Ripping Time

Chapter Ten

It was a vastly subdued Margo who returned to Spaldergate House in a driving downpour, with lightning sizzling in the night skies and Benny Catlin missing and wounded somewhere beyond their reach. After the preoccupation of their abortive search, it was actually a shock to return to the warmth and brightness of Spaldergate and the lively discussion amongst the Ripper scholars, who cared absolutely nothing about a missing time tourist. All except Shahdi Feroz. Margo still wondered why she'd volunteered to accompany them.

An argument broke out the moment they returned, as to which scholars would go into the East End to help place the final surveillance equipment at the first murder scene. Not to be outdone, Dominica Nosette and Guy Pendergast joined the fray.

"We're coming along, as well."

Pavel Kostenka said, "You are not qualified—"

"I've been on more undercover photoshoots than you have credentials strung out behind your name!"

"And you are a two-bit, muckraking—"

"Two-bit my arse! I'll have you know—"

"Enough!" Malcolm's stern voice cut through the babble and silenced the entire lot of them. "I'll make the decision as to who goes and who stays! Is that clear?"

Even Margo gulped, staring wide-eyed at her infuriated fiancé.

"Now. Miss Nosette, Mr. Pendergast, the terms of the Ripper Watch contract include you as the only journalists. It would be remiss of us if you did not accompany the team members placing the equipment, tonight, to record the attempt for posterity. I presume you've brought low-light, miniaturized cameras?"

"I know my trade," the blond reporter said with an icy chill in her voice, glaring at Kostenka. "And my equipment."

Kostenka just shrugged and pretended to find the carpet utterly absorbing.

"Very well. I would suggest you go and get that equipment ready. We'll leave the house at two A.M. If you're not dressed for the East End and waiting in the carriage drive, we'll leave without you. Now then, Margo, please be good enough to help them select costumes. They haven't been into the East End. Assist Dr. Feroz with that as well. I'll want you along, Inspector," he glanced at Conroy Melvyn, the Scotland Yard chief inspector who'd been named head of the Ripper Watch team, "and the others can prepare the relay and recording equipment on the roof and down in the vault."

There were grumbles, but clearly, the Ripper Watch team had grown accustomed to taking Malcolm's orders when it came to his decisions as head guide.

"Very good. I expect you all have someplace better to be than standing about in the parlour, with your mouths hanging open."

The assembled scholars and journalists dispersed quickly. Only Conroy Melvyn seemed to find the situation humorous. The police inspector winked at Malcolm as he strolled out in the wake of the disgruntled scholars. Then Margo was alone with Malcolm, at last.

"Margo, I'm afraid you're not going to like what I have to say next."

"Oh, no, Malcolm, please let me come with you!"

He grimaced. "That isn't it. Quite the opposite, in fact." He rubbed the back of his neck distractedly. "It's this blasted business with Catlin. Thank God you've come. I've got to work with the Gilberts, organize some plan of attack to search for him. We'll try the hospitals, the workhouse infirmaries, anywhere Catlin might have gone seeking medical attention."

Margo gulped, seeing abruptly where this was leading. "Malcolm... I—I'm not ready to guide that bunch by myself—"

Malcolm grinned. "Good. I'm glad you've the sense to admit it. I didn't intend sending you alone. Tanglewood's a good man, an experienced guide, and he's been in the East End a fair bit."

Margo frowned. "Isn't that kind of an odd place for tourists to go?"

Malcolm merely cleared his throat. "Zipper jockey tours."

Oh. "That's disgusting!"

"It isn't his fault, Margo. He's a Time Tours employee. If he wants to keep his job, he goes where the paying customers want to visit. Even if it's some back-alley brothel in Wapping."

"Huh. I hope they catch a good dose of something nasty!"

"Occasionally," Malcolm said drily, "they do. Spaldergate's resident surgeon keeps rather a generous supply of penicillin on hand. There is a reason London's courtesans wore death's-head rings, even as early as the eighteenth century."

Margo shivered. Poor women, reduced to such poverty they'd no choice but to risk syphillis and its slow, certain deterioration toward madness and death in an era predating antibiotics.

"Very well," Malcolm said tiredly, "that's settled, then. I would suggest you go in costume as a girl, rather than a street ruffian. You'll be less apt to run into serious trouble, particularly in company with the members of the Ripper Watch team. But go armed, love. It's no busman's holiday I'm sending you into, out there."

She nodded. "Believe me, I will be. I'll watch over them, get them back here safe again, as soon as their equipment is in place."

Malcolm held out his arms and she walked into his embrace, just holding onto him tightly for a long moment. He kissed her with such hunger, it left her head swimming. Then he broke the contact and leaned his brow against hers and sighed. "I would give anything... But I must get on with the search for Benny Catlin."

"I know."

He kissed her one last time, then went in search of the Spaldergate House gatekeepers. Margo found her way upstairs and helped the new arrivals pick out costumes ragged enough for the East End, then showed Dominica Nosette how to get into the costume. Shahdi Feroz had, at least, been down the Britannia before.

"In the West End, mostly" she said with a slight smile, glancing at the garments Margo had authorized. "But I do know how the underthings, at least, go on."

Dominica Nosette expected Margo to assist her as lady's maid, a task she did not relish. Three months of this? Margo groused silently, yanking at the strings on Miss Nosette's stays. I'll lop off her pretty blond hair and put her in a boy's tog's, first!

By the time the mantle clocks throughout Spaldergate chimed two A.M. and they were ready to leave in one of the Time Tours carriages, which would take them as far as the Tower of London, Malcolm had been gone for hours, out combing the hospitals and workhouse infirmaries for some trace of their missing tourist. Douglas Tanglewood ushered them all into a stylish Calash Coach, which possessed a hard, covered roof and curtains to screen them from outside scrutiny, since they were dressed as roughly as any dockhand out of Stepney. They rode in a silence electric with anticipation. Even Margo, who fretted over Malcolm's safety, searching for a man who had already been involved in two fatal shootings, found herself caught up in the air of excitement.

In three hours, they would know.

After more than a century and a half of mystery, they would finally know.

If nothing went wrong. If she did her job right. If the equipment didn't fail...

When they finally alighted at the Tower, which stood at the very gateway to the East End, dividing it from more prosperous areas to the west, Dominica Nosette gasped in astonishment and pointed through the darkness toward a misshapen silhouette outlined now and again by flashes of lightning.

"The Bridge!" she gasped. "What's wrong with the Bridge? Who's destroyed it?"

Douglas Tanglewood chuckled softly. "Miss Nosette, Tower Bridge hasn't suffered any damage. They simply haven't finished building it, yet." Flickers of lightning revealed naked iron girders which only partly spanned the River Thames in the darkness. The famous stone covering had not yet been put into place. "There's been quite a controversy raging about the Bridge, you know. Stone over iron, unheard of, risky."

"Controversy?" the blonde sniffed, clearly thinking Tanglewood was feeding her a line. "Absurd. Tower Bridge is a national monument!"

"Will be," Margo put in. "Right now, it's just another bridge. Convenient for trans-shipping cargo from the docks on this bank to the docks on the South Side, since it'll cut five miles out of the draymen's one-way journey, but just a bridge, for all its convenience."

"Nonsense!"

Margo shrugged. "Suit yourself. This isn't the London you left a couple of days ago, Miss Nosette. I'd advise you to keep that in mind. Let's get moving, all right? We don't have any time to waste, standing around arguing about a stupid bridge that isn't even finished, yet."

They set out, Doug Tanglewood in the lead, Margo and Shahdi Feroz bringing up the rear, while Dominica Nosette and Guy Pendergast, voices low, deadlocked in a debate with Conroy Melvyn of Scotland Yard as they walked through the dark, rainy streets. Pubs had just closed down and houses were mostly dark, gas lights turned out while the working poor found what sleep they could before dawn sent them reeling out once more to earn a living however they could manage.

"There's a lot of evidence against Frederick Bailey Deeming, isn't there?" Pendergast asked softly.

"A small-time swindler with brain fever," Conroy Melvyn said with a dismissive air. "Killed his wife and children, slashed their throats. They hanged him in ‘92."

"Didn't the press dub him the official Ripper, though?" Dominica Nosette pressed the argument. "And Scotland Yard, as well? For years, the Yard exhibited his death mask as the Ripper's."

Conroy Melvyn shrugged. "Well, he was a right popular chap at the time, so he was, violent and known t'be in Whitechapel during the murders. Carried knives, so witnesses told police. Not," the up-time Scotland Yard inspector added drily, "that anybody had any real evidence against him. Prob'ly just an epileptic, drunken lout of a sailor with a violent temper and a nasty habit of killing off family when they got inconveniently expensive to support."

"Nice guy," Margo muttered, earning a sardonic glance from Shahdi Feroz.

Dominica Nosette, who had secreted a miniature video camera system under her clothing and bonnet, turned to glance at the Scotland Yard inspector—thus adroitly filming the "interview" as well.

"Who do you think did it, then?"

"I dunno, ma'am, and that's what we're doin' tonight, innit? Taking a bit of a look-see for ourselves, eh?"

