by Kim Wright
“Not necessarily,” Cecil said. “We’ll go home tomorrow and I’ll call on Edmund Solmes. He must know a dozen barristers who could dance circles around Galloway.”
“I don’t know if you can afford to ask Solmes for any more favors,” William mumbled, ignoring Cecil’s warning glance as he clumsily reached for the wine bottle. “Especially now that your collateral is no longer in your possession.”
“What?” Gwynette asked, looking from one son to the other.
“Cecil has run up gambling debts.“
“He exaggerates, Mother. Edmund and I are friends. He doesn’t intend to press me.”
“What did you mean by collateral?”
“Leanna,” William said brusquely. “Solmes has his eye on her and Cecil agreed to press for the match. He came to me and said when I was officially head of the family - “
Gwynette stood, eyes blazing, and focused the full force of her fury on Cecil, who although he remained casually sprawled, visibly tensed under her scrutiny. “Let me see if I understand,” Gwynette said. “You intended to use your sister’s virginity to pay off your debts from the horses?”
“A callous turn of phrase, Mother. It isn’t as if Edmund wasn’t prepared to marry her.“
“Marry her? He’s four times her age! He would be too old for me!”
“Granted, Mother, but Leanna doesn’t have your fire -“
“Spare me your flattery. You’ve really gone too far this time, Cecil. Our family fortunes may have fallen, but I was not aware we were to the point you found it necessary to sell your sister. Especially not to that odious old man.”
“That odious old wealthy man, Mama,” added William, enjoying the rare sight of Cecil squirming.
“Wealthy indeed,” said Gwynette. “And so doddering he would probably drool on her. Just how severe are these debts?”
Cecil hesitated. “No more than three hundred pounds.”
Gwynette sighed. “If you’ll admit to three hundred, it’s more than likely twice that. You’re just like your father, Cecil, and it pains me to admit the fact.”
“Don’t start on that again, Mother,” William said. “I don’t see why Cecil and I should suffer because of Father’s sins and be cut out of what is rightfully ours. No one leaves that kind of money to a woman! No one!”
“Agreed,” Cecil said, relieved for the chance to change the subject. “Every wolf and fortune hunter in the countryside will be after her now.”
“I scarcely see how she could do any worse than what the two of you had planned for her,” Gwynette said. “And Cecil, for you to call anyone else a fortune hunter is quite unendurable.”
“They’re in there plotting, you know,” William said darkly. “Even as we speak, Tom and that corpse of a barrister are strategizing their next move.”
“Oh, I have no doubt what they’ll do,” Gwynette said. “There’s really only one logical option. They’ll hide her with your Aunt Geraldine in Mayfair.”
Her sons turned to her with puzzled faces.
“I thought I saw her at the funeral in a rather ridiculous disguise,” Gwynette said. “Now I suppose I understand why.”
“Given her eccentric nature I scarcely see how you could distinguish a disguise from her everyday clothing,” Cecil said. “Remember, William, she’s a huge ogre of a woman, spouting feathers on her head and indigestible political beliefs…”
“Which is precisely what happens when a woman doesn’t marry,” William said.
“Yes, without question, that’s their plan,” Gwynette went on, her brow creased in thought. “Leanna will be spirited away to London.”
Cecil rubbed his temples vigorously, but the headache from his hastily gulped brandy refused to be erased. “Then we must stop her.”
“I’m not sure we can,” Gwynette said. “And besides, it might be best for everyone if some time passes before Leanna takes up residence in Rosemoral.”
“As far as I’m concerned she can stay in London forever,” William muttered. “The longer I can go without facing the boys at the pub, the better.”
“Why you’re right, both of you,” Cecil said with some surprise, for he considered it his duty within the family to think of things first. “No one outside our small circle knows of this, do they? The assumption will naturally be that William is the heir and as long as our little sister is tucked away in Mayfair, we have a pocket of time, enough for me to…” Cecil sprang unsteadily to his feet, his spirits quite restored. “Yes, bravo to you both, that’s quite the plan. We will proceed to the Wentworth ball next week and no one will be rude enough to ask. They will see us there, laughing and gay, as if it has all gone precisely as expected.”
