Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  My heart begins a new, rapid descent when I thought it had already touched bottom. Reid is demanding the one coin I can’t give him. The truth about the Ripper wouldn’t save Mick; it would only doom him, Hugh, Barrett, and me.

  “That’s too high a price for Mick’s life?” Scorn laces Reid’s disappointment. “And you call yourself his friend. Well, you’ve wasted your time, and mine.” He drains his glass, sets it on the table.

  I hate to think I’ve humiliated myself for nothing. I hurry to offer Reid something else he might want. “If you get the charge dropped, I won’t tell anyone that you and Mr. Porter set up the attack on Mick and me at the Bethnal Green Workhouse.”

  Reid beholds me with surprise, then disdain. “It wasn’t me. I cut my ties with Porter when he was kicked off the force. If he set you up, he did it on his own.”

  I can’t hide my chagrin. Whether or not Reid is telling the truth, he’s not afraid of my accusation, and I can’t think of another card to play.

  “Here, I’ll sweeten the deal.” Reid’s eyes glint with the recklessness of a gambler who’s about to stake his all. “If you tell me what you know about the Ripper, then I’ll not only get the charges against Mick dropped, I’ll leave you and your friends and your husband alone, for good.”

  It’s more than I could ask—our lives free of trouble from Reid forever—but the price is still fatally high. My perception of him changes. I’ve seen him as a corrupt man who would do anything to satisfy a grudge, but now I glimpse the honorable police officer Barrett said he was before the Ripper case, who wants to get the right man or know why he can’t. Reid thinks the Ripper is still at large, and after six deaths that he takes personally, he’s afraid he’ll wake up one day to hear that there’s been a new murder. He believes I know who the Ripper is, and in order to prevent the next reign of terror, he would sacrifice his revenge against me. He wants justice that badly.

  I turn away from him rather than let him see how distressed I am because we’re birds of a feather when it comes to justice, because I almost shot him, and because I can’t accept his terms. I stand up and walk toward the door, my back straight, wearing my tattered pride like a cloak to dress up my defeat.

  He calls after me in a quiet, ominous voice, “You’re going to wish you’d taken the deal.”

  * * *

  I barely make it home before a siege of vomiting begins. When it’s over, I crawl into bed fully clothed, shivering and sweating, to recover from my body’s physical reaction to the fact that I almost proved myself my mother’s daughter. My mind rubs itself raw against the thought of what would have happened had I killed Inspector Reid. I think Mick, Hugh, Sally, and my father would understand and forgive me if they knew, but Barrett is a different story. He would be duty bound to hunt down Reid’s killer. Unable to deny that I had a motive for the murder—and a gun—he would remember that I’d gone out early this morning and suspect me. He would investigate me, and what if he turned up witnesses who’d seen a woman fitting my description near the crime scene or fleeing it after the gunshot? As much as he hates Reid, he couldn’t condone the murder of his superior, or cover up for the killer even if she was his wife.

  There are sins that not even love can absolve.

  Three hours later, I’m still in bed when the doorbell jangles, but I don’t move. Whoever is at the door starts pounding on it and forces me to get up. My sickness has passed, but I’m weak and shaky. I totter downstairs and see Barrett, dressed in his police uniform, peering through the window of my studio.

  When I let him in, he says, “Why did you leave so early this morning?” He takes a closer look at me. “Sarah, what’s wrong?”

  I must look awful, my hair falling down and plastered to my gray, haggard face. A trickle of nausea warns me that if I talk about it, I’ll be sick again. I should tell Barrett about my conversation with Reid before Reid tells him, but I can only shake my head.

  “Oh, God. You’re upset about last night,” Barrett says. “I’m sorry. That was a mean trick my mother played on you and the Reverend.” He takes me in his arms.

  I’m so glad he came back to me. After last night, who could blame him if he didn’t? I’m rigid with guilt because I’m not correcting his error about the reason for my sad state.

  He releases me and says, “Where did you go?”

  “I … had an errand to run.” If he knew what errand, he would be appalled. He wouldn’t want me going behind his back to make a deal with Inspector Reid.

  “I see.” Barrett’s tone says, There you go again, keeping secrets from me. Then a resigned expression comes over his face, as if he’s decided there’s no good in piling the old quarrel on top of the new. “Well, I’m glad you’re safe.”

