“Forget it,” Katie said, shaking her head. “It’s only a prop. And stop with the Southern drawl already.”
“T’aint Southern!” Collin scoffed. “Can’t y’all tell ah’m from Texas?”
“Last time I looked, Texas was in the South.” Katie tried not to smile.
“No-sir-ree, little lady. It’s in the Wild West. Don’t y’all know anything? Haven’t y’all heard of Buffalo Bill?” Collin explained that Buffalo Bill had performed in London last year for the Queen’s Jubilee. “Tarnation, I saw the show twice! Wish I was a genuine cowboy . . . or maybe a bison hunter! That’s the life for me!”
Katie laughed. “Even so, Texas is not the Wild West.” She didn’t know anything about Buffalo Bill except that his name sounded familiar. When she got home, she’d look him up on the Internet. Katie had a vague idea he was related to Annie Oakley. “The only thing worse than imitating a Texan accent,” she said, “is a Brit doing it. Come on, let’s go.”
A dozen firecracker pops! sounded across the stage to Katie’s right, making her jump. The stilt-walking cowboys were blasting cap-gun six-shooters at one another, all the while stomping long-legged around the stage, as if doing the Cotton-Eyed Joe. The audience rose to their feet, hooting and hollering just as the orchestra started up again.
For a hefty sum, Toby had arranged for Katie and Collin to meet Catherine Eddowes in her dressing room after her stage performance, and then to stay with her throughout the evening—with an even heftier bonus to follow in the morning. But when Katie and Collin arrived at the backstage room where the performers donned their costumes and makeup, Catherine Eddowes was nowhere to be found.
A grim little man in a red clown’s costume, wearing black face paint, approached. “If you be looking for Miss Eddowes, she said to tell you she received a better offer, and to say good day to you. Or, should I say, good night.” He scurried past several ballet dancers, whose bell-shaped tutus, draped in long pink netting, fluttered outward from their hips.
“Ballerinas!” bawled a low voice from the darkness. “Places! You’re on in five! Hey! You. What you doing backstage? Places! Places, girls! Half a tick! Wait for it. Wait for it. You’re on in three seconds. Two, one—”
Scampering toward the stage, several ballerinas gave Collin appraising looks. Collin, in turn, stared back at the pink-clad girls, a wolfish grin on his face.
“Wait!” Katie called after the clown man, elbowing past Collin. “Where did Catherine Eddowes go? Did she go home?”
“Not that one,” chuckled the clown. “Not by a long shot. Probably taking a stroll past the pubs, see what catches her eye. She likes her gin. Likes it more ’n most. Now me, I’m a pint man, m’self. Don’t go in for—”
“Where? What pub?”
“Ten Bells, more’n likely.”
Katie thanked the clown-man then narrowed her eyes at Collin who seemed oblivious to anything other than the dancing girls twirling onto the stage in their long, netted tutus, fitted bodices, and pink tights.
Chapter Forty-five
Catch Me if You Dare say the Bells of St. Clare’s
Hurrying down Commercial Street on their way to the Ten Bells, Katie and Collin heard the clock of Saint Clare of Assisi strike ten. They had two hours to find Catherine Eddowes and save her from her horrific fate.
Katie whispered a silent prayer that the doorman backstage at the London Music Hall was correct. Catherine Eddowes would be at the Ten Bells Tavern.
A pony cart rattled down the dark street, its lantern light dwindling, then dying away, as the cart turned sharply down Aldgate Lane, out of sight. Katie glanced at Collin, his hand at her elbow tugging her along, and a stab of fear shot through her. What if we don’t find Catherine Eddowes?
Collin, cloaked head to toe in black, his collar drawn up to his ears, looked precisely as Katie imagined Jack the Ripper would look. Shrouded in a long cape, the wings of his collar projecting stiffly upward like black raven’s wings, he looked—
Katie mentally shook herself. If anything, Collin’s clothing made him look more like Dracula. But his flame-red hair jutting out like straw from under his black bowler, shattered the Prince of Darkness image. And yet . . . the expression in Collin’s ice-blue eyes below the ginger arch of his brows was murderous.
“What if we don’t find her, Katherine? What if . . .” his voice choked.
