Nine Buck's Row (27 page)

“Millie—she may need me.”

“Sergeant Caine will be with her. She'll be perfectly safe.”

“Nicholas, can't you tell me—”

“No, Susannah.”

He held my shoulders in that painful grip, looking into my eyes, his own full of bewildering depths. He seemed about to say something else, the corner of his mouth lifting, his brows furrowed. There was a moment of exquisite intimacy, the two of us bound in a curious empathy, and then he released me abruptly and walked away. I stood with my arms folded, those unspoken words filling my heart with sadness.

Nicholas did not come back to Nine Buck's Row that night, and he was gone all day Saturday. September twenty-ninth seemed interminable, the sky sullen, sunless, inky black clouds floating over a rippled gray expanse. There was a misty purple haze in the air, the buildings below brown, black and gray, devoid of color. An occasional rumble of thunder sounded in the distance, yet the storm held off, the atmosphere oppressive and charged with tension. I wandered restlessly about the house, waiting for his return, starting every time I heard a carriage clattering down the street. By four o'clock there was almost total darkness, the sky a deep amethyst nearly obscured by the fast-gathering clouds.

Maggie didn't open the shop. Her customary vivacity was diminished, and she seemed on edge, several times remarking that she wished Nicky were here. Maggie knew no more than I did about what was going on and failed to understand why he hadn't returned. Lamps burned dimly, but their flickering glow only served to emphasize the darkness outside, a most unusual phenomenon for this time of year. Dinner was a shambles. Mrs. Henderson had been sulking all day and the food was almost inedible. Serving it, Colleen was pale and nervous, an apprehensive look in her eyes.

Maggie retired early, closing her bedroom door behind her. The house was hushed, silent. It seemed to be holding its breath, waiting. Boards creaked, settling with a soft groan, and the wind blew quietly, tapping at window panes, swirling under the eaves with the sound of whispers. I sat in the parlor, listening to the brassy tick-tock-tick of the grandfather clock in the hall.

Colleen crept into the room on tiptoe to inquire if I wanted anything else before she went to bed. Her ragged black locks accentuated chalk-white cheeks and worried eyes. She tugged uneasily at her apron, crushing the cloth in twisted wads.

“Thank you, Colleen,” I said. “I won't need anything else. You go on to bed.”

“I checked all the doors and windows,” she said. “Made sure they were locked good 'n proper.”

“There's no need to be alarmed, Colleen. Nothing's going to happen.”

“Oh, Miss Suzy, I have a
feelin
'—”

“Nonsense.”

“After what 'appened last night, I do so wish Mister Nicky was here. I'd feel much better if there was a man about.”

“He'll probably be back soon, and besides, Mister Lord is up in his studio.”

“But, miss, 'e
isn't
. I went up to do 'is room and 'e was gone. 'E 'asn't come back neither.”

“Just the same—”

“I won't sleep a wink tonight. I just
know
it.”

She shuddered dramatically and tiptoed back out of the room. I tried to laugh at her fears—the girl was imaginative and thrived on drama—but I couldn't. I was far more nervous than I let on, and it alarmed me to know that Daniel Lord was gone and we were alone in the house. I refused to give in to my nerves. Gathering Scrappy in my arms, I decided to take him out for a final time before going to bed myself.

Scrappy struggled as I unlocked the back door and stepped quietly out into the courtyard. He mewed unhappily as I set him down, staying close to my feet, refusing to venture out into the fog-filled void.

“Go on, you silly kitten,” I said.

Scrappy refused to budge. Wind stirred the fog, tearing it, lifting it up over the damp gray flagstones, revealing sections of the back fence and the gate opening onto the alley. I had the curious sensation that someone was watching me. It was absurd, of course, yet I could almost feel a pair of eyes staring. Nerves, I told myself, bending down to urge Scrappy on out into the yard.

Something moved in the alley. There was a soft rattle as though someone had rubbed against one of the trash bins. I saw Scrappy arch his back. He hissed, leaping into my arms, trembling. I stood on the back step, too frightened to move. Fog curled, billowed, and I watched the back gate in horrified fascination. A shadow moved behind it, hovered, vanished. The wind whispered, but there was no other sound. Minutes passed, each one stretching out interminably as I strained, listening.

