Shadows Fall Away (16 page)

Mark

I sat in the Ten Bells Pub, and let the general noise and buzz of conversation fade into the background while I told myself this was the best way to get a feel for 1888, and a way to scope out the Ripper.

Of course it was all bull.

Even though my place above the tea shop was more comfortable than many the people of Whitechapel called home, I’d come to the same conclusion as most of those around me: sitting in a lively pub in the evening was far better than being in an empty, lonely room.

I dressed in second-hand workman’s clothes I’d bought for working at Gurov’s print shop, but I still felt out of place because it was pretty obvious I’d washed up after work before coming here.

One of the local hookers approached, eyeing me up and down with a jeweler’s precision. Plain looking and maybe twice my age, her hair needed washing and her wrinkly dress sported lots of little patches and stains I didn’t want to know the origin of. A line from my mom’
s Ripper book came to me:
“The utter futility of it all was endless. They needed the drink to make what they did for a living tolerable; but drank away the money quicker than they could save it, perpetuating the cycle.”

“Ooooh, luv,” the hooker cooed, pulling me from memories of home. “You feelin’ lonely? Ya think Sally could cheer ya up?”

I was about to send her away when I realized that, even though I knew the names of all the victims, I didn’t know what they really looked like. There were tons of women working the streets, some regularly, some only when they had to, and I couldn’t remember which victim fell to which group. It was only ten o’clock, probably too early for the Ripper’s future victims to be out and about, since they’d been killed well after midnight.

I smiled. “Well, Sally, sit down and we’ll get yer another drink.”

The barmaid arrived with Sally’s drink before I even had a chance to order it. She stood by the table, looking like the Angel of Doom with the drink held just out of reach until I produced the necessary cash. Then she was all smiles.

Sally slid close to me, her hand on my leg. I flinched but managed to smile. “We’re drinking the last of my cash.”

She slid back, clutching her drink.

I tried to look disappointed. “I bought you that. Can’t you sit and keep me company till it’s gone?

“Just sit?”

“And talk.”

She shrugged, her eyes already scanning the room for another likely prospect.

“Actually,” I said, “I’m tryin’ to find somebody, Polly Nichols. You know her?”

Sally’s eyes drew themselves into dark slits and she stood, keeping a firm hold on her drink. “Don’t know ‘er,” she sniffed, then turned and stalked off.

I didn’t have any better luck in the next pub, or the next. The response was frosty and even suspicious. I wasn’t sure whether it was the murder that put everyone on edge or whether they’d figured me for a cop or just random outsider trying to get up in their business.

On my fourth try, the woman shrugged and said she might know Polly, but probably not.

Outside, the narrow sidewalk was getting crowded with men and women negotiating for the evening’s entertainment. I pushed through knots people arguing and skirted numerous shoving matches between drunken women squabbling over the same customer.

Maybe I did need a better line, something about a friend having recommended Polly. The stupidity of that hit me pretty quick. I might as well just say, “Sorry, I don’t want your ugly ass, I want this other woman.”

I
stopped walking at a corner on Whitechapel High Street and took in the whole scene of horse-drawn cabs and pedestrian traffic, of the pubs spilling their yellow light into the streets as their customers flowed in and out in various stages of drunkenness. Men wiped out from hard work wandered past a few better-dressed West Enders down for an evening of “slumming.” The Victorian equivalent of gang kids swaggered down the street—both drunk and sober—making dirty comments to all the women, the nastiest directed toward the respectable-looking ones.

Somehow, in the midst of this circus, I thought I could identify five semi-homeless women and their killer. And not make myself a suspect in the process.

Good luck with that, bro.

***

I ended up wasting three more evenings trying to locate any of Jack the Ripper’s victims. I wished, for the hundredth time, that I’d had paid more attention to my mom blabbing about her cool research finds or the gab sessions between Aunt Agatha and her old homies from the Ripper convention. But I hadn’t done any of those things and now all I could do was follow gut instinct.

I wandered the stinking, narrow alleys. I cruised down the main roads and pubs, hoping to catch a name in the quick exchanges outside the bars.