Dominica Nosette, clearly not one to be dismissed so easily, dropped back to where Margo and Shahdi Feroz walked behind the chief inspector and Guy Pendergast. "Who do you think did it, Dr. Feroz? You never did name your top suspect, back on the station, despite all those marvelous theories about Satanists and mad lesbian midwives. Come, now, Dr. Feroz, who's your favorite suspect?"

Neither Shahdi Feroz nor Dominica Nosette noticed the sharp stare from a roughly dressed man nearly invisible in the shadows of a dark alleyway. A man who abruptly changed course to follow them. But Margo did. And she noticed the heavy sap in his hand and the covetous look he cast at Shahdi Feroz and her carpet bag. He'd clearly heard Dominica Nosette call Shahdi Feroz "doctor" and doubtless figured there was something valuable in her satchel. Medicines, maybe, which could be sold for cash. Margo rounded on him in scalding language that brought the ill-dressed villain—and the entire Ripper Watch Team—to a screeching halt in the middle of Whitechapel Road.

"Cor, ‘ave a nice butcher's, will you?" Margo shrilled, fists clenched as she advanced menacingly on him. "Ain't you never clapped yer bleedin' minces on no missionary doctor before, you gob-smacked lager lout? Takin' ‘er to London Horse Piddle, so I am, an' you lay a German on ‘er, I'll clout you upside yer pink an' shell-like, so I will! I ain't no gormless git, I ain't, I know wot a blagger like you is up to, when ‘e follows a lady, so g'wan, then, ‘ave it away on yer buttons! Before I smack you in the ‘ampsteads wiv a bleedin' sap! C'mon, get yer finger out!"

Margo was, in fact, gripping a lead-filled leather sap of her own, so hard her knuckles stood out white. The shabbily dressed man following them had halted, mouth dropping open as he stared. Then he let out a bark of laughter past blackened teeth.

"Grotty-mouthed bit, ain't yer? Don't want no bovver, not ‘at bad, I don't. Sooner go back to me cat an' face me ruddy knife, so I would, after she's copped an elephant."

The man faded back into the darkness, his harsh laughter still floating back to them. Margo relaxed her grip on the lead-filled sap one finger joint at a time, then glanced up to discover Douglas Tanglewood hovering at her side, pistol concealed behind one hip. "Well done," he said quietly, "if a bit theatrical. Ladies, gentlemen, we have a schedule to keep. Move along, please."

It was only then, as Margo herded the Ripper Watch team members down the street, casting uneasy glances over her shoulder, that she noticed the open-mouthed stares from Guy Pendergast, Dominica Nosette, and—of all people—Shahdi Feroz, who broke the stunned silence first. "I am amazed! Whatever did you say to that man? It wasn't even in English! Was it?" she added uncertainly.

Margo cleared her throat self-consciously. "Well, no, it wasn't. That was Cockney dialect. Which isn't exactly English, no."

"But what did you say?" the Ripper scholar insisted. "And what did he say?"

"Well..." Margo tried to recall, exactly, what it was she'd actually said. "I asked him if he'd had a good look, hadn't he ever laid eyes on a missionary doctor, and I was taking you to London Hospital. So if he laid a hand on you, I'd hit him across the ear with a sap. Told him to go away, or I'd smack him in the teeth, and told him to hurry it up. Then he said I had a dirty mouth and told me he didn't want any trouble. Said he'd rather go home and face his wife after she'd been drinking than mix it up with me." Margo smiled a little lamely. "Actually, he was right about the dirty mouth. Some of what I said was really awful. Bad enough, a proper lady would've fainted from the shock, if she'd understood half of it."

Dominica Nosette laughed in open delight. "My dear, you are a treasure! Really, you've a splendid career ahead. What made you want to scout? Following in your grandfather's footsteps, no doubt?"

Margo didn't really want to talk about her family. Too much of it was painful. So she said, "We really shouldn't discuss anything from up time while we're here, Miss Nosette. That jerk started following us because he overheard what we were saying. You called Madame Feroz, there, by her professional title, which left him dangerously curious about us and the contents of her bag. There are very few women doctors in 1888 and it caught his attention. If you want to talk about scouting later, at the gatehouse, we can talk about it then, but not now. And please don't ask so many questions about the suspects while we're out on the streets. You-know-who hasn't even struck yet, despite the deaths on Easter Monday and August Bank Holiday, both of which will be attributed to him by morning. And since the nickname isn't made public in the newspapers until after September 30^th, with the Dear Boss letter that's published after the double murders, conversation on that subject should be confined strictly to the gatehouse."

Dominica gave her one rebellious glance, then smiled sweetly. "Oh, all right. I'm sure you're only trying to watch out for our safety, after all. But I will get that interview, Miss Smith!"

Margo didn't know whether to feel flattered or alarmed.

Then they reached the turn-off for Buck's Row and all conversation came to a halt as the Ripper Watch team went to work. They set up their surveillance equipment efficiently, putting in place miniature cameras, low-light systems, tiny but powerful microphones, miniaturized transmitters that would relay video and audio signals up to the rooftops and across London. They worked in silent haste, as the factory cottages terraced along the road were occupied by families who slept in the shadow of the factories where they worked such long and gruelling shifts. Conroy Melvyn had just finished putting the last connection in place when the constable assigned to this beat appeared at the narrow street's end, sauntering their way with a suspicious glance.

"Wot's this, then?" the policeman demanded.

"Don't want no barney, guv," Doug Tanglewood said quickly, "just ‘aving a bit of a bobble, ain't we? C'mon, mates, let's ‘ave a pint down to boozer, eh?"

"Oh, aye," Margo grumbled, "an' you'll end pissed as a newt again, like as not!"

"Shut yer gob, eh? Bottle's goin' t'think you ain't got no manners!"

The constable watched narrowly as Douglas Tanglewood and Margo herded the others out of Buck's Row and back toward Whitechapel Road. But he didn't follow, just continued along his assigned beat. Margo breathed a sigh of relief. "Whew..."

And did her dead-level best to keep the scholars and journalists out of trouble the whole way back to Spaldergate House, where Margo grew massively absorbed in the unfolding drama in the East End. They did a test recording, which captured a disturbance underway in one of the terraced cottages. The screaming fight which erupted on the heels of a drunken man's return home was not in English. Or Cockney, either. Bulgarian, maybe... Lots of immigrants lived in the East End, so many it was hard to distinguish languages, sometimes. The fight flared to violence and breaking crockery, then subsided with a woman sobbing in despair.

The street and the houses lining it grew quiet again. The constable walked his beat past the cameras several times during the next three hours, virtually alone on the dark stretch of road where no public gas lights burned anywhere within reach of the camera pickups. The silence in the street was mirrored by a thick silence in the vault, as they waited, downing cupfuls of coffee, fidgeting with the equipment, occasionally muttering and adjusting connections. As the clock ticked steadily toward Zero-Hour, the excitement, the electric tension in the vault beneath Spaldergate House was thick enough to cut with the Ripper's knife. Ten minutes before the earliest estimated time of death, they switched on the recording equipment, videotaping the empty stretch of cobbled street.

"Check those backup recordings," Conroy Melvyn muttered. "Be bloody sure we're getting multiple copies of this."

"Number two recording."

"Number three's a go."

"Four's copying just fine."

"Got a sound-feed problem on number five. I'm on it."

Margo, who had nothing to do but watch the others huddle tensely over consoles, fiddling with computer controls and adjusting sound mixers, wondered with a lonely pang what Malcolm was doing and why he hadn't returned, yet. Hours, it'd been, since he'd left on the search of London's hospitals. How many were there in London? She didn't know. After all the work he'd put in during the past weeks, setting up the base camp and helping the scholars learn their way around the East End, he was missing the historical moment when they would finally discover who Jack the Ripper really was. Lousy idiot of a tourist! Why Benny Catlin had chosen tonight, of all nights, to get himself into a gunfight at the Piccadilly Hotel...

"Oh, my God!" Pavel Koskenka's voice sliced through the tense silence. "There they are!"

Margo's breath caught involuntarily.

Then Jack the Ripper walked calmly into view, escorting Polly Nichols, all unknowing, to her death.

The night resembled the entire, waning summer: wet and cold. Rain slashed down frequently in sharp gusting showers which would end abruptly, leaving the streets puddled and chilly, only to pour again without warning. Thunder rumbled through the narrow cobbled streets like heavy wagon wheels laboring under a vast tonnage of transport goods. Savage flares of lightning pulsed through low-lying clouds above the wet slate rooftops of London. For the second time that night, a hellish red glow bathed the underbellies of those clouds as another dock fire raged through the East End. It was nearly two-thirty in the morning of a wet, soggy Friday, the last day of August.

James Maybrick paused in the puddled shadows along Whitechapel Road, where he watched the exceedingly erratic progress of the woman he had been following all evening, now. His hands, thrust deep into the pockets of his dark overcoat against the chill of the wet night, ached for the coming pleasure. His right hand curled gently around the hard wooden handle of the knife concealed in his coat's deep pocket. He smiled and tugged down his dark felt cap, one of many caps and hats he had purchased recently in differing parts of the city, preparing for this work.

