Ripped, a Jack the Ripper Time-Travel Thriller

by Shelly Dickson Carr

  “Well, that makes bloody two of us!” Collin grabbed the last butterscotch candy from the bowl and was about to pitch it into the flames when he tossed it high up into the air and caught it in his mouth like a trained seal. “Katie!” he slurped, chomping with such fervor, her name sounded like “Kay-we.”

  “What’s that look on your face?” he demanded, sucking harder on the butterscotch. “Like your dog just died.”

  Katie’s stomach lurched. She quickly glanced away.

  Toby was standing off to the side, his elbow resting on a middle rung of the library ladder. She met his gaze. He looked calm and unruffled . . . and, well . . . handsome. No matter what Major Brown was about to accuse Toby of, no matter what obstacles he threw in Toby’s path, Katie felt sure Toby would win out. He has to, she told herself. Otherwise, how would he end up on the moors with Collin a year from now? I need to warn Toby again. He can’t let Collin go anywhere near the moors.

  Toby was looking at her with a strange expression. “All right,” he said, “we know—or at least, Katie has told us—who the next five victims will be, and when and where the Ripper will strike. We have the how and where—just not the why.”

  “Or the who. We don’t know for sure that Major Brown is Jack the Ripper,” Katie said.

  “We bloody well do!” Collin shouted, his face flushing purple.

  Toby nodded, his dark eyes intense. “If your information is correct, Katie, it shouldn’t be too difficult to save those girls.”

  “And how exactly”—Collin frowned—“do you propose to save anyone while under house arrest? Last time I looked, ‘house arrest’ meant being confined to one’s domicile.”

  “I’ve some mates in the East End who will help. Let’s go over the list again. The next two victims to die at the hands of the Ripper are Molly Potter and Catherine Eddowes on September thirtieth. Is that correct?” Toby turned his full attention on Katie.

  She nodded. “A double murder on the same night. Molly Potter on Berner Street in Whitechapel, and then just before midnight, Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square.”

  Katie’s mind flashed back to the Chamber of Horrors and the hologram woman with the apple cheeks and church-organ voice describing how Molly Potter had been seven months pregnant. The thought of the poor girl’s evisceration at the hands of a homicidal maniac sent a chill up her spine.

  “Forget Jack the Ripper!” Collin sprang to his feet. His red hair, darker at the edges, spiked out around his head like a kid who’d put his finger in a light socket.

  “This is all hearsay and speculation. Clairvoyant speculation,” Collin sputtered indignantly. “And in case you weren’t listening, my grandfather wants to fry me in oil! Marry me off to Prudence Farthington! This isn’t the dark ages. I refuse to be bullied into an arranged marriage. God’s eyeballs! I know I’m ahead of my time, but I have this forward-thinking notion that one ought to have at least a bit of . . . well . . . passion for the girl one is to marry. I suppose you think that’s unreasonable. But there you are. It’s how I feel. The very idea of an arranged marriage to Horseface Farthington is as hateful to me as, well . . . drowning in a bedpan full of slops!”

  Katie bit back a weak smile. “I remember your telling me you were fond of Prudence. And would be very glad if she accepted you. A feather in your cap, you said.”

  “Piffle! I remember no such thing. I’m being forced to marry someone I don’t give a fig for! This isn’t the olden days! I’ve got new-fangled, modern ideas. Oh, all right. I’ll concede there are some sound reasons for arranged marriages—provided you at least like the other person—the nobility must, after all, maintain bloodlines and keep their titles up to snuff. But God’s teeth! I don’t feel the sort of passion for Horseface-Prudence that I feel for . . . say . . . er . . . Dora Fowler. Now there’s the girl for me!”

  Toby cast a sharp glance at Collin. “Dora Fowler? That’s a bloody rum joke. Dora can’t hold a candle to Prudence. What’s more, you’ve been rattling on lately about how much you adore ‘old Prudie.’ You said she has smashing Scotch eggs and beautiful pork pies.”

  “Horseface-Prudence? Nice legs? Beautiful eyes? Satan’s elbow! I don’t give two hoots for old horseface’s legs or eyes . . . or her bones, teeth, or curvaceous . . . well, never mind. She has a damnable good, er . . . carriage. But never mind that. I don’t give a tinker’s toenail about her now that I’ve met Dora Fowler.” Collin marched across the room to a bookshelf and snatched up a bronze ram’s head wedged between a two-volume The Tragedy of King Richard the Third.

