Chapter Seven #3
Elswyth continued to ignore her, weaving through the crowd of businessmen, not caring who stared.
“For goodness’ sake, Miss Elderwood, small steps!
” Mrs. Rose cried, following after her as daintily as she could.
Elswyth ignored her, stopping on the street corner and reaching into her reticule for her map.
She looked both ways, lifted her skirts, and then plunged into the street, stepping over puddles.
Mrs. Rose followed, making sounds of abject horror as carriages rattled by.
“Stop!” Mrs. Rose said. “I said stop this instant. Your father will hear about this, believe me, and you’ll be Mrs. Cousin Ficus before you can say chrysanthemum.”
When they reached the other side of the street, Elswyth turned to face her.
“No, he will not,” Elswyth said.
Mrs. Rose scoffed. “I will write him the moment I have a pen in my hand. Don’t think I won’t.”
“And you’ll admit to losing his daughter in such a busy, dangerous city? Lord Elderwood is certainly concerned with the well-being of his only remaining child. I doubt he would continue to leave me in the care of someone so irresponsible.”
“You ran,” Mrs. Rose said. “It wasn’t my fault—“
“You abandoned me, and I went to the police station for safety,” she said. “I was oh so frightened, Mrs. Rose.”
Mrs. Rose narrowed her eyes. “You wouldn’t dare.”
“Then it is your word against mine. But I have to imagine there are plenty of matchmakers in the city who would be happy to take your place.”
“Ha! But none so affordable.”
“I suppose the cost reflects the quality.”
Mrs. Rose scoffed loudly, then pressed her lips into a line.
“Perhaps some leeway is required in your scheduling. I would be willing to chaperone you on the occasional… errand. If you ensure that your father hears only positive reviews of my performance. But do not think that you are free to do whatever you wish. If your actions embarrass me or endanger the good name of my business, I’ll drop you like a bastard at a church door. Understood?”
“Quite,” she said. “I’m glad that we could come to an agreement.” Then she turned on her heel and continued walking.
“Wait!” she cried. “Miss Elderwood, where are you going?”
Elswyth hitched up her skirts and walked as quickly as she liked. “To the library.”
“What I don’t understand,” Mrs. Rose whispered, “is why we must be so quiet.”
The man next to Mrs. Rose—an academic-looking type with glasses and a three-piece tweed suit—shushed her.
Elswyth sat in the reading room of the British Library.
It was a large rotunda, with a white dome and skylight that hung over rows of reading tables.
At the center was a circular reference desk, manned with harried-looking librarians.
All around her were ladies and gentlemen at work or leisure, reading magazines or reference texts, penning letters, or simply enjoying the view of the dome.
The oculus in the center of the ceiling let in a column of gray light, which swam with motes of dust.
Elswyth sat with a stack of newspapers. Currently, she read an article titled “Vanished Gentlewoman Still Missing.” The article on Persephone was little more than a column, pushed to the right-hand side of the news sheet.
A few paragraphs alongside a sketch of her sister, her paper-white skin seeming ghostlike against the black ink.
Next to it, in far bolder print, was an article titled “Another Woman Found Slain in East End—Organs Removed in Grisly Fashion.”
There were dozens of similar papers. She had her commonplace book on the desk and was taking notes on each article, gathering any details she could.
“Hello?” Mrs. Rose asked, waving a hand in front of her face. “It is quite rude to ignore someone who is speaking to you.”
Again, the man reading next to Mrs. Rose shushed her. She gave him a withering look.
“It is the only place where recent news articles are available for free,” Elswyth said.
Mrs. Rose rolled her eyes. “The news. How trivial. A gentlewoman does not concern herself with such business. Especially not a macabre rag like that. No better than a penny dreadful.” She gestured disdainfully at the article about the Reaper.
Elswyth said nothing. Instead, she discarded the old news sheet and pulled a fresh one. This one read “Fifth Seamstress Slain in Whitechapel.” Next to it was an obituary for the death of a bishop who had died in his bed the month before.
She closed her eyes. They were beginning to tire from the constant reading. She rubbed at them and then ran her hands through her hair.
“This is clearly upsetting you,” Mrs. Rose said, with surprising sympathy. “Perhaps we should retire.”
“Not yet,” Elswyth said. “The reading room doesn’t close for another two hours.”
“Two hours?” Mrs. Rose said, her voice distressed. “I’ve never sat so long in a library in my life.”
“That much is evident,” Elswyth said, under her breath.
The man next to her—clearly very irate—shushed Mrs. Rose a third time. She turned to him and hissed: “Your shushing, sir, is louder than my speaking!”
The man scowled, slammed his book shut, and moved away. Mrs. Rose practically beamed after him.
Then she moved closer to Elswyth, leaning on the table. She sighed. “Perhaps I can help, if that will speed the process.”
