“Audrey Rose?”
I held up a hand, stalling Thomas from whatever he was about to say. An enormous pressure kept building under my ribs and the air suddenly felt too thin or too heavy. This had to be a nightmare. Soon I’d wake from it and all would be well. Soon I’d remember my beloved brother was Jack the Ripper and he was dead and my family was shattered, but we were slowly piecing our lives back together. We were broken but not defeated. We were—I pinched my arm and cried out. I was awake and this was happening. I swallowed hard.
I could not accept this letter. I couldn’t. The implications were too much to bear. Without preamble, I dropped onto the mattress, head spinning. Though perhaps it wasn’t my mind that was under attack—my heart was close to breaking. Again. How many times would this case haunt me? How many secrets did my brother keep? Just when I thought I’d solved one mystery, another took its place, more brutal and vicious than the last.
I focused on drawing in a slow breath and exhaling. A feat more difficult than it should’ve been. Jack the Ripper hadn’t committed his crimes alone. His reign of terror was not yet complete. That thought ripped the rest of my heart from my chest. Jack the Ripper was alive.
All this time… all of these months I’d convinced myself that his horrors were over. That his death might offer a bit of solace to the spirits of those he’d slain, though keeping his secret didn’t offer me the same peace in return. Every ghost of the past I’d worked to fight against, every demon in my imagination—everything was rallying against this news, clawing its way up my throat, taunting me with an I told you so. His death was one more lie to choke down. Tears burned my eyes.
Jack the Ripper was two depraved, twisted men acting as one. And I knew—I knew with every molecule of my body that he’d been with us on the Etruria. That crime was too much like him for me to have overlooked it. I committed the same mistake I had during our first case—I ignored the facts because I didn’t want to see them for what they were. I drew in one ragged breath after another.
Jack the Ripper lived. I couldn’t stop repeating it in my mind.
“Wadsworth… please, say something.”
I clamped my mouth shut. If I opened it now, I might start screaming and never stop. I didn’t know who my brother or the real Ripper was. I barely recognized myself in this moment. Who else in my life wasn’t what he or she appeared to be? I closed my eyes, forcing myself to become a solid block of ice on the inside. Now wasn’t the time to fall apart.
“On the ship,” I said through gritted teeth. “He’d sat in the shadows, night after night, watching, lurking, probably enjoying the chaos of another career murderer putting on a show.” I shook my head, anger filling the space where hurt had resided moments before. I wondered if my rage was hot enough to set others on fire. “Does he know me? Was he stalking me across the sea, or was it simply a twist of fate that our paths crossed once more?”
I set the letter down and gripped the rose knob of my cane until my fingers went numb. I wanted to bash it into the Ripper’s skull. I wanted—
Thomas slowly placed his hand over mine. He held it there until the violence left me. “There’s more, I’m afraid. In his journals.”
I fought a bitter laugh. Of course there was more. It seemed this nightmare was only just beginning. Each time I thought I closed a chapter, there was a new twist waiting to reveal itself. I didn’t bother asking for details. If there was more, it involved another person, and another tragic loss of life. Another brutal murder to add to the Ripper’s blood-soaked résumé.
“Who?”
“A Miss Martha Tabram. She was a prostitute who earned a living in the East End.” Thomas watched me carefully before rummaging through the stack of journals, finding the one he’d been reading. “Nathaniel saved several newspaper clippings discussing her death. Apparently she’d been stabbed thirty-nine times with two different knives. One was thought to be a pocketknife, and the other was described as a dagger. Judging from what we know of the other Ripper killings, it was probably a long, thin surgical knife.”
I turned the information over in my mind. The urge to scream was still present, but the need decreased as I shifted into mystery solving. “Did Uncle attend the murder site?”
“No.” Thomas shook his head. “A Dr. Killeen was called to inspect her body at the scene, and another coroner is quoted in a second article. I’m not sure why Dr. Wadsworth wasn’t consulted.”
“Probably because Scotland Yard had no need of his expertise yet.” I stared at the headline. My uncle was a brilliant professor of forensic medicine and often assisted on a case when invited, but he was not an official member of Scotland Yard. “As you’re well aware, prior to Jack the Ripper, a repeat murderer was practically unheard of. I imagine they used whichever coroner was available and didn’t give it a second thought.”
Neither one of us mentioned a more glaring reason why they hadn’t called in an expert: our society was unkind to women. Especially those who were forced to survive any way they could. Sure, the papers would claim they’d exhausted all possible inquiries, but it was another filthy lie told to enhance their tale. To sell their papers. To make them sleep better at night.
