by Kim Wright
Trevor and Davy were standing off to the side.
“Not the man we expected him to be, is he Sir?” Davy said.
“No,” Trevor answered shortly. He was beginning to feel the cold.
“Not the man at all,” Davy confirmed, and Trevor shook his head. They had caught a brute to be sure, but he knew in his heart the clumsy beast inside the wagon wasn’t the Ripper. He had known it while he was falling through the air, heading towards the knife-cold water of the Thames, had known with a kind of finality that had felt like his heart being cut from his chest.
He turned. People were trying to talk to him. More than one of the men offered to buy him a beer. Reporters were arriving, flashing their cameras and shouting questions. He couldn’t see, couldn’t think. Would they not all face away and leave him alone? But he did note that the police had roped off the area, that they were holding the press back while they combed the pier for fibers and hairs, chips of mortar, the remnants of the struggle. His legacy to the Yard. That’s something, he thought. Maybe it’s enough.
“An ending, but not a conclusion,” he said aloud.
“Beg your pardon, Sir?”
“Nothing. Get me my pipe.”
Davy nodded and went back to where Trevor’s coat lay. The detective must’ve known they would end up in the water, Davy thought, else why would he have pulled off his coat while he was running? He extracted Trevor’s battered notebook from a pocket and gazed at it for a moment, sadly. Then he went to the next pocket and found the pipe and tobacco. Returning to the shadows, he handed both to his boss, then waited to give him his coat. But Welles was already walking back toward the pier.
Poor Leanna and Emma, he thought, they had been on foot for an hour but had managed to get, in all their circling, no more than ten blocks from where they had started. “We’ve never gone as far as we think,” Trevor informed a gull, who gazed at him meditatively, then took flight. Trevor sat down on the pilings and lit his pipe, surprised that his hands did not shake in the effort. Inhaling deeply, he looked out at the water, which, deceptive in the moonlight, was almost lovely. He exhaled, and the puff of smoke escaped into the fog.
CHAPTER FORTY-SEVEN
9: 25 PM
Tom’s frantic pounding brought Gage to the door with Geraldine right behind him. They watched in shock as the girls they assumed were dining out were carried in by John one at a time. Geraldine helped Emma get changed into dry bedclothes while John, with the unsteady assistance of Gage, rinsed the blood from Leanna’s scalp and stitched up her cut. The bruising around her neck would take longer to heal. Then he went downstairs to see to Tom, whom he suspected was the most badly injured of all.
The boy had collapsed on the couch. It was almost impossible for him to believe that this just this morning he had awakened naked on the floor with a hangover and that so many strange things could have happened in the course of a single day. He had broken into a house, stolen a knife, sprained his ankle, walked through London in a bloody shirt, gone on a bender, ridden in an official Scotland Yard carriage, dislocated his shoulder, witnessed his first birth, and nearly lost his sister to Jack the Ripper. Now that he was safely back within the confines of his aunt’s home the adrenaline had abruptly left his body and he could not seem to stop trembling. John, who was nearly as exhausted as Tom, wrapped his ankle and popped the boy’s shoulder back into its socket. The pain was great enough to make him cry out and afterwards the two men sat on the couch, side by side, staring into the fire.
“Did you talk to them?” Tom asked.
“Offered them something to help them sleep,” John said. “But they both said no.”
He does like it when women go to sleep, Tom thought. He is indeed quick to offer the needle. But he had seen John’s face as he eased the infant from her mother’s body, the deep and unfeigned relief when he heard her first cry, and that had told Tom everything he needed to know about John’s character. When the women had babbled in the carriage, all that they could speak off was Trevor. How he had appeared like some sort of vengeful god, Leanna said, swooping down unexpectedly through the air, but Emma thought his arrival was more like a warrior on horseback or perhaps, no, perhaps more like a locomotive, swift and powerful. He had been heroic, certainly, on that they could agree. Leanna kept repeating “He saved our lives” in a mechanical fashion while Emma had been so distracted that she’d lain beneath John’s cloak and allowed him to cut her wet clothes completely off her body.
John had worked steadily, moving back and forth between the two girls, offering what medical care he could in the darkness of the coach, and he had not spoken during the entire ride. Tom considered the man’s profile for a moment and then looked back into the fire. It was too early to predict how things would play out.
Geraldine came down the steps reporting that both the girls were asleep. She dropped into the chair opposite the couch and said “John, I don’t know what we’d do without you.”
John smiled wanly. “I hope you never have to find out.”
“Please stay the night.” Geraldine said. “I wish I could offer you the guest room, but - I forgot to tell you Tom, in the thrash of getting the girls upstairs, but your brother is here. He just showed up unexpectedly saying he had news.”
Tom’s heart sank. “Why did you let him in?”
Geraldine looked surprised. “He’s my nephew, of course.”
“But Cecil won’t rest until he –“
“No, not Cecil. Of course not. Cecil’s dreadful. It’s William.”
A little better, but still confusing. “What the devil is William doing in London?”
Geraldine shrugged. “He said he was exhausted and would be turning in early. Should I wake him?”
