Portrait of Peril

by Laura Joh Rowland

  CHAPTER 25

  “You were right about treating Richard Trevelyan’s murder as a separate, unique crime,” I say to Barrett as we walk through the crowds along the Whitechapel high street.

  Barrett smiles at me. “I’ll have to remember this moment.” His eyes twinkle with mischief. “You don’t often you admit that you were wrong.”

  I cuff his arm. “Enjoy it. You might not have another chance for a long time.” Despite my playful manner, even while I’m enjoying the fresh climate of new hope, I’m troubled. I feel distant from Barrett, as if I’m alone again outside Inspector Reid’s house, aiming the gun. I imagine my mother inside me, coiled like an invisible snake with sharp scales. I clutch Barrett’s arm, trying to anchor myself to the present, to reality.

  “Ouch, you don’t need to hold me so tight,” he says. “I’m not going anywhere.”

  The George Yard Buildings, to which Mr. Newby directed us, are located just down the block from my house. Eva Piper and I are virtually neighbors, and although I don’t recall ever seeing her, our paths must have crossed before the night of Richard Trevelyan’s murder. Barrett and I stand in George Yard, a narrow alley between the Whitechapel high street and Wentworth Street. The alley is a dim tunnel lit by streetlamps at either end. We look up at the pair of four-story brick tenements built some twenty years ago as inexpensive housing for the poor. They’re among the most notorious places in London, the scene of Jack the Ripper’s first murder.

  “Tuesday the seventh of August, 1888,” Barrett says.

  On that date he was the first police officer at the crime scene. I never saw the scene myself, but I’d known the victim—Martha Tabram. I’d followed the accounts in the newspapers and read quotes from Barrett’s testimony at the inquest, unaware that I would solve the crime and that someday Barrett would be my husband.

  The exteriors of the buildings look the same as they did during the Ripper’s reign of terror, but tenants fled in droves and the glare of publicity revealed the squalid conditions and the abundance of prostitutes. Recently, the flats were renovated and converted to a hostel for students. Barrett and I see fresh-faced young people going in and out of the arched entrance. I hear swatting and bouncing noises from a tennis game in the court outside the settlement house behind the buildings. A wholesome new era of change is under way.

  Barrett shows Eva’s ghost photograph to a skinny youth lugging a stack of books. “Do you know which flat she has?”

  “Number two-oh-five. A snooty bird, won’t give a fellow the time of day,” he replies.

  Beyond the open entrance, a dim passage smells of urine from vagrants who still shelter in the passage at night. I wonder how a beautiful, elegant woman like Eva came to live here. Maybe modeling doesn’t pay as well as I thought. The odor joins the scents of onions and fried lard as Barrett and I mount a stone staircase. Martha Tabram was murdered on one of the landings. I picture her lying on her back with her thick legs spread and her skirts hiked up, in a pool of blood from thirty-nine stab wounds. I’ve heard rumors that her ghost has been seen haunting George Yard. This and other scenes of Ripper murders are certainly haunted by tourists who have a taste for grisly crime. Barrett and I step over a sleeping man who reeks of liquor. At flat 205, I knock on the door.

  “Who is it?” a throaty female voice calls from inside.

  “Police,” Barrett says. “Eva Piper?”

  My heartbeat quickens with anticipation; I feel on the brink of catching Richard Trevelyan’s killer.

  The woman who opens the door is a far cry from the ethereal ghost. Over forty, she’s plump, with a large bosom and double chin. Her hair, arranged in a pouf of swirls, is a brassy, unnatural shade of red. She wears a dirty white apron, a green paisley wool dressing gown, and stained green velvet bedroom slippers. She must be one of the original tenants who stayed on after the buildings became a student hostel. The air that issues from the room behind her smells of rose perfume.

  “Eva Piper don’t live here anymore,” she says.

  “What’s your name?” Barrett says.

  The woman chews her rouged, scarlet lips. She eyes Barrett’s uniform; her evident fear of the police outweighs her reluctance to tell them anything. “Annie Watts. Miss.”

  “Miss Watts, do you know the whereabouts of Eva Piper?” Barrett says.

