Ripped, a Jack the Ripper Time-Travel Thriller

by Shelly Dickson Carr

  In the corner, Toby was talking to one of the butcher lads who was hoisting half a joint of beef over his shoulder. The boy was nimble, eager, and athletic-looking with a purple scar running from his nose to his upper lip.

  “There’s a knack to getting it in the right place on your shoulder, mate,” said the butcher boy, shifting the weight of the carcass. One of the creature’s bloody hooves rested on a knot in the rope wrapped around the boy’s leather smock, which extended from his neck to his ankles.

  “Oy, there! Mind the hook,” another butcher lad shouted as Toby ducked his head below a cow’s tail.

  “Like I told yer,” said the first butcher lad with the purple scar, “we didn’ see nuffin’. Not till Georgie Cross came wailin’ down the street hollering fer us to help him wiff some tart he thought stumbled in the street. Shame ’twas Mary Ann Nichols. Billy bend-you-round-his-finger was fair sweet on poor Mary Ann afore she started in wiff Mad-Willy.”

  Toby raised an eyebrow. “Billy bend-you-round? So, Mary Ann liked ’em rough, did she?”

  “Naw. Billy-bend is soft when it comes to twist ’n’ swirls. Got a gentle spot fer the girls, he does. And Mary Ann did ’im a good turn. She introduced Billy-bend to her friend, Dora Fowler, what sells them birds in Clavell Street Market. You know, the girl wiff them big, beaut’ful mince pies? When Dora bats them mince pies at a bloke, he could fair drop dead on the spot.”

  “I know Dora Fowler.” Toby nodded. “She was at the inquest.”

  Kate inched closer until she was standing just behind Toby’s elbow. The two boys were talking with such thick accents, Katie was having trouble following their conversation.

  Toby and the butcher lad continued for several more minutes in what sounded like pig Latin, then Toby nodded, waved, and wheeled around, shoving Katie hard between her shoulder blades as if to say “get a move-on.”

  Katie stumbled, righted herself, then loped close on Toby’s heels, hastening through red-speckled sawdust toward a set of doors leading past a courtyard, and around the corner into the shop front where a butcher-block counter stretched end to end fitted with scales and carving knives. Large joints of meat, similar to those in the slaughter barn, swung from metal hooks behind the counter, but were ticketed at a price per pound. Bluebottle flies circled the glistening meat.

  A line of women stood waiting at the counter to buy dinner. Toby pointed out the shop owner, Johnny Brisbane, helping a young woman with a flattened nose at the front of the queue. The woman peered at bits and pieces of hanging meat. After she chose one, Johnny Brisbane slung it to the counter to be weighed, then motioned to one of his butcher boys to cut and whittle it as per his instructions.

  Johnny Brisbane turned to the next woman in line. “Here’s a loin of pork for one-and-six, Mrs. Bayswater. And I have a nice leg of lamb for the same.”

  “I knows yer tricks, Johnny. You can do better than that, you being my niece’s cousin’s husband. Come on now, Johnny, don’t be swindling a near relative.”

  “All right, Mrs. Bayswater, you be pullin’ my heartstrings. Fourpence off that loin of pork, fivepence off the leg of lamb. Can’t do better ’n that, now can I? You’d have me in the poorhouse if I sell off all my meat so cheap.”

  A minute later, Toby pulled Johnny Brisbane aside in such a way that didn’t allow Katie to listen in.

  Shortly after, as they were leaving The Cut, Katie glanced over her shoulder. Brisbane’s leather apron was awash with old blood stains as well as bright splatters of new ones. It would be easy, Katie thought, for a butcher lad to cut a girl’s throat, then march innocently away from the crime. No one would question his bloody apron.

  As the horses began their relaxed trot toward Clavell Street, Toby sat forward in the carriage, arms folded, brows drawn together in a frown.

  “You ought not to have been in a slaughterhouse, Katie. It’s not a fit place for a proper young lady. We had a deal,” he said quietly.

  “I know, I know,” Katie hedged. “A jellied eel. But today I’m a half-blind, mute, twelve-year-old boy, remember?” She tugged off the scratchy eye patch and thrust her head out the window to avoid meeting Toby’s stony glare.

