Ripped (44 page)

Chapter Fifty-two

You Gave Your Promise say the Bells of Saint Thomas

A
m
id the gloomy dark waves
and shadows rippling across the River Thames, Katie could see pale gleams of light from bobbing boat lanterns. By day this vast waterway would be overflowing with sewage and teeming with tug boats, barges, cargo vessels, and clipper ships, whose tall masts would sway and soar and puncture the sky like giant church spires.

At sunrise, the clatter of horses' hooves would mingle with the shouts of boatmen and the lap of the tides—but for now, in the predawn dimness, the only thing Katie could hear was the dying-goose wail of a foghorn competing with the clinkity-clank of buoy bells.

The hard right over the easy wrong
. What had Mrs. Tray meant by that? Katie wondered as she hurried along the embankment toward the river.
And why did Mrs. Tray give her this heavy rock?
She reached into her pocket and felt the jagged edge of the stone.

With only the sharp scent of wet earth to guide her along the footpath, Katie veered away from the embankment down a sloping expanse of grass toward a gravel causeway running parallel to the river. She was brought up short minutes later by a fenced-off area with “Danger!” signs posted on wooden crosses in the mud flats beyond. The split-rail fencing, enmeshed with wire, showed spiky points across the top. Katie squinted, trying to discern objects and shapes in the gloom on the other side of the fence. In the waning moonlight, she could make out piles of bricks and metal crossbars, beams, pulleys, swags, and chains scattered across the green-glimmering slime of the riverbank—the skeletal bones of what would soon be the most talked-about bridge in the world. This was the construction site for Tower Bridge. The turrets and battlements of the famous structure had not even been built yet—in their place, nothing but dark sky.

Closer to the water's edge, Katie could hear boats moored along the riverbank creak and crack, their ropes groaning. But with the fence barring her way, Katie had to scramble back up the grassy slope to the embankment, where just ahead stood a hansom cab.

Katie hastened toward the black cab for no other reason than that the horse tethered to it was the only living, breathing creature in this lonely stretch of deserted river bank. When she was almost abreast of the carriage, she noted that the coachman was not sitting on his perch, and that the horse, a tired old nag, was tied to a post next to a stone hut.

Katie moved cautiously forward.

The hut—shaped like a rectangular shoebox and resting on concrete slabs—had a flat tin roof with wavy ridges dipping low. Bales of wire and planks of wood lay strewn around the ground in front. Katie was reminded of a construction trailer she had visited with her father when she was twelve. Her dad had insisted that she wear a hard hat. When they entered, there had been a drafting table in the center of the room, charts on the walls, and a coffeepot percolating in the corner. Was this structure the equivalent of a construction trailer? Would there be a drafting table inside, but no coffee maker? Katie wondered. Then she heard something that made her heart race.

A feeling of dread surged through her.

It was Catherine Eddowes singing “Ta-ra-ra-Boom-de-ay!”

But it couldn't be. Catherine Eddowes was dead.

Katie listened with shaking nerves. Someone was singing. Someone who sounded exactly like Catherine Eddowes! If Katie closed her eyes, she could almost imagine it
was
Eddowes with her lusty, throaty bravado.

But a moment later, from out of the carriage window, popped Dora Fowler's laughing face and bouncing brown curls. “ 'S'at you, Katie? Whatcha doing 'ere? Cor! The whole bloomin' city of London is 'ere!”

The whole city of London? The street was totally deserted
.

Katie hurried to the carriage. “Dora? What are
you
doing here?”

“I came wiff Collin! Not ten minutes ago. Then, sure as you please, Major Brown comes waltzing on past, followed by that hollow-faced, eagle-nosed reverend!”

“Pinker?” Katie gasped. “Reverend Pinker?”

“The very same!” Dora hooked her elbows out of the cab's window and giggled.

She doesn
'
t know that Catherine Eddowes is dead
, Katie thought and moistened her lips in order to break the news. But Dora leaned further out the window.

