Ripped (9 page)

“Very good, m'lord. But I want your promise in return that you will not hinder my efforts in any way. If you give me
your
word as a
gentleman,
you shall have mine in return. I shall not ask for Lady Beatrix's hand again until I've risen to the topmost ranks of Scotland Yard, or”—he lowered his voice—“if our sovereign queen should deem to knight me for my . . . services.”

“You do that, son. You do that. But mind, it won't be easy. You'll have to achieve something mighty spectacular. Mighty spectacular indeed.”

“I intend to, Sir Godfrey.”

“So we have a deal, then, eh, m'lad? You're an ambitious, talented young man with a bright future. I admire self-made men such as yourself. Now then, I could use a spot of brandy. Let's drink on it, shall we?”

A minute later, Katie heard the clink of glasses followed by sounds as if the two were hurriedly swallowing their drinks.

“You may go now, Major Brown,” said the duke. “And tell Stebbins to send along my godchild, Miss Katherine, if you please. I drove in from the country just to see her. Fetch the child for me, there's a good lad.”

Katie raced down the center aisle of plants, nearly knocking over a pot of lavender. When she reached the iron-studded door at the far end, she turned full around, smoothed out her billowing skirts, and attempted to settle a complacent smile on her face just as Major Brown came charging through the glass door looking like an angry bear caught in a trap.

Seeing her, he skidded to a halt. He looked nothing like what Katie had envisioned. In a ruggedly handsome face anchored on a thick neck above broad shoulders, his green eyes fastened on Katie's.

“A pleasure to meet you again, Miss Katherine.” An ironic smile twitched at the corners of his lips. “Sir Godfrey is expecting you. But you're looking quite flushed. I trust nothing is amiss?”

Sunlight, glinting through the glass dome overhead, highlighted the powerful, almost sinister angles of his jaw and cheekbones, and made the chestnut gleam of his hair appear several shades lighter than his moustache.

“No. Nothing's wrong,” Katie said breezily, though she could feel the power of his cat-green eyes boring into her like heat piercing her skin. She flinched and pushed past.
He knows I was listening
, she told herself.
Or he suspects.

When Katie eased open the door to the duke's study, the words “murder” and “England's most notorious enemy” pounded in her head. It was clear from the conversation she'd just overheard that Major Brown had killed someone
with
the duke's knowledge and consent, and quite possibly the Queen's.

Sir Godfrey, the Duke of Twyford, was gazing out the window. He gulped down a large snifter-full of amber liquid, then a second, and a third, giving Katie time to scan the room.

The ceiling of the duke's study was high, with big windows overlooking a garden. In the center of the room stood a broad desk littered with papers, pipes, ink jars, quills, keys, cigars, banknotes, and loose coins. Around the walls, above the wainscoting, ran a line of medieval weapons—spears, war clubs, and devil masks—as well as big game trophies. Over the fireplace, where a steady blaze glowed, was a rhinoceros head, its marble eyes reflecting light from the flickering flames. Perched on either side of the chimney shelf sat two stuffed birds, a vulture and an eagle.

Katie gave a little gasp of recognition. The vulture and eagle were the same ones collecting dust in an old trunk in Grandma Cleaves's attic. Bald in patches and moth-eaten, they had been toys for Katie and Courtney when they were younger.

When the duke swiveled around to face her, bitterness flared so intensely in his watery blue eyes, and his jowly, wrinkled face held such a sour expression, Katie forgot to curtsy.

“So it's you,” he wheezed. “Spitting image of your mother.” He lowered his great bulk into a leather chair by the fire and motioned for her to take the seat opposite.

Katie stepped over a pile of open ledgers on the floor covered in tobacco ash and sank into the massive club chair, the seat cushion of which sagged almost to the floor.

“Sinkhole of a chair, eh? Bloody nuisance.” The duke snatched up a black cigar from a side table and began examining it end to end. He bit off the tip, and with a loud grunt, spat it into the fireplace. “Do y'know the difference between a hyena and a police bobby?” he poked the unlit cigar in her direction.

Katie kept her gaze fully directed on the duke and shook her head.

“Humph!” He glowered. “The hyena has the more exalted moral character. Which is why”—he raised a clenched fist—“that son-of-a-sloth will
never
marry my granddaughter, not whilst there's an ounce of breath left in me! What d'you say to that, eh?” He clamped watery blue eyes on Katie, as if daring her to contradict him.

“Major Brown will roast in
hell
before I allow him to marry my granddaughter. I'll foil his every move, thwart him at every turn, that's what I'll do.”

