1888

by Andrew Hastie

  There had never been any secrets between them, but the gift was special, and her grandmother had made her promise not to tell anyone, and since she outranked her mother, she had kept it from her.

  But her mum took it in her stride. Just like the time when Halli had experimented with vodka and she had been there to hold her hair back while she threw up. She simply hugged her and told her that whatever it was, she loved her and that nothing else mattered. If grandma said it was okay, then that was fine. There was no talk of psychotherapists or counselling, she just told her to stay safe and not let the neighbours find out.

  * * *

  Maddox went to the side gate and found it unlocked as usual. This wasn’t the first time she had come home without a key, and she had other plans anyway, ones that involved the garden shed.

  She been sitting in the pub, listening to the various theories about how the trial was going to go, while her mind kept wandering back to the Ripper case. She was baffled by Sabien’s actions, there was no logical reason why he would kick her off the crime scene. It didn’t make any sense, and then she remembered the date. It was the same as the one in her grandmother’s cabinet.

  * * *

  Her dad’s old shed sat slowly rotting under the ash tree at the bottom of the garden. The ropes of a mouldy old swing still hung from its branches, which used to be one of her favourite places to hang out in the rain when she was a kid.

  Inside the shed were the remnants of her father’s tools, stacked in a dusty pile, covered in grease and slowly rusting into one amorphous lump. She had used them many times to go back and watch him work on one of his famously unfinished DIY projects. It was one way to get to know him, through the things he made and helped repair all the years they had missed together.

  She took down the small tin box of mementos from the dusty shelf. Her ‘treasure chest’, as she used to call it, full of small things with significant histories — ones that led to special places.

  Amongst the spoons and coins was the key to her grandmother’s wardrobe and with that the rather interesting collection of curiosities she kept within it.

  27

  Grandmother's Wardrobe

  [Date: 1979]

  Her grandmother had the most incredible wardrobe in her bedroom. It was like something conjured up by C.S. Lewis or the TARDIS from Doctor Who.

  From the outside it appeared to be a large, old oak cabinet decorated with carved panels of tall Pre-Raphaelite trees, beautiful tiny birds sitting among their branches. Her grandmother had told her that it had been in their family for generations, but Halli didn’t really care about the craftsmanship or its heritage, it was what it contained that intrigued her.

  She would never forget the sense of wonder she experienced the first time she entered the cabinet. It was far larger on the inside, beyond the racks of long dresses and heavy winter coats was a dressing room; a sumptuous boutique with silks draped across the ceiling, a long golden mirror and a chaise longue sitting on a thick-piled Turkish carpet.

  One wall was made up of hundreds of tiny wooden apothecary drawers. Each was carefully labelled with a date above the brass handle.

  ‘Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all,’ her grandmother would say with a wink, each time she took her into the wardrobe.

  It was a magical experience for an eight-year-old, the best game of dressing-up you could ever wish for.

  Clothes from the last five centuries were hung on rails like a costume department at the theatre. When she complained that they were all too big for her, her grandmother simply smiled and assured her that one day she would understand what it was all for.

  She showed her the things she kept in the numbered drawers. Small mementos from random parts of history: rings, keys, coins — the kind of useless stuff that people keep because it might come in handy and then forget about.

  ‘These are vestiges,’ her grandmother said, handing one to her. ‘Objects that have links to specific points in history. Over the years I’ve collected quite a few.’

  Maddox turned the small brooch over in her hand. She could feel its timeline moving just below the surface of the tarnished gold. It was Russian, from the reign of the last Tsars. She caught dazzling moments of opulent ballrooms in grand winter palaces, beautiful women in elegant ballgowns, and handsome men in dashing uniforms, but as she marvelled at the spectacle, time moved forward and suddenly people were fighting over the brooch, killing each other, smashing windows and setting fires.

  She dropped the jewellery as if it had burned her, her eyes suddenly full of tears.

  Her grandmother scooped her up into her arms. ‘This is why you must take care my child. The past is not a playground, it’s full of dangers.’

  * * *

  Halli never forgot that lesson. It had been a hard one to take at such a young age, but it had made her strong.

  Throughout her many visits to the secret cabinet, there was always one drawer that remained locked. The label read ‘09.10.11888’ and her grandmother would never explain why. When Halli asked about it, the old lady’s eyes would water a little and then she would change the subject. It had fascinated Halli ever since; it was a mystery she needed to solve.

  Now, as she stood in the dressing room, swaying slightly from the effects of the alcohol, she knew that it was somehow connected to the fifth murder. Touching the brass handle of the drawer, she was disappointed to find no latent timeline attached to it. Her grandmother had been very careful to leave no trace.

  Halli took a flat-bladed knife and forced the lock, silently apologising to her grandmother as the wood split. Inside the velvet-lined drawer was a small heart-shaped silver locket. Halli used the blade to lift it out and opened it carefully. In one half was a picture of a pretty young woman, while the name ‘Mary’ was inscribed on its opposite side. She could feel the woman’s life begin to unwind as she held it. The timeline led back towards the same period of nineteenth-century Whitechapel.