  “How should I? I used to live next door, but she kept to herself. Her room was better than mine, so I took it over when she left. Landlord said she skipped out in the middle of the night without payin’ the rent.”

  “When did she skip out?” I say, hoping that Eva Piper’s trail isn’t too cold.

  “Tuesday.”

  It can’t be a coincidence. I say to Barrett, “That’s the same night Richard Trevelyan was murdered.”

  “If she’s the killer, it would explain why she left,” Barrett says.

  Annie Watts’s painted eyebrows shoot upward. “Hey, I don’t want nothin’ to do with no murder.” She shuts the door in our faces.

  I push it open before she can lock it. “I need to look around the flat.” I mustn’t ignore the slight possibility that it harbors clues.

  “Go away!”

  “Let us in, or I’ll arrest you,” Barrett says.

  Uttering a harsh sound of disgust, Annie obeys. The rose perfume is so strong that I can taste its bitter chemicals. The flat consists of a single small room that’s cluttered with garments strewn about, laundry hanging from a string, and dirty pans on the stove. On the bed, a large basket contains roses, lilies, and tulips. At first I think they’re real, but then I see that the table under the window, lit by the gas lamp, holds wire, scissors, sewing supplies, paint and glue pots, and brilliantly hued cloth and paper.

  “You make those?” Barrett asks Annie.

  “Yeah. I’m an artificial florist.”

  The black net stockings and the red petticoat hanging on the clothesline suggest that she, like many other women who sell artificial flowers, has an additional profession of a different sort. She plucks a little bouquet from the table and offers it to Barrett with a coy smile. “A posy for your lady? Only five pence.”

  Barrett nods, apparently thinking that a sale will make Annie more likely to cooperate. Coins change hands. Annie sprays the bouquet with perfume from an atomizer bottle, adding to the fragrance in the room, then gives the bouquet to me. The petals are coral silk, the centers crafted from yellow beads, the leaves from starched green fabric, and the wire stems wrapped in green silk ribbon. It’s a small work of art, a cut above the usual trinkets sold on London streets.

  “Thank you,” I say. “It’s beautiful.”

  “Coral is for passion,” Annie says.

  A blush warms my cheeks. Barrett winks at me, then asks Annie, “Is everything in this flat yours?”

  “Yeah. That cow Eva Piper didn’t leave nothin’.” When Barrett and I begin searching the room, Annie says, “Hey, careful with my stuff!”

  Barrett finds long blond hairs in the dust under the cupboard—a physical trace of Eva Piper. He lifts the mattress on the bed to look under it, and I look behind the plain wooden headboard. A sheet of white paper is stuck between the board and the wall. Cautioning myself not to hope for too much, I say to Barrett, “I think I’ve found something.”

  He helps me move the bed. Annie mutters, “If you break it, I’ll have to pay.”

  The paper falls on the floor. I reach down and pick up THE paper, which is creased, as if was folded into an envelope. At the top is the name JENNY LIND HOSPITAL, POTTERGATE, NORWICH, and an illustration of a building. Below, printed in columns, are fees for BED, BOARD, MEDICINE, PHYSICIAN, and NURSING. Written on the line provided for the patient’s name is EVELYN COREY PIPER.

  CHAPTER 26

  “There’s a train to Norwich at seven oh five tonight from Liverpool station,” Barrett says, consulting a railway timetable.

  He and Fitzmorris and I are at home in the kitchen, eating bacon sandwiches for supper. I would leave my meal and
run out the door now, but I have to point out, “That’s not enough time to get to the station.”

  “There’s another at nine thirty-seven. It arrives in Norwich at eleven forty.”

  “Norwich might be a wild-goose chase.” I pray to heaven that it isn’t. “We would have to stay overnight, and we’re not at all certain Eva Piper is there.”

  Barrett waves the hospital bill.

  “Even if she once was a patient at the hospital, she could still be in London now.” I’m trying not to set myself up for disappointment. “And she might not be the killer.”

  “If Norwich is a dead end, we could be back in London by tomorrow, with three more days left to clear Mick,” Barrett says.

