Ripped (5 page)

“On the very day that the Lord Mayor's procession wound through the City of London on its way to the Law Courts in the Strand, Jack the Ripper struck for the last and deadliest time at number thirteen Miller's Court, a lodging house on Dorset Street, shaded beneath the steeple of Christ Church.”

In the distance, Katie heard the sound of bloodhounds barking.

“As the Lord Mayor's carriage approached Fleet Street from St. Paul's, Lady Beatrix Twyford, the only victim hailing from the ranks of the peerage, died an excruciatingly torturous . . .”

Katie had stopped listening.

She turned and ran.

And even when spasms of pain traveled up her legs, she didn't stop sprinting until she crashed through a pair of swinging exit doors into a solarium, lit by sunshine and fluorescent lights, where dozens of people stood milling about in front of a souvenir shop showcasing a glistening array of Jack the Ripper memorabilia: guidebooks, puzzles, tiny wax dolls, china figurines, glittering ornaments, and trinkets of all kinds paying homage to the most famous murderer in the annals of British history.

Katie gave a silent prayer of thanks that she was out of the ghoulish Chamber of Horrors and in the bright sanity of this outer room where people were murmuring kudos for the “spot-on” Jack the Ripper exhibit.

In the next twenty-four hours, Katie would vehemently regret her hasty retreat. Had she known what was about to happen, she would have paid infinitely closer attention to even the most minute details involving the murders.

Chapter Four

Halfpence and Farthings say the Bells of St. Martin's

T
h
e sensation of having risen
from the black depths of weirdness into the bright light of sanity rushed over Katie with such relief she felt unsteady on her feet. Nothing in this sunlit solarium could hurt her. No death, no squirting fake blood, nothing macabre or ghoulish.

A tangy nip of peppermint swept past Katie as a young girl wearing high-heeled combat boots and earrings the size of Hula-Hoops pushed past in a rush to get to the souvenir shop. And as the girl scooted across the threshold, a tinkling of bells rang out.

The store, with its carved wooden sign, “The Old Curiosity Shop” was right out of Dickens.

“
Katie
!”
boomed a familiar voice from behind her. “
Where the bleedin
'
hell
'
ave you been?
What
happened
to you?”

Katie swiveled round just in time to see Toby come charging through the exit doors.

He strode toward her, his duster coat rippling out behind him like a vampire's cape. “You gave us a right good scare!” he chided. “One minute you were with us and the next,
poof!
Gone. Collin's in there running around like a chicken with its 'ead cut off looking for you.”

Toby's eyes weren't hard or mocking, but quizzical, as they swept over her face. “Dunno how you got past me, Katie. I really don't. I was ahead of you the whole time.”

Katie managed a weak smile. “I sort of . . . had enough . . . of all that . . . death.” But when she caught the glint of sympathy in his eyes, she took a deep breath and countered more assertively: “The whole scene was, like,
totally
getting on my nerves, dude.” But she couldn't keep the quaver out of her voice.

“Can't say's I blame you. Bleedin' harsh in there, 'specially that last bit where the twist 'n' swirl's uterus was ripped out and mailed to the police.” He fixed her with another long stare.
“
Hold on!
Steady
!”
He put a hand gently on her shoulder.

Katie glanced down. Her hands were shaking, and she could feel her teeth begin to chatter, though it wasn't cold. Just the opposite. It felt like a furnace in here.
What was it about that last victim that had bothered her
. . . other than the fact that the girl had been butchered? Something about —
But Katie couldn't grasp whatever it was.

“Let's go, luv,” Toby urged. “You could use a hot cuppa. There's a god-awful tea shop 'round about here somewhere with soupy little biscuits, but it'll do the trick.”

Taking her lightly by the elbow, he steered Katie past The Old Curiosity Shop, navigating a wide swath around the still-thrumming tambourine doors, toward a bank of stainless-steel elevators gleaming in the distance like a row of side-by-side refrigerators.

Moving in the direction of the elevators, up a small set of stairs, they came to an arched doorway bracketed on either side by candelabras with a dozen fake candle stubs resting in electric sockets. Toby motioned to the archway.

