The fine hairs on my body vibrated. Lifted and crackled with the shocking energy that arced between two bodies in a painful zap. I felt as though, at any moment, someone would snatch me from my feet and pull me into the blood-soaked past.
Two years is a respectable distance where death is concerned, but an evil so potent leaves a trace behind. Echoes rippling through time like an iridescent overlay or carbonless copy paper. I tried to convince myself that it was the hour, the circumstances, or the gruesome murder in front of me that summoned the shifting specter of a killer in my periphery.
But I knew it was the place.
13 Miller’s Court.
The archway beneath which I, Fiona Mahoney, had been well and truly broken.
I couldn’t accurately claim that I’d been repaired after all this time, but let us say I’d salvaged myself. Repurposed, even.
I stared down to the dark horizon along the row of common houses, distinct in their tight quarters and shoddy craftsmanship. In these dwellings barely fit for pigs, several impoverished families would often huddle together for warmth, or drunkards, whores, and thieves would pay a ha’penny for a dingy, flea-ridden bed, anemic tea, and a crust of bread.
They’d cram inside smelling of sweat and sex and liquor in an untenable mélange of vice and villainy.
Lifting my chin, I refused to look toward that arch. I did my utmost to maintain my decisive focus on the murder in front of me, not the one in my history. I toed up to the threshold, tucking escaped wisps of my dark, sleep-tangled knot behind my ears as I surveyed the gruesome scene.
“Who do you think sent for me?” I asked after clearing a gather of nerves from my throat.
His exhale, thick with smoke, reminded me that autumn would soon give way to winter, and my business always thrived in that season.
“Someone who didn’t know better.” He gave the shadows another dark glance.
Most of the men who worked at Scotland Yard knew of the painful, sanguinary past I shared with Whitechapel. You see, it was there that I began my profession as a Post-Mortem Sanitation Specialist.
I couldn’t shake the sense that I’d pleased the devil just by being here. That he observed me from his lair and smiled. A cold feeling, that. The coldest. It had me squinting over my shoulder into the night, searching for shades. For the demon I’d claimed as my own.
Because Dorset Street belonged to Jack the Ripper. Ask anyone.
I suspected it always would.
2
Constable Hurst leaned on my cart and lifted the burlap cover with his nightstick. He inspected the contents with all the disgusted curiosity an inquisitor owed a witch’s lair. To be fair, it contained a few less than potable concoctions.
And some less than legal, to boot.
He wrinkled his nose as he unstopped a vial and sniffed. If you wanted my opinion, I’d say he had the olfactory abilities of a bloodhound with a nose as beakish as his. He could simply sniff his way to a murderer. That he remained a mere constable at forty years of age or so, spoke volumes regarding his ineptitude. Men his age were usually promoted.
“Hao Long is a Chinaman’s name, Fanshaw?”
I tried not to shudder at how many of Hurst’s chins wobbled as he laughed.
“I dunno, Bob, ‘ow long is it?” Constable Fanshaw resembled a bundle of kindling leaned against the chipped brick of the common house. All long, spindly limbs and bristled whiskers.
“I’m telling you, Fanshaw, Hao Long is a Chinaman’s name.”
“Sounds like you’re asking me, Bob, and all I can say’s I don’t rightly know.”
“All’s I know is their names are about half as long as their—”
“That’s quite enough,” Croft intoned from the doorway. He used his sinewy frame as a sort of bulwark, letting nothing in nor out, while still giving Mrs. Sawyer and Aidan some privacy.
I appreciated his terse brand of chivalry, though I didn’t want to rely on it. So, I said, “I imagine you two lackwits think you’re as clever as the last dozen people I’ve heard have this exact conversation.” Tying my white apron around my trim waist kept me from gesturing at them, though I had a few particular gestures in mind. “I assure you both, it’s as tedious now as it was the first time.”
“Aw, we don’t mean no’fing by it, Miss Mahoney.” Fanshaw’s whiskers lifted in an attempt at a conciliatory smile. “Besides, ‘e don’t understand us, do ‘e?”
“My employee’s origins do not give you leave to be so inconsiderate,” I admonished. “If you use the pejorative again in his presence, I’ll be taking it up with your superior.”
