City of Darkness

by Kim Wright

  Perhaps she would have better luck with Emma, who at least, in the worst case, she could probably lift. “Emma,” she said pleadingly, crawling over Tom in an undignified manner and slapping Emma smartly on the face. “Emma, do you hear me?” She was rewarded with a slight stirring. Spying a water glass on the bedside table, Leanna picked it up and splashed it in Emma’s face. To her great relief, Emma’s eyes began to blink.

  “Darling,” Leanna said, helping the girl sit up. “Try to focus. Do you know where you are?”

  Emma shook sleep from her eyes and pulled herself into an Indian position. Her eyes grazed across Tom, then to the overturned hassock at the foot of her bed and finally to her muslin gown, discarded in a corner and - not too surprisingly, Leanna noticed - smeared with a faint trace of blood.

  “Oh my God,” she said, nearly sinking down again, but Leanna caught her behind the shoulders.

  “You’re going to have to put your gown on help me get Tom back to his room.”

  “What….?”

  “You don’t remember?”

  Emma looked vaguely around the room and then at Leanna. “I remember.”

  “Perhaps it’s not what it looks like?”

  “It’s just what it looks like.”

  “I’m sure Aunt Gerry would under –“

  “No,” Emma cried out, with such ferocity and such clarity that Leanna jerked back. “We must get him back to his room. What time is it?”

  “Just past seven,” Leanna said.

  “Gage will be up any minute,” Emma said, and the girls sprung into action, Leanna moving quickly to gather up the strewn articles of Tom’s clothing and Emma behind her, far less steady on her feet but just as systematic. She pulled on her gown and, grabbing Tom’s shirt, began to push one of his hands through the sleeve.

  Leanna shook her head. “No time for that,” she said. “My mother always said it’s impossible to dress a drunk. If we can just get him through the door of his room it won’t matter that he wakes up naked.” She piled Tom’s clothes on his chest and took his hands in hers. “The top half of a body is the heaviest,” she said. “If I can carry this end, can you carry the other?”

  “I suppose,” Emma said, too surprised by Leanna’s rapid-fire barrage of information to argue. She grabbed one of Tom’s ankles in each hand and with the deep exhalation of a dockworker, started to pull him off the bed. When his body came to the edge of the mattress and dropped the girls nearly lost their grips but they readjusted their hand holds and managed to lug him to the door.

  Leanna opened the door and peeked out. Gage’s room was directly opposite Emma’s and she could only hope that the thud caused by Tom’s fall to the floor had not been audible in Gage’s room or, far worse, awakened Gerry sleeping below. But Gage’s door remained shut and Leanna turned back to face Emma.

  With a nod, Leanna reached down again for her brother’s hands and Emma took up the feet. They moved awkwardly out the bedroom door and toward the stairs. Leanna started down first but it was immediately apparent that if she preceded Emma, Tom’s head would hit each step during their descent. Which served him right, as far as she was concerned, but Emma had immediately frozen and indicated through a jerk of her chin that they should switch positions, allowing her to go first. Leanna leaned against the railing to let Emma pass her, which Emma could only do by pulling Tom’s legs around her waist and bringing her pelvis up against his own. Leanna shut her eyes and tried to persuade herself that she would laugh about this someday. That someday she would be an old lady and the memory of this morning would be amusing indeed. But for now all she could do was press into the railing, looking first up at Gage’s closed door and then down at Gerry’s, praying that neither would open while Emma inched her way around her. The clothes piled on Tom’s chest fell off during the transfer of positions, but there was nothing to be done about that. Both girls simply looked down at his nude body with dismay and Leanna kicked the garments aside. Then, with Emma moving backward and Leanna forward, they managed to turn on the landing and make it down the final flight of stairs. Leanna’s arms felt like they were breaking by the time they reached Tom’s door and dragged him through. The bed was impossibly high so they abandoned him on the rug. Emma sprinted out, presumably to fetch his clothes from the stairwell and Leanna stood gazing down at her brother.

