by Forbes, Kit
The daylight hours had nearly driven me crazy, knowing there was nothing to be done until after dark. Three times I’d had started to go to Ian and blurt out the truth, no matter how insane it sounded. The first two times, Ian had been out. The third time, Inspector Reid had abruptly summoned Ian away and given me a dismissive glance, as if to say, “You’re a good young chap but you’re wasting police time.”
Finally, I took that as an omen. A cosmic three strikes and you’re out telling me to keep my big mouth shut. I had no choice now but to try to carefully stake out the murder scene on my own.
It took me a while to locate the soon-to-be murder site. It was further East than I thought. Buck’s Row was fairly long and I couldn’t find a place where I could watch the whole street. So I took a chance on covering one end. I found a pile of rubble to hide behind later near Barker’s Row, the point closest to the major pubs in the area. The other end of the street was out near the Jewish Cemetery and that seemed an unlikely place for Nichols to be conducting her business.
As the night slid along, I walked a bit more, searching the faces of everyone I passed. I hoped to catch a glimpse of the doomed woman or at least spot someone who had the look of a psychopathic murderer.
Yeah, I was pretty much wandering aimlessly and hoping for a miracle.
***
Genie
I had just left Mother at the infirmary to visit and tend to some of her “gallant lads” now that she’d returned from her fortnight in Northampton. On the way to secure a cab, I came across a most interesting thing but quickly told myself I shouldn’t be surprised to see Mark Stewart peering into pubs well after midnight.
I reasoned he was simply trying to find someone to talk to, something write about, that I had no cause to have wicked thoughts about his motives. And yet, I couldn’t forget the sudden heat of his body nor the intense look in his eyes the night he’d almost kissed me. Even young, he was a man, after all, and men did have needs.
But he didn’t resemble any of the men I passed, who eyed the women as if the streets were store shelving filled for their purchases. Mark had a strange expression on his face, a haunted look. A look that frightened me a little.
He must have sensed me behind him and he whirled, a wild light in his eye before he recognized me.
“Miss Trambley, you’re the last person I expected to see out here tonight.”
“Obviously.” I kept my voice calm even though I had to speak loudly to be heard over the racket coming from the nearby pub. “Who were you expecting?”
He seemed completely distracted, his eyes never leaving the passers-by. “No one,” he said. “I mean, I was looking for someone and hoped to find her down here.”
“Oh.” My stomach twisted with a sudden sick feeling I refused to let show. “Is it someone special, perhaps? A friend for the evening?”
He looked at me as if seeing me for the first time, his face going through a series of changes so quickly I couldn’t begin to identify them.
“If I wanted to get laid, I wouldn’t have to pay for it.”
Was he implying he could have me if he wanted? Had he sensed my foolish desire that night? Or was he calling me a whore, implying I was out now, searching the night for the likes of him?
Anger, confusion, and revulsion coursed through me. “I’m sure your intelligence and good looks are sufficient to make them all want to pay you!” I spun on my heel and stormed off, ignoring his protestations and dodging through the crowd to shake off his pursuit.
“Miss Trambley!” he shouted. “Damnit, Genie! Stop!”
Tears threatened to blur my vision but I fought them back. He would not have me. Ever. And he would not treat me like a common prostitute.
He grabbed my arm and spun me around.
“This is not a safe place to be tonight,” he hissed through clenched teeth. “Please, just go home. Go. Anywhere but here!”
I wrenched free. “It is you I should be afraid of. Now leave me alone before I call a constable!”
“Dammit, girl! Will you listen and go home!”
I swung my umbrella again and the heavy handle caught him just above his left eye. He staggered back, clutching his face.
Without another word, I hurried into the crowd. This time, he did not follow.
Chapter Sixteen
Genie
“Oh, Miss Eugenia, you got to stop going to Whitechapel at night. You got to stop, ‘specially now—”
The maid broke off when Mother entered the dining room for breakfast. “Whatever are you on about now, Sarah? Have you burnt our meal?”
Sarah wrung her hands. “No, Ma’am, the food is fine. There’s been another nasty murder down Whitechapel!”
Mother sniffed. “That has nothing to do with us. It’s certainly no reason to delay our breakfast.” She sat at her place and plucked a piece of toast from the rack.
“But you was down there last night, Ma’am. It’s just too dangerous—”
Mother’s head snapped towards Sarah. She pinned her in place with her gaze. “To suggest that I might be in any danger either defames those brave men I tend to or implies I have business outside the Wards. And any such slander will have you looking for a new employer without reference quicker than you can blink!”
“I mean no disrespect, Ma’am. I’m just concerned for you is all.” She stepped aside to let Father enter. “I’ll fetch the tea now,” she said, beating a hasty retreat.
“How are your soldiers, Mother?” Father smoothly interrupted further outburst.
“We lost another last night, pour soul. Dead before his time, driven to drink by the immoral wife he left behind when he went to war.”
“That was over thirty years ago,” Father replied. “Surely enough time for him to have recovered from the shock.”
“Enough time? There would not be enough time in eternity if you came home from the war and found your wife a common whore and your children begging in the streets.”