A constable from Ian’s station gave me a quick greeting. I was already recognized by a bunch of cops and I wasn’t quite sure if that was a good thing or a bad thing.

I noticed their rounds were mostly predictable, something the Ripper might have noticed as well.

A group of sailors passed. Their accents had a Jersey Shore vibe to them so I guessed they were from around New York with at least one New Englander in the bunch. I trailed them to the Britannia pub where they loudly demanded drinks.

I barged in on their party like a long-lost brother. “Thank God! Other Americans! I can’t tell you how good it is to hear real Americans talking!”

With little hesitation, they welcomed me in, found me a seat at their table, and made introductions all around.

The topic of conversation quickly turned to local entertainment. The guy nearest me swung his arm around the room in an expansive gesture.

“There’s no better to be got than right here,” he said with a knowing wink. “This’ll be my fourth time to England, so take it from me, sonny boy, I know.”

Others chimed in with lots of locker-room talk about girls in various ports. When they settled down a bit, I broke in. “How about finding someone particular? I hear a Polly is one of the best.”

“They’re all the same under the skirts so who cares if it’s a Polly, Dolly, or Mary Sue?”

They guys laughed; the nearest one jabbed me with his elbow and told me I’d ‘learn all there was soon enough’. Obviously, the long-shot approach to finding Nichols wasn’t going to work.

I hung around long enough to be sociable before removing myself from my new-found bros. I was getting nowhere but broke and doing that far too quickly. There wasn’t much to do now except call it a night.

***

At two o’clock the next day, a coachman came to me at the print shop with a note inviting me to tea with Sir Cedric Hawkesmythe, the mad inventor. I doubted Gurov would let me skip out for a bit but when I told him who the invitation was from he was all smiles. “My best subscriber. Paid a year in advance.”

As I watched the city pass from the comfort of Sir Cedric’s carriage, I told that hopeful little voice in my head that Hawkesmythe’s time machine would never work. After all, no one had invented a time machine by my year, so what chance did an old geezer in 1888 have?

My “slip” was due to who the hell knew what. It certainly wasn’t planned and probably couldn’t be controlled or ever replicated.

But then anything is possible, right?
a
little hopeful voice chimed in.

Cedric
Hawkesmythe
’s home was a stylish house in Kensington. From the outside, the white façade had a refined elegance that predicted the classiness of the interior. It was almost indistinguishable from the other houses that lined the quiet street except for the faint odor of noxious chemicals that wafted around the doorstep.

A uniformed servant welcomed me, took my hat, and escorted me directly into the dark-paneled library. At least he said Sir Cedric was waiting in the library.

Library was not the word I’d use to describe the room. Coils of wires littered the floor and on a large mahogany table, great globes of metal were scattered around like a giant baby’s toys, odd bits of machinery and pieces of chemistry lab apparatus were set up across shelves, table and floor. Books were piled on the floor and chairs while, overtop it all, scribbled sheets of paper lay like a blanket of melting snow.

In the middle stood Sir Cedric, looking gentlemanly in a burgundy smoking jacket. He reminded me a lot of Aunt Agatha’s friend Percy.

He beamed, thrusting his hand in front of himself as he plunged across the room to greet me. “So good of you to come. Please, sit down.” He stopped, eyes darting around for an uncluttered place to sit. “Yes.” He pursed his lips. “Well.” Then he brightened.

“Wallace!” he called into the hall. “Bring some chairs with the tea, won’t you?”

The immediate problem dealt with, Sir Cedric returned his attention to me.

“I have had the most remarkable thoughts since our chat after the reception. I was quite impressed with your observation about crystals. Crystals do of course vibrate and time itself is nothing more than the
result
of the natural vibrations of the Cosmos. Surely these vibrations are the source of time. They must cause ripples, which carry us forward, just like the ripples on a pond carry bits of flotsam to the shore. Now, if one disrupted the ripples on a localized basis and then controlled the size and direction of the ripples, one could ride the time ripples to wherever—or should I say
when
ever—one wants!” He paused for breath. But only briefly. “Most remarkable!” he said. “Most enlightening!”