“I know.” Katie nodded. “I was thinking the same thing. But we will find her, Collin. We won’t let her die.”
Collin let go of Katie’s elbow and threaded her arm through his. “Not to worry, Katie old girl. If we don’t find Miss Eddowes at the Ten Bells, we’ll hightail it directly to Mitre Square . . . and wait. We’re about to pass through the square now, it’s on our way. And you have my word, Katie, I’ll do everything in my power—”
“I know, Collin. If only . . .” But Katie didn’t say what she was thinking. If only Toby were here, because that would irritate Collin, make him think she didn’t believe he was capable of thwarting Jack the Ripper. They’d agreed that Katie and Collin would stick like glue to Catherine Eddowes—who had given her promise for a hefty fee to stay with them until past midnight. And that Toby would escape from Twyford Manor—where he was under house arrest—and shadow Molly Potter.
Katie’s pulse raced. She started to tremble. They were entering Mitre Square. It would be here, in this dingy courtyard that Catherine Eddowes might die. Katie glanced around. There was no one in sight except a drunken man sprawled on the ground, legs splayed, his back propped against a hitching post. He was snoring loudly, clutching tight to a whiskey bottle, a red kerchief tied atop his head. Streaks of coal dust lay smeared across his eyes and nose like a raccoon mask.
Dimly lit, the cobblestone square was no bigger than half a basketball court, bracketed on three sides by narrow, brick tenement walls, which held the entrances of shops, shuttered and padlocked. Kearley & Tonge Grocers, O’Fingal’s fish shop, and a wardrobe dealer whose name Katie couldn’t read because it had been scratched away from the weather-beaten sign hanging over the lintel.
Katie and Collin stopped as they approached the square and scanned the perimeter. The lonely, moonlit square had three entrances: one from Minories Street to the east, the second from a doglegged alley called Church Passage, and the third from a narrow walkway leading from Saint Clare’s Place, the last of which they had just walked down.
Collin lit the lantern he’d brought with him. As the flame dipped and rose, it illuminated a stone drinking well in the center of the square.
A cat yowled, and Katie spun around. Collin flicked open the slide-window on the lantern an inch or two, and let the beam of light play up and down the narrow brick walls.
Fear, stronger than Katie had ever felt before, suddenly seized her, making her recoil. She felt an all-consuming sense of revulsion as her gaze fastened on the stone well, similar to the one at Madame Tussauds that had cradled the London Stone. It was here that Catherine Eddowes would die. By some weird illusion of the light from Collin’s lantern, the tenement walls rising up behind the stone well looked moist and damp, as if they were sweating tears.
Shaking away her sense of foreboding, as well as the notion that the walls were crying, Katie whispered, “Let’s get out of here! It’s giving me the—”
“Willies?” Collin whispered back. “Me, too.”
Katie was going to say that the place gave her the creeps. She cast a sharp glance around, clutching tight to Collin’s arm, and they hastened past the drinking well toward Church Passage.
Collin muttered something under his breath that Katie took for half-oath, half-prayer. She was saying prayers herself.
The drunken man, propped up against the hitching post, cried out in a gravelly, whiskey-soaked voice: “Oy, mate! Got a smoke fer a bloke down on ’is luck?”
“My good man,” Collin tut-tutted. “If I had a cigar, I surely wouldn’t—”
Katie yanked hard on Collin’s arm.
“Er .
. . right,” Collin amended. “I left me smokes at ’ome,” Collin called out, imitating a Cockney accent. They had agreed, should they meet anyone, that Collin would use a Cockney accent, which he did quite well, having listened to Toby for most of his life. It wouldn’t do to sound educated and well-to-do in an area where pickpockets and thieves plied their trade.
“Oy, mate,” the man stumbled to his feet. “You two love birds be awful careful, mind.” The soot-smeared man belched. “Don’t wanna meet up wiff his majesty Jack the Ripper. He’s a nasty piece of work, is ol’ Jack. Seen him do the dirty deed wiff them girls.”
“You’ve seen him?” Katie asked, turning back. “You know who he is?”
“Course I know him! It’s me! Oim Master Jack, his worshipful lordship. Oy! Ain’t you a pretty bit of goods?” The man lurched toward Katie.
“Drunken oaf! Leave off!” Collin shouted, shoving the man.