The woman he followed at a discreet distance staggered frequently against the wall as she made her way east down Whitechapel Road ahead of him. She was a small woman, barely five feet two inches in height, with small and delicate features gone blowzy and red from the alcohol she had consumed tonight. High cheekbones, dark skin, and grey eyes, framed by brown hair beginning to show the signs of age... She might have been anywhere from thirty to thirty-five, to look at her, but Maybrick knew her history, knew everything it was possible to discover about this small, alcoholic woman he stalked so patiently. John Lachley had told Maybrick all about Polly Nichols. About her years of living as a common whore on the streets of Whitechapel.

She was forty-four years old, this "Hooker" as the Americans in Norfolk would have called her, after the general who had supplied such women in the camps during the Civil War. Not a handsome woman, either. She must have a dreadful time luring customers to pay for the goods she offered up for sale. Polly's teeth were slightly discolored when she smiled and just above her eyes, Polly's dark complexion was marred by a scar on her brow. She was married, was "Polly" Nichols, married and a mother of five miserable children, God help them, to have such a mother. Mary Ann Walker, as Lachley had told him was her maiden name, had married William Nichols, subsequently left him five or six times (by William Nichols' own disgusted admission), and had finally left him for good, abandoning her children to take up a life of itinerant work "in service" between stints in workhouses and prostitution. William, poor sod, had convinced the courts to discontinue her maintenance money by proving that she was, in fact, living as a common whore.

Not even her father, Edward Walker, a respectable blacksmith in Camberwell, had been able to live with her during her slide into the miserable creature James Maybrick stalked through this rainy and unseasonably chilly August night. Her own father had quarreled violently with her over her drunkenness, precipitating her departure from his doorstep. Her most recent home—and Maybrick curled his lip at the thought of calling such lodgings home—had been the cold, unheated rooms she'd paid for in various "doss" houses along the infamous Flower and Dean Street and the equally notorious Thrawl Street, establishments which catered primarily to destitute whores. Hundreds of such lodging houses existed in Whitechapel, some of them even permitting men and women to share a bed for the night, as scandalous a notion as that was. The "evil quarter mile" as the stretch of Commercial Road from Thrawl Street to Flower and Dean was known, had for years been vilified as the most dangerous, foul street in London.

James Maybrick knew this only too well, for he had lived, briefly, in Whitechapel during the earliest years of his career as a cotton merchant's clerk, had met and married a pretty working girl named Sarah here, where she had still lived, unknown to the wealthy and faithless bitch he'd married many years later and settled in a fine mansion in Liverpool. Florie, the whore, had discovered Sarah's existence not so many weeks ago, had dared demand a divorce, after what she, herself, had done with Brierly! James had laughed at her, told her to consider her own future carefully before taking such a step, to consider the massive debts she'd run up at dressmakers' shops, debts she could not pay. If she hoped to avoid disgrace, to avoid bringing shame upon herself and her innocent children, she would jolly well indulge his appetites, leave poor Sarah in peace, and keep her mouth shut.

James had visited Sarah tonight, before arriving at Dr. Lachley's. He had enjoyed the conjugal visit with his precious first wife, who bore his need for Florie's money and social position stoically and lived frugally on the money Maybrick provided for her. Sarah was a good, God-fearing girl who had refused to leave Whitechapel and her only living relatives and ruin his social chances. Sarah, at least, would never have to walk these streets. Even the local Spitalfields clergy despaired of the region and its violent, criminal-minded denizens.

James Maybrick smiled into the wet night. They would not despair over one particular denizen much longer. Three and a half hours previously, he had quietly followed Polly Nichols down Whitechapel Road as she set out searching for her evening's doss money, the four-pence needed to secure a place to sleep, and had watched from the shadows as his guide, his mentor, Dr. John Lachley, had accosted her. The disguise his marvelous teacher wore had changed his appearance remarkably, delighting James to no end, as much as the secret retreat beneath the streets had delighted him. The false theatrical beard Maybrick had obtained for him from a cheap shop in SoHo and the dye used to color it left Lachley as anonymous as the thousands of other shabbily dressed working men wandering Whitechapel, wending their way from one gin palace to the next on a drunken pub crawl.

Lachley, stepping out into Polly Nichols' path, had smiled into her eyes. "Hello, my dear. It's a raw evening, isn't it?"

The doctor, whose medical treatments had left Maybrick feeling more powerful, more vigorous and invincible than he'd felt in years, glanced briefly past the whore's shoulder to where Maybrick stood in concealment, nodding slightly to indicate that this was Polly Nichols, herself, the woman he had brought James here to help murder. Dressed in a brown linsey frock, Polly Nichols had smiled up at John Lachley with a whore's calculating smile of greeting.

"Evening. Is a bit wet, innit?"

"A bit," Lachley allowed. "A lady such as yourself shouldn't be out with a bare head in such weather."

"Ooh, now aren't you the polite one!" She walked her fingers coyly up his arm. "Now, if I were to ‘ave the coin, I might buy me a noice, fancy bonnet and keep the rain off."

"It just so happens," Lachley smiled down into her brown eyes, "that I have a few coins to spare."

She laughed lightly. "An' what might a lady need t'do to share that wealth, eh?"

"Consider it a gift." The physician pressed a silver florin into her palm.

She glanced down at the coin, then stared, open-mouthed, down at her grubby hand. "A florin?" This pitiful alcoholic little trollop now held in her hand a coin worth twenty-four pence: the equivalent of six times the going rate for what she was selling tonight. Or, marketed differently, six glasses of gin. Polly stared up at Lachley in sudden suspicion. "What you want t'give me an whole, entire florin for?" Greed warred with alarm in her once delicate little face.

John Lachley gave her a warm smile. "It's a small token of appreciation. From a mutual friend. Eddy sends his regards, madam." He doffed his rough cloth cap. "It has come to his attention that another mutual friend, a young man by the name of Morgan, loaned you a few of his personal letters. Eddy is desirous of re-reading them, you see, and asked me if I might not do him the favor of speaking with you about obtaining them this evening."

"Eddy?" she gasped. "Oh, my! Oh, blimey, the letters!"

Deep in his pocket, Maybrick gripped the handle of his knife and smiled.

John Lachley gave the filthy little trollop a mocking little bow. "Consider the florin a promise of greater rewards to come, in appreciation of your discretion in a certain, ah, delicate matter."

"Oh, I'm most delicate, I am, and it's most generous of Mr. Eddy to send a token of ‘is good faith. But you see, I don't exactly ‘ave those letters on me person, y'see. I'd ‘ave to go an' fetch them. From the safe place I've been keepin' ‘em ‘idden, y'see, for Morgan," she added hastily.

"Of course, madam. Shall we meet again when you have obtained them? Name the time and place and I will bring a far better reward than that paltry florin, there."

"Oh, yes, certainly! Give me the night, say? Maybe we could meet in the morning?"

Maybrick tightened his hand on the knife handle again, in anger this time. No! He would not wait a whole day! The bitch must be punished now! Tonight! Visions of his wife, naked in her lover's arms, tormented James Maybrick, drove him to a frenzy of hatred, instilled in him the burning desire to kill this filthy prostitute posturing in front of them as though she were someone worthy of breathing the same air they did. Polly Nichols was nothing but a blackmailing, dirty little whore...

"You must understand," John Lachley was saying to her, "Eddy is most anxious to re-read his letters. I will meet you again here, later tonight, no later than, say, three-thirty in the morning. That should give you more than adequate time to fetch the letters, buy yourself something to drink at a public house and get a little something to eat, perhaps even buy yourself a nice new bonnet to keep this miserable rain off your lovely hair."

She bobbed her head in excitement, now. "Oh, yes, that'd be fine, three-thirty in the morning, no later. I'll be ‘ere, I will, with them letters."

"Very good, madam." Lachley gave her another mocking bow. "Be sure, now, to find yourself a nice bonnet, to keep out the wet. We don't want you catching your death on a raw night like this." Lachley's lips twitched at the silent joke.

The doomed whore laughed brightly. "Oh, no, that would never do, would it? Did you want to go someplace dry and comfy, then?" She was caressing Lachley's groin vulgarly.

The thought tickled Maybrick's sense of humor, that this dirty little trollop would sell herself to the very man who was bringing about her murder. The thought excited him, almost as much as the thought of killing her did. He hoped Lachley dragged her to the nearest private spot and commenced banging her as hard as possible, toothless blackmailing bitch that she was.

John Lachley gave her a wry little smile. "Indeed, madam," he lifted his cap again, "little would give me greater pleasure, but duty recalls me to Eddy's side, I fear."

"Oh! Well, then, tell Mr. Eddy I'm that grateful for the money and I'll buy a proper bonnet before we meet again."

Maybrick reined in his seething frustration and disappointment with barely restrained violence. He gripped the wicked new knife inside his pocket until his whole hand ached. He wanted to strike now, curse it! But he had to wait until the tart found Lachley's letters, had hours to wait, yet. I will rip her apart, he thought savagely, rip her wide open and let the rain wash the filth from the bleeding womb she sells so freely...

Lachley gave her a courteous bow she did not merit and left her walking down Whitechapel Road. Maybrick's clever mentor had carefully instructed him in the exact method he must use to murder this bitch, to keep the blood from splashing across his clothes when he struck. The brilliant physician and occultist had guided him to the worst of the slatterns walking these streets—deserving targets of the monumental rage he carried against the bitch who lay with her lover, tonight, in Liverpool. Maybrick almost loved his mentor, in that moment, as he thought of what delights lay ahead. As Polly wobbled drunkenly off into the night, Lachley circled around silently, sent a secretive little smile in Maybrick's direction, and followed Polly Nichols once again.

