City of Darkness

by Kim Wright

  Cecil rounded a corner and, to his relief, saw Georgy resting on a barrel on the opposite side of the street.

  “Morning, Guv’ner,” Georgy greeted him. “Found ‘ol Micha.”

  “Good work. I knew I could count on you.”

  “Tis Mary who can count on me, no offense to you, mate. Right this way.” The two set off toward the water. “You send the letter?”

  “It will be delivered within the hour. You’re going to have to make a few stops before the Pony Pub. They’re ladies, and I thought they might be more likely to meet you if I chose a tea room in a more middle-class part of town.”

  “Me? You wanna be there?”

  “It’s my damn pale eyes, Georgy, you know they make me too easy to pick out of a line,” Cecil said. “But you have that nice common face, you know? Hard to describe in case the coppers get nosy.”

  “And two of ‘em? Mary just had one sister, dinna she?”

  “Society ladies never go anywhere without a companion,” Cecil said, thinking he was certainly betting heavily that Leanna’s guilt would compel her to come along. “Now here’s the plan. When you meet them you’ll say the baby is in a different place, a different part of town. By then we have them hooked and I have no doubt they’ll follow to another bar, and then another, and finally back to the Pony Pub. Sometimes you have to do these things in stages, Georgy, give the fish a bit of slack line before you pull it in. Micha and I will be waiting. I want to make absolutely sure he knows who his victims are. Micha follows them out and does his job, then we have the money and they have a lesson they won’t soon forget.”

  Georgy’s brow puckered. “It’s a fancy plan.”

  “The letter couldn’t invite them into the bowels of Whitechapel,” Cecil said, failing to hold back an exasperated sigh. “I know ladies like this. We can lure them to a tea room easily enough, but they would never set out alone for an establishment like the Pony Pub, no matter how persuasive the letter.”

  Georgy sighed too. “‘ope this works.”

  “Trust me, everything will be fine.”

  Cecil would smell the slaughterhouses before he could see them. He made Georgy stop while he covered his nose with a handkerchief, but the stench seemed to have no effect on the smaller man, who pushed a door open and motioned for Cecil to follow.

  This, Cecil reflected, must be what the waiting room for hell looks like. Blood was everywhere and they passed ten or so young boys who were completely covered in it. Sides of beef and pork hung from the rafters, dripping. The butchers, whose heads jerked up at their arrival, were cutting the carcasses into pieces and loading them on carts to be sold to shops all over the city. Every man in the building looked capable of doing the job Cecil had in mind, and half the boys as well.

  When they reached the back of the slaughterhouse Cecil saw a huge man with his arm around the neck of a struggling cow. As Cecil watched with a fascinated horror, the man twisted the cow’s head and it popped with a sound that rang through the crowded, noisy room. Cecil staggered a bit, and Georgy and the other workers laughed. They had seen the same reaction many times from people first witnessing Micha’s specialty. As Georgy approached, the giant let loose of the now-limp cow, which fell to the floor with a thunderous thud.

  “’ello, Micha. ‘ow are you this morning?”

  The giant grunted something back at Georgy.

  “I wanna you to meet a friend of mine and Mary Kelly’s. This is…” a puzzled look came across Georgy’s face. “Excuse me Guv’ner, but I don’t think you’ve ever told me your name.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Cecil called out, nodding toward the bloodied giant and praying it would not be necessary come closer, or, God forbid, to shake hands. After a moment’s pause, during which Micha looked him over with impudence, it became apparent this would be the case.

  “Well there, Micha,” Georgy spoke up, still anxious to play the proper host. “We came wonderin’ if we might have a word outside. We’d like to ‘ire ye for some work.”

  Micha mumbled something to a worker and started for the door, grabbing a remnant of raw meat from a butcher block as he passed. He popped it in his mouth like a candy and Georgy grinned, knowing this was all mostly for show. Cecil shuddered and scurried after them, his feet sticking to the cement floor with each step.