“When I first met Geraldine I was just a bride,” Gwynette murmured, gazing toward the open window and the blazing colors of Leonard’s autumnal garden. “And she seemed to me almost as if she’d come from a different species. I’d never known a woman who was free to marry as she pleased, and if she chose not to marry at all, I suppose there are worse fates. I can still recall the day my father summoned me to the library and told me I that I was going to be escorted to the dance that evening by a boy named Dale Bainbridge…”
“Perhaps I should even get something new for the ball, something brightly colored,” Cecil mused. “Gloves, do you think? Perhaps an ascot?”
William looked at Gwynette with a play of emotions on his face, something between a child’s indignation and a man’s sadness. “You surprise me, Mother. You’ve always claimed you and Father were a love match.”
“Oh we were, in a way, at least in the sense he was the youngest and most attractive of the options my father offered. But I was sixteen and hardly knew what I was doing. Then, years later, after you children were born, I saw I should have chosen a different sort of man. It’s the way Hannah will feel if you persuade her to marry you, Cecil. There will come the day, a normal seeming sort of day, and she will look across the breakfast table…”
“I won’t hear this,” Cecil said. “It’s almost as if you’re suggesting that a child like Leanna would know better what she needs than her own brothers. Solmes may be older than her but he is settled, prosperous…”
“Forget it, Cecil,” William said, pushing himself from the settee and walking toward the open window. “She isn’t ours anymore.”
“No, she isn’t, is she,” Gwynette said, her voice almost as low as a whisper. “Your grandfather hasn’t just handed her an estate, he’s cut her quite loose from the earth. I feel she’s up somewhere floating high above us, not bound by the same rules anymore. Someday you’ll both understand that this was the true purpose of Leonard’s will. Not to punish the two of you, but to allow Leanna to be a different sort of woman.”
“Like Aunt Geraldine?” William said. “If so, he’s cut her loose but I’m not sure it was a kindness.”
“Perhaps she was his last experiment,” Gwynette said tiredly. “The last species he attempted to evolve. The independent woman. But you’re right, I’m not sure it was a kindness.”
CHAPTER FOUR
5:35 PM
“It’s a bit early in the investigation for us to be literally running down blind alleys, wouldn’t you say?”
Trevor turned to see Rayley Abrams standing behind him. “This is where they found Martha Tabram in the early morning of August 7,” he said.
“I know where we are, Welles. But Tabram isn’t part of our inquiry.”
“She should be. Throat sliced eat to ear and then stabbed thirty-nine times, for God’s sake, not three weeks before the Nichols murder. Are you so sure she shouldn’t be under consideration?”
Abrams shook his head. “Not sure at all, but you heard Eatwell. We can’t investigate every woman who comes to a bad end in Whitechapel. And perhaps he’s right. Prostitution is not just the world’s oldest profession, but also the most dangerous. They’re statistically more likely to be killed in the line of duty than we are.”
Trevor shot him a skeptical look.
“It’s just as the doctor said. The how will tell us more than the why.”
“Precisely,” Abrams said, removing his glasses and blowing on the lenses.
Trevor looked down at the overgrown grass and bits of broken windowpane where Martha Tabram had drawn her last breaths and a slow shudder came over him. “Our normal means of deduction are quite useless here. Our killer didn’t necessarily have any prior relationship to our victim.”
“Quite right again,” Abrams said. “Which is why the hour I spent tracing the Sussex postmark turned out to be a blind alley too. Chapman was taking some sort of pills and the box that held them broke. So she tore a piece off an envelope she found in the rubbish at her boarding house and folded the pills into it. Wasn’t even her letter. It makes you long for the good old days, doesn’t it? When criminals were decent enough to only murder people they knew?”
