City of Darkness

by Kim Wright

  “It’s honest work and it will allow me to remain at Rosemoral,” William said. His tone was calm and steady but he couldn’t quite bring himself to meet Cecil’s eyes. “Leanna will need help to keep the property productive and it isn’t as if I don’t know the land. Truly, Cecil, there’s no shame in taking up a profession. You could consider it as well. ”

  “Please! Can you really imagine me toiling as a tradesman or soldier or even - no offense intended, Neddy - a barrister? Taking lessons, rising at dawn, holding a schedule…”

  “The will allows for it,” William said stubbornly. “If you went to Tom and professed some sort of interest he would be bound to release funds for tuition and then you could - ”

  “Neither one of you understands the true enormity of my needs,” Cecil said, bending forward to drop his pale face into well-manicured hands. “It isn’t merely that I’ve lost what I had…”

  The silence in the room grew uncomfortable and William and Edmund Solmes exchanged a pointed glance. The man must dye his hair with shoe polish, William thought, for no one could have such a weathered face and still maintain that shock of ebony hair. And his hands…they tremble with the palsy when one gets quite close to him. Cecil is a fool, fawning over this dandy, promising him their sister. Calling him Neddy, indeed, as if they were schoolboys! Precisely how old was the fellow, anyway?

  “I think we do understand you, Cecil,” Solmes finally said. “You’ve wagered not only against funds in pocket but against future earnings, that’s the trouble, isn’t it?”

  “Strange time to hear a lecture from you, Neddy.”

  “And I take it Miss Wentworth is out of the picture? There’s no means of escape in her?”

  Cecil flushed. “You’re aware she will no longer receive me.”

  “So,” Solmes said. “All roads lead back to Rosemoral and the estate that is housed there.”

  “Really, Cecil,” William said. “This is one time I can’t say I feel that sorry for you. The will allows you income, you had Hannah all but hooked, and as Mr. Solmes said, if you had played it smart, gone to Leanna every now and again for a bit of cash…”

  “In dribs and drabs,” Cecil said morosely. “I can’t live like that. I have my pride!”

  William turned away in disgust, his vision falling on the moth-eaten tapestries suspended from the ceiling. This office, he reflected, was much like its owner, with a thin veneer of gloss applied over a crumbling core. The sort of place which impresses the eye at first glance and then upon reflection begins to disappoint in innumerable small ways. Not like Rosemoral, William thought. The surface may not be as glamorous, but there is substance and quality underneath. Although he would never confess this to Cecil, William rather liked the idea of estate management. He could see himself living out his years at Rosemoral with a plump little wife, his herb garden, a litter of children and an annuity promptly paid each month…

  “Is this really enough for you?” Cecil asked, as if William’s thoughts were an open book. “Begging Tom for money so you can go to school to learn how to be a farmer, for God’s sake. Being in Leanna’s employ! I can’t believe you’d even consider it.”

  “I am considering it,” William said. “And the more I consider it, the more I think being the estate manager wouldn’t be so different from being the master of Rosemoral. It would enable me to go through with the plans I’ve made. The back acreage is being wasted. We could bring in sheep…”

  “Sheep,” Cecil said bitterly. “How appropriate.”

  William felt as if he were seeing his brother for the first time. When they’d been boys, people had often mistaken Cecil for the elder of the two. William had the brawn but Cecil had been the one gifted with the quick mind, the glib turn of phrase, the ability to converse with adults when he was still in short pants. Why did I envy him, William wondered. Why have I spent my entire life trying to win his approval?

  “Yes, sheep,” he said again, more firmly. “I think Leanna and Tom will both see my reasoning. And I want to bring in an ostentation of peacocks.”

  Cecil and Solmes merely stared at him.

  “That’s what you call a group of peacocks,” William said, nodding as if the decision was already made. “An ostentation.”

  Cecil fumbled for his pipe. “Have you gone mad?”

