Shadows Fall Away (27 page)

“You mustn’t blame Eugenia, Mrs. Trambley. It was the fault of the boor who caused such a scene at the fundraising reception. Absolute lout that one, but I suppose it’s to be expected considering the stock from which he’s bred.”

“If you’ll both pardon me,” I interrupted before Mother could go off one on one of her tangents. “I simply must get to the ward.”

Nudging myself behind Jack, I signed the admittance book then wedged past Mother and hurried down the long empty corridor, my heels clicking upon the recently washed floors. The lingering tarry scent of the carbolic took my mind off the fading voices of Mother and Jack.

Putting away my things in the nurses’ cloakroom, I rinsed my hands then bustled myself into the overnight matron’s office. I glanced at my watch then gave a sharp rap on the door. I was only five minutes behind, but still. “Forgive my tardiness, Mrs. Craft. I was held up by a bit of a commotion near my residence and again at the admittance desk.”

She scarcely raised her head from the sheaf of papers upon the desk, her eyes shadowed and shining like cold black stones in the glow of the kerosene lamp to her left. “You don’t warrant special consideration, Miss Trambley.”

“I don’t ask for any, Ma’am and I shan’t let this happen again.”

While I suppose it was remarkably unchristian of me, I loathed the day duty staff of the convalescent ward. While I fully understood things were expected to be busier during the daylight hours when the patients were awake, I wondered how on earth they’d ever managed before I arrived.

Once again the coal scuttles needed filling, the patient’s side tables and bedrails had to be wiped down, as did the high windowsills along the left wall. Both of Mr. Wilkins’s spittoons needed emptying and cleaning. I hoped his current state of sleep was deep enough to curtail any violent coughing before I returned with at least one spittoon.

I was wholly surprised anyone had managed to take care of the bedpans before they left. The more I thought on it, I imagined Mother had made a cursory round upon her arrival. She’d never allow standing waste to accumulate.

The worst of the cleaning done, I assisted the training nurse on the ward.

I didn’t have to take more than two steps to seek her out as she strode up and gave me a harsh look. “Mrs. Robin is being difficult again. She won’t let anyone but you change her bandage.”

“Fine.”

Mrs. Robin was an old friend of Mrs. Yost whom I often treated near the park. I hadn’t quite figured out how the women were friends considering all Mrs. Robin did was criticize Mrs. Yost over everything she’d said and done for the past two decades.

“I don’t see why she just don’t’ get off ‘er high horse and get ‘er treated. Wot? She thinks them on the outside’ll feel sorry and drop her a spare quid or three?”

“I’m sure I don’t know, Mrs. Robin. If you’d turn a bit more right so I can apply this poultice to the entire area. The wound will be healed and you’ll be right as rain in no time.”

I disposed of the old poultice when one of the men’s ward’s attendants sought me out. “Dr. Palmer is needing your help, Miss.”

“I’ll be right there.” I stopped below one of the windows to take in a bit of cool air and did my best not to acknowledge the jealous look of the training nurse. Honestly, if it wasn’t Mark Stewart making people gossip about me, it was Jack Palmer.

After taking a deep breath, I resolved to have him ask her assistance the next time it was necessary.

I reached the ward to see a stuporous man in an examination room off to the left being stripped of his jacket by the attendant who’d come for me. It might have been comical the way the man kept flopping this way and that as the attendant sought to disrobe him. I rushed to his aid, tugging the jacket sleeves then working at the shirt while Jack bellowed for someone to hurry with ice.

Noting the man’s glassy stare, I looked at Jack. “Narcotics?”

“Morphine.” He sneered. “Should let the blighter die but his two daughters dragged him here for help because we were closer than the hospital.” Jack slapped the man’s cheeks, his palms leaving imprints on the man’s flushed skin. “Wake up!”

He addressed the male attendant. “You get those towels on the stand, knot the ends, and find out where that blasted ice is.”

No sooner had the words left his lips than the other male attendant entered a bucket of ice and water in his hands. He rushed forward causing the water to slosh about the floor. I hurried to clean the spill only to be stopped by Jack’s voice.

