Alba bit her lip and rubbed her weary eyes. I hope we aren’t wrong about Jochen. She couldn’t bear to send an innocent person to the gallows. She stuffed her hands into the pockets of her billowing black robe. My spectacles! She hastily donned them and inhaled a breath to steady herself.
“I knew Mary Kelly,” Jochen replied, “but that doesn’t make me a murderer!”
“I believe you are lying.” Teddy leaned on the railing. “You knew the area of Whitechapel, Mr. Rhessa. You were familiar with the prostitutes and their schedules. And you have a medical background. After all, you were studying to be a surgeon alongside Mr. Griffin, were you not?”
More startled murmurs shot around the room.
Jochen flashed angry eyes at the crowd.
“Please answer the question,” Teddy prodded.
“Yes. I was studying to be a surgeon,” he said reluctantly.
“Mr. Rhessa,” Teddy continued, “I put to you that you were uncontrollably jealous of Mr. Griffin for two reasons. He succeeded in becoming a doctor when you failed. And he was admired by your father when you weren’t. I have a feeling that if you didn’t kill Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth Stride, Catherine Eddowes, and Mary Kelly out of vengeance for the way they rebuked you, you killed those women to frame Dr. Drake Griffin.”
“I did no such thing!” Jochen cried. “People claim Jack the Ripper is tall and dressed like a gentleman. I don’t fit that description!”
“I’m afraid jealousy makes you capable of anything, Mr. Rhessa. Perhaps you hired someone who looks like Griffin. Maybe you killed Mary Kelly then paid someone to testify that they saw Dr. Griffin enter Mary Kelly’s house on November ninth. Did you do any of these things?”
“No!” As his body shook with rage, Jochen lunged forward and took a swipe at Teddy.
The attack sent Teddy’s horsehair wig to the ground. The sight of him without it struck Jochen with horror.
“You!” Jochen burst out. “I knew I’d seen you somewhere before! You were in Whitechapel the night I escorted Dotty Malone home. You were dressed in a top hat and cloak, but you removed your hat when you approached a prosser. You were there!”
“You’re mistaken.” Teddy scowled as he put his wig back on.
“I know it was you,” Jochen raged.
The pounding of Wentworth’s gavel did nothing to restore order in the courtroom.
Jochen pointed a finger at Teddy, his face crimson. “I also saw you in Whitechapel two nights after I arrived in London. On the night Polly Nichols was killed.”
Alba felt her gut wrench. Teddy? Could he be all the things he was accusing Jochen of? Was he jealous enough to try and frame Dimitri? Or had he killed the prostitutes as a result of a twisted mind?
Alba’s mind spun. She looked away and caught a glimpse of Teddy’s legal case, which sat on the floor. With the aid of her spectacles, she could see that the case was trimmed with Teddy’s initials, JTR. John Theodore Rollingsworth. Or just maybe, Jack the Ripper.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Alba must have passed out from the strain, for when she opened her eyes, she was seated at a table with her head upon it. Harold Rollingsworth was sitting beside her patting her hand. He looked devastated.
“Where am I?” she asked groggily.
“You fainted, my dear, and I brought you here, to a private chamber of the courtroom.”
While she studied the cozy, wainscoted chamber, the events she’d witnessed in the courtroom came streaming back to her. “Teddy,” she murmured. “He might be a killer.”
Rollingsworth ran a hand over his white curls. “My son didn’t kill anyone.”
“Has he been detained?”
“Yes. But he hasn’t been charged with anything yet.”
“And Dimitri—”
“I’m afraid he won’t be released anytime soon. I plan to talk to the lead judge since Teddy and Jochen have become new suspects,” Harold replied quickly, “but you know as well as I that filing for a mistrial can be a lengthy process.”
She made a move to get up. Her knees buckled.
“Have patience, Alba. I’ve ordered you some tea to revive you.”
She desperately needed her strength at the moment, so she sat back down.
A kindly-faced, elderly woman bustled in. She held a tray filled with a clattering teacup and an apple scone. “Here you go, my dear,” she said, placing the tray in front of Alba. “I’m Mrs. Grayson. I see to the judges’ needs here at the Old Bailey.”
