City of Darkness (City of Mystery) (9 page)

The note had suggested Emma could
stay on as the household governess -  a final effort, Emma supposed, for Mary
to assuage her conscience.  The thought was not altogether ridiculous, for Emma
was in fact a better student than Mary had ever been and had continued her
studies, in secret, in the evenings.  But she was only a year older than the
tailor’s eldest son and slight for her age.  The tailor had roared in fury and
deposited her posthaste in the hands of his local sexton with instructions to
escort her to the nearest workhouse.  Emma sat quietly, politely, as the two
discussed her fate.  No matter where the sexton took her she had already
determined that she would not stay.  She had a good mind and thirty pounds tied
in a scarf; surely London held something better than a workhouse for her.

It was then that, after years of
lucklessness, Emma’s life suddenly took a turn for the better. The sexton was a
friend of Geraldine Bainbridge, and he mentioned Emma’s plight to her.  Within
hours Emma was delivered not to the squalor of the Knights Home for Indigent
Youth, but to an elegant house in Mayfair, where it was at times her job to
cook and clean but generally just her job to be sane.  To impose discipline and
order on an undisciplined and disorderedly household.  It was a task for which
she was uniquely well-equipped.

She had not minded taking care of
Gerry, Emma reflected, as she gave the last plate a cursory flick with a towel,
nor had she balked at the string of misfits and ne’er-do-wells Geraldine
routinely took into her home.  Emma was acutely conscious in every pale face
that there, but for the grace of God, went she, and she ladled out soup and
sympathy with a sure hand.  But this girl, this Leanna, was a different
matter.  She had talked quite freely with Geraldine about the money she’d
inherited and her family’s reaction and Emma had for the first time felt the
sickening thud of jealousy.  Not even the fact that she realized Leanna had
been raised in a venomous household instead of the happy normalcy she’d known for
twelve years, could abate Emma’s envy.  Dear thoughtless Gerry had prattled on
about the many pleasures London afforded an heiress until Emma could stand to
listen no longer and had excused herself.

Leanna, to her credit, at least had enough
conscience to seem uncomfortable about the magnitude of her wealth.  She had
pleaded with Gerry not to introduce her as an heiress, but simply as her
grandniece, as her ward, and Gerry had reluctantly agreed.

“It’s too new to me,” Leanna had
said.  “I can’t get used to the money or the power it represents and I’m afraid
people will look at me strangely because of it.”

“I inherited money and people don’t
look at me strangely,” Gerry had protested.

Leanna had burst into giggles. “Oh
but Aunt Gerry, they do.”

Then Geraldine had laughed herself. 
“You’re right, darling, but they don’t look at me strangely because of the
money.  Quite the opposite.  A little wealth gives you the right to be as queer
as you wish yet remain socially acceptable.”

“Well, at least don’t mention it
around any young men,” Leanna had said firmly. “If I should attract suitors I
don’t want to worry about if they’re only interested in my estate.  Oh, Aunt
Gerry, have I told you?  I met the most attractive man on the train.  He
thought I was destitute and he paid my fare…”

And so she had launched into the same
story she had told a half-dozen times since her arrival and Emma finally
escaped into the kitchen.  If she should attract any suitors?  The girl was
mad.  With her beauty and breeding she would attract suitors immediately, and
Emma had never so acutely felt what Mary must have endured in that attic years
ago.  She was now the same age Mary had been – almost twenty - and she could
feel her youth and womanhood as if they were a palpable ache in her chest. 
Gerry had offered her a home and a purpose and, like Mary before her, she had
kept her mind on her work for a full five years.  But she was young, and while
she did not have Leanna’s long-limbed grace, Emma knew she was pretty.  Men
looked at her on the streets when she passed.  But however was she going to
meet any of them?  The only man she saw on a regular basis was Gage.

