“For someone so injured, I don’t know how I can. All I can say is that justice has a means of finding us, one way or another.”
“Then I hope I can escape it for what I did to my pa. If I can find my way to California, I’ll wade out in the ocean and be baptized as a new person.”
“I know about reinventing yourself, Beth. You’re a smart woman. You can be anything you want to be.” Still, Felicity couldn’t help but be frightened for her.
Beth got up from the bed with another squeak. “I appreciate the thought, Miss Felicity. But don’t matter where I go. Everything will be the same. The men. The beds. In Placer, I got lots of friends at least. A man at the Red Rose Gambling House even talks about marrying me.”
“You’ll be leaving behind a place stalked by a horrible murderer. Please, consider my suggestion.” Felicity placed the money on top of the small chest. “The bank notes will be here if you change your mind. Few people receive a second chance, Beth. This is yours. Take it.”
Beth smiled. “I’ll think about it.”
“Until you leave town, promise me you won’t go out after sunset.”
“I promise, Miss Felicity.”
“That’s a start.”
She glanced at the small kitchen area. “I wish I had tea to offer. English people love tea.”
At last, Felicity smiled. “I do like coffee.”
“Got some on the stove.” Beth headed toward the kitchen but stopped and turned around. “Hold on. Something’s different about you since the last time we talked.”
Felicity’s cheeks heated.
The young woman slapped her knee with laughter. “I want to hear the whole story over a cup of brew.”
“Honestly, this is a very private matter.” Felicity did want to discuss her fledgling experience with a woman of, well, numerous ones, but would not out of respect to Tom Pike.
“Come on, spill the details, Miss Felicity.”
“I have no comment.” She smiled larger than she should have.
Beth’s eyebrows rose with mischief.
“What?”
“You’ve been with the sheriff. I seen how he looked at you in front of the café. Like you were heaven on two legs even though he was mad.”
“We shared a kiss.”
Beth motioned for more details.
“All right, kisses. That is all, I can assure you.”
“That’s a start.” Beth threw her head back in a laugh. “You don’t need any pointers, do you, Miss Felicity?”
“No, thanks. I’ve always been a good student.”
“Good. Then I’ll go get your coffee.”
That night, Felicity sat on the porch of her house in Placer. Below she had a good view of the lights of the town. The brighter spots in the center of town where electricity had arrived. The dots of light at the mines and smelters. The darker area of the Red District.
The night became pitch and lifeless after a covering of clouds shrouded the full yellow moon. The clouds thickened, and lightning flared up behind them. Rain would come soon, she thought, and wrapped her shawl tighter. She had always loved the smell of rain back home in England. The freshness and renewal it brought. She hoped the same would happen so far away from Carrol Manor, but still her skin chilled, because the clouds and sky were full of turmoil. The rain started pinging on the roof.
She couldn’t seem to move other than rock back and forth on the wooden chair. She was weighed down by the events of the day, by Beth’s story and a floundering inquiry. She had a good suspect in Lennox but couldn’t uncover enough evidence to use against him. All those circumstances seemed to bind her. She could have been sinking helplessly under a deluge of rain. Down to where there was no freshness or renewal. No light at all. The chillness of her skin turned to stiff cold, just like it did for the murdered or those soon to be.
CHAPTER 24
Felicity took her final photograph of the body. Sunlight had scattered the storm clouds of the previous night.
The victim appeared to be in her twenties and heavyset. Spread over the ground, her black straight hair resembled the beaks of hungry ravens. She had died wearing a cheap red velvet dress, red stockings, and black boots. The yellow feathers in her trifling black hat had dried to a pitiful sight.
Rain had washed the blood from the neck wound, which was identical to those of the other victims. The woman’s sad dress had been hiked up. An incision along the right side of her abdomen stopped short halfway up.
Taking care not to slip on the mud, Felicity packed up her camera. “What’s her name?”
“Teresa Sweet,” Pike said.
“A girl of the line?”
“She worked in a brothel. And forget about finding any good footprints in all this mud.”
