Castle Rouge (35 page)

“This is what we have to work with, Irene,” Quentin said. “However unconvinced Nell might be, she would not quibble to use the tools at hand were it another’s life in the balance.”

“No. Nor shall we. All right. Mary Ann Nichols, known as ‘Polly,’ is designated as the first Ripper victim, though she may not be. She was slain here at Bucks Row, just off Whitechapel Road on the high, eastern end of the district.”

Irene made a large “X” to mark the spot.

“The next victim was Annie Chapman at Hanbury Street. Look! Almost on the same east-west axis as Mary Ann Nichol’s death scene, but dead center of the district.”

I winced at the unintended aptness of her American usage, “dead center.” Irene drew another “X” on the map.

“Third. Elizabeth ‘Long Liz’ Stride, at Fairclough and Berner Street.”

Irene marked the third “X” and drew back from the map to study it. “These three points make an upside-down pyramid, almost an equilateral triangle. What is the fourth location, Quentin?”

He read from the cable. “Catharine Eddowes, on Mitre Street, near Aldgate.”

Irene drew a double “X” there. “And near here the chalked lines about the Juwes were discovered. Look, the Eddowes site is almost across from Stride, as east-west goes, but a long, long walk. Eddowes was the Ripper’s second victim that night, before he presumably turned to scrawling ambiguous statements about Jews.” She frowned at her series of “X”s. “Four points now, and if you connected them, you would have a rectangle, a skewed rectangle, although I believe there is exactly such a construction. I don’t believe that geometry is Jack the Ripper’s field, however.”

She shook her head, disappointed. “Number five.”

Quentin consulted map, cablegram, then map again.

“Dorset Street. Mary Jane Kelly. Almost directly northeast of the Eddowes site, although a shuttlecock of confusing streets lay between them. Kelly? Wasn’t she the one that was cut limb from limb?”

Irene nodded. “In the privacy of her room. The Ripper had all the time in the world and disassembled her like a
Les Halles
piglet.”

“Now we have five points on the map,” I said, “and they still make no sense.”

“Points on a map never make sense until they are linked,” Irene mused. “Quentin? You have puzzled over a map or two in your time.”

He nodded and shrugged at the same time. “Four of the key sites are clustered to what I would call the left of center, three of them being locations of victims. They are Annie Chapman, the second…Mary Jane Kelly, the fifth…Catharine Eddowes, the fourth…and finally the Goulston Street graffito. Eddowes is the farthest point east of the four. But look how far west the first site, Nichols, is. All off by itself, as is the Stride site, yet Stride and Eddowes were attacked in the same night.”

“And no straight, easy path between them,” Irene noted.

“That and the graffito that night almost argue for more than one man,” I noted.

“More than a James Kelly, certainly,” Irene said grimly.

“Six sites,” I said, “if you count the Juwes graffito as a separate one. Four of the six to the left of center. There is no reasonable pattern. Just as Paris is laid out in neat geometry, thanks to l’Enfant’s elegant redesign, London remains a postmedieval jumble. Make sense of it if you dare.”

My comment seemed to spur Irene to prove me wrong. She seized a pen from the letterbox, dipped it in a crystal inkwell, and used the edge of the cablegram as a somewhat insubstantial ruler.

In a moment she had drawn a bold black diagonal line from the first murder site to the fourth. Spinning the cablegram edge, she drew a second diagonal line from the fifth to the third site. It was Nichols to Eddowes, Kelly to Stride.

I could not deny it. Her lines created an giant “X,” just as they had in Paris.

“Points on a map can be manipulated as ‘X’s into eternity,” Quentin objected. He had never seen the map we had drawn of the Paris murders, an “X” intersecting a giant “P.” This Chi-Rho symbolized the Christ figure, the very same marking we had found scratched in some of the Paris cellars and catacombs where the secret cult associated with Kelly had met.

Irene nodded, grim-lipped, noncommital. She set the edge of the cablegram at the top of the map, on the second Whitechapel murder site, Annie Chapman’s final resting place on Hanbury Street.

Next she spun the edge of the paper left, then right.

“Where shall we draw this last, vertical line? There is no southern point to fix its axis. If I draw it straight down, it crosses the diagonal lines off center, creating an empty triangle between them.” She frowned, unhappy with the figure her calculations would draw.

“If, however, I…cant the vertical line to the right, along the strong angled street lines of Brick Lane and Osborne Place…if I permit the vertical to curve slightly as in a cursive letter, the downward stroke intersects the two diagonals at their jointure and…and I have isolated above Whitechapel High Street a section of byways that makes the top of a ‘P’: Hanbury Street east curving into Great Garden Street and bounded on the bottom by Old Montague Street thence meeting Brick Lane to make a closed circle.”

We stared at her construction of ink and lines, Quentin Stanhope and I. We consulted each other silently. He had not seen the same pattern laid on the map of Paris, as I had, but the resemblance was uncanny.

Irene reached into the folder and withdrew another map, another city. Paris, with the Chi-Rho laid over it by Nell’s hand.

“Good God!” Quentin leaned in with the sort of fascinated distaste that implied a literal body lying on the table. “The patterns are close enough to send chills up my spine. What kind of debased being would kill so savagely by the rigorous rules of geometry?”

“The geometry is incidental,” Irene said, her voice muted, “as it is to most of life. The question is who would kill by a symbol of God?”