  “What chance do I have of happiness”—Collin railed, waving the ram’s head in the air—“if I can’t be with Dora? And, anyway, I sort of . . . you know . . . pledged myself to her. So an engagement to Prudence is out of the question.”

  “You what?” Katie and Toby said in unison.

  Collin replaced the ram’s head next to a stuffed snake draped over the collected works of Thackeray on the shelf above, then turned back to the others, but wouldn’t look Toby in the eye.

  “Dora’s not like other girls. She wouldn’t have me . . . you know . . . unless I pledged my . . . what did she call it? My applecart. So I pledged my heart like a proper gentleman—or ‘gent’ as she calls me—and sealed the deal with my signet ring!”

  Katie fastened her eyes on Collin’s right hand. His signet ring with the Twyford crest was missing; in its place, a telltale band of white skin.

  “You bloody fool!” shouted Toby. “Dora Fowler, with her ventriloquism and bird whistles, would take you into her bed for far less than—”

  “How dare you talk about my beloved that way?” Blue veins bulged in Collin’s forehead. “She’s pledged herself to me . . . for . . . for all eternity!” He sprang toward Toby, fists clenched, blue eyes fierce.

  Toby stepped forward, fists equally raised.

  Katie moved to Toby’s side and placed a restraining hand on his arm. Her head was level with his shoulder and she sensed the anger inside him—Collin was Toby’s responsibility—but fighting would only make things worse.

  Feeling the gentle pressure of Katie’s touch, Toby dropped his fists to his side. “Collin,” he said wearily. “In the name of all that’s holy, tell me you didn’t offer Dora—”

  “My hand in marriage? Err . . . um . . . something quite like it . . . yes,” Collin yelped, releasing his own fists and stepping back. “I believe so. I can’t remember everything that transpired last night, but I do remember I gave her my ring . . . she wouldn’t let me kiss her otherwise. God’s whiskers, Toby! Don’t look at me like that! What would you have me do? I fancy her. She fancies me. True push and shove.”

  “Well, I hope true love was worth it.”

  “It was, er . . . yes, rawther. Or what I remember of it.” Collin gulped and his Adam’s apple surged up and down. “We had a few pints at the pub . . . I woke up this morning with a blistering headache . . . and she told me I’d . . . er . . . proposed. And . . . a gentleman . . . doesn’t go back on his word, as you well know, Toby.”

  “What I know is this: Dora pulled the oldest round the stick in the book on you! The oldest trick, ploy, hoax, swindle, deception known to mankind . . . or, I should say, womankind.”

  “She never!”

  “She did, old sod. You were putty in her hands.”

  “Boys!” Katie stepped between them. She shot Toby a warning look.

  “I tell you,” sputtered Collin indignantly. “I’m pledged to Dora Fowler, and there’s an end to it!” He made a grunting sound, like a sigh, and began tugging on his lower lip with thumb and forefinger. “What’s more, I despise old Horseface-Prudie like poison!” He turned and sprang past the book table, bumping against it, rattling the tea set and jiggling the biscuits. One biscuit fell to the floor with a thunk. Collin bent over to retrieve it, then, in frustration, shoved the entire table and it fell over with a crash.

  “So you’re going to make Dora your bag for life, is that it?” Toby crossed his arms in front of his
chest.

  “If you mean wife, yes. She’ll be the Duchess of—”

  “Strife?” Toby was grinning.

  Collin rose to his full height and thumped himself on the chest. “Nothing you can possibly say will in any way upset the matrimonial applecart of Collin Chesterfield Twyford, the third, or my name isn’t . . . er, well . . . Collin Chesterfield Twyford, the third, heir to the Duke of Twyford, and—”

  “You’re right, old sod,” Toby laughed, cutting him off. “Nothing I say will make a bit of difference. But the Duke will have more than a few words on that account. He has his own way of dealing with what he perceives as a swinging door.”

  “A swinging what?”

  “What Cockneys call a—”

  Katie tossed Toby a sharp glance. If that’s what I think it is, don’t say it, she thought. “Don’t even think it,” she said aloud, moving forward. But she was too late.

  “Whore.”