“Thank you,” Alba replied.
The woman offered her a gentle smile before she left the room.
Alba began to fix her tea when the court bailiff stuck his head through the crack in the door. “Mr. Rollingsworth, your son is asking for you.”
“Am I allowed to see him?”
“Yes, sir.”
Harold bolted out of his seat. After telling Alba he would return shortly, he disappeared.
Reaching for the scone, she could hardly believe what had just taken place. She hated to admit it, but Teddy as the sadistic killer made sense on one level. The same level, in fact, on which he’d proclaimed Jochen had a motive. Jealousy. Just maybe Teddy had committed the first two Whitechapel murders before Dimitri came to London of his own accord, but after seeing Alba’s connection to Dimitri, Teddy became inspired to incriminate him. And because Dimitri’s medical rounds took him to the East End, he had fallen into that plan far too easily.
Although Alba’s glimpses at Teddy’s dark side had been few and far between, she’d certainly seen them. Perhaps he held a deep resentment of women that stemmed from his being given up for adoption at birth. If Teddy was the Whitechapel killer, Alba thought, he also harbored a raw propensity for violence—a propensity he’d managed to keep hidden beneath his pleasant demeanor.
The possibility that she didn’t know him at all pierced her heart like a sharp arrow.
Alba took several bites of the scone. Suddenly she felt queer. Her upper lip began to perspire and her mouth went dry. She thrust down the pastry. A burning sensation spread through her entire body and she sagged against the table in front of her.
What on earth is happening to me? Then she knew. I’ve been poisoned.
Spots clouded her eyes, but she could still make out a female figure hovering over her as she crashed to the floor.
“Alba.” It was Mrs. Grayson’s face—but it wasn’t Mrs. Grayson’s voice. “I finally found you, my not-so-innocent stepdaughter. You are in my hands now.”
Ileana.
Eyes closed, Dimitri huddled on a filthy cot in the corner of his cell. Suddenly, a vision of an incapacitated Alba jolted his world of imprisonment. He sat upright, feeling her silent pain as she slipped into a catatonic sleep. In the black shadows, he realized that his precious Alba had just surrendered to one of Ileana’s spells.
Holy hell! The stone-hearted witch finally got to her!
Knowing that his visions were always correct, Dimitri’s senses turned topsy-turvy and his heart struggled to pound against a devastating vise. While panic, sorrow, and an uncontrollable rage twined together, Dimitri drove his fist into the wall. He’d been wasting away inside the prison like a pathetic weakling—and he hadn’t protected the woman he loved.
Yanking on the bars, he cried, “Guard! I need you!”
I must have human blood. It was the only thing that could supply him with enough energy to escape. And he had to get to his beloved Alba.
Maybe he could feign illness. Once the warden entered the cell to check on him, Dimitri would attack. The plan was a long shot since the wardsman never got within four feet of him.
“Guard!” he called out again.
The reed-thin officer didn’t come, but to his surprise Edith Tuttlebaum appeared.
“Miss Tuttlebaum! How did you get back here?”
“For once my red hair does me justice.” Her voice contained only a fraction of her usual good humor. Edith placed her face between the bars and clasped them w
ith trembling hands. “Dr. Griffin,” she whispered. “Alba is gone!”
When Dimitri stepped close to her, he could smell her blood. The metallic but sweet scent prompted his fangs to drop. He tried to speak without widening his mouth.
“I sensed that something happened,” he said.
Edith looked alarmed. “How did you know?”
“I had a vision . . . her stepmother cast a spell on her.”
“My God!” Edith pressed her face closer to his. “This can’t be.”
Dimitri scowled. “You hardly know me, but you must believe me.”
“You and I are not well acquainted, Mr. Griffin, but Alba has faith in you. She wouldn’t have defended you otherwise.” Edith took a glance up and down the narrow corridor. “Now she needs you, so we must get you out of here.”
“How?” Despite the urgency of the moment, weakness pulled at Dimitri. The small amounts of animal blood he had received barely allowed him to function.
“I know you’re a vampire,” Edith said. “I saw you materialize outside the dormitory window—on the night you swept Alba away. I never told anyone.”
