’d been down to her waist, as thick a mane as any young woman could have wished for and had fetched a handsome price. Since then she’d kept it neatly trimmed, surreptitiously cutting it so her mother didn’t seem to notice except to comment from time to time that it was a shame the locks didn’t appear to want to grow back. It—and her squarish jaw—helped Kit to pass for a boy. A girlish-looking boy to be sure, but a boy nonetheless, with a voice that was deep for a girl, light for a boy, and did not give her away for she was careful to speak in low tones.
Beneath the dress were the myriad petticoats and underclothes she’d come to loathe more and more with every passing day, particularly the corset; even the strapping across her modest breasts to keep them flat in her uniform was less uncomfortable and restricting. She shook everything out before dressing, just in case some kind of insect life had decided her drawers might make a good home. But the lock-up was very clean, and Kit knew she had no real reason for concern. And the shoes, the little black leather boots with bows and buttons up the side that made her toes hurt. In the cracked and speckled full-length mirror the owners had been kind enough to provide (Kit was under no illusions that hers was the only transformation conducted here on a daily basis), she surveyed herself and settled the silly little cream and coffee bonnet with trailing ribbons and silken butterflies onto her head, then affixed the short cape around her shoulders against the chill. She looked respectable and that was the best she could hope for.
Navigating her way through the clawing bushes and over the boggy path, she finally stepped out into the alley after taking a good look around to make sure she was unobserved. There was only the young Chinese boy, perched on a stool at the back gate, drowsy but alert enough to give her a nod as she passed by. He was one of a cadre of youngsters deployed by his community to collect information that might keep them safe, learning the business, learning to keep secrets, learning a dozen other possibly highly illegal things in regard to which Kit might one day have to glance the other way. She’d worry about that later though. For now, tolerance and willful blindness were in everyone’s interests—she’d realized in the last few months that sometimes part of enforcing the law was pretending ignorance, and she was more than prepared to apply that to her current situation.
The walk to number 3 Lady’s Mantle Court took ten minutes. The streets were starting to come alive, so her footsteps weren’t the only sounds to be heard; bakers making deliveries, butchers lugging carcasses to restaurants and big houses, coal trucks, flower girls shouting at anyone they could see, all combined to start the beginnings of a cacophony that would grow and not subside until well after dark had fallen. Mind, things had been quieter since Mary Anne Nichols had been found. Might grow quieter still, thought Kit, now Annie Chapman had joined her compatriot. Then she wondered how long before the city’s male population got up-in-arms, or at least the pimps and the bullyboys who ran the whores; those who made their living off women’s backs, and who didn’t mind knocking “employees’ around themselves, but God help the man who hit another’s whore—at least without paying extra. Finding herself at a familiar blue-painted door, Kit pushed these thoughts aside, consciously settled a blank and obedient expression on her face, and slid the neat little black key from the balding velvet drawstring purse—which also contained a dainty hanky with edges embroidered and a set of brass knuckles—into its lock.
“Did you do it? Katherine?”
Sweet Jesus, had her mother been waiting up all night until she walked in? Kit took a deep breath and paced to the tiny parlor in the rooms they rented in Mrs. Kittredge’s genteelly decrepit home. Sure enough, there she was, seated by the dying fire, a frayed rug across her knee, disarrayed knitting tumbled to the floor and tangled about Louisa Caswell’s worn slippers. The mourning cap she’d adopted and not relinquished, though almost three years had passed since her husband’s death, sat askew on the silver-shot black hair that flowed over her thin shoulders, and her eyes, fever-bright, seemed to be trying to pierce Kit, to get inside her and determine all the secrets she might be hiding.
Kit smiled. “Yes, Mother. Good morning.”
“Did you get it all done?” repeated Louisa as if her daughter had not answered. Kit nodded, crossed the room, and patted her mother’s long thin hands with their spidery fingers.
“Yes, Mother. We completed the entire order. Mistress Hazleton is very pleased.”
“So you are home for a while? Did she pay you? Lucius needs more medicine. Did she pay you?” Louisa had been under the impression for some time that Kit was still apprenticed to a milliner on the other side of the Thames, and that this employment sometimes required her daughter to work nights in order to fill large orders of hats—she was willing to believe that Mistress Hazleton’s confections of feathers and silk, bows and beads, netting and pearls were in high demand. Louisa also had no idea that the pittance her daughter earned in that position did not stretch to the needs of three people, one of them very ill. It was four months since Kit had hit upon her plan after discovering how much improved her pay conditions might be were she a male.
“Yes, Mother. I have been paid. I will get Lucius’ medicine this morning and I will pay Mrs. Kittredge the money she is owed. Then I will buy groceries and we shall have a fine luncheon before I go back to work. Put your mind at rest.” She stroked Louisa’s hair and face; was stunned to find how much resentment was billowing up from inside like bile, how much she hated being a parent to her mother when she’d barely finished with being a child herself. “Have you been sitting up all night?”