  Even though he failed to take my side against his mother, he’s a bigger, better person than I am. I’m glad to be married to him, for however short the duration proves to be.

  “But listen,” Barrett says, “I’ve been thinking about Richard Trevelyan’s murder, and I’m wondering if we’ve been going at it wrong.”

  I’m glad to turn my attention to saving Mick. “How so?”

  “What if it’s not connected to Charles Firth’s murder?”

  “I think it is.” I brace myself for another disagreement.

  “Just humor me for a minute,” Barrett says. “Suppose Charles Firth hadn’t been murdered. What would we do?”

  I start to catch his drift. “We would investigate Richard Trevelyan’s murder as a unique crime, not the second in a series.”

  “Yes!” Barrett smiles, excited by his inspiration. “We would look for suspects and clues that are associated with him instead of with Charles Firth.”

  My hopes resurge. “If we do that, we might be able to solve at least his murder.”

  “And save Mick,” Barrett says.

  * * *

  It’s a relief to take action instead of thinking about Inspector Reid. On the train, seated beside Barrett, I’m fervently glad that we’re able to work together even when our relationship is rocky. Perhaps our marriage isn’t doomed to fail.

  “I’ve news about Diana Kelly,” Barrett says. “Remember I thought her name sounded familiar? I checked the police records and found out why. In 1887, she was arrested for stabbing a man. She was a streetwalker in Whitechapel, and he was a customer who got violent with her. It was ruled self-defense, and he wasn’t seriously hurt, so she was let off.”

  I recall Diana hinting that she’d taken desperate measures to support her children after she’d spent her savings on Charles Firth’s fake spirit photographs.

  “At the station this morning, some of the constables who’d been in the tunnels told me they saw Diana and Jean Ritchie together, shouting through megaphones, just before Richard Trevelyan’s body was found.” Barrett adds, “I don’t think Diana killed him. I think she skipped town because she was afraid her record would make her a suspect.”

  “That sounds logical,” I say, “and she didn’t seem to have a strong reason to kill Richard Trevelyan at all, let alone with so many people around and so much risk of getting caught.”

  I’m upset because it appears we’ve eliminated a suspect instead of finding evidence to clear Mick. I’m also disturbed by a weird sensation of being uncomfortable in my skin, as if there’s something inside it with me, a sharp-edged, foreign, malignant presence. When I turn to the window, I see my mother’s face in my reflection.

  I gasp.

  “What’s wrong?” Barrett says.

  “Nothing.”

  But I feel as if the ghost of my mother, dormant until today, has awakened in me. I squirm, trying to rid myself of the sensation. It won’t go away. I remind myself that I don’t believe in ghosts. But I can’t deny that my mother is in my blood, my bones. All these years, her spirit must have been lurking in me, kept alive by my thoughts of her, and my encounter with Reid gave her power over me. If I told Barrett, he would scoff and tell me it’s just a fancy. But the fancy has taken hold of me as i
f with the thorny tendrils of a vine. When the train stops, I leap for the door in an effort to escape. I bump into passengers waiting to board.

  “Careful,” Barrett says.

  The sensation fades when we’re walking along Paternoster Row, the busy street in central London that’s home to many major publishers. I remember Mrs. Firth saying that if the atmosphere is unsympathetic, spirits won’t come, and perhaps the bustle of commerce has quelled my mother’s ghost. I breathe easier. We bypass the large bookstores, their crowds of customers, and the heavy traffic, and we turn down Queen’s Head Passage, a narrow lane with a thin slice of St. Paul’s Cathedral visible at the dead end. Drifting fog gives the illusion that the massive, domed cathedral is moving into the passage, like a wedge driven into a crack. The sign at Trevelyan and Company bears its name in gold letters and a coat of arms—a medieval knight’s helmet entwined with ivy.

  Barrett tries the door; it’s locked. Through the window I see a man moving around inside, and I rap on the glass. He comes over and opens the door. Of average height and stocky build, he has brown hair combed over a bald crown, a bristly moustache, and spectacles. An apron and ink-stained sleeve protectors cover his business suit.

