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

“Viva la revolución!” Elizabeth said raising her tea cup.

George laughed. “I do love you Americans. You’re so wonderfully raw and unfinished.” He caught her slight frown and continued, “I mean that in only the very best way. You forge yourselves. You can be born a pauper and build an empire. Here, you see, we’re all born as we ever shall be. It’s all rather dull.”

“I find that hard to believe.”

He sighed dramatically. “I’m the third son of a baronet. You can’t go a mile in London without tripping over one of us. I’m hardly unique and unlikely ever to amount to anything more than I am at this moment.”

“Poor butterfly,” she said not unkindly.

He tried to force an affronted frown onto his face, but couldn’t quite manage it. “Now you’ve ruined my lament. Feeling sorry for myself is the one area in which I truly excel.”

“I’m sure there are others.”

He laughed out loud. “Ah, Mrs. Cross. How glad I am that we’ve met.”

~~~

It was after one in the morning when Simon had the night man at Brown’s summon a cab for them. As they waited, Simon rolled his shoulders to try to dispel some of the pent up anxiety that had taken residence there over the past few hours. It had been nearly unbearable. Hours dragged by, each slower than the last, until, finally, the time had come to begin.

Simon felt a wave of relief and prickles of adrenaline as the hack pulled up to the curb in front of the hotel. He helped Elizabeth inside and gave the cabbie the address a few blocks away from Victor’s boarding house. There was no reason to think anyone was watching them, tracking their movements, and yet, he felt he’d be a fool if he didn’t assume the worst. Repeatedly.

Elizabeth leaned back in the seat as far as her ridiculous clothing would allow. She offered him a weak smile and then looked out of the carriage window as the dark streets of London rolled past. She’d been quiet all evening. He had as well, but quiet in Elizabeth was something altogether rare. Not that he blamed her. His thoughts had been filled with images of the night’s horrors yet to come. None of them were things either wanted to give life to by speaking about them, but they would come to be whether they kept silent or not.

Tonight, Ripper would find his first victim. Tonight, Mary Ann Nichols would die.

The streets grew darker and dirtier, and Simon could smell the East End before they reached it. A few gas lamps, yellow and faint, lit their path toward Victor’s. There were still plenty of people about and Simon felt acutely aware of the attention they drew as they passed through the lower-middle class streets. His already heightened sense of alarm ratcheted up a notch higher.

He put his hand over Elizabeth’s as it rested on his arm and she looked up at him, supportive, nervous, reluctantly resigned to what they had to do.

Finally, they reached Victor’s. The building was quiet except for one loud fight on the third floor.

Simon rapped sharply on Victor’s door. It opened almost immediately, the Frenchman as pleased to see them as Simon was to see him.

“You’re late,” Victor said with a frown.

Simon glared at him. They were not late, and even if they were, it was a matter of minutes.
 

“We had to wait for a cab,” Elizabeth explained and it galled him that she felt she owed this man an explanation.

Victor grunted and stepped aside, gesturing for them to come in.

The little room was as pitiful as Simon remembered, but the clothes he’d purchased earlier were laid out and waiting for them.
 

“We should leave here soon,” Victor said.

Simon gave him a cursory nod and re-examined the clothes. They were rough, shabby and filthy. An unfortunate, but necessary, guise.
 

Simon shed his jacket and unbuttoned his shirt. Elizabeth began work on the absurd row of buttons that ran up the front her blouse when she looked up and cast a nervous glance toward the door. Victor casually leaned against it, as he pushed a plug of tobacco down into a rough-hewn clay pipe.

Simon cleared his throat.

Victor looked at him and then at Elizabeth. He arched an eyebrow. “I have seen people naked before.”

Simon stood a little straighter. “Not my wife.”

Victor puffed out a bit of air in that infuriating way the French did and looked at Elizabeth once more before shaking his head. Dropping his pipe into his pocket, he offered a mock bow before leaving. Simon heard his footsteps as he took the creaking back staircase.

Elizabeth laughed lightly. “That was very ‘grrr.’”
 

“What sort of man stands there while—”

“It’s all right,” she said with a patient smile. “He didn’t mean anything by it.”