Maybrick trailed at a leisurely distance, smiling to himself, now, and caressed the handle of his concealed knife with loving fingertips. Polly Nichols, stumbling ahead of them, first visited an establishment that sold clothing of dubious origins. There she acquired a reddish brown ulster to keep off the rain, which fastened up with seven large brass buttons, and a fetching little black straw bonnet with black velvet trim and lining. She giggled as she put it on, then paraded down the wet streets to pub after pub, steadily drinking the remaining change from the silver florin.

Twice, both he and Lachley paused in dense, wet shadows while she disappeared into a secluded spot with a customer to earn three or four pence "for my doss money" she explained each time. And twice, after she had earned a few more pence, they followed along behind again as she found yet another pub in which to spend the money on gin. Well past midnight, she staggered out of the locally famous Frying Pan Public House, just one more in a long series of pubs, and found herself another customer with whom to earn another fourpence. She spent this money just as quickly as she had the rest, pouring it down her alcoholic gullet.

And so the night waned into the small hours. At nearly one-thirty in the morning, she returned to a lodging house at 18 Thrawl Street and remained inside its kitchen for several minutes, until the lodging house deputy escorted her to the door and said, "Get your doss money, ducks, an' don't come back ‘til you ‘ave it."

"Won't you save a bed for me?" she asked the man. "Never mind! I'll soon get my doss money. See what a jolly bonnet I've got now?" And she touched the black, velvet-lined straw hat with caressing fingers. "I've ‘ad money tonight and I'll get more just as easy, I will, an' I'll be back wiv my doss money soon enough."

And so out onto the streets she wandered again, clearly searching for another customer to procure more gin to while away the time before their three-thirty appointment—presumably having retrieved the letters Lachley sought from the room she was not yet able to pay for and would not be needing, ever again. Maybrick followed her silently, as did the all-but-invisible John Lachley, a mere shadow of a shape in the darkness ahead, the paler blur of Lachley's skin lit now and again by the lightning flaring across the sky. The rumble of thunder threatened more rain. It would need rain, to wash away the blood James would spill into these streets...

Polly Nichols stumbled and staggered her way through the better part of an hour, approaching and being turned down by one prospect after another, leading James and his mentor eventually toward the corner of Whitechapel Road and Osborn Street. There, she put out a hand to brace herself and greeted a woman coming up Osborn. "Well, if it in't Emily ‘olland," she slurred, "where you been?"

Emily Holland was a woman considerably older than Polly Nichols, closer to Maybrick's own age, he suspected, although she looked considerably older than Maybrick's fifty years. Emily greeted the drunken prostitute with considerable surprise. "Polly? I didn't expect to find you at this hour! Whatever are you doing wandering around so late? Me, I've been down to Shadwell Dry Dock. To see the fire." Emily gestured toward the distant docks, where the sky glowed a sullen red from the dockside disaster. It was the second fire that night which had reddened the clouds scudding so low above Whitechapel's broken and dilapidated rooftops. "What are you doing out at this hour, Polly? I thought you were coming back down to Flower and Dean Street, with Annie and Elizabeth and me. You were at the White House with us last night."

" ‘At's right," Polly nodded, slurring the words. "But I've got to get me doss money, yet. Bastard wouldn't let me stay ‘til I've got it."

"Polly, it's two-thirty in the morning!" Almost as an echo, a nearby church clock struck the time. "Hear that? Why don't you have your doss money by now?"

"Oh, I ‘ad it. Three times today, I've ‘ad it." She touched her pretty new bonnet in an absent little gesture. But she didn't explain about the florin and the letters, which was just as well, since that would have required Maybrick to murder this new trollop, Holland, also. Lachley had made it clear that none of these filthy whores must be allowed to know about such important letters. Truly, Maybrick was doing all England a great service, ridding the streets of the kind of filth Polly Nichols represented.

Polly was saying in a deeply slurred voice, "Three times, Emily, I've ‘ad me doss money, but I've drunk it all. Every las' penny of it. Three times. Never you fret, though. I'll ‘ave my doss money before long, I will, and I'll be back wiv you and the girls." She patted her pocket and let out a drunken giggle. "Won't be long at all, now."

Whereupon Polly took her leave of Emily Holland and staggered away on a new course, down Osborn Street in the direction of the Shadwell dock fire, where she might presumably find paying customers in abundance. The other woman called a low-voiced "Good night!" after her and watched Polly for a moment longer, shaking her head sadly, then shrugged and pulled her shawl more tightly about her shoulders and continued on her way, down Osborn Street in the opposite direction. James Maybrick waited impatiently until Emily Holland had disappeared into the wet night before moving down Whitechapel Road in pursuit, once more. John Lachley also broke from hiding.

Polly's voice, badly slurred, drifted back to Maybrick. "Be nice, ‘aving an ‘ot fire to warm me cold fingers by." She laughed drunkenly and reached the edge of the crowd which had gathered at Shadwell to watch the docks burn. Utter chaos reigned. Firemen swept continuous streams of water back and forth across the blazing dry dock and several doomed warehouses. Fire boats in the river added their drenching spray, trying to contain the inferno before it spread to any other warehouses with valuable contents.

More than two centuries might have passed since the Great Fire, but London had never forgotten the devastation which had destroyed all but one tiny corner of Britain's capital city. The only good to come of that fire, which had forced thousands to flee, only to watch their homes and livelihoods burn to ashes, had been the complete eradication of the Black Death. Afterwards, plague had never broken out in London again.

Not a plague of that sort, in any case. A plague of whores and prostitutes and bitches, however, had swelled to number in the thousands. Tonight, Maybrick would begin his campaign to eradicate this latest deadly plague to strike the greatest city in the greatest Empire on the earth. He smiled, marshaled his patience, and kept watch on Polly Nichols as she trolled for customers.

Despite the late hour, thousands of spectators jammed the narrow streets to watch this latest London fire. The electric thrill of danger was a tangible presence in the wet night. Maybrick hung well back, as did Lachley, losing sight of the drunken Polly Nichols in the crowd. The atmosphere in Shadwell was a carnival madness. Alcohol flowed in prodigious quantities. Maybrick, seething like the jagged lightning overhead, downed pint after pint of dark ale, himself, feeding his rage, nursing the hunger in his soul. John Lachley, too, had vanished through the crowd, leaving Maybrick to wait. He wanted to shout obscenities, he was so weary of walking and endlessly waiting. He gripped the handle of his knife so tightly he was sure there would be bruises across his palm by morning.

Nearly an hour later, with the fire still blazing furiously, Maybrick finally caught another glimpse of Polly Nichols' black, velvet-trimmed bonnet. She was just emerging through the door of a jam-packed public house which had thrown open its doors in all defiance of the closing-hour laws. She staggered mightily under the influence of God-only-knew how much more alcohol. She passed Maybrick without even seeing him, stumbled straight past a doorway from which John Lachley subsequently emerged, and headed down Osborn Street toward Whitechapel Road.

It was time for her to keep her rendezvous with murder.

The game was in Maybrick's blood, now, the stop and start of shadowing his prey down wet streets with the growl of thunder snarling overhead like a savage beast loose in the night. They waited, strolling quietly along, until they were well away from the crowd at the fire. Polly reached the now-deserted Whitechapel Road and turned east, moving unsteadily toward the spot they'd agreed to meet. John Lachley started out into the open, making his move to retrieve the letters. Then halted abruptly. So did Maybrick, cursing their foul luck. A rough man dressed like a dockhand, also coming from the direction of the Shadwell Dry Dock fire, had appeared at the end of the block and accosted her first.

Maybrick and his mentor melted back into the shadows of dark overhanging doorways, on opposite sides of the narrow street. The dockhand and the drunken whore bent their heads together and spoke quietly. A low laugh broke from the man and Maybrick heard Polly say, "Yes." A moment later, the two of them sought deeper shadows, so close to James Maybrick's hiding place, he could literally smell them from where he stood.

Maybrick's pulse flared like the lightning overhead as he stood there in the darkness, listening to the rustle of skirts and clothing hastily switched about, the sharp sounds of the dockhand shifting his hobnailed boots on the pavement as he pressed the cheap trollop back into a convenient corner, the heavy breaths and meaty sounds of flesh coming together, slow and rhythmic and hard. Maybrick's nostrils flared. He gripped the wooden handle of his knife, listened eagerly to the gasp of breath as the whore ground her hips against her customer's. He could all but see the clutch of the dock worker's hands against a straining breast, a naked thigh, skirts and petticoats lifted high to either side to accommodate him. He imagined his wife's face where the strumpet's was, saw his wife's glorious, strawberry blond hair falling down across her naked breasts as the unwashed dockhand shoved into her, took her right here on the street like the slut she was, heard his wife's voice gasping in the close darkness...

Low, breathy obscenities drifted on the night air, his voice, then hers, encouraging him. Hurry, she must be thinking, hurry up and finish, I'm drunk and need a bed for the night and they'll be along with the money for the letters soon, so get on with it and spend your spunk, you great ugly lout of a dockhand...

