Corroded tscc-3

by Karina Cooper

  I shook myself hard, mentally more than anything. I did not want the man to think me a lunatic. Any more than he already did, anyway, as he asked with the patience of one who has already asked it in the seconds before, “Are you here for a reason, sir?”

  I did not address the subject of my sex. Forcing myself to consider only the task at hand, I answered, “There’s enough rumor to fill the rags for weeks on end and run the printers out of ink. I’ve come for the source.”

  His expression did not soften so much as ease out of wary lines. I noted creases about his eyes, time and wear taking a toll, but no longer did I see the tension that had possessed him the instant he’d opened the door. Instead, gesturing to me, he turned and led the way into the small home. “I apologize for the untowardness of my behavior,” he said, a sight more polite than I’d expected. “It has been a busy evening. Please, step into my study.”

  This was the lamp I’d seen from outside. His study was smaller than the one I was to inherit—a study that had passed from my father to my executor, and from Mr. Ashmore to my husband upon my marriage.

  So many things I’d intended to do with my Cheyne Walk home, and now I would do none of them.

  Bloody fool, I was. I gritted my teeth behind the mask. It seemed I could not shake my own ghosts tonight, no matter how often I licked the resin I carried.

  This would not do. I required focus.

  I took a slow breath, silent enough so as not to alert my unwitting host to my troubles. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” I told him. “I’m sure you’ve a wife to see to, and I’ve a murderer to catch.” Best to be blunt, in these situations.

  Mr. Lusk surprised me—he smiled faintly, a bit of nostalgia in the curve beneath his mustache. “Not a worry. My Susannah’s gone, rest her. The children are with family for the moment.”

  A recent loss, then. Something in me softened—something I could ill afford to nurture, and had no intention to share with this stranger.

  My throat tightened. “Right,” I said, rather than give voice to the condolences I wasn’t sure how to shape. Would a collector care? Like as not, no. Therefore, as a collector, I resolved not to. “Tell me what you know of this murderer, then?”

  “Most the same as you and probably all the rest of your sort,” he said, easing his not overly extravagant bulk into his chair. He ran a hand over his balding head with weary dismay. I could read it in his bearing, hear it in his confession. “What’s done in the papers is as what we’ve got. Every day, another rumor of a sighting.”

  “No truth to it, then?”

  “None.” He rested his hands over his middle, studying me with more curiosity, now, than the fear he’d initially displayed. “I suppose you’re here to ask about the reward too?”

  It’d seem odd not to, and I did need the bounty. I nodded.

  “If that bastard Matthews had his way, there’d be none to have.” Mr. Lusk grunted his ire on the subject. “How many letters must we pen for him to understand the gravity of the need? People need incentive. It’s not enough to want to protect our homes and businesses.”

  I confess to a momentary loss of understanding, but it faded quickly as I recalled the name. The Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, had flatly refused to fund a reward for capture of the Ripper.

  “I take it you are funding the reward yourself?” I asked, surprised.

  “That we are,” Mr. Lusk confirmed, his pride so palpable that I could have reached out to touch it. “The lot of us, the whole committee, each pitched in a bit to make a decent purse. I assure you, sir, you will not be shorted.”

  That was in the eye of the beholder—or he who held the purse. Still, I did not pry more. The coin, at this point, was only an extra that I would be glad to have. It would not take much to acquire the opium grains I needed.

  “Good,” I said. “Now, tell me all.”

  He did, and I listened quietly, standing with my hands clasped behind my back as I’d seen men do. To be perfectly honest, he did not tell me anything I did not already know. It was simply that I enjoyed the sound of it. The words, oh, not so much, but the way his soft-spoken voice spilled forth, strained over some of the less delightful details, rose when he allowed his anger to color his comportment, delighted my opium-tinged senses.

  He spoke of the first murders, which I recalled reading of quite clearly. He spoke of the troubles he’d had with the police, and the private detectives the committee had hired. He spoke passionately, but with a gentleness that someone else may have mistaken for weakness were they not paying close attention. The plight of the working class, the business all affected by the murderer’s rampage, and if the doxies being slaughtered did not rank very high in his list of reasons to care, I could forgive him the slight.