Hurst muttered beneath his breath, “I’m not like to be in trouble over a bloody immigrant.”
“I am a bloody immigrant,” I reminded them, glancing at Hao Long, who stood patiently behind the cart in his silk vest and apron, hands clasped behind him.
The truth of it was, I didn’t have any idea how much English he understood. In the several months he’d worked for me, we’d miraculously communicated in gestures and looks. The only time we had trouble understanding each other was when we attempted to use language. So, we avoided it whenever possible.
He didn’t seem to be paying the uncouth constables any mind. Turned out, Hao Long watched Inspector Croft, who glared at me from beneath his felt hat as though the entire conversation were my fault.
I fought the urge to fix my untidy mahogany hair by rummaging in my things for the sleeve covers I used to protect my dress during such messy jobs. I tried to keep my movements unhurried as I pulled them on over my black frock.
“I’ll thank you to keep your paws off my things,” I snapped, grabbing for the bottle Fanshaw had extracted from its case.
He swung it high and out of my reach.
Even the taciturn Hao Long cringed perceptibly.
I planted both my hands on my hips, wishing my spectacles didn’t hinder my withering glare. “Have it your way, but that’s my concentrated hypochlorite powder. If any of that so much as touches the ammonia Hurst is currently mishandling, the fumes will melt the lungs right out of your chest, and you’ll drown in your own blood whilst struggling to cough it onto the stones.”
“We’re doing no’fing but inspecting it,” Fanshaw dismissed me. “Shew us the smelling salts in case you give over to hysterics?”
I did my best to ignore his jibe at my sex. “That vial is more likely to explode than I am. But if you break it, it’ll take a month’s wages to replace.”
“Look at her,” Hurst pointed. “Ears are the color of pickled beets.”
“Calm down,” Fanshaw put up a hand in an exaggerated gesture. “No need for a bird to get ‘er feathers in a ruffle.”
If there was anything more infuriating than a condescending male instructing me to remain calm when I am, indeed, already calm, I hadn’t found it yet.
It’d taken me twenty years and six brothers to learn, but I’d discovered how to school most of the emotions a man could use against me out of my countenance. What I didn’t have control of, however, was my skin. I blushed and flushed with alarming frequency. When emotions were high, my ears and my chest turned red as Robert Burns’ rose, and the crimson melted up my throat and down my cheeks in a splash of damning color.
“Put. Them. Back.” Croft’s command was immediately obeyed by both abashed constables. I couldn’t tell if I was more relieved that they’d minded him, or irritated that they’d heeded him over me.
Either way, I decided to mark this night as a ready example for the next time someone asked me why I wasn’t married at nine and twenty.
Marching up to Inspector Croft, I noted in my periphery that Hao Long had gathered the things we’d need to lift the bloodstains from the aged wooden floor. I tried not to smile when he snatched the hypochlorite powder from Constable Fanshaw’s hand as he trundled past.
“Has the photograph of the corpse been taken?” I asked Croft.
“It has.” From this vantage point beneath the dim light of the gas
lamp, his felt hat shadowed his eyes. That didn’t stop me from sensing the darkness in his gaze.
“And the doctor’s made the post-mortem report?” I made a show of searching our vicinity. “I don’t see him about.”
“He has.” A cloud of smoke erupted from his mouth at the curt words, and I waved it away, pretending that the smell of cloves and chicory offended me.
“And you’ve conducted your murder scene investigation, then?” I pressed impatiently.
“I have.” The nettle in his voice grated at nerves already raw.
I picked up the scraper and pail I’d leaned against the stoop and stood against him as he blocked my way into the house. “I’m trying to figure out why you haven’t cut the body down yet to send to the mortuary.”
He lifted his head to pierce me with a level stare. “I’m waiting on Aberline.”
I must have looked like a right idiot blinking at him for as long as I did. “Aberline?” I echoed like a daft parrot. “Inspector Fredrick Aberline? He’s coming here? To Whitechapel?”
“He is.”
If you were anything like me, you’d likely spend most of your time wanting to slap a proper response out of Inspector Croft, and I’d not blame you for it. I’d worked around him enough to know that if the preponderance of his answers contained two syllables instead of one, it meant he was feeling downright chatty.