Felicity bent over. Sloppy ruts that might have been footprints marked the brown muck around the body. A few of the holes were filled with water colored red by blood. Mud clung to Felicity’s skirt as she stood.
The body had been found in a large stand of white-barked aspens. Less than six yards away was a dirt path that wound through the trees. She and Pike walked to the path. Standing there with a deputy was a slender man with white hairs sprouting irregularly from his chin. The hair on top of his head was also white and scattered. His hair and clothes were covered with sawdust and mud and his fingers looked coarse as sand. The nails on his right hand were black-and-blue, as if he had hit them with a hammer. His appearance told Felicity that he worked with wood. He leaned on a thick branch from an aspen tree and rubbed his left knee.
Sheriff Pike introduced Billy Stuart to Felicity, keeping her story that she was a writer interested in crime. “He works as a carpenter at the smelter.”
She had been right about his profession.
“Tell us what you saw, Billy,” Pike said.
“It was about three in the morning and I was making my way back to my boarding house on Sluice Street. After a full shift, the pain from my bum knee hurt awful, so I thought I’d take Digger’s Lane to make the trip shorter.”
Using the aspen as a crutch, he walked a little up the path to illustrate his story. “I was about here, I guess, when I heard what sounded like the moans of a sick dog. I look over and see a man bent over a woman lying on the ground. The moon was full, so that helped. The man held something in his hand. Even with little light to see by, I’d been in enough bar fights to sense the presence of a knife.”
Stuart hobbled off the path. “I yelled, ‘Hey you! What you doing to that woman?’ and I went toward them. That bastard straightened and made his way through the trees. I followed. I had read about the murders of the girls of the line in the Gazette, so I gave chase. And I remember reading about the reward money, so that put a fire under my old feet.”
With difficulty, Stuart turned and headed up the path, with Felicity and Pike following. She heard Stuart’s knee cracking.
“Did you see his face?” Felicity asked.
“Now, ma’am. It was just too dark. I forgot about the ache in my knee and ran quick as I could. I didn’t have no gun. Don’t carry them. But I yelled, ‘Hold it, you son of a bitch!’ and hoped the man might turn around, but he didn’t.”
The dirt path ended at a set of wooden steps leading up a twelve-foot incline to Ore Avenue.
Stuart pointed at the stairs. “Right here, the man slipped. I reached out and touched his pant leg but couldn’t get a firm hold. The man kicked at me, leapt up, and reached the street above. By the time I climbed up there, the man was gone. Agony plunged into my knee and my face smacked onto the dirt of Ore Avenue. I dragged myself up to the street and started yelling for help, but the street was deserted.”
His shoulders sagged. “I made my way back down and found a tree branch to use as a crutch. Then I found the woman and lit matches. Her eyes were open, but she was dead. I picked up her hand. Still warm.”
“Was the man dressed as a gent?” Pike said, beating Felicity to the question.
“Yes, sir. Long black coat, hat,
nice pants and shoes.”
“I applaud your keen observations, Mr. Stuart,” she said.
“Call me Billy. I’m just sorry I didn’t see that bastard’s face.” His rough cheeks went vermillion.
“You said you heard noises first,” Felicity said.
“Didn’t sound like no man. Sounded like something with claws and teeth and hooves. An animal with rabies, but also howling in pain. Gives me the shivers to think about it.” Stuart rubbed his sore knee harder. “If I’d only spotted him ten minutes earlier, the poor girl might be walking around today.”
“You did all you could to apprehend the madman,” Felicity said. “You don’t have to be sorry for anything.”
Pike placed his hand on the older man’s shoulder. “Go on home now, Billy. Take care of your knee.”
Still using the branch as a cane, Billy Stuart staggered away.
“Any other witnesses see the killer?” Felicity asked Pike.
He took off his hat and slapped it against his hand. “At that time of night and between shifts at the mines and smelters, the streets are empty. You’ve seen the Red District at that hour. Too many places to hide.”
“What about the reward the city is offering?”
“Didn’t amount to spit.” He kicked at the dirt.