  That’s cutting it close, but I’m at my wits’ end. “All right. We’ll catch the nine thirty-seven train.”

  I’m upstairs in my room, throwing clothes into a valise, when the doorbell jangles. This time it has to be Hugh. I run downstairs … and find Sally in the kitchen. Collapsed in a chair, she dabs a handkerchief against her red, teary eyes. Fitzmorris hovers near her with a cup of tea; Barrett, seated beside her, wears the calm, sober expression he dons at crime scenes. My disappointment at not seeing Hugh turns to alarm.

  “Sally, what’s wrong?” I say.

  “It’s Father,” Sally wails. “He’s gone!”

  The two words reawaken a panic that has deep, twisted roots inside me. They sprout new growth that crowds the air out of my chest. “What happened?”

  “We were supposed to meet for tea. I went to his lodgings, and he wasn’t there. I waited and waited, but he never came. I think he’s disappeared again!”

  “I’m sure there’s another explanation.” Barrett’s tone is steady, reassuring.

  I barely hear him over the high-pitched, keening animal cry that fills my mind. It’s the sound I uttered when I was ten years old, the night when my father had been gone for a week and I lay in my bed and faced the terrible possibility that he might never come back. Blackness stipples my vision. I’m going to faint.

  As I drop into a chair, Sally clutches my hand. Hers is cold, wet with tears. “Oh, Sarah, what are we going to do?”

  I force myself to breathe, to stay conscious. I can’t fall apart; I’m not a child anymore, and Sally is depending on me. “He must have gone out on an errand and forgotten about your appointment.”

  Sally looks stung by the idea, but hopeful. “He wouldn’t forget me, would he?”

  “If he started taking photographs, he could have lost track of the time, like he used to do,” I say. “He’s probably back at his lodgings by now.”

  Sally smiles through her tears. “Yes! Let’s go and see if he’s there.” She jumps up from her seat.

  I wrestle with conflicting impulses, then make a decision: a few hours’ delay probably won’t affect my search for Eva Piper or the outcome. “I’ll fetch my coat and pocketbook.”

  “I’m coming with you,” Barrett says.

  * * *

  I’ve never been so thankful for Barrett. During the journey by slow night train to Battersea, he lets Sally and me fret about accidents or other terrible fates that might have befallen our father until we’ve exhausted the subject. Then he tells us he’s sure our father is safe and sound and will be upset to see our long faces, so we’d better cheer up. He asks Sally about her job at the Daily World and soon has her telling funny stories about people she’s interviewed. He in turn relates amusing tales from his police work, such as the time he cornered a robber who tried to escape down a chimney and got stuck. By the time we’re walking down the mist-shrouded street toward the Gladstone Arms, we’re as gay as the local folks I see heading to the pubs. I think of the vows Barrett and I made at our wedding. He’s fulfilling his promise to comfort me. The vows take on a richer meaning than the mere words suggested.

  In the dim second-floor passage at the Gladstone Arms, Sally knocks on the door of our father’s room. There’s no answer. Now I’m afraid he’s lying in there unconscious—or dead—perhaps from a stroke. Barrett runs downstairs to the taproom and fetches the publican. Sally and I clasp hands and hold our breath while the publican opens the door to dark silence. He lights the lamp inside the room, revealing the bed neatly made, everything in order, and my father absent.

  My panic swells anew, choking me. Sally moans. Barrett says to the publican, “Thanks. You can go.”

  I look in the cupboard and under the bed and find my father’s clothes, trunk, and camera. “His things are still here. He must be coming back.”

  Sally shakes her head. “You know this is just like the other times. All he took were the clothes on his back. He’s left us again!”

  I speak forcefully, to convince myself as well as Sally: “No, no. Something else must have happened.”

  But I wonder if he found the relationship with us too onerous; we’re adults, not the simple little girls he remembers. Or maybe he’s afraid that our efforts to exonerate him will fail and thinks it will be safer and easier to disappear again and resume his solitary life under a new alias in some obscure locale.

  Sally turns to Barrett. “What should we do?”