“Whatcha doing here all alone?” she demanded. “You best come in here wiff me. 'Tis nice 'n' warm inside this cab. Collin gave the Westminster Abbey a few quid to get a pint o' beer at the pub round the corner, so I'm all by me lonesome.”

“Collin went to Westminster Abbey? But—”

Dora giggled. “Not a bit of it. Collin gave the Westminster Abbey a few quid to make hisself scarce.”

“Dora, I don't understand—”

“Westminster Abbey—the cabbie! Collin gave the cabbie bread 'n' honey to—”

“Okay. Okay. I get it.” Katie was in no mood to wrap her mind around Cockney rhyming slang. “Collin gave the coachman money to get a drink at the pub.”

“Tha's right! So it's joost you 'n' me. Gives me the fair shivers to be out here alone at night, so I'd be ever so grateful for your company. Leastways till Collin returns.”

“I can't stay, Dora.
I
'
ve got to find Toby
.”

“He's hiding up there on the upper pier. That's where Collin went. Said he had somfink important to tell Toby.” Dora pointed to the double set of pilings covered in scaffolding jutting out into the water, the top structure rising high above the lower like unfinished highway roads leading to nowhere.

“Did you tell Major Brown?” Katie gasped.

“ 'Course not! Blimey. I ain't no itchy snitch. Didn't tell the vicar neither.”

With a sigh of relief Katie continued. “Dora. I've got to get up there. How do I do it? Do I climb the scaffolding? And how do I get over the fence?”

“You can't do neither. That fence will cut you to shreds sure as I'm a bird seller. T'aint safe, Katie. It's what we calls French fencing. It's got barbed wire woven into it. Sharp steel points to keep people and animals out.”

Katie bit down on her lip. “I don't have a choice. Toby's in trouble.”

“Toby can fend for hisself, better 'n most. Don't you go worrying 'bout him. He's as slippery as the devil and just as strong.”

“How did Collin get through the fence?”

“There's a hidey-hole. But I ain't showing you where. T'aint safe, I tells you.”

Katie blinked at Dora and realized that Dora was in danger as well. If Madame Tussauds' waxwork plaques were correct, Dora would die near the construction pilings of Tower Bridge at the hands of Jack the Ripper in exactly two weeks. But everything was so upside down in terms of history's rewriting itself, maybe the Ripper would strike again tonight. Maybe Dora was next . . .

“Dora!” Katie reached up and tugged on the carriage handle. “You've got to come with me.”

“I ain't getting out of this 'ere warm cab.”

“Dora.
Please
. Let's stay together.”

“Thank you, no,” Dora said primly, shrinking back inside the carriage when Katie swung open the black lacquer door.

“Dora. We need to stick together. Did Collin tell you anything about me?” Katie improvised. “Like that I have second sight?”

“Every Cockney and his Great Aunt Fanny claims to have the seeing eye. If I had a farthing for every time a fortune-teller claimed to know me future, I'd be rich as Croesus.”

“But I'm different,” Katie bluffed. “I
am
clairvoyant.”

“T'aint no one clairvoyant save old Mrs. Tray at Traitors' Gate.”

“Precisely, Dora. And I've just come from Mrs. Tray's house. She agrees with me. Someone . . . I don't know who . . . is going to be murdered by Jack the Ripper at this exact spot any minute now . . . in a . . . Westminster Abbe
—
” Katie said, still improvising. “In a cab. I see it as clearly as I see you now.”

“Are you saying the cabbie is Jack the Ripper? I don't believes you!”

“Ask Mrs. Tray. Some poor innocent girl—who shall remain nameless—is going to die in a . . . in a . . . er, right here. Any minute now. I don't know about you, Dora, but I'm not chancing it. You can . . . well, suit yourself. It's been nice knowing you.”

