When We Touch (38 page)

“But . . . Arianna is home.”

He nodded. “Charles would have been very proud of you, you know.”

“I'm glad.”

“I'm still ready to thrash you! You should have told me.”

“I couldn't tell you . . . I had to get her out first, or you would come there ready to be shot yourself and you both might have died. You hadn't been there, and actually, I was going to tell you, but—”

“But I behaved like the biggest ass in the world,” he said ruefully.

“But . . . it didn't really matter. Honestly, it didn't work out quite as I had planned it, but we are all alive, and Arianna is home, and . . . Jamie?” she asked, suddenly wincing in pain. “Do you think that . . . that he might be the killer as well? I tried to tell the police everything he said. And I told them that he'd come to the séance the night before after the murders had occurred, and when he took my hands, his were wet. All wet, as if he'd washed them.”

“I don't know, Maggie. I do know that he's still on the loose out there, somewhere, and that we've got to find him.” He leaned forward, kissing her forehead. For a moment he paused there, and she felt him trembling. “You're all right,” he said softly. “Dr. Mayer says that, amazingly, you've not got a single broken bone. You'll not feel great for a few days, but . . .”

He sat back again. “I've got to change. I've got to have a bath, change . . . get some sleep myself. You, rest. If you even think about getting out of that bed, leaving this room—I will beat you to within an inch of your life!”

She tried not to smile. He'd saved her life. He'd never hurt her, and she knew it.

But she hadn't the strength to argue. Not then.

And so she nodded, and her eyes closed again.

The next time she awoke, it was to Arianna's face. The girl sat by her side, watching her so anxiously. And when her eyes opened, Arianna cried out, “Oh, Maggie!”

The hug that she gave her hurt. Maggie managed not to cry out. It was far too precious a hug to refuse.

* * *

Three days later, her throat no longer hurt, her voice seemed just fine, and even the little aches and pains that had plagued her had subsided.

She hadn't seen Jamie again, and she was concerned, except that her brother had taken up residence at the house, and told her that Jamie had asked about her, but that he was busy. He had gotten Mireau to write some articles and see that they were sent to the paper; they were calming articles, saying as how the entire community must learn to fight terror together.

Hearing this, Maggie decided that she could aid the cause, and she got Mireau to sit with her while she had him write up her version of her particular story, claiming that the police, along with Lord James, had certainly saved her life, that they were a city with a massive population, learning to fight crime. She made certain to stand up for Prince Eddy, pointing out clearly that he had been in Scotland during the murders, and she had urged other men and women of any financial prosperity to help those who were so in need. She made sure that the byline was that of a fictitious member of the Salvation Army, and therefore, she didn't add any of the scandal of her own life to what was written.

The days ahead were hard, though—horrible. The entire city indeed lived in fear. A piece of kidney, proved to be human, was delivered to Mr. Lusk, head of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee, and the police and the citizens had to grimly accept the fact that it might well have been taken from one of the victims.

The story was printed, and Maggie was glad to see that there were people who talked about it, and rather than drag down the monarchy or continue to ridicule such hardworking fellows as Abberline, they began to form their own watch committees.

And to add aid to those in the East End.

A week after the night when she had gone to Hennesy's house and possibly had her own encounter with the madman, Jamie came to the house. He was in a tense and dire mood, and she was surprised when he said that he wasn't ordering her about, but if she cared anything for him, she would go away for a while.

“Where?”

“Go visit Clayton's sisters. Visit the baby,” he told her.

Mireau was there, and she glared at him furiously. He lifted his hands helplessly. “He . . . has a way of making me say things!” Mireau said.

“Just for a while, Maggie, please. Just for a while. Alexander is a madman, whether he is the East End fiend or not, and he wants you dead. I can't worry about you and do the things I should be doing.”

She wanted to argue. She didn't. She had to admit that she wasn't feeling her usual strength as yet. Except that she didn't want to be away from him. First, everything had been so volatile, and then, when she had finally discovered a taste of real tenderness . . .

“All right,” she told him.

So she went up to the woods, and met Clayton's sisters, and spent time playing with the absolutely precious little girl called Ally.

Arianna came for the first week, which made Justin come, too. They were waiting, of course—her period of mourning for her father was long from over, but as she told Maggie, Justin was her prince in shining armor, and she wanted to be with him more than anything in the world.

Cecilia came to visit as well, bringing with her news from London. Sir Charles Warren had buckled to pressure and resigned.

Actually, he resigned again, and then again, but the whole of the police departments were in a state of flux. Maggie's cousin Tristan had joined with the Metropolitan police, and was very pleased to be working.

Cecilia announced that she had done some investigating, since they really didn't know much about their little Ally.

“There is definitely a woman named Annie Crook now escaped somewhere to the North. She had been in and out of many of the relief houses. She is not supposed to be a prostitute, but, well, women make their money where they can! And she has borne a few children. One whose name is Alice, but that baby is with her, alive and unharmed. Whether this is a woman with whom Eddy had an affair . . . I do think that our Ally is his child. Annie Crook may have had several, or maybe she isn't even the mother.”

“It doesn't matter now,” Maggie told her. “Ally belongs here, in this lovely cottage, being raised by gentlewomen who adore her. You're not supposed to know who she is, or that she's here. Mireau can't keep a secret!”

Cecilia was offended at that. “Maggie! I would go to my grave with the secret! After all we've been through together!”

And, of course, she was right.

“No one must ever know about her, though. Really, truly,” Maggie reminded Cecilia.

“Of course!”

And they progressed to talk about other matters.