The soot-sodden man tumbled off balance to the ground and let out a throaty roar of rage that grew louder, echoing off the tenement walls. As if licking his wounds, he crawled back to his spot by the hitching post and took a long swig from his whiskey bottle.
As they hurried out of the square, Katie asked Collin if he thought the man might actually be telling the truth.
“Of course not!” Collin shook his head, guiding her forward. “Bloke’s nothing but a drunken lout. It would take someone far more clever and virile”—he thumped himself on the chest to indicate his own prowess—“to be Jack the Ripper.”
“But, Collin, don’t you see?” Katie whispered. “Pretending to be a stumbling drunk would be the perfect disguise!”
They entered the alley leading out of the Square.
“We shouldn’t overlook the obvious,” Katie insisted. “He might be lying in wait for Catherine Eddowes.”
“Look here, old girl,” Collin said in what sounded like bravado. “Two hundred years from now when that drunken oaf, and all his grandsons—ours, too—are rotting in their graves, none of this will matter a tinker’s curse.”
“It will matter, Collin,” Katie whispered, her throat tightening. “I think violence committed against innocent girls should never be forgotten . . . or forgiven. If we don’t stop Jack the Ripper, history will have to find him and track him down . . . if only to honor his poor victims.
“Collin,” Katie continued, more vehemently than before, “if it’s the last thing I do, I’m going to find out who Jack the Ripper really is. Even if we don’t save a single girl, at least history will know and condemn him for the sadistic serial killer that he is.”
“Sweet, suffering Moses! Let’s hope it’s not the last thing you do.” Collin’s eyes shone in the gloom as they hurried along. “You sound as if you actually believe the ghosts of those murdered girls will come back and haunt these streets until their killer is brought to justice.”
Or maybe a relative of one of the victims—a descendant of Lady Beatrix—will come back and serve up justice!
“I think,” Katie answered softly, “that Jack the Ripper and his poor victims will live on for hundreds of years . . . unless we do something about it.”
Behind them, from somewhere out of sight, Katie heard a man clear his throat. Katie glanced over her shoulder and caught the vague outline of a shrouded figure hastening down the passageway opposite into the Square. From the dimness rose a strident, arrogant voice they recognized instantly.
In a flash, Collin extinguished his lantern and tugged Katie around the dogleg bend and down a set of steps into a basement stairwell, where they crouched out of sight.
From the far end of the courtyard came the distinct sound of tall boots clicking, long before the man wearing them emerged into the moonlight, black military cloak flapping in the breeze as he strode forth.
Major Gideon Brown.
As he approached the center of the square, Katie caught a clear glimpse of the slightly curved sword protruding down from Major Brown’s left hip. It had a woven-wire grip and silver-filigree guard. She saw the holstered pistol, hung like a limp-necked dead bird, next to his billy club.
With a rattle of steel, leather, and hobnails from his boots, Major Brown strode toward the soot-faced man slouched against the post. The bright blade of his rapier flashed maliciously at his side. Its cutting edge appearing needle sharp in the moonlight.
“Angus. I crave a word!” Major Brown spoke bluntly, with an authoritative ring that carried clear across the cobblestones and echoed off the tear-streaked walls.
Crouching in the stairwell, Collin hissed under his breath. “Crave all you like, you filthy swine. The lout’s as drunk as a skunk.”
“Shhh, Collin. I can’t hear,” Katie whispered sharply, jutting her neck out to see better.
“Major Brown, sir!” The man shot up, instantly at attention. When he had risen to his full height and was saluting Major Brown, Katie could see it was the same man who had followed Toby and her from Traitors’ Gate into the underground railway. The same beefy man they’d escaped from. Major Brown’s man.
“Sir! The redheaded lad and the girl. They went that way, down Church Passage.” The officer pointed in their direction.
Chapter Forty-six
Clerics Hats and Sheep say the Bells of Eastcheap
Collin was on his feet instantly, the wings of his cloak thrown back as he pushed Katie up the stairwell.
“Run!”
Katie darted along the impossibly narrow alley. If she reached out her fingers, they’d scrape against bare brick walls on both sides. A horse cart blocked the tiny lane.