  The windows of the carriage had been left open, and the seats were still slick with morning dew, so when Katie slid across the wet leather, she could feel the damp soak into her threadbare breeches. A quick glance down the road revealed a string of crooked houses where street noises and the smell of Dijon mustard filled the air.

  “A right fair jellied eel,” Toby pronounced, and Katie could feel his eyes boring holes into her back.

  “The deal,” Collin said, “was that you promised to do whatever Toby and I told you, and in return we’d allow you to accompany us.”

  With great effort Katie resisted the urge to throw back at him that she’d made the deal with Toby and Toby alone.

  “All right. All right,” Katie muttered, her elbows dangling out the window as she tried to decide how best to deal with Toby’s anger. In Katie’s mind, there were only two strategies. The first was to make nice, smile and act contrite; the second, to go on the offensive. But being combative, or even righteously indignant, she felt, was not the way to handle Toby, so she opted for contrition, but not before Collin interjected with a lofty snort:

  “You’re lucky Toby doesn’t wallop you on the spot!” he harrumphed. Almost as an afterthought, he added, “A Twyford would never wallop a girl, of course. And . . . er . . . Toby’s half Twyford, don’t you know.”

  Katie swung her head back into the carriage and looked into Toby’s dark eyes, but instead of seeing anger, she saw amusement. They stared at each other for a long moment.

  His voice was soft, almost like a caress, when he said, “Collin’s right. I would never hit a twist ’n’ swirl. Though truth be told, Katie, you near make me want to amend my gentlemanly ways.” He startled her by laughing.

  So Toby wasn’t mad at her for tagging along after him into the slaughterhouse? His reaction confused her, and she had to tear her gaze from his. Was he taunting her? Mocking her? She stared hard at his chin so she could concentrate. But that only managed to distract her. His chin had a dimple when he smiled, and he was grinning like a Cheshire cat. The dimple was undeniably sexy.

  Sexy? Ugh! Katie thought. The last thing I need right now is to be attracted to a guy I’ll never see again! But Katie couldn’t ease the image of hooking up with Toby from her mind. He’s technically dead, she reminded herself. Or will be when I travel forward in time again.

  “Okay,” she announced, with a nonchalant shrug. “I made an itty-bitty mistake in judgment. I thought—since you were questioning a witness—I should be there. That was our deal. I’d help with the investigation.”

  Toby smiled.

  Katie felt embarrassed but wasn’t sure why. She was pretty certain Toby would make her life miserable by making her wear another ridiculous, itchy, uncomfortable disguise, but she forced herself to smile back.

  “I’m sorry, Toby,” she said, in a syrupy sweet voice. “But this really has to be a fifty-fifty deal. We need to be partners here. I’m your silent partner today because I’m supposed to be blind and mute, but tomorrow—”

  “No tomorrow, Katie. All bets are off. Tomorrow you stay home and knit by the fireside. Or perhaps you can do needlework like a proper English lass.”

  “No way! You can’t dictate what I can and can’t do. We had a deal. You need me.”

  “Not any more, pet. You gave us all the information. You said yourself you can’t predict the future anymore. Your clairvoyance was a one-shot deal, is how you phrased it.”

  “So you’re telling me I’m history? I’m toast? All because I didn’t listen to your Machiavellian, chauvinistic, insufferable edict to stay put in the carriage? What did you think? I was going to faint dead away when I saw a bloody carcass hanging from the rafters?” She was fuming and wondered what Toby would say if she told him she’d watched dozens of gory autopsies on TV crime shows. “You must
be kidding me!” She slammed her fists on the damp seat.

  “History? Toast?” Collin sputtered in a wheezy voice. “Whatever do you mean, Katie? No matter how you slice a boiled egg, a noun can’t be another dissimilar noun. A horse can’t be a tree. A girl can’t be history. And as for toast, did you mean burnt toast? Or toast with marmalade? Perhaps you meant a crumpet with jam and butter? That would be an apt metaphor for a girl! But in the future, if you’re going to bandy about metaphors, I would thank you to—”

  “Oh, shut up!” Katie shouted her frustration. “What I meant is you can’t just diss me, er, dismiss me. I’m the bones of this operation. I’m the most important spoke in this wheel. You need me if we’re going to stop Jack the Ripper!”