“But why?” I wondered aloud. “Aberline is assigned to the borough of London, he’s not much been in Whitechapel since…” I paused, keenly aware of the dark arch to 13 Miller’s Court behind me. It loomed like a cold gate to Hell, not a hundred paces away.
Or, more appropriately, from Hell, to steal the closing salutation from the Ripper’s infamous letter.
Aberline hadn’t much been to Whitechapel since he’d conducted the murder inquiry and investigation of Jack the Ripper during the Autumn of Terror in 1888.
It seemed like an eternity, or maybe yesterday.
“I don’t often see you in these parts, either,” Croft said, and I detected a note in his voice that a more fanciful girl might have called grim, and a cynical woman might label suspicious. “Not that I blame you, mind. Business must be good if you can afford a row house in Chelsea all on your own.”
My business was none of his concern. Especially since some of my business could see me arrested.
Or hanged.
I tried to shoulder past him, using the handle of my scraper to avoid as much contact with his unyielding body as I could. “Do you know how much longer he’ll be? I’d really like to get on with it. It’s late enough to be early, and I’d like to be done before a crowd starts to gather at dawn, and an enterprising landlord starts charging admission for a view of the corpse—”
Croft’s hand winching around my arm was enough to startle me into silence, and I gaped at him in shock and alarm. “Go home, Fiona.” His low voice was astonishingly gentle, where his words were not. “You want no part of this.”
I stared up into his serious expression, trying to discern his intention. If the law hadn’t summoned me here. Then who?
A dark notion stabbed me in the gut, followed by a darker anticipation. What was Croft hiding from me? I understood that he disagreed with my choice of profession, but it was better than the alternative, and we both knew it.
Besides, I made more money than a prostitute.
Inspector Croft had never been friendly with me, never employed me, and had never called me Fiona. To him, I was Miss Mahoney. And only then if he acknowledged my presence at all.
It occurred to me in that moment, that the last time he’d physically held me back from a crime scene had, indeed, been almost two years ago in the doorway of 13 Miller’s Court.
He’d been a newly promoted inspector then, before the tiny shards of silver ever threaded themselves through the perpetually dark stubble on his jaw. I remembered how strong he was, how inflexible. Like a mountain in a morning suit.
“Why don’t you want me here, Inspector Croft?” I demanded, thoroughly studying the rough planes of his face, searching for a lie. “What aren’t you telling me? What are you trying to protect me from?”
“Yourself.” His grip tightened to painful on my arm.
“Why call Aberline to Whitechapel? Unless…”
My gaze swung back to the body of poor Mr. Sawyer. To the pool of blood beneath him. Blood that had long since ceased to disgust me. I devoured every visible detail the wan light allowed. The filthy tin basin of dark wash water perched on a rickety table. A few days’ worth of dirty dishes stacked in a bin. An upturned chair next to a scratched, unused writing desk. And an open, dingy window—
“Wait!” I surged against Inspector Croft’s hold, but it remained as secure as an iron shackle. “Let me go.”
“No,” he ground out. “There’s nothing here for you. No one to pay your bill. Just. Go. Home.”
But we both knew I’d seen what he hoped I wouldn’t. Water in a washbasin shouldn’t be so inky and dark when the dishes hadn’t been cleaned.
The water wasn’t water at all.
And it wasn’t blood, either.
“Was Mr. Sawyer disemboweled?” I demanded loudly, itching to get my hands on his buttoned shirt, vest, and jacket in order to rip them open. Knowing that desire made me a monster. “Are those his innards in that pail?”
Frank Sawyer’s throat had been cut in two neat motions, all the way to the bone. Exactly like the throats of more than six prostitutes during the Autumn of Terror. If I guessed right, he’d been sliced from pelvis to sternum, his organs removed. Organs that I was certain were piled neatly in the basin. Something I would confirm once I could see in better light.
Croft had called Aberline to Dorset Street because, even though the victim was a man, the wounds were too similar to the Ripper murders to ignore. Croft didn’t want me here because he knew of my obsession. Of the way I spent my sleepless nights, attempting to solve the very murder that’d thwarted the brightest investigative minds of our modern age.
