Ripper. Part 19

eaven was pretty much as I always thought it might be, if it existed at all.

I found myself lying on my back at the bottom of a pond of cool, clear water. The shock of the cold water was a pleasant sensation; my skin, indeed every part of my body, felt-sensed-more acutely than ever before. Looking up through the wavy surface of the water at a late afternoon sky, I watched kingfishers cut through my view, slicing through the air just above the water with unbelievable force. Everything seemed colorful, alive-not the slightest bit dreamlike. I began swimming upwards.

Up.

Up.

As I broke the surface, the sharp ammonia smells of Whitechapel Hospital a.s.saulted my nose. I now lay not on my back in the pond, but on my stomach, face down. I could not move or even speak. My muscles seemed dead.

It was then that I felt searing pain in the back of my right thigh, just below my b.u.t.tocks. I realized I was lying under a light blanket on the third floor operating table. In my peripheral vision, I saw a small amount of early morning, pumpkin-tinted sunlight seeping through a window.

The Ripper. The pain reminded me of what had knocked me unconscious. The last thing I remembered was the smell of the wet brick wall, the blood odor of the Ripper, the thrust of the knife. I began to hear my heartbeat pound in my ears. Was he nearby? I panicked, trying to move, but remained paralyzed.

I felt better when William's voice broke forth from the other side of the room. "Dammit, Simon. Do you think you might wrap me up without breaking another rib?"

"She kicked you quite hard," I heard Simon say, more than a hint of amus.e.m.e.nt in his voice. "This left vertebral rib is broken nearly clear through."

"How is she?" William asked.

"She will be all right. The stab wound did cause quite a bit of tissue damage. She will not be able to work for several weeks."

Dear G.o.d! I wondered, in my paralyzed state, if I was blus.h.i.+ng. Though I felt the blanket covering me, I could not tell if I was even dressed. I felt rising embarra.s.sment that the wound Simon had st.i.tched was so high on my leg. This worry was compounded by Simon's verdict that I would need some recovery time from the wound.

It was then that I noticed my finger, against the bedsheet, could wiggle a little. I was about to try to speak, but decided to remain silent. I felt certain that neither Simon nor William would tell me all I wanted to know about what had happened last night, or why I was still alive.

"I am angry at myself for letting her go off like that," William said.

"Drink some cool water. You've looked like a ghost since you got back."

I heard the soft rush of water pouring into a gla.s.s.

"Thank you. She ran so fast. With this broken rib, I could not catch up. I ran around for thirty minutes, calling her name like a madman. You have no idea my relief when you told me she was alive. Before she ran away, she was talking incoherently-somehow she knew he was going to murder again."

"She knew?" Simon's voice sounded sharper than I had ever heard it.

"She did."

I hoped that I did not suck in my breath when I heard William's water gla.s.s shatter against the wall. "She might have been killed."

"William." Simon voice came out gentle.

"Don't try to be my priest now. I should have locked her up, stuck her in a b.l.o.o.d.y kennel. But instead I let her get away from me. She might have been killed."

Silence.

"In fact, she should be dead now. It does not make sense why he left her alive. Why he left me alive. I told you-he was right behind us near Berner."

I heard the dry slicing of scissors through cloth bandages before Simon spoke, his tone even. "Keep your voice down, William. I gave her an extra dose of chloroform, but she should be waking soon. Besides, we do not want anyone else to overhear us."

I felt their eyes on me.

"What happened, exactly?" William asked. "You still have not told me how you found her."

There was a long pause. I strained to hear Simon.

"She was dropped off at the front doors in a pauper's coffin, a pinewood box. It is identical to the ones the morgue uses to bury unclaimed corpses, the standard kind we have sent here by Dr. Phillips for many of our deceased patients."

I had been dropped off in a coffin!

Simon was quiet for a minute before he continued, softly. "After you both ran out of here, I was attending to the first floor but was so distracted by the thought that she was out there, I had trouble pulling myself too far away from the front doors. I was at the doors instantly when I heard the box thump against them-that was shortly after two o'clock."

"So you found her?"

"Yes." Another pause. This one longer than the last. "You should heal in a few weeks. Don't strain your chest too much. And please, put your s.h.i.+rt on. Anyway, the lid fell aside when I opened the front door. My first thought was that she was dead. She lay face up. Her face was so white, she looked almost bloodless. Her clothes were bloodstained. But when I checked her pulse, I felt that she was still alive."

"My G.o.d."

