Fearless (Scarlet Suffragette, Book 1): A Victorian Historical Romantic Suspense Series (2 page)

“He may have trained you, and more fool him,” the banker declared. “But that hardly makes you an appropriate choice for such a scene.” His gaze darted back to the alleyway, but I was sure he couldn’t see more than simple shadows. Fear and uncertainty filled his eyes, smoothing the harsh planes of his previously unforgiving countenance.

Like those behind me, like the whispered fears of earlier, this man was merely panicked. Making his objections harsher than they may otherwise have been. Making his statement something far less than the immutable truth.

I was a woman in a man’s world, but that did not mean I was incapable.

“The victim,” I said to the Militia guard. “May I see to them?”

“The Police will be ‘ere soon, miss,” the guard replied, shifting from foot to foot with mounting unease. The crowd moved with him, but their nerves were borne of urgency rather than uncertainty. The victim may well be still alive.

I doubted it. Even from here, even with the filth funnelling through the nearby canal, wafting over the street and melding with the stench of dead fish, I could discern the scent of blood. A lot of blood to have risen above the miasma of a bustling metropolis.

“Then they shall be angered by the lost opportunity to ascertain survival by a professional before their arrival,” I countered.

The guard looked me up and down, taking in my full skirt, the crinoline petticoat beneath keeping the layers in perfect symmetry, the fashionable bustle at my rear hindering mobility. The fine lace of my cuffs. The pearls at my neckline, the matching earbobs. The wide brimmed, feather bedecked hat perched jauntily upon my coiffed hair.

More than once a day I cursed women’s fashion.

My saviour came in the form of my ever irrepressible Suffragettes. Several of whom had made their way to the front line of the milling assemblage. We may have lost our opportunity to impress the deputy mayor, but never let it be said that we’re not adaptable.

“Doctor Cassidy is a fine surgeon,” one cried.

“Let her through!” another added.

“Be it on your conscience, boy, should the fallen require assistance and their angel of mercy arrive too late.”

Perhaps that last was overkill, but Ethel was difficult to restrain under normal circumstances. And this situation could not be called “normal” by any stretch of the imagination.

“Let her through!” someone repeated, in the recognisable tones of a Suffragette on the march.

“Let her through!” the chant began, making the banker beside me huff out a disgusted grunt of bemusement.

“
Let her through!
” the crowd intoned, even as I spotted the approaching curricle of the Senior Inspector for the Auckland Central Police Force over the heads of the now near-mobbing crowd.

I didn’t have much time left to establish myself at the crime scene.

I stepped forward, raised my voice above the melee, and said, “Well, you heard them. Lead on!”

The guard had ten years seniority on me easily, but much can be accomplished with a straight back and firm words. My father had taught me that.

“Very well,” he muttered, as my girls closed in, blocking the view back towards Queen Street and the righteously furious look upon one certain police inspector’s visage.

I glanced back over my shoulder, noting the concerned looks on the few women’s faces I could make out, and the hard disapproval on the banker’s façade, matched by the shocked looks on several other gentlemen’s. But I could not see the inspector.

Precious seconds had been granted me, I grasped them in a tight fist and stormed into the alleyway.

The smell hit me first, as my eyes adjusted to the dimmer lighting. We’d have to bring in lanterns to truly dissect the scene. I lifted a gloved hand to my face, covering my nose, cutting off much if not most of the stench, and checked my surroundings.
‘Tis easy to forge headfirst into a crisis
, my father had always said.
‘Tis far harder to backtrack from a fatal misstep.

The alleyway was empty, save for the few crates left abandoned, the tall crumbling brick walls on either side, and the mish-mash of shadows, overlain with a reek of rotten fruit, discarded refuse, and death.

I crouched down beside the pile of cloth that indicated a body. No movement of chest or sign of life. Not enough light to discern identity, but the material was fine, if not stained with copious amounts of blood, and the petticoat an indication of sex.

The Ripper is here
.

I knew what I’d find when I finally raised the courage to move closer. I’d studied drawings of the five women lost in Whitechapel. I’d made a fine art of examining that man’s base skills. War and what happened on those woe-begotten streets are not so different. But for one singular and important distinction.

The Ripper killed for his own desires.

Soldiers kill on the orders of other men.

I stood up and leaned over the form of the dead woman, making sure to keep my skirts well out of the immediate crime scene. With pure determination, I disconnected myself from the victim, and searched with my eyes alone for any indication of the mechanism of death.

Stabbed. Brutally and viciously stabbed. I’d counted fourteen possible incision sites before my time ran out.

The light from his lantern filled the alleyway, splashing illumination across the woman’s face as if blood spilled from a slashed artery.

I sucked in a mortified breath of air, took a step backwards in unmitigated shock and horror, and rammed into the haphazardly stacked crates at my rear.

“Damnation, woman!” a deep and angry voice sounded out over my shoulder. A large hand wrapped around my upper arm and steadied me before I fell. The sound of a walking stick coming down hard upon the toppling crates halted their trajectory. “How many times have I told you to wait until I arrive?”

I pulled out of Inspector Kelly’s grip and dusted myself down, my eyes darting back to those blankly staring of the victim’s.

Margaret.
I forced the horrified whimper back where it belonged. Lifting my chin, I detached from the moment, and stared the inspector hard in his deep blue eyes.

“We both know the outcome had I waited,” I declared.

Inspector Kelly sighed. The sound of a much put upon man.

“Anna Cassidy,” he said without enthusiasm. “What the devil am I do with you now?”

Two

Right You Are

Anna

“You can start by making me chief surgeon on this case,” I advised, knowing full well what the reaction would be.