  “I’m sorry; we’re closed,” the man says.

  “I’m with the police,” Barrett says. “Let us in.”

  The man’s eyes widen behind his spectacles, and he backs away as Barrett and I enter the shop. The shelves are empty, the counter littered with scissors, labels, and rolls of twine. “What do you want?”

  Barrett introduces himself and me. “We’re investigating the murder of Richard Trevelyan. Who are you?”

  “George Newby. I’m his business partner.” He exhales a doleful sigh. “Or was.”

  If I should liken Richard Trevelyan to a thoroughbred racehorse, Mr. Newby would be a workhorse that pulls a cab. “Why are you packing up all the books?” I ask.

  “The shop is out of business.”

  I notice, on the counter, an open mahogany till that contains a small stack of bank notes. “Now that Mr. Trevelyan is dead, you’re making off with the goods and money?”

  “No.” Insulted by my accusation of theft, Mr. Newby says, “They’re mine now. That’s what our partnership contract says: if one of us dies, the other gets everything.”

  Barrett regards Mr. Newby with sudden surprise. “Hey, I saw you at the Clerkenwell House of Detention the other night.”

  “What of it? Yes, I was there. So was half the city.”

  “Did you kill Richard Trevelyan so you would get everything?” Barrett says.

  Mr. Newby puffs out his chest and juts his chin forward. “I did not.”

  “Can you prove it?” I say.

  “I was with friends the whole time. John Dexter and Roger Edmonds, from Longman’s—you know, the big publisher. Ask them; they’ll tell you.”

  “I will ask them,” Barrett says. We’re both disappointed that as soon as we found a new suspect, he produced an alibi.

  “It’s ridiculous that you would think I killed Richard,” Mr. Newby says.

  “I suppose because he was a dear friend,” I say.

  Mr. Newby blinks, then removes his spectacles to wipe teardrops off the lenses. When he puts them back on, they magnify the pain in his eyes. “You would be lucky to have a friend like Richard. It was my dream to start a publishing company, and I couldn’t have done it without him. He provided most of the money, and he was good with customers; he sold a lot of books. And he treated me like an equal partner. He was generous that way.”

  I’m ashamed of viewing Richard Trevelyan as merely a murder suspect and victim. I haven’t considered him as a person with friends who are grieving his loss.

  “If you think I would kill anybody for this—” Mr. Newby gestures at the boxes of books. “Think again. It’s not worth the risk of getting caught and hanged.”

  “It looks like a good haul to me,” Barrett says.

  “Ha!” Mr. Newby’s expression turns morose. “I’ll be lucky if I can sell them for pennies on the pound.”

  “Didn’t you and Mr. Trevelyan publish books of ghost photographs taken by Charles Firth?” I say. “Weren’t they best sellers?”

  “They won’t be for much longer.” Mr. Newby pulls a disgusted face. “I warned Richard not to put all our eggs in one basket. I’ve worked in publishing since I was a fourteen-year-old apprentice at a print shop. We met when we both worked at Longman’s. He was an editor; I was in sales. I know that if you want to make money, you have to publish a variety of books, not just ones about spiritualism because they’re your favorite kind.” Mr. Newby kicks a box that contains volumes of Charles Firth’s work. “I told Richard that spirit photographs were a fad that wasn’t going to last forever. I also warned him that when you build a business on a fraud, if you get caught, then you’re sunk. But he didn’t listen.”

  Mr. Newby sees my dismay and says, “Charles Firth’s ghost photographs were fake. Didn’t you know?”

  “Yes, of course.” Despite my skepticism, a part of me wanted them to be genuine, resisted believing that my former patron had stooped so low.

  “So you got caught?” Barrett says. “Did somebody figure out that the ghost in their picture wasn’t their dear, departed husband or wife?”

  “Far from it,” Mr. Newby says. “People who believe in ghosts are extremely gullible. Have you ever wondered how those pictures are made?”

  I’ve taken pride in thinking myself not gullible enough to believe in ghosts, but I feel my mother again under my skin, the sharp edges of her personality pricking my vulnerable self. “It could be done with multiple exposures.”