There was other crime in the City of London. As accusations and arguments climbed, so did the fear. More and more letters poured into police stations.

But time passed . . .

A month, and the murderer did not strike again.

Then, he came back with his most savage rage of killing yet.

And naturally, the papers were full of it. For once, he didn't kill his victim on the streets, or leave the body there, exposed.

But what he did surpassed any evil previously seen.

His victim was different as well in that she was young, and pretty. Once.

But not when the killer finished with her.

He attacked her in her room, in Miller's Court. She was very late with her rent money, and hadn't had the money to repair a broken glass pane in her window. That was how those who discovered her body came in the next day.

Mary Kelly. Twenty-five years old, not yet worn down by the life she had come to lead. Not being on the street, the killer had taken his time, and his frenzy had seemed to know no bounds.

It was in the afternoon, two days after the killing had taken place, that Merry had brought the papers back to the cottage. She had been deeply disturbed to do so, but there was no way out of the fact that it
was
deeply disturbing.

Maggie couldn't help but wonder if she hadn't known the killer. Jamie had talked to her about his conversation with Abberline. People wanted to make something different of the killer. They wanted a conspiracy, a political movement; indeed, they even wanted to be able to say that the killings had been committed by a demented person among “the highest of the high.” No one wanted to accept the fact that the killer could be a simple criminal, a man capable, at times, of appearing completely normal when he walked on the streets.

Arianna, Justin, Cecilia, and even Mireau were back in the city, and she sat up late that night, chilled, tending the fire. The baby was peacefully sleeping, as were her “aunties.”

Maggie wrapped her shawl tightly around her shoulders, musing over the state of her life. The murder of Mary Kelly had made her feel that, whatever her worry about her life, and with the scandal that always seemed to surround her, with her love for Jamie, and his true feelings for her, she was blessed. She had never had to live in the East End. She had never known that kind of desperation.

She had learned a taste of fear.

And it appalled her to think of what the women had gone through in the hands of the man becoming known to history as Jack the Ripper.

It was as she sat there thus that she heard the snap of a twig outside the window.

* * *

London was in a frenzy such as it had never seen before.

The last murder was bringing about a state near chaos. People protested the police action in the streets. They shouted accusations.

Everything had been tried.

A fiasco with bloodhounds.

Handwriting experts.

Dreams.

Psychics.

Mesmerists, spiritualists.

The police were bombarded with those who had dreamed of the Ripper, with those who had seen him when they were hypnotized. A woman claimed that the ghosts of the victims came to her each night, and that if she was to stand on a certain street on a certain date, the Ripper would appear.

Jamie decided his best assistance to the police and the situation would be to follow up some of the more bizarre leads given to the police. Someone was certain, having seen some of his work and his strange behavior at times, that the artist Walter Sickert could just be the murderer. But friends stated that he had been in France at the time of several of the murders, and so Jamie had taken a ferry across the English Channel. He had found not just a few, but several people who swore that yes, Sickert had been there, and so, it seemed that he might be eliminated.

Two foreign men, both totally erratic in their behavior, threatening people with knives, getting into brawls, and making other certain statements, were taken into custody and jailed. The police became convinced that one of the them was the murderer—only to find out that he had been in jail already on the night of the double event.

And so it went. There were whispers among those who believed in a royal conspiracy—that since Eddy had been proved to be in Scotland on certain dates, Sir William Gull, the steadfast physician, had done the killing for him.

One had only to look at Sir William and know that the man had been incapable of the killings and the mutilations in the amount of time in which they had occurred. He could scarcely move on one side of his body.

Jamie was also convinced that fine carriages were noted in the East End. He watched for them constantly himself.

And, of course, he was left to wonder if he'd nearly had the murderer in his grasp, only for the man to escape. It was a bitter question, and a frightening one.

He spoke again with Abberline the day after the discovery of Mary Kelly's body.

“What now?” Abberline asked woefully. “Such a terrible blood bath, good God, man! If I live to be one hundred, I will never forget what I saw in that room. So, where does a man go from there? Would a man's sanity snap entirely?”

“I wish I could say,” Jamie told him.

When he returned to the town house that night, he frowned, noting that a letter had been left at his door.

There was no postmark on it.

When he opened it, he found only the words, “
Catch me when you can,
” written in a crude scrawl. They had been written in another letter that had made its way to the police. Originally, the letter had been sent to Mr. George Lusk, chairman of the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee.

The letter had been accompanied by a piece of human kidney.

The killer knew him. Personally,
Jamie thought.

And then he was seized with a sudden terror. He still had no proof. But Adrian Alexander was still at large. He had disappeared back into the bowels of the East End as if he had never existed.

He knew Jamie, and . . .

He turned the letter over. More words were written on the back of the paper.

* * *

Maggie seized hold of the fire poker, and stood, listening. She knew that she had heard a rustling in the bushes.

But now . . .

Silence reigned.

For an endless amount of time, she simply stood her ground. Seconds passed, then minutes, and still, she stood perfectly still, listening.

Finally, she eased down the poker. Her nerves were rattled, she told herself. She was far away here. Far from the city. Jack was holding his reign of terror in London.

Still, as she walked into the kitchen, determined to make herself some tea, she took the fire poker with her.

The mullioned-glass windows that bordered the sink were closed. A gas lamp had been turned low, causing shadows to flicker on the walls. Outside, the autumn weather was growing crisp and chill. She shivered, and pumped up water, filling the kettle. As she set it over the stove and lit the flame, she wondered just what she was going to do. Jamie cared for her, she was certain. But since that day . . .