“Most likely he’d run off to the adventure of war as so many have and left his family penniless.”
I cast around for something to divert the impending clash of their tempers. It didn’t happen often but clearly Father was in a difficult mood. My attention focused on the bandage on Mother’s right hand. “What happened to your hand, Mother? Are you all right?”
Her mouth worked itself into a knot as she cut the sausage on her plate into thin, even slices. “One of your father’s doctors in training left his case unlatched and a knife fell out and cut my hand when I was clearing it away.”
Father cleared his throat. “You really should have a matron accompany you,” he said quietly.
Mother replied with a harrumph. “We need young doctors who don’t leave their kits behind like children’s forgotten toys. And, we need a proper ward solely for the veterans.”
Turning towards me, she added, “We might have gotten that ward had it not been for the extraordinarily rude behavior of a certain guest at Lord Amberson’s home.”
I lowered my head, unable to erase the image of Mark that night, passionately arguing for more training for women nurses, then the image of him in the garden, so handsome, so close. My cheeks burned and I forced the image to the Mark Stewart I’d seen last night, acting like a man possessed or wild with drink.
Were either of those images the real Mark Stewart? Or was there yet another young man hidden behind his compelling eyes? As much as I wanted to hate him, I wanted more to understand him.
Yes, he had behaved shamefully in some respects. But if his behavior had been shocking, he was not alone. I looked back at Mother. “I agree entirely,” I said. “I think it scandalous the way Phoebe shamelessly flirted with all the men there—and some of them married! And the way Captain Walters carried on about the lazy, ignorant louts in the ranks. He defamed the very men we’re trying to support!”
Mother’s eyes widened and she gaped silently before regaining her senses. “You kn
ow very well that was not what I meant.”
I held my ground, knowing how shaky it was but I also knew that it was worse to retreat. “Oh?” I asked innocently. “Did you mean Mr. Stewart, then? I thought his notion of training nurses to serve as physicians’ assistants would have met with your approval. It would certainly solve many of the staffing problems you yourself have complained of.”
Mother calmly replaced the toast on her plate, wiped her mouth, then dropped the napkin onto the table before rising with great dignity, turning to Father and saying softly, “Your youngest daughter is no better than a conniving, filthy whore. I want her out of this house immediately.”
***
Mark
Ian leaned over his desk and glared at me. “And just where were you at the time of the murder?”
“I must have been somewhere near the other end of Bucks Row,” I admitted. Frustration spilled out and I hit the edge of the chair with my fist. “If I’d been even halfway down the street I might have heard something or been able to do something.”
Ian looked at me suspiciously. “And just why were you in that area at all?” Ian demanded. “Not your usual haunt, is it?”
“I was coming back from the big fire down by the dry docks. It was quite a sight,” I said, believing the lie to make it convincing.
There was no denying Ian was my dad’s ancestor because he pulled the same thing Dad did when I got into trouble. He crossed his arms, leaned back against the desk, and gave me the evil cop eye, waiting for me confess.
A lot of times it worked, too but this time I hadn’t done anything wrong. “I guess I was hoping I’d run into Genie—Miss Trambley—since I heard she was at the hospital with her mother.”
Ian laughed. “Ah, the most sinister of motives that is.” He looked at the bruise over my eye, the one that had brought me to the attention of Sergeant Kirby who’d hauled me in for questioning after the body had been found. “And what did you do to earn yourself that?”
I smirked. “Obviously I found her and tried to suggest she stay off the streets at night because it isn’t safe, especially for someone like her.”
Ian laughed right out loud. “I’ve said the same often enough, but at least she didn’t feel the need to come to blows with me.”
I shook my head. “She is the most…” I paused, searching for a word.
“Stubborn? Wrong-headed? Annoying? Irritating?” Ian offered.
“Interesting girl I’ve ever met.” Damn. The evil cop eye confession tactic worked every time.
Ian gave me a critical look. “You find that willfulness attractive in her, lad?”
My lips twitched. “Yeah, I find it attractive. I just wish she’d listen to reason.”
“She needs a stern husband to give her a home and handful of children to occupy her time.”
Nope. Wasn’t going to go there. “I don’t see why she’d be forced to give up her nursing. She’s good with people. It would be a shame to waste her talents.”
“A married woman nursing? Preposterous. Having a wife wasting her efforts on employment is pure foolishness for all but the lower classes.”
Yeah, well so much for the old DNA making it down to Dad intact.
I wandered down Leman Street to think. The docks were only a few blocks down and I needed a change of scene.
The Ripper had claimed his second victim, a murder I might have stopped if only I’d paid more attention at the seminar and the walking tour. Except for the Kelly murder that inspired a fairly long scene in my mom’s book, I didn’t know enough to pinpoint the time or exact locations of the other murders. Staking out Kelly’s place would be my last chance to solve the crime and get home, but her murder was a long way off.
And I was still worried any unofficial investigating might disrupt the Ripper’s pattern. And if the Ripper deviated from the pattern, I’d have no chance at all of catching him and getting back to my own time.
