by Tessa Harris
I gaze at Cath, mourning for her baby Evie. “The little mite’s in a better place now,” I say. I’m trying to reach out to her, but then I hate myself for sounding so glib and smug, like a parson. Do I mean what I say? Do I really believe that good people go to heaven when they die, or is it a lie made up to comfort those of us left behind? I’d like to think it’s true, but I hold my tongue and watch Cath’s face as the heartache screws it up like an old brown paper bag and her tears fall.
A moment or two passes before she lifts her face again and dabs her cheeks. “It’s not right,” she sobs.
Suddenly I’m not sure what she’s on about. There’s something more. “What’s not right?” I ask.
“The babes, dying so young.” Her face is all puffy and she begins to sob again. “So little and helpless.”
In my mind’s eye, I’m picturing sickly little infants, whimpering and moaning before giving up the ghost, but I’m not sure what it is she’s seeing.
“Cath?”
Her grief has suddenly turned to anger. There’s something of a strange look on her face and her eyes grow wild, like she’s fresh out of Bedlam. She stands up and steadies herself against the table. Wiping more tears away with her sleeve, she sniffs. “I best be off,” she says. “I’ve got business to do.” I picture her up against a wall, her skirts round her waist, and all so she can sleep in a bed tonight. She reaches for her bonnet and places it firmly on her head.
Flo’s neck whips round. “You off then, Cath?” She’s been looking for an excuse to escape Irish Mick, who’s turning out to be even creepier than Danny, touching her at every turn.
“Yes,” says Cath, leaving her bonnet ribbons to dangle under her chin. She pats the stiff, velvet collar round her neck to see it’s done up against the cold.
“Business,” I say.
Flo nods and pulls a face. “Got to earn your keep, I s’pose.”
“Good-bye,” I tell her, standing up to give her a hug, but she stiffens, like she doesn’t want me to touch her, so I just say: “It’ll be all right.” She shoots me a peculiar look, like she’s back in the madhouse, but she don’t say nothing. “Take care,” I call after her as she shuns a cluster of dockers by the bar and disappears into the night.
“What’s got into her?” asks Flo. Mick’s made his excuses and has gone. Turns out he’s up here delivering geese and turkeys for Mr. Greenland. So now she’s left with me, but her face is as flushed as a spit jack’s. She’s downed a few too many.
“She’s still grieving,” I say. Sometimes I wonder at my big sister’s thoughtlessness. When she’s had a glass or four, she spouts a lot of claptrap and no mistake.
“But it’s Christmas!” she protests. “Christ-mas!” she shouts loudly, turning round and waving a hand in the air to all and sundry. It’s the signal to leave, I think. A couple of sailors start to close in, and the lech with the tattoo perks up, but I manage to wheel Flo toward the door before any of them makes a move on her.
I don’t know which is worse, the ’baccy smoke inside or the fog out. It’s a mile-and-a-half walk back to our house in White-chapel and I’m dreading it. It’s starting to drizzle, too, and, worse still, Jack’s out there, lurking. I hook my arm through Flo’s and she breaks into another Christmas carol. “‘God rest ye, merry gentlemen, let nothing you dismay,’” she trills. I manage to drag her a few hundred yards, but she’s getting hoity-toity with me. We’re sticking to Commercial Road, so there’s plenty of people about, and a few wagons and carts, but Flo keeps wishing every passerby the “compliments of the season.”
By the junction with Sidney Street, we’ve moved on to “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing,” but the smog’s still as thick as thieves and I’m wondering how on earth we’ll tackle the rest of the journey. Another cart with its lamps lit rumbles past us and I’d pay no attention if it isn’t for the feathers rising up from the trailer. At first, I think the rain’s turned to snow. The feathers are like big flakes, whirling in the wind. But when I look closer, I see it’s a poulterer’s wagon. What’s more, the driver’s looking at us. As the glare from the streetlamp lights up his face, I recognize who it is. And he recognizes us.
“We must stop meeting like this, ladies,” jokes Mick Donovan, raising his cap. He fancies that he’s God’s gift to womankind. That he certainly is not, but I’m still pleased to see him. He tugs on the reins, bringing the cart to a halt just ahead of us.