  A moment later Collin was raining punches down on Toby, flailing his fists with a fierceness that belied his lanky frame. But Toby came from a long line of fairground fighters. His maternal granddad had been a champion bare-knuckle boxer. Collin was outclassed, outfoxed, outmaneuvered. Toby deflected his blows as easily as if he were dancing around an angry, pecking rooster.

  Katie shook her head. Seemingly without effort, Toby sidestepped punch after far-flung punch until Collin grew tired and began to weave off balance. But in a final burst of frustration, Collin raised his right fist and hammered it at Toby’s face. Instead of ducking, Toby wrapped his hand around Collin’s high-flying knuckles, stopping the momentum as easily as if he were wearing a baseball glove and catching a hard-hit spitball. The move surprised and enraged Collin. He began to howl in anger as Toby twisted his arm and levered him down on all fours. They wrestled to the ground, Collin shrieking, but he could no more fight off Toby than a bear could an elephant, and when Collin was finally pinned and cried uncle, Toby easily released him and strode back across the room to right the tea table, hoisting it up from the floor with one hand.

  “Toby! Watch out!” Katie cried.

  Toby whipped around.

  Behind him, Collin had sprung to his feet and was screaming with such rage, the shrill sound of it set Toby’s teeth on edge. It was the piercing shriek of an enraged animal. Collin’s face, as he lunged, was twisted with rage and as dark red as if suffused with beet juice.

  “You’re all in league against me!” Collin screeched, pulling out his penknife and jabbing it in the air like a poker.

  Toby’s hobnailed boots clattered back across the floor.

  Another shrill howl from Collin. “I’ll show you who’s the boss of me. Not so bold now, eh?” Collin slashed the pocket knife this way and that.

  “Put it down!” Toby hissed, circling Collin cautiously. But as he narrowed the distance between them, Collin kicked out wildly at Toby’s midsection, forcing him to step back.

  Toby continued to circle, slowly, deliberately. “Every Thursday night,” he said in a deceptively matter-of-fact voice, “a thousand East Enders pack into Joey’s Music Hall. I’ll take you someday, Katie.” He spoke so softly and conversationally, it was as if he were talking about the weather, but his attention remained riveted on Collin.

  “For a shilling I can get us ringside seats. Isn’t that right, Collin? You and I like to stand at the back . . . placing bets. Working-class stiffs number fifty to one against toffs. It’s a sight to behold, isn’t it, Collin? All the lads wear bright red scarves instead of collars. Not like the tournaments at Albert Hall.” His voice was soothing.

  But Collin was not mollified. He continued to jab at Toby, his freckled face bathed in sweat, his red hair falling over his furrowed brow. His eyes held a watchfulness that matched Toby’s. He was waiting for his moment.

  “If anger could win this for you, Collin,” Toby said with a wry smile, “you’d be the victor hands down.”

  When Toby inched closer, Collin saw his opportunity and punched out with his free hand, then kneed Toby in the abdomen. Toby had deliberately gone in close, bracing for the kick—and when it came, it seemed to Katie, he absorbed the blow like a punching bag, inured to the pain.

  Emboldened, Collin followed with a jab and a right cross. Toby seized Collin’s wrist and pivoted him around into a half-Nelson, then wrapped his right leg around Collin’s left. Collin buckled. Twisting his wrist like a corkscrew, Toby ordering Collin to drop the knife. But when Collin stubbornly refused, Toby bent back his fingers one by one, until an expression of agony washed over Collin’s face and the pocketknife clattered to the floor.

  Chapter Forty-four

  Kettles of Fish say the Bells of Shoreditch

  In the orchestra pit at the London Music Hall in Shoreditch High Street, the bandleader raised his baton. The vast auditorium was only half full with Saturday night patrons who had paid a hefty sum to be entertained with bawdy music, juggling acts, knife throwing, sword swallowing, dancing girls, and a rousing ventriloquist act. A half circle of burning lanterns threw spheres of quivering gaslight onto the stage, lending a tremor of anticipation to the charged atmosphere.