“That's the last of the Ripper exhibition, in there. A rogues' gallery of possible suspects. We'll skip it.” He nudged her forward.

“You mean there's
more?
” Katie gasped. Dull light from the fake candle stubs turned the ivory of Toby's shirt beneath his duster coat a dingy grey.

Katie shuddered. The last thing she wanted to do was to see more waxwork images of death and dying. Her face must have shown what she felt, because Toby repeated, “It's just a summing up, with clues to who the Ripper was. We'll steer clear of it.” He winked. “Promise.”

Ahead of them, skirting the right-hand wall, stood a Victorian-style bench with wrought-iron armrests. Katie broke free and made a beeline for it. Plunking herself down on the narrow wooden seat, she squeezed her eyes shut and felt the
thump-thud
of her heartbeat crashing against her ribcage. An instant later she could hear her own little dry gasps of breathing, but was helpless to do anything about it.
What
'
s wrong with me?

“Going to be sick, then?” Toby asked bluntly. When he sank down next to her, his duster coat billowed out, then settled with a rippling-ribbon effect across his splayed knees.

Katie folded her arms over her chest and pressed hard trying to stop the shivering. Toby, unlike Collin, seemed gifted with infinite patience. Katie could barely hear his low voice with its quirky Cockney accent: “
No rush, luv. We
'
ve got all the time in the bleedin
'
world
.”

With his head thrown back, and his heavy-lidded eyes half-closed, Toby actually appeared to be savoring the musty, mothball-scented museum air. Katie stared past his shoulder to the arched entrance of the last Ripper exhibit, and watched as the fake candle flames flickered against the far wall. In the fragmented half-light, from the corner of her eye, she could see the outline of Toby's strong face with its square jaw and cliffhanger cheekbones.

Minutes later, like a runner breaking an easy stride, Toby ended the silence. “Look, Katie,” he said, making an exaggerated gesture as if striking a match and lighting an invisible cigarette, “for what it's bloody worth, I know what you're going through.” He blew imaginary smoke rings at the ceiling.

“
You don
'
t know
!”
Trembling shook her words as Katie clenched and unclenched her fists. She hated when people told her they knew just how she felt.
Nobody knows
. “You can't possibly know what it's like to lose both parents in a nanosecond. To have a family one day, and none the next . . .” Why was she telling him this? Katie never talked about her parents.

She pounded the bench slowly with her fists and exhaled in a ragged, shuddering way as if Toby's nonexistent smoke rings had penetrated deep into her lungs. She didn't really mind the uncontrollable shivering, as familiar as rain since her parents' car accident. What Katie hated were the platitudes, those empty, shallow words of pity masquerading as sympathy. “Time heals all wounds,” or “This too shall pass,” or, worst of all, “I know what you're going through.”

No one can feel someone else
'
s pain
, Katie thought.
At least not deep down inside where it counts
.

Closing her eyes again, Katie concentrated on the voices all around her—
human voices
—of museum patrons and the sound of their clumping footsteps as they scurried in and out of the archway to the Ripper finale. But such was the trick of echoes in the surrounding hallway that the noises seemed to bounce off the walls and echo softly in her ears from a spot just behind her.

“I
do
know what you're going through,” Toby said evenly. “I lost m'dad last year, right about this time. He fell off a frickin' scaffolding, painting a house. Still have me mum, though. She makes lace for a fancy dressmaker. So you're right, I don't know what it's like to lose both—”

Katie's eyes flew open. “Have you ever snorkeled?”

He raised a dark eyebrow. “You mean with fins and a mask?” He shook his head.

She stared past him and said, “My sister and I used to snorkel on Cape Cod, and there was this one time we dove under the water and stayed down too long . . . and I felt . . . a weird . . . sort of . . . panic . . . that I wouldn't . . . make it to the surface.
That
'
s what it feels like!
As if I'm swimming upward toward the blue sky and fresh air, but I'm not going to make it.”

“You'll make it.”

“What if I don't?”

“Rubbish,” he answered heavily, with a faint inflection that even to think such a thing was daft. “After my old man died, I thought I wouldn't mind being brown bread, too. Took stupid risks . . .” His gaze slid to the floor. “Still do. It's not easy, Katie. You can't bring 'em back.” He snuffed out the imaginary cigarette on the seat between them.