“Eugenia, wet the towels while we get him up.”

I did as ordered and watched Jack direct the attendants in lifting the man and holding him upright. They had to keep him awake and alert. If he lapsed into a coma, the effects of the morphine would surely kill him.

The man barely moved. Jack followed along as the attendants dragged him, smacked the patient’s bare back with the icy towel. “Eugenia, help me. Get his face with the unknotted end.”

It was like a macabre ritual. Back and forth we went across the narrow room, the patient falling asleep on his feet, rousing slightly when battered with the icy damp towels. Jack shouted at the man to wake while the ward patients protested the disruption of their sleep, shouting at me for not striking the patient hard enough for his liking.

I realized it was for the man’s own good, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that Jack was punishing him for his transgressions as much as trying to keep him alive for the sake of his children.

***

Mark

Genie looked like hell when she came home the following morning. It took every ounce of self-control not to rush out of the tea shop to go to her. Instead I pulled apart my sweet roll and muttered about her parents being assholes.

“They did what they felt was best for all concerned,” Mrs. O’Connell said from the other end of the counter.

“Yeah, right.” I popped the last of my roll into my mouth. I set a few coins down then took Gurov’s pastries over to the newspaper then went off to do some heavy lifting down by the docks until it was time to take a break and clean up at the print shop.

The days were long as ever but the work was pretty much a no-brainer that put me on autopilot. The talk in the streets was still worried about the Ripper but more than few jumped on the old “no news is good news” train of thought.

But the last week of September was about to start and bad news was going to be the word of the day.

I knew that and yet I kept on strumming my guitar in the evening before cruising the area to see if I could figure out who the Ripper really was. That Palmer character topped my list but I couldn’t find out anything aside from him being a resident or whatever they were called now. But I planned to keep an eye on him. If he snuck out of the infirmary late on the twenty-ninth, I’d be following him.

Then again I wasn’t sure if I’d make it to the twenty-ninth. I knew that infamous “Dear Boss” letter was due to make the rounds. My slip up to Ian in using the word Ripper was far in the back of my mind, but when a mean looking cop came to haul my ass into the police station the night of the twenty-seventh I knew I was knee deep some bad shit.

The constable grabbed the back of my shirt and shoved me through Ian’s partially opened door, not caring that half my face connected with the solid oak. He propelled me forward and pushed me into a wooden chair so hard my tailbone screamed in protest.

“Here he is, Inspector, got him right at the back of the Russian’s. Singing songs ‘bout murder he was.”

“It was just a song. It wasn’t about committing murders; it was about…oh, screw it.” I shifted on the hard seat, wondering if I got hanged as the Ripper if I could go forward in time to haunt my dad and uncle for making me learn the nineties tune to fill in the empty spot in their cover band.

Ian got up from his chair and came around to stand between his desk and me. “Sergeant Fletcher, you may go.”

I’d been interrogated by a lot of cops and Ian definitely ranked right up there. It wasn’t what he said, in fact he didn’t say much, but his bleak silence and steel cold stare showed what had helped him move up the ranks.

He shoved a handbill under my nose that showed a handwritten copy of the original letter. “Read it.”

Dear Boss,

I keep on hearing the police have caught me but they won’t fix me just yet. I have laughed when they look so clever and talk about being on the
right
track. That joke about Leather Apron gave me real fits. I am down on whores and I shan’t quit ripping them till I do get buckled. Grand work the last job was. I gave the lady no time to squeal. How can they catch me now? I love my work and want to start again. You will soon hear of me with my funny little games. I saved some of the proper
red
stuff in a
ginger beer
bottle over the 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.
The next job I do I shall clip the lady’s ears off and send to the police officers just for jolly wouldn’t you. Keep this letter back till I do a bit more work, then give it out straight. My knife’s so nice and sharp I want to get to work right away if I get a chance. Good Luck.

Yours truly

Jack the Ripper

Don’t mind me giving the trade name

PS Wasn’t good enough to post this before I got all the red ink off my hands curse it. No luck yet. They say I’m a doctor now.
Ha ha

“I didn’t write that. I don’t sound anything like that and you know it.”