Flo lifts her gaze and narrows her eyes at him. “Con! Will ya take a look at that? If it ain’t my Paddy hero!” she blurts out. I could clock her one, I honestly could, the way she flirts. She knows I hate it when she calls me Con, too. My name is Constance. That’s how the vicar christened me, and that’s how I want to be known.
Mick bends low from his perch as we draw alongside. “I’m off back to the shop to get more fowl,” he tells us. “Want a ride? It’s not fancy, but on a night such as this, it . . .”
He hasn’t finished his sentence before I’ve dragged Flo by the arm and am waiting by the tailgate. Mick jumps down, slides back the bolt, and helps us climb up. The cart’s still full of feathers and a few empty sacks. There’s a whiff of dead fowl wafting about, too, but I don’t care and nor does Flo. She’s already leaning on my shoulder as Mick jiggles the reins and we’re off, showered in a snowstorm of feathers, but headed back for Whitechapel and the safety of our home.
It’s still cold in the cart, and jerky, too. We’re tossed from side to side now and again, but the drizzle has petered out and it’s a darn sight better trundling along like this than gritting our teeth against the biting cold if we’d staggered back. I cover my face in my shawl as we go. I’m just settling into the ride, and then, from out of the corner of my eye, I think I see Cath. She’s clamping her hat on her head, minded toward the junction of East India Dock Road. I know her lodgings lie that way. She’s moving fast and I call to her, but my voice comes out all muffled from behind my shawl and is silenced by the fog and the noise of the traffic. The cart just clatters on, jouncing over the muddy ruts, splashing through the filthy puddles, taking us back to Whitechapel, back to Jack. Or so I think. But for Cath, the night is yet young.
EMILY
Constance has done the sensible thing by accepting a ride from Mick Donovan. With Jack still prowling around Whitechapel, she and Florence are safer by far than walking home. But it is their friend Catherine who needs to be vigilant tonight. I find myself shadowing her as she hurries past the Eagle Tavern in East India Dock Road. A sudden gust of wind blasts down the street, setting empty barrels rolling and shop signs creaking; and in its wake, it takes off Catherine Mylett’s hat. Slowly, as if in a daze, she turns to see it tumble to the ground and roll along the road. She lets out a little moan, but she does not choose to pursue it. It joins the blown sheets of newspaper in the gutter. There is no attempt to retrieve it. Instead, she turns and resumes her journey, counting her bonnet as but a trifle, counting it as lost. I fear ’twill not be the only thing that is lost this cold winter’s night.
Ever since the death of her daughter, Evie, Catherine has been living but half a life. So knotted with grief, she was forced to enter the Poplar and Stepney Sick Asylum earlier this year. Her weight plummeted and sleep eluded her. When she was finally discharged, she may have been physically stronger, but mentally she was still most troubled. She also had to go back on the streets.
Moments later, Catherine is turning into a neat row of terraced houses off Poplar High Street. It’s more respectable than anywhere she’s ever lived. These London brick abodes are bigger and more solid. They stand in a long line with steps leading up to their smart front doors, with a bay window to one side. The panes are not boarded and the guttering doesn’t hang from their roofs. There are thick curtains up at the windows and inviting gas lamps burn, instead of measly tallow stumps. For a moment, I think myself in the wrong place. There are no doss houses here. This is a decent neighborhood.
It’s then that I notice Catherine is acting oddly, avoid
ing the glare of the infrequent streetlamps, hiding in the shadows. She stops at a house in the middle of the row. Since she discovered this new address, she’s stood here once or twice before, just looking—looking and wondering and trying to pluck up the courage. She will do what she is about to do for her dead Evie, and for all the others there have been before her and since. Tonight she has decided she has looked and wondered enough. She bends low and reaches down to her right boot. Glimpsing behind her, she satisfies herself that no one is around before she climbs the steps and seizes the door knocker. She raps three times. She holds her breath. The blood pounds in her ears, so that when the door opens, she is not quite sure what the man in the smoking jacket says at first, although she can tell he is shocked to see her. By the light of the gas lamp in the hall, she watches his lips form a round “o” shape and she imagines him saying the name she used at that time.
