City of Darkness

Chapter TEN

September 30

12:36 AM





It was well after midnight, but Leanna wasn’t sleepy. She’d been wearing both her hair and her corsets looser since she’d come to London, so she’d been able to undress herself without Emma’s assistance and she now lay sprawled across the puffed pink bedspread in her camisole and bloomers, with her hair tousled down around her shoulders.

Emma rapped twice on the door and, not waiting for a response, entered. She was exhausted herself and Leanna’s languor was an irritating reminder that she still had plenty picking up from the party to do. Leanna rolled over and propped herself up on her elbows. “It was a wonderful evening, wasn’t it, Emma?”

“Seemed to be.”

“I’m just sorry John couldn’t stay to the end.”

“Poor girl. Left with only one adoring male and not a matched set.” Emma signaled for Leanna to stand and pulled the corset over her head, a little more roughly than usual. “It was a child who came for John, scared out of his wits because he thought his mother was dying in childbed. If you could have seen the gratitude which swept him when John walked into that kitchen you wouldn’t be so sorry that you lost an escort.”

Leanna sat down and began to unlace her slippers, face flaming. At home, it would have been inconceivable for a maid to speak to her in such a tone, but things in London were not so clearly delineated. Gerry introduced Emma as her companion, surely one of the most conveniently vague words in the English language, and Emma most often dined with the family. But not tonight, not on the more formal occasion of Leanna’s launch into society. Tonight she had served them, had fastened the innumerable hooks of Leanna’s plum silk and then gone to button up her own black cotton, had watched John and Trevor contend to pull out Leanna’s chair while she gulped down a few bites in the kitchen with Gage, had carried plates and serving trays rather than gay conversation. No wonder that the girl sometimes showed temper.

“Besides,” Emma went on, her voice softening almost as if she had read Leanna’s thoughts, “it wasn’t as if Trevor didn’t remain to dance attendance.”

“You like him, don’t you?” Leanna asked, not raising her eyes. “He comes here more often than you and Aunt Gerry said.”

“He’s a fine man,” Emma said shortly. “Easy to talk to.”

“Exactly my thoughts, and I found him quite fascinating. In a different way from John, of course. But Trevor speaks to me…” Leanna paused, “As if I were a human being.”

“And how does John speak to you?”

“As if I were a lady.”

Emma shook out the plum gown. “I didn’t realize the two were mutually exclusive.”

Leanna watched Emma adjust her dress on the hanger and thought back to the day they had bought it, how differently the shopkeeper had treated the two girls. He had approached her with – well, she supposed the word was “respect” but it didn’t feel like respect, it had felt like a refusal to speak directly to her at all. But Emma he had treated like an equal. Men categorized women very quickly, that was clear, but what was the basis of the sorting?

“You know,” Leanna said “John didn’t recall meeting me on the train.”

“Um?”

“John. He didn’t recall meeting me in the train.”

“He was the man who paid your fare? How bizarre.”

“Apparently I failed to make much of an impression.”

Emma shrugged. “You were different then. I remember how you looked standing on the doorstep a few weeks ago. Lost, frightened, practically swimming that black mourning dress. Tonight ….it’s not so surprising he didn’t remember. A woman isn’t like a man. She can change and become anything she wants to appear to be, based on her clothes and her way of walking and talking.”

“Odd,” Leanna said. “But you’re right. Men don’t look us in the eyes. They take in the clothes and the bearing and they adjust their behavior accordingly.”

“Trevor Welles looks women in the eyes,” Emma said quietly.

“Yes,” said Leanna. “He would be a hard man to fool.”

“Now in my opinion, that is the odd remark,” Emma said, turning to leave.

“Emma?”

“Yes?”

“Do you have any sisters?”

“No.”

“Neither do I.”

“How unfortunate for you,” said Emma, closing the door behind her.

“Auugh,” sighed Leanna, rising from the bed. Of all the things she had struggled to understand since coming to London, Emma might have been the hardest. Leanna went to the dressing table and began to brush her hair so hard that tears came to her eyes.





1:24 AM



At the entryway to the George Yard stables, Trevor stood looking down at the lifeless form of a woman. An hour earlier a man had been trying to lead a workhorse into the courtyard when the creature had shied and refused to enter. He’d summoned a bobby making rounds and the boy had quickly found the trouble: a white-stockinged leg sticking out from a gate. Trevor breathed a silent prayer of relief that the bobby - although young and obviously terrified - had exhibited enough presence of mind to rope off the area and leave the body unmoved. Now Eatwell and a few others milled around, awaiting the arrival of Dr. Phillips and trying to keep the throng of onlookers at bay. Although the night was warm, Trevor trembled violently.