“Oh no, dear. I slept very well.” And Kit thought she probably had after a dose of the laudanum Louisa had found was her only means to cope after the Reverend Caswell’s demise. She ran tender fingers over the stump of Louisa’s left ear where only a remnant of the top half remained. Louisa swatted her daughter’s hand away as if the touch reminded her of things she wished to forget.
“I’ll go and check on Lucius, Mother, then we shall have some breakfast. Would you like your knitting?”
The woman nodded and Kit carefully lifted the unidentifiable knotting of coarse wool and smooth wooden needles to her mother’s lap and left her to get on with whatever it was she thought she was making.
Her brother’s bedchamber was at the back of the ground floor flat; their entire space was small, but neat, and the paint was not peeling even if the rugs w
ere a little threadbare. Some weeks Kit paid Mrs. Kittredge extra to help clean their rooms and the older woman was happy to help out. She was even good about sitting with Lucius when his mother and sister had to go out; and more often than not when she arrived home in the afternoons Kit would find her mother and their landlady either in the parlor drinking tea and gossiping, or in the kitchen shelling peas for a great pot of stew or soup the two households would share—and gossiping. Kit wondered if Mrs. K noticed Louisa’s decaying mental state; perhaps she did and it just made her kinder. With no family of her own living close, Mrs. K had adopted the Caswells, seeming to spend more time with them than on the two floors above which were her domain. Kit didn’t mind because it meant her family was watched out for while she was away.
“Get some rest,” Inspector Makepeace had said when she left the station in the morning dark. Easier said than done, thought Kit. Lucius hadn’t woken yet and Kit watched as he slept. He had their mother’s coloring, black hair and palest skin, with icy blue eyes that warmed when he roused and saw his sister.
“Kit!” He struggled to sit, thin arms pushing him upwards, the weight of his wasted legs making the task harder than it should have been. She came to his aid, plumping pillows and helping him to rest against them. The room was narrow, like the whole house, with just enough space for a slender bed, a tallboy and a chair by his pillow, where a copy of Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde lay.
“You want to be careful with that. If Mother sees it we’ll never hear the end of it.” She lifted the book, sat down and rested the slim volume in her lap. Louisa objected to her son reading anything that wasn’t “improving” and she most certainly did not consider “that Scotsman” improving. She thought his work encouraged boys to run away from home for adventure’s sake. Lucius gave his most winning smile.
“She won’t get angry with me, Kit, don’t worry.”
“No, but she will get angry with me and I’ll be the worst person in the world for giving it to you,” she pointed out, mock scolding.
“What did you do last night, Kit? What did you see?” When Kit had put her plan into action and changed jobs (to say the least), Lucius knew; he noticed everything, all the habits of the house because he had nothing better to do with himself. It was the kind of secret that was difficult to keep from him—whereas Louisa spent so much time in her own world, not caring as long as the bills were paid, Lucius had his medicine and she hers, and food made a regular appearance on the table. He read, he scribbled in the cheap notebooks Kit bought him, he read some more, he watched the garden from the tiny window of his room, he played whist with Mrs. K, although Louisa couldn’t keep track of the game. But her brother, observed Kit, remained cheerful; illness and immobility hadn’t soured his nature, and he looked forward to hearing about what she did when dressed as a man.
She wondered if he’d be so accepting if he’d had a father still alive, if he’d spent the better part of his thirteen years going amongst other boys and drinking in their beliefs and bigotries. Despite the hardship his sickness caused them all, a tiny part of Kit was pleased it had made him so sweet and open-minded.
She leaned forward, thinking about what to tell him—how to tell him, for he loved a story. So she began with her evening patrol, the three fights she’d broken up before strolling down Hanbury Street and finding Wright and Watkins in their varied positions near poor Annie Chapman. She glossed over the worst of the predations on the woman’s corpse, but told him enough that a look of horrified delight sparked there even as he whispered a prayer for the soul of the dead. When finally she finished her tale and sat back in the chair, he looked as though he’d eaten a good meal; which she knew he hadn’t.
“Right, I’m off to make breakfast before Mother comes looking for me.”
“Five minutes more, Kit, please. Read me the chapter again that I read last night.”
“But you’ve already read it—won’t be any surprises,” she teased.
“Please, Kit, I like to hear it too. Oh, won’t you please?”
She relented and cracked the cover. “ ‘A fortnight later, by excellent good fortune, the doctor gave one of his pleasant dinners . . . ’ ”
III
Two in the afternoon and Kit, once again in disguise, could barely suppress her yawns. The problem with that—apart from the dagger looks Himself was giving her—was that it seemed to let the smell into her mouth, and it was bad enough that her poor nose was already getting so abused. She couldn’t help imagining the odor as a taste, a contagion on the air. The Old Montague Street Mortuary stank, as one might expect, of death, a stench that had embedded itself into the very bricks of the walls, the very stones of the floor. Luckily the temperature was kind—in high summer, Kit imagined there was a good chance she’d keel over if she had to set foot in this place.
