I turned to Hao Long and gestured at the next room, where Aidan sat with Mrs. Sawyer, then I pointed back at the basin. He nodded and set down the pail and the tray of supplies he’d brought in with him. He eyed Croft as he passed the inspector in a rustle of dark silks.
Whilst waiting for Mr. Long to carry out his task, I refocused on the basin, doing my best to keep my heartbeat from galloping after my unruly thoughts.
It was all here as far as I could tell. Two kidneys with adrenal glands attached, two lungs, a heart, a liver, a spleen, a gallbladder with the bile duct still intact. I was extremely careful with the intestines as I nudged them aside with the handle of the fork. It wouldn’t do to acquaint myself with the contents therein.
Sweet Christ and all the saints, was that a…? Was that his shillelagh? I cast a horrified glance back at the corpse and noted that the blue fabric of his trousers had darkened between his legs.
Dear Jesus, I wondered if he’d still been alive when his sex was cut from his body.
“You can’t come in here, Father, this is a murder scene.” I turned to find Croft’s shoulders blocking Aidan from entering the room.
“I understand, Inspector, but the Chinaman fetched me,” Aidan said congenially, nodding his head to where Hao Long lingered beside him.
Though he was the taller of the two, Aidan emitted a great deal less menace than Croft. He looked past the inspector to find me, an action I assumed Croft did not appreciate if his stance was ought to go by.
“Do you need something?” he asked.
“Your opinion.” I pointed to the basin.
“Absolutely not.” Croft remained where he was, as insurmountable as a Spartan shield wall. And just as prickly.
“Sorry, Fi.” Aidan shrugged in that disarming way of his. “Besides,”—he wrinkled his nose at the scent of death— “I’d just as soon not join you in there.”
Croft grunted his approval and whirled on me, thunder gathering above the Irish moss in his eyes. “Now, are you leaving, or do I have to physically escort you out?”
Throw me out, he meant.
Aidan’s voice remained agreeable as he asked, “Are your hands clean, Fiona?”
I didn’t miss the tic in Croft’s temple every time Aidan said my Christian name.
The question surprised me so much, I studied my hands for an instant too long, wondering if he’d meant the query about blood in the existential sense, or the literal.
Some of the blood from the fork had made it onto my fingers, so I looked back up at him and shook my head in the negative.
My hands were unclean. I was glad he didn’t know just how soiled they were in the eyes of his Lord.
“Mrs. Sawyer is requesting her shawl, a frock, and a few…delicates, as she’s surrendering her garments for evidence,” Aidan said. “Do you mind very much if I fetch them for her, Inspector Croft? Or would you rather do it?”
Croft set his jaw and looked at the ceiling. I imagined him silently asking the Almighty why he’d been cursed with the two most aggravating Catholics in London on top of such a nightmarish murder scene. I also imagined that he’d rather do anything but paw through a woman’s unmentionables with her murdered husband still hanging from the rafters, and their priest looking on, besides.
“Be quick about it,” Croft ordered gruffly, moving to the side just enough to allow Aidan room to shoulder through.
Once he’d gained access to the scene, Aidan gave me a victorious smile and a cheeky wink, reminding me of the days when we’d been each other’s closest confidants and conspirators.
I turned away so Croft couldn’t see my secret smile.
So Aidan couldn’t see my secret pain.
“Fiona, would you show me what a crinoline is?” Aidan requested. “Mrs. Sawyer is very adamant that she cannot be considered modestly dressed without it.”
“Certainly,” I agreed, ignoring the irate sound Croft made as I drifted over to where Aidan stood in front of the wretched wardrobe.
He swung it open, supporting the door once it became readily apparent that only one of the hinges was capable of carrying out its vocation.
“What was your question?” Aidan grabbed the crinoline without instruction, sliding me an expectant glance.
This is why I love—loved him. Past tense. He would still bend the rules for me.
“Mr. Sawyer was disemboweled,” I whispered. “All of his organs are in that basin over there.”
