A Study in Darkness (63 page)

But before she could form another thought, Nick had his shirt off, and all else crashed to nothingness.
Oh, dear God
, she thought, not sure if it was thanks or a plea for strength. Her mouth went utterly dry. He looked fit with his clothes on—without them, she could see every curve and shadow of muscle. Nick knelt on the bed, bending over her for another kiss.

The heat inside her went from a slow burn to a conflagration. Hunger of another kind—the appetite of a woman for a man—ripped through her, leaving an urgent yearning behind. She surged to her knees, wanting a better angle, more of his mouth, his tongue, of the bond he was offering her. She knew him, deep in her bones, further still into the core of her soul. All the poetry he would never say in words, he’d say with his body. And right now he was telling her a thousand things with his lips and hands.

The silver fire deepened even more, drawing the devas so close the lights covered their bodies like a cloak of stars. And then she felt their power soaking into her, healing the last shadows of hurt from her flesh. She could feel their giddy, drunken glee and it spun into her own, driving her even tighter into Nick’s embrace as they fell back onto the bed, laughing.

But the alchemy of desire suddenly turned that laughter to something more predatory. Nick’s power surged to the fore, lithe and sharp as a rapier. And yet he gentled it to a velvet touch, like a cat with its claws drawn in. Evelina felt it pressing against her own, urging, nudging, wanting that moment of mastery but waiting for her invitation. She lay back, her arms open to him, willing and wanting to surrender. And as he came to her, his magic washed through hers, mixing like the border of the river and sea, binding two disparate kingdoms with links that could never be broken apart.

And then she realized why the devas weren’t tearing the room to shreds.
This
is what they had wanted all along. This
was the wholeness that the fear and fire and engines of the barons had nearly scorched from the world.

And under that cloak of many-colored lights, Nick continued his tradition of introducing Evie Cooper to new and marvelous things.

“I wonder what our happy letter writer will send this time,” Inspector Abberline muttered to Holmes as they arrived at Dorset Street about a half hour before lunch. The murder of Catherine Eddowes in Mitre Square had prompted a missive addressed “From Hell.” Apparently Hell used earthly modes of delivery, for the postmark was October 15. A kidney had accompanied it, presumably that of the unfortunate Eddowes, who had been missing one of hers. Some believed it was truly hers, a few suspected medical students playing a prank.

“I had rather hoped he’d gone to the Antipodes,” Abberline added. “But the Ripper is back. And by the by, speaking of unpleasant returns, the Gold King was at my door again yesterday, wanting to know about your niece. He thinks she returned to you and you’re hiding her somewhere. He had the Devonshire constabulary turn over your mother’s house yesterday.”

“The devil he did!”

Abberline gave him a narrow look. “He says he feels responsible since she vanished after leaving his country house. But does that October date mean anything to you, Mr. Holmes?”

Frustration gnawed at Holmes. “Trust me, if I knew where Evelina was, I would know what it was to sleep again.” He’d worked around the difficulty of Keating’s watchdogs by having Lestrade’s men ferry him to the East End once a day and either searching alongside the police or carrying on his own investigation from there. He’d found where she’d been living and where Magnus had been, but both had vanished. “There is a madman running amok. I just want her home.”

“I know that, Mr. Holmes, but be aware that the longer Keating talks, the more others are listening.”

“He’s going to ruin me by casting suspicion my way for the disappearance of my own niece?” Holmes asked incredulously.

Abberline shrugged. “I’d find her if I were you.”

“Don’t insult me.” Holmes looked out the window, confronted by a sudden urge to strike the man.

“I’m not. I don’t like Keating in my business, and he shouldn’t be in yours.”

Holmes glanced at Abberline, suddenly faced with the uncomfortable feeling that the man pitied him.

The latest victim lived in a place called Miller’s Court, which was a clutch of single-room rentals that led off Dorset. The passageway to get to them was less than three feet wide and twenty-six feet long. The court itself was an odd wedge shape framed by outdoor privies at one end and a communal garbage bin at the other. Six connected cottages, three to either side of the court, made up the living spaces. Each cottage had two tenants, one up and one down. The deceased—another prostitute—lived at number thirteen, on the ground floor. Her name, Holmes soon learned, was Mary Jane Kelly.

“A bit riskier, don’t you think?” one of the constables said as he looked around the court. “Lots of ways someone could see a bloke coming or going.”

And yet, no one had. No one ever did. All through the case, there had been witness statements, theories, sketches, and arrests, but nothing that felt right or, for that matter, stuck. “How was this one discovered?” asked Holmes.

“At ten forty-five this morning, McCarthy, the landlord, knocked on the door,” Abberline replied. “When he got no answer, he reached through the broken windowpane and lifted the curtain. That’s when he discovered the body. Apparently there’s quite a mess.”

“I deduced that from the amount of fresh vomit on the premises.”

Another official was walking toward them. “Inspector Beck,” Abberline said.

“They’ve called for the bloodhounds,” Beck said. “We’re not to go in until they’ve had a go.”

“How long until they arrive?” Holmes asked.

“Hard to say. We’re telling the photographers to shoot through the window.”