“But you gave your word—” Katie blurted, then dug her fingernails into the leather armrests of the chair. “Er . . . um . . . I mean . . .”

“Don't gibber, girl! I detest gibbering. Doesn't amount to a tinker's curse what I promised the sorry son of—” During the thunderclap of silence, they stared at each other. “I told you that, did I?” he demanded suspiciously, and when Katie nodded, he made a face as though smelling a rotten egg. “Bah. I talk too much. Means nothing.”

He rose and poured himself another drink from the crystal decanter by the window. “The unctuous blighter hasn't a pauper's chance in hell of rising in the CID. He'd have to solve an unsolvable case or catch a notorious criminal. What are the odds of that, m'girl, eh?” He ran the bulbous stopper of the decanter across his grey-whiskered chin.

“But we mustn't underestimate Major Gideon Brown, no indeed,” the duke continued, brandishing the decanter above his head like a torch. “Tenacious as a bulldog and methodical to a fault—
don
'
t I know it
!
” He swung the bottle back down and poured another drink. “Odds are, Major Brown is plotting a course of action as we speak. But we'll beat him at his own game, eh?”

In one gulp, the duke drained his brandy snifter, ending with a noise that sounded like “
Haaaaaa-ah
!
” as if he'd just chugged a foot-long stein of beer. Then he hurled the crystal glass into the fireplace where it crashed and crackled causing Katie to jump out of her seat.

“God's teeth! I'll not bungle this one!” the duke roared, as the fire embers sputtered and sizzled, lapping up droplets of brandy. “Send Collin to me at once . . . no, send Toby. I've a dark suspicion that
Toby
'
s
my man.”

Part III:

Jack the Ripper Strikes

Chapter Ten

Murder in Buck's Row. August 31, 1888.

S
eventeen-year-old
Georgie Cross had a round, clean-shaven, good-natured face that flushed with a strawberry rash whenever he got excited. He was wearing knee breeches and a ragged white shirt beneath his porter's smock, and his hobnailed boots made loud clumping sounds against the cobblestones. It was early evening, and as Georgie ambled into Buck's Row on his way to Spitalfields Market, he found himself joyfully whistling the tune of “Auprès de ma Blonde,” the French marching song—his knees stepping high along with the rousing melody.

Georgie fisted his hand and pounded it to his heart like a Roman soldier pledging allegiance. Georgie was in love.
Again
. But this time it was
true love
. Dark eyed, dimple-cheeked, buxom Cecilia, a dancer at the Veux Music Hall, wasn't a bit like his last twist 'n' swirl, Monique. No, Cecilia was going to be his one and only true love forever.

Georgie couldn't read or write, but he was a great one for stories. He remembered them all in his head, and right now he was remembering that odd little fable about a wizard—or was it a warlock?—named Zeus, who, at the beginning of time, when all humans were born with two legs, two arms, and one head with two faces, decided to cut everyone down the middle and scatter their cleaved parts across the universe. Then he commanded all future generations to go out and search for their rightful other halves to make them whole again.

It was a story Georgie had loved hearing his mother recite ever since he was a wee nipper. And Cecilia—Georgie felt it down to the tips of his toes—was his true other half, his twin flame. She just didn't know it yet.

Georgie flushed scarlet thinking about Cecilia's long, shapely bacon and eggs, and her beautiful dark mince pies.

Those ebony eyes of hers made the blood rush to his head when she chanced to favor him with a smile. True, she wasn't the type of girl his mum would approve of. She wore far too much paint on her face. But Cecilia was a can-can dancer after all. She needed to rouge her cheeks and paint her eyes and smile encouragingly at the toffs at the dance hall in order to get an extra sovereign here and there. No harm in that. Underneath all the powder and dross, Georgie felt sure Cecilia was as demure as a saint. And those ruby lips . . .

But thinking of Cecilia's luscious red lips reminded Georgie unhappily of all the crates full of ripe fruit and vegetables he would soon be straining to load and unload well into the night, stacking them in the market stalls so as to be ready before dawn.

With a heavy sigh, he glanced around. Buck's Row was dimly lit, with only a few sputtering gas lamps casting flickering shadows into the gutters. The full moon overhead made the street appear brighter, illuminating Berber's Slaughterhouse across the way in a pale, amber glow.

A cat yowled in the distance.

Georgie gave an involuntary shudder, not at the high-pitched cat wail, but at the slaughterhouse. As he approached, he couldn't help but scrunch up his nose at the stench. He caught sight of Johnny Brisbane standing in front of the slaughterhouse with a group of butcher lads in blood-smeared leather aprons. Johnny Brisbane was Georgie's mother's cousin's brother-in-law. He owned the East End Butcher shop called The Cut, near Petticoat Alley, but got his meat here at the slaughterhouse, hauling great hulking carcasses across town to The Cut. Georgie's mum had wanted Georgie to apprentice with Johnny.