He cast the basin a dismayed look. “It doesn’t smell like it.”
“Exactly,” I said, fighting to keep the enthusiasm out of my voice. “The intestines weren’t perforated one little bit. If they were, it’d smell like a shithouse in here.”
“Language, Fiona,” Aidan scowled.
I ignored him. “What do you make of that?”
It was common knowledge in Whitechapel that before Aidan had become a priest, he’d been the top medical student at Trinity College, only months away from becoming a doctor. He often nursed the sick as he ministered to them.
They didn’t know he’d been months away from becoming my husband.
“Cutting a man’s organs out so neatly is no easy feat,” he said, interrupting the dangerous direction of my thoughts. “You’d need knowledge of just where and how to dissect the dermis to avoid organ damage and remove everything.”
We looked at the body, the dark suit covering an empty cavity, and then back at each other. Our eyes widened in tandem as Aidan confirmed that he shared my suspicions. “You don’t think this was done by…”
“This man is not a victim of Jack the Ripper,” Croft snarled from behind us. “Now, get what you need and get out.”
I faced him, shoulders squared, and guilt concealed firmly behind bravado. “Then why send for Aberline?” I challenged.
“Yes, Inspector Croft. Why summon me to this cursed street at this ungodly hour?”
Chief Inspector Frederick George Aberline appeared in the doorway, a weary crusader in a checkered suit and a billycock hat. Gleaming from his vest dangled a watch chain the Prince of Wales would lust after. It wasn’t that the inspector was a particularly fashionable fellow, just an abidingly punctual one.
Whitechapel used to be his kingdom, as he’d been the local inspector in charge of H Division’s Criminal Investigations Division.
Blunt features adorned with silver muttonchops and kind eyes provided a façade for a mind as precise and ruthless as the spinning cogs of Big Ben. Which explained why, two years ago, Aberline had been drafted to lead the inquest into the Ripper murders.
I always assumed that his acquaintance with the peculiar singularities of the Whitechapel district had something to do with his enlistment to the case.
Inspector Croft opened his mouth to debrief Aberline, but the chief inspector interrupted him.
“Why, Miss Mahoney. It’s been too long since I’ve clapped these old eyes on such a beauty that in’nt my Emma.”
He was being kind, of course, but I blushed anyway. Frederick Aberline loved his wife to distraction, but it didn’t stop him from being a harmless flirt once in a while.
We spinsters lived upon the praise of harmless flirts.
He ducked past Croft with a friendly chuck on the arm and surveyed the scene with his characteristic shrewdness.
“It’s a pleasure to see you again, Inspector,” I said, though I didn’t extend my hand to his on account of the utensil I still gripped, and the blood and whatnot on my fingers.
“I wish it was somewhere but Dorset Street.” He echoed the sentiment heartily shared by everyone in the room.
“May I introduce an…old friend?” I hurried to keep the conversation from following the dark path to Miller’s Court. “Chief Inspector Frederick Aberline, this is Father Aidan Fitzpatrick of St. Michael’s off Leman Street. The victim and his wife are part of his congregation.”
“St. Michael, the patron saint of soldiers,” Aberline recalled aloud as the two shared a congenial handshake.
&nbs
p; “Indeed, Inspector,” Aidan said with a solemn nod.
“You’ve the look of a soldier, lad. Where’d you serve? South Africa? The Boer War?”
If his deduction surprised Aidan, he didn’t show it. “Different army, I’m afraid,” he admitted a little sheepishly. “I spent most of my youth as part of the Sinn Fein, fighting for an independent Ireland.”
Aberline made an uncomfortable noise. “Terrible business, that.”
I chanced a peek at Aidan’s carefully impassive features, noting his pallor and the gathering of mist on his upper lip. Not for the first time, I burned to know what had happened to him during his short stint in the Irish Republican Army.
I was sure it was the reason he hadn’t married me, though he’d never said as much.
“And a dreadful business, this.” Aberline gestured to Mr. Sawyer, correctly deducing that he’d found Aidan at the shores of a mire he had no great need to forge. Instead, he toed to the edge of the spreading pool of blood that coagulation had begun to contain.