  “I always have rather liked peacocks,” William said, to no one in particular. “They give the lawns such a regal air.”

  Edmund Solmes considered this remark for perhaps two seconds, then turned his attention, and his full body, back towards Cecil. “There is, of course, the chance your sister might marry someone sympathetic to your needs. If she marries, control of the funds will pass to her husband and if he were the right sort of man he might seek to rectify the mistakes of the will.”

  “And give all the money back to his brothers-in-law?” Cecil asked irritably. “I bloody rather doubt it, unless she marries a dunce, and even so there is baby Tom to consider.”

  “As her family, as her older male relatives, you may have some influence over her choice.”

  “Gad, Neddy, that’s quite out of our hands now. Leanna’s independent. She can take up with the apple seller on the corner for all I know or care. Besides, I wouldn’t put it past Leanna to remain a virgin until death just to spite us, and we all know that virgins live forever.”

  Solmes smiled. “Actually, if your sister should happen to predecease you - ”

  “What?” Cecil asked, his head jerking up.

  “A small provision in the will, over around page seventy or so. If your sister dies childless the estate reverts back to her three brothers to be shared in equally. But, heavens, Cecil, wipe that hungry look from your face. The girl is barely out of her teens after all, and the last time I saw her she was a bouncy little armful of flesh, looking quite healthy and capable.”

  “Yes, Cecil, hush,” said William, infuriated that Solmes would refer to his sister in such a familiar way. “You are truly grasping at straws. Leanna is but a girl. She doubtless has fifty full years ahead of her.”

  “Oh, of course, rosy and healthy and just a girl…” Cecil said slowly. “But she lives in London now, doesn’t she? And London is such a dangerous place.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  October 14, 1888

  9:05 AM

  He has found her. She is younger than the others, prettier, stronger. A better specimen by any method one might wish to employ, a more suitable target for his talents. A bright bird of Africa somehow trapped here among the common wrens.

  She looks straight ahead when she walks. In her arms she holds something shocking, the most surprising thing a woman in Whitechapel might possess.

  She carries books.

  And - although he has not gotten close enough to see their titles, nor their authors, nor even, in this ecumenical part of the city, the language they employ – the very fact she can read is enough to set her above the others.

  She is like me, he thinks. She does not belong here.

  He has followed her twice, plans to follow her again.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  2:29 PM

  “Sounds like a foreign language, Sir,” Davy said, staring at the paper in his hands.

  “That’s because it is,” Trevor said. “Or was. Someone in security translated it from the French, but I don’t think they did a particularly admirable job.” He stepped back from the worktable and wiped his hands.

  There had been no murders for the past two weeks. The parade of witnesses and confessors had dwindled and even the newspapers seemed to have moved on to other subjects.

  Some people around the Yard were beginning to say that perhaps they’d flushed him, that Jack had moved on to a less vigilant location – the countryside, the mainland, or even America. Let him go to America, they said. It fits. Plenty of room to absorb the madness there, mile after mile of open land to stretch his violence out to the point where it would dissolve, somehow no longer matter. But Trevor could not quite
bring himself to believe it was over. He was not the sort of detective who put great stock in instinct, nor was he a betting man – but if he were either of these things, he would have laid odds that the Ripper was still very close.

  No matter. No more bodies were wrapped in the morgue, that was the key thing, and the last time Eatwell had passed him in the halls the old ogre had actually smiled, as if the lack of dead whores was somehow proof of the personal capabilities of Detective Trevor Welles. The general lull had allowed Trevor the time to set up a bit of a genuine laboratory in the corner of the chief mortuary, and today he was concerned with the latest report from the Parisian police. Latest brag, was more like it.

  The French were claiming they had discovered a way to create a perfect replica of a knife blade from pouring wax into a wound. Trevor had read the report twice over breakfast, then headed straight to the butcher shop to ask the man behind the counter which animal’s meat bore the greatest similarity to the texture and density of human flesh. The man had regarded him with open alarm until Trevor produced his credentials from the Yard and then, within minutes, Trevor had been back on the streets bearing a sizable leg of mutton. The butcher had refused to let him pay. “Catch old Jack and we’re quits, Sir,” he’d said, and Trevor had nodded briskly, with a confidence he no longer felt.

