by Alex Grecian
Shaw stood and Pringle followed his lead, standing up, too. Hammersmith remained seated.
“I have entertained this matter as far as I am willing to,” Shaw said. “I’ll ask you to leave this house and not return.”
“You don’t want us to find the man who burgled you?”
“I don’t care. What I want is to go to bed and enjoy a few hours of uninterrupted sleep, free from thoughts of sweeps and burglars and nosy police.”
“Nosy, are we?” Pringle said. “And aren’t we trying to help you?”
“I’m sure I have no idea what you’re trying to do, but the hour is inappropriate and your questions seem unusual.”
Hammersmith was unperturbed. For Shaw to be so openly rude meant that he was hiding something from them. Knowing that there was something hidden was the first step toward finding it.
“Could you give us some indication, at least, of where we might find this sweep?”
“No, I could not. Leave now.”
Hammersmith concealed a smile and stood. “Of course,” he said. “We apologize for disturbing you.”
“Well, I don’t apologize,” Pringle said. “I think you’ve been bloody rude.”
“Please excuse my friend,” Hammersmith said. “We’re quite tired ourselves.”
“Just get out.”
“Would it be permissible for us to return later?”
“Not at all. I very much hope never to see you again.”
“A crime has been committed here, sir,” Pringle said, “and we are duty-bound to follow—”
“You are duty-bound to do what your betters ask of you. Now go. If there’s been a crime committed—and I’ve seen no evidence of that, only your word—then I will investigate it myself.”
“Very well,” Hammersmith said. “Have a good night, sir.”
“I shall have a very good night indeed just as soon as you’re both out of my sight.”
Shaw ushered the two police out the door. Hammersmith paused on the step and turned back toward the doctor.
“Please tell your lovely wife good night for us,” he said. “And apologize to her on our account for the beastly hour.”
“I shall do nothing of the kind.”
And with that, Shaw slammed the front door.
“Well, I never,” Pringle said.
Hammersmith rubbed his hands together and bounded down the brownstone’s steps. Pringle hurried to keep up with the longer strides of his friend.
“So that’s the end of it, right?” he said.
“Not at all,” Hammersmith said. “We know the name of our sweep.”
“He said it was Richard, didn’t he? No, Robert.”
“Yes, he said Robert. But the name of the man we’re looking for is Sam.”
“Oh, yes. That’s what the wife said, isn’t it?”
“Penelope. Yes.”
“She’s a lovely thing.”
“I hadn’t noticed.”
“You hadn’t? How could you not?”
“Perhaps that accounts for the good doctor keeping her out of sight.”
“I would, if I were married to her.”
“She may have more to tell us, if we could talk to her alone.”
“Well, I’m willing to make the attempt.”
“It might be better if I have a go at her myself, Colin.”
Pringle smiled and clapped Hammersmith on the back. “Oh, I quite understand.”
Hammersmith shook his head.
“We should hurry,” he said. “The sun will be up soon, and we have a long walk ahead of us.”
17
Esme whimpered in her sleep.
Liza rolled over and traced her fingers lightly down the length of Esme’s scar. The puckered red line began under Esme’s hair and ran diagonally across her forehead, jumped over her left eye and exploded in a starburst on her cheek before commencing down over her chin, her throat, and disappearing under the top of her loose-fitting nightgown. The endpoint of the scar was a crater where Esme’s left breast had once been.
Liza leaned in and brushed her lips against the coarse fabric of the nightgown, gently kissed the absent breast.
Esme stirred and smiled. She wrapped her arms around Liza and groaned.
“You was havin’ the dream again,” Liza said.
“Did I wake you?”
“I was awake already.”
“You ain’t slept, have you?”
“I’m fine, love.”
“You should sleep.”
“I will.”
Esme mumbled something that Liza couldn’t hear and slipped back into her dreams. Liza watched her for a long while after. Watching her beautiful girl Esme was all that Liza ever wanted to do. The one time she hadn’t watched, hadn’t been there, Esme had met Saucy Jack.
And now they both dreamed of Jack when they slept.
Liza wasn’t there when it happened. Liza never saw the Ripper. In her dream, as in reality, she was too far away to help poor Esme, Esme who went down a dark alley with the Ripper. Him with his midnight cloak and his yellow teeth.
And his wild black beard.
Esme had been working—both women had been working that night—and she had chosen the alley herself.
In hindsight, of course, taking a strange man into an alley was a foolish, even fatal, mistake. But the Ripper hadn’t arrived in the popular press as yet, and going down alleys with men was what Esme, Liza, and countless other women in Whitechapel had to do in order to put food on the table.
And so Esme got lost in the dark with the man and his knife.
Liza was with a different man, down a different alley. But Esme had told her everything, and Liza’s dreams replayed for her what had happened as if she had been in that alley on that night. And night after night ever since.
She imagined the scent of the Ripper as he pressed against her, briny and rank. The feel of his beard against her face, wires in her eyes, blotting out the gaslight from the street so far away. The sting of the knife on her face, on her throat. On her breast. The sound of her blouse ripping open and the warmth of her blood trickling down her ribs.