“Rose?”
She does not respond at first, but sways a little on the doorstep.
“Rose,” he says a second time, more assuredly, but with a look of disgust on his face. It’s a look she has seen so many times before. From somewhere inside, she hears an infant cry.
“Where is she?”
“Where’s who?”
“The old Irish bitch that killed my Evie.”
“You’re drunk,” he sneers. He cannot smell her breath, only the reek of smoke on her clothes, but she is not welcome. He is about to slam the door in her face, when she suddenly lurches toward him. The blade glints in the candlelight as she raises the knife.
“No!” cries the man, pushing her away from him.
But she flies back. “She killed her!” she wails. “And all the others.” There’s a scuffle. He clasps hold of her wrist, but she manages to struggle free and plunge the knife down toward the man’s chest. There’s a sickening shriek. Blood blooms on flesh and splatters onto the wall. Catherine cries out. The man grunts. The knife clatters to the floor.
CONSTANCE
We’re at the end of our street. It’s too narrow for the cart to turn round, so Mick jumps down and helps us out of the back. The cold air’s sobered Flo up. She started to jabber again when we trundled past St. Jude’s Church. The jerking must’ve rumbled her innards ’cos the next thing I see is her spewing up over the side. Luckily, I don’t think Mick heard. Anyway, we’re back safe and sound and I’m grateful for our ride.
First Mick sees Flo down and then takes my hand, all firm like. There’s something in his eyes that makes me blush. I’m hoping he can’t see me color in the shadows. Flo’s a few paces ahead of me, staggering toward our door. “Thank you. It was kind of you,” I mutter, dipping my eyes to the slippery cobbles.
He whips off his hat. “The pleasure was all mine,” he replies with a smile. I notice the bristles on his top lip rise; then without warning, he bends low and tries to find my mouth. I manage to turn my head away and feel only his coarse hairs against my cheek. Startled, I jerk my hand up to my face. I’m half expecting to find a rough patch just above my jaw, where his lips snagged me.
I look up to see he’s swallowed his smile and regards me all strange. “I’d best be off then. More geese to deliver up Poplar way,” he says.
There’s an awkward silence between us that’s suddenly filled by the howling of an unseen dog.
“Good night,” I tell him, sounding stern as a schoolmistress. The sharpness of my own voice surprises me. But what he did just gave me the creeps. He don’t reply; he just snorts and walks back to his cart, like he’s wasted his time on me.
“Come on, Con,” groans Flo, leaning up against a wall. I walk the few paces back to my front door. My legs feel like twigs. There’s nothing I want more than to feel safe behind the bolted door of my own home. I suddenly think of Cath, out alone on the streets at the mercy of any man who wants to use her. I say a little prayer aloud: “Please, God, don’t let anything bad happen to her.”
CHAPTER 3
Thursday, December 20, 1888
EMILY
I do not choose what I see. I am sent and I am shown. I am a revenant. I used to live here in Whitechapel, among this squalor and deprivation, among this seething, disparate mass of people whose dreams have long been snatched from them to be replaced by the daily nightmare of despair. But I am returned and I speak through Constance Piper. We were close when I walked this place in my human form. There was a bond between us. I was her teacher. She was my pupil, but there was also a sisterly intimacy that transcended the boundaries of our respective births and classes. However, my death, instead of dividing us, has brought us closer together.
I am present much of the time and have returned to this district, sometimes with Constance’s knowledge, but many times without it. She has no notion that I am here tonight. Nor that I am sent to witness yet another murder in this godforsaken district of London. As the night creeps on, I fear something terrible is about to happen.
In the living accommodation above the East India Arms in Poplar High Street, the landlady, Mrs. Thompson, is woken by her dog. His bark’s worse than his bite, but he’s kept chained in the courtyard to ward off thieves. Slipping from between the rough blankets on her bed, she shivers, then shambles over to the window to look out. She screws up her eyes to peer into the blackness, but sees nothing. She returns to her snoring husband.
