A Rip in Time (Out of Time #7) (11 page)

Red and raw. All of them.

A man shouldered his way past a duo that had just arrived at the bar. The three exchanged unpleasantries and Victor let his chair rest on the floor again. One of the men was the one he’d seen at the inquest.
 

Ignoring the other two, he made his way to the door. Victor waited a moment and then followed him out into the cool night.

~~~

“I don’t know how I’m going to keep this clean,” Elizabeth said as she looked at herself in the mirror.

The dress was gorgeous—silver silk with an elaborately embroidered chiffon overlay and pale blue lace trim. It had small poofs at the shoulders, and was beautifully tailored, but unlike her other dresses, had an actual neckline. Most of her décolletage was obscured by floofs of lace, but it was oddly thrilling to be wearing anything that didn’t go up to her neck in some sort of fabric prison. She twisted around to try to see herself from the back.

She looked great coming and like she was smuggling a small circus going. If only she didn’t have to wear the darn bustle. Simon made an appreciative sound and she turned to give him the better of the two views.
 

He, of course, looked perfect. With his black tailcoat and straight cut black wool pants, crisp white shirt, and white silk waistcoat and tie, he looked as though he’d walked off the fashion plate of some Victorian magazine.
 

“You look beautiful,” he said, coming to her side.

Elizabeth smiled and Simon turned to observe himself in the mirror, critically looking for anything out of place.

“You don’t have to be so hard on George, you know,” she said. “He’s harmless.”

Simon continued his inspection. “You said he had a reputation to uphold. A ladies’ man?”

He turned to her and she nodded.

“Well then,” he said, tugging needlessly on his perfect cuffs. “What serves him better? A husband who doesn’t mind his overly friendly nature with you or one who does?”

He arched a knowing eyebrow.

And here she thought he’d been actually jealous. “You sneak.”

He laughed and then pulled her into his embrace. “I will say though, it is a part that comes very naturally to me. I don’t like to share.”

Elizabeth felt the thrill that went with hearing those words. Unfortunately, they had places to go and people to meet. “We have the theater and a party and you have sore ribs.”

He pulled her more tightly against him. “Which are much improved.”

She sighed and put her hand to his chest. “Simon…”

He sighed, picked up his gloves and guided her toward the door. As he opened it for her he said with a smile, “No party lasts forever.”

~~~

The Lyceum Theatre thrummed with excitement after the play. The two women who had passed out due to momentary hysteria were still being tended to as Simon helped Elizabeth on with her coat.

The story was an age-old tale of outward honor and respectability, and inward evil and lust. It was the very dichotomy that defined the Victorian era. But it was more than mere social commentary. It was a study in man’s dual nature, the evil inside every man.
 

The staging had been simple, straight-forward, and Richard Mansfield’s performance as Dr. Jekyll had been so flat, it was on the verge of concave, Simon thought, but his Mr. Hyde was an altogether different story. His on-stage transformation—talent aided merely with cleverly hued make-up and lighting—was impressive. He was repulsive, animalistic, and disturbing.
 

The frightening duality of his personality and its parallels to Jack the Ripper were painfully obvious. Was the Ripper a man suffering from a split personality like the good Dr. Jekyll? It seemed far more likely to be the case than a man who could not hide his demon. It was not a comforting thought.

Mansfield was on the suspect list Travers had given him. Although, like so many others, there was very little credible evidence to link him to the crimes. In some cases, merely being in London at the time seemed sufficient reason for suspicion. However, having seen him as Hyde now, Simon had to wonder.

“I’d take you backstage to see Richard,” George said as they left their box. “But it’s nearly impossible to wend your way through the crowds down there. He’ll be at the party, I think. I’ll introduce you then, if he can pry himself away from his admirers. Which I cannot guarantee,” he added with a smile.

He lifted the velvet curtain at the back of the box and held it for them to pass through. “My carriage should be out front. Why don’t you ride with me? We can send for a cab when you’re ready to escape.”

Elizabeth looked to Simon for confirmation before agreeing.