  Few enough favored the women who chose—or were forced—to earn their keep between their legs. His lapse seemed rather more thoughtless than malicious.

  I did not wander the study, because there was precious little room to do so, but I did scrutinize my surroundings. It was charmingly decorated, with bobs and ends tucked here and there, paintings framed upon the striped papered wall. I did note more than a few indications of Freemasonry about the décor.

  I found my fingers twitching somewhat to leaf through his array of books.

  That would have garnered much more interest than I could answer for.

  At the end, Mr. Lusk said, “Therefor, we have taken it upon ourselves to muster a reward. It was Mr. Aarons’ idea to post a notice with the collectors.”

  “A good idea,” I assured him. I had made no move to take off my fog-protection, and so I felt able to study the man rather frankly. “Is there anything else you might know? No matter how small, Mr. Lusk, it could be important.”

  “Nothing,” he said, shaking his head. He propped one elbow atop his desk and scrubbed at his face, clearly too weary to fight the urge. “All we can do is keep involved, let the people know we’re watching, help the police where we can. Certainly, there’s no shortage of those willing to make a name for themselves over it.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Oh.” A dismissive grimace. “No small amount of crackpots coming from all over to claim they know the face of the Ripper, or that they themselves are what done it.”

  I mirrored his grimace, for all he could not see it. Folding my arms over my chest, now, I asked, “Any seem legitimately the sort?”

  He laughed, but there was nothing amused or light in the sound. Fatigued, rather. Dismayed. A little bit bitter, unless I missed my guess. “How can one tell? One crackpot murdering is the same as one who’d claim to. There doesn’t seem to be a difference, does there?”

  Something in the way he spoke drew my attention, something different than the manner by which he shared his information earlier. A line in his brow, a distasteful sneer as he shifted in his seat.

  A wince, even. His eyes glanced left and low.

  I approached the desk. “Is there something you know, Mr. Lusk?”

  His gaze rose to mine—or the yellow glass, anyhow. I could see all right between the leather holding the fragmented lens in the other, but I could not rely on it. “What?” Then, just as quickly, a scoffed, “No.”

  I did not believe him.

  Planting my gloved hands upon the surface, just beside his blotter, I leaned over until I read wariness on his face—his mustache twitched, and his gaze narrowed in the way of a man who could not decide whether he would allow himself to be bullied in the name of peace or push back.

  I did not afford him the opportunity to work it out. “Mr. Lusk,” I said quietly, “I do not mean to alarm you, sir, but you yourself have only just finished informing me how important this is. If you know anything, anything at all, I’d be well within my rights to extract that information however I please.”

  His cheeks darkened, his scalp went red. “Now, you see here—”

  I reached over and seized his loosened tie. A good tie, really. Narrow and sleek, exactly
the sort of accessory I expected from a Freemason. The dues required of one suggested a certain standard.

  It crumpled in my grip.

  Mr. Lusk found himself not so much standing as leaning over his own desk, arms braced upon it and mustache vibrating with anger—and shock, I think. “How dare—”

  “Your committee went to the trouble of posting a collection,” I told him. Another exclamation of outrage I did not allow him to finish. An interesting game, to my sparkling mind. “Upon accepting the collection, a collector may achieve the end using whatever means viable. Do you understand this?”

  “Unhand me,” he sputtered. “Or else!”

  “What say you show me what’s in your desk drawer,” I suggested mildly. My grip twisted in his tie. “Top left.”

  Mr. Lusk did not seem inclined to argue. “All right. All right! There’s one thing.”

  Ah. So my instincts had not yet abandoned me. Brilliant. “Yes?” I let him go as he asked, allowing him the opportunity to smooth his tie. I expected his anger to hold, but it faded quickly. With a nervous hand, Mr. Lusk opened his draw and withdrew a small parcel. Three inches square, with the remains of brown paper still folded about it, it seemed harmless enough to my eye.