“Eeeeek! I ain't staying here by me lonesome!” Dora shrieked. In a flash she had scrambled out of the cab. “Like you said, Katie, we oughts to stick together.” Dora glanced around nervously. “You don't really suppose that fellow . . . the cabbie . . . is Jack the Ripper?”

Katie gave an I-don't-know shrug. “Let's not wait to find out.”

Dora clutched the ring hanging down from her neck on a gold chain that glinted in the moonlight. “Collin wouldn't take kindly to nobody trying to murder me afore we dot and carry.”

“Dot and . . . ?”

“Marry,” Dora explained as they hurried down the slope of lawn toward the water's edge.

“We needs to stay close. It's slippery,” Dora said. “When we're on the other side”—she pointed to the spiky fence—“and we gets to the pier, if you fall into the river, the current will carry you away and you'll die quick as a wink swallowing the filthy muck floating in it.”

Katie nodded. Dora was telling the truth. The River Thames was a sewage funnel for most of the city. Marine life couldn't live in it. The polluted water carried typhoid and cholera. And although there was a new underground sewer system in London, most factories and open drains still emptied human waste directly into the river.

Dora pointed to a gaping hole in the fence. She told Katie it was where Collin and, later, Major Brown and the vicar, had ducked through.

“Careful, now,” Dora warned. “We don't wants to get tangled up in that barbershop wire—sharp as a blade on a straight-edge razor. Falling into the river would be a far pleasanter way to die than getting cut and slashed to ribbons.” Dora pointed to what looked like twisted jagged points of metal protruding from the fence.

Katie blinked at Dora. If Jack the Ripper wasn't stopped, it would be
exactly
how Dora would die:
cut and slashed to ribbons
.

It took several long minutes to wriggle through the opening in the fence because of their long, billowing skirts. After hiking them up around their waists and each helping the other step gingerly through the hole, they shook out the folds in their skirts and headed for the double set of pilings at the water's edge.

Dora began to chatter nervously, “You wouldn't thinks to look at us, but Collin and me gots true . . . heavens above.”

“Heavens above . . . love?”

Dora nodded. “Collin's a right decent bloke
,
even if he does wear them funny swallows and sighs.”

Katie stopped in her tracks. “Swallows and sighs . . . ”

“Collars and ties!” Dora chuckled. “Blimey, Katie, you're as
la-di-da
as Collin. Let me gives you a lump of ice—”

“No, Dora.” Katie sighed. “Let me give
you
a lump of advice. You and Collin will need a bag full of fruits and nuts
—
guts—to get past Collin's grandfather. The Duke of Twyford has his mind set on Collin's marrying the daughter of an earl.”

Dora made a face. “Collin told me all about horse-face Prudence. Makes no never-mind if she's the daughter of
Gawd
Almighty. Collin says she's a petticoat lane in his bottle of rum.”

Katie raised an eyebrow. “A petticoat lane—
pain
—in his . . . bottle of rum? What's that?”

“You know! His kingdom come. His fife and drum. His queen mum.”

Katie shook her head. “You lost me.”

“His bum!”

“Ah . . . of course.” Katie bit back a smile.

Dora giggled. “I tells you, Collin hasn't even had a decent muddle wiff horse-face Prudence.”

“Muddle?”

“Kiss and a cuddle!” Dora tittered gaily. “And he's had plenty wiff me, I can assures you!” She nudged Katie playfully in the ribs. “So? Is that what you Americans say—fruits and nuts?”

Katie shook her head. “I just made it up.”

Dora raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Why would you do that? Make something up? Why not just say Collin and me will need enormous orchestra stalls to marry wiffout the Duke's blessing?”

“Orchestra stalls?” Katie blinked at Dora.

Dora sing-songed, “Balls.”

Minutes later neither girl was smiling or laughing. They were both breathing heavily. They climbed over piles of rubble, moving slowly toward the scaffolded piers, one rising high above the other. Red mud held fast to their boots and clung in waxy clumps to the bottoms of their long skirts. A stinking odor of rotten eggs and excrement rose off the water.