And also his.
Croft had listened to the vow I’d made to my dear friend, Mary Kelly, as I’d scooped ruined bits of her into the very pail I now gripped in my hand. I’d promised that I would avenge her death. That I wouldn’t rest until I uncovered the identity of Jack the Ripper and saw to it that justice was done.
3
I wasn’t ashamed to say that I squirmed out of Croft’s ham-fisted grip in a rather undignified manner.
I’d heard Inspector Grayson Croft’s hands compared to iron hammers, and my smarting upper arm lent validation to the claim. I couldn’t say I’d studied them before, but I certainly did now.
My father used to say that you could tell a lot about a person by looking at their hands. And not in the way my Aunt Nola did, reading palms and the like, but by studying the details.
Inspector Croft’s hands matched the rest of him. Big, square, and rough, with old calluses, scars of dubious origin, and blunt fingers. Though his hands were clean, and his nails curiously well-kempt, the skin of his knuckles bore the craggy confessions of recent violence. As I stared, I idly wondered what my father would have said about Croft after taking a look at his hands.
I even allowed myself to wonder what Aunt Nola would read in them, though I would bet a month’s pay he’d never let her near them. The consummate skeptic was Croft.
“Why do you suppose it doesn’t smell?” I wondered aloud, hoping to buy myself the time it took for Aberline to arrive.
He glowered down at me, scrubbing the palm he’d maltreated me with on his suit coat before burrowing his fists into his pockets away from inspection. “It does smell. It smells like a ripe corpse and a lake of blood.”
“Well, that’s a given, isn’t it?” I glowered right back, furrowing my brow to do him one better in the foul expression department. “But you know as well as I that the stench of a disemboweled body is a great deal worse than your average corpse. We’d not like to be standing in such poorly ventilated rooms
without our suppers making a violent reappearance. What did the coroner have to say about that in the post-mortem report?”
His lips compressed into a white hyphen.
I marched over to the tin basin full of poor Mr. Sawyer’s innards. If Croft sanctimoniously refused me answers, I’d find them myself. I was no medical expert by any means, but neither was I a fool. Building a business such as mine, I’d learned a few things the past couple of years.
Hao Long followed me like a shadow, and I handed him my pail before I snatched the lantern from the table.
Careful to keep my skirts out of the pool of blood, I peered down into the macabre stew, holding the lantern aloft. “Which surgeon conducted the post-mortem examination?” I queried. “Dr. Brown or Dr. Phillips?”
If I were lucky, it would be Dr. Phillips. He was more likely to let me take a peek at the post-mortem report. I’d met him right here on Dorset Street when he reported the findings on poor Mary. He’d explained to me that post-mortem is Latin for after death. I liked the sound of it so much, I decided to purloin it for my own professional title.
“Most women would faint at the very thought of what is in this room,” Croft muttered, more to himself than to me.
“As I am not a matron, factory girl, nor a prostitute, it’s safe to assume I’m not like most women of your acquaintance, Inspector.”
“You are unlike anyone I know,” he confirmed.
I didn’t glance back to gauge Croft’s expression, mostly because I didn’t have to. I knew what he thought of me. To say I confounded him was putting it too mildly, and to say I disgusted him was too harsh. But I was certain the dark, bemused tone of his voice accompanied an expression I’d seen on too many faces. A horrified rejection at the sight of a well-kempt woman scrubbing blood from the wallpaper, carrying a mattress soaked through with the leavings of death…
Or using the wrong end of a soiled fork to slide organs around in a basin to inventory them—as was my current occupation.
The inspector wasn’t wrong when he said that ladies might be seized with the vapors at the sights and scents of death, but he wasn’t altogether accurate, either. In the two years I’d been a Post-Mortem Sanitation Specialist, I’d calculated that about one in four men collapsed in a faint that would do a debutante proud—and all at the sight of a little blood. Never mind a ghastly scene such as this one. And let me tell you, it was the bigger and more braggadocious ones that were the most often afflicted by a loss of consciousness. Of course, they didn’t call what a man did fainting. But it was the same bloomin’ thing, if you asked me.
The Business of Blood Page 2