  She was the next victim, Maddox thought to herself. Snapping the locket shut putting it in her pocket. Somehow her grandmother had known about the murders and was trying to protect her granddaughter from the event. It had the opposite effect, of course, making her want to know more, but now she was ready.

  She took the Protectorate tachyon, almanac and whistle out of her jacket and pushed them into the broken drawer. This was her mystery, she needed to show Sabien she was capable of doing this on her own. Turning to the rows of costumes that she had admired as a child, Maddox wondered what her grandmother would have thought of him. She had always encouraged her to follow her instinct and it told her to try and save Mary.

  28

  The locum

  [The New Hospital for Women, Marylebone Road. Date: 1888]

  The victims had very little in common, beyond their profession.

  Maddox knew that Eddington’s team had not managed to find any real connection between the victims. Sabien seemed to think they were nothing more than random, opportunistic killings, but there was something they had all overlooked; their health. One of the many occupational hazards of being a prostitute was disease: syphilis was rife in the nineteenth century and condoms were not something most of their clients were willing to wear.

  There was no such thing as the NHS in those days. Doctors were expensive and medicines even more so.

  But there was one establishment where working girls would have been able to get treatment. The New Hospital for Women was created by Elizabeth Garret Anderson, the first female doctor and, thanks to her patrons, the only one dedicated to the needs of women.

  They would walk the five miles just to be seen by a female doctor, even though the London Hospital was on their doorstep. The London was a charitable institution and the wards were always full. The porters were notorious for demanding a shilling before they would even let the women through the door.

  * * *

  Her grandmother had told her the story of how Elizabeth had struggled for most of her life to be
recognised as an equal in the medical profession. She had founded the hospital to treat poor women and train the first female doctors alongside Sophia Jex-Blake.

  Her grandmother had collected a variety of medical instruments from that time. The proudest of which was a stethoscope that had once belonged to Doctor Anderson. She opened the timeline and found a node nearest to the time of the murders, a few weeks later and moved quickly inside it. Once she was in the right era it would be easy to find a local object that would take her back to the right date.

  [Date: November 7, 1888]

  The corridors of the hospital were overrun with women and children. Dressed in rags and half-starved, they were pitiful creatures whose haunted eyes spoke of years of poverty and malnutrition. Some of them bore the scars and lesions associated with the later stages of syphilis.

  She walked among them, careful to avoid the eyes of the ward sisters who were barking orders at their nurses like sergeant-majors. Maddox wasn’t exactly sure of the layout of the building, nor where the prostitutes would have been treated, so she picked up an empty bedpan and followed the signs for the examination rooms.

  A series of curtained-off cubicles had been arranged to create a semblance of privacy while the women were undressed and prepared for examination. Along the opposite wall there were a series of office-like consulting rooms. It was primitive compared to the healthcare systems of the twenty-first century, but it was better than nothing, even if the chances of a cure were relatively low.

  One of the nurses smiled at Maddox as she turned to leave. ‘You’re new?’

  ‘I’m lost,’ Maddox replied quickly in a cockney accent. ‘It’s me first day,’ she added with a slight blush.

  ‘No matter dear, we all have to start somewhere. What did Sister ask you to come down for?’

  ‘I’m looking for Mary Kelly.’

  Mildred frowned. ‘Oh, you mean Fair Emma? I haven’t seen her since last week.’

  The door to one of the offices opened and they could hear a woman ranting hysterically.

  A doctor came to the door. He was a tall, middle-aged gentleman with thick, black hair that came down to his shoulders. ‘Mildred, a sedative as soon as you can.’

  The nurse rolled her eyes at Maddox. ‘No rest for the wicked I suppose! You want to give me a hand?’

  ‘I thought they were all female doctors,’ Maddox whispered as the nurse went to the medicines cupboard and unlocked it.

  ‘When Doctor Garrett is away, we have to rely on a locum. Mr Knox is a very good doctor, although his bedside manner could do with a little work.’

  ‘And how long’s he been here?’ whispered Maddox, trying not to sound too inquisitive.

  ‘Oh, since August. Doctor Garrett has been preoccupied with the architects and the preparations for the building of the new hospital over on Euston Road. He’s quite dashing don’t you think?’ Mildred added with a wicked glint in her eye.

  Maddox nodded shyly and followed her into the consulting room.

  The patient was thrashing around in the chair. Doctor Knox had strapped her arms down and placed a wooden stick in her mouth. White froth was bubbling down her chin and her eyes flickered wildly.

  ‘She’s taken some kind of tonic,’ he explained. ‘Probably one of those quack remedies that purport to cleanse the pox. They usually contain arsenic or something equally noxious.’

  He was wearing a starched white shirt and black waistcoat; his sleeves were rolled up and Maddox noticed he had recent scratch marks down both arms.

  Mildred handed him the vial of sedative and a syringe.

  ‘We’ll need to counteract the effects. Steady her arm please,’ he said to Maddox. ‘Mildred please go and ask Sister if we have any activated charcoal.’