Maybrick clutched his knife, hand thrust deep in his pocket, and breathed hard as she whispered to the man using her. " ‘At's right, lovey, ‘at's good, Friar me right good, you do, ‘at's grand..."

Friar Tuck... the rhyming slang of the streets...

A low, masculine grunt finally drifted past Maybrick's hiding place.

He waited for their breaths to slow from the frantic rush.

Waited for the sounds of clothing going back down, the jingle of coins in a pocket, the whisper of, " ‘Ere's three-pence, pet, and a shiny penny besides." The sound of a wet kiss came, followed by the muffled smack of a hand against a cloth-covered backside. "An' a right nice trembler it was, too."

Maybrick waited, pulse pounding like the thunder overhead, as the dockhand's hobnailed boots clattered away down the pavement in the direction of the docks and the still-burning fire. As his footfalls died away, Polly's low, slurred voice drifted to Maybrick. "Eh, then, got my doss money, just like I told Emily I would. I've ‘ad a lovely new bonnet tonight and a warm new ulster and thirty-eleven pints and still got my doss money. And there's still the money for the letters to collect, too!" A low laugh reached Maybrick's hiding place.

He waited in a fever of impatience while she staggered out into the open again, heading down Whitechapel Road with the money she'd just earned in her pocket. Across the street, Lachley, silent on the rubberized overshoes they'd both bought, the same shoes worn by several million ordinary domestic servants to silence their footfalls, stole after her down Whitechapel Road. They crept up behind...

"Hello, love," Lachley whispered.

She gave a tiny, indrawn shriek and whirled, with semi-disastrous results.

Lachley steadied the small woman easily. "There, now, I didn't mean to terrify you. Steady."

She peered up at him, face pinched from the shock. "Oh, it's you," she breathed out, "you give me such a fright!" She smiled happily, then, and touched her bonnet. "See? I got me that bonnet, just like you said. Innit a fine one?"

"Very fine. Very becoming. Velvet-trim, isn't it? A lovely bonnet. I trust you have the letters we discussed earlier?"

A crafty smile stole across the woman's face. "I've got one of ‘em, so I ‘ave."

Only Maybrick saw the flicker of murderous wrath cross Lachley's face. Then he was smiling down at her again. "One of them? But, my dear, there were four! Mr. Eddy really is most anxious to obtain the full set."

"Course ‘e is, an' I don't blame ‘im none, I don't, but y'see, I only ‘ad the one letter. An' I've looked for my friend, looked an' looked everywhere, what ‘as the other three—"

"Friend?" Lachley's voice came to Maybrick as a flat, blank sound of astonishment. "Friend?"

The stupid whore didn't even notice the cold rage in her murderer's voice.

"I ‘adn't so much as a single ‘apenny to me name and it were ever so cold an' raining ever so ‘ard. An' I ‘adn't drunk no gin in an whole day, y'see, so I give three of the letters to Annie an' she give me a shilling, so I could pay for a doss ‘ouse an' not be caught by some constable sleepin' rough and get sent back to Lambeth Work'ouse. She's only ‘olding ‘em for me, like, ‘til I get the shilling back to repay ‘er the loan..."

Lachley touched her gently, tipping up her chin. "Who is this friend, Polly? What is her name?"

"Annie. I said that, Annie Chapman, what lives in the doss ‘ouses over to Flower and Dean Street, same as me. She's ‘oldin' the other three letters for me, but I'll ‘ave ‘em back by tomorrow morning, swear I will."

"Of course you will." Lachley was smiling again.

Maybrick's hand was sweaty where he gripped his knife.

Polly blinked anxiously up into Lachley's face. "Say, you finish up your business with Mr. Eddy for the night?" She leaned against Lachley, still reeking of the dockworker's sweat. "Maybe we could go someplace b'fore I go back to me doss ‘ouse an' find Annie?"

"No, my business tonight is not quite finished," Lachley said with fine irony. Maybrick admired the man more and more. He gestured Maybrick forward with a motion of his head. "But I've a friend here with me who has a little time in hand."

Polly turned, so drunk on the gin she'd guzzled that Lachley had to keep her from falling. "Well, then, ‘ello, luv."

"Good evening, ma'am." Maybrick tipped his hat.

"Polly," John Lachley said with a faint smile, "this is James. He is a dear friend of mine. James will take care of you this evening. Now. Here is the money for the letter you have with you." Lachley held out a palmful of glittering sovereigns.

Polly gasped. Then fumbled through her pocket and produced a crumpled letter.

Lachley took it gently from her, swept his gaze across what had been written on the grubby sheets of foolscap, and put the money in her hand, then glanced up at Maybrick with a quirk of his lips. Polly wouldn't be keeping her money long.

"There, now. First payment, in good faith. Payment in full very soon. Shall Mr. James, here, escort you someplace quiet?"

Polly smiled up at Maybrick in turn and moved her hand downward along the shapeless workmen's trousers he wore. "Grand."

Maybrick's breaths came faster. He smiled down into her eyes, pulse beating a savage rhythm at his temples. He said to his whore, "This way, my dear."

They had timed the rounds of the constables of the H Division all through this area, he and Lachley. Maybrick knew very well that the next few minutes would provide him with exactly the opportunity he needed. Lachley doffed his cap and bid Polly goodnight and disappeared down Whitechapel Road at a brisk walk, whistling merrily to himself. James knew, of course, that his mentor would circle around to Buck's Row by way of quiet little Baker's Row and meet him again soon... very soon.

Maybrick took Polly's arm and gave her a brilliant smile, then guided her off the main road, down Thomas Street, a narrow bridge road which led across the rail line of the London and Northern Railway, twenty feet below. Beyond the railway line lay the exceedingly narrow street known as Buck's Row, lined by high brick warehouses, a board school, and several terrace houses, which served as cottages for the tradesmen who worked in Schneiders Cap Factory and several high, dark warehouses: the Eagle Wool Warehouse, which supplied fabric for the cap factory, and the massive warehouse called Essex Wharf.

James knew Schneider of old, a dirty little foreigner, which in this dismal region meant only one thing: Jew. James had chosen his killing ground carefully, most carefully, indeed. It was the filthy foreigners flooding into London who were destroying the moral fibre of the English Empire, bringing in their foreign ways and unholy religious practices and speaking every tongue heard at the Tower of Babel except the Queen's good English. Yes, James had chosen this spot with great care, to leave a message on the very doorstep of the bastards destroying all that was English.

The place he wanted was an old stableyard which stood between the school and the workers' cottages. The only street lamp was at the far end of Buck's Row, where it met Baker's Row to the west. As they entered the cramped, cobbled street, which was no more than twenty feet wide from housewalls on the one hand to warehouse walls opposite, Maybrick slipped his right hand into his coat pocket again. He closed his hand around the handle of the beautiful, shining knife and gripped it tightly. His pulse raced. His breath came in short, unsteady gasps. The smell of cheap gin and sex and greed was a poison in his brain. Her whispered obscenities to the dockworker rang in his ears. His hand sweat against the wood. Here, his mind shrieked. Quick, before the bloody constables come back! He drew another breath, seeing in his mind his beautiful, faithless wife, naked and writhing under the lover who impaled her in that hotel he'd seen them coming out of together, the one in Liverpool's fashionable Whitechapel Street.

Maybrick glanced toward Baker's Row. Saw Lachley appear from the blackness at the end of Buck's Row. Saw him nod, giving the signal that all was clear. Maybrick's breath whipsawed, harsh and urgent. He tightened his left hand on the whore's arm. Moving her almost gently, Maybrick pressed her back against the stableyard gate. It was solid as iron. She smiled up at him, fumbling with her skirts. He slid his hand up her arm, toyed with a breast, slipped his fingers upwards, toward her neck—

Then smashed a fist into her face.

Bone crunched. Several of her teeth broke loose. She sagged back against the fence, stunned motionless. Maybrick tightened a savage grip around her throat. Her eyes bulged. Her abruptly toothless mouth worked. Shock and terror twisted across her once-delicate face. High cheekbones flushed dark as he cut off her air. His wife's face swam before his eyes, gaping and toothless and terror stricken. He dug his thumb into dear, faithless Florie's jaw, bruising the right side of her face. The bitch struggled feebly as he tightened down. He dented and bruised the flesh of her throat, the left side of her face with his fingers, ruthless and drunk with the terror he inflicted. She was so drunk, she wasn't able to do more than claw weakly at his coat sleeve with one hand.

James Maybrick smiled down into his whore's dying eyes...

... and brought out his shining knife.

Skeeter Jackson pushed his heavy maintenance cart toward the men's room in Little Agora, bottles rattling and mops threatening to crash against the protestors who screamed and carried signs and picketed fifteen feet deep around Ianira's vacant booth, threatening to shut down commerce with their disruptive presence and threatening to shut down the station with the violence that broke out between them and the Arabian Nights construction workers at least once every couple of hours.

Nuts, he groused, maneuvering with difficulty through the packed crowd, we are neck deep in nutcases. He finally gained the bathroom, which he was already fifteen minutes overdue to scrub, slowed down on his schedule by the crowds of protestors and uneasy tourists, and turned on the hot water to fill his mop bucket. He'd just added soap when the trouble broke loose.