  In the alleyway, Micha stopped and turned toward them with his bloody mouth. “What you want?”

  “Remember sweet Mary Kelly? Murdered by Jack a few days back?” asked Georgy. The man nodded thoughtfully. “Well she ‘ad wealthy family in Mayfair who snubbed ‘er for years. Dinna even come to ‘er wake. We wanna show them a thing or two. We’ll set a trap to pull ‘em down to Whitechapel tonight and we want you to rough them up a bit and steal their purses. There’d be ten pounds in it for you. Can you ‘elp us?”

  “They?”

  “Two people,” Cecil said. “But both ladies.”

  “Twenty.”

  “Twenty pounds?” Georgy said, genuinely shocked. “You think we be royalty, do you?”

  “Twenty’s fine,” Cecil said, for his brief observation of Micha had convinced him the man was perfectly suited to carry out his whole plan, not just the aspects understood by Georgy. He dug into a pocket and extracted a handful of silver. “Here’s ten as a show of good faith. The rest tonight, when you meet me at the Pony Pub at seven. You know the place.”

  Micha took the coins, turned his massive frame, and started into the building.

  Cecil was left to stare after him. “That’s it? Is he even going to do it?”

  “Don’t think so, Guv’ner. Better go in and get yer money back.” Georgy burst into laughter at the panicked expression that came over Cecil’s face. “’ad you going there, mate, sure but I did. Yeah, Micha will be there. But where we gonna get the other ten pounds, that’s what ole Georgy needs to know.”

  “Leave that to me,” Cecil said. They both turned and headed back toward the smokestacks of Commercial Street.

  10:14 AM

  Tom sent two telegrams that morning. One was to Galloway, requesting the prompt delivery of his grandfather’s medical journals. The other was to Cambridge, this one asking for a leave of absence for the remainder of the school year. From an academic standpoint, the term had been a lost cause. His grandfather’s funeral, the ensuing legal problems, now the murder of Emma’s sister….Tom had decided his place for the next few months was here in London. Who could concentrate on craniums when his whole world was falling apart?

  Trevor’s accusations about John Harrowman weren’t true, the delivery of the twins was proof of that. But Tom was further determined to prove that Trevor was wrong about the Ripper being a medical man and he believed he knew just how to do this. He didn’t have a surgical scalpel himself – he was at least four classes away from the point where he could do dissections. But Tom knew where to find one.

  11:15 PM

  “Thirty?” Cecil said, his voice gone soft and low in disbelief as the pawnbroker lifted his mother’s diamond and opal brooch to the light. “Look again, man, because you’re mistaken. The weight of the center diamond alone –“

  “Would fetch a much higher price if you cared to take the piece to a pawnbroker in a different part of town,” the man said agreeably. “But something tells me you don’t want to do that.” He gently placed the brooch on the square of black velvet he had spread across the table and gave Cecil a little smirk. “Thirty’s fair enough when you consider that it’s thirty with no questions asked.”

  He thinks I stole it, Cecil thought with disgust. Thinks I’m some sort of highway bandit or, more likely, a grave robber. Why else would a man waltz into a pawn shop in the saddest alley of the East End with a handful of diamonds? Cecil turned to look at Georgy, pacing outside the pawnshop window. He had obviously been curious about the purpose of this particular mission and had wanted to follow Cecil inside the shop. But Cecil had insisted he stand guard outside and something in the word “guard” had appealed to the man’s e
go.

  “It’s a ludicrous offer,” Cecil said, turning back to the pawnbroker with as much dignity as he could muster. Ever since the trip to the slaughterhouse his clothing had assumed a peculiar smell. The smell of poverty, he supposed, but poverty smelled much differently in the city than it did back in Leeds. There the farmers carried the faint odor of earth and sun and sweat on their clothes. Not so unpleasant really, nothing like the smoky stink of the city. How quickly he had fallen into the gutter. Thirty-two hours out of Winter Garden and here he stood, as rank and malodorous as any man in London.