“Yes,” Tom said. “And bring Gage in too. I only want to tell this story once.”
10:10 PM
They all poured brandies and settled in. When Tom described the contents of the letter that had been sent to Emma, Geraldine closed her eyes and wept softly. William had sat through the tale with both feet on the floor and both hands at his side, Gage paced, and when Tom got to the part about stealing the bloody shirt from John’s hassock they all actually laughed a little.
“At the time I didn’t know how much blood there was in childbirth,” Tom said. “Now I do.”
But as he had tried to explain how they’d all wound up at the waterfront, the story grew so complicated that Tom hobbled over to fetch the pieces of the chest set so that he might demonstrate the sequence on the tabletop. He used the queens for Emma and Leanna, the bishop for John, the knight for Trevor, a rook for Davy and a pawn for himself. He would never be able to explain why the Ripper was represented by the king, but they all bent forward in concentration as he went through his tableau. When he finished with the scene of the bobbies fishing the big brute out of the water, he flicked the king to its side and said “Checkmate.”
Geraldine leaned back in her chair, shaking her head. “When I picture those poor girls walking the streets of Whitechapel….”
Tom looked at his older brother. “You must think you’ve come into absolute insanity. Aunt Geraldine said you had news?”
“Oh that,” said William. “It hardly matches your story for drama, in fact it doesn’t seem worth mentioning in the light of all this.” He looked at John. “My sister will fully recover, won’t she?”
“Up and about in a day or two,” John said.
Something in him has shifted, Tom thought. The anger has gone. He hasn’t come to London to rant and rave, to fight the will, or to try and drag Leanna back to Rosemoral. He’s thinking of something other than himself now.
“Tell us, William, really,” Tom said. “Why are you here?”
William shifted his large frame uncomfortably in the chair. “Well, it’s the damnest thing,” he said. “But Cecil has disappeared.”
CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT
November 13
7: 20 AM
The man asks the woman to marry him.
So Lucy says yes.
Severin had endured a very bad night. He sat until daybreak on top of a rum keg and for the first time in recent memory, he was frightened. The man from the bar, the tall dandy who threw around his money and rolled his pale eyes in distain, had stood no more than two feet away, staring at the knife in Severin’s hand. Drunk as he was, he had understood at once what he was seeing.
The man had glanced at the form of Maudy, had swayed on his feet a bit, and had then looked back at Severin. It was a strange moment, a sense of seeing oneself in a carnival mirror. Each had sensed from the start how much they were alike. Of course, Severin would never let himself go to drink in such appalling fashion and he didn’t know what manner of unsavory business this dandy was up to, but he knew they shared a certain way of looking on the world.
He genuinely regretted that he would have to kill him. Severin had never killed a man.
But when the air had suddenly split with sound and an avalanche of bobbies had come rolling toward the waterfront, the dandy had bolted. He ran into the street and when Severin tried to follow, he found himself caught in a swarm of rushing men. They rumbled past him, nearly knocking him off his feet, and the shrillness of their whistles was unendurable, like a woman’s scream. The one thing Severin despised above all else was the sound of a woman screaming.
He let himself be carried down to the docks with the wave of the crowd and he stood back while they dragged Micha from the water. Tied his hands and threw him into the back of a wagon, and when the thud of Micha’s great weight hit the floorboards, Severin had felt it deep in his own gut. Because last night was the very first time it occurred to him that someday he too would be caught. There were so many coppers when you saw them like that all together, swarming around with their clubs and lanterns, so many that you knew no man could escape forever, no matter how clever he might be.
Severin had stepped back from the crowd and focused on the figure in the middle of it all, Trevor Welles.
He had, of course, watched Welles for weeks. Setting up his ridiculous laboratory at the Yard, reading his reports from France, giving lectures to anyone who would listen, and imagining himself the great detective. The fat fool had even come into the Pony Pub to interview Lucy and had somehow failed to notice Severin sitting at the end of bar. So much for his self-proclaimed powers of observation. Severin had eavesdropped on Trevor throughout that whole night, as sickened by the man’s hypocrisy as by his arrogance. As it turns out, the hero of Scotland Yard likes his young whores just as much as the next man.
It had been such a game to mislead them. Sometimes when he was alone in the mortuary, Severin had interfered with Trevor’s experiments, poking a fork into one of the wounds on Mary Kelly’s leg, replacing the human hairs in his notebook with a few he’d plucked from a passing Whitechapel dog. Pulling an enormous skirt off a clothesline to burn in Mary Kelly’s fireplace, sending them kidneys plucked from bodies in the next room, scribbling messages about Jewes just to fuck with that prissy Raylay Abrams. Stirring a bit of arsenic into Phillips’ tea - not enough to kill him, just enough to hasten the shakes. Watching them all search so earnestly for a scalpel that was – here’s the great joke – all the while within an arm’s reach. He had even left a button from a bobby’s coat on the roof of the Kelly house but they hadn’t found it, had they? How that would have set them spinning.
He had listened to every meeting, every conference, and at times it had taken the sum total of his substantial self-control to keep from laughing in their faces.