“I never told this to anyone, but when m'dad died I came here . . .” A strange smile twisted his lips. “Well, not here, but the Victoria and Albert, where the London Stone was on display at the time. I thought—”

Katie gasped and drew back. An odd chill surged up her spine. It was as if Toby could read her thoughts. He met her startled gaze and shot up off the bench.

“Cor, Katie! Not you, too!” He blinked down at her and began to pace. “You're not here for the Ripper exhibit: You're here because of the bleedin' London Stone! Ah, Katie.” He shook his head, his voice compassionate but disapproving. “And I thought
I
was the only one with a bleedin' screw loose.” Then more kindly, “You can't bring 'em back, Katie, no matter what the legend of the Stone says.”

“I'm not trying to bring them back! I just want to make it better. Easier. That's all I'm asking. I just want things to be semi-normal again.” What Katie didn't say was that she didn't want to be split down the middle, with most of her life in London with Grandma Cleaves and only summer vacation with her sister in LA. “I know I can't undo the past, but I want the future to be different. I want my sister and my grandmother to get along. I want us to be a family again.”

But if Katie were being honest with herself, she would have admitted that Toby was right. She
did
want to undo the past. Rewrite history.
I never got to say good-bye to my parents!

Katie pushed herself up off the bench and a little away from Toby.

A moment later Collin stuck his head out of the arched door across the way. Flickering light from the fake candles in the candelabras on either side of the entrance made Collin's red hair look sickly orange, like tomato soup gone bad, and brought his freckles, straining against the pale skin across his animated face, into high relief.

Collin's eyes fixed on Katie from under their red brows, then turned to Toby with a sort of eager pounce as he loped across the tiled floor toward them.

“You're missing
everything
!
” he crowed excitedly, grabbing Katie's arm. “This last bit of the exhibit is fantastic! The best. Come on! You've
got
to see this! I think I've figured out who Jack the Ripper was!”

“Right,” Toby laughed. “That'd be a good Turkish bath, mate. You and ten thousand others before you have tried . . . and failed.”

Collin's fingers tightened around Katie's arm. The wide grin eased off his face and was replaced by a frown. “Bet ya ten quid.”

“No way to know for sure, mate. So you can keep your speckled hen squid.”

Katie, holding back a smile, wriggled her arm free. “Speckled hen” must mean ten; “squid” was quid. And she was pretty sure that “Turkish bath” meant laugh. She liked the sound of Toby's Cockney voice and was getting used to his rhyming slang.

Collin looked slightly hurt, or maybe angry. His eyes narrowed and then flashed at her. She had expected her cousin to say, “
Dammit, where have you been?
” when he finally found her, but Collin was too wrapped up in trying to figure out Jack the Ripper's identity to give a thought to where Katie had wandered off to, or why.

“Okay. It's like this—” Collin said rapidly, moving his hand back and forth as if brushing away an annoying fly. “I know
you
already know all this,” he said to Toby. “But it's new to me.” He swiveled his eyes back to Katie.
You take a stab at it, Miss Smarty Pants
, his voice implied. “Here's the problem, or puzzle, as they refer to it in there. From September of 1888 to December of that same year, when Jack the Ripper was murdering girls, no one,
absolutely no one
, was out walking the streets of London at night. The police were on every corner of Whitechapel. The pubs were deserted. Only those who
had
to make their living at night, or ply their trade, dared go out at night. Police were giving free escorts to those who had to walk home alone. And everyone,
especially girls
, were being told to walk in pairs, day or night, for protection. Therefore, the Ripper had to be someone people trusted or at least were used to seeing on the street. I think Jack the Ripper was a policeman! Had to be. Stands to reason.”

“That's one theory.” Toby nodded, amusement sparking his dark eyes. “Another is that good ol' Jack was a woman. Victorians refused to believe that Jack the Ripper could possibly be a twist 'n' swirl due to the old-fashioned notion that the weaker sex was incapable of brutal violence”—he winked at Katie—“so the supposition that
he
was a
she
is a much later theory. But Jill the Ripper might have been a midwife, due to his or her intimate knowledge of evisceration.”