A sudden scuffle and a meaty smack and thump shook the whole bank of stalls behind him. Skeeter came around fast, mop gripped in both hands like a quarterstaff. A pained cry, high-pitched and frightened, accompanied another thud and violent slap. Then a stall door burst open and a burly guy with Middle Eastern features, who wore jeans and a work shirt and a burnoose-style headdress, strode out. He looked smug and self-satisfied. He was still zipping his fly. A muffled, startlingly feminine sob came from the now-open stall.

Skeeter narrowed his eyes at the construction worker, who wore a wicked linoleum knife in a sheathe on his belt. These creeps had been involved in the attacks on Ianira and her family. He was convinced they might yet know where she was, despite their protests of innocence to station security. They were trouble, wherever they went on station and it looked very much like more trouble was breaking loose right in front of him.

"You want to tell me what that was all about?" Skeeter asked quietly, placing himself carefully between the heavily muscled worker and the exit.

The dark-eyed man smirked down at Skeeter, measuring his shorter height and lighter frame contemptuously. "Little girls should not demand more money than they are worth."

"Is that a fact?" Skeeter balanced lightly on the balls of his feet, aware that he played a potentially lethal game. These guys carried tools that doubled as deadly weapons. But he wasn't going to let this creep just walk out of here, not with somebody back there crying in that stall like a hurt child. "Hey, you okay in there?" he called out to the pair of grubby tennis shoes visible under the partially open door. "I'll call the station infirmary if you need help."

"S-Skeeter?" The voice was familiar, quavering, terrified.

When the voice clicked in Skeeter's memory, the anger that burst through him was as cold and deadly as the winter winds howling down off the mountains onto the plains of the Gobi. "Bergitta?" The girl huddled in the back of the stall was younger than Skeeter. She'd helped search for Ianira, that first terrible day, had searched along with the other down-timers long after station security had given up the job. The Found Ones had been teaching her modern technical skills so she could make a living doing something besides selling herself.

"Skeeter, please... he... he will hurt you..."

Skeeter had no intention of abandoning a member of his adopted down-timer family to the likes of this smirking lout. "How much did he agree to give you, Bergitta?" he asked, carefully keeping his gaze on the construction worker who now eyed him narrowly.

"T-twenty—but it is okay, please..."

Skeeter gave the angry construction worker a disgusted glare. "Twenty? Geez, last of the big spenders, aren't we? You can't hardly buy a burger around here for that. Listen, asshole, you pay my friend, there, what you promised and get the hell out of here, maybe I won't get nasty."

Incredulous black eyes widened. "Pay her?" His laugh was ugly, contemptuous. "Out of my way, you stupid little cockerel!"

Skeeter stood his ground. The other man's eyes slitted angrily. Then the construction worker started forward, moving fast, one fist cocked, the other reaching for his belt. Skeeter caught a glint of light off that wicked linoleum knife—

He whirled the mop handle in a blurred, sweeping arc.

It connected solidly with a solar plexus that came to an abrupt halt.

A sharp, ugly grunt tore loose. The knife clattered to the tiled floor. The would-be knife-fighter folded up around the end of Skeeter's mop, eyes bugged out. Skeeter kicked the knife away with one foot. It clattered across the floor and skidded into a puddle under a distant urinal, then Skeeter assisted the gagging construction worker face-first into the steaming mop bucket at his feet. He landed with a skloosh! While he was upended, Skeeter lifted his wallet with light-fingered skill and extracted its contents. Curses gurgling underwater blew the most interesting soap bubbles Skeeter had ever seen.

As soon as he'd secured Bergitta's money, Skeeter hauled the former customer up by the shirt collar. "Now," he said gently, "you want to tell me about Ianira Cassondra?"

The reply was in Arabic and doubtless obscene.

Skeeter fed him more soap bubbles.

By the fourth dunking, the man was swearing he'd never laid eyes on Ianira Cassondra and would've strewn petals at her feet, if it would've helped keep his head above water. Reluctantly, Skeeter decided the bastard must be telling the truth. He shoved the guy's wallet between soapy teeth and said, "Twenty for services rendered and the rest for damages wrought. Now get the hell out of here before I break ribs. Or call security."

One twist of the mop handle and the dripping construction worker found it necessary to launch himself across the tiled floor, out the doorway, and past the "Slippery When Wet" sign just beyond. From the startled shrieks and angry shouts outside, he cannoned straight into a group of protestors. A moment later, security whistles sounded and a woman's voice drifted in, shrill with indignation. "He knocked me down! Yes, he ran that way..."

Skeeter crossed the bathroom, flexing a slightly strained shoulder, and peered into the open stall. Bergitta had clutched one side of her face, which was already swollen and turning purple. The simple dress she wore was torn. Anger started a slow burn as he gazed down at his terrified friend. "Are you okay?" he asked gently.

She nodded. Then burst into tears and slid to the tiled floor, trembling so violently he could hear the scrape of her identification bracelet—a gift from the Found Ones—against the wall. Skeeter bit his lip. Then sighed and waded in to try and pick up the shattered pieces. He crouched beside her, gently brushed back Bergitta's hair, a glorious, platinum blond, thick and shining where the lights overhead touched it.

"Shh," he whispered, "he's gone now. You're safe, shh..." When she'd stopped crying, he said gently, "Bergitta, let's take you down to the infirmary."

She shook her head. "No, Skeeter, there is no money..."

Skeeter held out the cash he'd liberated. "Yes, there is. And I've got some money put aside, too, so don't you worry about that, okay?" He'd been saving that cash for his rent, but what the hell, he could always sleep in the Found Ones' council chamber down in the station's sub-basement until he could afford to rent another apartment.

Bergitta was crying again, very quietly and very messily down her bruised face. Skeeter retrieved a towel from his push cart and dried her cheeks, then helped her to her feet. When she wobbled, shaking violently, Skeeter simply picked her up and carried her. She clung to his shoulders and hid her face from the curious onlookers they passed. When he carried her into the infirmary, Rachel Eisenstein was just stepping out of her office.

"Skeeter! What's happened? Not another riot?" she asked worriedly.

"No. Some asshole construction worker blacked Bergitta's face and God knows what else before I interrupted. Tried to disembowel me with a linoleum knife when I protested."

Rachel's lips thinned. "Bring her into the back, Skeeter, let's see how badly hurt she is. And we'd better file an official complaint with security. The more complaints we log, the more likely Bull is to push the issue and toss the men responsible for all this trouble through Primary, schedule or no schedule. Kit's already been after Bull to do just that."

So Rachel took charge of Bergitta, and Skeeter found himself giving a statement to security. He identified the man from a file of employment photos. "That's him. Yeah, the creep came at me with a linoleum knife."

"You realize we can't press charges for what he did to Bergitta?" the security officer said as he jotted down notes. "She's a down-timer. No legal rights."

"Yeah," Skeeter muttered darkly, "I know." They'd search for Ianira Cassondra, move heaven and earth to find her, because of the Templars and the phenomenal popularity and power of the Lady of Heaven Temples, but Bergitta was just another down-timer without rights, trapped on the station with no way off and no protection from the people who ran her new world. Worse, she was a known prostitute. Security didn't give a damn when a girl like Bergitta got hurt.

The guard said, "If you want this creep charged with assault and battery with a deadly weapon, plus anything else I can think up, you got it, but that's all we can nail him for, Skeeter."

"Yes, I want him charged," Skeeter growled. "And tossed off station, if you can swing it. Along with his pals."

"Don't hold your breath. That crew's already running behind schedule and the first tour's slated for next month. We might be able to work out a trial up time after the new section of Commons is finished, but getting him tossed off station before that job's done is flogging a dead horse. Not my idea, but that's how it is. Just figured you'd want to know up front."

Skeeter muttered under his breath. "Thanks. I know you're doing your best."

Rachel put in appearance just then, returning from the exam room where Bergitta rested. "She's badly shaken up and her face is going to be sore for a while, along with some other nasty bruises he left, but she's basically all right. No internal hemorrhaging, no broken bones."

Skeeter relaxed marginally. "Thank God."

Rachel eyed him curiously. "You fought a man with a knife, protecting her?"

Skeeter shrugged. "Wasn't much of a contest, really. I had a mop, he never got close to me with it."

"Well, whatever you think, it was still a risky thing to do, Skeeter."

He realized she was trying to thank him. Skeeter felt his cheeks burn. "Listen, about the bill, I've got some money—"

"We'll talk about that later, all right? Oh-oh..."

Skeeter glanced around and blanched.

His boss was in-bound and the head of station maintenance did not look happy.

"Is it true?" Charlie Ryan demanded.

"Is what true?" Skeeter asked, wary and on his guard.

"That you beat up a construction worker over a goddamned down-timer whore? Then brought her up here while you're still clocked in officially on my dime?"

Skeeter clenched his fists. "Yes, it's true! He was beating the shit out of her—"

"I don't pay you to rescue your down-timer pals, Jackson! I looked the other way when it was Ianira Cassondra, but this by God tears it! And I sure as hell don't pay you to put hard-working construction professionals in the brig!"

Rachel tried to intervene. "Charlie, everyone on station's had trouble with those guys and you know it."

"Stay out of this, Rachel! Jackson, I pay you to mop bathrooms. Right now, there's a bathroom in Little Agora that's not getting mopped."