I stepped back inside and closed the door, jamming the bolt home. My nerves were in a frightful state, almost as bad as Colleen's. There had been nothing amiss, yet I was relieved to have a locked door between me and the courtyard. I hurried down the hall, back into the lighted rooms, trying to put the incident out of my mind.

It was after ten o'clock. I turned off the lamps in the parlor and decided to leave the one in the hall burning. Nicholas might come back, and I didn't want the house in total darkness. I went upstairs to my room and prepared for bed. Scrappy snuggled on top of the counterpane while I brushed my hair. Later, the lamp off, I stepped to the window in my petticoat, peering out into the courtyard. Looking down on it, the fog was thin and wispy, floating smokelike. The back fence was dark tarnished silver, stained black with shadows, and the alley was a pit of darkness, dense and impenetrable.

Leaving the window, I climbed into bed, but I couldn't go to sleep. I found myself straining, listening to night noises, imagining noises that weren't there. Scrappy was a warm, soft ball of fur at my side, purring quietly in his sleep. An hour passed, perhaps two, and I was still staring at the ceiling and watching flecks of moonlight on the plaster. Somewhere a bell tolled, one single bong that reverberated in the still night. It was Sunday morning now, September thirtieth … my eyelids grew heavy.

He was out there. Somewhere, gliding through the fog, melting into the shadows of a tall brown wall, he was watching, waiting for his prey. The deerstalker was pulled low. The heavy cloak swathed his shoulders and fell in dark folds. Footsteps, light, tripping footsteps tottered along the pavement in a tipsy gait. The knife glittered as he withdrew it, long and razor-sharp, and he was leaning against the wall, panting, listening to the footsteps and watching her lurch out of the fog, a tattered feather boa around her shoulders, a bulging, beaded reticule dangling at her wrist and slapping against her thigh. He moved with supple grace, gliding, and the knife flashed, catching the light of the street lamp, and she gave one shrill, terrified scream … but the scream was my own.

I was sitting up in bed, my heart pounding rapidly. A nightmare. Another nightmare. Had I screamed aloud? Had Maggie heard me? I listened, but there were no footsteps hurrying across the sitting room. I had dreamed the scream, too, yet it had been so real that my throat felt sore.

There was no question of sleep now. I knew it would be impossible. I lay in bed, thinking, trying to understand what had been going on. Why was Nicholas being so secretive? He was involved. Some way or other he was involved with these dreadful murders. What had he and Jamie and Millie been discussing Friday night in the parlor? They didn't intend to inform the authorities of the attack, of that I was certain. Nicholas said he was going to see Sir Reginald Belmount. Why? Why Sir Reginald? And … and why had Millie been attacked? It was almost as if he had
known
she would be passing by that doorway and was waiting for her. How could he have known? I remembered the sudden apprehension I had felt Friday afternoon, how unnerved I had been when I saw the storage room door swing open … but surely that had nothing to do with it. How could there possibly be any connection?

It was three o'clock in the morning. The house was still. The wind had died down. My mind was occupied with a gigantic jigsaw puzzle. The pieces were all there: Marietta, the bracelet, Sir Charles Warren, Nicholas, Nine Buck's Row, Daniel Lord, Sir Reginald Belmount, Millie in her red dress. They all fit together, somehow, into one clear picture, and I was a part of it, but try though I might I couldn't put them together. One piece was missing after all. No, not missing, misplaced. Something I had seen, something I had heard, something that would fill the gap and answer all my questions.

If only I could remember.

Dawn was breaking when I finally slept. When I awoke it was after ten Sunday morning and the streets of London were already ringing with cries of horror over the grotesque double murder Jack The Ripper had committed during the night.

17

Louis Diemschutz made a rather precarious living selling cheap trinkets and gaudy jewelry. Traveling about in his pony cart, he would select a promising site, stop the cart and let down the sides to display his shelves of shoddy merchandise, hawking them lustily. Saturday night he had stationed himself in front of the Crystal Palace in Camberwell, hoping customers of that pleasure dome would show some interest in his imitation ruby earrings, emerald brooches and handcarved music boxes, but they were far too eager to see the magic lantern show inside to pay any heed to the little Jewish man with his woeful eyes and pitifully gaudy junk. Near midnight, after a pathetically unsuccessful pitch, he folded up the sides of his cart and headed for the East End, his destination the International Workmen's Educational Club, a convivial haven for Jews like himself.

