by Tessa Harris
Panic breaks out and the police cordon crumples. The crowd surges forward, spilling into the alley. Once again, the cry that’s become so familiar in Whitechapel goes up in Poplar: “Murder! Murder!”
CONSTANCE
“Let me through! Let me through!” I scream.
We’ve made it to Poplar in good time. Thanks to Mr. B’s quick thinking, he managed to marshal a few lads from the Vigilance Committee. Gilbert Johns is one of them and now I feel his heavy hand on my shoulder, trying to calm me, but it’s no use. I’ve the strength of a thousand men as I barge my way past a copper.
“Get back!” yells another policeman. “Get back!” Someone knocks off his helmet.
“I need to see. I need to see. My sister . . . !” I’m screaming like a madwoman.
Squeezing through a gap, I see a handful of men gathered around something by the wall. More men are milling outside the forge.
“Please,” I yell, tugging at sleeves. “Please, let me see. My sister . . .” One of the blokes spins round and clocking the state I’m in, he steps to the side. It’s then that I see her slumped against the wall, her white stockings turned scarlet by her own blood.
“Flo!” I scream, throwing myself at her. “Flo! She’s not dead. Tell me she’s not dead!” Crouching low, I put my shaking hand up to her neck. By the light of the copper’s lantern, I can see the blue bruises blooming on her milk-white skin. At first, God help me, I think she’s been strangled. I feel for a pulse. There is nothing. My hand drifts to Flo’s parted lips—there is no breath—then I go back to her neck, and there, under my trembling fingertips, I sense a slow, faint thud like a summer raindrop falling to the ground. She’s still alive.
“Clear the way. Clear the way!” I glance up to see a copper waving at two ambulance men with a stretcher. “Move away!”
I’m barely able to breathe as they approach. “She’s alive!” I scream. One of the men bends low and feels Flo’s neck. He pauses for a moment, then nods to the other before he, too, utters the sweet words.
“She’s alive!”
I cradle Flo’s head in my arms until the ambulance men are ready to lift her. They move quickly, but carefully: one slipping his arms under hers, while the other takes her legs and together they lower her onto the stretcher. I reach for her hand. It’s stone cold. I know she’s senseless, but still I lean to her ear and tell her: “I’m here, my love. It’s going to be all right, Flo. I’m here.”
EMILY
It will be all right. For the moment at least. Florence will be taken care of and her life saved, and for that, she has, in part, to thank her sister. I was with them both tonight. I know that as soon as she saw Florence lying senseless, the life draining away from her as the blood spread on the ground, Constance wanted to die with her. Panic had seized hold of her and her thoughts were frantically scrambling inside her head.
It was then that I made myself known to her. I told her that her beloved Florence wasn’t dead; there was still breath in her body. After her initial horror subsided, she calmed herself. She became aware of my presence, there, in the yard, watching over her. She understood I would take care of everything.
Constance held her sister’s hand in the ambulance as they wended their way through murky streets to the Poplar Infirmary, not half a mile away. Florence opened her eyes when they were wheeling her into the examination room, and Constance stroked her head and told her she was safe.
We shall rejoin her now as she waits anxiously for news of her sister. Mr. Bartleby is to return to Whitechapel to fetch the girls’ mother. Gilbert Johns offers to remain at the infirmary. He’s been kind to Constance, even trying to put his arm around her as they wheeled Florence into the hospital, but she shrugged him off. She knows she is weak at the moment and she doesn’t want him to take advantage of the fact. Not now. It’s been agreed he should also leave.
CONSTANCE
The corridor is long and drafty and filled with the chatter of nurses and the sound of coughing. It smells of carbolic, too. I’m watching Mr. B and Gilbert disappear through the door, and then, from out of a side passage, I spot two men. One’s a copper and the other, I realize when he’s only a few yards away, is Sergeant Hawkins. It’s all I can do to keep myself from leaping up and running toward him. I’m that relieved to see him, but it’s not a mutual feeling, I can tell.