The men turned, as if by silent agreement, and began walking back toward the street. Trevor had spent his own afternoon combing the East End, moving back and forth between the slaughterhouses and the bars. He had seen a dozen aprons of the kind Phillips had displayed in the conference room and had observed several people holding a pencil, cigarette, or whiskey bottle in their left hands. He had taken note of everyone in the area, even women, and wouldn’t Eatwell have a laugh at that? But a midwife or nurse might have enough medical knowledge to effectively wield a scalpel, and Trevor would not allow himself to leave any stone unturned.
“It’s a daunting task, is it not?” Abrams said, as if reading his mind. “Within the confines of Whitechapel there are 233 lodging houses with over 8000 occupants, an estimated 1,200 of them making their living as prostitutes.”
“Over a thousand women?” Trevor said with surprise. He wouldn’t have guessed as third as many. “Abrams, you’re a marvel. Wherever do you get all your statistics?”
“Home Secretary report, Welles. Released last week.”
Trevor stopped on the sidewalk, so abruptly that the man behind him bumped into him with a low curse, and dug his journal from his pocket. “233 lodging houses?”
“Sixty-two of them established brothels. I say, Welles, you’re a marvel in your own right. You don’t go anywhere without that little notebook of yours, do you?”
“Where do you keep your reports?”
Abrams tapped his temple lightly.
“Bully,” Trevor said stiffly. “But I want to make sure I don’t forget anything and a case like this has so many – where are we going, by the way?”
“I’m visiting the mortuary to have a look at Annie Chapman,” Abrams said. “And since you’re walking with me, it would appear that you’re headed there too. She’s set to be buried tomorrow morning, and seeing them off is a bit of a ritual with me, I suppose. There’s nothing to be done with it, of course, but I can’t seem to resist paying my final call.”
“You’ve never worked with a partner, have you, Abrams?”
“Never saw the need. He travels fastest who travels alone, as they say. And you?”
“Never saw the need either.”
“I suppose your little notebook is your partner.”
“Scoff if you will, but if there are over a thousand prostitutes in Whitechapel, each with a hefty number of clients, how many interviews do you think we’ll have to conduct before this matter is brought to an end? Look at the sheer amount of people on this street, the number of possible victims, the number of possible suspects. How are we to determine where a random killer will turn his sights next?”
“I don’t know,” Abrams said, his shoulders drooping a little. “I suppose if a man’s a hunter, any bird in the sky will do. Ah, here we are.”
Trevor and Abrams entered a plain gray stone building beside the graveyard and followed the dull sound of hammering to the back of the hall. “What can I do for you?” asked a voice slightly muffled by the pounding.
“Abrams and Welles of Scotland Yard,” said Abrams. “Here to see the remains of Anne Chapman.”
“Remains is right, Detective” said the man, stepping out from behind his work bench and gesturing with his hammer toward a doorway. “Poor Dark Annie was butchered sure enough. She’s in the pine box in the back.”
Trevor walked into the second room where a man he supposed to be one of the coroner’s assistants was bent over a coffin. Why they had done their examinations here, in this ramshackle mortuary, and not at Scotland Yard was a mystery to Trevor and he wondered if the case was truly receiving the attention it deserved. The assistant seemed to recognize Abrams and Welles as detectives, or perhaps he had overheard the conversation in the hall, for he stepped back from the body smartly, in an almost military manner.
Trevor walked over to the humble coffin and paused for a moment. He gave a nod of credit to the assistant, who was now setting up a camera on a tripod, for the expression on the ashen face was peaceful and Annie Chapman was neatly dressed, her body giving little evidence of the violations of two nights before. Her eyes were shut and her arms had been neatly crossed over her chest.
“Where would you drain blood from a body?” he asked the assistant.
The young man turned clumsily from the camera, startled at having been addressed. “In the mortuary at Scotland Yard, Sir.”