On the table in front of Dr. Bagster Phillips lay Chapman, Annie, the woman the doctor kept referring to as “an unfortunate,” as if her death was some kind of inconvenience that might have been overcome in better circumstances; something from which she might recover. Kit kept her expression blank; Makepeace was watching her too closely to let any thoughts slip onto her face. Her camouflage was maintained by diligent discipline in all areas of her person and mentality and conduct.
She stood with her feet apart, balancing squarely and gratefully on boots with a reasonable heel, a flat sole and not a hint of buttons or bows. Dr. Bagster Phillips’ voice was a buzz in her head, comments on the corpse she took in without really listening: lungs ripe with tuberculosis, the tissues of the brain diseased, abrasions on fingers where rings had been removed (and not found), the neck cleanly cut, the head almost severed, the terrible injuries to her belly and the fact that her uterus was gone. A bayonet, the doctor said quite clearly, or something very like one, wielded by someone—a man obviously, no woman would have the strength. Privately, Kit thought that untrue—if Dark Annie had been incapacitated first, there was nothing to stop a woman from hacking at her; well, apart from common decency and squeamishness.
“A Liston knife, perhaps?” asked Abberline and Bagster Phillips blew out an annoyed breath.
“Or a butcher’s knife, or a circumcision knife . . . ” he muttered half under his breath, then tried to rein in his temper.
“Someone with a degree of anatomical knowledge?” asked Makepeace and Kit watched the doctor squirm until he reluctantly nodded and muttered perhaps—he did not, Kit noted, want anyone to think a medical man might have done this. She couldn’t blame him and kept her eyes on the woman as the police surgeon conducted his business. Poor Annie didn’t look any better than she had the last time Kit had seen her, except she’d been cleaned up. Her face was still swollen and bruised, the slashes across her body were dried obscenely brown and black, and the cuts stood out starkly on her dead-white flesh. And the old scars, her life right up until someone had taken a blade to her, were writ large on her skin with contusions and cicatrices, scrapes and scratches. Kit had to blink to stop the heat of tears. No one else in the cold malodorous chamber was showing any sympathy for the dead woman; nor would Kit.
The doctor’s commentary was occasionally interrupted by questions from Abberline and Makepeace. Both men stood near to the table on which the body rested; they leaned forward to look more closely when Bagster Phillips indicated some trauma or cut, or smudge or other trace element of the woman’s murder. On either side of Kit stood Wright and Airedale, the latter looming over both his fellow PCs.
“You lot,” said Makepeace, his voice echoing off the walls, “did you speak to her clients from last night?”
Wright nodded, reeled off the names of the men they’d been able to find; all had alibis, had been happily tucked up in bed with their wives after they’d availed themselves of Annie’s services.
Makepeace continued, “And Chapman’s husband?”
There was a silence, into which Kit, when it became apparent her betters could not fill, dropped, “John Chapman was her h
usband, sir, but they’ve been separated four years. He left London soon after their paths, err, diverged.”
Airedale and Wright stared at Kit, the former with resentment, the latter with surprise.
In for a penny, in for a pound, Kit went on: “I spoke to the tarts last night, sir, those who hung around. Eliza Cooper—with whom Annie had fought over some hawker called Harry, and no I’ve not found him yet—told me. It seems they were friends before they became rivals. And Annie sometimes was seen in the company of one Edward Stanley, a brick layer’s apprentice.”
“Have you spoken to Mr. Stanley?” asked Abberline. Kit shook her head.
“I was going to try to find him today, sir, and Harry the Hawker.”
“I think you’ll be best spent with Mr. Stanley. Your colleagues can locate and question the mysterious Harry and see if they can learn as much as you did so quickly.” Makepeace gave his other officers a look fit to melt glass; Kit knew that she was being rewarded, sent to find someone whose last name and place of work she already knew. The other two would have to start at the bottom—if they were smart they’d try Eliza Cooper first, but who knew where to find her in the daylight hours? Makepeace barked, “Well, what are you all waiting for? Get out there. And Caswell?”
She paused, side-stepping to avoid Airedale’s intentional bump. “Yes, sir?”
“Mary Anne Nichols. Talk to her husband, see if he knew Chapman too.”
“William Nichols. Yes, sir.”
She followed Wright and Airedale into the watery afternoon sunshine. Kit took a deep breath of the air, which, although it wasn’t the sweetest, was still a vast improvement on the atmosphere of the mortuary. The large copper glared at her. “Apple-polishing little bastard. Mincing, apple-polishing little bastard.”
“Leave him alone. Good work’s no reason to hate someone. Not his fault he’s smarter than you are, Airedale.” Wright crossed his arms, rolled his neck and cracked the vertebrae loudly as if limbering up for a fight. Airedale, for all his size, was unlikely to go after Wright, who was stocky and known to be a fine bare-knuckle fighter. Kit wondered what she’d do if ever the older PC’s protective presence was absent and Airedale found he had free rein. Wright jerked his chin at Kit and said, “Off you go, lad, best not to keep Himself waiting when he’s got such high expectations of you.”