  He was even less sure of himself now as he stared down at the mutton. “All right Severin,” he said. “Bring the knives.”

  The young man promptly stepped forward with his tray. It held a surgical scalpel, the tip of a bayonet rifle, and a large carving knife obtained from a slaughterhouse. Severin paused before the leg of mutton with his usual measured pace, and then picked up the carving knife. With a nod from Trevor, he slashed at the mutton, left to right, a single deft wound. Next the bayonet and a different sort of movement, more of a thrust and finally the scalpel. This he used carefully, almost artfully, making a shallow curved slice into the meatiest part of the leg, the haunch.

  Trevor nodded to Davy, who began reading again, more slowly, although the instructions were simple enough, really. Severin put a palm on each side of the first wound and held it open as Trevor spooned in the wax. Davy noted the time on his pocketwatch as they moved on to the bayonet and scalpel imprints.

  After precisely ninety seconds, Trevor pulled the wax from the carving knife wound. Despite his care, a piece of the wax broke off, stayed embedded in the mutton and they fared little better with the other two imprints. They were left with three very different wax shapes, that much was true, at least in a general sense. But the imprints were uneven and crumbled around the edges, hardly anything you could present to a court as evidence. Trevor sat down with a sigh, not bothering to conceal the frustration in his face.

  “Which one would you have guessed would leave the cleanest imprint?” he asked Severin.

  “The scalpel,” Severin answered. “It is sharpest and the cut it produces is the most shallow.”

  “Indeed,” Trevor said. “And that imprint is marginally better than the others. But even it…” he looked down at the wax figures before him, and sighed again. “Can you think of any reason why it might not have worked?”

  “Perhaps the thick of the wax,” the young man said. His voice was evenly pitched and nearly devoid of accent but when he said certain things - “thick” rather than “thickness,” for example – he betrayed his immigrant roots. People are streaming into London from all over Europe, Trevor thought. Smart, and hard-working, most of them, and some as schooled as any Brit, even if they didn’t learn those lessons in the mother tongue. And yet we reduce them to maids and rubbish men and assistants, rarely asking them to use their true minds. He himself had initially dismissed Severin as useless. Now Trevor wondered what this shy young man thought of him and how he really viewed the good doctor.

  “We used the same kind of wax the report called for,” Davy said. “I went three places to find the brand.”

  Severin shook his head. “Perhaps hotter,” he said. “Thinner.”

  “Quite right,” Trevor said. “We’ll try again this afternoon with the wax hotter and thinner.”

  “And the meat cold,” said Severin.

  “Indeed. We’ll get the mutton colder and the wax hotter and if the imprint hardens faster that might indeed sharpen the impression. Good thinking, Severin.”

  Severin nodded and slipped back into the back room to finish his own tasks. Trevor waited for the curtain to close behind him before turning back to Davy. “Although if the meat needs to be chilled first, I can’t imagine why they wouldn’t have that sort of detail in the report. Bloody French.”

  “Perhaps the coppers in Paris don’t have things as right as they think they do,” Davy said, letting the report drop to the table with a sigh of his own. “Are they really so far ahead, Sir?”

  “Yes,” Trevor said, although such disloyalty to his motherland did not come easily. “They’re even claiming they can tell who has touched something, like a door latch or a weapon, based on the ridges people have on their fingertips. They call it a finger print. Apparently everyone on earth has one and they’re all in a slightly different pattern.”