Geraldine had mentioned soup for
lunch, but they were out of carrots.   Emma reached for her cloak so that she
might dash out to the greengrocer.  She was glad for the excuse to take a brisk
walk.  The day was clear with a bite of autumn in the air and the morning fog
had burned off to reveal a crystal blue sky.  Emma automatically strode the
familiar route to the corner grocery, barely noticing what she passed, for her
mind had drifted again to her sister.  With all the news of the Ripper it was
impossible not to think of Mary, for Emma was not being entirely truthful when
she told herself that she had not seen her for five years.   One winter day,
the past December, she had gone with Gerry to deliver toys to an orphanage,
ironically one attached to the very same workhouse she had herself so barely
avoided.  In the dark, dank evening, as they made their trips to and from the
carriage with loaded arms, Emma had become aware that someone was watching
her.  She’d turned to see a solitary figure standing on the sidewalk across the
street and although the woman was draped in a lacy red shawl from her nose to
her waist, there was something familiar in her stance.  Emma stood stock still,
unable to look away from the form of her sister, and finally the figure raised
one hand, in a kind of greeting, then turned away and disappeared.

She had been quiet for the rest of
the evening, unable to enjoy the squeals of the children as they tore into
their gaily wrapped gifts, scarcely able to make polite conversation with the
nuns who ran the orphanage. When Gerry had inquired why she was so silent, Emma
had muttered something about taking a chill.  But a mystery of sorts had been
solved.  Adam had never written the promised letters from Seattle.  For all she
knew, he had sailed off the edge of the map as the navigators in the old days
had threatened, and for years she had thought Mary must have fallen off the
earth somehow as well.  But now she knew.  There was only one reason a woman
alone would walk the streets of the East End in a red shawl, and the Ripper had
stated to the world that he didn’t like that kind of woman.  Emma handed the
grocer her shopping list with an automatic smile, which stayed plastered on her
face as the elderly man flirted and teased her, just as he always did.  But her
mind was in Whitechapel, which may as well have been a thousand miles away.

CHAPTER EIGHT

September 29, 1888

7:10 PM

Aunt Gerry had been right when she
told her not to worry about the purple dress.  Compared to Madame Renata in her
shapeless sari and Tess Arborton in her multicolored plumes, Leanna would
surely be the most conservatively attired woman in the room.  She paused
uncertainly on the landing, biting her lip as she considered the scene below. 
This was hardly like the country parties at home, or the scientific conferences
Grandfather had sponsored at Rosemoral, and it wasn’t as if she could expect an
escort to be waiting at the bottom of the staircase.

Besides Tess and Madame Renata, who
had stuffed themselves companionably into the smallest divan, there was an
elderly gentleman in what appeared to be an ancient admiral’s uniform.  He was
crouched in an absurd, twisted manner, bending over Tiny Alex, a midget who had
traveled the continent with Barnum before retiring to become the darling of the
London social circuit.  Tiny Alex’s appeal was not immediately apparent to
Leanna, for the man, who had the disconcerting manner of a five year old with a
beard, seemed far more interested in Gage’s canapés than the swirl of
conversation.  Gerry herself, looking flushed and breathless, was engaged in
what appeared to be a debate with a man in grey broadcloth, a man whose neat
shoulders and long, slender torso seemed somehow familiar to Leanna.   This was
hardly a group to be concerned about a young woman who wore purple instead of
the usual black of mourning and Emma, who was circulating among the group
bearing a tray of champagne glasses, noticed her and gave a nod.

Emma’s hair was pulled back in a neat
bun and in her stiffly starched maid’s uniform she looked like a very bastion
of propriety.  Silently she paused at the banister and handed up a full glass
of champagne.  Leanna downed it in one fast gulp and shakily gave the glass
back to Emma, who raised her biscuit-colored eyebrows.  Leanna didn’t care.  The
champagne was cool and tart and gave her a fast burst of courage.  There was
surely time for her to drink a magnum; no one below had noticed her arrival.

Tess suddenly stood in a quite
agitated manner. “Forty years?” she said incredulously to Madame Renata, who
sat still and implacable. “You must have made some dreadful miscalculation. 
Geraldine, this woman has said there won’t be suffrage for forty years.”

“Most likely forty thousand,” said
the tall man in the military uniform, but no one appeared to be listening to
him.