“Miss Piper.” He raises his hat most formally. “Your sister—”
I break him off. “She’s being cared for. Pray God she’ll re-cover.”
“Indeed. My officers have notified me about events in Clarke’s Yard, but I’m afraid I do hope you understand that I’ll need to question Miss Florence when she is stronger.” He glares at his constable, who beats a sharpish retreat, leaving us alone in the corridor. “Shall we?” he says, gesturing ahead of him, like he wants us to take a Sunday afternoon promenade. Only I can tell this isn’t a social visit. He’s looking very serious.
We’ve just taken a couple of paces down the corridor in silence when, from out of nowhere, he says: “The dead man.”
I stop in my tracks. He stops, too. “The dead man?” I repeat.
My look tells him I’m not sure what he’s on about.
“Ah,” he grunts. “You haven’t been told?”
“Told what?”
There’s a couple of nurses standing next to a trolley nearby. It’s clear he doesn’t want our conversation to be overheard. He moves on and I follow. “A man’s body was found in the blacksmith’s workshop, the same time as your sister.”
My mind flashes back to the mayhem in the yard. I was so caught up in helping Flo that I’d no notion of what was going on around me.
“I . . . I didn’t know. . . . Who?” Just as the question leaves my lips, I think of the blacksmith. I pray it’s not him.
Detective Sergeant Hawkins inhales deeply. “The body is not yet identified, but at the moment, we believe it to be Adam Braithwaite.”
I gasp and stop in my tracks. “Oh, God!” My fears for him, it turns out, were real, and now it’s too late to save him.
Seeing my face, the sergeant looks sympathetic. “I’m sorry. The news must come as a shock.”
I picture the smithy and hear his gritty voice. “I was going to warn him,” I mutter.
“Warn him? About what?” Sergeant Hawkins is on his mettle. “Is there something you haven’t told me, Miss Piper?”
“How? How was he killed?”
He thinks for a moment. I know he’s going to say something that he supposes will shock me, and it does. “This is why we can’t yet be sure that it is Mr. Braithwaite.” He works his jaw. “I fear the dead man had been decapitated.” I gasp again. “His head was found in the furnace.”
I think he half expects me to swoon. But I don’t. Just because I can put on a lady’s manners when I want to, it doesn’t mean I’ve gone all soft. There’s more to me than frilled petticoats and powder puffs.
The sergeant narrows his eyes at me. “You think you might know who did this?”
“Perhaps,” I reply. “That’s why I was about to go to Clarke’s Yard myself.”
“To warn him, you said. About what?”
“Not what. Who, Sergeant. About Will Mylett.”
One of his brows shoots up. “Catherine’s brother?”
“Yes.”
Sergeant Hawkins looks at me all wary. I can see his mind’s working away as he carries on walking, his hands clasped behind his back. “Can you think why Miss Florence might have been in Clarke’s Yard?”
For a moment, he’s taken me aback. I get the feeling he thinks my sister might’ve been up to no good. Flo can be fiery at times—he’s seen that for himself when she had a fit at him down at the station—but she’s no murderer. The only reason I can imagine is to lay flowers where Cath fell. I know it sounds silly, but I remember she once said that’s what she wanted to do: to see the place where her best friend died. I tell him so, but even as I say it, the excuse sounds lame. His eyes tell me he knows th
at I’m hiding the real reason why I think Flo went to Poplar.
“Might it have anything to do with that baby farmer of yours in the vicinity?” he asks.
For the second time in as many minutes, I’m stunned. “You seem to know a lot about Flo’s comings and goings, if I may say so, Sergeant Hawkins.” I don’t care if I sound full of myself. Now I think it’s me who deserves some answers.
He nods as if agreeing he should be a little more forthcoming. “Some residents called a constable earlier to complain about a young woman behaving oddly. She was banging on a door and creating a disturbance.”
“Not Woodstock Terrace!” I blurt out. I’m suddenly picturing Flo hammering on Number 9’s front door, cursing and turning the air blue with her foul mouth and her accusations. All the same, I’ve just broken my own cover and I suddenly feel as though I need to run to safety.