  Collin tugged on his lower lip. “You distinctly told us that your psychic abilities dried up after your initial vision. You swore to me that you could not tell us who this Jack-the-knife is. I grilled you on that point, and you said—”

  “Yes. I mean, no. I don’t know who the murderer is, and never will, unless we catch him. That’s absolutely correct. But that doesn’t mean I won’t have good ideas—better ideas—than you two. Because I . . . er . . . come at it from a different angle. . . a different historical perspective.” You don’t know how different! She took a deep breath to calm down.

  “Because you’re a twist ’n’ swirl or a Yank?” Toby asked in a matter-of-fact voice.

  No, because I watch CSI. I’m from the twenty-first century. I’m more logical. More advanced . . . more evolved!

  “Kind of. Sort of.” Katie groaned, realizing she couldn’t explain her reasoning and was only digging herself deeper into a hole. “Look, you guys. You need me because of where I’m from and who I am and what I know about the world that you don’t. I’m better equipped to . . . er . . . solve crimes.”

  “I see. That’s logical,” Toby said.

  “Precisely. By the very nature of where I come from, I’m more logical . . . less . . . naïve.”

  Collin fell backward with a thud of his shoulder blades against the leather seat and clamped his hands theatrically to his heart.

  “Naïve? God’s eyeballs, Katherine! Call a man a gutter snipe, call him a son of a boar, call him a scoundrel, but never call a British bloke naïve! Might as well call him the village idiot, or a lily-livered coward, or a simpering girl. It’s beneath an Englishman’s dignity!”

  “Oh, puh-leeze!” Katie harrumphed.

  Toby looked amused. “You’ll stay in the carriage, Miss Katherine. And this time you will do as you’re told. I’ll have your promise, pet, or we’ll press home and unload you at Twyford Manor where Lady Beatrix and the Duke can play nursemaid to your tantrums.”

  His face grew serious. “I don’t owe you an explanation, but I’ll give it to you just the same. I didn’t want you in the slaughterhouse for your own safety. I’m responsible for you, and I don’t want you harmed. Johnny Brisbane is a dangerous man, capable of great cruelty. He once snapped his own dog’s neck, then tore half its hide off with his bare hands because the dog lost in a ratter’s fight.

  “Give me your promise, lass. You will stay in the carriage when Collin and I talk to Dora Fowler. She’s got until the first of December to live, if your visions are trustworthy.”

  “That’s exactly why I need to go!” Katie pleaded, hating the high-pitched wail in her voice.

  “That’s exactly why you’re staying here. I don’t doubt you believe you’re well versed in the vast ways of the criminal world,” he chuckled at the absurdity of the statement. “But I will have your promise on this.” He shot her a hard-as-stone look.

  A hollowness filled Katie’s chest. Toby’s piercing gaze didn’t compel her to obey. Quite the opposite. She hated being left out. She was here to catch Jack the Ripper, not obey insufferable orders from an arrogant jerk who had no clue how to track down a serial killer.

  “You’ll get my promise when hell freezes over!” she muttered under her breath.

  As it turned out, hell froze over five minutes later.

  Chapter Thirty-two

  Farthings and Fate say the Bells of Ludgate

  When the four-wheeler came to a full stop half a block from Clavell Street, between Charlotte and Commercial Road, the horses shifted, prancing in place, making the carriage sway.

  “Let me be blunt as a dull knife, Katie. You will not follow us. Give me your word on this, lass.” Toby smiled. Or we’ll leave you home next time. And don’t give me that pouting face. This is a flowery dell of your own making.”

  “Flowery dell?” Collin raised an eyebrow.

  “Prison cell.”

  “Good one, old chap!” Collin clapped enthusiastically. “Mark my words, Katie. Disobey our orders and you’ll be doing needlework in a rose arbor, or some such thing.”

  “Mustn’t paper bag her, Collin,” Toby chuckled, then swiveled to Katie. “What’s it to be, lass?”

  Katie folded her arms across her chest. She had a childish urge to stick her tongue out at both of them, but glared hard at Toby instead, hoping to convey the frosty promise that she wasn’t about to back down. Her father’s words flashed in her mind. “When backed into a corner, Kit-Kat, never concede, only negotiate.” Her father had been a litigator before he switched careers to become a classics professor. And he always called her Kit-Kat.

