A Murder in Time (26 page)

Alec's head snapped around, and he glared at her. “
You
have no say in the matter.”

“Caro would be apoplectic if she found out.” Aldridge rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “I'm not entirely certain this is a good idea, my dear. And, I warn you, none of this is pretty.”

Some emotion flitted across her face, too quick for Kendra to define. And then it was gone, and Rebecca was smiling again. “I have never expected pretty.” Abruptly, she pivoted to face the slate board again. “Miss Donovan, I do believe you were speaking when I arrived. Pray continue.”

Kendra decided to ignore Alec's deepening scowl. She tapped the board with her finger. Maybe if she pretended she was in a war room, and everything was normal . . .

“As I was saying, we can rule out mission-oriented. We're dealing with a power-and-control killer. As for the victim, her being a prostitute, I believe, is significant. Killers tend to prey on prostitutes because they're dispensable.”

Rebecca bristled. “That is a dreadful thing to say! They may be soiled doves . . . er, Unfortunate Women. But they are still human beings!”

“I'm not making a statement about their humanity,” Kendra said. “I'm seeing her as the killer would see her. Why did he choose her instead of a village girl?”

“A village girl would be missed,” Alec said tersely, clearly still not entirely comfortable with Rebecca being in the room.

“Exactly,” Kendra nodded. “And by his choice of victims, we learn something about the killer. He's cautious. He doesn't want to draw the kind of attention a missing village girl would. Instead, he selects a prostitute. Not a street hooker, though,” she murmured, almost to herself. “Why not? If he were really cautious, he'd take the one who'd be the least missed.”

“Mayhap he doesn't wish to risk disease,” Alec suggested. “Streetwalkers are notoriously filthy. They tend to be a coarse lot, often drunk, diseased.”

“Yes.” Kendra gave him a thoughtful look. “This girl was young. Soft. Maybe he doesn't want a girl who
looks
like a prostitute. Which means her appearance is a factor. I'd need more victims, though, before I can identify it as a signature.”

“Signature?”

Kendra hesitated. She was giving them more information than maybe she should. Though in the latter half of this century Dr. Thomas Bond would offer up a profile on Jack the Ripper, she was introducing a lexicon that wouldn't be part of criminal investigative analysis for another century, at least. Was she changing the future?

Dammit. She didn't know. And she couldn't worry about it. If she was going to do any good here, she needed to think and act like an FBI profiler.

Shrugging aside her unease, she explained, “The psychological pattern of the killer. It's something that he does that has a special meaning to him. Like Jane Doe's appearance, or the bite mark on the breast—one very deliberate, very vicious bite mark. He didn't bite her to kill her. He had another, more personal reason to do it.”

“What reason, pray tell?” Rebecca asked, fascinated.

“I don't know. What does the female breast represent? Sex. Desire. Life—mother's milk. A mother who dominated him. A lover who spurned him. It means
something
. And then there's the hair. Why did he cut portions of it? Like the breast, it's a female symbol. A woman's crowning glory.” Unconsciously, Kendra threaded her fingers through her much shorter hair. “Female vanity. Did he do it to humiliate her? Or for another reason? I'll need to see the body again.”

She turned to face her audience. “There's another difference between a streetwalker and a prostitute in—what did you call it?—an academy. Streetwalkers aren't very choosy.”

“Neither are Birds of Paradise, if you have the blunt,” Alec pointed out dryly.

“Yes. You have to have the . . . er, blunt. Does it cost the same to hire a street whore as it does a girl from an academy?”

“Hardly. Streetwalkers will offer their services in the alley for a shot of whiskey and a few shillings.”

Kendra picked up the piece of slate and wrote “money” in the unsub column. “He paid for a girl from an academy. From London, most likely. Plenty of opportunities to hunt. Why go farther?”

Alec looked at her. “You speak as though killing the girl were sport.”

“To him, it was. This was not the murder of a young girl. It was
more.
”

“Dear heaven,” Rebecca breathed.

“And he had to transport her here somehow.” It was too early for trains. That left . . . stagecoach or horse?

Rebecca frowned, thinking. “A public stage?”

Alec's lips twisted. “Doubtful—not unless her benefactor made it worth her while.”

“So
not
a tryst with a farmer,” Kendra said slowly.

“He'd have to be a wealthy farmer. A bawd would never have let her go, and the girl would not have gone unless—”

“She could better herself,” Kendra finished, earning a raised brow from Alec.

“I never considered it in that precise way, but yes.”

“'Tis true, then,” Rebecca said, staring at her. “The outrageous rumor that this madman is one of . . . of
us
.”

“If you mean someone in the upper classes, then yes.” Kendra noted the other woman's shocked expression and thought of the servants crowded around the breakfast table. “You thought he was a drifter—a gypsy, perhaps? Because the perpetrator
can't
be somebody you know?”

The blue eyes sparked, then went cold. “Mayhap
you
know such fiends, Miss Donovan.” Her upper-class accent was so precise, it was like a slap. “
I
do not.”

“Actually . . . you do.”

Rebecca drew in a breath, the earlier friendliness gone. Now she looked every inch the aristocrat.

Kendra sighed, but maintained eye contact. “I think you could be very helpful to this investigation, but if you can't handle it . . .” She shrugged.

The other woman frowned. “I can . . .
handle
it.”

The phrase was obviously unfamiliar to Lady Rebecca, but she'd gotten the gist of it. Kendra was beginning to like the Lady.

“Good. Otherwise . . .” She remembered what Dalton had said yesterday, and gave the other woman a speculative look. “Just how good are you at portraiture?”

The question threw Rebecca. “You want me to paint your portrait?”

“Not me—”

“Bloody hell. We already told you, that would not be proper,” Alec snapped.

