Ripped, a Jack the Ripper Time-Travel Thriller

by Shelly Dickson Carr

  Yet Toby never mollycoddled Collin. That would have been demeaning. He just made sure the Duke’s grandson stayed out of trouble. That was the agreement Toby had with the Duke.

  “Keep the blister out of mischief until he’s married and produces an heir. That’s an order, young Tobias,” the Duke had commanded when Toby was twelve. “After which, the devil take the red-headed imp, for all I care.” Yet Toby suspected the Duke was genuinely fond of his grandson, as fond as he was grateful to Toby, especially when Collin got into one of his little “scrapes,” as the Duke called them.

  Last year Collin tried to trounce a schoolmate for making fun of his purple trousers, claiming Collin must have raided his sister’s closet. Then the idiot made a bawdy comment about Lady Beatrix’s underdrawers. Collin went at him like a wildcat. Toby intervened, but the boy had it coming. He was a sniggering bully. When the Duke got wind of the story, he bought Collin the pearl-handled pocketknife and told him next time he must use it to defend the Twyford honor.

  Next time came soon enough when Collin accused a viscount’s son of cheating at cards. The other promptly gave Collin a good thunk on the noggin. Enraged, Collin brandished his pocketknife in the air like a sword-stick, flourishing thrusts and parries with cries of “En garde!” and “Take that, you louse!” When the card-cheat drew out a small pistol, Toby stepped in, and the future viscount came within an inch of his life. Everyone in the gaming room had cheered.

  •

  Annie Chapman, called “Dark Annie,” lived in a dimly lit lane, which curved around to the right toward Christ Church. It was due north of the Mark Street Underground Railway, situated in a narrow row of houses with sagging bay windows and chipped stone steps.

  Standing in Annie Chapman’s front parlor, with its floral wallpaper and black lacquer table, Toby noticed that the room had been swept and scrubbed. Only a few candles burned in the pewter chandelier, and there were water stains on the ceiling above the sagging windows, but otherwise the room had an air of respectability. There was even a bell-pull next to the fireplace.

  Even so, Collin looked ill at ease standing in such modest surroundings. He kept drawing down his sandy-red brows, puffing out his cheeks, and darting sharp glances at Toby, as if to say, “Go on! Warn her about Katie’s phantom killer, and let’s get out of here!”

  Toby shot him a cut-it-out look, then settled his gaze on Annie Chapman. She was a tall, high-shouldered woman, whose age was a mystery. She might have been ten years older than she looked—which was about thirty—or ten years younger. Her face was angular and had a slight wasting appearance, as if she had consumption. Toby knew the look. Pale skin with even paler circles ringing the eyes on either side of her high-bridged nose. She had very black hair and very white skin, paper white with a tinge of blue where the veins showed through. Toby thought she might once have been beautiful. Was still beautiful. But it was clear that she wasn’t well. And her eyes were so pale a blue, the iris seemed to mingle with the whites—a telltale sign of a consumptive.

  Her voice was so soft as to be hard to hear. “So, Tobias, Georgie’s grandmother must have told you that Georgie is here. Is that why you’ve come? Be quick, Tobias, I’m just on my way out.”

  “At this hour? Mustn’t go walking about at this hour, Mrs. Chapman.”

  “Call me Annie. Or Dark Annie. Everyone does.”

  “It’s not safe, Miss Annie.”

  She laughed, but the sound was as shallow as eggshells crushed beneath one’s fingers. “I’ve lived here all my life, Tobias. Everyone knows me here. I have but to call out, should the need arise.” She moved across the room and took down a paisley shawl from a peg on the wall.

  Collin nervously rolled his tongue against the inside of his cheek. “Wouldn’t do that!” he yelped.

  Dark Annie spun around and again they heard the soft, eggshell sound of her laughter. “I’ll be fine, young man. My late husband was a military man. He taught me how to speak the Queen’s English and to look after myself.”

  “We’ll go with you,” Collin offered.

  Dark Annie’s brows, like the black wings of a tiny raven, shot up. “I’ll just check on Georgie,” she said, wrapping her shawl around her shoulders. “He’s been ever so agitated today. Poor lad is running a fever. Afterwards, if you care to escort me to Hanbury Street, that will be fine.” She turned just as the front doorknocker rang out with fist-pounding ferocity.