“Excellent,” George said, taking Elizabeth’s arm and winding it through his own. “And you can tell me all of the gossip from America. Do you know the Vanderbilts?”

Elizabeth looked to Simon in panic. He merely smiled and lingered behind.

She turned back to George. “Not exactly,” she said, trying to buy time.
 
“But I did meet Buffalo Bill once.”

“The cowboy?” George said excitedly.

And with that Simon knew he’d lost them.

~~~

Victor followed the man until he knocked on a nondescript doorway on Commercial Road. He waited there and a minute later a big, bull of a man opened the door. From his vantage point across the street, Victor could just see inside. He knew the look, the smoke, the bad piano playing, and the women walking back and forth through it all in a daze.
 

A whorehouse.
 

The big man hesitated and then finally stepped aside letting the other man inside. Victor took out his pipe and pushed a finger in the bowl to re-secure the plug of tobacco. If it had been elsewhere, he might have followed the man inside. But not here. A woman’s touch was always welcome, but the prostitutes of Whitechapel brought sadness, not comfort. Not to mention, crabs.

Victor contented himself with his pipe, sure the man would not last long. He was right although not for the reasons he’d suspected. Twenty minutes later, the little man was bodily escorted from the premises and tossed, quite literally, out of the door and onto his ear.

Pushing himself up, he stood on wobbly legs and rubbed his jaw.
 

“You stay outta ‘ere, Pizer!” the big man threatened. “Next time I’ll knock your block off.”

And with that he slammed the door.
 

So it
was
Pizer, Victor thought. He’d suspected the man might be John Pizer, a boot maker who was better known for his nickname, Leather Apron, and a very viable suspect.

Pizer picked up his hat from a puddle it had fallen into and shook it off. Still sopping wet, he pulled it down onto his head and started to stumble down the street.

Victor followed him to another bar, the Ten Bells. There, Pizer argued with another man briefly.

“They say it’s a Jew,” he said, his voice thick with drink.

“They say everyfink bad that ‘appens ‘ere is a cause of a Jew!” the other man agreed loudly.

Pizer nodded before telling his friend what he thought of the local police in colorful and barely understandable English.

“Shaddup!” a man at a nearby table said.

Pizer started to stand, but the other man reached out and shoved him. He was already so far gone, he probably passed out before he hit the floor.

“All right, all right,” his friend said as he surrendered to the angry customer. He helped Pizer back up into a chair and left him to sleep it off at the table.

“They’ll pin it on somebody,” a woman at another table said. “You can bet on that.”

“They won’t be spendin’ time tryin’ to solve no murder of the likes of us,” her friend said with a sneer.
 

Then she affected a middle class accent. “Scotland Yard is looking into it, love.” Then she laughed. “My arse, they are!”

Her friend cackled. “Lookin’ into your arse. That wouldn’t be the first now would it, Annie?”

Another woman at the table joined in. As she spoke, Victor noticed that she was missing all of the teeth in her lower left jaw. “No one cares what becomes of us. Least of all the rousers. They’s just in someone’s pocket, that’s all. It’s thems that you got to look out for.”

Annie, a tough looking little woman with a fresh black eye said, “You should know, Lizzy.”

Lizzy. Annie. Victor had to wonder. Were these two of Ripper’s victims? They fit the descriptions he’d read, but then so did hundreds of other women here.
 

Lizzy grinned and pushed back in her chair. “Oh, I do, my dearie. I do. But we’ve got a plan for them, ain’t we?”

Annie and the other woman laughed. “A pretty little plan.”

T
HE
PARTY
WAS
A
sort of social bumper cars—aimlessly circling, randomly bumping into people only to veer off and collide with someone else. Having mastered the aristocratic air of indifference so well, Simon glided through it all effortlessly.

It took Elizabeth a little longer to get into the flow. While she and Simon had spent a fair share of time on their missions with the upper crust, it always started out the same way for her. A little unsure. After all, pre-Simon she had no crust at all.

 
And this wasn’t just a fancy dress party; it was one step from Buckingham Palace. But, she told herself, she could do this. She took a cleansing breath.

