City of Darkness (City of Mystery) (8 page)

The blending, of course, is the
challenge.  Most creatures who are special cannot seem to stop themselves from
announcing the fact, despite the dangers that come with being different from
the rest of your species.  If you tie a red string around a wren’s leg, the
others in the flock will peck it to death.

CHAPTER SEVEN

September 25

8:20 AM

“I’m still not certain that it’s
proper to wear a purple dress in mourning,” Leanna fretted, as she pushed a
slice of pear around her plate.  “Grandfather has only been buried for three weeks.”

“You loved Leonard, we all know
that,” Geraldine said, looking up from her copy of the morning paper.  “The
important thing is that you and Tom were a comfort to him while he lived, not
some barbaric custom you choose to observe after he is dead.  Besides, your new
gown looks lovely on you.”

Leanna ducked her head a bit
guiltily, knowing what Aunt Gerry said was true.  In the two weeks since her
arrival, Leanna had roamed the streets of London daily with Gerry’s maid Emma
in tow.  She had indulged herself in several gowns but the purple one,
delivered just the evening before, was her favorite.  It brought out the grey
in her eyes and she had never worn a color quite so deep and striking. 
Gwynette had been more of the opinion that maiden girls should wear shades of
pink, robin’s egg blue, and yellow – colors which suited neither Leanna’s
temperament nor her coloring.

Ever since Aunt Gerry had mentioned
having a dinner in her honor, Leanna had been so carried away with excitement
that she’d forgotten to be homesick.  Had practically forgotten she was in
mourning.  But Gerry was right, her grandfather had never been one to stand on
ceremony and if he were here he would most certainly tell her to wear what she
pleased.  Leanna resolutely broke off a bit of bread and smeared it with jam. 
She wouldn’t worry.  This was a new life and the old rules did not apply.

Emma entered the room with a fresh
pot of tea and, after a rapid glance at the table to make sure all the serving dishes
were full, sat down across from Gerry.  At first Leanna had been stunned by the
casual manner in which Gerry ran her household.  She had never seen a home
where servants dined within arm’s length of their employers and were in fact
frequently sought for counsel or companionship. 

It was hard to peg Emma’s exact
position within the household, but Leanna had to admit that, thanks largely to
Emma, what the home lacked in formality it compensated for in efficiency.  Emma
ordered the food, managed Gerry’s daunting social calendar, and supervised the
cleaning efforts of the pregnant girls who came in twice a week.  Gerry was a
patron of a home for unwed mothers and liked to offer these young women the
chance to earn a pound or two.  The first morning after her arrival, Leanna
thought she had gone mad when she bounded down the staircase only to find four
big-bellied, child-eyed girls on bended knee polishing the entry floor.  Her
shock had been magnified when a half-hour later Emma rang that breakfast was
ready and they all trooped in to join them at the table, wolfing down massive
portions of oatmeal and hot buns.  It was all she could do to maintain her
composure from cracking into a fit of giggles at the sight of seven women -
four of them pregnant and one older woman wrapped from head to foot in an
orange silk kimono- sitting in a circle waiting for their tea.

It was at that moment the door to the
kitchen opened and she had first spied Gage, the sole male member of Gerry’s
household.  Heaven knows from what charity Geraldine had acquired Gage, but he
served as a combination cook and butler and was quite timid. Gerry had informed
her on the first night of her visit that Gage had prepared a special welcoming
supper but lacked the nerve to serve it to her himself.  The ensuing meal had
been delicious - a standing rib roast and a delicate apple tart for dessert -
and Leanna had unsuccessfully begged Gerry to have Gage come out and take his
bows.  But now that she was actually seeing him she nearly cried out with
surprise.  Gage had an enormous goiter which obscured the majority of his
throat and gave him the appearance of a bullfrog.  Other than the large pouch
and his eerie silence, he was a model butler, attired in a white linen serving
suit even at dawn, and a superlative cook.  Leanna couldn’t blame the pregnant
girls for stuffing extra almond buns into their pockets.  If she’d had pockets,
she’d have been tempted to steal a few herself.