Ian let the handbill flutter to his desk. He leaned in, his jaw tense, his eyes hard and sharp. He looked very much like my dad did the last time I got busted. Like he’d had all he was going to take and if I ended up behind bars then so be it. Only here, in this time, if they thought I was the killer it wouldn’t be years of jail and court appeals I’d get. It would be a one-way trip to the gallows and rope with my name on it.

“What I know, young man, is that you appear out of nowhere less than twelve hours before the body of a murdered woman is found. What I know is that this mysterious traveling companion of yours, this Agatha, is nowhere to be found. What I know is that no ship manifests have you listed as a passenger.”

He paused, lifted my chin with a prod of his finger, and delivered his last shot like a line drive down the center of PNC Park.

“What. I.
Know.
Is that you referred to the Whitechapel murderer as ‘the Ripper’ in this very office.”

“I did not write that! I may be a major screw-up and a piss-poor son but I am no killer!”

He grabbed the handbill and shoved it in my face again. “What’s the signature say, Mark? What’s that trade name he speaks of?”

I gripped the seat edge so hard my knuckles hurt. It was either that or punch Ian in the face. “I did not write that. I never called myself Jack the Ripper.”

“But you used the term so smoothly.”

“Maybe, but how many other people have? I’ve seen the newspapers. How many articles have mentioned Annie Chapman being ‘ripped’? I didn’t do it, any of it. I’m innocent.”

I don’t know how long we went round and round the mulberry bush like the monkey and the weasel in the nursery rhyme, Ian bringing up his “facts” me telling him I was innocent.

When he suddenly backed off and left the room I thought this day was finally done. I looked at the old pocket watch. One in the morning. Crap. No wonder my ass was numb.

I got up and stretched, jogged in place a minute to loosen my muscles and get the blood flowing again. I debated on telling Ian the truth about me, about what I knew. The “double event” was going to happen Saturday night. If I told him and they caught the Ripper and I was in Ian’s sight the entire time, he’d know I was innocent—

Or think you’re an accomplice trying to score points.

I couldn’t tell him the truth. The truth was beyond crazy. Crazy was not looked on in any caring, pity-the-sick-person way in 1888. With no forensic evidence or hot shot CSI team to produce the real facts, I was screwed. No. Telling the entire, absolute truth would just make things worse for me.

Mark

When seven a.m. rolled around and they finally let me go, I was tired, hungry, thirsty, and sore all over. That last bit thanks to the detectives who relieved Ian. While they didn’t try to beat a confession out of me with their fists, they shoved me around pretty good, making sure not to leave any visible bruises in case I decided to rat them out.

A blast of cold damp air froze me just inside the entry of the police station. Shit. It had been getting chillier since the weekend but it must have dropped twenty degrees overnight. A shove from a couple constables heading out on their rounds made me exit the building. I scrunched myself against the wall just outside the doors, beneath the enclosure above the steps. And that would be rain coming down like a cold shower stream meant just for me.

Sure, why not. Pneumonia and no antibiotics would be just the thing I needed.

Gathering up what manly macho I could, I lowered my head a little, stuffed my hands into my pants’ pockets, and trotted down the steps and almost had my eye poked out by Genie Trambley’s umbrella.

Cursing, I jumped back and tripped over the edge of the bottom step and sent a constable sprawling over me to the sidewalk at Genie’s feet.

My luck being what it was, more cops appeared out of nowhere and hauled my back inside for being “disorderly.”

On the upside, I was out of the rain.

On the downside, Ian arrived as I stood in front of the sergeant on duty and Genie was pleading my case while the cop I’d tripped tried to shout her down.

Ian gave me a hard look, massaged his temple, and pointed to the doors. “Out the lot of you! You, back to your patrol and you two, anywhere but here.”

I stayed on the steps under the cover of the arched entry while Genie unfurled her big black umbrella. “Thanks for speaking up. I could have handled it, though.”

“Undoubtedly.” She cast me a disbelieving look.