Simon, always attuned to her, leaned down and whispered. “They’re just people, Elizabeth. With sticks up their arses, but just people.”

Elizabeth laughed, relaxing.

The house was owned by the Marquess of Kildare: Gerald FitzGerald, 5th Duke of Leinster, which, she realized belatedly, was one person. According to George, the land had initially been part of the grounds of St. James’ Palace and later, when the first house was built, the town residence of the Prince Regent. Eventually, it was sold, demolished and turned into the two enormous white stucco terraced-buildings they were now.
 

Enormous hardly did them justice. They were four stories high with grand terraces on each side, one with a perfect view of the park. The outside was nearly as opulent as the inside.
 

The party spilled from the main downstairs salon through the elegant domed entry hall, up the grand double-staircase, complete with statues in alcoves and into the main ballroom. So far, she’d met a duke, a viscount, a baron, a couple of earls and fistful of knights, and they’d only just arrived.

Now this was a party.

The dresses ranged from the sublime to the ridiculous and beyond. It seemed that the more fabric and layers you displayed, the higher up the food chain you were. It was a wonder some of the women could move at all.
 

George led them around, introducing them to all and sundry, as a small orchestra played in the corner. Most of the guests were gracious, although there were a few who found an American among them, an American woman reporter at that, discomfiting. Lord Salisbury had been most put off. It was all Elizabeth could do not to say how much she loved his steaks just to see the look on his face.

An artist named Sickert was busy doing sketches in the corner—capturing his subject’s dual nature by drawing two separate faces for them, their Jekyll and Hyde, much to everyone’s amusement. Both Simon and Elizabeth passed on that, but there was quite a crowd gathering.

They had almost reached the end of their first circuit when George smiled and waved them toward two men talking in the corner. She recognized one as Montague John Druitt. The other was more whiskers than man, with a large belly that strained his pearl grey waistcoat.

As they approached, Elizabeth overheard the tail end of their conversation.

“You should regularly,” the whiskered man said with a slightly scolding tone. “…an appointment tomorrow afternoon.”

Druitt nodded. “Yes, especially after mother, I—”

Both of them stopped talking as they realized they weren’t alone and their serious countenances instantly changed to the same
isn’t it a delight?
expression everyone seemed to assume when they came across a new person.

“John,” George said, shaking hands with his friend.

The other man seemed glad to see him, but perhaps a little embarrassed as well.

“Doctor,” George said, extending his hand to the whiskered man who humphed and shook the offered hand quickly. The doctor then turned his attention to Simon and Elizabeth, and coughed in a not so gentle reproof of George’s lack of manners.

“Oh, forgive me,” George said. “Dr. Blackwood, may I present Mr. and Mrs. Simon Cross?”

Dr. Blackwood. He was another one of the names on the suspect list. Between the doctor and Druitt, they’d hit the perfecta.
 

The doctor eyed them warily for a split-second before extending his hand.

“It’s Sir Simon, actually,” Simon said, not unkindly, and earning a warmer reception from the doctor.

“Oh,” George said. “Are you?”

Simon arched an eyebrow in an English shrug.

George looked questioningly at Elizabeth.
 

“Never came up,” she said.

George smiled, amused. “We usually lead with that sort of thing here,” he said before getting back to the introductions at the end of which, he asked permission to pull Druitt away, leaving them alone with the doctor and his whiskers.

Elizabeth couldn’t endure the awkward silence. “So, what sort of doctor are you?”
 

The man frowned. “I beg your pardon?”

“She means, what do you specialize in?” Simon clarified.

“Diseases of the mind. It is the most misunderstood and mysterious part of the human anatomy. Delirium, derangement, melancholia. What some would simply call madness. I suppose that’s in keeping with tonight’s theme of madness,” he said looking rather pleased with himself. Elizabeth smiled politely, encouraging him. He didn’t need much.
 

“The study of the mind with my methods is a rather new branch of medicine. We’ve made incredible strides in the last decade, but the established medical community, is, well, not prepared to embrace them fully just yet.”