Stalking Jack: The Hunt Begins... (Madeline Donovan Mysteries Book 1) (27 page)

“Thank you for helping me. You must call the police.”

“No; you have to stay out of it, the coppers will charge you with killing 'em. It’s done now, The Ripper’s dead. Let the police think they killed each other.”

“But you, Bob, you will know.”

“I’ll take it to me grave; I promise you that.”

“I don’t know if I can make it. I’m losing too much blood.”

“You must. It’s not far. I can see the door to their house.”

“Leave me then and get the aunts. I can’t make it.”

She saw him pounding on the door and Helen answering. Helen put her hand up to her mouth and came running out to her.

With Helen and Bob on either side of her, she made it inside.

“Helen, please get Hugh. He can get Dr. Scott to come.”

“I best be going,” said Bob.

“No; you have blood all over you. Maybe the aunts could give you a coat to cover you. Don’t let anyone see you with that blood on…”

She was losing conscious, and she wanted to try and tell Helen what happened, “Helen,” she whispered, “He’s dead. The Ripper, I killed him, but you must keep my secret. Please, only you, Anna and Bob will ever know.”

“All right, Madeline, I have to get Hugh. Anna will stay with you.”

Chapter Twenty-Four

Recovery

When she awoke, Madeline was between white sheets, in a stark room in Queens Hospital. She was weak and felt sharp pains stinging up and down her side.

“Nurse,” she called.

“Mrs. Donovan, at last, you are awake. You have been here many days.”

“My sheets are damp. Could I possibly get clean coverings?”

“We have changed them many times. You have been sweating profusely. After I change your sheets, I will bring in your visitor. He has been here every day waiting for you to wake.”

She wondered if it were Hugh or Jonathan that had been waiting for her, but she knew that whoever it was, she would feel fortunate that someone was here for her, and would bask in any affection given to her. After everything that she had been through, she desperately needed a smiling face to look upon and a hand to hold. She was beginning to recall the events of that night and realized how lucky she was to be alive. She touched the place on her skin where the scalpel mark was.

When she looked up, the man coming towards was the one person she would have hoped to see if she had all her wishes granted.

“Madeline, I have waited for this moment for three days, waiting to see your eyes open and hear your voice. My darling daughter, I was so frightened.”

He moved toward the bed and kissed her forehead. Tears rolled down her face as she proclaimed, “Father, how did you get here? Who informed you? How is it possible that you are here, at the moment, when I need you so! Bring your chair near to me father.”

“Several weeks ago, when I received your last letter, I decided to book my fare on the next voyage of the New York. There were things you mentioned in your correspondence that were so unsettling, that I felt I should come immediately, but we will speak of that on another day. That is what brought me here. When I arrived at the Hotel George, I was informed by your friend, Clinton, of what had happened. Your friend, Hugh had told him of the attack. I was so worried; I thought the doctor would have to find a place for me in this hospital. What happened, Madeline? How did you come to be stabbed, and what was your business in that ungodly place Whitechapel?”

“Father, I am so weak and in pain, but I promise I will explain it all to you at a later time. Let me just enjoy the happiness I feel that you are here.”

“I have met many of your friends and have spent time talking to them about you and Whitechapel. They have been vigilant in coming to see you, sitting by your bedside with me.”

“Father, something amazing has happened to me, I want to live again. I don’t want to just exist and take meaningless breaths of air, but I want to live again.”

She saw a tear fall slowly down her father’s face. “I never thought I would hear those words from you again. You have returned to me. We will get through this together and return to America with new hope.”

“There is so much I wish to confide in you about. I have not been well and have done things that you would not approve of, but I had so given up on living. I had given myself over to thinking it was all right to do things; I would never have done if Russell and the boys were still alive.”

“I have an idea what that might be, at least, I think I do. I am a physician, and I see your tremors and the constant changing of sheets that you have soaked through with sweat. You are in the throes of withdrawal, are you not?”

She put her head down and could not look him in the eye, “Yes.”