She screamed and he pulled her face into his chest so that she breathed in the hair of his beard. She beat against him and she pushed against him and he didn’t seem to notice. Her strength left her more quickly than she would have dreamed. She let her arms fall to her sides and she shut her eyes and she waited for the end.
Jack held her like a father might hold a bawling infant, and he spoke a single word. Through his beard, his mouth smelled of metal and fish and old rope.
“Slowly,” he said.
And then there were other voices, the voices of women, far away at the alley’s mouth. She felt herself fall to the stones as Jack disappeared. There came the sound of boot heels on cobblestones, and then she felt soft hands on her skin and she heard a soft voice in her ear.
“Don’t die,” someone said.
And so she didn’t die.
Instead, she slept.
Liza woke again for the third time in a night and gasped at her false memory of Esme’s ordeal. She watched the ceiling of the tiny rented room they shared, and when that proved unsatisfying, she rolled onto her elbow and went back to watching Esme.
And Esme whimpered in her sleep.
18
The bald man woke with a start. He lay listening to the dark house and the rain beating against the roof above, unable to pinpoint what had awakened him. He fumbled along the bedside table for his spectacles and put them on, then went searching for the box of matches he kept next to the candlestick. He was a firm believer in the old ways of doing things, and a candle would do just fine. There was no electricity in his house. He felt strongly that mankind had grown too arrogant and had harnessed an elemental force that would eventually turn on its master. He waited nervously for all of London to burn to the ground, done in by the fiery electrical wires strung here and there over the city.
He struck a match and contemplated the s
udden blue flame for a moment before lighting the tallow candle and snuffing the match between his fingers. He felt a sudden cramping in his bowels and, jamming his feet into the slippers on the floor beside his bed, he hurried out of the room and down the hall to the water closet. Not all of the new ways of doing things were bad. Indoor plumbing, for instance, was marvelous.
When he had finished, he pulled the chain to flush and took his candle back out to the hall. The house was old, and the floor creaked under his weight. He walked against the wall where it was quieter and eased open the boy’s door.
At first he didn’t see anything amiss. The candle’s glow didn’t penetrate far into the room. He crept closer, just wanting a look at the boy before heading back to his own bedroom. He had given Fenn a room of his own after they’d returned from the park. The bald man had been proud of the boy for obeying him in public. There had been no shouts for help or attempts to run away. The bald man was sure that Fenn was beginning to think of him as his natural father and to think of this house as his own. Of course, the bald man wasn’t stupid. He had still tied the boy to his bed.
The flickering candlelight played over the boy’s bed, chasing shadows into the folds and curves of the blankets. Too many folds and curves. The bald man approached the bed. He swallowed hard and reached out, grabbed a corner of the topmost blanket and yanked too hard. The blanket flew at his face and he almost dropped the candlestick. He let the blanket fall to the floor and pulled at the other blankets. The ropes he had used to tie the boy were tangled at the foot of the bed.
Fenn was gone.
Panicked, the bald man rushed to his own room and pulled a pair of trousers on under his nightshirt. He used a snuffer to put out the candle and hurried into the hall and down the creaking stairs to the front door.
How had the boy made it down the stairs without the sound of those dry old boards awakening the bald man?
He cursed himself for a trusting fool. He hadn’t double-checked the ropes before going to bed, hadn’t taken out the slack. He had been too kind. Of course the boy wasn’t ready yet to accept his new family situation. It would take more time. The bald man had rushed things, trying to recapture his past. He hesitated, trying to remember his first son’s name, but it wouldn’t come to him. He shook off the sudden twinge of sadness and regret. It hardly mattered now.
Outside, the rain fell steady, but not hard. The bald man left the front door open and went to the middle of the street. He looked both ways, trying to decide where the boy might have gone. The rain beaded on his head and ran in rivulets down the back of his neck. Within minutes, the thin fabric of his nightshirt clung to his skin and his slippers had absorbed enough water to triple their weight.
He hunched his shoulders and shut his eyes, trying to imagine himself as a young boy in a strange neighborhood. He opened his eyes again and looked around. Rain clouds blotted out the moon. A carriage swept by, a gas lamp swinging back and forth from the pole next to the driver. The bald man’s gaze followed the carriage down the street and watched as it turned onto a broader lane where firefly clusters of streetlamps struggled to penetrate the gloom. The bald man’s street was completely dark, no lamps here, and the streets to the east were also residential, but to the west were more thoroughly traveled streets, and those were lit up with gas. He felt sure the boy would have been drawn to the light, dim as it was.
The bald man set himself on a westerly course and followed in the wake of the carriage.
19
Kingsley stared into the dying embers of the night’s fire, not focused on the coals or his surroundings. Outside, rain pattered against the roof. A small noise in the room woke him from his daze, and he slowly shook off his malaise and turned his head. Fiona was standing in the doorway watching him.