Elswyth considered. “I suppose. Read through this one—write down any dates mentioned first. Then the names of people who might have found the body or known the victim. Places they might have worked or otherwise frequented.”
She handed Mrs. Rose an article about the murder of Lily Thornton. She took it, scanning the headline.
“Miss Elderwood—why this article? I supposed you were here inquiring after your sister—surely you don’t think that the murders of these women are somehow connected to Persephone?”
She considered for a moment. She still wasn’t sure if she trusted Mrs. Rose.
She did have a reason to dislike Persephone, if her sister had played a part in her dismissal, and she could have been the person who created the cryptic bouquet.
But then again, so could dozens of other women in Persephone’s social circles.
And if Elswyth was honest with herself, Mrs. Rose simply seemed too ridiculous to murder anyone.
And so she decided—perhaps foolishly—to share what she’d learned.
“Something about the Reaper murders has been troubling me since I arrived in London. Persephone disappears while someone slaughters women in the Rows. It seemed too much of a coincidence.”
Mrs. Rose laughed nervously. “But Persephone was the diamond of the season! And these women were all, well…”
“Prostitutes,” Elswyth said.
“If you must put it so bluntly, yes.”
“It’s true that Persephone was, on paper, as different from the Reaper’s other victims as a woman could be. Which raises the question: Why were both of their cases assigned to the same detective?”
Mrs. Rose blinked at her. “They were?”
Elswyth nodded, looking over her shoulder, then leaning in closer to Mrs. Rose. “Yes. Detective Inspector Reed. He’s in charge of the Reaper murders and Persephone’s case. Don’t you think it’s odd?”
“Well, I suppose. The police usually ensure that cases regarding the nobility are held separately, and discretely. But these are all cases involving murdered women.”
Elswyth frowned. Persephone had gone from missing to murdered rather quickly, she thought.
And then there was Inspector Reed’s demeanor.
He’d seemed so dismissive at first, when she tried to share her theory regarding the flowers.
But then it almost seemed as though he were trying to scare her intentionally, by making her look at the photographs of the murdered women.
By telling her to be very careful. Elswyth was used to being dismissed, but it had felt like more than that.
It had felt like Inspector Reed wanted Elswyth to stop asking questions.
She stared at her commonplace book—in it, she’d made notes about each of the Reaper’s victims and when their bodies had been discovered.
And then she noticed something, staring back at her like a gap in the floorboards.
Her hand stopped over the page, hovering.
Her skin flushed, and she frantically began double-checking the broadsheets.
“What is it? What are you doing?”
“November…” Elswyth muttered, “September, October, December, January, February. No November.”
“It’s March, dear.”
“No—the dates the bodies were discovered. Daisy Gartner was the first. They found her in September 1888. Missing her heart. Lily Thornton was next, in early October. Missing her liver and lungs. Then there was a gap, in November, where no body was discovered. Flora Broadbent in December. Delaney Shaw in January. And finally Hazel Fairburn, the most recent, in February. Missing her uterus.”
“Your point, dear?” Mrs. Rose said.
Elswyth tapped the gap in the timeline. “Monthly killings for half a year, except for one month. The month when Persephone went missing.”
Mrs. Rose blinked. “But surely the police would have noticed…”
“Inspector Reed seemed very interested in protecting Persephone’s reputation, to say the least,” Elswyth said.
“If they did suspect the Reaper had a hand in her disappearance, they wouldn’t have told the papers.
For her name to appear alongside the other victims, all prostitutes…
it would risk damaging her reputation, and by extension Lord Devereux’s.
Inspector Reed only agreed to meet with me because he wants my uncle’s support in Parliament. ”
Mrs. Rose took Elswyth’s commonplace book and examined it more closely. Then she shook her head. “It’s nonsense, Elswyth, really. Your sister was out shopping for a ball at Syon House. These women were walking the streets. There is simply no way they are connected.”
“My sister had her secrets. She was not a prostitute, but she was no paragon of virtue. What woman is, truly?” She tapped a broadsheet with a sketch of a murdered girl splattered across the page in black ink.
“And ultimately, what is the difference between one woman and another, to a man like this?”
Mrs. Rose frowned deeply, something haunted in her eyes. “These are dreadful things. I won’t hear any more of it. It is not for a lady’s ears.” She stood, grabbing her reticule. “I will adjourn to the powder room for a moment, to collect myself. When I return, I should very much like to leave.”
She stood in a huff, then walked briskly away, taking the smallest steps she could manage.
Elswyth sighed. She would return tomorrow, if she could, and continue reading.
But for the moment, she closed her commonplace book, rubbed her eyes, and stood.
Around her, the library had begun to empty—the last of the gray light had vanished, and the stacks around her seemed like a labyrinthine forest, a maze with no way out.
She gathered her things and walked carefully to the exit, considering Novembers.