“What’s really bothering you, Tom?”
“In London, Jack the Ripper didn’t finish cutting up Elizabeth Stride, because he’d been interrupted. So he murdered Catherine Eddowes the same night.”
“What are you getting at?”
“He’s going to kill again, and very soon.”
CHAPTER 25
TO: FELICITY CARROL
PLACER MONTANA, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FROM: MORTON & MORTON, LONDON, ENGLAND
NO RECORD OF WILLIAM LENNOX ATTENDING UNIVERSITY OF EDINBURGH MEDICAL SCHOOL.
NO INFORMATION OF LENNOX PRACTICING MEDICINE IN ENGLAND OR SCOTLAND. PHOTO OF DR. DRURY DIFFICULT TO OBTAIN. NO FAMILY LOCATED. WILL CONTINUE EFFORTS.
JOSHUA MORTON
With the telegram from her solicitors, Felicity hurried to Pike’s office. When his deputies told her he had not yet come to work, she rode to his house and knocked hard. He answered with half of his face shaven.
“So what?” He handed back the telegram after reading it.
“Ask your Dr. Lennox why he lied about going to medical school in Edinburgh.”
“Did he tell you he went there, or did you just assume it because he’s Scottish?” Pike grimaced from a nick.
Felicity didn’t want to answer. “He was terribly ambiguous.”
“How about the notepaper you stole from his house?”
“Similar to the one sent to you.”
“The same paper?”
“My results are inconclusive.”
“Any blood on his pen?”
“No. You sound like a lawyer.”
“Someone needs to remember the law around here.” Pike walked to his bedroom with Felicity at his heels. He finished shaving. “Why are you so dang convinced Dr. Lennox is guilty?”
“Along with what I’ve found, he’s cold and calculating. The very essence of a killer with no conscience.” Glancing at herself in his mirror, she perspired as if a dying star flared inside her.
Pike wiped the shaving soap off with a towel. “You’re not talking about Dr. Lennox, are you?”
Her knees shook under her dress. “Who else could I be talking about?”
“Go ahead and tell me. The words are on your tongue. I can almost see them sitting there.”
She sat in a chair across from him. “You have the most irritating habit of dissecting everything I say. I should know what I’m talking about.”
“If you say so.” He headed to the kitchen, where he poured a mug of coffee.
His statement jolted her momentarily, but she pursued him. “Jack the Ripper will go on killing in Placer, and other towns, unless he is stopped.”
“For once we agree. But you haven’t given me anything solid enough to make me believe the doctor butchered those women.”
“He has the skill and personality. He had the opportunity.” He snorted at that. “And Tom, I feel the truth in my bones.”
Pike donned a triumphant face.
“Why are you looking at me like that?”
“You’re finally learning not all facts come from under a microscope.”
“Nonsense.”
He put on his hat, Felicity still trailing him. “Where are you going?”
“To find our man. You coming or not, Miss Carrol?”
She sped to catch up with him.
At the three-story brothel on Slag Street where Teresa Sweet had lived and worked, Felicity and Pike talked with the madam and other prostitutes, who said Teresa had left around eleven.
“She told us she was going to see Bill Mandrake at the Riding Horse Saloon on Viceroy Street. Most nights she did that,” said one woman. “Teresa and him were sweethearts.”
The dead’s girl room revealed nothing.
“Much nicer than the cribs of Viceroy,” Felicity said as she and Pike inspected the room. A new brass bed. Tiffany lamps, thick rugs on the floor. Lace curtains. Even a writing desk.
“The madams protect the brothel girls.” Pike looked through a small trunk in the corner.
“At least inside these walls.”
They stopped at the Riding Horse Saloon, where Pike wanted to interview Teresa Sweet’s lover.
“This might not be the work of your killer at all, but a deadly lover’s spat,” Pike said before entering.
“This wasn’t a crime of passion. It was a crime of madness,” Felicity said.
A young man with the robust cheeks of a farm boy, Bill Mandrake slowly cleaned the bar with a rag. From the redness of his face, he had been crying.