And so the night wears on. A shop manager, bogged down by paperwork, tallies and tots up into the early hours. His grocery store backs onto a builder’s yard, just off Poplar High Street. It’s called Clarke’s Yard. The ventilator in the shop has remained open all night, but he has heard nothing out of the ordinary. Nor has the letter carrier, whose bedroom looks onto the same yard.
It’s just gone four o’clock when Sergeant Robert Golding and Constable Barrett pass by on patrol. It’s been a relatively quiet night, save for the usual drunkards and the odd brawl. Yet as he draws level with the narrow mouth of the yard, something catches the senior officer’s eye. Lying by the wall is a shape. He approaches and crouches over it.
“Give us your lamp,” he orders the constable, who duly hands it over.
The glow that emanates from the bull’s eye lantern reveals that the shape is that of a woman—and, what’s more, a woman already known to the police. Seeing her face, Sergeant Golding recognizes her as a local unfortunate, although he can’t put a name to her. He feels her neck for a pulse. Her body is still warm, and she is lying on her left side. I can tell that it strikes him that the attitude of the body is somewhat reminiscent of that of the Ripper victim Annie Chapman. The left leg is drawn up and the right stretched out, although on this occasion the clothes are neither torn nor disarranged in any manner. Nor is there any obvious sign of injury.
Sergeant Golding rocks back on his heels and stands in thought.
“Another of Jack’s, sir?” the constable asks anxiously. The mere thought has caused him to tremble.
Golding shakes his head. “I think not.” He looks about him. “Lift the lantern, will you, lad?” he instructs. Constable Barrett holds the lamp aloft to the woman’s face. There’s a trickle of blood from her nostrils, but she’s not been cut. It doesn’t look as though this is Jack’s handiwork, and for that, he is grateful, but he still needs assistance. He takes out his whistle and blows two sharp blasts. Within seconds, more constables have arrived.
CONSTANCE
The bed creaks as Flo stirs, rolls over, and starts snoring again. At least the booze has brought her sleep. My own head throbs not because of strong drink, but through my own anxiety as it spews out endless thoughts. I had a dream. No, a nightmare more like, and for the past hour or more, my mind’s been fixed on Cath. I worry that she’s still on the streets. The thought of leaving her in the state she was in is keeping me awake, niggling in my brain. It’s times like these I need Miss Tindall most. For a short while, I found comfort in the notion that I thought she could still speak to me from beyond the grave; I was her spirit medium, although now I think I must’ve been mistaken. I’m s
till feeling all strange. Something happened to me, you see, and I ain’t been myself for a while. I’ve not felt like Connie Piper, the flower girl, since I went to the Egyptian Hall and saw a strange man called Mesmer the Magnificent perform his act on stage. I know it sounds daft, but he tried to put the audience into a sort of trance. That’s when something flipped inside my head. My brain went all mushy, like mashed-up marrowfat peas, and I started to see, well . . . things.
I always fancied myself as a shopgirl in the West End one day, working behind the counter of one of them fancy stores. They’d call me by my real name: Constance. But Miss Tindall, my old teacher, she said I was better than that. If I spoke right and learned my lessons and my manners well, I could one day be a lady. Flo used to tease me; said I had “hairs and grasses” or “airs and graces” to say it proper. Maybe I used to, but not no more—or “anymore,” as Miss Tindall would have corrected me. She’s gone, and everything I thought happened before was only in my mind—my poor, stupid, deluded mind. I’m telling myself it’s all been a dream, or a nightmare, more like. So now I think my grief got the better of me and made me believe foolish, fanciful things that comforted me in my time of sorrow and loss. I ain’t heard from Miss Tindall since they laid her—what was left of her—in the ground.
“Tell me Cath is safe. Tell me, please,” I say, over and over. But there’s no reply. I can’t even comfort myself with the thought that if anything bad, I mean really bad, had befallen Cath, then Miss Tindall would have told me. It seems that everything strange that’s happened has all been in my own sad mind.