  “A ludicrous amount,” he repeated. “And an offer I would not normally accept. I will be back for the piece within the week, you understand.”

  “It will most likely still be here,” said the pawnbroker, still as pleasant as if they were taking a stroll in the park. All the advantages were on his side and he knew it. “Not much call for such jewelry in this part of town. Thirty now…..and fifty to take It back next week.”

  “Barbaric,” Cecil said. “No wonder they warn against your kind in the Bible. Keep it safe, you hear me? And I want a receipt. Because if you think you’re keeping jewels of this value for a mere thirty pounds, you’re a madman.”

  The pawnbroker pulled a small ledger pad from a drawer. He filled out the amount and pushed the receipt toward Cecil. “Can you write your name?”

  “Of course I can write my name. Dear God,” Cecil said. He hesitated a moment, then signed with a flourish. “My father bought this brooch for my mother in Italy, you know. Florence. They were on their honeymoon.” And for the first time since childhood, he felt the urge to weep.

  11:15 AM

  Tom had never followed anyone in his life but he flattered himself that he must have a natural gift for subterfuge, for John had not appeared to notice him at all. He’d had very little trouble locating him in Whitechapel, in the quiet alleys where the pubs were sleepy in the morning. Tom envied the ease with which John moved among the people there, how relaxed he seemed in conversation with the working girls.

  John had steered a couple of the women into a pub, making a great show of holding the door for them, as if they were ladies. Tom gave them a few minutes to settle and then pulled down his hat and walked by the window, glancing through the glass as he passed. John must have ordered the women bowls of stew because he was simply sitting opposite them at a table, watching them eat. This should, Tom thought, occupy him at least for an hour, and the important thing was that John didn’t appear have his medical bag with him.

  Ten minutes later a coachman dropped Tom a few blocks from Brixton and he walked the remaining distance. He’d gotten the address from Geraldine earlier that morning, on the excuse he planned to call on John and borrow a textbook. The neighborhood was neither as fashionable as Mayfair nor as squalid as Whitechapel and seemed nearly deserted. This is where the tradespeople live, Tom thought, the rising working class, probably not yet able to afford servants and conveniently gone to work during the day. Tom found the house number – a brownstone in a row of others just like it – and rang the doorbell, on the off chance John employed a housekeeper. But, just as he’d suspected, no one answered. He slipped around to the back and used a drainpipe to climb as far as the top of the porch. From there it was a bit more frightening to inch his way across the sharply-pitched roof to the windows, but luck was with him. The second one he looked in was John’s bedroom and he could see a study located beyond. Presumably the man’s medical bag would be in one of these rooms.

  The house was in a bit of a shambles, Tom noticed, as he used the blade of his pocketknife to chip away a layer of paint around the window. The bed was unmade, with clothing draped over the chairs and books stacked on every table in the room. Even the small garden below him looked poorly tended and dispirited. Apparently this was what he had to look forward to as a bachelor doctor, a mess of a home and meals in a pub with whores. Tom was prepared to break a pane of glass if necessary, but once he had cracked through the heavy layer of paint it had proven simple enough to wrench the window open. Whatever fears troubled John Harrowman, robbery was not among them. Glancing around to confirm no neighbor was watching, Tom crawled inside.

  Medical bags were big, heavy, and awkwardly shaped, so John’s shouldn’t be hard to find. But it wasn’t in the study, where newspapers and academic journals were scattered about the floor, along with, Tom noted with some amusement, the latest copy of a pornographic quarterly, The Pearl, which lay atop the heap. He supposed Trevor and the men of the Yard might view such a magazine as evidence of a perverse twist of mind, prigs that they were, but Tom had left the same issue back in his dormitory in Cambridge. Good to know that even Saint John - the kind of man who would invite a woman into a pub because he wanted to feed her - had all the normal impulses.