The club was located in a closed-in courtyard on Berner Street, just off Commercial Road. Despite the late hour, the tall wooden gates to the court were still open, and Diemschutz urged his pony to pass through them. The courtyard was foul-smelling and dark but for the windows of the club which occupied one side. Members inside were singing loudly, the jovial sound spilling out into the fog-infested darkness. Diemschutz sighed, clicking the reins, and all at once his pony shied with such violence that he was almost thrown from the cart. Getting out to investigate, he struck a match and in the fizzing yellow light he discovered the body of Elizabeth Stride. It was still warm. Her fur trimmed black sateen dress was ripped to shreds, and one thin hand clutched a bunch of grapes. Blood was still pouring onto the flagstones as the match scorched Diemschutz's finger and he let out a terrified yell that brought his compatriots rushing outside.

An hour prior to this grisly discovery, the Bishopsgate Police Station off Commercial Street was filled with clanging, merry noise, the cause of it one Catherine Eddowes, a good-natured boisterous type who had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. Singing a robust ditty, banging on the bars of her cell, she succeeded in wearing down the patience of her jailer, a nervous man whose head was splitting from all this raucous noise. He reprimanded her severely, and Catherine winked coyly, employing her most persuasive voice.

“Come on, ducks, give a lass a break,” she pleaded. “Let me outta here, eh?”

As most of the gin shops were already closed and it was too late for her to get anything else to drink, the jailer agreed, and she was soon on her way, tripping down Commercial Street in a pair of high-heeled boots, wearing a dark green dress printed with Michaelmas daisies and gold lilies, a fur-trimmed jacket and a black straw hat draped with black and green velvet. Maggie had made the hat and sold it to Catherine not two weeks before. She might be down and out, but Catherine loved fancy hats and always paid for them in cash.

Although Mitre Square was dark and dingy, lined on two sides with the warehouses of a firm of tea importers, it was a perfect shortcut for pedestrians to and from Bishopsgate, and as it was patrolled every fifteen minutes by a bobby they felt relatively safe in using it, despite the abominable things that had been happening in the East End. Police Constable Edward Watkins passed through Mitre Square at 1:30, swinging his bull's-eye lantern and suspiciously eyeing the half dozen pedestrians he passed. Nothing was amiss, just a few drunken Saturday night revelers on their way home. Fifteen minutes later, making another round, he almost stumbled over the corpse of Catherine Eddowes stretched out on the ground in a pool of blood. Her palms were raised as though in supplication. Her body was grotesquely mutilated. Part of her right ear was missing.

Before the day was half over, these and other details of the terrifying crimes were known to every man, woman, and child in the city. Berner Street and Mitre Square were jammed with sensation-seekers, mothers holding their babies aloft so that they might see the bloodstains, tradesmen setting up stalls, vast crowds jeering at the police for their inefficiency. Rumors spread like brush fires, burning briskly; every scrap of information, however trivial, fanned into roaring flames. People talked of nothing else. We at Nine Buck's Row were no exception.

Maggie was prostrate, wretchedly upset by the death of “that poor unfortunate creature” who had been one of her best customers, “friendly as a puppy and quicker with the ready cash than many a grand lady I could name.” Colleen babbled excitedly over each new scrap of information, pointing out that she had had a
feelin
' Saturday night and quite proud of her clairvoyant powers. Iron gray hair in a tight bun, dark eyes glittering, Mrs. Henderson volubly expressed her theories. What tenuous class distinctions that may have existed at number nine were completely forgotten, and the four of us stayed close together. Nicholas did not return. He was gone all Sunday night as well.

On Monday the newspapers worked double time, putting out extra after extra to satisfy the demands of the voraciously curious public. Crowds stood in the streets, eagerly waiting for the newsboys to arrive with the still-damp news sheets, and I was as shameless as anyone else, some perverse demon driving me to dash out with penny in hand every time a new item was issued. Sensitivity was forgotten. It seemed imperative that I learn as much as possible. The newspapers provided full accounts of the murders, told of police activity during that endless Saturday night and went on to make wild speculations.