“How long have you been there?” he said.
“Not long. Do you feel all right, Father?”
He smiled and nodded. “Of course I do. Why aren’t you asleep, Plum?”
“I heard a noise. A carriage going by outside.”
Kingsley sniffed and glanced up at the clock on the mantel above the dead fire.
“It’s early yet. Or late. You should try to sleep a bit more.”
“I’m awake. Should I get you something? Tea?”
“No, thank you.”
“Have you slept yet?”
“You know, I don’t think I have,” Kingsley said.
Fiona padded across the room and sat on the arm of the chair. Kingsley put his hand on her back. He wiped his other hand across his face and tried to remember what he’d been thinking of. Fiona spoke as if she could read his thoughts.
“Were you thinking of Mother?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I was.”
“I was thinking of her even before the carriage woke me.”
“You were dreaming, you mean.”
“Yes. We were all together at Hyde Park, gathered around the fountain. You know the one I mean, with the statue of the angel in it.”
“I think I know the one, but I’m not sure that statue’s meant to be an angel.”
“I think it is.”
“Fair enough.”
“You and Mother were holding hands, and Beatrice was there, too, home from school, I think.”
“We should visit her soon.”
“I’d like that.”
“Then we’ll do it.”
“Do you still dream about her?”
“Beatrice?”
He knew what she meant. She wasn’t talking about her sister.
“Mother.”
“Yes, Plum, I still dream about her. I suppose we always will.”
“Do you think she dreams of us?”
“No.”
“Not ever?”
“She doesn’t dream anymore.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because I have seen countless dead people, I have cut into them and removed their organs and weighed their brains, and not one of the dead has ever told me anything that wasn’t concrete and physical. When people die, their minds no longer work. They can’t dream.”
“What about their souls?”
“I have never seen a soul nor found a repository for such a thing in any body I’ve examined. There is no soul.”
Fiona was quiet, and Kingsley realized he’d upset his daughter. He was too tired to be of any use to his still-grieving daughter. He rubbed his hand clumsily up and down her back. He wished he could offer her some comfort, some assurance that her mother lived on, but since he didn’t believe it himself, he had no way of convincing her. She wiped her eyes, but her hair had fallen over her face and Kingsley couldn’t see her.
“Well, I believe we all have souls,” she said, “and you just can’t see them.”
Kingsley nodded. He was afraid to contradict her.
“I believe my mother is in heaven and I will see her again someday.”
Kingsley smiled, but it was a sad smile. “I sincerely hope that day is a long way off,” he said.
“I mean that we’ll see her when we both die of old age, hundreds and hundreds of years from now.”
“It’s a pleasant thought, at least.”
“Maybe she’s looking at us right now. Maybe she’s smiling at us and making nice things happen for us.”
“That would be an excellent dream for you to have.”
“It would, wouldn’t it?”
They sat in companionable silence, staring at the embers in the fireplace, and eventually Fiona slid off the arm of the chair and into her father’s lap. He smoothed her hair away from her face and she shifted slightly, mumbled something unheard, and began to snore quietly.
Kingsley sat in the dark and watched the crackling remains of the fire until he fell asleep.
He didn’t dream about anything at all.
20
Walter Day laid his head on his wife’s pillow and closed his eyes. Beside him, Claire swept a lock of hair from her eyes and propped herself on one elbow, her other hand o
n her husband’s chest.
“Let me lie here a moment and I’ll return to my room,” Day said. “I should have stayed there. You need your sleep.”
“But your room is miles away from mine,” Claire said.
“Only down the hall.”
“That’s still too far. And I sleep too much as it is. I hardly see you anymore.”
“It’s this case.”
“I know that. I’m not complaining. What is the case, Walter?”
“I shouldn’t say.”
“But I would love to hear about it.”
“It might upset you.”
“I’m no flower, you know.”
Day sighed. “I heard Percy Erwood still hasn’t married,” he said.
“Are you changing the subject, Mr Day?”
“You must have been the only woman for him.”
“I was never for him.”
She took her hand off Walter’s chest and moved away, staring in the dark direction of the ceiling.
“Why did you ever marry me and leave poor Percy in the lurch?” Day said.
“I declare,” she said. “You’re not going to worry about Percy Erwood for the rest of our long lives, are you?”
“I wouldn’t say I’m worried about him.”
“If you had your way, Percy Erwood would come here right now and carry me away.”
“Right now?”
“In the morning, then.”
“I would rather he didn’t.”
“As would I.”
Day smacked his lips and mumbled something Claire couldn’t make out.
“What’s that, dear?” she said.
“I said that I still remember the moment I fell in love with you.”
“Was I there or was it just you and Percy Erwood deciding amongst yourselves who ought to win me?”
“It was in church. That’s the only place I ever saw you. No, that’s not true. I saw you often when we were small, passing in the street sometimes, playing with your friends, and once in the post office, but church was the only place I felt like we might be on equal ground.”
“And you remember a single Sunday?”