  Davy stared so intently down at his hands that Trevor burst out laughing. “I know,” he said, “it sounds a bit fantastical to me too. Oh, and another thing we might try this after – Come in, it isn’t locked.“

  The door swung open revealing a bobby and a man in streetclothes who was holding a parcel and seemed in a high state of agitation. “Are you a doctor?” he asked. “Am I even in the right place? They told me to turn right at the stairs but there are so many stairs in this infernal –“

  “I’m Detective Welles,” Trevor said, motioning both men in. “Doctor Phillips has stepped out –“

  “Then send someone to get him immediately,” the man said. He seemed used to barking out orders. “I am George Lusk of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee and we were formed to protect and prevent –“

  “I know your organization, Mr. Lusk,” Trevor said, indicating a seat but Lusk tossed his head about violently, as if the idea of sitting down was ludicrous. Davy was already moving toward the door to fetch Phillips so there was nothing for Trevor to do but observe Lusk, who looked like precisely what he was – a prosperous businessman prepared to take matters into his own hands before he would let an unchecked crime wave destroy his investments.

  “Before you begin your policeman’s lecture, you need to know that I’m not a Johnny-come-lately to this Ripper business,” Lusk said, his tone as vigorous as if he were speaking from the pulpit. “Our committee formed on the tenth of September, long before the nastiness of the double murders. We grasped, Sir, quite at once, that this was not a singular threat that would soon fade away. And I was elected chairman during that first meeting. Since then we’ve taken up watch on our own – “

  “I know who you are, Mr. Lusk,” Trevor repeated,” and I know the task your committee has undertaken.” The bobbies on the streets were constantly complaining about this amateur group of sleuths who patrolled Whitechapel nightly. The police largely considered the vigilance committee more of an obstacle than an advantage, more likely to be needing help than capable of providing it, and Trevor was inclined to agree. “What I don’t know is what brings you here to Scotland Yard today.”

  “I received a letter from the Ripper himself,” Lusk said, fumbling in his coat pocket.

  “Would you like to put down your parcel?” Trevor inquired mildly. Letters from the Ripper were a near-daily event at the Yard. It may be unusual for someone to send such a letter to a private citizen, but, then again, Lusk had done everything possible to attach himself to the case and had undoubtedly made his share of enemies along the way.

  “No, I most certainly do not wish to put down my parcel,” Lusk said testily, “and the reason will be quite clear when the doctor arrives. Here,” he added, clumsily pulling a folded piece of paper from his pocket. “Here’s the letter. He says he’s sending it from hell, he does.”
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  Trevor took the paper and read:

  From hell

  Mr Lusk

  Sor

  I send you half the Kidne I took from one women prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a while longer

  Signed Catch me when you Can

  Mishter Lusk

  “And what do you think of that?” Lusk demanded.

  “I think it’s quite different from the other letters we’ve received. The misspellings and mistakes are so outrageous that I have to wonder if they’re calculated – “

  “Calculated!” Lusk seemed in danger of exploding.

  “As if the writer were deliberately attempting to present himself as uneducated,” Trevor said, attempting to counteract the man’s anger with his own calm, as if they were on a sort of emotional see-saw. “The other letters we’ve received have been quite literate. Proper spelling. One even spoke in a rather well-constructed rhyme. It’s hard to believe all these letters were written by the same person unless he’s trying to mislead us into thinking he is a very different sort of man than he is.” Trevor looked up at the fuming Lusk. It would be unnerving to receive such a message, no doubt about it. But to be fair, hadn’t the man brought much of this on himself? He had written to the papers almost daily, demanding the police do more, offering rewards for information, holding meetings in every church and community house in the East End. He has created his own celebrity, Trevor thought. It was exciting at the start but he is beginning to see the dark side of his creation.

  “There are some similarities to one of the previous letters,” Trevor conceded, since Lusk seemed determined to elicit some sort of reaction. “And of course the writer has threatened to send a body part before – “

  “Threatened? Why the dash do you think I’m here? He didn’t threaten. I have the woman’s kidney!” Lusk thrust the package forward and Trevor leapt to attention. He held his hand out and Lusk gingerly placed the small package in it, wincing at the smell.