  “I suspect that will be Major Brown.”

  “Major Brown? Major Gideon Brown?” Toby felt a tightening in the pit of his stomach.

  “Yes. He’s a friend of mine from the old neighborhood where we grew up. He left a note saying he’d drop by this evening.”

  “Because of Georgie? You’re not going to tell him Georgie is here, are you?”

  “Certainly not, though I’ve a mind to.” The doorknocker continued its ceaseless rapping. “Major Brown may have guessed that I’m hiding the lad. He has spies posted everywhere. But I shan’t tell him. Are you acquainted with Major Brown, Tobias?” she asked, moving into the hall to answer the front door.

  The moment Dark Annie stepped out of the room, everything in Toby’s world began to spiral downward. He couldn’t have prevented what was to happen, even if he had been forewarned. Which, he realized upon reflection, was the case. Katie had told him precisely what was to transpire. The problem was, she’d gotten her dates wrong.

  Chapter Thirty-eight

  Swinging Doors and Shame say the Bells of Clements Lane

  Katie paced the floor. Where were they? Toby and Collin should have been back hours ago. She scooped up a textbook on ancient Rome from Collin’s desk, then another on anatomy, and a third on drawing caricatures of dogs and monkeys and horses. She tossed all three books aside and continued pacing.

  It was well past midnight. Collin’s elderly manservant, Jeffries, kept popping his head into the room, his eyes sharp and shrewd and suspicious below bushy white brows.

  Katie knew she shouldn’t be in Collin’s bedchamber at this hour, but she yearned to hear what had happened with Dark Annie.

  Where are they? Katie hugged her arms around her body and continued to pace. She had spent the evening playing the piano for Sir Godfrey in the library, and the song “The Grand Old Duke of York” was stuck in her head. It was a nursery rhyme in her own century, but a rousing marching song in this one, with extra bawdy lyrics, making Courtney’s Dangerous Love music video sound almost tame. But at least Katie had been able to spend some time with Lady Beatrix, who looked so startlingly like Courtney it gave Katie a wistful pang—not of homesickness exactly, but more like a sad ache in her stomach from missing her sister.

  Lady Beatrix’s singing voice was deeply melodic, with perfect pitch, and she harmonized in a way nearly identical to Courtney’s. And when Lady Beatrix turned the sheet music, light from the candelabra had caught the golden highlights in her hair, the brilliant shine in her velvet eyes—so dark a blue they were almost black . . .

  Just like Courtney’s.

  Katie moistened her lips and unconsciously began to hum.

  “The Grand old Duke of York,

  He had ten thousand men;

  He marched them up to the top of the hill,

  And he marched them down again—”

  Katie jerked to a halt and gave herself a good shake.

  At least the Duke of York song was better than “Drink to Me Only with Thine Eyes,” which Katie had had to play half a dozen times. Each time she hit a sour note, the Duke’s spectacles had tumbled down his nose, and he rapped his cane on top of the Steinway piano with a thundering crack! All in all, it had been a trying evening, especially since Sir Godfrey was tone deaf and his gravelly voice was ear-piercingly off-key.

  Now, sighing deeply, Katie threw herself into one of the armchairs next to the fire. As frustrating as the evening with the Duke had been, she had a feeling it was going to get worse. She could feel it in her bones.

  •

  Fifty yard
s away, Toby was running toward the house.

  A rustling roar of rain drummed onto his shoulders and trickled down his neck as he hastened past the gatehouse and up the gravel drive, feeling his breath rasp in his lungs. Twyford Manor loomed dim and ghostly white through the sheen of rain ahead. A slant of light flickered in Collin’s window, and seeing it, Toby tore across the side lawn to the trellis below, his mind divided between blind panic and seething anger.

  Slumped in the armchair next to the fireplace, Katie heard the window creak.

  Instantly alert, she jumped from the chair, but her long gown tripped her up as she darted across the room, and she bumped awkwardly against the desk, knocking the textbooks onto the floor. The noise made Katie gasp. The whole house would be up in a minute, and Jeffries would be poking his solemn face into the room again.

  She scrambled to pick up The Artist’s Guide to Anatomy, the drawing manual, and the Roman history textbook. She kicked the desk in frustration. It was anchored dead center in the middle of the room, directly below the gas chandelier. Normal desks skirted walls to take advantage of electrical outlets for lamps and computers!

