The Ripper Affair

Chapter Twenty-One Answers In Other Quarters

The poor woman had perhaps never been as much a subject of attention in life as she was now. The surgeon–a round, jolly little physicker in a dark suit, his hands quick and deft as he performed incisions–muttered to a thin boy in a transcriber’s gown, while behind them a sour-faced barrowmancer tended to a charm-heated bowl of pitch, eyeing the body warily as if he expected it to perform some feat.

Which was much the way Miss Bannon regarded said corpse, too, when she glanced at it at all. Most of her attention seemed taken by rumination; certainly there was much in this turn of events to cogitate upon.

It was not like her to seem so… distracted, though.

The dank little stone room in this morguelrat warren was noisome enough, but it was also crowded. Clare stood at the periphery of a group clustered near the door, comprised of Miss Bannon, the ever-present Shield, the lad Pico, and the stout detective inspector who addressed Miss Bannon with quite amazing familiarity. The hall outside was packed as well, for the murder had attracted no little attention, and the broadsheets were already crying out its details. A small army of scruffy newsboys were having a fine time selling the sheets as quickly as they could be printed.

Clare leaned a little closer, using his height to advantage as he peered over the examiner’s shoulder. “Most curious,” he said. “The viscera… where has the uterus gone?”

“Don’t know,” Physicker Bagswell said, cheerily, hunched over the scarred granite slab. “There’s a rumour some scraper in Stepney is paying in guineas for them. The ovaries are missing too. Look there, a very sharp blade.”

“Yes, and handled with some skill.” Clare did not hold a handkerchief to his sensitive nose, but he was tempted indeed. “Scraping the underside of the diaphragm, even. And the kidneys…”

“The Tebrem woman.” Aberline aimed the words in Miss Bannon’s general direction, though his posture shouted that he would rather not speak to her. “And Nickol. Yes, the similarities are striking. Both did work as… well, unfortunates. This one, no doubt, did too.”

“I know a frail when I see one, sir.” Miss Bannon’s tone held a great deal of asperity. “Yet this one’s farthings were left upon her corpse. Most troubling.”

“When you say such a thing, it fills me with dread.” The inspector sighed, his breath making a cloud. It was unhealthily damp here, and the coolness no doubt kept the bodies from becoming too fragrant. Still, it was nasty enough. The victim’s entrails–what was left of them–were in a bucket, sending up a stink of their own, and her slack face was nowhere near as peaceful as those who called Death a tranquil state would credit.

“Her fingers are abraded.” Clare pointed. “I wonder…”

“Rings? And look there, the nicks in the cervical vertebrae.” Bagswell tutted over the the steady dripping from the slab into the drain, its black eye exhaling its own foulness up through rusty metal grating. “Note that, Edric.”

“Yes, sir.” The boy was slated to become a physicker himself, and was remarkably unmoved by the spectacle. “Shall I list them separately?”

“Do, please. There are three. Take care with the locations, sketch if you must. Hm.”

“Right-handed,” Clare prompted. “And her throat slashed from behind. Now why would that be?”

“She would face the wall and raise her skirts.” Miss Bannon, archly. “Much easier than couching upon cold ground.”

“Must you?” The inspector was crimson.

Clare noted this, turned his attention back to the body.

“You would prefer me not to speak of something so indelicate?” Her tone could best be described as icy. “My mentath works best when given what information is necessary, clearly and dispassionately. Now, you mentioned another attack? Before Tebrem?”

“Might not be related. Name of Woad, seamstress and occasional frail. She was assaulted, said it was two men with no faces, or a single man with no face.”

“Really.” Bagswell found this most interesting. He turned, his arms splattered elbow-deep with gore. “I saw the body. Collapsed in the workhouse, ruptured perineum. Infection. Faceless, she said?”

Aberline’s expression could not sour further. “Quite insistent upon that point.”

Clare glanced at Miss Bannon, who had gone deathly pale. He doubted it was the setting, for she had gazed upon much more unsettling tableaux with complete calm on more than one previous occasion. Interesting. Again, he filed the observation away, returned his attention to the body. “Half the liver missing. No doubt an error.”

“Do you think so? He has some skill—”

Clare pointed. “Oh yes, but look there, and there. The marks are quite clear. He was aiming otherwise and slipped.”

“Detective Inspector.” Miss Bannon had evidently heard enough. “I require you to shepherd Mr Clare to the Yard, and give him every answer he seeks, access to anything he might require.”

“McNaughton’s not going to be fond of this,” Aberline muttered, darkly. “Nor will Swanley. Or Waring.”