  “There. That’s all I have. A hoax,” he added, mopping at his brow with a kerchief pulled from his pocket, “but a grim one. Not the first I’ve received, either.”

  I reached over to unfold the paper, opening the cardboard box.

  The sight that greeted me forced a knot of bile into my throat.

  I had seen kidneys before, I knew what it was I looked at. I was versed in anatomical matters, and there’d been a few kidneys on display in the falsely named Professor Woolsey’s exhibit of electrified anatomy.

  I looked at what appeared to be half of a kidney, stained with some days of rot, and attempted to calculate what details I could. The organ was rather more purple than red, bloated as if its time in the box had only swollen it but not wholly ruptured the rubbery globule.

  “Why is it that color?” I demanded. Yet even as I took a breath to ask it, as the words left my lips, I realized that what I smelled faintly through the ventilator in my mask reeked of alcohol.

  Wine, to be precise.

  “It’s been preserved,” I said, answering myself. “But why?”

  Mr. Lusk proffered a bit of paper. “It was delivered by parcel from somewhere in London,” he explained, “though the writing’s so bad, I can’t make heads nor tails of it.”

  I unfolded the piece, laid it flat atop the desk and squinted at the awful handwriting.

  From hell, it began. An auspicious start.

  “If you require me to read it to you—”

  “I can mind my letters,” I said gruffly, tamping down my smarting pride. Of course I could mind my letters, I wasn’t a street-born waif, but I didn’t give voice to the waspish retort.

  Mr Lusk, Sor

  Some Irish had been known to use “sor” in place of “sir,” but it was possible that the handwriting had forced the letter i appear more an o. The style was not kind upon the eyes.

  I send you half the Kidne I took from one woman and prasarved it for you tother piece I fried and ate it was very nise. I may send you the bloody knif that took it out if you only wate a whil longer.

  “Charming fellow, isn’t he?” I murmured.

  “What?”

  I looked up, aware that Mr. Lusk had bent forward, an ear tilted. My mask had swallowed my sardonic attempt at levity. “The spelling appears to be strained,” I said, a mild enough observation.

  “Oh, it is,” he agreed.

  I studied the last line thoughtfully.

  signed Catch me when you can Mishter Lusk

  Very little punctuation, a love affair with lowercase letters, and some terrible spelling concluded one of two things. Either the letter the Leeds Mercury had printed, wherein the murderer had finally named himself Jack the Ripper, had only been a taste of this man’s terrible grasp of the Queen’s English, or it was another man entirely.

  A third option occurred just as quickly. It could be that this note was poorly written by design.

  “Why haven’t you brought this to the police?” I inquired.

  His proud nose wrinkled deeply as he looked at the stained box. “I believe it a dog’s kidney, and the letter some fool’s attempt at a hoax.”

  I could not completely dispute the idea. “When did it arrive?”

  “Just today,” he said. “In the evening’s post.”

  I looked from the box and its grisly contents to the letter, and back again.

  That someone might go to the all the trouble to kill a dog, then slice its kidney and preserve it for a few days, wrap it up with a letter and send it seemed not entirely out of bounds. There were always those eager for a bit of fun—whatever fun that might be.

  But how could we be sure?

  “Your post man’s name,” I said.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “Your post man.” I shoved the box back along the desk. “What is his name?”

  “Girard, I think.” A pause. “Or is it Gerald? Something of the sort. No idea of his given name. I’m sorry, I can’t be sure. But,” he added quickly, “it won’t help to speak to him. I happened to catch him before he left again.”

  “What did he say?”

  “The box started reeking half through its carrying,” Mr. Lusk said, frowning thoughtfully. “He said it came from the eastern or eastern central districts.”

  All too big to pinpoint. Bloody hell, I could not afford to chase down a clue that would lead nowhere.

  Frustrated, I thrust the letter at him. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Lusk.”

  “Did anything help?”

  “If it did, you’ll soon know.” I turned, and polite as he was, Mr. Lusk escorted me to the door. “In the meantime, you’d best be careful.”