Since there were no cameras on scene at the moment, Holmes approached the shattered pane, praying for a solid clue this time. He reached through, lifting the curtain. A quick glance told him the room was small, only about ten by twelve, with the bed on the south side of the room. And then
nothing else he saw made sense. Holmes looked for a long moment, forcing himself to pick out concrete details one by one, before he could accept what was in that tiny, dingy room.

Mary Jane Kelly was naked and on her back, her body angled slightly to the left, her head turned toward the window. Like the others, her throat had been cut. In fact, from the way the blood stained the mattress, it looked like she’d been lying the other way when that had happened, and the killer had turned her around for what came next.

Her legs were spread wide, the left arm flexed across the abdomen, the right arm a little away from the body and with the fingers clenched. The arms were covered with jagged wounds.
Did this one fight?
Holmes wondered, but it was hard to tell. There was no part of the woman’s flesh that hadn’t been attacked with maniacal fury.

The question was more what hadn’t been savaged than what had. The entire surface of her abdomen and thighs was gone, as were her breasts and much of her neck. Holmes couldn’t see the particulars, but it looked like her abdominal cavity was scooped out. Spare parts were scattered here and there, with an overflow on the table by the bed. There was no way to tell what her facial features had been. Her face had been slashed in all directions, parts sliced right off. Oblique cuts ran from the lips down to the chin.
Who hated her this much? What did she represent to the killer?

Holmes dropped the curtain, glad to give Mary Kelly back her privacy for a little while. It had been years since the sight of violence had turned his stomach, but he felt a sudden need for fresh air. Sweat slicked his skin, sticking his shirt to his back. He retreated from number thirteen.

“I’m going for a walk,” he said to Abberline. The inspector took one look at his face and didn’t argue.

Holmes fled the narrow passage back to Dorset Street, telling himself he was surveying the neighborhood. He would give himself two minutes, then head back in to take a closer look at the court. But the two minutes stretched to three, and he kept going, submerging himself in the noisy, vibrant scene around him. It felt good, like a hot bath after a
chill. The scene in that tawdry room had struck deeper than he cared to admit.

Women gossiped outside the doorways of the tenements; men lounged on the porches. A steam tram went past on Commercial Street, heading for the markets. Life went on despite the grisly death a few dozen yards away. And it might as well, because there was no sign the deaths would ever stop. He was failing as badly as Abberline.

At the Stride murder, Holmes had been certain that there had been a connection to the Hilliard House deaths. Obviously, that meant a common link. Bancroft? The Gold King? Magnus? But that theory fell to pieces when he looked at the other deaths. He couldn’t imagine any of those suspects, not even Symeon Magnus, attacking random women with that much fury. They would kill, yes, but they’d do it like they did everything else—elegantly and efficiently. In truth, he had no suspects.

Like so many of the men investigating the Whitechapel murders, Holmes was beginning to take the case personally. He knew the letters from Saucy Jack were false leads, but still the mocking, misspelled words whispered in his dreams like a music hall tune he couldn’t scrub from his brain.

The only positive was that Holmes had used the case as an excuse to search as much of the area as he could over the last month. He’d started with the lodging houses, but it seemed the population was as stable as shifting sands, and few remembered the names of their current neighbors, let alone a girl who might have been there and gone. There had been hints of Evelina’s presence, but they vanished as quickly as a dropped sovereign. If his niece had wanted to disappear, she’d chosen the area well.

A wave of frustration coursed through Holmes as he moved quickly down the street, doing his best to burn his own anger off so that he could summon a semblance of his usual calm. But something about the area resisted logic, as if it had given up and gone back to bed drunk.

A hand came out of a dark doorway and grabbed his sleeve. Holmes wheeled, ready to fight, but the hand let go and began to beckon instead.

“Show yourself,” Holmes demanded.

“Be quiet and get in here,” his brother snapped. “We have a great deal to discuss.”

Reluctantly, Holmes complied. Beyond the doorway was an empty room, stinking as if a fire had cleared out the last occupants, the furniture, and most of the walls. “Is this safe?”

“Probably not,” Mycroft replied. “But then few places are these days.”

“I thought Keating kidnapped you from the Diogenes Club,” Holmes said dryly.

“He did.” Mycroft gave him a smug look. He looked haggard, but otherwise unhurt.

Holmes raised an eyebrow. “So what are you doing in Whitechapel?”

“I escaped.”

“And came here?”

Mycroft waved a hand, taking in the charred walls, the mildew blackening the woodwork. “Exigent circumstances required that I break my routine.”

And everyone knew Mycroft’s routine was sacrosanct. Holmes refused to rise to the bait—if he did, he knew his brother would wring his tale for every nuance of drama, and Holmes wasn’t in the mood. “What do you want?”

“I want to speak to you, but you’re guarded as closely as a virgin queen. I’d hoped you’d turn up at this sideshow.”

“If you saw what I did just now you’d be a little less flippant.”

Mycroft made a face. “There is a reason I don’t frequent crime scenes. It disturbs my digestion. Let us get down to business.”

Holmes shrugged. “I imagine you’re seeking a favor, though I can’t imagine what.”

“Have you no theories? No well-reasoned deductions?”

Holmes gave a dry laugh. “You know well that I’m outside the circle of your confidence.”

“I’m working for the shadow government, and that means I am in deep with the Baskerville business.”