  She limped to the window, relief surging through her when she saw Toby’s boot push through the open windowpane, followed by a blast of sluicing rain. Katie stared past Toby’s wet shoulders, outside into the darkness. There was no thunder or lightning, only a steady deluge of rain.

  Toby dropped from the windowsill into the room, and when he turned to face her, Katie knew something was wrong.

  Dead wrong.

  He snapped the window shut, muffling the roaring sound of rain splashing down the waterspout, and strode to the fireplace with its dying embers, the heavy squelch of his boots reverberating across the polished wooden floor.

  Katie stepped in his direction.

  She had a momentary impulse to flick on the light switch by the door before she remembered no such thing existed in this century. She blinked across the room and saw the anguished expression on Toby’s face as he pitched more logs onto the fire, like a gravedigger chucking earth.

  “Dark Annie is dead,” he said softly.

  Katie’s stomach tightened. “That’s not possible! She’s not supposed to die for two more days!”

  “And Georgie Cross?” he said in a low, tormented voice. “When was he supposed to die? Two days hence as well? And now Collin—”

  “Toby!” cried Katie. “You know I don’t know anything about Georgie Cross—” But one thought crowded out all others, surfacing like the gushing rain. “Omigod! Where’s Collin? Why isn’t he with you? He isn’t—”

  “He’s with Dora Fowler at the Cock and Bull.”

  Katie sighed with relief and pressed on. “Dark Annie is supposed to die on September tenth. If she died today, maybe I got my dates mixed up . . .”

  Toby nodded. “That you did, lass. That you did.”

  Katie ignored his quick agreement. “This can’t be right, Toby. How did she die?”

  Toby stood facing her in his soaking wet greatcoat. He looked as if he were ready to fight. His legs were braced apart, his hands clenched at his side, and the scowl on his face was as ferocious as the storm outside. “I need to hear every last detail about the man you call Jack the Ripper.”

  “First off, Toby, I don’t actually know if he’s a man or a woman. Secondly, I told you everything already. Was Georgie attacked as well? Was his throat slit? Was Dark Annie—” Katie couldn’t get the word “eviscerated” out of her already dry lips.

  Toby lowered his voice. “Dark Annie was slashed like a gutted farm animal. And this”—he struggled out of his soaking wet greatcoat and drew out a small, rectangular pillow—“is how Georgie Cross died.”

  Chapter Thirty-nine

  Open Sores Will Fester

  say the Bells of Winchester

  Toby held up the feather pillow and pointed.

  Dead center in the middle was the oval impression of upper and lower teeth marks, the size of a half dollar, as if Georgie had tried to holler for help and then bitten into the fabric.

  “He was smothered?” Katie asked incredulously.

  Toby motioned for Katie to take a chair by the fire and sat down opposite. Rivulets of water trickled down his damp face, but he didn’t bother to wipe them away. He stared directly into the flames and thought about Georgie lying on the walnut cot in Dark Annie’s back sitting room.

  The room had been small, with the shades drawn, and the smell of medicine clinging to the air. When Toby and Collin first entered, Georgie had been very much alive. The wallpaper behind the cot was as clearly etched into Toby’s brain as if he were staring at it right here in the flames. Blue, with faded cabbage-rose flowers and dark water stains near the ceiling. On the right-hand wall, as you entered, stood a narrow, red-brick fireplace, its mantel lined with porcelain trinkets. Wedged between the walnut cot and a low chest of drawers sat a rocking chair with a quilted sewing basket stuck full of pins.

  Georgie had looked large and bloated in the tiny cot, an old wool scarf wrapped round his neck, which bulged like a goiter above the buttons of his flannel nightshirt. His curly hair fanned outward against the white of the pillow casing, glistening with sweat. Flags of a strawberry rash flushed his cheeks. And his arms, draped over the top of a patchwork quilt, looked soft and plump like dimpled pie dough.

  “Damn stuffy in here, what?” Collin had muttered, peering down at Georgie. “Smells like the bloody plague.”

  It was rank, Toby remembered. That’s why he had crossed the room, unlocked the window, and cracked it open to let in fresh air. The mottled panes looked out on a small courtyard lined with bricks.