  “If you ever gain consciousness,” she said aloud. “I’m going to kill you.”

  “I suppose you think I’m dreadful,” Emma said, entering with the clothes which, after a second of thought, she dropped back on top of Tom.

  “No,” Leanna said. “I don’t know what I think, but I know it isn’t that. He never should have – “

  “Tom was blameless. Truly. I seduced him. Come on, they can’t find us here.”

  They returned to the door, looked both ways and slipped out, both going down the stairs toward the kitchen. Leanna was trying to figure out what the word ‘seduced’ meant. The only thing that made sense was that Emma was saying that she was the one who had initiated something. I’ll look it up later, Leanna thought. She couldn’t admit to Emma she had never heard the word.

  “Emma,” she did say, turning into the kitchen. “Why are you even awake?”

  Emma used both hands to lift the tea kettle. “I stopped taking the medication yesterday. John used the injection needle the first two days but then he started leaving powder for me to mix in my tea. And I mixed a little less than he said and then a little less again.”

  Leanna stared at her. “You don’t trust him?”

  “Of course I do. It’s just I know he would have let me sleep forever and a woman has to wake up eventually, wouldn’t you say?”

  There were a thousand things Leanna wanted to ask Emma. This odd morning, she thought, it’s made us closer friends than we’ve ever been, but where do I begin? Her sister, my brother, the morphine, the Ripper, or the fact that she has done a seduce and I don’t even know what that means? Women have to wake up eventually but girls…girls can apparently doze forever. Emma was waiting, tea kettle in hand.

  “Are you hungry?” she asked.

  “Yes,” said Leanna. “But you should sit down. The strangest thing has happened in the last four days. You won’t believe it and you’ll take it as undeniable proof that we truly have come to the end of one world and the start of another.”

  “Really?” Emma said, and little hiccup slid through her lips. “Please tell me.”

  Leanna moved toward the stove. “I’ve learned how to fry an egg.”

  8:20 AM

  They were a subdued party at the breakfast table. It was the first time Emma had joined them for a meal in days and both Gerry and Gage were very careful with her. Gerry was even whispering. For weeks the breakfast routine had included a pile of the daily papers but of course they were now verboten, and in their absence the conversation lagged. If it were not for the sounds of Emma’s fork scraping against her plate as she ate with the slow and steady pace of a convalescent, there would have been times when the room was completely silent.

  Tom entered at some point, wrapped tightly in his dark blue bathrobe. If he had been surprised to awaken on the floor, utterly naked, with his clothes tossed across his chest, his face didn’t show it. He smiled at Emma and Leanna and told Gage he would only take toast.

  Emma smiled back, but fleetingly, and her gaze soon returned to her eggs. Geraldine, who had never been able to bear prolonged silence, began some rambling story about the newborn twins while Leanna, glancing from her brother to Emma in what she hoped was a nonchalant manner, struggled to evaluate the situation. Unless Tom was a consummate actor, which she knew he was not, he had no memory beyond passing out in front of the fire and awakening in his own room. And Emma was doing absolutely nothing to jostle his recollections. In fact, she was completely playing the part of a woman straight from her sickbed, a patient still trying to shake off the last effects of morphine.

  He doesn’t remember, Leanna thought. And she doesn’t want
him to.

  Earlier that morning, when Leanna had found Emma and Tom in bed together she had said that Geraldine would understand. And Emma of all people must have known that Leanna was right, that Geraldine’s big heart would have expanded around the idea of Emma reaching for Tom in a dark hour, of him tumbling into the temptation. It had never been Geraldine’s disapproval Emma feared, Leanna saw that now. Emma had simply not wanted Tom to know of their night together.

  But why? Leanna frowned down into her tea, trying to sort it all out as Aunt Gerry droned on, Emma ate steadily, and Tom accepted a plate of dry toast from Gage. If she had given herself to John Harrowman only to find that the next morning he did not remember the event she would have been crushed, but Emma seemed almost to have designed the evening this way. She is already slipping it back into some secret pocket of her mind, Leanna thought. She’s tucking it away to pull out and reexamine at a later time, some evening when she’s lonely, some morning when she needs a bit of private comfort.