“Teresa left here a little after one. I read in the newspaper about the other murdered girls, and I pleaded with her to stay until my shift ended at three and then I’d walk her home.”
“Why didn’t she stay?” Pike asked.
“Teresa said the madam wanted her back by one thirty or else she’d fine her twenty dollars.” Mandrake bowed his head as if he had served his last drink. “I wanted to marry her. Teresa called me foolish because she considered herself tainted, but never was there a gentler girl.”
“Did a man dressed in a long dark coat, bowler hat, and gloves come into your saloon? Someone perhaps paying special attention to Teresa?” Felicity asked. The man replied with a shake of his head.
“And where were you last night?” Pike asked the barman.
Mandrake’s face lost its color. “I’d never hurt Teresa, but I understand you asking.” He waved over an older bull of a man. “Seth, please tell the sheriff. Did I leave the bar last night?”
“No, sir. Bill stayed here until three this morning.”
“Never saw him leave?” Pike asked.
“No, sir.” The man left to help customers at the other end of the bar.
“Then I am sorry for you loss,” Felicity said.
Bill Mandrake’s eyes became wet with tears. “If women aren’t safe in this world, then who is?”
With Felicity at his side, the sheriff proceeded to knock on every door within a mile of Digger’s Lane asking anyone if they had seen the suspect who had run from Billy Stuart. Not one had. Last, they made a stop at the Quigley and Son Funeral Parlor.
“All right, let’s see what you can do,” Pike said.
Felicity smiled.
While Pike and Marcus Quigley stood off to the side, Felicity took a magnifying glass from her satchel and carefully inspected the victim’s clothing and body. To her chagrin, she found no red hairs anywhere.
“She wasn’t violated,” Felicity said after scrutinizing the lower part of the body.
“How do you know?” Pike said.
“No traces of seminal fluid nor bruising around her legs or groin. Then again, there were no indications of rape on any of the other victims
.”
“That’s what I like about Miss Carrol,” Quigley said. “She don’t hold nothing back.”
“Marcus, you and I are going to have a long talk one day,” the sheriff said.
“’Bout what?”
“Not telling me about her earlier visits.”
“She bribed me, Tom. I’m guilty.”
Felicity’s nerves tingled from having Pike watch her work. As if he might be grading her investigative skills.
When inspecting the wounds, she called Pike closer. “They match those on the other women. The same knife was used on all of them.” She explained the difference in the cuts made by single- and double-edged blades.
Pike rubbed his large hands over his face as if just waking up. “Marcus, please remove one of the eyeballs of this lady.”
Quigley didn’t flit an eyelash. “I’ve had worst requests. Which one you want?”
* * *
In the darkroom located in the cellar, Felicity prepared for the photograph and its development. Upstairs, Pike nosed through the kitchen for something to hold the eyeball so they could shoot the light through the lens and onto the photographic paper. She had also asked him to bring down a metal funnel. If Helen should return, Felicity had advised him to merely say she needed the kitchen tools for one of her experiments.
Returning to the cellar, Pike held a wire ladle, knife, and funnel. He used the knife to make a small hole in the bottom of the ladle to hold the eye. Around the cellar, he located four bricks and set the ladle handle between two of them to place the eye about three feet from the surface of the counter as per her instructions.
“Excellent, Tom.”
“If anyone had told me I was going to help take a photograph through a dead woman’s eye, I’d have locked them up for being monkey drunk.”
“I’m not sure what that means. Let’s crack on, shall we?”
Working by kerosene lamps, she and Pike carefully detached the two electrical wires tacked to the ceiling, along with the lightbulbs and the power switch. Pike ran the bulb over the food shelves and power switch into the darkroom.
He withdrew the victim’s right eyeball from the white cloth in which Quigley had wrapped it. At Felicity’s direction, he placed the eyeball in the spoon of the ladle with the lens facing the counter. Pike scrunched his face as he touched the slimy orb.
Felicity Carrol and the Murderous Menace Page 23