Inspector Kelly tapped his cane on the alleyway floor, almost absently, making the walls rebound with its echo.

“You know I can’t do that, Anna,” he replied, and if the tone was to be believed, he was in fact saddened by that pronouncement.

I didn’t trust the softness of the words nor the compassionate look he threw my way.

I glanced down at the victim. At Margaret. And said, “At least fourteen stab wounds. The one in the carotid artery would have been the killing blow. Several were post-mortem. But the majority were inflicted prior to death.”

“Go on,” he encouraged, despite his recent protestations. Kelly knew as well as I that the police surgeon would take several minutes to arrive.

If at all.

“Defensive wounds,” I added, walking around the body to get a better look. “She raised her arms to ward him off. She saw her attacker.”

I crouched down, as I had before, but took note of what was stacked behind me before effecting the manoeuvre. Quarters were cramped, but there was enough space to lean in and check Margaret’s fingernails. I lifted a gloveless hand up to the light of Inspector Kelly’s lantern and grimaced. Several nails were torn, blood had seeped under the nail beds.

“She struck back,” I whispered, then cleared my throat, lowering her hand to where it had formerly been. “Managed to mark her assailant.”

“That could help, if the markings are visible,” Kelly remarked quietly.

I wasn’t sure if his lowered volume was for preservation of the scene, or for me. Either way, I ignored it.

“To determine the exact number of strikes, I’d have to unclothe her.”

Kelly made a disgruntled sound, but when I raised arched brows at him, his face was impassive.

“The type of blade may well be discovered at that time as well,” I added, glancing around for a flash of metal in the dim light, but not succeeding in the endeavour. “There is even some discussion as to whether the height of the murderer can be calculated.”

“Indeed,” Kelly remarked, neither agreeing nor disagreeing with my thoughts.

“Angles of the incisions, depths of the wounds. If he used a serrated or tapered knife, we may well be able to discern direction as well.”

I glanced up at him and received a blank stare in return.

“Left or right handed,” I clarified, making a slashing movement through the air with a closed fist.

Kelly stepped forward abruptly and wrapped a gloved hand around my wrist halting my movements. My position and his height meant he loomed over me. The glow from the lantern shining up in his face and sparking with fervour in his eyes.

“Must you be so vivid?” he whispered.

“What good would a surgeon be, if she were not?” I countered.

“That, Anna, is your problem.” Said without rancour or reproach. Inspector Kelly understood my plight.

He just couldn’t do anything about it.

Footsteps from the entrance of the alleyway had him retreating to his side of the small space that had formerly separated us. We both looked up, rather guiltily at a guess.

Kelly’s partner-in-arms came to a slow walk, covering the last few feet between us all with a mirthful smirk.

“Miss Cassidy,” he said with a bow of his head in acknowledgement. “What a surprise.” It was anything but, I was sure.

“Sergeant Blackmore,” I replied in greeting.

His smile didn’t abate until his eyes landed on his superior.

“Sir, we’ve got a problem,” he announced, all levity having left him.

Kelly’s eyes swept across Margaret’s body and landed on me. He straightened his back, and then offered an, “Excuse us, Miss Cassidy,” before walking a few feet away with Blackmore.

I tilted my head in an effort to overhear the conversation, but Kelly knew me too well to not have his voice lowered appropriately. My gaze returned to Margaret, questions rioting through my mind.

She was meant to have been in front of the stage, throwing questions at Mr Entrican in order to waylay him. Despite his earlier support for our cause, recently he’d behaved like any other gentleman. We had been sure the moment he realised the Suffragettes were upon him, that he would have retreated in great haste to avoid a confrontation. But how quickly had he retreated? And had he seen Margaret?

“Whatever were you up to, Maggie?” I whispered, just as Kelly and Blackmore approached.

“We’ll take good care of her, Miss Cassidy,” Kelly declared; a signal for me to rise and leave.

“The surgeon is here?” I asked absently, as I shifted to my feet, my eyes all for Margaret.

Silence met my question. I turned to see Sergeant Blackmore studying the rough hewn ground beneath his boots and the inspector looking stoic. And determined.

“He is corned, is he not?” I enquired, well used to the police surgeon’s usual inebriated state.

“Anna,” Kelly chastised, then realised his mistake. “Miss Cassidy,” he corrected in an even more persistent tone. “It is not appropriate for you to tally here.”

Of all the things he could have said, that was the most shocking. Kelly understood the strictures of today’s society. The repression of women from all walks of life. But he had also known my father. He had been aware of how my father had raised me. He’d watched on and never commented in any way.

And when my father was killed, he’d stepped forward and offered his protection. Protection I had sorely needed, but refused to take.

It was not his protection I wanted. Anything else, though, was lost to me.

But never had he outrightly shown his disapproval of my upbringing.

“I am more than capable of carrying out the post-mortem,” I offered, my shoulders rigid, my hands in fists at my side.

Blackmore stepped away, with some mumbled comment about checking on a constable. Kelly took a tentative step toward me.

I stood my ground.

“Even if I wanted to, I could not,” he explained gently, as though speaking to an emotional child. “You know this, Anna. Drummond will not allow you in his surgery. And despite his… failings, he
is
the Chief Surgeon for the Auckland Police Force.”

“Then bring her to mine.”

He stared long at me, shifting shades of blue in his eyes. The glow from the nearby lantern painted shadows across his face, casting his short beard in an auburn light. Kelly had dark hair, but on occasion there were hints of gold amongst the charcoal to be found.

“Go home, Anna,” he finally said. Softly. Carefully.