“Besides your other injuries from the stabbing, this will prove a test for you to get through this, but I will be here. You have a fight on your hands, but you have someone to fight with you.”

“Before this and without you here, it would prove a daunting task, but now, with you standing beside me, I will do it. I must, I still have a life I wish to live.”

The nurse brought her lunch, and she sat with her father, sometimes looking at him as if she had dreamed him there. Jack was dead, she was alive, and her father was here. Life was beginning anew. She spoke to him of her friendship with Hugh and Jonathan, and of her affection for the aunts and all the ladies she had met on the ship.

They talked until the nurse said it was time for her to rest, father promising to return in the evening.

“Madeline,” he heard her say as her eyes opened. She had fallen asleep and now looked up to see Jonathan.

“Jonathan, how good of you to come to see me.”

“We thought we might have lost you. Has the constabulary been to see you?”

“No, not yet, but I am expecting them. I have little to tell them. Are you interviewing me for an article or talking to me as your friend?”

“You know I have to try and interview you, but this is off the record, between you and me.”

“I will tell you as much as I can, and then someday I will tell you all that I can.”

“I don’t know what that means, but first I must know, will you be staying through Christmas?”

“Yes, Father has agreed, and I couldn’t imagine leaving for America without spending the holidays with everyone. But what of you, are you staying on?”

“As long as the murders go on, I will be here, but if nothing breaks by Christmas, they are sending me back for a while.”

“Father has booked us on the New Year’s Day cruise. Is there any possibility at all that you might return with us?”

“If there are no further developments in the next week or two, I will request it. I could not imagine anything nicer than having the company of you and your father. The winter cruise is a much bumpier ride, and it will be comforting to have friends aboard to brave through it.”

“Now, tell me if you are well enough to talk?”

“I will tell you what I can.”

“What were you doing there at that time of night?”

“What I have been doing for several months, speaking to people about Jack the Ripper.”

“Off the record, were you there in your disguise?”

She had told Jonathan long before about her thoughts that she might consider going to Whitechapel as a low woman but had never confirmed to him that she had gone through with it.

“Yes, I wanted to draw Jack out after what happened to Mary Kelly. I was not thinking clearly as to my safety; I felt compelled to complete what I had started.”

“Could you tell me what occurred?”

She went on to tell him of her late night visit to Whitechapel and her encounter with Prince William’s coach. She told him about following the coach as it crept along Dorsett Street, and how the man in the coach had stopped often to solicit young ladies, and how the driver had tried to shake her off, but she persisted. She spoke of her trying to see what the Motts boys had been up to, and visiting with Patrick Rooney and told him all that he had told her.

“Then I turned down the street into a darker area. I was about to turn around and retreat to another street when a man came up behind me and told me to leave The Ripper investigation alone. Not in those words, I think he said something like, “stop sticking your bloody nose in or you’ll be done in.” Then we struggled, and I felt a hot, stinging feeling in my side where the man knifed me. I avoided a more direct wound by pushing my satchel against me because I believed he meant to pierce my heart. I was lying on the ground, bleeding profusely, when some man came upon me and offered his help. The next thing I know, he was helping me to the aunts’ house.”

“Why didn’t you go directly to the hospital?”

“I didn’t know who would have helped me to get there. Before I may have found someone in Whitechapel to help me, I thought I might bleed to death.”

They had conversed at length before Jonathan put his notebook down, and then they spoke of America and his conversations with father, which he said he had thoroughly enjoyed.

“Madeline, there is something else. I don’t know when the right time is for me to tell you, so I may as well just say it. There have been two more deaths.”

“What? There can’t be. That’s impossible.”

“What do you mean?”

“Oh…nothing—go on with your story.”

“Harry Nelson and Rocks are dead.”

She put her hands up to her face to cover them, in the event Jonathan might notice anything amiss in her expression.

“Good Lord, what happened?”

“No one seems to know. The poor old fellow was half-dead already from the look of him. I don’t know what was wrong with him, but he must have some type of disease. It seems they might have quarreled, and she stabbed him, and then he cut her open at the neck. At least, that’s the assumption. The people at the market had no great grief for her. No one seemed to care, with the exception of her one lady friend.”