Panting hard, Katie swiveled back and watched as Collin wheeled the lantern high over his head, swung it around like a light saber gathering momentum, and smashed it to the ground. The glass shattered with a splintering crash. Oil oozed across the narrow passage.
Katie heard the whick of a matchstick as it struck against the tinder-box, and watched as Collin flicked the match onto the gooey sheen. Flames rose up, blood-red tongues licking and spitting. Katie blinked, then blinked again. It appeared as if Collin’s cloak was engulfed in fire; his face, melting like wax. Terrified, Katie cried out. But an instant later, relief surged through her when she heard Collin’s laughter rise up along with the flames.
“Take that, you blighter!” Collin hooted.
It had been an illusion. The only flames engulfing Collin were the spikes of his red hair shooting straight up from his head. His bowler had tumbled to the ground and was rolling by his side. Collin scooped it up and bolted after Katie, shouting: “Run! Run! Run!” A second later, their racing footsteps clattered loudly on the cobblestones, drowning out the hissing fire.
At the far end of the passage loomed an enormous wagon stacked with wooden barrels, stamped with one word: MALT.
Collin took Katie’s hand, and they squeezed past the unattended cart, dodging around the back wagon wheel. The owner must have stepped into the Hungry Goblin across the street for a pint. Releasing Katie’s hand, Collin hoisted himself onto the back of the open wagon. The large dray horse snorted and pawed the ground.
Pure fury glimmered in Collin’s eyes as he shoved barrel after barrel out the back end of the cart where they tumbled down with a loud thunk, clattering and rolling into the alley.
With a heavy growl like a mastiff on a leash, Collin jumped down from the flatbed dray and grabbed Katie’s wrist. They turned and ran, increasing their pace until Katie felt as if her lungs would burst. Her corset was too tight.
She faltered and stumbled.
Collin slowed down.
They rounded a sharp corner, and only then did they stop. Panting and hidden in shadow, they peeked out from around a boarding house cornerstone and scanned the long, dark street.
With a distance of several blocks between them and Major Brown, they watched the driver of the dray charge out of the Hungry Goblin, howling curses at Major Brown and fisting Brown’s assistant in the chest.
Katie glanced over her shoulder. Several women were entering a sta
rk white church across the way on Minories Street. Spiraling up into the misty, dark sky reared the church steeple of Saint Clare of Assisi, its windows lit with candles.
“Collin. Come on!” This time it was Katie who seized Collin’s wrist and tugged. As they raced toward the chapel they saw a sign advertising a midnight prayer vigil for the souls of the two murdered Whitechapel girls, Mary Ann Nichols and Annie Chapman.
Angels adorned the front windows. The church was so small — nestled between crooked houses on either side—that the columns flanking the front doors appeared like giant masts holding up a tiny sailing ship.
This area of the Minories, though not a slum, loomed dreary and smoky with its muddy cobblestones and curbside refuse. Crumbling chimney stacks sat atop tenement houses whose doors were shuttered with iron bars that rattled and groaned in the wind.
“Rot my soul!” Collin shouted. “Look—”
As they approached the church, Reverend H. P. Pinker stood just inside the doorway greeting mostly elderly congregants. When he saw Collin, he gave a hard, sharp look of surprise. Reverend Pinker had been bending forward, murmuring words of solace to two old women and an unshaven man, but he hurried them inside when he spotted Katie.
“My dear Miss Katherine,” Reverend Pinker beckoned to Katie, and his long face above the white clerical collar grew heavy and somber. “The East End is no place for a young lady such as yourself. There’s a madman on the prowl. Scotland Yard has given us every assurance that this carnage is at an end. But even escorted by young Master Collin—especially escorted by Master Collin—there’s danger around every bend. I insist on bringing you posthaste to Twyford Manor after I deliver my candlelight sermon. Let me—”
“Stow it, Stink-Pink,” Collin roared. “By all that’s holy, be a brick, Pinker—just this once! We need sanctuary, safe passage, safe haven, not sanctimonious polly-woggle drivel from a—”
“Reverend Pinker, sir,” Katie cut in, dropping a curtsy. She was still panting heavily. “Could you . . . would you . . . be so kind as to . . . help us? It’s . . . Major Brown. He . . . he—”
Ripped, a Jack the Ripper Time-Travel Thriller Page 34