  Tom moved back into the bedroom and did a quick scan. Still no bag, but his eye fell on a hamper in the corner. He pulled up the lid and found that almost every item of clothing inside bore traces of blood. Doctors certainly had occasion to be splattered with blood but this, Tom was forced to admit, seemed excessive. The clothing in the bottom of the hamper was crusted with the color of old bricks, but the items near the top were – for these, splattered was not the word. One shirt was soaked. Without knowing fully why, Tom pulled it out to take with him. A professor at university had lectured on a new technique known as blood typing and Tom wished he had paid more attention. The lecture had been about how you could infuse blood from one body into another, an idea radical enough in itself, but someone in the class had also raised a hand to ask if it might be possible to test blood and ascertain who it had come from. Why had he not listened better?

  At the other corner of the bedroom, there was a large armoire, a handsome old piece that hinted of inheritance. The sort of family heirlooms, Tom noted dryly, offered to third and fourth sons. He opened the creaky doors and was immediately rewarded with the sight of the medical bag, which John had tossed on top of his shoes in a haphazard manner. Tom pulled it open and studied the array of knives tucked into side pockets. You’d need a rather big one if you planned to slice deep and the wound on the leg Trevor had certainly looked deep enough. The trouble was that if he pulled a knife from this neat formation, sequenced large to small across a felt panel, John would immediately notice its absence. The man might be a sloven of the worst sort in his rooms – luckily Leanna would be able to employ armies of maids to clean up after any husband she chose - but John was also a typical doctor, neat and systematic with the contents of his medical bag. Tom pulled out one of the larger knives and tossed it across the room so that it landed noiselessly on the bloodied shirt. Perhaps if he put something else in the felt slot, it might not be immediately evident to John that a knife was missing. He looked around the room until he found a pen on the desk about the same length as the knife and slipped it into the felt holder. It hardly looked like a knife and, in fact, now that he considered it more carefully, the substituted pen was clear evidence that someone had deliberately removed the knife. Perhaps if the slot was left empty, John would simply conclude he had left the knife somewhere.

  No. No, that was no good either. Doctors weren’t in the habit of leaving their medical knives lying about. Tom rocked back on his haunches, suddenly unsure why he was in this room or what he hoped to accomplish. If John was a serious suspect in the Ripper case, he would undoubtedly be made aware of this fact soon enough, so Tom couldn’t say why he was going to such lengths to disguise the fact someone had been in this room. And there was also something about being here, in the normally private world of another man’s bedchamber, that was making Tom uncomfortably aware of how little he knew John. There was the man he’d watched earlier who laughed and slapped a whore on the rump. Then the same man had held the door open for her, all but bowed as she passed. Bought her a bowl of stew, sat and watched to ensure she ate it, like a father might stand guard over a sickly child. Hard to reconcile all that with the weedy garden, the sloppily-painted windowsills, the
sad tumble of this room. Not to mention a hamper full of bloody clothes, large stacks of medical books, an expensive armoire, a collection of knives, and pornography. Any of these things were simple enough to explain on their own, but brought together they created images Tom could not quite reconcile into a single picture.

  Could Trevor have been right?

  I don’t know John, Tom thought again. I defended him on the basis of his profession, his public manners, the fact my sister seems to fancy him. I’ve come here certain I would find evidence to exonerate him and what I’ve gathered might just as easily be his downfall. Tom slowly looked around the bedroom, trying to memorize the details for future reference, but profoundly sorry that he had ever come. Who among us, he thought, could survive this sort of scrutiny? Who among us would like to have every bit of paint chipped away, every drawer opened, every paper read aloud?

  And just then, from downstairs, Tom heard the unmistakable sound of a key turning in a lock.

  CHAPTER FORTY

  11:50 AM

  After breakfast, Emma had insisted on getting back to her daily duties, and although the girl was still a bit shaky on her feet, Geraldine let her have her way. Activity and the solace of a routine were probably the best things for her, at least now that her mind had cleared. Gerry could hardly see the wisdom of packing the girl back up to her room and leaving her there alone to mull over the events of the last few days.