  It suddenly occurred to Leanna that Emma might love Tom, that she could have loved him for months. It was a painful thought.

  So, if this was true, why would Emma do a seduce when Tom was barely conscious? Perhaps it was a matter of class, just one more thing that the circumstances of her birth doomed Leanna to never understand. Emma was a schoolteacher’s daughter, had lived for years under the protection of Gerry’s roof, and had most likely been, if the red smear on her gown was true indication, a virgin. Yet she had chosen to surrender that virginity in a situation that would not lead to love and marriage, would not even lead to a shared memory between herself and the man.

  Her quest for John had certainly suffered some setbacks but at least their union was in the realm of social possibility and Leanna couldn’t imagine what it would feel like to love a man you knew you would never have. Would you try to tamp down the emotion? Scold yourself for going outside your station? Divert your desire onto the corner greengrocer or some more likely target? Or would you find a way to get at least a little of what you craved, to pull a few tattered pieces of satisfaction though the iron bars of the class system? Leanna remembered once, a Christmas back at Rosemoral, when she had looked up from the blessing at the holiday table and seen the servants clustered in the hallway, waiting for the signal to enter with their dishes. They had evidently been standing with their platters and tureens for some time, for the village parson tended to overpray, especially whenever he found himself dining in the homes of the wealthy. Leanna had opened her eyes in the middle of his prayer and looked around at the scene – the holly and red roses spilling down the center of the table, the gleaming silver, the frosted panes, and the servants waiting in the wings, their own heads bowed as well. She had happened to see one of the girls – had her name been Agnes? Abigail? - run her index finger swiftly along the rim of a platter and lift it to her lips for a quick taste. Leanna had clamped her eyes shut quickly, as if she had been the guilty one. It was much the same feeling she’d had when she stumbled across Emma and Tom this morning, the sense she was seeing something she had no right to see. She didn’t blame the serving girl. There was such bounty all around her and yes, she would have access to the remains later, after the family had spooned though the dish and eaten all the good parts. But who could blame her for wanting just a little taste now, when the food was so lovely and hot and those who considered themselves better than her were all pretending to pray?

  And perhaps this was just what Emma had done on the previous evening. Taken a bit of something she wanted while the family’s attentions were devoted elsewhere. Considering it like that, Leanna thought, it makes a kind of brutal sense.

  “….two fine boys, both plump and healthy,” Geraldine said, finishing her story with such a note of triumph you would think she’d given birth to the twins herself.

  “When were they born?” Tom asked.

  “Friday nignt,” Leanna answered, with a calculated glance at Emma. She did not have to add “The night Mary was murdered,” for Tom understood her meaning at once.

  “How did the mother fare?” he asked mildly.

  “Oh, a long labor to be sure,” Geraldine said. “But Tess praised John Harrowman to the skies. She said he arrived at her daughter’s bedside at nightfall and was still there at dawn…..”

  There, Tom thought triumphantly. Let the envious Detective Welles put that in his pipe. John Harrowman spent the entire evening of the Kelly murder attending the delivery of a prosperous Mayfair matron. And I bet there’s a way to prove that the murder weapon wasn’t even a surgical knife. Tom was beginning to feel a little better, with a slow glow of energy and optimism rising in his chest. God knows he had drunk too much the night before, and there was no telling how he’d gotten himself upstairs, but the toast was helping and through the windows the sun was coming out. It showed promise of a cold and clear day, perfect for the task at hand, and even if he had not slept long, Tom had the sense he had slept well. Fragments of dreams had been coming back to him all morning. Odd dreams, but very pleasant.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT

  9:30 AM

  He has decided to flatter her. There are few of us immune to flattery, or to the ambition hidden beneath its husk. Even those who live in a dung heap dream of occupying a higher peak within the heap.

  And so perhaps an abortionist fancies herself a medical practitioner, might welcome the chance to commune with a colleague.