"I carried her discreetly up here. It was then that I saw that the wound was not fatal, though it bled profusely I had Mary begin cleaning the wound so that I might st.i.tch it. While she was occupied in that task, I disposed of the coffin."

"Was she ... ?" William's voice trailed off.

I heard the sound of surgical tools clinking on a tray.

"No. There were no other injuries." The clinking stopped. "I told Mary that Abbie had been stabbed by a deranged vagrant when she stepped outside to dump out a pail of water."

"So, are you certain that it was him?"

"The wound is perfectly consistent with those of the victims. It was most certainly the same knife, a surgical, thin six-inch blade. Branwell was at the morgue this morning and saw the bodies. These murders are very similar to the other two. Both patients left, voluntary discharged, yesterday. Both were disemboweled. The Ripper spent more time with Cate. Took out all of her intestines, laid them neatly beside her shoulder, removed the left kidney, mutilated her face. He cut off her nose."

"Disgusting. This is maddening, Simon. We've talked of some of my theories. I know you have difficulty thinking ill of anyone, except perhaps the rich."

Simon cleared his throat a little before continuing, "You know that I am shocked by the unfolding of these events as much as you are, William. I see enough sense in what you have told me lately to agree to keep this conversation between ourselves-to agree not to go to the police with what happened to Abbie. But I know your tendency to be impetuous and hotheaded. I do not want you to make any premature enemies for us."

"Agreed."

I wondered what they had discussed that would make them such sudden and unlikely allies.

"So, you are leaving for France tomorrow?" Simon asked.

"Avignon, specifically. The safe is there."

The safe?

Someone, either Simon or William, began sweeping up the pieces of the water gla.s.s.

I had heard enough. Clutching the blanket around me, I said with my best attempt at a groggy voice, "Might I have some clothes?"

Simon was with me in Grandmother's parlor to tell her that I had been mugged in Whitechapel the night before, stabbed as I left the hospital.

When Simon and I had left Whitechapel early that morning, the police and the press had begun descending upon the hospital in swarms. Like flies. But I was home now, facing Grandmother and away from the crowd.

She was disturbed as she sat across from me, her eyes gla.s.sy with tears. Otherwise, her entire demeanor seemed perfectly put together, her dress crisply ironed, her hair smooth. Oddly, in that moment, I knew that she loved me.

"She will be all right?" Grandmother asked shakily.

"Just a flesh wound. The police apprehended the

mugger immediately."

Grandmother's face tightened, frightening me.

"I am fine," I said, rea.s.suring her. "I will be able to return to the hospital in a few weeks."

Her face hardened; I had said the wrong thing.

Simon cast me a look. "It will be at least four weeks before she should return to work at Whitechapel Hospital."

Grandmother seemed to accept this. Particularly since it would give her a month to attempt to persuade me (or manipulate me) to not return at all.

My wound throbbed so much I could barely walk. Still, I would get better. I needed to get better. Apart from my desire to heal and return to work, my experience with the Ripper-and what I had seen him do to Liz Stride and Cate Eddows-had sparked a flame within me to stop him.

Part III "Unjust! Unjust!"

-Jane Eyre

Eighteen.

O.

n Monday morning, we moved into Lady Violet Chanderly's house, and my first two weeks there were terrible. I felt totally preoccupied with the murders, with what had happened to me, and with William, wondering whether or not he was all right. But I could do nothing, absolutely nothing, as I was entirely bedridden. The wound had not only cut deeply into my hamstring, but I acquired a mild infection so that whenever I tried to stand, shooting pain coursed from my thigh to ankle. Once the infection set in, I couldn't walk, let alone take stairs, so I was essentially confined to my fourth floor bedroom at Violet's house.

It was during this time that I came to appreciate Mariah even more. Her bedroom was just down the hall from mine and she visited me almost daily, bringing me magazines, gossiping about the goings-on of the house. It was through her that I learned that Lady Violet Chanderly was actually deeply in debt, displaying expensive furnis.h.i.+ngs while unable to replace badly rotting wall and floor structures throughout the house. Her husband, Sir Bertram, was a drunk and heavily addicted to laudanum, and spent most of his days in his large library doing absolutely nothing. Violet went to great lengths to keep his addictions a secret. They had nothing except their name.

"So there you have it," Mariah said, tossing the end of her cigar out the window. "One of London's finest families, batty, and only a few steps away from the poorhouse."

Mariah and I were the only occupants of the fourth floor, which allowed her to talk freely with me about the Chanderlys' dysfunctions, and to smoke.