I didn’t even want to go into the Butterfly Effect route and think, what if this one event did not happen as the history books said and what might it do to the world as I knew it?
What I had to do was concentrate on finding Annie Chapman whose murder was only a week away. Still, I knew from observing my dad and even my mom when she wrote that sometimes you could get too close to a problem to see the best way to fix it.
I needed a distraction, something that might let my subconscious work on the issue.
So I headed to the docks and the first thing that struck me was the stench of the water mixed with the smell of hot tar. But after the worst of that wore off I was caught up in the sight of tall masts and rigging that dominated the sky like the centerpiece in some huge old museum painting.
In the distance off to the right, the tops of the Tower of London poked up. Off to the left I saw wisps of smoke still coming from the Shadwell Drydock fire the night before. But in between were the ships.
I wandered along, dodging sweaty guys shifting cargo into or out of the vessels. It was a fascinating sight. Mom had dragged us to Mystic Seaport one summer but I’d never seen a real working sailing ship before and here were a bunch of them, jostling for space in the river and along the wharves.
And the cargo wasn’t boxed up in big metal containers. There were bags and crates and barrels of every description being slung off the ships by block and tackle then manhandled into stacks or onto handcarts or wagons.
I walked an obstacle course, dodging men and carts and decided to find someplace to sit while I thought. A short piling that seemed relatively safe from the commotion on the docks seemed like a good place so I settled down.
I tried to think back to the conference and did my best to remember the prime suspects they’d flashed on the big flat screen in one of the panels. All I remembered were the High Society types who’d been pretty much cleared—the Queen’s grandson, her old doctor, a tutor, and a couple others.
I remembered the profiler at the Ripper conference said it had to be a Whitechapel resident. While I had no clue to point otherwise I wondered if it might be a type of person that hadn’t been brought up
Maybe a soldier, someone with post-traumatic stress who had some real out of it moments and took the prostitutes for an enemy? Perhaps one who’d been held captive and tortured? Weren’t there a ton of British soldiers in India? Had any of them been taken hostage for any reason? Maybe Africa? I really wished I’d paid better attention to Mom’s nineteenth century research info.
She’d know what conflicts might have sent someone over the edge. That would at least help to narrow possible suspects down.
But what if the killer was a cop? I didn’t think anyone ever tossed that idea out. If the Ripper was an off-duty cop, he would be nearly impossible for the police to catch. Like Ian had with the thought of a woman killer, the regular cops would never believe one of their own could be a serial killer.
And if it was an on-duty cop then, unless I could actually catch him in the act, the guilty man could claim he’d stumbled on the body and the knife and be totally believed. These guys had no clue about contaminating crime scenes and evidence. No one would think twice about a cop who said he’d picked up the bloody knife to turn it in.
I looked around the busy docks and sighed. There was no one I to toss ideas around with the way Dad did to help Mom plot her mysteries.
Missing my parents hit hard and deep. I’d resented them. Their groundings, lectures, and talks about “not living up to potential.” I couldn’t even count how many times I’d silently chanted for them to go away and leave me alone. Well I’d gotten that wish. Now I really understood what “be careful what you wish for, you might just get it” meant. Damn.
Turning emo wasn’t going to get me anywhere and neither was sitting here all day. I got up and continued my self-guided tour of the docks.
“Ahoy! Mark Stewart!” someone shouted.
I whirled around, trying to locate the speaker.
The shout came a
gain and, this time, I realized it came from above. Craning my neck I saw a figure waving to from the rigging of one of the ships. It had to be one of the American sailors I’d met that time in the pub.
I waved back. “How’s it going?”
“Give me a minute,” he called down. “I’m off watch. I’ll buy you a beer.”
I wasn’t particularly in the mood for a beer at two o’clock in the afternoon, nor for the company of any of the seamen I’d met, but I didn’t see any way to avoid it.
“Sure thing.” I watched and waited as he swung himself from his position and slid hand-over-hand rapidly to the deck. Now, what was his name? Tom, Todd, Tim. Tim. Ferguson, that was it, from Boston. You’d think I’d remember a guy like him with flaming red hair and handlebar moustache.
“Just taking in the sights,” Tim said as he came down the gangway to the dock. “Great view from up there, you can see half the town.”
I stood and shook his hand.
Tim gazed up at the rigging again. “You’d think I’d have had enough of hanging off the mast, being up there half the night watching the fire to see if it was headed our way. Still, something about sightseeing from the rigging. Almost feel like a bird looking down sometimes.”
I nodded and with no small talk to toss out I looked at the ship’s hull, noticing, for the first time, the name in bright, new, gold lettering on her bow.
Agathos.
“Funny name for a ship.” I indicated with a nod of my head. It was like Agatha was haunting me across time. When Tim scowled and crossed himself, I was afraid the crazy thought wasn’t that far off.
“Nothing funny about it. Means ‘good’ in Greek or something but you’ll never prove it by me. New owners changed her original name before we sailed and that’s a curse, as any sailor’ll tell you. Half the crew jumped ship before we left Philadelphia and we barely made our complement.”