I sent Hao Long a morose look, and he nodded conspiratorially. Time was, indeed, of the essence, as the floor planks were old, porous, and feebly kept. Which meant, the longer the blood had to cling to the wood, the worse it would stain.
“I see now why I was summoned,” Aberline muttered, a remembered darkness feathering across the lines of his face before it disappeared beneath a mask of nonchalance every inspector must practice at length. He crouched down on his haunches to get a better look, rather too certain of his balance if you asked me, as an upset in stability would plunk him right into the gruesome lake. “I’ve not seen a throat done like this since our old nemesis, eh, Croft? And am I to assume that’s not laundry in that basin over there?”
Croft removed his hat, though I was sure it was only done to lend weight to the dark glare he directed at me rather than in any deference to decorum. “I’ll clear the room and brief you on the particulars. Then I’d like to request that you accompany me to the morgue.”
“I’ll stay, if it’s all the same to you.” I quickly directed this to Aberline as he’d proven himself my ally more than once.
The regret in his eyes sent my hopes plummeting before he delivered his gentle rejection. “I’m sorry, Miss Mahoney, but it’s against procedure, and this scene is already muddled enough. Once the body is cleared away, we’ll invite you back to work your magic on the place. It’s a good thing you do for these families visited by such horrors. I’m sure Mrs. Sawyer is grateful to employ you.”
At this, confusion drew my brows together. “I was hoping you’d sent for me, Inspector.”
“To Dorset Street?” He gasped as though I’d done him a personal affront. “I’d never! Not to within a stone’s throw of where poor Miss Kelly—” He broke off, perceptibly reddening. “And to a scene like this? What must you think of me?”
“It’s become a bit of a mystery just who sent for Miss Mahoney.” Croft stood over Aberline, crossing his arms over his chest in a sardonic gesture. “The affair of the unpaid invoice.”
I balled my fists and pursed my lips, fighting the spurt of Irish temper heating my blood.
“The church will cover it, of course, on behalf of poor Mrs. Sawyer.” Aidan was at my side at once, his hand reclaiming its perch on my shoulder. “Come, Fiona. Let us leave the inspectors to their work.” He clutched Agnes Sawyer’s garments in his other hand as he attempted to steer me in the direction of the door.
Aberline sent him a grateful smile as Croft’s hard mouth inverted the gesture.
“At least let me take the basin to the coroner’s cart for you,” I suggested, doing my best to hide precisely how keen I was to do so. If I could get that bit outside, perhaps Aidan could help me examine it for any pertinent clues. “It’ll improve the smell.”
“Not a chance—” Croft began.
“I’d be obliged,” Aberline said simultaneously.
“But won’t you need to inspect—?”
“I’m feeling a might peaky, Croft.” Aberline patted his belly. “Anything you want to show me in that basin, you can report with the Queen’s own English.”
I did my best not to look smug as I motioned for Hao Long to help me heft the tub. Perhaps I didn’t exactly smother all triumph from sparkling in my eyes, but let’s call it a decent effort and move right along.
The coroner’s cart was teamed by horses a bit too fresh for ghastly cargo with a propensity to slosh, but it wasn’t my business to notice. They kept the antsy animals in line with a rough hand, too distracted by their task to pay us much mind as we perched the basin on the backboard.
“Aidan,” I said excitedly, shooing Hao Long away to make room at my side. “Hurry and help me look through this. You can tell me if anything is missing.”
“Dear God, why would you want to do that?” he asked, horrified.
“Because.” My whisper escaped as a hiss. “The Ripper usually took something, didn’t he? An ear, a womb, a bladder, a kidney, or what have you. If I’m not to hear what the detectives have to say, then maybe I can find something helpful in the evidence left behind.” I poked my pilfered fork toward the contents of the basin, then gave the street a furtive glance, ensuring our privacy.