"I'll clean the stinking bathroom!" Skeeter growled.

Charlie Ryan look him up and down. "No, you won't. You're fired, Jackson."

"Charlie—" Rachel protested.

"Let it go, Rachel," Skeeter bit out. "If I'd known I was working for a stinking bigot, I'd've quit weeks ago."

He stalked out of the infirmary and let the crowds on Commons swallow him up.

What he was going to do now, he honestly did not know.

He walked aimlessly for ages, hands thrust deep into his pockets, watching the tourists practice walking in their rented costumes and laughing at one another's antics and buying each other expensive lunches and souvenirs, and wondered if any of them had the slightest notion what it was like for the down-time populations stranded on these stations?

He was sitting on the marble edging of a fountain in Victoria Station, head literally in hands, when Kynan Rhys Gower appeared from out of the crowd, expression grim. "Skeeter, we have trouble."

He glanced up, startled to hear the Welshman's voice. "Trouble? Oh, man, now what?"

"It is Julius," Kynan said quietly. "He is missing."

Skeeter just shut his eyes for a long moment. "Oh, no..." Not another friend, missing. The teenager from Rome had organized the down-timer kids into a sort of club known affectionately as the Lost and Found Gang. Under Ianira's guidance, the "gang" had turned its attention to earning money guiding lost tourists back to their hotel rooms, serving as the Found Ones' eyes and ears in places where adults would have roused suspicion, running errands and proving their value time and again. The children's work had allowed the Found Ones to learn rather a good bit more about the cults active on station than Mike Benson or anyone in security had managed to discover.

"How long has he been missing?" Skeeter asked tiredly.

"We are not sure," Kynan sighed. "No one has seen him since..." The Welshman hesitated. "He was supposed to be running an errand for the Found Ones, just before the riot broke out, the one Inaira disappeared in. No one has seen him, since."

"Oh, God. What's going on around this station?"

Kynan clenched his fists in visible frustration. "I do not know! But if I find out, Skeeter, I will take apart whoever is responsible!"

Of that, Skeeter had no doubt whatsoever. Skeeter intended to help. "Okay, we've got to get another search organized. For Julius, this time."

"The Lost and Found Gang are already searching."

"I want them to get as close to those creeps on the Arabian Nights construction crew as they can. And those crazy Jack the Ripper cults, too. Any group of nuts on this station who might have a reason to want Ianira to disappear, to stir up trouble, is on the suspect list."

Kynan nodded. "I will get word to the children. They are angry, Skeeter, and afraid."

"Huh. So am I, Kynan Rhys Gower. So am I."

The Welshman nodded slowly. "Yes. A brave man is one who admits his fear. Only a fool believes himself invincible. The Council of Seven has called an emergency meeting. Another one."

"That's no surprise. What time?"

"An hour from now."

Skeeter nodded. At least he wouldn't have to worry about losing his job, sneaking off to attend it. Kynan Rhys Gower hesitated. "I have heard what happened, Skeeter. Bergitta is all right?"

"Yeah. Bruised, scared. But Rachel said she's okay."

"Good." The one-time longbow-man's jaw muscles bunched. "Charlie Ryan is a pig. He hires us because he does not have to pay, what is the up-time word? Union wages."

"Yeah. Tell me about it."

"Skeeter..."

He glanced up at the ominous growl in the other man's voice.

"Accidents happen."

"No." Skeeter shoved himself to his feet, looked the Welshman straight in the eyes. "No, it's his right to fire me. And I was doing a lousy job, spending all my time looking for Ianira and Marcus instead of working. I happen to think he's got his priorities screwed up, but I won't hear of anything like that. I appreciate it, but it'd just be a waste of effort. Guys like Charlie Ryan are like mushrooms. Squash one, five more pop up. Besides, if anybody's going to loosen his teeth, it's gonna be me, okay?"

Kynan Rhys Gower clearly considered arguing, then let it go. "That is your right," he said quietly. "But you have earned more this day than you have lost."

Skeeter didn't know what to say.

"I will see you at the Council meeting," the Welshman told him quietly, then left him standing in the glare and noise of Commons, wondering why his eyes stung so harshly. "I'll be there," Skeeter swore to empty air.

How many more of his friends would simply vanish into thin air before this ugly business was done? What had Julius seen or overheard, to cause someone to snatch him, too? When Skeeter got his hands on whoever was responsible for this... That someone would learn what it meant to suffer the summary justice of a Yakka Mongol clansman. Meanwhile, he had another friend missing.

Skeeter had far too few friends to risk losing any more of them.

Margo craned forward, so excited and repelled at the same time, she felt queasy. Then she saw the face and gasped as she recognized him. "James Maybrick!" she cried. "It's James Maybrick! The cotton merchant from Liverpool!"

"Shh!" The scholars motioned frantically for silence, trying to hear anything the murderer and his victim might say, even though everything was being recorded, including Polly Nichols' final footfalls. Margo gulped back nausea, watched in rising horror as Maybrick escorted his victim down to the gate where he would strangle and butcher her. When he struck with his fist, Margo hid her face in her hands, unable to watch. The sounds were bad enough...

Then Conroy Melvyn burst out, "Who the bloody hell is that?"

Margo jerked her gaze up to the television screen... and found herself staring, right along with the rest of the shocked Ripper Watch Team. A man had crept up behind Jack the Ripper, who was still hacking away at his dead victim.

"James... enough." Just the barest thread of a whisper. Then, when Maybrick continued to hack at the dead woman's neck, as though trying to cut loose her entire head, "She's dead, James. Enough!"

Whoever this man was, he clearly knew James Maybrick. More importantly, Maybrick clearly knew him. The maniacal rage in Maybrick's eyes faded as he glanced around. Maybrick's lips worked wetly. "But I wanted the head..." Plaintive, utterly mad.

"There's no time. Fetch me the money from her pockets. Be quick about it, the constable will be arriving momentarily."

The Buck's Row cameras, fitted with low-light equipment, picked up the lean, saturnine face, the drooping mustaches of a total stranger who stepped up to peer at Polly Nichols. As Maybrick stooped to crouch over the dead woman, the newcomer closed a hand around Jack the Ripper's shoulder, a casual gesture which revealed a depth of meaning to anyone who knew the stiff etiquette of Victorian Britain. These men knew each other well enough for casual familiarities. Maybrick was wiping his knife on Polly's underskirts.

"Very good, James. You've done well. Strangled her first, as instructed. Not more than a wineglass of blood. Very good." Voice pitched to a low whisper, the tones and words were clearly those of an educated man, but with hints of the East End in the vowels, hints even Margo's untrained ear could pick out. Then, more sharply, "The money, James!"

"Yes, doctor!" Maybrick's voice, thick with sexual ecstasy, trembled in the audio pickup. The arsenic-addicted cotton merchant from Liverpool bent over the prone remains of his victim and searched her pockets, retrieving several large coins that glinted gold like sovereigns. "No other letters, doctor," he whispered.

"Letters?" Pavel Kostenka muttered, leaning closer to the television monitor to stare at the stranger's face. "What letters? And Dr. Who?"

Across the room, the British police inspector Conroy Melvyn choked with sudden, silent laughter for some completely unfathomable reason. Margo resolved to ask him what he could possibly find funny, once this macabre little meeting in Bucks Row had ended.

On the video monitor, the stranger muttered impatiently, "No, of course there won't be any other letters. She said she'd sold them, drunken bitch, and I believed her when she said it. Come, James, the H Division Constables will be along momentarily. Wipe your shoes clean, they're bloody. Then come with me. You've done well, James, but we have to hurry."

Maybrick straightened up. "I want my medicine," he said urgently.

"Yes, I'll be sure and give you more of the medicine you need, before you catch your train for home. After we've reached Tibor."

Maybrick's eyes glittered in the low-light pickup. He gripped the other man's arm. "Thank you, doctor! Ripping the bitch like that... she opened like a ripe peach... so bloody wonderful..."

"Yes, yes," the narrow-faced man said impatiently. "You can write it all down in your precious diary. Later. Now, you must come with me, we haven't much time. This way..."

The two men moved away from the camera's lens, walking quickly but not so fast as to arouse suspicion should anyone happen to glance out a window. The crumpled body of Polly Nichols lay beside the gate where she'd died, her disarranged skirts hiding the ghastly mutilations Maybrick's knife had inflicted. Margo stared after the two men who—clearly—were conspirators in some hideous game that involved unknown letters, payments made to prostitutes, and murder. The game made no rational sense to Margo, any more than it did to the openly stunned Ripper scholars. Who was this mysterious doctor and why was Maybrick involved with him? And why hadn't Maybrick's diary even once hinted at such a turn of events? That diary, explicit as to detail, with its open, candid mention of the many people in Maybrick's life—his unfaithful American wife, their young children and the little American girl staying with the Maybrick family, his brothers, employees, murder victims, friends—that diary had never even once hinted at a co-conspirator in the murder of the five Whitechapel prostitutes Maybrick had taken credit for killing.