I inhaled deeply, channeling my returning rage into something usable. Anger wouldn’t resolve problems, but action would. I inspected the first article with a cool head.
THE HORRIBLE AND MYSTERIOUS MURDER AT GEORGE’S YARD, WHITECHAPEL ROAD.
“‘The August Bank Holiday murder took place in George Yard Buildings.’” I read the first few lines of the article aloud. “Her body was discovered in the morning of the seventh of August.” My blood chilled. “That’s nearly three weeks prior to Miss Mary Nichols.”
The first—supposed—victim of Jack the Ripper.
“What’s interesting,” Thomas said, grabbing another journal from the pile, “is Miss Emma Elizabeth Smith was also murdered during a bank holiday.”
I closed my eyes, recalling all too clearly that she’d died on the fourth of April. My mother’s birthday. Another fact from her case rose to the surface of my mind. “She lived on George Street. This murder took place in George Yard. It might mean something to the killer.”
Thomas seemed intrigued by this new thread. He got off the bed and sat at a small writing desk, jotting notes down. While he lost himself with that task, I turned my attention back to the newspaper clippings regarding Miss Martha Tabram’s death. My brother didn’t claim her murder in his journal—at least he hadn’t done so in this volume—but his interest was no coincidence.
The East London Advertiser proclaimed:
The circumstances of this awful tragedy are not only surrounded with the deepest mystery, but there is also a feeling of insecurity to think that in a great city like London, the streets of which are continually patrolled by police, a woman could be foully and horribly killed almost next to the citizens peacefully sleeping in their beds, without a trace or clue being left of the villain who did the deed. There appears to be not the slightest trace of the murderer, and no clue has at present been found.
I rubbed my temples. I hadn’t heard of this murder, though if I recalled correctly, the first part of August had been unusual in my home. My brother was preoccupied with his law studies, and my father was in one of his especially gruff moods. I’d attributed Nathaniel’s absences to Father’s growing agitation and had thought my father was upset by the approach of my seventeenth birthday. Every morning, he’d taken the newspapers and had them burned before I could read them.
Now I knew why. It wasn’t madness, but fear. I turned the next page of the journal and silently read a quote clipped from an article.
“The man must have been a perfect savage to inflict such a number of wounds on a defenseless woman in such a way.” This from a George Collier, deputy coroner for the district.
Hastily scratched below, in Nathaniel’s frantic hand, was a passage from our favorite gothic novel, Frankenstein.
… if our impulses were confined to hunger, thirst, and desire, we might be nearly free; but now we are moved by every wind that blows and a chance word or scene that that word may convey to us. We rest; a dream has power to poison sleep. We rise; one wand’ring thought pollutes the day. We feel, conceive, or reason; laugh or weep, Embrace fond woe, or cast our cares away; It is the same: for, be it joy or sorrow, The path of its departure still is free. Man’s yesterday may ne’er be like his morrow; Nought may endure but mutability!
I’d read the book so many times during chilly October evenings that it took only a few moments to place the scene. Dr. Victor Frankenstein had traveled to a land of snow and ice to confront his monster. Before his meeting with the creature he so despised, he’d hinted that nature could heal a man’s soul. Did my brother fancy himself as Dr. Victor Frankenstein?
I’d always thought he’d considered himself the monster based on previous passages he’d underlined months ago. How well could I claim to know him, though? How well did any of us truly know one another? Secrets were more precious than any diamond or currency. And my brother had been rich with them.
I found a nib of ink and began scribbling my own furious notes on a blank page, adding dates and theories that seemed as unhinged and untamed as Frankenstein’s monster. Perhaps I was becoming my own mad, feral creature.
Movement caught my attention a second before Thomas knelt in front of me, his expression uncharacteristically kind. For a fleeting moment, I wondered how I looked through his eyes. Did I seem as wild as I felt? My heart thumped as quickly as a rabbit’s, but my instincts weren’t to flee; I wished to draw blood. Thomas touched my brow, then traced his finger across my hairline, soothing a knot I hadn’t realized was forming. I relaxed at his touch. Marginally.
“You’ve got a certain aura of murder that’s—quite honestly—a strange mixture of alluring and troubling. Even for me. What is it?” he asked. I turned the journal around, pointing out the Frankenstein passage. He read it, then searched my face. “I remember your brother was intrigued with Galvani’s experiments with electricity and dead frogs, and Shelley. But that isn’t what’s bothering you.”