But it was Emma who provided order
amid all this chaos, who proved to be the still island around which the flotsam
of Gerry’s wild life drifted.  Leanna wondered why Tom had never mentioned the
girl, for she was an enigma to Leanna.  Emma could scarcely be any older than
herself, yet she was so calm and assured, not only in the brownstone of Mayfair
but also in the shops and streets of London.  And she spoke in beautiful tones,
saying words Leanna had never known a servant to use.  She had the look of the
Irish, with her gingery hair and milk-white skin, and Leanna was surprised Tom
had not found her intriguing.  But then he had never mentioned Gage either and
Gage was certainly a fascinating specimen of humanity.

“Oh heavens, darling, read this,”
Aunt Gerry said, dragging Leanna’s thoughts back to the present.  “Aloud, so
Emma and Gage can hear.”

Leanna swallowed, and reached for the
front page of the Star. “Last night,” she read, “the following letter was
delivered to the Central News Agency of Fleet Street.”

Dear Boss:

I keep on hearing that the police
have caught me.  But they won’t fix me yet…I am down on certain types of women
and I won’t stop ripping them until I do get buckled.

Grand job, that last one was.  I gave
the lady no time to squeal.  I love my work and want to start again.  You will
soon hear from me, with my funny little game.

I saved some of the proper red stuff
in a ginger beer bottle after my last job to write with but it went thick like
glue and I can’t use it.  Red ink is fit enough, I hope.  Ha, ha!

Next time I shall clip the ears off
and send them to the police just for jolly.

Jack the Ripper

“Hmmm…” Leanna finished, letting the
paper drop, “It’s been a few days since they’ve reported on the killings.  Jack
the Ripper, he calls himself? It’s very fitting.”

“It’s absolutely ghastly!” said
Gerry, “and whatever does he mean ‘I’m down on certain kinds of women?’”

“Prostitutes,” Emma said shortly. “He
hates prostitutes.”  Gage rose and silently left the table.

“Well he has certainly given Scotland
Yard fair warning that he plans to try again,” Leanna said. “It is a schoolboy
taunt, is it not?  Like he’s rubbing their noses in the fact they haven’t been
able to catch him.  Oh, look, farther down, they quote one of the detectives. 
‘Trevor Welles…’” she began.

“Trevor Welles!” Emma and Gerry cried
in unison.

“He’s a dear friend of mine,” Gerry
said, “and he’ll be your dinner partner on Sunday.  Trevor being quoted,
imagine that.  I knew him when he was just a bobby.”  Emma gave a little
snicker.  “Well go on, Leanna,” Gerry insisted, “What does he say?”

“He says Scotland Yard has every
intention of apprehending the Ripper,” Leanna said, dropping the paper again. 
“He’s certainly a talkative sort, isn’t he?”

“Tell Leanna how you and Trevor met,”
Emma said innocently.

“He arrested me,” Gerry said.

Leanna raised her eyebrows.

“No, truly, some time back Tess and I
and several of the other women in the suffragette movement were protesting the
fact women weren’t allowed to row on the Thames -“

“Row on the Thames?” Leanna asked
skeptically.

“Yes, can you believe it?  Any fool
or drunk of a man can take a pleasure craft into the water but no woman can
steer a boat on the Thames.  So we went to Hyde Park and we chained ourselves
to trees and we said we would not leave until Parliament -“

“Aunt Gerry,” said Leanna, half
amused and half impressed.  “You chained yourself to a tree outdoors in the
elements without food or water or any…facilities?  However did you manage?”

“Oh I doubt we were there more than
ten minutes,” Gerry went on, so absorbed in her story she was oblivious to Emma’s
muffled giggles.  “They sent out the bobbies and Trevor was the one who
arrested me.  Quite the gentleman he was, and as he was loading me into the
wagon he said ‘Stick to your guns, ma’am,’ rather low under his breath.  I’ll
never forget that.  He gave me a bit of courage just as I needed it.”

“They seriously took you to the
prison?”

“To Newgate, worst in the city.”