“What a terrible business—Whitechapel produces the worse from people, but then there’s Patrick Rooney and a few others that are so kind. Life can still be good, if we can get past the darkness, somehow we can still find the light.”

“Now that didn’t come from Sherlock.”

“That’s just from me trying to come back into life again.”

He squeezed her hand and said, “And I am glad of it.”

After he had left, she was violently ill for several hours, and called for the nurses and her doctor to come to her. They wiped her brow with cold compresses, and the doctor gave her an injection of some sort. Father returned and tried to comfort her.

“Father, I have spiraled into an abyss, and now I am paying a toll for it. Please forgive me.”

“You are my daughter. You do not need ever to ask me for forgiveness, only yourself. You will have to learn to forgive yourself for being human and falling prey to the emotions of your grieving. Events happened in your life that caused other events; now it is up to you if you want to fight back against this addiction and not give in to it. It will be a painful and suffering time, but I will stand by you.”

“Will you read to me, as Mother did when I was ill? The sound of your voice will calm me.”

She shivered and huddled beneath the covers, her face damp with sweat.

“Yes, of course. What would you like me to read?”

“In my room, there are several books; we can start with A Study in Scarlet. Have you read it, Father?”

“Madeline, I have not read a book except for a medical journal in years.”

“Wonderful. You will like it, and we will share it together.”

Father left for the George to retrieve her books, and she lay there, happy to be alive. She looked like death but hoped her friends would think on it as the aftermaths of her stabbing.

“Miss, you have a visitor, Hugh Scott.”

“Could you please bring me my white shawl? If you can please ask him to wait a few minutes, and then I will receive him.”

She tried, as best as she could, to make herself presentable, but was too weak to do anything, but put her shawl on and brush her hair.

“Madeline, I have had such a troubled heart, I cannot tell you what a relief it is to see you’re awake and on the mend. My dearest friend, you gave us all such a fright.”

“To hear you say those words, had already given my recovery a boost. Come here closer to me, sit by me and let me see your face.”

He came over to where she was and kissed her cheek. Another time, she may have responded to his nearness, but today, she was trying not to wretch in front of him.

“Take my hand and stay while I rest. Tell me all that you have heard about the Ripper and of Harry. Jonathan has come to tell me the news. Just talk and I will listen.”

She looked at his eyes with a peacefulness she had not known for a long time, and once again thought how fortunate she was to have met her new friends. He spoke of the news accounts, the aunts and their care of her, and how they stayed by her side since her admission to the hospital. The nurse returned to bathe her, and Hugh left with the promise to return in the evening. She promised herself that she would recover for all the people who had shown her love and whom she loved, also.

Helen, Anna, and all her favorite girls descended upon her with flowers and candy. She hugged them and spoke with such rapid fire as if she couldn’t get the words out fast enough from her mouth to tell them how glad she was to see them.

“You saved my life,” she said as she took Anna’s hand. “You and Helen, I feel you are my family now. We must always be in touch. You must come again to America to visit, or I will return, but we are joined in our lives now,” said Madeline. “It will do my heart good to join all of you for Christmas. It will be a healing, I hope, for all of us.”

“And you, you are like our daughter,” said Helen. The other ladies nodded their heads, and it gave her strength to try and stop her body from trembling.

They sat and talked for over an hour, and then Sophie said, “You are sweating so dear, are we a bother to you? Should we go?”

“No, please, do not go, but if you could bring the nurse to me, perhaps she may give me some medicine to help with my suffering.”

Hugh walked in as the nurse gave her a dose of medicine, which calmed her body’s withdrawal symptoms. She believed she was suffering more from that then her knife wound, but she hoped they would believe that somehow the shaking occurred because of her pain from her wound. She couldn’t bear to have them discern the problem of her addiction. She thought it might be a burden she would carry for the rest of her life, for even now, with all her sickness, she still craved the opium.