Kendra ignored him. “We plan to send out a description of the girl with the Bow Street Runner. It would be much more effective to have a photo—a sketch of some kind.”

“You want me to paint the dead woman?”

“Charcoal or pastels would be faster.” She glanced at the Duke. “I'm sorry, but it's the best way.”

“This is beyond the pale—” Alec protested.

“I've never known you to be such a stuffed shirt, Sutcliffe,” Rebecca interrupted him, her expression once again amused. Kendra caught the glimmer of excitement in the cornflower eyes. “I shall do it. When?”

Kendra's lips curved with an irony her audience would never understand. “I always say there's no time like the present.”

18

Alec grabbed Kendra's arm before she could follow the Duke and Rebecca out of the schoolroom. The action surprised Kendra—almost as much as the electrical jolt she felt at the physical contact.

“Why are you involving Lady Rebecca in this?” he demanded.

He released her, and Kendra let out a breath. But it caught in her throat again when he put his hand up, palm flat against the wooden doorframe, and shifted his body, effectively caging her in. She was close enough to see the gold flecks around the pupils in his green eyes, close enough to smell his scent, a blend of clean linen, leather, some kind of soap, and a masculine underpinning that was unique to the man.

“Well?” he asked impatiently, when she remained silent.

She cleared her throat. “I already told you—I think she'll be helpful to the investigation. If she can sketch the dead girl's face, we'll have a much better chance at identification than sending out a verbal description.” She paused, then shrugged. “And it wouldn't hurt to bring in a woman's perspective.”

Alec frowned. “What the devil is
your
perspective?”

A twenty-first-century perspective
, Kendra wanted to say. Instead, she shrugged again. “A woman from the aristocracy, then. As I said before, I think we're dealing with someone from your class,
Lord
Sutcliffe.”

“Exactly what is
your
class, Miss Donovan?” he asked softly.

He was looking at her so intently that Kendra found herself fidgeting. She forced herself to stop and gestured to the clothes she was wearing. “I'm a servant.”

“Odd. That is what I told the Duke.” He smiled but it didn't reach his eyes, which remained a clear, cool green. “Exactly who are you, Miss Donovan?”

To Kendra, it seemed as though he were saying:
What
are you? But perhaps she was reading too much into that—years of being under the microscope, as it were, more science experiment than child, had left her sensitive.

She remained silent. She had no choice, really. She could hardly tell him the truth.

He straightened, stepping back. “I shall be keeping a very close eye on you.”

Not for the first time, Kendra thought that, despite his elegant clothes, upper-class accent, lithe grace, and lineage, there was something dark, almost dangerous about the marquis. “That sounds almost like a threat,” she said.

He smiled grimly. “There is no
almost
about it, Miss Donovan.”

Kendra was relieved when they caught up with Rebecca and the Duke on the path leading to the icehouse. Aldridge was carrying Rebecca's art supplies. The other woman had also put on an ankle-skimming dark brown velvet coat, Kendra noticed. The gaze Rebecca turned in their direction was frankly speculative, but she didn't ask where they'd been.

“I've told Lady Rebecca if she has second thoughts about doing this, she may simply inform us,” Aldridge stated.

Rebecca merely smiled. Her amusement vanished, however, when they entered the icehouse.
Good
, thought Kendra. She didn't want anyone involved who viewed this as some sort of novelty.

Propriety may have been tossed out the window, but the Duke and Alec still made sure that the nude body was covered to the neck with a coarse wool blanket before Lady Rebecca was allowed to enter.

Kendra immediately scanned Jane Doe. Dalton had closed her eyes, but otherwise hadn't touched the head. Normally, the M.E. would make an incision and pull down the scalp and cut open the skull to remove the brain, which was then weighed and measured. But this was the early nineteenth century. Maybe that wasn't part of the normal procedure. Or maybe Dalton had decided to forgo that part of the autopsy because it was clear that the girl hadn't died from a brain injury. Whatever the reason, it was probably for the best; Kendra doubted Lady Rebecca would've been allowed into the room if the girl's head had been sliced open like a tin can.

As Rebecca began setting up her art supplies, Kendra glanced around. Visiting morgues and viewing autopsies were all part of the job, but there was something really creepy about this room, with the cold seeping up from the stone floor, the dead animal carcasses hanging by hooks against the far wall, and the flickering light from the lanterns, staving off the perpetual gloom. The smell—dust and decay—seemed to have grown stronger.

She saw that Rebecca was also affected, but that might have had less to do with the atmosphere than it did with the corpse. For a long moment, Rebecca stared down at the dead girl, her expression solemn. Kendra thought she saw her shiver, but when she reached for the paper and pastels, her movements were brisk and sure.

Kendra didn't know what to expect, whether she'd get an accurate likeness of the victim or not. It wasn't as though Rebecca was a professional artist. Art was merely considered an appropriate activity for ladies of the era. At least she wouldn't get a woman with three noses, as modernism wouldn't take the art world by storm for several more decades. But Kendra was impressed with the woman's absolute focus, her face pulled into lines of concentration as she worked, her tongue caught between her teeth. For the next ten minutes, the only sound in the room was the whispery movement of pastels against sketch paper.

“What color are her eyes?” Rebecca asked, without stopping, without looking up.

“Brown.”

She nodded, choosing a different pastel. Her fingers were smudged with color by the time she put the crayon down, and flipped her drawing tablet around to show them.

Kendra studied the portrait with an appreciation she hadn't expected to feel. Not only had Rebecca captured the girl's likeness, but she'd infused it with a liveliness that was obviously now absent. Maybe it was creative license, but Rebecca had added just the faintest smile to the Cupid's bow mouth, a healthy tint of pink in the cheeks, a coquettish gleam in the eyes.