  “Let’s go to the taproom and ask if anyone there has seen your father.”

  “I’ll look for clues here.” After Barrett and Sally depart, I sit in the chair and inhale deep, shuddering breaths until my heartbeat slows and the panic recedes enough for me to survey the room. His shaving things by the washbasin have a forlorn air, like relics in a seldom-visited museum. I catch a whiff of his clean scent laced with the bitterness of photographic chemicals.

  “Where are you?” I say softly.

  My voice echoes in the quiet. It’s as if he’s a ghost that I lack the power to conjure up. I can still feel my mother’s malevolent presence under my skin, but my father has never seemed more distant. I go through the motions of searching for clues. His trunk, camera case, and clothes yield nothing. Then I see, on the windowsill, the notebook in which Sally wrote his account of the day Ellen Casey died. She must have left it there, intending to come back later and finish. It seems to give off an unnatural glow, like an enchanted, poisonous apple. I take the notebook to the table, turn the lamp higher, and brace myself. I skip the part of the story I’ve already read, about how my father discovered Ellen’s rape and murder. I skim the next few pages, which describe the terrible bargain he struck with my mother: he would help her and Lucas cover up the murder, then run away and let the police think he’d done it, but only if Lucas went with him. He wanted to protect me from being molested by Lucas as well as protect Lucas and my mother from the law. I knew all this because he’d told me. But I’ve never heard the next episode of the story.

  When Sarah came home from school, I talked to her about her lessons and her friends and pretended nothing was amiss. At supper, I could hardly eat. Mary wouldn’t look at me or say a word to me. When Sarah went to bed, I kissed her and told her I loved her. I knew it could be the last time, if things went wrong that night. And soon I would be going away, never to see her again, and I couldn’t say good-bye. I almost broke down.

  I wipe tears from my eyes. I have no memory of that night; it must have seemed like any other.

  Then Mary and I sat in the parlor and waited for Lucas. She kept her face turned away from me, and I could feel how much she hated me. Lucas came back at midnight as we’d planned. He and I went down to the cellar and brought up the trunk in which I’d hidden Ellen’s body. Mary clung to Lucas and kissed him and wept. All she cared about was that he was in danger and going away soon. Then he and I carried the trunk down the street. It was a foggy night, and no one was about. We meant to throw Ellen in the river, but she was heavy and it was slow going. We couldn’t hire a cab, because if her body was found, the driver might hear about it and remember us. Then we heard voices and police whistles in the distance.

  Lucas said, “They must be looking for her. We’re going to get caught. We have to get rid of her now.”

  We went to Grevill
e Street. There’d been a fire recently. Three houses in a terrace had burned. The ruins hadn’t been cleared away yet. We sneaked inside what was left of one house, took Ellen from the trunk, and laid her on the floor. I covered her with charred boards. We threw the trunk in a dustbin in an alley. Then Lucas went back to his lodgings, and I went home.

  I reread the last paragraph as a cold tide of apprehension laps at me.

  Sally and Barrett return. Sally says, “The publican is the only person here who knows Father. The last time he saw him was this morning, walking down the street. He doesn’t know where he went.” Her voice is heavy with disappointment.

  I picture my father vanishing into thin air as he walked away. I stand and hold the notebook open in front of Sally. “You wrote that Father left Ellen in a burned house in Greville Street. Are you sure that’s what he said?”

  Sally wrinkles her brow, as if puzzled about why I’m asking a question regarding a minor detail from the past. “Yes. I was careful to record every word exactly.”

  “Why’s it important?” Barrett says.

  “According to the police report, Ellen Casey’s body was found on Gough Street,” I say, “at a road construction site.”

  “It was a long time ago,” Sally says. “Maybe Father forgot where he and Lucas left the body.”

  I want to believe it, but I say, “I don’t think he would have forgotten. And his memory of the three burned houses and covering Ellen with charred boards seems very clear and specific.”

  “What does it matter, where they left the body?” Sally says.

  Dread rising in my throat holds my tongue. Barrett reluctantly answers: “That’s a discrepancy between your father’s story and the official one. It calls the rest of his story into question.”