“That is what I see,” Madame Renata
said, folding her arms over her ample abdomen.  “It will be the 1920s at the
earliest.”

“Then your glass ball must be all
cloudy or you’ve read the wrong tea leaves,” Tess said, two high spots of color
in her cheeks.  “I know the women in this movement and they think  - “

“Balderdash, they don’t think,” sputtered
the man Leanna had come to think of as The Admiral.  “What of that woman who
threw herself under the policeman’s horse at the front of Westminster Abbey? 
Damn near unseated him.”

Leanna had never heard a man swear in
the presence of women, but no one else seemed surprised by the Admiral’s choice
of words.

“You don’t think that shows the depth
of her commitment??” Tess demanded.

“Shows the depth of her stupidity.  
You’re confusing hysteria with courage, my dear Tessy.”

“I’m not your dear anything and it
does show courage.  She was willing to risk her life to bring attention to her
cause and I –“

“Balderdash!”

“Hush, Fleanders,” Aunt Gerry said. 
“I know you’re all salt and vinegar but the others – “

“He’s saying women haven’t any
courage,” Tess said, her chin bobbing furiously.

“Courage, what do women know of
courage?  Were women in Crimea?”

“Florence Nightingale was,” Gerry
pointed out.  “She spoke to our ladies auxiliary to raise funds for a hospital
in-“

“A simple nurse!”

“You’re an old fool,” Tess said
judiciously, accepting another glass from Emma’s tray.

“Don’t ask me, ask this young man, he
looks as if he knows something of women.  Tell us all, and speak up, have you
ever known a woman to exhibit a real courage, to act as if she had the necessary
constitution…”

The gray-backed young man spoke
quietly, so quietly that Leanna had to stretch over the railing to hear him. 
“You’ll never convince me women have no courage, Sir.  I am an obstetrician.  I
have watched them fight their own wars on a daily basis.”

With this he turned, and Leanna let
out a long low gasp of shock. 

It was the man on the train.  Even though
no one had looked at her - and, given the intensity of the discussion, no one
was apt to - she sank to her knees and tried to conceal herself behind the
railing.  She had the sudden foolish feeling that all her thoughts had been
laid bare, and that anyone glancing up at the stairwell could have read her
emotions in a single look.  What manner of coincidence was this, that the man
who paid the fare to bring her to London would emerge here as a friend of
Geraldine’s?  And that he would be a doctor?

“You see, Fleanders, that’s what
happens why you try to circumvent a proper introduction,” said Gerry.  “This is
John Harrowman, the doctor I’ve been telling you all about, the one who plans
to open an East End clinic.”

“Really?” said Tess, all smiles now. 
“When Gerry told me you planned to put a clinic there I was quite swept away.”

“I’m afraid saying I plan to do this
is a bit premature,” said John, emerging from the shadows of the entry and
stroking his dark mustache.  In the stronger light, he suddenly looked younger,
more hesitant, and unaccustomed to such attention. “I haven’t the funds yet, so
I suppose it should be rightly introduced as more of a dream than a plan.”

“What sort of clinic?” asked
Fleanders, removing his spectacles to reveal enormous watery eyes.

“An obstetrics clinic.”

“Whatever for?”

John paused. “To… deliver babies.”

“I repeat, whatever for?  They’ve
gotten along all right down there for generations breeding like rabbits without
any sort of clinic…”

“A poor woman is as likely to
experience a difficult delivery as is a woman of the middle classes.”

“Balderdash, there’s some sort of
difference in the pelvis, isn’t there?  Ladies have narrow hipbones and their
children have large craniums but in contrast those East End women, I suppose
you could call them, have large pelvises…”

Leanna remained rigid, her hands
gripping the banisters.  She had never overheard such a discussion as this in
her whole life, but no one in Gerry’s parlor seemed to think it at all odd.  In
fact, Madame Renata was doddering on the edge of a nap, and the midget seemed
only concerned with how many clams he could balance in one chubby palm.  John,
however, stood nearly as still as Leanna, his dark eyes intent on the Admiral.