I could think of only one answer, but did not say it for fear of sounding foolish, though Nell would never have hesitated to name names for a minute.

The Devil.

29.

Game for Dinner

At the present moment you thrill with the glamour of the situation and the anticipation of the hunt
.

—
SHERLOCK HOLMES TO INSPECTOR MACDONALD, ARTHUR CONAN DOYLE,
THE VALLEY OF FEAR

What a tantalizing dilemma!

Would I rather have the hand of James Kelly with a clasp knife at my throat, or would I rather be the prisoner of the mysterious spy-mistress who called herself Tatyana? Perhaps I was facing both.

I did not ask Godfrey to resolve my quandary.

He had become quite grim after realizing that Tatyana was our captor. Though I breathed many prayers of thanks that it was not that madman Kelly who had darkened our door, I must admit that I found Tatyana intimidating. Godfrey clearly considered the Russian woman to be the greater foe, but he had never walked the path Irene and I had in Paris.

While we were still engaged in debating the dangers of our situation, there came a knock on my door.

Our discussion stopped while we gazed startled at each other. Tatyana surely wouldn’t have returned, knocking, where before she had ambled in unheralded like the Queen of the May (although it was now early June).

Godfrey, of course, took matters into his hands and rose to answer the knock. I was momentarily disturbed that someone should witness Godfrey’s and my closeting and make unpleasant assumptions about his presence in my room. On reflection I concluded that it was quite natural for prisoners to conspire and only a demented mind would misconstrue our close association.

Then again, Tatyana was clearly demented.

While I debated with myself, Godfrey returned, leading a petite, brunette woman wearing the plain dark dress and servile white collars and cuffs of a personal servant.

She curtsied to me, this dark-favored sprite, and spoke English with a French accent.

“Madame Tatyana say that you will take care to dress for the dinner, and Monsieur as well. This are for you. Dinner at eight.”

What I had taken for a pile of bed linens apparently was a gown. Of sorts. There was no point my spurning the things in the presence of the messenger, so I nodded to the long bench at the foot of the bed.

“Thank you—”

“Mignon.” Offered with another curtsy.

She turned to leave.

“And how long,” Godfrey asked, stopping her as if he held a pistol on her, “have you been with Madame?”

“Been with?”

“How long have you served her?”

“
Deux ans
. Two year.” She held up a pair of fingers lest we still be uncertain.

“In London, too, then?” said I.

“
Oui
. Since Buda-pesth.”

With that she curtsied again—apparently Madame Tatyana required frequent obeisance—and departed.

“Well done, Nell!” Godfrey smiled for the first time since Tatyana had announced herself. “So our hostess was in London previously, and the French maid betokens a sojourn in Paris as well.”

“What is a French maid doing in this forsaken castle?”

“Apparently what she did in London and Paris. What has she brought you?”

“Oh, I’m not even going to look at it. I am not going through any mummery for Tatyana’s benefit.”

Godfrey had gone over to prod at the clothing. “It might be to our benefit, though, to appear as docile captives. I say, these look more like draperies than clothing.”

“Revolting pattern. It reminds me of the Girl Who Trod on a Loaf in the fairy tale and sank down into Hell twined round with spiders and snakes and other crawling things.”

“Ah, I see. The pattern is dragonflies and reeds, all in peacock blue and emerald green and gold threads. A costly fabric, to be sure.”

“It looks like something barbaric she would wear herself, all the more reason I should shun it as if it were sackcloth and ashes.”

“Perhaps not, Nell. Tatyana likes to pretend to elegance, even here. We may learn more by humoring her manias than defying them.”

“You will wear formal dress, as she demanded?”

He shrugged. “Why not? All my baggage was captured with me. Methinks a woman who imports a French maid to a half-crumbled castle in the wilderness has pretensions that may be turned against her.”

“She certainly has too much time and money on her hands,” I grumbled, lifting the heavy gown. I might as well have been handling the carapace of some huge, exotic bug, I shivered so at the cold metallic touch of the glittering weave.

“I don’t know how to dress my hair without my comb and brush,” I explained, “but I will try to do it up so as not to embarrass you.”

“The entire point is not to enrage Tatyana. The more we play into her charade that we are her guests, the more we may learn how many henchmen she has brought with her.”

“Perhaps they’re all as harmless as French maids.”

“I fear not.” Godfrey glanced at my dimming window and consulted his pocket watch. “We have an hour. I suggest you do what you can before the daylight fades and you are dependent only on candlelight.” He paused on the way to the door. “Your injuries…you are able to dress yourself? I have assisted Irene. I can always do laces through a crack in the door.”

“A most sensitive offer, Godfrey, but I believe I can manage by myself.”

I did not mention that I had observed Tatyana before, by her account a former dancer with the Russian ballet. It had appeared to me that she habitually dispensed with corsets, as Irene did herself from time to time. I doubted that this heap of clothing would include anything so restrictive of movement. But of course I could not tell Godfrey that. It was best that gentlemen not be encouraged to speculate on the exact elements of a lady’s underlayments, no matter how dire the situation, even if they knew all about them, as apparently Godfrey, and Quentin, did.

I found my face hot with shame as I untangled the garments.

A camisole and drawers, but no corset. I glanced down at my peasant blouse, skirt, and wide, laced felt belt. Perhaps the belt would serve as a corselet beneath the gown. I would very much like to present Tatyana’s gown back to her with a much smaller waist than her own!