Yes, it had been easy to disregard and mock Welles for weeks but something in his manner last night had pulled Severin up short. Welles knew Micha was not the Ripper. He knew the minute they pulled him from the water and plopped him on the dock that Scotland Yard had caught a whale, but not a shark. Severin had watched as the detective’s shoulders sank with disappointment. Just a little, but enough that Severin had understood that Welles was not deceived.
This was going to be a problem.
The police had gotten very close last night. They had touched him, had jostled him, had shoved him and shouted “Step aside, damn you.” Much worse, there was a man out there somewhere who knew his name and had seen his face. Severin had walked back and forth among the crowd at the waterfront and when he had not found the man, he had stationed himself on his rum keg and watched each figure that passed. But the drunk dandy with the pale blue eyes had eluded his grasp.
And when the sun finally rose, Severin had known it was over.
So he had walked back to the rooming house where Lucy slept, had crawled through her window as he had so many times before, slipped into her narrow bed beside her. She had awakened with a start, almost crying out in her surprise, but he cupped his hand around her mouth.
Beneath his palm he can feel her muffled cry turn into a smile. She loves him. God knows why, but she does, and at long last her devotion might prove useful.
“You were right all along,” he tells her. “There was dreadful business in the streets last night and this is no city for decent people like us.”
Under his palm, she nods.
“I could learn to like the country life,” he says, removing his hand. “So yes, we’ll get married and we will go to your sister in Jersey.”
She laughs softly. “You don’t listen,” she says. “Men never do. My sister isn’t in Jersey, she’s in New Jersey.”
He frowns.
“New Jersey,” she repeats. “In America. You’ll still go, won’t you? You’ll take me that far away?”
“Oh yes indeed,” he says quietly, slipping his hand beneath her flimsy bedgown. “America is even better.”
7:34 AM
The household in Mayfair had managed to sleep a few hours but with the rising of the sun most of them were up too. Trays had been prepared for the girls and William had insisted on carrying up Leanna’s. What passed between the two siblings, he did not divulge, but Tom thought William seemed lighter as he came downstairs, relieved and full of appetite. Despite his own aches and pains Tom was ravenous too and the brothers sat together at the breakfast table with Geraldine. William did not seem surprised when Gage emerged from the kitchen with his own plate. Instead he slid his chair a little to make more room for the man, and began to tell them all his plans for getting a degree in estate management.
“Will you release the funds for the tuition?” William asked Tom, his mouth crammed full of toast and jam.
“With great pleasure,” Tom said. “Leanna will be thrilled when you tell her.”
William smiled shyly. “She was. She said it would be a great load off her mind and I have the impression she doesn’t see herself returning to Rosemoral to live. Is something keeping her in London?”
As if on cue, there was a rap at the back door and John Harrowman entered.
“Take a plate, John,” Geraldine directed. If the household had been casual before, Tom reflected, this Ripper business had turned them into absolute bohemians.
“No time,” John said briskly. “I wanted to check on the girls and then I need to see Mrs. Byrd, the woman Tom helped me deliver last night.”
“Dear Lord,” said Geraldine. “Do doctors ever sleep?”
John grinned, grabbed a roll from a serving plate, and kissed her on the cheek. “Not often,” he said, and then turned toward the stairs.
“He’s a saint,” Geraldine said.
“And I think he’s going to be our brother-in-law,” Tom said to William, who gazed thoughtfully toward the staircase. “Now, what’s this business about Cecil?”
“Do Gage and
I need to give you privacy?” Geraldine asked, but William shook his head and took a gulp of tea.
“The time for pretending is long past us,” he said and then proceeded to tell them of Cecil’s last disastrous night at the tracks, the missing pounds from his pocket, the notable absence of Gwynette’s opal and diamond brooch.
Tom groaned. “Where do you think he’s headed?”
William turned up his broad palms. “I could only think he came here, to beg funds from Leanna, but now I’m at a loss.”
Another rap at the back door, this time Trevor Welles. He looked as if he had slept about the same amount as John, but he had at least changed out of his wet clothes.
“Trevor,” Geraldine said. “Get a plate.”
“No time,” Trevor said briskly. “I just came by to check on Leanna and Emma.”
“John’s up with them now,” Tom said. “This is our eldest brother, William.”
Trevor extended a hand, surprise on his face. “I’m not sure I knew there were two older brothers.”
“Congratulations, darling,” Geraldine said. “It came at a high price, but we have our Ripper at last.”
“Afraid not,” Trevor said, sitting down with a sigh. “Maybe I will take a few sausages,” he said, as William slid the platter toward him. “What we have is one Micha Banasik, a hired killer who, thank God, is not very skilled at his craft.”
“Hired?” Geraldine said with a gasp. “So this wasn’t a random crime? Are you saying he was after Emma?”
“Leanna was his target. Just as you said last night, Tom, someone who knew she had money.” Trevor looked pointedly at Tom and then William, but did not elaborate, and they both seemed to understand there was something he wished to discuss with them later, truly in private. “So no, Geraldine, we don’t have our Ripper. Not yet. But I think we came very close.”