Who, then, was this dark-skinned, foreign-looking man? A man who, Margo realized abruptly, fit perfectly some of the Ripper eyewitness descriptions. And Maybrick, with his fair skin and light hair and thick gold watch chain, fit other eyewitness descriptions to the last detail. The many witnesses questioned by London police had described two very different-appearing men—for the perfectly simple reason that there'd been two killers. "The eyewitness accounts," Margo gasped, "no wonder they differed, yet were so consistent. There were two of them! A dark-haired, foreign-looking man and a fair-haired one. And Israel Schwartz, the Jewish merchant who'll see Elizabeth Stride attacked, he saw both of them! Working together!"

She grew aware of startled stares from the Ripper Watch scholars. Shahdi Feroz, in particular, was frowning; but not, Margo sensed, in disapproval. She looked merely thoughtful. "Yes," Dr. Feroz nodded, "that would certainly account for much of the confusion. It is not so unheard of, after all."

Margo gulped. "What's not so unheard of?"

Shahdi Feroz glanced up again. "Hmm? Oh. It is not unheard of, this collusion between psychopaths. A weaker psychopathic serial killer will sometimes attach himself to a mentor, a personal god, if you will. He worships the more powerful killer, does his bidding, learns from him." She was frowning, dark eyes agitated. "This is very unexpected, very serious. It is, indeed, possible that more of the murders during this time period should be attributed to the Ripper, if the Ripper was, in fact, two men. Two very disturbed men, working as a team, master and worshiper. They might well have struck in different modus operandi, which would explain the confusion over which women were killed by the Ripper."

"Yes," Inspector Melvyn broke in, "but what about these letters? What letters? And just who is this bloke? Doesn't fit any of the known profiles. Not a bloody, damned one of ‘em!"

Dr. Kostenka shook his head, however. "Not one of the named profiles, no; but a profile, yes. He is a doctor. A man with medical knowledge. It is this doctor, clearly, who warned James Maybrick to strangle his victims first, to avoid drenching his clothing with blood from arterial spurts. If Maybrick's victim had been alive when he slashed her neck and throat, he would have ended covered in the ‘red stuff' of which he writes in his diary."

The passages to which Kostenka referred had been labeled as damning Americanisms, which had caused some experts to call the diary a hoax. Of course, Maybrick had lived for years in Norfolk, Virginia and married an American girl, so he would've been intimately familiar with American slang from the late Victorian period. Sometimes, so-called experts could be as blind as an eyeless cave shrimp.

Kostenka was frowning thoughtfully at the TV monitor. "Whoever he is, the man is foreign-looking and of genteel appearance, just as the witnesses described. A man of education."

Margo heard herself say, "And he's spent time in the East End. You can hear it in his voice."

Once again, she was the abrupt focus of startled stares from the Ripper Watch experts. Then Guy Pendergast grinned. "She's right, y'know, Melvyn. Rerun the tape. Heard it, meself. Just didn't twig to it quite so fast. Used to hearing that sound, hear it every day, just about, on a job."

Shahdi Feroz was nodding. "Yes, whereas Miss Smith has needed to listen very carefully to East End accents, to pick up the vowel sounds and the rhythms of the speech. Very well done, Margo."

A warm glow ignited in her middle and spread deliciously through her entire being. She smiled at the famous scholar, so proud of herself, she felt like she must be floating a couple of inches above the floor.

Dominica Nosette said abruptly, "Well, I intend to find out who our mystery doctor is! Anybody else game to give it a go?"

Guy Pendergast lunged for cameras and recorders.

"Oh, no you don't!" Margo darted squarely in front of the exit to Spaldergate House's main cellar. "I'm sorry," she said firmly, "but there will be an official police investigation getting underway in Bucks Row a few minutes from now. And no one, not one member of this tour, is going to be anywhere near that spot when the police arrive. We have remote cameras and microphones in place and every second of this is being recorded."

"Listen," Guy Pendergast began, "you can't just keep us locked up in this cellar!"

"I have no intention of locking anybody in this cellar!" Margo shot back, trying to sound reasonable as well as authoritative, when she felt neither. "But there's no point in leaving Spaldergate for the East End right now. Maybrick has been positively identified. His companion has remained a mystery for nearly a hundred fifty years. We'll certainly begin working to identify him. Carefully. Discreetly. Word of this murder is going to send shockwaves through Whitechapel. Especially the mutilations, when the workhouse paupers who clean the body tomorrow finally remove Mrs. Nichols' clothing and discover them. It's been less than a month, after all, since Martha Tabram was savagely slashed to death in the East End."

"August seventh," Shahdi Feroz put in, "August Bank Holiday. And don't forget Emma Smith, stabbed to death Easter Monday. To the residents of the East End, April fourth wasn't all that long ago. Not when women are being cut to pieces and nobody feels safe walking the streets."

"Yes," Margo said forcefully. "So everyone out there will assume this is the third murder, not the first. We are not going to go charging into the East End asking, ‘Say, have you seen a foreign-looking doctor hereabouts, friend of James Maybrick's?' The investigators of the day had no inkling that James Maybrick was involved, let alone this other guy, whoever he turns out to be. So we'll use extreme caution in proceeding with this investigation. Do I make myself perfectly clear on that point?"

Dominica Nosette looked petulant, but nodded. Slowly, her partner agreed, as well, grumbling and visibly irritated, but compliant. At least for the moment.

"Good. I'd suggest we analyze the tapes we've got for further clues. Inspector Melvyn, if you would rewind one of the backup copies while the master tape and other backups continue running?"

As they viewed the footage again, Shahdi Feroz pursed her lips thoughtfully. "He is familiar to me. The face is not quite right, but the voice... I have heard it somewhere. I would swear that I have." She shook her head, visibly impatient with her own memory. "It will come to me, I am certain. There are so many I have studied in so many different places and time, over the past few years. I spent several weeks in London, alone, looking into occult groups such as the Theosophical Society and various Druidic orders. And if he is a friend to James Maybrick, he, too, may be a Liverpudlian, not a Londoner. But I know that I have seen or heard him before. Of that, I am completely certain."

What Shahdi Feroz might or might not have remembered at that moment would never be known, however, because the telephone rang with the news that Malcolm and the search teams had returned for the night. There was no news of Benny Catlin, although from the sound of Malcolm's voice, there was something worse which he wasn't telling her. Margo narrowed her eyes and frowned at the monitors where the Ripperologists were studying their tapes. At least Benny Catlin didn't look anything like their unknown Ripper, thank God. And an American graduate student wouldn't sound like an East End Londoner, particularly not one who'd taken pains to train poverty from his voice. The notion that they were facing two wrenching murder mysteries, an up-time shootout and the Ripper slayings, left Margo deeply disturbed as she quietly left the vault to meet her fiancé in the house upstairs.

"What's wrong, Malcolm?" Margo whispered after he'd hugged her close and buried his face in her hair.

"Oh, God, Margo... we are in a great deal of trouble with Catlin."

She peered up into his eyes, alarmed by the exhaustion she found there. "What now?"

"The men who were killed? At the hotel and the opera? They're not down-timers, as we'd all assumed. Not Nichol gang members or any other native footpads."

Margo swallowed hard. "They're not?"

He shook his head. "No. The constables of the Metropolitan police asked Mr. Gilbert and me to come to the police morgue, to see if we might be able to identify either man, since Mr. Catlin had been a guest in Spaldergate for a brief time." He paused fractionally. "Margo, they're up-timers. Baggage handlers from TT-86. Gilbert recognized them, said they came through with your group, he saw them earlier in the evening hauling steamer trunks out to carriages for the newly arrived tour group. Then they vanished, abandoned a wagonload of luggage and half-a-dozen tourists at Paddington Station and went haring off on their own. The Spaldergate footman in charge of the wagon thought perhaps they were reporters who'd slipped through as baggage handlers and tried to follow, but lost them within minutes and returned to help the stranded tourists."

Margo rubbed her eyes with the heels of her hands. "I don't get it, Malcolm," she moaned softly, "why would a couple of baggage handlers ditch their jobs to chase halfway across London and try to murder a graduate student at the Picadilly Hotel?"

"And failing that, chase him all the way to the Royal Opera?" Malcolm added. "I don't know, Margo. I haven't the faintest bloody idea. It simply makes no rational sense."

"Maybe Catlin's involved somehow with organized crime?" Margo wondered with a shiver.

"God knows, it could be anything. I don't want to think about it for a while. What's the news from the Ripper Watch?" he added quietly, drawing her closer to him and burying his lips in her hair once again.

"You're not gonna believe it," Margo muttered against his coat.

Malcolm's face, wet from the rain that had been falling again, drew down into a whole ladder of exhausted lines and gullies. "That bad?"

"Bad enough." She told him what they'd just discovered, down in the vault.

Malcolm let out a low whistle. "My God. A ruddy pair of them? And you're sure the other chap isn't Catlin?"

"Not unless he brought a plastic surgeon with him. And knows how to walk on stilts. This guy's a lot taller than Benny Catlin."

"Well, that's one breath of good news, anyway. Whatever's up with Catlin, he's not a psychopathic serial murderer."

"No," Margo said quietly. "Given what's happened on station, though, and what you just found out about the guys he killed tonight, quite frankly, I'd feel better if Catlin had turned out to be the Ripper."

"My dear," Malcolm sighed, "I wish it weren't so distressing when you're right."

To that, Margo said nothing at all. She simply guided her weary fiancé up to bed and did what she could to help them both forget the night's horrors.