  “How did it happen?” Katie asked, interrupting Toby’s thoughts. “Talk to me, Toby. What happened? Start at the beginning. You went to Annie Chapman’s house with Collin—”

  Toby nodded, then slowly filled Katie in, up until the moment of Major Brown’s arrival. “Dark Annie rents rooms on the first floor of a boarding house. One in front, two in back, with a shared front door and common kitchen. Collin and I darted into Georgie’s room, second from the back. We didn’t want Major Brown to catch us there. Georgie had been given an opiate by Dark Annie because he’d been shouting and carrying on, ‘all delirious, like,’ Dark Annie said. So we slipped across the hall into the back room, out of sight.

  “When we entered, Georgie was sleeping. But he was alive. His breathing was regular, with grunting snores. After I opened the window a crack, Collin and I stood with our backs to Georgie, and our ears to the door, listening. We could hear Dark Annie and Major Brown arguing. But Georgie must have sensed we were there. He became agitated and began mumbling a French army song and muttering about a girl named Cecilia. I told Collin to stay put, and I stole back into the narrow hallway to hear what Major Brown and Dark Annie were arguing about.

  Toby blinked into the fire flames. He took a deep breath and continued: “In the ceiling above my head was one of those trap doors that lead into attics, but Dark Annie’s was just a crawlspace used for storage. If you tug on the rope-pull, a set of wooden stairs unfolds. I stood there under the ceiling-door, listening. Three minutes, maybe four. Behind me, with Georgie’s door slightly open, I could hear him humming “Aupres de ma Blonde.” But in no time at all, Collin joined me in the hallway. He couldn’t abide the stuffy room.

  “Major Brown was shouting at Dark Annie now, saying she had no business hiding a witness from the crown; and that she’d be thrown into prison if she didn’t comply.

  “‘Will you turn me in, then?’ Dark Annie shouted back. She sounded hurt, then clearly bewildered that he was threatening her. They’d grown up together. She begged him not to forget his Cockney roots, but he hollered at her that he had important duties to perform and she was obstructing justice. She became fretful. You could hear the wheeze in her voice as if she were going to cry. In the end, she led him into the alcove where we stood eavesdropping. ‘Georgie’s in there,’ she said, pointing to the half-open door. That’
s when Major Brown saw us—”

  Toby’s face had gone pale, with an expression in his eyes Katie couldn’t read—a sort of rage, mingled with . . . indignation? Was he angry at Major Brown? Or just at the senselessness of Georgie’s murder? And what of Dark Annie . . . ?

  Toby groped at his chair, clenching and unclenching the air above the padded arms. “I think Major Brown killed Georgie,” he said softly.

  “What?” Katie gasped. “Did you see him do it?”

  Toby shook his head. His eyes looked haunted. When he spoke, he left off Major Brown’s title, as if he thought the man didn’t deserve it.

  “Brown was furious when he saw us,” Toby continued. “Mum and dad. Spitting mad. He cursed me for my ‘stupidity’ and ‘unlawful audacity’ and demanded to know why I had insinuated myself—and Collin—into a police investigation. When I said nothing, he stormed into Georgie’s room as if he meant to wrangle a statement out of him, which, of course, he couldn’t, not with the opiate Georgie had been given. Brown stayed in there a long time; when he returned, banging the door shut behind him, he unleashed his wrath first on me, then on Collin, ‘What in holy blazes did you think to accomplish coming here and muddying the waters of a police inquest? What you’ve done is a criminal act of vindictiveness aimed at me . . . is that it?’

  “Then, for some reason impossible to explain, Collin began to laugh. Yes, laugh at Gideon Brown, who turned red with rage. I thought he was going to strike Collin. I actually had to position myself between the two of them in that narrow hallway. It was as if Collin enjoyed taunting his sister’s beau. He wouldn’t let up. Collin kept laughing in Brown’s face. Then he said, ‘Hi-ho! What’s this?’ and reached up and yanked on the rope-pull dangling from the ceiling, and the wooden stairs unfolded like a Chinese fan. ‘Maybe I should climb up there and hide like a frightened rabbit? I’m sooo scared of the bullying bobby. Want to tell Lady Beatrix what a cowardly cuss I am? You’d like that, wouldn’t you?’ ”