He studied the torment in the girl’s green eyes. Would she allow me to bite her? “Now that you know I’m a vampire, you know I require human blood. Will you let me take some of yours?”
“Yes,” she said cautiously. “Will it leave me alive?”
He nodded. “You will feel only momentary pain. Then you’ll remember nothing.”
“Very well,” she said courageously.
“Are you certain?” Dimitri asked.
She nodded. “Alba is like a sister to me. And I owe her a favor. On the night I accompanied her to the hospital, I shouldn’t have told Teddy that she went home with you. To think that Teddy Rollingsworth might be Jack the Ripper . . .”
Dimitri gave a shudder. It was true that he, Jochen, and Teddy were all in the East End the night of Mary Kelly’s murder. But Dimitri was willing to bet Teddy was the brutal killer. “Where would Alba’s stepmother have taken her?” he asked.
“Alba suggested that Ileana might be living in her family’s house in Kensington Gardens. She wouldn’t be able to perform her dark magic in private at a hotel.”
“Did Alba tell you what this house looks like?” he asked.
“She described it as a Georgian-style home with a brick edifice and stained-glass windows. It belonged to her father.”
A plan started to form in Dimitri’s mind. It’s essential that I get out of here. To do that, he needed to start hypnotizing Edith.
“It’s time, Edith. Brace yourself,” he said.
She nodded.
Breathing deeply, he sent a commanding energy from his topaz eyes to her viridian ones.
“Call for the guard,” he instructed.
Enveloped in the trance, she turned slowly around. “Guard!” she said. “I feel ill.”
Dimitri reached a hand through the bars and pulled Edith to him. She stretched her head to the side and he bit down on her neck. Her blood filled his mouth and soothed his parched throat. And as the red liquid streamed into his veins, a tremendous force rushed through him. Like a phoenix rising from the ashes, he’d been reborn.
He held Edith’s tiny body upright while the wardsman rounded the corner.
“What’s wrong, miss?” the guard asked.
“She blacked out,” Dimitri replied, careful to keep his bloodied mouth hidden in the shadows.
The guard took hold of Edith, and Dimitri saw his chance. He yanked the round key chain off the guard’s belt, then punched the guard on the jaw. The guard and Edith fell to the ground in unison.
Dimitri’s heart pounded as he fitted key after key into the lock. Finally one was a match. There! I’m free! He streamed down the hall, leaving the clamor of the other prisoners behind him. If he thought for an instant that any of the inmates were innocent, he would have opened their cells too.
Reaching the first window along the corridor, he stopped in his tracks. After he morphed into a mist without being seen, he seeped past the open window and into the miasma of twilight. It didn’t take Dimitri long to reach Kensington Gardens and find the home that fit Edith’s description. When he circled the quiet structure, it appeared dark from every angle.
Are Ileana and Alba inside?
He decided to chance it. Fanning out his cape like a pair of black wings, he leapt in preternatural flight to the second story. As he peered into a curtain-framed window, he realized that the purple haze of dusk had settled over the neighborhood. Dimitri saw no one beyond the rooftop, so he drew a handkerchief from his jacket and busted the glass pane. Pulling his frame into the house, he found that the room was empty—save for a chair in the corner and the shards of a broken mirror on the carpet.
He was about to make his way to the corridor when the glass pieces glowed and rippled. Astounded, Dimitri took a step back. No doubt this was one of Ileana’s magical tactics. The mirror had been broken into only eight or nine large chunks, so he fitted them back together like a jigsaw puzzle. Gazing down at the reassembled mirror, his eyes widened as it spoke.
“All the king’s horses and all the king’s men couldn’t put Humpty Dumpty together again,” it said. “But you have, Dimitri Grigorescu.”
“Where is Alba? Where has Ileana taken her?” he thundered.
“My mistress has thought ahead. She sent her housekeeper back to Romania and has taken your beautiful Alba somewhere no one will find her.”
“Tell me where, damn it!” Dimitri raged.
The mirror cackled ominously. “Where else do you take a prisoner you want the world to forget?”
Dimitri thought for a moment. “The Tower of London?” “Indeed,” it answered. “But I’m afraid you’re too late, brave Grigorescu. She has been poisoned by a pastry dipped in special cyanide.”
