City of Darkness (City of Mystery) (50 page)

“Jack,” Cecil blurted.

“Then fetch up a load and be quick on
it.  Today’s your schooling and by tomorrow you’ll be expected to be pulling
your weight or you’ll be food for the fishes, right enough.”

“Aye, Sir,” muttered Cecil.  The
crates had no handles and he struggled to get the first one aloft, nearly
pitching it into the water in the process to the great amusement of the rest of
the crew.  “Where are we headed?” he gasped out to the boy beside him, the one
he supposed he had to thank for his job.

The boy shrugged, wiping sweat from
his face.  “Argentina, mate.”

CHAPTER FIFTY

December 4

11:45 AM

As the train sped through the slush
and wet snow toward Rosemoral, Gerry tactfully napped so that John and Leanna
were essentially alone in the back seat of the compartment, gazing out the
broad window.  He leaned forward and grasped both of her hands in his. 

“Sometimes,” he said.  “I wonder if
this is all happening too fast.”

She shook her head.  “It’s hard to
believe that just a few months ago I was a country girl, waiting weeks for a
single ball, my whole life tied to the change of seasons.  For that Leanna,
almost any change was too fast.  But now, I feel ready for whatever comes
next.” 

“Will your mother approve of me?”

“I’m sure.” It amused her to think
that after all they had been through John still believed that he would have to
ask her mother or her brothers for permission to court her.  Just a few days
earlier he’d received an anonymous benevolence from the country for his clinic,
a donation which had surprised him, but which he believed was a delayed result
from one of his fund-raising trips to parishes and garden clubs.  The check had
given him confidence, at least enough to accept her invitation to Rosemoral.

She pulled her wrap a little more
tightly around her.  “Do they have any tea in the dining car, do you suppose?”

“My guess would be yes,” he said.  
As he made his way up the rattling aisle, Leanna leaned back, thinking of
Rosemoral, where her mother waited with William and Tom and where she was sure
certain pivotal decisions would be made before this visit was complete.  It’s a
second chance for us all, Leanna thought.   Our chance to be a completely
different sort of family.

 “Are you comfortable, Miss?”

She smiled up at the conductor, who
stood in the compartment door.  “Oh yes,” she said.  “It’s such a lovely day
for a journey, isn’t it?”

The conductor was a bit taken back by
this response and glanced out the window into the gloomy slush.  “Is there
anything you need, Mistress?” he repeated.

“I truly am - oh.  Oh dear, you want
my fare.  Of course.” Leanna stood, straightening her skirts with embarrassment. 
Perhaps at heart she still was an idiotic child.  Now where was her purse? 
Geraldine was sleeping the sleep of the dead, slumped against a pile of their
bags, and Leanna could not remember which one held the small blue pouch with
her pounds.  “Just a minute,” she said, flustered. “I assure you the money is
here somewhere.”

John strode up behind the conductor
and slipped a bill into this gloved hand.  “Here, Sir, and keep the change in
fair trade for the time we have cost you.”

“Yes Sir, thank you Sir,” the
conductor said, beaming at Leanna as though she were the Queen.  Then he left
them alone and both John and Leanna began to laugh.

“You never seem to have any money.”

“So you do remember the first time we
met.”

“Oh course. I saw you fumbling about in
your bag and thought ‘Now here’s a girl who needs my help.’  And there is
nothing on earth so irresistible to a man as a girl who needs his help.”  He
leaned over and kissed her roughly on the cheek.  “Why are you smiling like
that?”

“Sit down, John,” Leanna said.  “There’s
something we need to discuss.”

12: 15 PM

“Trevor,” Emma said with surprise,
opening the door a bit wider.  “You just missed them.  They took the 11 o’clock
train.”

“I know,” Trevor said.  He stood on
the stoop to remove his coat, which was half crusted over with the first snow
of winter.  “I actually dropped by to visit you.”

“And caught me lazing, I’m afraid,”
she laughed as he stepped in.  “It’s so rare to have the house to myself.  Or
almost to myself, for Gage is quiet as the proverbial mouse.”   She looked at Trevor
more seriously.  “So you deliberately missed the chance to say goodbye?”

“My God, are my feelings that plain
on my face?”

Emma smiled.  “Yes, yes they are.”

“Very well then, my dear detective of
the heart, I’ll confess to you that it will be difficult at first if they do
indeed return from the countryside engaged, but I can’t very well say it’s
unexpected, can I?  Things always end as they should.   People end up partnered
as they should.  None among us can fight his fate.”

 Emma could think of nothing to add
to this.  “I was just about to have a bit of luncheon.  Would you join me?”

“Thought you’d never ask,” said
Trevor, following her into the cozy parlor and seating himself on the huge
armchair Gerry normally secured.  The parlor was warmed by a roaring fire and
he propped up his feet and was seized almost at once with the feelings of peace
and homecoming which engulfed his senses whenever he entered this particular
house.  Odd, he had always thought it was Geraldine who radiated the comfort
and security, but she was miles away.  It must have been Emma all along who had
made this house a home.  The knowledge surprised him, but it was not
displeasing.

Emma returned within minutes,
carrying a tray of fruit, cold meats and cheese.  “I hear congratulations are
in order.  Another Ripper has confessed, according to the morning papers.”

“Yes, we’re up to thirty-seven at
last count.  This one was a bit dramatic, by any standards.  A public hanging,
yesterday, of a man who had gleefully admitted to poisoning his mistress.  He’s
up on the scaffolding and just as the trap door opens, he yells ‘I am Jack
the…’ That’s it, the neck is broken, the crowd is in hysterics.  They like to
watch them go down but this was a bit more of the excitement than anyone
bargained for.”

“Could there be any truth to it?”
Emma asked, slicing a bit of cheese and popping it in her mouth.