  “Careful?”

  “If the Ripper is aware of you, he like as not reads the papers. Preening, no doubt. He’ll know your address, same as I.”

  That did not have the effect I was aiming for. Mr. Lusk nodded most solemnly. “I suspect,” he told me, quite seriously, “that I am already watched.”

  “Watched?”

  Another nod. “I’ve sensed it, of late. Being watched, from out there.” This time, the bob of his chin was aimed for the door he opened for me. “I’m not afraid. Let the murdering swill know we’re on to him.”

  I looked out into the fog, filthy yellow and thicker than paste. If it held the Ripper, only I knew that he wasn’t the worst out there. I hesitated on the stoop, turned and suggested, “You should show the box to your committee.”

  “You think so?”

  “I do,” I said flatly. “If it is not a hoax, then perhaps it’s your best lead. I suspect that it’s exactly what the Ripper wants, anyway.”

  “For me to tell the police?”

  “Attention,” I corrected him, once more glancing out behind me. A shudder walked icy fingers along my skin. Now I felt watched. Infected by Mr. Lusk’s paranoia?

  Or was this another sampling of an opium dream in waking form?

  Once more, I found my ears straining to hear beyond our conversation. A footstep, an echo.

  A whistle.

  A laugh.

  Weep for the widowed bride!

  “Strange,” Mr. Lusk told me, his expression one of wry resignation. “The last fellow suggested it to be no more than hoax. Said I’d be better off tossing it out with the rubbish.”

  Very slowly, I turned my gaze away from the roiling miasma filling the street. Away from the dark places, and the lamplit yellow bloom. “Last fellow?” I repeated softly.

  “Another collector,” Mr. Lusk explained, as if wholly unaware of the gravity that shaped my words. The intensity with which I listened. “You don’t communicate with each other?”

  I shook my head, but did not explain. “This collector. What of him?”

  I was proud that my questi
on fell from my tongue without strain. Without effort. As if my lips were not thinned and trembling with exertion, as if the blood had not drained from my head and left behind a dull roaring in my ears.

  “Oh, a tall bloke,” Mr. Lusk responded, one hand upon his door. “Taller than I, anyway, and thinner. Though that’s no trial,” he added with a briefly amused chuckle. “Plain enough, I suppose. Didn’t remove his bowler, but pleasant spoken. Wore a greatcoat seeing some wear and shook my hand firmly. Well-mannered, too, not unlike yourself.”

  “Any distinguishing features?”

  “None that I recall.” His smile was somewhat awkward, as if unsure what it is I asked of him. “I’m afraid I did not ask a name.”

  “No,” I agreed hoarsely. I cleared my throat, my body as tight as a coiled spring. “Did he say where he headed?”

  “Afraid not.”

  Though Mr. Lusk continued to wax lyrical on the nature of us collectors for a few moments more, I did not hear it. I let the words glaze off me, unable to pick out a single helpful syllable from the lot.

  None of it mattered. Fluff, worthless. As if in a daze, I said my farewells, stepped off the stoop and paid no mind when the door clicked shut behind me.

  My rival had been here. Here. Before me.

  How?

  Was it him? Of course it was him. Greatcoat, bowler hat. Thin. In my occasional tussles with the man, I’d pegged him for a man whose build tended towards thin. I didn’t know how thin, or whether much could be attributed to athleticism, but he was not squat or stocky. As always when I met him, he’d worn a bowler hat pulled low and a large greatcoat, standing collar shading his face in every encounter. It frustrated me that Lusk could provide no greater detail.

  Save that he was so polite. Bollocks!

  My hands shook as I jammed them under my chin, my gaze pinned on the fog that I did not see.

  He’d been here. I knew it. I could feel it. He must have found my challenge sooner than I expected; come to Mr. Lusk while I’d brawled with the Bakers and wasted time with Ishmael.

  Had he learned something of the kidney? Is that why he’d counseled the man give it up as a hoax?

  Had he hoped it would be destroyed before I arrived?