“That is beyond my control. You shall give them to understand the Crown’s wishes in this matter. I am bound to seek answers in other quarters. Pico? You know your duty.”

“Yesmum.” The lad had sobered immensely, which was a relief.

“Mr Clare? Try to be home for dinner, and try not to experiment too rashly.” She smoothed her gloves, and her quick fingers were at her veil fastening. “I shall leave you the carriage and Harthell. Mikal, fetch a hansom.”

“Bannon—” Clare had to tear his attention from the body before him. “I say, I rather think—”

“Archibald. Please.”

You misunderstand me. I suppose it cannot be helped, now. “Oh, certainly. I simply wish to remind you to… to take care.”

“As much as I am able. Good day, gentlemen.” And she was gone, the crowd in the passageway no doubt drawing back from Mikal’s set grimace preceding her slight, black-clad form. Did they think her a relation of the deceased? Who knew?

“You might as well tell a viper to take care where it stings,” the inspector muttered, his face set sourly.

Clare cleared his throat. “I shall thank you, sir, to speak no ill of that lady.” How odd. Only I may do so? To her face, no less.

Thankfully, the man did not reply, and Clare turned back to the body and the physicker, who had watched this with bright interest.

The barrowmancer crossed his arms, as if he had felt a chill.

Perhaps he had.

The detective inspector was an interesting case. A proud nose and side-whiskers that did not disguise the childish attractiveness he must have once possessed, but purple shadows bloomed under his sharp dark eyes. His distinctive sliding step would have told Clare he was accustomed to the Scab’s fascinating resilience underfoot, even if the fraying along his trouser-cuffs hadn’t. Aberline moved with precision and economy, though he took care to appear more a clerk than one of Commissioner Waring’s bootleather bulldogs.

Added to his familiarity in addressing Miss Bannon, and the evident caution he held her in, as well as the fact that he was rather young to have achieved such an exalted rank as detective inspector… well. It bespoke some manner of history, and would have served to keep Clare’s faculties most admirably occupied, if they had not been so already.

Now Aberline looked rather mournful, planting his feet and staring at the flayed, opened body. “Throat cut from behind, right-handed, and then he gutted her.”

Clare’s collar was uncomfortably tight. He made no move to loosen it. “Could sorcery account for the vanished blood?”

“Oh, aye, it could. She said as much. And she’s never about but there’s nasty work going.” He sighed heavily, from the very soles of his sturdy, Scab-scarred shoes. “Whitchapel’s in a fine stew. We’ll be lucky to avoid more unpleasantness.”

“So I overheard.” Clare’s brow knitted itself rather fiercely. Something teased at the edge of his deductions, a nagging thought that would not quite coalesce. “We shall do our best. Those are her effects? I wonder… why take the rings and leave the coin?”

Aberline nodded. His nose was reddened from the chill. “I’ve seen men murdered for less, and women too.”

The examiner let out a gusty breath of disgust. “He needn’t have hurried her along. Lungs, heart, all raddled like the rest of her. Prime example of drink and dissolution.”

“The question becomes, why her?”

“There are thousands of unfortunates prowling the End, sir.” Aberline’s mouth was a grim line, only opening barely enough to spit the words free. “Perhaps she was merely unlucky.”

I am not so certain. What in this unfortunate–or in the other members of Londinium’s almost-lowest dregs–would have concerned Queen Victrix so? And the organs of generation removed with a very sharp knife. It was unthinkably crude. “Perhaps. Poor thing.”

Aberline’s eyebrows rather nested under his bowler-brim at that, for Clare had uttered the words softly. A mentath generally did not speak so.

“Well. Gentlemen, should I stitch the bag up?” The physicker’s good humour was almost shocking, but Clare took a renewed grasp upon himself. “Or is there more to be seen?”

Aberline’s expression grew even more troubled, if such a thing were possible. “Can you tell if she had, ah, relations? Before, ahem, the event?”

“Well, that’s rather a curious thing.” The doctor scratched his cheek, leaving a trace of gore in his whiskers. “What little remains of her organs of generation seems… scorched.”

Clare blinked, and leaned closer. “Yes, indeed. How very curious. It seems to follow the blood channels and nerves.”

The barrowmancer coughed, nervously. Clare’s attention fastened on him. “Well?”

“Nothing, sir.” But the man was much paler than he had been when Clare had arrived. “Just… well, sorcery follows blood and nerve, mostly. But to sear it… nasty stuff, that is. Especially there.”

“Miss Bannon shall be informed.” Clare nodded. “Very well, then. Detective Inspector, I believe we are to endure each other’s company for some little while longer.”