“Is that an order?” Gray says.
“It is. I invited Hugh to join us, so we may hear his update and share yours.”
“We are very busy, Isla. I am not certain we have time for tea.”
“I picked up cream pastries this morning. Also, coffee, for Catriona, so she may no longer need to sip piteously at your dregs.”
“He hadn’t touched the coffee I drank,” I say. “Which isn’t to say his dregs aren’t tempting.”
“Are they now?”
Her eyes glitter, and I’m glad I’m slung over Gray’s shoulder, so I can make a face at her and roll my eyes.
She laughs and pats my shoulder. “Coffee and tea, cream pastries and lemon cake. Five o’clock in the library. Do not be late.”
THIRTY
When we talk to McCreadie, I’m glad I made the choice to stay with Gray. McCreadie’s interview brought him nothing, even with the additional questions we brainstormed.
“I know Duncan has theorized that Evans was tortured,” McCreadie says as he sips his tea. “Which implies a connection between the two men, but if there is such a connection with Rose Wright, I have no idea what it might be. Her sister is a respectable lady. A laundress. Rose helped when she … Well, when she was able. She liked her drink and was often in no shape to assist her sister in the mornings, if you take my meaning.”
He means Rose was an alcoholic whose heavy drinking meant she could rarely rouse herself from bed before noon. It’s tempting to look at someone like Rose and compare her with her industrious and “respectable” sister, but it’s rarely that easy, and I give McCreadie full credit for digging deeper.
Rose was ten years older than her sister. She’d been married, happily enough it seems, and worked in a factory. Five children. The only two who survived infancy both died in the cholera epidemic of 1856, along with her husband. The doctor prescribed laudanum to help with her “nerves”—shockingly, the death of her entire family within a week had sent her into a depression.
From laudanum, Rose moved to alcohol, eventually losing her job and her home, and then going to live with her younger sister, where she helped with the laundry and the children. She went out in the evenings a few times each week, sweeping floors for local shops and then having a drink with friends.
Rose didn’t really clean shops in the evening. McCreadie confirmed that easily enough. She was doing sex work. She’d earn enough for the night’s drinking and bring home a shilling or two, always apologizing that it wasn’t more. I can imagine her planning for it to be more, to bring all those coins to her sister after just one drink.
One drink to take the edge off, banish the ghosts, and boost her self-esteem. One turned into two, which turned into five, and it is a testament to her willpower—or her love for her sister—that she came home with any money at all.
A sad life with a tragic end.
Was there a connection to the killer? My gut says that he needs that. But in this case, he also needed a woman who’d match Polly Nichols close enough to mimic the Ripper. Maybe that was enough. If there was more, it might have only been a passing encounter, like the one we had in the coffee shop.
I’m digging too deep. I know that. Fixating on a connection with the victim. Fixating on the Jack the Ripper connection. Those are distractions. I need to strip them away and focus on the true connection. The one that matters.
Our killer inhabits the body of whoever tried to strangle Catriona a week ago. Forget who’s inside that body. Forget his motives. Find Catriona’s would-be killer, and I can stop him before another Rose dies.
* * *
Our killer is my attempted killer … in the body of Catriona’s attempted killer. Who would want to murder Catriona? I think “who wouldn’t” might be the easier question to answer. She stole from those who tried to help her, like Isla and Gray. Fought with those who trusted her, like Simon. Betrayed those who wooed her, like Findlay. Bullied Alice. Gave Mrs. Wallace endless grief. Double-crossed her allies, like Davina. And those are just the people in her life that I know.
Are any of those betrayals motives for murder? As a cop, I learned that’s a far less useful question than one might think. I’ve known people who killed a partner to escape horrible abuse, and some still insisted that wasn’t a valid motive for murder. I’ve also known a guy who killed his neighbor for having loud dinner parties and a woman who tried to kill a job rival. In neither case would I remotely see motive for murder, but they still tried to convince a jury of it.
I need to learn more about Catriona. Talk to Davina. Talk to Isla, too. Get Catriona’s background from Isla and find out from Davina what Catriona had been up to recently, even if that takes every coin in my stash.
Still, I feel as if I’m about to wade into shark-infested waters trying to find the one shark who did this. I stare at the ceiling, mentally sorting through data and feeling pulled in twenty directions while working with both hands tied behind my back.
I saw Catriona being strangled, but as hard as I rack my brain, I can recall nothing of her killer except the sense that it was a man. Otherwise, the links only further complicate the crime, and I need to constantly pull apart those threads before they hopelessly tangle.
As for the “tied hands” part, well, I’m not a detective here. Not a criminal officer. Not a constable. Hell, I’m not even a man, and for all the times I felt hampered by that in the modern world, it is the difference between having to swim upstream and being kept out of the river altogether.
I have a crime to investigate. I am the person best qualified to solve it, because the killer comes from my world, which I cannot tell the investigating officer. Yet my days are not my own. I’ll get up tomorrow and take Gray his coffee, and if I’m lucky, he’ll keep me up to date on McCreadie’s investigation, and maybe I can add my two cents, but that’s it.
I want to tell Isla I need a few days off, so I can go out and investigate.
Go out where? Investigate how? I’d need McCreadie for that, and there’s no logical way for me to insert myself into the active part of his investigation.
I’ll talk to Isla. Convince her to help me get more access.
Can I tell her about the link between this killer and my twenty-first- century one? I’m not sure yet. I need to work it through more and tread carefully.
The tangled threads make my head spin as they cinch ever tighter. I need paper and a pen so I can get my thoughts out of my head. When the clock strikes midnight, I’m reasonably certain everyone will be in bed, and so I sneak down the back stairs to the second floor and head for the library. I’m creeping across the cold floors when a board creaks, and I freeze.
What if someone catches me in the library at this hour? I can’t keep asking Isla to get me out of scrapes.
I tell myself I’m overreacting. If I’m caught, I’ll take a book. I’m allowed to borrow them, and it’s understandable that I might get one if I can’t sleep.
I cock my head, listening, but the house has gone still. I continue on to the library. I consider lighting a lamp, but instead just open the drapery enough to catch moonlight.
Find a book first. That will make my cover story more plausible.
The problem here is that the minute I begin perusing the bookcases, I lose myself in the possibilities, all whispering to be pulled from the shelves. Victorian fiction that I doubt my father has heard of—contemporary works lost to time. Scientific and historical texts of every variety, each promising a glimpse into past theories and thoughts, their gorgeous vellum pages nestled between leather covers.