Not knowing what else to do, I nodded. “Glad I could help,” I said.

“This fits so neatly with my theories,” Sir Cedric continued. “Of course Nature would provide us with the key to understanding its hidden powers. Despite Man’s genius, Nature is still the greatest inventor of all.”

The butler arrived with a tea cart on which two straight-backed chairs were perched above the biscuit tray. He arranged the chairs around the cart then retired gracefully, as if delivering bits of furniture with snacks was a common occurrence. Of course here it probably was.

Sir Cedric continued as he handed me a cup of tea and a plate with little cakes and tiny sandwiches. “The next problem is the inner sphere. Come see the progress I’ve made.”

He led me to the far end of the library where a series of half-spheres lay partially assembled. They were covered with a crocheted ball of wires in which small crystals had been placed at intervals.

“Here are the new spheres I’ve developed based on your observations. They will be nested inside each other, each rotating on an independent axis within the others. Brass for the outer one, since it’s the densest and will serve to contain and focus the vibrational flux. Then copper, because of its conductive powers. But I’m stumped on the third, innermost sphere. I had considered silver, gold, and even platinum but they all seem wrong.”

I put down the tea and looked closely at the pile of parts in amazement as well as amusement. Compared to the mysteries of printed circuits and micro-technology I’d left behind, these were large, beautifully crafted, and would make any steampunk fan drool.

I noticed Sir Cedric’s hopeful gaze.

“Um…” I paused to take a sip of tea because I didn’t know what he expected me to say. But it was obvious he expected something that would get his brain in gear again. “Have you considered aluminum?” I used the ever-popular alphabetical method of deduction.

Sir Cedric stared a as if trying to decipher the comment then his eyes grew wide. “You mean
alu-mini-um
. Brilliant! Absolutely smashing! Aluminum! The most abundant of Earth’s metals and the most difficult to extract from its component ores. Yes! That is exactly the sort of puzzle Nature would set for us! And fortuitously, the French and Americans have both discovered an effective means of production.”

The aristocrat inventor danced around his contraption in delight, clapping his hands like a kid excited to get the latest popular toy. “Now, the final question: how to regulate the machine? I considered a clockwork mechanism but a pendulum is far too cumbersome.”

If we were going to be in steampunk land I figured I might as well play along. I pulled out the pocket watch Aunt Agatha gave me for the costume party. “What about something smaller like a pocket watch?”

Sir Cedric took the watch from me and peered at it intently, as if he had never seen one before. “Yes, brilliant! Smashing.” His eyes glazed over and he wandered the library. He stopped suddenly and hit me with a penetrating glance, full of hidden meaning. He smiled, as if I understood his delight. “This is it
exactly
! Oh thinking works up my appetite. Come, let’s finish our tea.”

By the time the tea and snacks were gone Sir Cedric was lost in one of his tangents but I was no closer to believing he had anything that could actually work. I doubted that it would get me where I wanted to be even if it did more than light up and buzz. More than likely this would just be a piece of steampunkish fantasy that’d end up gathering dust in the basement or attic. Maybe sell for a crap-ton of cash on eBay someday.

***

Paying Mrs. O’Connell the weekly rent gave a whole new meaning to my nagging feeling of desperation. Gurov told me my new opinion piece for the paper was “utter crap.” I had no idea what to write that hadn’t already been said. I wanted to go home.

I sat in the tea shop, watching the traffic on the street and savoring the last crumbs of one of Mrs. O’Connell’s sweet rolls while trying not to feel depressed. “So what do you do, Mrs. O’Connell, when everything seems hopeless?”

She fixed me with a stern gaze and planted her fists on her hips. “You do what needs doin’ is what. Anything else is feelin’ sorry for yerself and that’s the Devil’s work, it is.”

What “needed doing” exactly? Going home was number one on my list but I didn’t have a clue on how to do that. Catching the Ripper might be the ticket but I needed to identify the victims first so I could follow them. And that was next to impossible when all I had to go on was half remembered grainy images of ancient autopsy photos and old newspaper sketches.