I lay propped up in bed reading Wuthering Heights. It was hard for me to focus. I had planned to start walking around my room the next day; I figured the wound would heal better if I had a little exercise on top of the extra rest.

Mariah exhaled loudly, walking away from the open window and sitting on my bed. "Only a few more weeks until I can leave here for good, never look back. Break away from this life and start my life abroad as a writer."

I had reread the same paragraph in my book at least three times in the past few minutes, such was my restlessness. "You're still planning on running away?" I asked.

"Undoubtedly. The night before the wedding. Then it's off to Paris."

Mariah had told me very little about her paramour, Charles. I had the feeling she didn't know much about him. She slipped away several nights a week to see him. She knew, I think, that it wouldn't last, but she thrived off romantic peccadilloes. An elopement before her marriage would be quite the scandal, and, I was sure, break her away from the Chanderlys and stuffy Kensington for good. And she would make it as a writer-in Mariah, I saw a bit of a rising star. I had read some of her writings, and she was quite good.

She chattered a bit about her planned elopement and told me about the latest book that she had written, a mystery novel.

My mind wandered. Mystery. I felt caught in such a puzzle regarding my feelings for William and the truth behind Dr. Bartlett and his friends, especially whether they played any role at all in the Ripper murders. But for now, I was stuck in bed recovering, caught in Kensington purgatory.

By mid-October, I began walking around my bedroom a little. The pain was still sharp, but much less than it had been two weeks before, and the infection had healed. I focused on completing small tasks; specifically, it had occurred to me that I might give Mary some of my dresses. She was poor, and I had so many. I began separating them out by colors: two black dresses, a brown one, a mint green one. I bit my lip knowing that it might be a bit of a fight to get her to take them, but I knew, in the end, she would.

A knock sounded at the door.

One of Lady Violet's servants entered with an envelope. My heart quickened, and I hoped that the letter was from William. Perhaps he was safe, back in London.

But it wasn't from William.

A newspaper cutting fell out; it detailed the state of the Ripper investigation. As I skimmed through the article, I saw that dozens of suspects had been brought in for questioning, including some of the morticians examining the bodies, seven young men from prominent families, and, of course, many physicians, surgeons, and medical students. As I scanned the article, I recognized many names including Dr. Bagster Phillips, but neither Simon's nor William's names appeared.

To my disgust, next to the article was a published sketch of one of the murder victims. The ill.u.s.tration, graphic and detailed, displayed one of the victims with blood pouring from her stomach onto the street. Though I knew that the press had a tendency to dramatize or sensationalize events, I found such a portrayal disrespectful to the women, and I knew that had the Ripper's victims been anyone other than the prost.i.tutes, such a picture would never have been published.

Following the graphic ill.u.s.tration and story about the murders was an article about Whitechapel Hospital itself-about the many services the hospital provided for the Whitechapel district. The sender had cut off part of that story, clearly wanting me to read the article regarding the investigation. My anger and irritation increased when I realized the ident.i.ty of the sender. Abberline's card, complete with his name and the address of Scotland Yard, had been tucked neatly inside the envelope.

Why was he sending me this?

Furious, I thought of how Abberline's men had recklessly searched Londoners' homes and businesses in the vicinity of Liz Stride's murder while the Ripper had already left the area to pursue another kill that same night. Where were the police when the Ripper stabbed me, stuffed me in a coffin, and dropped me off at the hospital? I had, by now, lost any respect that I might have had for Scotland Yard. They were ineffective and bullying. Meanwhile the Ripper was still free, still at liberty to murder.

Part of me felt tempted to throw the letter, card, and newspaper clipping into the trash, but then, a second later, I thought it might be time for me to set up a meeting with Abberline. I wasn't, and didn't plan to be, a p.a.w.n in his investigation. Perhaps I hadn't made that clear enough before.

I cooled down gradually as I finished setting aside the dresses. By the time Mariah stopped by my room for afternoon tea, my anger had subsided a bit. My intended trip to Scotland Yard gave me even more inspiration to get better. I would attempt to walk downstairs the next day.

That night, I awoke in the curtained darkness of my bed with a desperate wish that I had been dreaming when I had heard the chuckle-the same one from my nightmare, from that night in Church Pa.s.sage.

But this time, I had heard it in my bedroom.

My heart raced. Was he in my bedroom?

No. I told myself. You were dreaming. You've been having nightmares lately. You've been anxious.

I heard a footstep.

Someone was in my bedroom.