It was just before two in the morning, a time when the denizens of the night who plied their various seedy trades in the district began to seek refuge from the misery of the matins. To them, the insufficient gas lamps of Whitechapel only created more opportune shadows. But once dawn licked the stones with grey, the respectable and industrious citizens would emerge, and they didn’t take kindly to seeing the illicit revenants of the dark. Most factory workers wouldn’t rouse until five, so now was the time when the streets were nigh empty, and the shadows were full and long.
In fact, one shifted with a serpentine grace over by the Miller’s Court arch, and I thought I got an impression of a top hat and a dark overcoat.
Stunned, I dropped the fork.
I grimaced with distaste as I retrieved it from where it slid between a kidney and the wall of the basin.
When I looked up again, the shadow had disappeared.
If it had ever been there to begin with.
So what if there had been a man in a top hat? I admonished myself. Such a sighting wasn’t exactly a rarity, and the depictions in the papers of the gentleman Ripper with his top hat and smart mustache had no basis in reality or even hearsay. They were just the speculations of rabid journalists.
Still, I couldn’t shake the sense that a killer stood nearby. That he watched me conduct my gruesome investigation. That he appreciated the sight of blood on my hands.
This place was driving me looney.
“I don’t like this,” Aidan lamented.
“Oh, come now,” I goaded. “You don’t expect me to believe that you’ve gone all squeamish, do you?”
“Of course, not. But, Jesus, Mary, and Joseph, Fiona, that’s all that’s left of a parishioner of mine in there. A man brutally murdered, possibly tortured, and his poor wife—widow— may be within earshot.”
I used to like to watch emotion turn his dark eyes grey. But couldn’t bring myself to look at them now.
“What if those were my bits in that basin?” he asked. “Would you just poke about at them with a dirty fork and get on with it?”
“No.” My voice sounded churlish and ashamed all at once, and only served to fuel my ire. Had this been Aidan, I’d be nothing but a puddle on the ground. His death didn’t bear consideration. Not even in the hypothetical.
Even though he wasn’t mine…he was all I had left.
“What if we could help find the killer?” I challenged. “You know the Sawyers better than anyone in there, and Whitechapel is your home, isn’t it? What if he’s back, Aidan? What if this killing is the first of many?”
“I want justice done, same as you, for the Sawyers and for Mary.” The genuine tenderness in his voice strung my nerves tight as a piano wire, and I hunched against it lest it breach my composure. “Two
of Scotland Yard’s finest inspectors are on the case. If Jack the Ripper has returned, then Whitechapel isn’t safe. And if he hasn’t, then this is some…perverse imitation of what he’s done. One that’s not likely to be an isolated event.”
I started when he touched my cheek, as I’d been too busy inspecting the darkness to notice his hand move. “Either way, it isn’t a place for you. I don’t want you involved in all of this—”
I slapped his hand away and jabbed the fork into the air between us. “You don’t get to tell me my place, Aidan Fitzpatrick.” There was no Irish fire in my tone this time, only ice. “I believe Mrs. Sawyer is waiting for her things.” I adjusted my spectacles with my clean hand and turned back to the basin, summarily dismissing him.
He stood behind me for a moment, motionless and silent. I could hear every word ever spoken and unspoken between us spilling onto the ground at my back.
“I understand what the years have done to you, Fiona. I know all the reasons you do what you do.” The pity in his voice summoned a scream from deep, deep in my soul, and I swallowed three times to keep it from escaping. “I appreciate that you have to be cold sometimes. But have a care this profession of yours doesn’t make you heartless.”
Heartless.
Struck by an idea, I frantically searched until I found Frank Sawyer’s heart in the center of the basin. An unceasingly strong muscle upon which one’s entire existence depended. I counted four chambers. Four valves. I stared hard, unblinking in the wan light until Aidan’s retreating footsteps plodded away.
I’d never found Mary Kelly’s heart.
Every single part of her had been catalogued in all its exposed and grotesque exactitude. But not her heart. Jack had taken that, along with her life.
The Business of Blood Page 3