  Newby points his blunt, ink-stained finger at me and grins. “Well, Charles couldn’t always get hold of photographs of the dear departed. Sometimes there weren’t any. In those cases, he had to use a model for the ghost. And because he took photographs for so many clients, he used lots of models.”

  “I suppose he couldn’t have used the same model for the ghosts of your granddad and my aunt,” Barrett says.

  “Right. Charles never told the models what he wanted their pictures for, but using so many models meant a big risk of somebody recognizing himself or herself as the ghost in a photograph and spilling the beans.”

  “Did somebody?” I say, taken aback because I never considered these practical issues of spirit photography.

  “Recognize herself? Yes. Spill the beans?” Mr. Newby says darkly, “It’s only a matter of time. Last February, a woman came to the shop. She said, ‘Do you know who I am?’ Richard and I recognized her at once. She was one of Firth’s models. I thought the jig was up, but Richard put on his most charming manner and said, ‘I don’t believe I’ve had the pleasure of your acquaintance.’ The woman picked up Charles’s latest book, pointed to a photograph inside, and said, ‘I’m Eva Piper. That’s me.’ I said, ‘What do you want?’ ” Mr. Newby chuckles grimly. “As if I hadn’t already guessed. She said, ‘Give me a hundred pounds, or I’ll go to the newspapers. I’ll tell them I’m the ghost in these photographs and they’re fake.’ ”

  Comprehension is like a bell struck hard inside me, cracking with the force of the impact. “She blackmailed you.”

  Mr. Newby nods. “Richard said we believed the photographs were genuine, and he pretended to be shocked to learn they weren’t. He told her Charles had tricked us and since we were also victims of the fraud, we couldn’t be held responsible for it. But she pushed a stack of books onto the floor and said, ‘After I talk to the newspapers, these will be worthless. Give me a hundred pounds.’ She seemed desperate. Richard told her to ask Charles for money. She said she had, and he’d paid for a while, but then he said he couldn’t get his hands on any more cash. I knew that once the story got out, we would be done for. We didn’t have a hundred pounds on us, so we persuaded her to take ten then and the rest later. But of course she didn’t stop at that. She was bleeding us dry. Richard and I decided it had to stop before we went bankrupt—even
if it meant there would be a scandal.”

  Barrett says, “So you stopped paying?”

  “Yes,” Mr. Newby says. “The morning of the day he died, Richard told her to publish and be damned. I wasn’t there, but I understand she didn’t take it well.”

  Barrett turns to me. “That could have given her a motive for his murder.”

  I feel a burst of elation. “And Charles Firth’s murder. She would have been angry at him as well, because he too stopped paying.” Barrett and I smile at each other, delighted to have a new suspect. I ask Mr. Newby, “Can you show us her photograph?”

  “My pleasure,” Mr. Newby says with bitter satisfaction. “She’s probably talking to reporters up and down Fleet Street as we speak. I figured I might as well pack it in before the scandal hit the news. If she killed Richard and Charles, I hope she hangs. If not, do me a favor and arrest her for blackmail.” He takes a book from a box, flips through the pages, and hands the open volume to me.

  The photograph shows a man, a little girl, and a younger boy, all dressed in black, seated by a fireplace. Above the mantel floats the head of a beautiful blond woman, her hands clasped in prayer under her chin and her eyes lifted to the heavens. Recognition stuns me. I saw an image of this same woman, wrapped in a sheet and posed in a cemetery, in a photograph at Charles Firth’s studio and again in the photograph I saved from the fire that Leonora Firth set.

  “We need to find out where she was the nights of the murders,” Barrett says.

  “I can tell you where she was the night Richard died,” Mr. Newby says. “She was in the tunnels under the Clerkenwell jail. I saw her arguing with Richard. She must have been trying to wring more money out of him.”

  “Oh, God.” I’m thunderstruck. “I saw them too! But I thought she was Diana Kelly. They’re both blond.” My mistake sent me barking up the wrong tree. Now I’m amazed to discover that Mr. Newby is the witness Barrett and I need, the one with a clue that could prove to be Mick’s salvation. Eva Piper, our new suspect, has to be the blond woman Dr. Lodge saw accosting Charles Firth. In retrospect, our path was littered with omens—her image seen in three different photographs at three separate times—as if our destiny lies with Eva Piper.