Ripped (46 page)

Collin hesitated. He let go of the knife. As the blade clattered to the ground, Collin's mouth split into a defiant, triumphant grimace, and he shoved Major Brown with all his might.

The taller, bulky man flailed, grabbing at air, but was off balance. Behind him loomed the yawning chasm of the pier's drop-off into the Thames—a sharp plunge, straight down, like the nosedive of a roller coaster. There was no tension wire or safety rail, nothing to grasp. Just wet, slimy wooden boards, sheared off at the end.

Collin gave another heaving thrust as if pushing a giant boulder over a cliff, and Major Brown toppled off the edge, a pinwheel of arms and legs. A scream of rage, not fear, echoed eerily back up at them until Major Brown's body hit the surface of the water far below with a thudding splash.

Katie's lantern caught Collin's white face, turned sideways. “
May he rot in hell
,” Collin said hoarsely. He sank down to his knees and began to cry, slowly at first and then with deep, shuddering gasps. Across the horizon, grey-white clouds hung against the moon, which was dipping slowly into the water's edge on the opposite bank of the river.

Dawn breaking.

Katie hastened to Collin's side. Hard sobs wracked his body.Whether from happiness, pent-up fear, or gratitude that the man who would have killed him was sinking into the watery depths below, Katie didn't know.

All she knew was that Collin was alive. Toby was alive. And so was she.
We
'
re safe now
.

Katie knelt down shakily and threw her arms around Collin. “I thought you were going to die. I thought Major Brown was going to kill you.”

“
Have a care, old girl
!”
Collin sputtered through his tears. “I wasn't . . . about to . . . let that blighter kill me. I showed him a thing or two!”

Katie bit back a smile. She wasn't going to tell Collin that it was Mrs. Tray's rock that had turned the tide. Instead, she hugged Collin harder. Close to his torn and bloodied ear, Katie whispered softly, “It's going to be all right, Collin. Everything's going to be all right now, I promise.”

A moment later, she held his shoulders at arm's length and looked directly into his eyes. “We did it, Collin! Molly Potter, Dora Fowler, and Lady Beatrix are all safe now. Just think about it. We stopped the most infamous serial killer in history! We stopped Jack the Ripper.”

But of course, they hadn't.

Chapter Fifty-five

Puppeteers Make Fun say the Bells of Newington

K
n
eeling next to Collin
, just inches from where the pitted boards gave onto the crashing waves below, Katie stared at the floating wick in the fish-oil bowl. Smoke rising from its tiny flame flickered like a question mark reminding Katie of the incense sticks Courtney used to light back home in Boston.
I miss my sister! It
'
s time to go home!

“It's not over,” came Toby's expressionless voice from behind her.

Katie dragged her eyes from the hypnotic dancing flame with its pungent, rancid-oil smell, and swiveling her head around, peered into the shadows. “What do you mean, it's not over?”

“Jack the Ripper isn't dead,” Toby shot back.

Katie felt cold rising inside her that had nothing to do with the moaning wind. She could see Toby across the way, supporting his weight against the handrail that ran the length of the pier up and down on either side. His left arm was dangling by his side at a crooked, awkward angle.
It
'
s broken
, Katie thought with a shudder.

Toby's good arm was resting on a tangle of nautical rope coiled around a metal strut jutting out from the railing. With his dark hair plastered across the deep gash in his forehead, and his eyes shooting daggers at her, Toby looked more menacing than Major Brown had just moments before.

“But, Toby! Major Brown went over the side. No one could have survived that!” Katie blinked at him.
He must have a concussion.
“I guarantee you,” she said more gently. “Major Brown can't hurt anyone ever again—”

“He's . . . right . . . Katie,” came Collin's rasping voice so close to her ear she felt the prickle of his breath like a tickling feather against her neck.

“Major . . . Brown . . . not . . . the . . . Ripper,” Collin choked out, his chest heaving from the exertion.

“
Omigod
!
” Katie sputtered. “Reverend Pinker! It's Reverend Pinker, isn't it?
I knew it
.
I just knew it!
Dora's all alone. We have to go back and find her!”

With an adrenaline rush that precedes gargantuan feats of strength, Katie hoisted Collin to his feet, then half dragged, half pulled him away from the edge of the pier, his boots raking over the wooden floorboards with a stumbling clatter. But she managed to put a distance of only six feet between them and the drop-off brink.