  He composes a note to her, taking care with the prose. Hoping that, as is so often the case, she can read better than she can write. He has been to the ironmonger, so he is prepared.

  The note says that he has studied as a doctor, as she undoubtedly knows. That he sees the financial possibilities in her line of work. That perhaps it would be better if they put aside their differences in order to consider how they might help one another. She has her skills – how it pains him to write this sentence, how it gnaws at his gut – and he has his unique social position, one which brings him into contact with all manner of society including women who might have need of such her unique services. But unlike the Whitechapel wretches with their shillings and farthings, these women are prepared to pay in pounds and sterling.

  He need go no further. She is a business woman, greedy to the core. She will see the advantages of such a union. He tells her that he has found a first client already and suggests a place where the three of them might meet. The girl in question is of good family. In a spot of trouble, true, but not willing to show her face in the Pony Pub. They must meet in a more secluded place. But the money will be good, he assures her. Far more than she could ever hope to get shaking the pockets of a working man like him.

  He hopes she will believe him. That some combination of vanity and greed will overrun her senses. Convince her to drop all common sense and join league with the devil himself.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE

  9:50 AM

  Smoke billowed from Rayley Abrams’ pipe as he stood on the dock and watched the other passengers walking up the gangway to the channelboat. The cargo was still being loaded and he hoped he had time to get through a full bowl before he boarded the ship. As pleased as he was by this opportunity to study in Paris, he did not relish the idea of crossing to France. He had taken to sea several times in his life, but had never enjoyed much luck with his stomach.

  “We thought we might not catch you before you boarded,” said Trevor, coming up from behind and slapping his shoulder. He seemed in unusually high spirits, almost as if he were taking the trip himself.

  Abrams removed his pipe. “I still feel as though I’m deserting you.”

  “Nonsense. You’ll be of much greater aid to us after you have learned all you can from the French. Ah, the ocean air,” Trevor added, puffing out his chest. “Nothing quite like it, is there?”

  “Nothing,” Abrams said dryly.

  “Calais is but three hours as the crow flies,” Davy said, looking at the man’s pale face with sympathy. They were all fellows now, since the m
orning at Mary Kelly’s house. Odd that something so perverse could make men better friends, but Davy was beginning to suspect that the grimmer the case, the greater the sense of camaraderie.

  Abrams sighed, for the ship’s steward had positioned himself at the top of the plank and given a quick blast of his whistle for last call. “I’d better be off. You two catch old Jack while I’m gone,” he said. Davy reached into his pocket and pulled out a bag.

  “Here, Detective. Peppermint candy to smooth your insides. The Channel can kick up pretty good this time of year.”

  “Thank you, Davy. I hope I don’t need to use them.”

  “And remember to keep your mind on the science and not the ladies. The French women are like no others,” shouted Trevor, who had never been to Paris, as he waved at Abrams’ retreating back.

  The gangplank was now hauled onto the ship and the dock keepers untied the heavy ropes that lashed the boat to the pier. Abrams was on his way.

  Trevor turned to Davy, shrugged, and the two men started back down the long pier.

  “Sorry it isn’t you that’s going, Sir?”

  “Glad it’s someone. He’ll do the job. Perhaps not in time for this particular madman, but on the morrow there shall be others.”

  “Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow,” Davy said, “Creeps in this steady pace from day to day.”

  Trevor looked at him quizzically.

  “Shakespeare, Sir. My mum quotes him while she does the laundry.”

  Trevor laughed as the two men came to the end of the pier and stepped back into the cobblestones. “Ah, Davy,” he said. “You’re full of surprises.”

  10: 10 AM

  Cecil asked the driver to pull over and let him out before getting much closer to Whitechapel. He was meeting with Georgy that morning on Commercial Street, where the slaughterhouses were located, and he certainly did not want the little man to know he was wealthy enough to hire coaches. Wealthy, he supposed was a relative term since between the train, the inn, and this coach, he had made a surprisingly large dint in the money he had found in William’s pocket. But he figured his coffers would be replenished soon enough.