“No. No, I mean what parts of the body?”
“Throat, wrists, behind the ear.“
“Then I regret I must spoil your admirable work,” Trevor said, reaching into the coffin and seizing one of the woman’s waxy white hands. He turned it over and there, just as he predicted, was a tiny aperture in her wrist.
“See this, Abrams, unmistakably a hypodermic needle,” he said, forcing himself to shrug, although he was so excited it took all of his control not to tremble. “Now we just have to find the bastard who drained her blood.”
“It was me, Sirs,” said the mortuary assistant.
Trevor looked up.
“When we embalmed her, Sirs.”
Abrams gave a soft laugh and Trevor felt himself flush.
“And did you happen to notice,” he said, in what he hoped was a cool and level voice, “if there were any such apertures when you began?”
“Doctor Phillips reported she was very nearly drained when they found her,” Abrams said, by way of explanation, but the young man still seemed confused.
“When doing your embalmations, your… your preparations for the coffin, you didn’t stop to wonder at the absence of blood?” Trevor asked, his voice revealing more exasperation than he intended.
“The incision in her throat, Sir, six to eight inches long and three deep –“
“Quite,” said Abrams, shooting Trevor a warning look. A case could be made that the woman’s near-decapitation, followed by a bumpy cross-town transit in a cart, was a reasonable enough explanation for the fact she’d arrived to the mortuary almost bloodless. Besides, they wouldn’t aid the investigation or win any friends by snapping at the assistants of powerful men.
Trevor sighed, looked down at the pale hand in his own. Phillips had scolded Eatwell for not better training the bobbies and yet it appeared he also chose his own assistants more on the basis of their silent efficiency than for their curious minds. But he supposed it wasn’t this boy’s task to look for needle marks on a corpse, any more than the bobbies could be blamed for the manner in which they swarmed the crime scenes. The men on top liked their underlings physically strong and mentally deferential, quick to do whatever task they’re ordered but unlikely to ask troubling questions along the way. No one knew that better than him.
“But see here,” Trevor said, stil
l staring down at the woman’s hand. “There is something. Under the fingernail.”
Abrams handed Trevor a pencil and all three men held their breath as he carefully used its tip to remove a raveled red fiber. Trevor held the thin piece up to the light to examine it better and slowly, carefully untangled a red thread about an inch long.
“From the clothes of the killer, perhaps,” Trevor said. “There may have been a struggle and she grabbed at him. Tore at a shirt or scarf.” He removed the journal once again from his breast pocket and carefully laid the red thread between two pages, then reached back over Annie to get a better look at her other hand.
“I assure you, Detective, you will not find a pulse,” came a familiar voice from the doorway.
“Doctor Phillips,” Abrams said, extending a hand. “We got here just in time to see you photograph the retinas.” The two men chuckled and, noting Trevor’s uncertain expression, Abrams explained. “This morning The Star ran an article suggesting the police photograph the dead women’s eyes. Apparently there’s a theory floating around that the last image one sees before death is forever seared into the retina.”
“Would that it were that easy,” said the doctor. He motioned to his assistant, who was waiting with the camera. “Go ahead, Severin, take your picture. Eyes closed, of course, the detective was just having his little joke. What were you doing with her hands, Welles?”
“In the morning meeting you said the victims may have been strangled or smothered first, which allowed for so little blood.”
Phillips nodded.
“If I was being choked, I would at least try to lash back at the assailant. I would grab or scratch at anything I could reach, just out of desperation. A simple reflex, wouldn’t you say?”
“And your point?”
“Just this. Did you examine the hands of both victims? Did you noticed if these women had anything under their nails indicating they fought back? Was there blood, or hair, or skin found? Could they have scratched or wounded the attacker? Anything?”
The pop of the camera made them all jump and Phillips blinked, perhaps in anger or perhaps just because of the flash. “Young man, are you seriously questioning my ability to do an autopsy?”