Simon let out a breath, knowing he needed to calm his already jangled nerves. Victor would undoubtedly be the least of their problems tonight.
 

The clothes were an awkward fit, each piece a little too large, but the effect was as he’d hoped. They both looked like they could use a good filling out and that would help them fit in with a group of people for whom a good, solid meal was a rarity.

Elizabeth set about rearranging her hair and finally turned to him in triumph. “What do you think?”

It had been transformed from an elegant bun to something that might secretly house a nest of some sort. He nodded in approval, but couldn’t keep a worried frown from his face.

“What?” she asked as she stepped closer.

He hadn’t wanted to bring this up, but as the time grew closer, he had no choice. “Are you sure you want to do this?”

She started to argue, but he continued. “I know you want to and I’m not questioning your abilities, it’s just that…”

“It’s dangerous?”

“Well, yes, but that’s never stopped you before. I have no reason think it would now.”

Elizabeth tilted her head to the side. “So what is it?”

Simon pushed out a breath. “Are you truly prepared to do what we must do tonight?”

She nodded, and waited, knowing he had more to say.

“That what we must do is…watch,” he said, and the images of the files he’d read just days ago flashed across his mind.
 

He walked to the window, but couldn’t see through the dirty glass. “We will have to stand by, quietly, while an innocent woman is savagely murdered.”

He turned back to her. “Can you do that? I’m not even sure I can.”

She swallowed and then nodded. “Yes. We have to.”

He crossed back to her. “You, who risks her neck to save every innocent creature that crosses our path? Can you stand in the shadows,
stay
in the shadows, while this man…” his voice trailed off and he cleared his throat of the bile that started to rise. “While this man brutally murders someone not twenty feet away?”

Elizabeth’s breath caught and he could see the emotion play across her face. Her eyes searched his face for the answer.

He reached out and took hold of her arms. “We’re here only to observe,” he reminded her. “To find out his identity, and keep our own a secret, if possible. At least until there’s no other choice.”

Elizabeth chewed her lower lip for a moment before looking up at him, chin out. “I can do it,” she said, but he heard the unease in her voice.
 

He had to believe her. It wasn’t as if he could just leave her behind. She’d follow, and God only knew what horrors that would lead to.

“All right,” he said, ignoring his own doubts as he tucked a finger beneath her chin, tilted her head up and kissed her.

She patted his chest. “It will be all right.”

Simon hmm’d and held out his hand. She took it and he held hers tightly, quite sure he would never let go again.

E
LIZABETH
BREATHED
THROUGH
HER
mouth, but it wasn’t helping. The cool night air did help a little, but she could only shudder to think what it must be like in the heat of summer here. It wasn’t so much the sewage in the open streets that made her feel sick, it was that people lived this way, had to live this way. That so many hovered on the razor’s edge between life and death every day.

She really had no idea what to expect. She knew this wasn’t going to be like seeing a road production of
Oliver!
But nothing could have prepared her for the squalor and hopelessness of Whitechapel.

Dilapidated tenements crammed with people lucky enough to find a bed for the night loomed darkly over the streets below where only a few gas lamps lit their way. The sky above was black, not a star to be seen. It was probably just clouds, Elizabeth told herself, but it felt like they were in some sort of netherworld where the stars never shined.

Somewhere in the distance, toward the river, she could barely make out the red glow of a fire and the faint smell of wood burning.

They passed a few prostitutes who were walking arm in arm toward them. Elizabeth strained to see their faces. Was one of them Mary Nichols, she wondered? One of the other victims? But she couldn’t see them clearly, and even if she had she wasn’t sure she’d recognize them. The autopsy photos were grainy and a little surreal. Wax works instead of people.

Elizabeth shivered and Simon tucked her arm more tightly to his side. “All right?” he whispered.

She nodded, but the feeling of dread that lodged in the pit of her stomach grew with each step they took, each second that passed and drew them closer to the murder.

Simon, his face smeared with soot, jaw set and eyes keenly scanning ahead, was as on edge as she’d ever seen him. Not that she blamed him. They were in an unfamiliar place and following an unfamiliar man.