“Isn’t typical, is it Sir?” he ventured, as Eatwell paced by.

“What do you mean?” Eatwell asked distractedly.

“Her throat is cut, left to right like the others, but there aren’t any mutilations.”

“You sound disappointed,” Eatwell said. “Ah, Abrams, what do you make of this?” Trevor looked up to see that Rayley Abrams had joined their circle. While the other detectives looked as if they’d been summoned from their beds – as indeed he himself had been – Abrams was as neatly groomed as ever. He stared soberly down at the woman.

“Surprising that he’d change his method, Sir.”

“I agree,” said Trevor. “Just a few days ago in the paper he bragged that he would –“ Trevor stopped, a sudden revelation sweeping with nauseating certainty. “He didn’t finish.”

“She’s finished plain enough,” Eatwell said but Abrams looked at Trevor and gave a slow, almost imperceptible nod.

“We need to scour the area, Sir,” Trevor said, his heart beginning to pound. “Something – probably the man with the horse – interrupted the killer before he could leave his usual calling cards. And that would have made him furious.”

“Perhaps,” said Eatwell. “But why should we care if he’s furious?”

Because people kill when they’re furious, you imbecile, Trevor thought. Struggling to control his voice he said, “Perhaps a patrol of the area is in order, Sir, or at least an alarm with the whistles. If Jack’s still about, we’ll flush him.”

“This many coppers in the area and you think he’s still about?” Eatwell said. “In my experience, killers flee once the deed is done and this deed is most assuredly done. Sir Warren himself is on the way here and I want the whole contingent at the ready.”

“I believe that’s Phillips now, isn’t it?” Abrams said quietly, directing Eatwell’s attention toward the street as a carriage rattled up to the front of the stable. The inspector turned to greet its occupant.

“See here,” Trevor said, using the diversion to step back from the circle and whisper to the bobby who’d found the body. “What’s your name, lad?”

“Davy Madley, Sir.”

“Look round the area.”

The boy nodded and slipped off without questions. Trevor hung back, watching Phillips’ assistant all but lift him from his carriage and lead him over to the body. “Good God,” said the old man. “Another one.”

“But she doesn’t fit the pattern…” Trevor said.

“No, by all appearances this one gave him a bit of a fight,” Phillips said, crouching and gingerly turning over the long, lean body of the prostitute. “Look, even now you can see bruises forming…”

“Check her nails,” Trevor insisted. “Women fight with their fingernails.” Phillips ventured a grim smile.

“What are you, mad for fingernails? Very well…”

Just then three sharp blasts of a whistle pierced the night and the men clustered around the body all jumped. Davy Madley was running toward them, his face chalk-white and his breathing ragged. “Come, come, it’s just as you said, Sir. There’s another and he – he had plenty of time for this one, Sir.”

Trevor turned to the bobby and shouted “Get back there, and keep the crowds away. Keep the police away.” Davy spun and ran back into the darkness as if he were being chased by the devil himself.

“Don’t let them touch her,” Trevor cried after the boy’s retreating form. “Don’t let them move her. For the love of the Virgin, don’t let anyone near that body.”





2:22 AM



At his home in Brixton, a half-hour on foot from the house of Geraldine Bainbridge and an equal half-hour from the streets of Whitechapel, John Harrowman stood at his wash basin. Slowly, methodically, almost dreamily, he washed the last vestiges of blood from his hands. His favorite scalpel, the one he’d performed his very first surgery with and the one which still felt most at home in his hand, lay disinfected on a folded white towel and a bundle of bloodied clothes had been stuffed in his hassock. He’d been up for twenty hours, but John was not tired. Instead, as he scrubbed and the water blushed from pale pink to red, he was conscious that he was humming, that he was happy. He found a sense of exhilaration and power in his work. No matter how late the hour, he always returned from the streets of the East End feeling right within himself.

Still humming, he turned from the washstand and walked over to his window. His working class neighborhood was sleeping, and John’s thoughts drifted back to the girl, Leanna. He had been absorbed in his medical practice for years, perhaps too many, and meeting her had reminded him there was another life out there, a life beyond the women of the East End. He caught a glimpse of himself in the window-glass and softly cursed. It had been a rough one; even his undershirt was splattered with dried drops of blood, and he thought for a moment of removing it and adding it to the pile of laundry. But he crawled in his bed instead, letting out a deep sigh, willing sleep to come and stop this strange pounding in his chest. He hugged his own arms, the memory of the night comforting him and in truth - for he was a doctor to the core - even the faint smell of blood was a pleasure.