“No, he was in America when the first
three murders were committed.  Just a ploy to get his name in the history
books, I gather.  Poor sots.  Some of their confessions are quite convincing.”

“And what of the others?  The one
whose friends committed him to the asylum?  Or the man who threw himself into
the river?”

Trevor’s face changed, grew somber
and dark.  “Both legitimate possibilities and growing more plausible each day that
passes without a murder.  If a man commits suicide, or is quietly put away, and
then the killings stop we will probably conclude, by default, that our Ripper
has been caught.” 

“Or was simply scared off, which has
the same effect.” Emma said, speaking with surprising detachment of the man who
had murdered her sister.  “But either way, the case stays open for all eternity,
just as Madame Renata predicted it would on the evening of the dinner party.  Could
that have been just months ago?  It seems more like a lifetime.”

 “I owe you an apology,” Trevor
said.  “I never came to see you after Mary died.”

She shrugged.  “You blamed yourself.”

They sat for a moment, concentrating
on their food.  Finally, Emma spoke again.

“But life goes on, does it not?   The
heart doesn’t really break at all.”

“Do you think he will be enough for
her?”

It was an abrupt shift of topic, but
she knew his meaning at once.  “I don’t know.  He sees things rather simply.”

“And perhaps in time it might become
tedious to find yourself married to a saint?”

“Well, if he isn’t enough on his own,
she won’t rest until she makes him so.  We women are like that, Detective
Welles.   Men are our careers.  We read things into them, we convince ourselves
that our devotion in and of itself is enough to lift them to a higher level. 
Leanna will convert John into whatever sort of man she needs him to be.”

“It is your gender’s highest
accomplishment.” 

“Really?  I would have said it’s our
greatest failing.”  Emma turned her chin toward Trevor.  “Do you mind if I ask
you a very personal question?”

He snorted.  “I think you’ve earned
the right.”

“What bothers you more, losing the
Ripper or losing Leanna?”

“Now don’t laugh…”

“I seriously doubt that I shall.”

“…but I think they were somewhat
bound together in my mind.  Get the killer, get the girl, as if I were a
character in a penny dreadful.  Instead, it’s almost as if I lost them both in
the same moment.”

“You learned that some things matter
more to you than solving crimes.”

Trevor winced.  “Which makes me a bad
detective.”

“I don’t agree.”

 “So Leanna goes to John, the Ripper
goes into the darkness, and I am left with gratification of knowing that in the
moment of decision, I opted to save a human life.”

“I assume Leanna thanked you.”

“Copiously.”  He looked at her out of
the corner of his eye. “But if memory serves, the life I saved was yours.”

“Only by mistake.  You dove in after
Leanna and came up from the water with me.”

He shook his head.  “I saw more than
you think that night on the pier.”

She was sorry she’d been so harsh. 
He had rescued her, no matter how or for precisely what reason, and she could
not say exactly why she fought that knowledge or found it so difficult to
express her gratitude.  We are too much alike, Trevor and I, she thought.   We
can’t stop wanting things we’ll never have.  We claim to be creatures of
intellect, and yet we have both made dreadful mistakes of logic.  In the moment
of truth, we both follow our hearts instead of our heads, and life will pound us
over and over for this frailty, the way waves repeatedly pound against rocks. 

She struggled for a way to change the
subject. “I understand you have the funds for your forensic laboratory.”

“Yes,” Trevor said, brightening.  “Can
you imagine?  From the Queen herself, no less.  Someday I may go to France as
well.”

“C’est merveilleux.”

“You speak French?”

“You forget that my father was a
schoolmaster.  He taught all three of his children any number of useless
skills, especially in the area of linguistics.”

“It wouldn’t be useless in Paris. 
Abrams writes that they insist on speaking French there.”

“How very unreasonable of them.”

“Those papers on forensic technique… 
Could you possibly have a look at them?  And then… I know I’m thick and slow to
learn, but even a phrase or two would help.  Would you teach me?”

“Oui.  Naturellement.”

“We don’t have to start right now,”
Trevor said, cramming a bit of cheese into his mouth.  “Here’s the thing,
Emma.  Rayley Abrams is already in Paris and Davy Mabrey has shown such
promise… I need a physician to serve as coroner, someone who isn’t a million
years old like Phillips, and then I’ll have it, the beginnings of my forensics
team.  The lad I was considering just told me he’s had his fill of London and
plans to decamp with his fiancé for that paradise known as New Jersey.”  Trevor
chuckled.  “Now, don’t scoff, but I’ve been thinking of asking Tom to join us. 
His actions that night may have been misguided but they showed a lot of courage. 
Trying to kick in the door where Harrowman was delivering the baby, that sort
of thing.”

Emma sat silent.

Trevor frowned.  “You think he’s too
young, don’t you?”

“Young may be better.  No bad habits
to unlearn.”

“Quite.  He’s a boy in many ways, but
he has his qualities.”

 “I agree.  He has his qualities.”

 He tilted his head to observe her
face more closely.  “It occurs to me my team will need a linguist.”

Emma’s lips turned up.  “Indeed.”

“Oh, I’m quite serious, especially if
we train in Paris and then take cases all over the continent.  That’s what the
Queen envisions, you know.  That when there’s an unsolvable crime anywhere in
the world, the authorities will scratch their heads and say ‘We must bring the
forensics team from Scotland Yard.’”

“Complete with the schoolteacher’s
daughter.”

“Whyever not?  The Yard employs women
in any number of ways when there’s a task the men simply can’t assume. Off the
record, of course.“ 

“You mean as spies.”

“A harsh word, my dear.”  Trevor
thoughtfully bit into a pear.  “When did you begin to wear your hair down?  It’s
lovely.  How would someone say that in French?”