Victor was an enigma. She wanted to trust him, but it was hard to trust someone who offered so little of himself. For now, though, they had no choice. God, she missed Jack Wells. The thought of him brought a pang of sadness and she pushed it away. She couldn’t think about that now. She had to stay focused.

She and Simon had studied maps of the area, but the reality was far from the neat grids and clearly labeled intersections the Council had provided. Whitechapel was a warren of dark streets and darker allies. Victor claimed he knew the streets well and with a Thomas Guide out of the question, they followed silently behind as he maneuvered them through the maze.
 

There were a surprising number of people still out and about, stumbling from one pub to another, leaning against doorways, lingering by an open brazier. She’d been to slums before; she’d lived on the outskirts of a few, but the poverty she’d seen there was nothing compared to this—where people owned nothing but the clothes on their backs, and each day’s earnings, if they could find work, disappeared with the cost of a sparse meal, and a shared bed.
 

 
Women like Mary Ann Nichols had only one thing of value—their bodies. At her age, in her mid-forties, and an alcoholic—she’d be lucky to get two or three pence for a trick. Enough for a stale loaf of bread or a glass of gin. As Elizabeth looked around, she understood why so many opted for the latter.

As they walked along, it seemed that nearly every other building was a bar. After another ten minutes, they arrived at a popular local pub—The Frying Pan—where, rumor had it, Mary Ann Nichols had been seen the night of her murder.
 

Situated on the corner of Brick Lane and Thrawl Street, it was in the heart of some of the worst parts of Whitechapel. Men so steeped with alcohol that it came off them in waves lingered by the front door. She wasn’t sure if they were going back in or had recently left; either way, the stoop was as far as they could make it.

Victor stepped inside and made his way to the bar. He nodded for Simon and Elizabeth to take a small table at the far end of the room. Simon grumbled to himself, but he did as Victor suggested and ushered her toward it.

With a sweep of his hand, he brushed away the crumbs that littered the rough wooden table. A woman with a stained apron and a tired, worn expression came to take their order.

“Two pints, love,” Simon said as he pushed two pennies across the table. All traces of his aristocratic accent gone, replaced by one that made him sound a bit like Michael Caine.

The waitress scooped up the coins and disappeared into the thickly packed bar.
 

“What time is it?” Elizabeth asked.

Surreptitiously, Simon took out the watch and checked. “2:30,” he said as he closed it and tucked it back into his pocket.
 

They had less than hour. She’d wanted to get to the crime scene early, but Victor had advised against it. Two constables would be passing by the entrance to Buck’s Row, where Mary Ann’s body was found, at about 3:15 a.m. They wanted to avoid them at all cost. The last thing they needed was to get hauled in by the police.
 

However, knowing that the police had passed by the spot on their rounds and seen nothing, and that Mary Ann’s body was found at 3:40, gave them a pretty good idea of the time of the attack. The plan was to leave the pub at three, allowing ten minutes to walk there. They would stay close, but not too close, and move into position just after the police and before the murder. That was, if everything went off without a hitch.

The waitress came back and put down two large beers on the table, some slopping over the rim as she did. Without thinking, Elizabeth picked hers up and took a sip. Warm and mostly disgusting. She made a face and Simon pushed his aside, choosing instead to focus his attention on the crowd.

She knew what he was thinking. Was one of these men Jack the Ripper? It sent a chill down her spine. Somewhere, maybe not here, but not far away, was one of the most notorious serial killers in history. And they were going to follow him.

Despite herself, she took another sip of beer. It wasn’t so bad that time. At least it helped her wash down her fear.

Before she knew it, she saw Victor leave his spot at the bar and head for the door. They waited a minute and then followed.

When they got outside the pub, Victor was gone. Even though it was part of the plan, it made Elizabeth uncomfortable to lose the one other person she could trust. The few men looming outside the pub, leering at her despite Simon’s presence, reinforced just how out of their element they were. But it was the plan.