Still too close
, Katie thought
.
She could easily see beyond the wet-slimed swath of the timbered edge to the black expanse of water below. She moistened her lips, and the taste of salty air was all-pervasive like beads of sweat. She raked the back of her hand across her mouth to rid herself of the moisture, but her fingers only managed to smear her face with more watery brine.

“I knew it was Pinker!
I just knew it
.” Katie's heart pounded. She swallowed the salty wetness on her lips, acrid and sticky.

“No,” came Toby and Collin's voice simultaneously.

Toby pushed himself away from the handrail and limped to the spot where Mrs. Tray's rock lay. With his good hand he scooped up the stone, and it disappeared into his clenched fist.

“Jack the Ripper is very much alive. But he's
not
Reverend Pinker.” There was a strangled, dark look in Toby's eyes as he hobbled closer, which deepened into something more fierce:
Sorrow? Anger? Pity?

“Who, then?” Katie demanded, struggling to prop Collin up as the wind whipped her hair around her face.

“In a manner of speaking—” Collin said, swaying unsteadily. “I suppose you could say it's
two
people.” He glanced at Toby and smiled weakly. There was a strange sort of relief in his voice, even as his body quivered. “Two of us. Isn't that right, Toby?”

“What are you talking about?” Katie let go of Collin's elbow and instinctively stepped back—from disbelief or fear, she wasn't sure. Collin, unable to stand without her help, lunged to the waist-high railing to their left. Clutching the wooden handrail, rigid in his intensity, he locked stares with Toby, ten feet away. The only thing separating the two boys was the expanse of pitted grey boards at their feet.

Katie glanced from one to the other.

To the east, a pale, buttery orb of a sun began to rise up out of the Thames. With it, the groan of the wind died down. Katie could hear buoy bells clanking in the distance and anchors being hoisted up, chain against chain, like the clatter of pots and pans.

There was a pause as if they were all standing still in awe of the sunrise. In the momentary lull, Katie peered down the long boards to where the pier dropped off into the sea. The Thames looked more like the yawning span of a misty golf course than a crashing river—bright green in patches where beams of sunlight sparkled. The image of the Thames as a golf course made Kate laugh. But it was a bitter, mirthless laugh. Before her father died on his way to pick up Collin, he had given Katie a present: a titanium driver with a graphite shaft, a Python Light Speed.

“So what do you say to that, Katie?” Collin's voice pierced her thoughts. She hadn't heard a word he'd said.

“You never guessed it was us, did you, Katie?” Collin continued.

Us . . .?
Katie yanked her thoughts back to the present. She felt oddly disconnected. As if she were here, but not here. Like one of those near-death experiences where you float above a hospital room watching doctors try to revive you.
It
'
s like that
, Katie thought.
I just want to be left in peace and float away. I don
'
t want to be revived. I just want to go home!

But the two faces peering back at her, both grim and splattered with blood, no longer resembled the boys she knew so well—full of pranks and mischief, bravado and heroics. It was as if, in the space of several hours, Collin and Toby had grown into full manhood. Standing across from each other, on either side of the long pier, their expressions looked like mirror images—bleak but resolute, full of anguish and grief . . . triumph and determination.

“Who are you talking about?!” Katie shouted, scared to her very core of the answer she might receive.

Toby smiled, but it was more a grimace than a smile.

Waves sloshed against the lower pilings.

Who?
Katie silently screamed.

Collin was the first to break the silence.

“I guess you could say . . . the one who set it all in motion . . . was the Duke,” Collin said, his face ashen as he leaned against the left-hand rail of the pier, the sun rising up behind his shoulders.

“The Duke?” Katie cried incredulously. “That's not possible.”
The Duke can hardly walk. He uses a cane. He
'
s not nimble enough to be all over the East End, slashing women and then disappearing from sight.

With a grunt of pain, Collin straightened to his full height, bracing his feet and legs against the wooden slats of the railing. He was breathing hard. “The Duke hatched a plan . . . that went wrong. Dead wrong. Isn't that right, Toby?”

The breeze carrying up from the water below smelled chokingly of burnt toast, garlic, and dead fish. Katie clenched her stomach, trying hard not to dry heave.

Toby stared at Collin. “The Duke is not Jack the Ripper. He may have unwittingly set plans into motion. He's not blameless in the death of Mary Ann Nichols. But he never physically touched any of those girls.”