  Maddox held the woman’s pale arm, it was thin like a child’s, and deathly cold — blue veins stood out through her skin as she strained against her bindings.

  As the doctor injected the morphine into her vein he looked up at Maddox. There was something quite fascinating about his dark brown eyes. They narrowed inquisitively as he studied her.

  ‘Are you new here?’ he asked. ‘I’m sure I would remember such a fine bone structure; your zygomatic symmetry is positively Nordic. Do you have any idea who your ancestors were?’

  She smiled politely, remembering to play the part of the shy new nurse. ‘No Doctor.’

  ‘Pity. I’m something of a phrenologist, a student of the skull. May I?’ he asked, putting down the empty syringe and ignoring the patient who had slumped back in the chair with her head lolling against her chest.

  Maddox nodded.

  His hands were firm, he felt around the base of her skull, brushing aside her hair to look at her ears. ‘Marvellous, although I’m surprised to see they have been pierced?’

  Shit, she thought, ear piercing was obviously not as common back in these times.

  ‘Would you allow me to take a cast of your face? It’s not painful, a simple clay impression. I have made quite a collection.’

  A cold knot of ice formed in her stomach as Maddox realised she was looking into the eyes of the Ripper. It took all of her willpower to sit perfectly still as his hands explored the base of her skull and her neck. She wondered if this was how he selected his other victims, because of their unusual physiology.

  ‘There’s half a sovereign in it for your time.’

  That would have been more than a week’s wages to Mary.

  29

  Intuit

  The walls of the Cerebarium were lined with glass bell jars, and each one contained a human brain floating in preservative fluid. As an officer of the Protectorate, Sabien had unrestricted access to every mind that had been donated to the Order.

  He hated the intuit process; the idea of connecting with another’s memories was anathema to him. It was developed to ensure the persistence of knowledge and it was the fastest way to transfer information between two people. Most members used it to learn a new language or research the local history of a particular period of time. Every one of the silent minds was a past master, an expert in their field.

  Maddox’s grandmother had been a very powerful seer in her day. Sabien was surprised that her granddaughter had not inherited her talent. Seers were different, they were generally born with the gift; the ability to read a person’s timeline, in the same way that most of the Order could do with inanimate objects. They used bloodlines, looking forward into the possible futures of their subject. It was something he had dabbled with, but he was a child playing with an ant compared to the power of a fully trained master.

  Maybelline Bell-Maddox, her name was written out in a fluid copperplate on the label of the jar. He took it down and carefully placed it into the compartment on the back of the seat of learning. Connecting the chair’s electrodes to the jar, he saw the bubbles begin to form over the grey, rippled surface of her brain as the chemical processes were triggered.

  Sabien sat down and lowered the copper lattice onto his head, feeling the cold plates touch his temple.

  * * *

  WHO/WHEN/WHY?

  Came the standard response. The mind was nothing more than a biological computer with hardly any residual personality. It could lay dormant for hundreds of years before being awoken and the first questions that it formed in his mind were always the same.

  INSPECTOR SABIEN, 11.888, HALLI MADDOX.

  GRANDAUGHTER?

  AFFIRMATIVE>REQUIRE LAST KNOWN LOCATION.

  He visualised Maddox at the door to Miller’s Court, but the image of the corpse in the room took its place.

  MURDERED?

  AFFIRMATIVE.

  He watched the deep memories surfacing from the dark recesses of her mind, events from Maddox’s childhood: games they played, a wardrobe filled with curiosities and all the times they had spent together while Maybelline had taught her about her gift.

  CURRENT LOCATION?

  He asked, trying to focus the mind on the problem.

  Lines stretched out i
nto a timeline. Not the simple linear ones of an object, but the winding organic ones that turned and branched like fractals. More complex than anything he had experienced, these were the bloodlines and he realised he was experiencing what a seer sensed when they read a person.

  He watched as she followed the lines that coalesced around the point of Maddox’s death, and began working backwards. She had gone to visit someone, a doctor, he couldn’t see the man’s face properly, it was nothing more than a shadowy outline that hovered at the limits of his perception.

  The mind changed focus, following the doctor’s life, which was unusually long. Over five thousand years or more. Sabien couldn’t make out the details, but it was obvious this was no normal bloodline.

  AEON?

  Asked the mind.

  Sabien shook his head, loosening the connection for a second. Aeons were a myth, it was a term the Copernicans used for someone with an unusually long lifespan, like an immortal. It was nothing more than a fairy story, a legend.

  Whatever he was, Maddox had tried to intervene and Sabien felt responsible. He had tried to save her from the pain and ended up sending her to her death.

  Maybelline’s mind seemed to shrink away from his, their connection fading.

  WHERE IS SHE?

  Demanded Sabien.

  An image appeared in his mind. It was a cabinet within her wardrobe, there was a drawer marked 11.888 and inside it was a locket.

  FIND MARY KELLY.

  He pulled the wire net of his head before the intuit had completely separated.

  SAVE HER.

  Pleaded her grandmother, as he put the jar back on the shelf.