  “Okay. Here’s the deal.” Katie dragged her eyes from Toby’s and stared out the window at a toothless man standing on the corner selling canaries from a cage attached to a shepherd’s staff. The smell of cider vinegar and horse sweat reached her nostrils and she scrunched up her nose.

  “I’ll promise,” she snapped, “under one condition. When you return, you swear to tell me everything. Every last detail. Whatever Dora tells you, whatever Dora says, whatever Dora does, I want to hear it. A full recounting. Everything. Every last—”

  “Even if she bats them beautiful mince pies at me?” Toby teased, sunlight slanting across his face highlighting the scar on his cheek.

  Katie wrenched her gaze from his scar and glowered. “Especially if she bats her eyes at you.” Why had she said that? Katie wondered. “Er . . . not that I care,” she added. “But it might be part of her M.O.”

  When both boys looked puzzled, Katie quickly explained, “Modus operandi. That’s Latin for mode of operation—”

  “Don’t you mean modi operandi?” Toby corrected. “Modes of operation? Dora Fowler has more than one method of maneuvering. She’s got a temptress bag full of tricks at her disposal.”

  “Whatever.” Katie rolled her eyes. “Just report back everything.”

  Chapter Thirty-three

  Gargoyles and Canaries say the Bells of St. Mary’s

  Relieved to have Katie well away from him, Toby accelerated his stride down Clavell Street, Collin barreling along close behind.

  With the church spire of St. Mary’s to the west and blue sky above, London Hospital rose up in the distance like a grim mausoleum, and Toby could well imagine that on its rooftop consumptive patients were stretched out on cots taking the sun cure, just as his mother had.

  The only redeeming feature of the hospital, Toby knew, was its roof on sun-drenched mornings. Otherwise, the pain and poverty inside those stone walls was intensified by fog and rain and bitter cold, with nary a bottle of medicine in sight. It was a beggar’s hospital, dismal as a prison, where the poor were shuffled off to die.

  Toby stared at the hospital’s jagged façade, remembering a freak show performer who was a patient there. Joseph Merrick, nicknamed the Elephant Man, had confided in Toby that his greatest desire was to be taken to a sanatorium for the blind so that he might meet a woman who wouldn’t be repulsed by his deformities. Someone who would love him for his watch and chain. His brain.

  But was such a thing possible? Toby wondered as he and Collin continued down the street past a shriveled old man with puckered skin begging at the crosswalk. Was it possible to find a girl—a wife—who cared only for your mind, not for
the accident of your birth or the deformities on your face?

  Toby wasn’t vain. He cared little for his appearance, hardly giving it a thought. Yet he wondered whether Katie felt repulsed when she looked at him so challengingly, so openly, at the sight of the scar on his cheek, or his pugilist nose. Did she mind that the Duke had called him the son of a whore? Toby pushed such thoughts away. What cared he for Katie’s opinion? She was the Duke’s goddaughter, not some Cockney lass he had any right to lust after. Toby would never be a gentleman, never be accepted into the society that was her birthright.

  He cursed himself for his lack of discipline. He was acting like a besotted schoolboy who alternately wanted to kiss the twist ’n’ swirl and strangle her.

  At the slaughterhouse, he had wanted the latter. He had seethed with a blind fury when he realized Katie had followed him into the maggot-infested barn. It had taken all his self-restraint not to drag her out kicking and screaming, but that would only have drawn attention to the situation. And one slip of that accursed tongue of hers, one argument from those bee-swollen ruby lips, would have exposed Katie for the girl that she was—a porkpie thrummer with nary a blemish to her skin, nor crooked tooth in her smile.

  Damn her eyes! She was the devil’s own daughter disguised as an angel sent to torment his every waking moment.

  But she had courage, Toby had to admit. Katie wasn’t some simpering highborn aristocrat, ready to swoon at sights that might fell a grown man. Yet she was bloody exasperating! Determined, too, and hopelessly enthusiastic about tracking down a crazed killer.

  Toby fervently wished that Katie were mad. Marbles and conkers. Bonkers as a lunatic at full moon. But if her premonitions were right, if other girls were destined to be butchered by a man named Jack, Toby had to do everything in his power to stop it. Even if that meant spending more time with the most maddening ham shank he’d ever met.

  A thought occurred to him. He could easily determine if Katie was daft as a barn owl. Why hadn’t he thought of it before? He’d take her to Traitors’ Gate.