“No! Ileana shall pay!”
“What a battle.” The mirror’s voice echoed as Dimitri vanished into the starry night. “An enchantress of black magic duels a scorned, bloodthirsty vampire. Who, I wonder, shall win?”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
The River Thames shimmered calmly in the moonlight, but Dimitri soared over it as angry as a provoked tiger. Christmas had come and gone two days ago—but seasonal cheer still glowed from London’s windows and sparkled in the tinseled garland that wrapped the lampposts. However, he was in no mood to admire the holiday ambience.
Speeding past Big Ben as it loomed over the snow-blanketed city, Dimitri knew that the Tower of London wasn’t far now. While his body quivered with wrath, all he wanted to do was put an end to Ileana and steal back to Romania with Alba. He supposed he’d have to settle for one out of the two—unless he was willing to do the unimaginable to save Alba.
The infamous Tower, with its rag-stone construction and pointed spires, sat adjacent to the riverbank inside an eerie cloud of fog. Over the years, the medieval castle had housed hundreds of prisoners, perhaps the most famous of those being Anne Boleyn. Now the intimidating structure seemed to beckon anyone willing to glimpse her beheaded ghost.
Dimitri, nauseated with the knowledge that he’d left one prison to break into another, scowled as he touched down on the bridgeway between two of the landmark’s towers.
If I were Ileana, where would I have taken Alba?
Then he knew. The Bloody Tower. The place where most of the compound’s atrocities had taken place. It was far from where the Crown Jewels were kept and no doubt it would be free of guards at this hour.
He hoisted himself to the windows of the turret and peered inside its topmost room. There, illuminated by the light of a torch, stood Ileana looking down on Alba. Alba lay sprawled over what appeared to be some sort of torture device, her hands captured in ropes above her head. The rack.
Even in her torturous state, Alba looked like an angel, and Dimitri’s heart surged. Free of her horsehair wig and black barrister robe, she was clothed in a simple blue dress. As she reposed in eternal slumber, her milky skin paled aga
inst the ruby red of her lips and the gloss of her ebony hair. She is more beautiful than life itself—thank God she doesn’t seem to be in pain.
In the hollow of a turret directly above Dimitri, the sound of ravens’ wings beat loudly. Ileana snapped her head to the window and caught sight of him. The look she gave him oozed a calculated evil.
Unfurling his fists, Dimitri evaporated through a crack in the ancient bricks and imported himself into the room. Once he morphed back into human form, he moved forward determinedly. Meanwhile, Ileana floated around the rack table, her hands clasped behind her back.
“Dearest Dimitri,” she said. “We finally meet face-to-face.”
As Dimitri’s glance shifted to Alba, he sucked back tears of grief. “How dare you take Alba from me! She never did anything to you.”
“Oh, my lovesick vampire. Don’t you know anything?” Ileana eyed him with pity. “Alba’s beauty threatened everything I live for.”
“You are jealous of someone half your age?” Dimitri roared. “Only a creature of the devil could be so heartless.”
Ileana tsked. “Speaking of evil creatures, you shouldn’t be so critical. I’ve seen you do it. You slip close to young, unknowing women while the scent of their blood fuels your excitement. I bet you drank someone’s blood recently—or you wouldn’t have escaped from prison.”
While Ileana spoke, Dimitri fired off options in his mind. Should I bind her to the rack and stretch her to death? Should I slam her against the wall and break every bone in her body? Or should I simply toss her out the window to her death?
He stiffened, his eyes burning into hers. “Becoming a bloodsucker wasn’t something I chose.”
“Alas.” Ileana pouted dramatically. “The minute you gave Alba the Egyptian amulet and crept into the cemetery at Bran Castle, you put her life in extraordinary danger. I witnessed all of it in my mirror.”
Dimitri had never despised anyone more in his life.
Soon the titillation in Ileana’s steel-colored eyes dimmed. “The good news is that I’m getting what I want in the end. But you . . . I don’t know why you’re even here. I can’t let you bite Alba and bring the vampire’s curse to life.”
Snow White and the Vampire (The Cursed Princes) Page 21