It’s Sergeant Hawkins who stops this time. He looks deep into my eyes, pinning me with his gaze. “Perhaps you should tell me everything you know, Miss Piper?”
CHAPTER 37
EMILY
So that is exactly what Constance does. Together with Detective Sergeant Hawkins, she finds a quiet seat in an alcove, set away from the busy hospital wards and clattering trolleys, and she tells him everything. She discloses what Adam Braithwaite told her (Will Mylett killed his own sister over money) and that it was supposed he’d fled abroad. Now, it seems, he has not.
She also recounts the sorry tale of Louisa Fortune’s missing baby—although she is careful to mention no names—and she informs him about the woman she knows to be a baby farmer, who she fears is also a murderer.
For several minutes, Detective Sergeant Hawkins listens attentively, although he has not taken out his notebook. He is hearing what Constance has to say without wishing to intimidate her, albeit he is starting to understand that she is one not easily intimidated. Now and again, he nods, or interjects with an “I see” or a “Can you clarify?” But just when Constance has told all there is to tell about Mother Delaney and her daughter and son-in-law, the detective is still left puzzled.
“But this still doesn’t explain why your sister was with Adam Braithwaite,” he puts to her.
I watch Constance bristle with indignation on Florence’s behalf. She can’t believe her sister may be under suspicion. “I’m sure Flo will give you a perfectly good explanation, just as soon as she is strong enough, Sergeant Hawkins,” she tells him.
CONSTANCE
Someone calls my name. I look up to see a nurse standing close by. “You may see your sister now.” Sergeant Hawkins and me are both on our feet like a shot. “Follow me.”
So I leave the detective and hurry to the ward where they’ve put Flo. There’s a curtain round her bed to make it more private. The surgeon, a tall, lean man with jam jar glasses, stands taking her pulse. He’s looking serious.
“Your sister, yes?”
I nod. “She’s going to be all right?”
“She’s lost a lot of blood, but she should pull through.” He pushes his glasses up his nose. “However, I fear she’s lost the baby,” he says in a low voice.
“Oh” is all I manage.
“Did you know?” He peers over his spectacle rims.
Slowly I shake my head, even though I did. I’ve known since Miss Louisa asked me to hold a séance and the pinprick of light settled on Flo’s head. Granted, it was only for a second, and it could’ve been explained away as the light from the copper’s lantern, but I knew. In that moment, I saw she was carrying a child inside her, and the odd things she’d done since now made sense to me: the sickness, the swing of her moods, and her pining after that slimy creep Danny were pieces in a puzzle that suddenly all fitted. It’s why she was so keen to see the baby farmers brought to justice, too. She wasn’t just angry for Cath’s baby Evie, she was angry for her own unborn child, as well.
“You’ll break it to her?” he asks me.
“Yes,” I say.
“She may even thank you,” he adds, glancing back at Flo.
“Thank me?” I repeat, all confused.
“There’s no ring on her finger,” says he with a smirk.
Once the surgeon’s gone, I settle myself in the chair by her bed. I’m angry and on edge, but I want to be the first person Flo sees when she opens her peepers. It’s almost midnight when she does. I watch as her lids flicker and she moans a little. Quickly I pour some water into a tin mug and hold it to her lips. She raises her head to sip it, then slumps back. Her eyes widen and she stares at the ceiling.
“Where . . . ?”
“You’re in Poplar Infirmary, my love,” I tell her, clutching her hand.
The thought seems to comfort her; and for a moment, she is calm, but her peace is short-lived. I can see she is remembering. It’s like the past is flashing before her eyes and she cries out. “No!” she screams as her head jerks up and she grasps hold of my hand.
I lay my free hand on her shoulder and press down gently. “It’s all right. No one is going to harm you, darling,” I assure her, but there’s still fear in her eyes.
Suddenly her breathing comes in short pants, like she’s reliving something terrible. “He tried to kill me,” she murmurs, clutching hold of my arm.
I don’t understand. “Who did?”