“True enough, Toby, old sod. True enough,” Collin said in a tired voice with a sort of bitter inflection. Then, from his torn vest pocket, he tugged out the knife that had clattered to the ground when Major Brown went over the edge, and held it aloft—a parallel image of Toby's holding up the rock in his clenched fist.

“Because Jack the Ripper is none other than”—Collin dropped the one monosyllable Katie least wanted to hear into the frozen stillness—
“
You.
”
Collin's eyes grew wide with a sneaky look. “You did the Duke's dirty work for him, Toby. You're Jack the Ripper. But your luck's run out, old sod.”

Uncomprehending, Katie blinked from one to the other. “Collin! Are you insane? Toby is no more Jack the Ripper than I am!”

“ 'Fraid not, old girl. Toby's going to hang.”

“How in all blue hell do you figure that will happen, Collin?” Toby asked in a flat, emotionless tone, but a vein in his temple began to twitch.

Collin's red brows shot up. He pantomimed shock that Toby could even ask such a question. “Because of Dora's testimony.
And mine
. I can
prove
you're the Ripper. Dora's a witness. She's going to give Queen's evidence against you.”

“And when she does, you'll plant an emerald the size of a pigeon's egg on her wedding finger, is that it, Collin?”

“I, for one,” Collin persisted, swinging the dagger from his left hand to his right like a surgeon weighing a scalpel, “shall take great delight in your undoing.”

“And I'll see you on a morgue slab with that knife in your heart first.”

“Not before I watch you swing from the gallows.”

“You're a damn fool if you think so.” There was naked contempt in Toby's voice. “Dora would no more give evidence against me than fly to the moon. There's a code amongst Cockneys—
not to rat each other out
—or have you forgotten?”

“As the future Duke of Twyford, I'm prepared to sign a statement that I saw you standing over the body of two of those murdered girls, knife in hand. There's already a great deal of evidence against you, Toby.” There was a vicious eagerness in Collin's eyes, matched only by the look of pure hatred in Toby's.

“And as for Dora,” Collin continued, “I think her loyalties will lie with those poor, dead Cockney girls.
And
with me. It won't matter a fig if you're her Great-Aunt Fanny's nephew, thrice removed.”

“Are you so sure about that?” Toby grunted.

“Of
course
I am! Dora would play the part of a Cherokee maiden if I asked her to. But she saw what she saw.
You
bending over two of those murdered girls. I suppose you'd like to tell Katie that it's me. That I'm Jack the Ripper. But it won't wash, old sod. Katie was with me at the Ten Bells Tavern. She knows I couldn't possibly have killed Catherine Eddowes. That took someone as evil and cunning as Satan.”

“On that, we're in total agreement. But you'll be shaking hands with the devil long before I will. Go on, Collin. Tell Katie. Tell her what you told Major Brown. That you never meant to kill the first girl . . . how it was an accident.”

“So? You want me to babble? Spill the beans? What's to be gained by it?” In the soft glow of the rising sun, Collin's face appeared veiled.

His voice was icy as he said, “Why don't
you
tell Katie, Toby? Tell her how it's possible that I could be in two places at one time? How could I have killed the first girl tonight, Lizzie Stride, and then slit Catherine Eddowes's throat? Katie was with me at the Ten Bells. Unless you think I'm a ghoulish phantom who can float through walls and be in two places at once. We kept Catherine Eddowes singing until half after midnight, in the back room at the Ten Bells. I came out and got Katie five minutes
after
Catherine Eddowes finished her last song. The whole evening, up to that moment, I was at the Ten Bells Tavern.”

“That's true!” Katie interjected. “I was outside the door the whole time. I heard Catherine singing. Just minutes after her last song, when he heard Oscar Wilde fighting with Major Brown's officer, Collin came flying out the door. Collin couldn't have killed Catherine Eddowes. I was there. Dora was there. There wasn't time for Collin to do anything, let alone murder two woman, cut them up, and leave their bodies blocks away from the Ten Bells. Unless . . . unless Collin had help. An accomplice.”

Fear shot through Katie like a sharp pain in her side. She blinked at Toby.
Toby is either Jack the Ripper . . . or he
'
s Collin
'
s accomplice!
Her throat tightened. Tears stung her eyes. The revelation struck her like a jab from the knife in Collin's hand.
They
'
re both Jack the Ripper!
The thought rattled around in her brain like pebbles in a tin can.

She stared at Toby with revulsion and something more: a deep, desperate, wrenching feeling of betrayal. She had cared deeply for him. More deeply than she had ever imagined possible.
I always lose the people I love!