“Gage and I had to go down and post
her bond,” Emma said dryly. “She wasn’t in a cell.  Mr. Welles had taken her
and the others into a private room and even fetched them a spot of
refreshment.”

“I was incarcerated, nonetheless,”
Gerry said, pulling herself up with great dignity.

“And now he’s a detective on the
Ripper case,” Leanna mused.  “This is going to be quite a party.”

“Oh dear,” Gerry said, peering at her
grandniece.  “I have two young men coming, but it has suddenly struck me that
the others are my age or more.  We’ll probably seem to be hopeless fuddie-duddies
to a girl like you.  I do hope you won’t be disappointed.”

Leanna grinned.  “I doubt very
seriously I’ll consider your friends to be fuddie-duddies,” she said, “But are
you certain about the purple dress?  I wouldn’t want to make a false step…”

Emma excused herself and left the
table, several plates stacked deftly in the crook of one arm.  Gage had cleaned
the kitchen, leaving her only the last dishes to do and she lowered them into
the warm water of the basin and began to swish them about slowly.  The fact
that the Ripper promised to kill more prostitutes plagued her mind, and the
silly story of Gerry’s arrest had not distracted her as thoroughly as it
usually did.

It had been four years since Emma had
seen her older sister Mary, but she thought of her daily and all the publicity
about this madman, this Ripper, was turning her concern into an obsession. 
Mary - pretty, saucy, and outgoing as she was - had been the idol of her shy,
bookish younger sister.  Their childhood in Dorchester with their brother Adam,
their gentle mother and their schoolmaster father had been idyllic, or at
least, Emma thought grimly to herself as she pushed her hair back with one damp
palm, it seemed that way in retrospect.  Their father had earned a
respectable-enough living.  Their mother was the angel of the county, so
compassionate and skilled a nurse that people called her in to deliver their
babies and comfort their dying.

Then came the tuberculosis epidemic
seven years ago, which closed the school for three whole terms, leaving her
father without the only kind of trade he knew, and which ended with bodies
piled high in the local cemetery and few men strong enough to bury them.  Emma still
dreamed sometimes of the piles of shrouded corpses, stacked as neatly as
firewood.  Her mother, worn down from incessant nursing, was the first to join
them.  Her father died four months later, leaving behind three children ranging
in age from twelve to nineteen, a heavily-mortgaged home, and boxes crammed
full of books.

But if the schoolmaster and his wife
had not managed to live to the age of forty, their children shared a strong
instinct to survive and a ruthless lack of sentimentality.  Within weeks Mary
and Adam had stripped the house of every saleable item, divided the paltry lot,
and begun to make plans to cope with an uncertain future.  Adam had a chance to
go the States - a former schoolmate had settled in Seattle and written that
there was opportunity for a lad who was young and strong and fearless.  It
would take everything he had to get there, but he lit out nonetheless,
promising to write and send money when he’d made his fortune.

Mary had an idea she could become a
governess, so she packed up Emma and the two headed for London.  If nothing
else, their father had left them a level of education rare in girls, and Mary
quickly found work in the home of a prosperous tailor.  Grudgingly, he and his
wife agreed Emma could stay on too and the girls shared cramped space in the
attic, with Emma running errands and doing chores for the humorless housekeeper
while Mary drilled Latin into the unwilling heads of the tailor’s three sons.

She hated her life.  Emma knew it,
could sense it, felt the desperation behind Mary’s quick smile.  Many women on
their own with a younger sister to support had done far worse, but she was
nineteen years old and the days droned on like the beat of a metronome with no
prospects of becoming richer, or fuller, or leading her out of the attic.  Emma
was powerless to help her sister and now, looking back, Emma could only marvel
that Mary had been able to stick it out for two years, so ill-suited was she
for the position of governess.  One day, shortly after Emma had turned fifteen,
Mary had simply disappeared, leaving a note and every pound she had managed to
save tied in a scarf on the flat little cot.  Emma leafed through the money,
unable to blame her sister and too frightened to be angry at this latest
desertion.