“Ta!” Georgie waved, as more boys in bloody aprons came piling out of the slaughterhouse through large wooden stable doors, with giant crossbeams. The butcher lads were gulping in deep breaths of fresh air, trying to fill their lungs after being inside where it reeked of dead flesh. As hard as Georgie's job was, Georgie could never be a butcher, not with the crying sounds of the dying animals and the stench.
Never
. The mere thought turned his stomach.

He was sorry that he had come this way. Buck's Row made him uneasy. It had no crime because a constable box stood just around the corner, but Georgie always gave the slaughterhouse a wide berth just the same, as did most everyone else in the East End.

He quickened his pace and continued humming “Auprès de ma Blonde,” but a nervous wobble rose in his voice. This whole street gave him a bit of the old gooseberry light—fright—that he used to feel as a young nipper on goblin day.

A flash of silver caught his eye. Something brownish, like a pile of oilcloth, lay crumpled near the curbstone. An old coat, mayhaps?

“Let's have a look-see,” Georgie murmured. Might be something of value, fallen off a tradesman's cart. Anything lost on the roadside could be claimed as salvage. Last month Georgie had found a broken spindle chair at the side of the road. He'd mended the peg leg, patched the straw seat with a dock hook and twine, and gave it to his mum, who was right pleased.

“Top-drawer, Georgie,” Ma had proudly pronounced when he presented it to her. He'd always been clever with his hands. Maybe this bundle in the road was another top-drawer find, a discarded coat or burlap blanket he could patch up and give to his sister.

Full of high hopes and whistling contentedly again, Georgie approached the protruding heap, then realized with a jolt that it wasn't an old coat or a canvas oilcloth, but a girl.

“Must be ill, poor thing.” But as he circled the prone figure, his legs went taut, and he felt suddenly nervous, like a stiff-legged dog sensing trouble.

“Oi, then. What's wrong wiff yer, lass?” he said loudly. When the girl didn't respond, he hollered over his shoulder to the butcher boys half a block away.

“Here! Give us a hand, mates! Some poor chit's gone lost her footing.”

Bending closer, Georgie could see that the girl's clothes were in disarray and her bonnet lay in the gutter next to something shiny. Born to a life of scarcity, Georgie plucked the silver object from the gutter and slipped it into his pocket. It was a pair of silver opera glasses, but he was too worried about the girl to give the treasure—as treasure it surely was—much thought. A portion of his brain registered that it would fetch a good price at Pickwick's Pawnshop. But his conscious brain remained focused on the girl . . . something was wrong. But Georgie had been mistaken before. Ma said often enough that when it came to twist 'n' swirls, Georgie didn't have the sense he was born with.

Johnny Brisbane came trotting down the street. When he reached Georgie, he glanced down and said, “Trollop's drunk as a skunk, I s'pect.”

“Or fainted,” said Georgie.

Together they leaned over for a closer look. Georgie touched the girl's cheek. It was warm.
Thanks be
, he thought, but when he lifted both of her hands, they fell back down, curiously limp.

“God's fish, Georgie! She's copped it!” cried Brisbane.

“Don't say that! She's warm as a toasted crumpet.”

“Deader 'n a haddock, don't I know it. I works in a bleedin' butcher shop, and I say she's copped it, right good.”

“No! No! Can't be. I think I can hear her breathing, only it's ever so faint. Come on, Johnny. Let's get her on her feet.”

Brisbane backed away. “Not me. I ain't touching her.” He crossed himself. “I tells you she's brown bread. Brown bread!”

“She's not! She can't be,” Georgie insisted, touching the girl's cheek again, and as he did so the scarf across her neck fluttered slightly revealing the corner of an open gash. With a shudder, Georgie flicked the rest of the scarf away and stared down at a glob of blackish blood oozing from a great gaping wound across her throat.

“Blimey! Look at that!” cried Johnny Brisbane. “Her throat's been chived from ear to ear!”

A scarlet flush crept up Georgie's neck, suffusing his cheeks in a bright strawberry rash. He rose up hollering, and didn't stop shouting and waving his arms until he'd reached the corner of Buck's Row and Bradley Street, where he flagged down Police Constable Misen of H-Division, Whitechapel.

Too late he remembered the glittery opera glasses in his pocket. Did they belong to the dead girl?