  Katie, standing next to Collin in the left-hand aisle against a dull brick wall, watched as a dozen black fiddle bows rose from the orchestra pit in unison. Cymbals crashed hard on the opening bar of “Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay,” rising with a pendulum cadence and a burst of cheers from the audience as Catherine Eddowes, a striking young woman, sashayed onto the stage and began to sing with deceptive demureness, even as she coyly displayed a flash of her ankles and calves wreathed in lacy pantaloons, and a portion of her prodigious white-powdered bosom, enveloped in see-through silk. Her voice was strong and sweetly feminine as she belted out the lyrics.

  Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay! (the cymbals struck again)

  Jack the Ripper’s out to play

  He’ll take your girl away—

  And slice her up today

  He’ll take her organs, too,

  And when he’s good and through

  He’ll take your sister Lou

  And cut her up for stew

  Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay!

  Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay!

  Throughout the dimly lit theater, people whistled, hummed, and clapped to the rousing tune. Collin, too, joined in. An infectious merriment filled the auditorium, which Katie might have felt if it weren’t for the fact that Catherine Eddowes, singing with such gusto, was slated to be Jack the Ripper’s next victim.

  It was the thirtieth of September, the night of the double homicide of Catherine Eddowes, in Mitre Square, Aldgate, and a very pregnant Molly Potter in Berner Street, Whitechapel.

  Catherine Eddowes sang the lyrics again, and then launched into a lusty refrain with a sort of kick dance, like the cancan, displaying her long legs and deep cleavage. Bras hadn’t been invented yet, Katie knew, but even so, Catherine Eddowes would have been the last person on earth to need a Victoria’s Secret push-up.

  She went on to sing “The Boy I Love” and “Daisy Bell,” and after several prolonged curtsies, Catherine Eddowes exited the stage to a chorus of cheering. Katie cast her eyes about, then nodded to Collin, and together they retraced their steps down the red-carpeted aisle.

  The theater was large and amazingly ornate, with plaster molds of cupids and nymphs on the gilded proscenium arch. Poster boards in the foyer announced the return of the Flying Mephisto Brothers with colorful renditions of acrobats in scarlet tights.

  Guarding the stage door outside the music hall sat a man in a monk’s costume who let them pass into the bowels of the theater when Katie palmed several silver coins into his waiting hand. Inside they moved haltingly down a long, dark passageway, musty with the smell of theater props and scenery. Nobody stopped them as they hurried along past broken rows of orchestra seats shrouded in white dust covers until they came to a set of padded swinging doors. Entering, they could see the side panels of the gas-lighted stage to the right. They were in the wings below a snarl of ropes, l
evered pulleys, and scaffolding, and could clearly hear laughter from patrons in the front orchestra stalls.

  The clang of a xylophone rang out, followed by the thumping clatter of stilt-walkers, dressed like cowboys, stomping across the stage. Peeking through the curtained wings, Katie watched the stilt-walker nearest her at the rear of the stage. He was so tall, she could see only the bottoms of his wooden legs draped in leather chaps, ending in giant spurred cowboy boots.

  She drew back. A shadowy figure was approaching from the dark recesses to the rear, moving stealthily under the scaffolding. Emerging from the dimness he looked disturbingly like Major Brown. Katie and Collin ducked behind a curtain wing. There was a stash of props on a side table: a white, ten-gallon cowboy hat, a rodeo-style blacksnake whip, two cross-belt holsters, and a pearl-handled six-shooter. Katie plunked the ten-gallon hat on top of Collin’s head, smushing it over his eyes, and ducked behind him into the shadows.

  If Katie were to bump into Major Brown in a dark alley, he would have scared her to death. Tall and commanding, he exuded a raw masculine energy that was more than a little menacing. But backstage in this burlesque theater she felt only apprehension and something like anger. What was Major Brown doing here? Had he spoken to Catherine Eddowes? Had he already killed her and sliced her open? No, Katie told herself. Catherine Eddowes was supposed to die in Mitre Square, just after midnight, not backstage in a dark theater.

  “Howdy, buckaroo!” Collin couldn’t resist saying in an imitation drawl as Major Brown pushed past.

  “Stop that!” Katie whispered, tugging at the back of Collin’s greatcoat.

  “This here hat is mighty fine!” Collin continued the parody, but luckily Major Brown was out of earshot, having left through the padded swinging doors.

  “Quit fooling around,” Katie whispered, swiping the ten-gallon hat off his head and replacing it on the prop table. “That was close.”

  “Sho-nuf, little lady.” Collin eyed the pearl-handled six-shooter longingly.