“The man with the tattoo.” She points to her hand.
It takes me only a second to realize what she’s talking about.
“The man with the tattoo. The one in the George?”
“He killed Cath.”
“What?! How do y . . . ?”
“He told me,” she groans. “He grabbed me in an alley, and when I tried to get away, he said, ‘Your friend didn’t make a fuss,’ and then he put his hands round my neck and . . .” Her eyes begin to brim and I worry she’ll do herself more harm.
“Don’t talk now, my darling,” I whisper, trying to soothe her. I stroke her head, but she’s still flighty.
“That’s why I went to Clarke’s Yard,” she sobs. “I knew it was nearby. I had to tell someone, and I knew Adam Braithwaite was a good man. I called and I called, and then I saw . . . !” Her voice splits into a faint scream at the recollection of what she stumbled upon.
So that was the reason she was in the yard—she was fleeing from the lech with the tattoo. She was seeking protection from Adam Braithwaite. A thought shoots into my mind. Perhaps this man, her attacker, had been to the forge before her. Perhaps he had killed not only Cath, but Adam Braithwaite, too. I digest the notion for a moment. It makes perfect sense. I need to tell Sergeant Hawkins, and quick, before this tattooed fiend gets his filthy hands round someone else’s neck.
CHAPTER 38
Monday, January 14, 1889
EMILY
Sir William Sampson, the owner of Number 9, Woodstock Terrace, has wasted no time moving in new tenants to his Poplar property. The Webleys arrived early this morning, and while Mr. Webley has gone to work, his wife has been left to unpack their belongings and mind their children. They are a respectable family. Father is a warehouse supervisor at the nearby docks. Mother is an active member of the Temperance Movement, and their three offspring are all under the age of eleven.
They also have a dog, a fox terrier, and the children are delighted to discover their new house has a small patch of garden at the rear. It is a very narrow area, mainly laid to lawn, but there are shrubs at the far end: laurel and lilac. The previous occupants obviously had no interest in the garden’s upkeep, as the grass was left to grow and the weeds were free to flourish.
Mrs. Webley is, however, a keen gardener, and once the men have unloaded their trunks and boxes—the house is already furnished—she is keen to inspect her new domain. She has dressed her children in their coats and, despite the cold, has ushered them outside into their new garden. The dog, which goes by the name of Patch, accompanies them.
For a few minutes, the terrier is content to play fetch with the children, while Mrs. Webley surveys the briars in the shrubbery.
But then his attention is caught by something else. His ears prick up and he sniffs the air before bounding toward the laurels. He begins to bark; then he begins to dig, much to the delight of the children. His front paws scrabble away at the earth beneath the thick foliage close to where Mrs. Webley has been standing, and it’s not long before clumps of soil are being flung into the air.
“Patch, what on earth have you found?” asks Mrs. Webley, shaking her head disapprovingly, but with a wide grin on her face. She carries on inspecting some shriveled roses.
By now, the children have joined her: Susan, aged ten, Jonathan, eight, and Becky, six. They think it most amusing to watch their dog thus engaged. They have never seen Patch dig so enthusiastically before.
“He’s got something,” cries Jonathan suddenly as a fragment of material suddenly emerges from beneath the soil.
The children cluster round the dog to peer closer as he keeps on digging frantically. Then little Becky lets out a delighted cry: “It’s a doll, Mummy. Patch has found an old doll!”
Mrs. Webley smiles. “Really, dear?” she says unthinkingly. She carries on inspecting the shrubs. However, it’s only when Patch’s bark suddenly turns to a growl that she gives his discovery her full attention. She strides over to see what the terrier has uncovered. By this time, he has dragged whatever he has found from out of its hiding place and is wrestling with it in a frenzied fashion.
“Mummy, he’s killing the doll!” screams Becky.
“Patch, no!” yells Susan.
“Move back, children,” says Mrs. Webley as she finally draws close enough to see what has so excited the terrier. It takes a moment to realize what it holds within its jaws; but when she does, her hands fly up to her face. “Oh, God!” she exclaims.