Chapter 1 #2
Mrs. Flaherty wrinkled her nose. “The bus is so crowded. Last time I took it, a woman got on with a crate of chickens. Live chickens, mind you. Sat right next to me. She rode for four stops, them all the while squawking and molting and dropping shit on my best boots.” She gave Caroline’s mourning gown an appraising glance.
“What about you, Miss Foster? Headed southwest? Mayfair, I’ll wager.
Or Green Park? Charing Cross will be on your way.
It won’t put you out three minutes to drop me first.”
Caroline resisted the urge to slip her fingers into the purse at her belt, feel the reassuring edges of Charlie’s last letter.
“I’m headed east, I’m afraid,” she said with a polite smile. “But thank you for the offer.”
“East? Which borough?”
Caroline swallowed. “Whitechapel.”
Silence fell in the carriage.
“Whitechapel,” Mrs. Flaherty repeated, as though the word were foreign. “Are you quite sure?”
“Yes.” Caroline breathed against the faintness that was rising within her again, despite the mollifying effects of Dr. Hoffman’s medicine. “Quite certain. I’m meeting my brother.”
“And this brother can’t be bothered to meet you at St. Pancras?” Mrs. Flaherty’s face was incredulous, her wide jaw slack. “He expects his sister to make her way to the East End, unaccompanied?”
“I’m surprising him.”
At least it was the truth.
She hadn’t heard from Charlie in months, not since the bleak weeks in early spring after their father died and she learned the family fortune had been squandered at horse tracks and whist tables.
Her brother’s note had been strange and short, the handwriting so frantic she barely believed it belonged to him.
Stay in Stafford.
Missing was the salutation, her favorite two words in the whole of the English language: Dear Cat. The margins were wide and empty, devoid of the drawings that always decorated his letters.
Don’t come here, whatever you do. Something has changed. I can’t say more, but it’s not safe. I’ll come to you. As soon as I sort things, I’ll come to you.
—C
But Charlie hadn’t come. He hadn’t written back, not even when she had begged him, sent a dozen letters warped with tears.
Every day, as she sold off the horses, the furniture, the paintings of their ancestors, she stared through the windows as though she could summon him.
He would appear now, now, now. She would glance up and see him at the turn of the drive, his dark hair incorrigible as a cock’s comb, his long arms swinging.
On the sweltering August morning when she signed the deed over to the American’s beady-eyed lawyer, Caroline had kept glancing past his shoulder at the door, expecting her brother to burst through it.
But he had not come. So, despite the strangeness of the message, despite the warning to remain where she was, Caroline was going to him.
“A young lady such as yourself has no business in Whitechapel,” the laborer said now, his face somber. “No business at all.”
“You’ve heard of the murders, Miss Foster?” Mrs. Flaherty spoke with such vehemence that her jowls trembled. “The women?”
A ripple ran up Caroline’s spine.
“Aye,” the man confirmed with a nod. “A man has been murdering women in Whitechapel. Two last month alone, found with their bellies slit. And the police making a botchery of it, as they always do.”
It had been months since a newspaper had been delivered to Audley House. Caroline knew nothing of the outside world, had heard nothing but her own frantic thoughts since Lord Foster’s heart stopped beating.
“You must have another place to stay,” Mrs. Flaherty said, eyeing the black silk roses bunched in Caroline’s bonnet, the mother-of-pearl buttons on her boots. “Another relative in London?”
Her mouth had gone dry. But she must say something. They were staring at her.
“I appreciate your concern.” The words sounded cool, iced with Eloise’s borrowed superiority. “But I will be under the care of my brother. I will be safe.”
Ignoring the weighted glance that passed between her two companions, Caroline turned imperiously back to the window.
Women murdered. The words thundered through Caroline’s head alongside the clattering of the train. Bellies slit. Was that why Charlie had forbidden her from coming? Because there was a murderer of women at large?
Caroline took a long, shuddering breath.
But she had nowhere else to go.
Carys was hundreds of miles away, with her family in Llangua. No one in Stafford wanted anything to do with her, as though bankruptcy were something catching. Even Eloise had visited only once since Lord Foster’s funeral.
“You’ll write?” Eloise had asked, eyes flicking to the parlor door.
“Of course.”
“And this aunt…She is your…”
“My mother’s sister,” Caroline had interrupted smoothly. It was always odd to lie to Eloise, whom she had known since they were both in nappies. But in the small circle of her world, only Carys knew about Charlie.
“Hmm.” Eloise cocked her head. “Strange that you’ve never mentioned her.”
“I only discovered I had an aunt after Father died.” Caroline had practiced the story in her glass that morning, knowing Eloise would spread it to the other Staffordshire families. “She and Father didn’t get along, but when she heard the news, she wrote and invited me to live with her.”
“That was kind,” Eloise said, eyes once again on the door. “I’d invite you to stay with us, you know, but Harry—”
“It’s fine,” Caroline cut in with a wooden smile. “I understand.”
That had been the worst of it. To find every back turned to her, even that of her oldest friend.
Charlie would be angry, perhaps, that she had come, that she had ignored his instructions to stay in Stafford and risked the journey alone, with a murderer on the loose. But he would forgive her. He would take the reins of her life and guide it back onto some course.
She shut her eyes, conjured him. Eyes hooded, mouth grinning. The easy way he moved in his body, as though he never thought of it. The way animals moved.
He would open the door. Or someone else would open the door, go to fetch him. She would hear his voice somewhere beyond, the sure weight of his footsteps. And then he would be before her, face alight with surprise and happiness.
He would catch her in a tight hug. He would explain everything, why he hadn’t come like he had said he would. There would be a perfectly reasonable explanation, she was certain of it.
—
With a scream of iron, the train began to slow.
Caroline stared through the window, but there was nothing to see but a dank press of brick. Her companions began to gather their things.
“Are we there?” she asked.
“Just about,” answered Mrs. Flaherty, without meeting her eyes.
Caroline bit her lip. Her companions had only sought to warn her, and she had replied as Eloise might have, in the dismissive manner that Caroline herself so hated. But it was too late to apologize, for the dimness had given way to light and air.
Clusters of passengers zoomed past on the platform in blurs of gray and black. The station ceiling was high, curved glass crosshatched with iron, like a giant birdcage. Through it the meager daylight sifted, yellow and sickly, on the writhing mass of humanity below.
The train’s whistle blew. With a final, terrible shriek, the train rattled to a halt.
“God bless ye, ladies,” said the laborer, disappearing into the still-swaying hallway with a touch of his cap.
Mrs. Flaherty staggered to her feet with a groan and gave Caroline a final, searching look. “Take care of yourself, Miss Foster.”
Caroline murmured a polite reply and began to gather her own things: a leather valise stuffed with notebooks, the fine black mourning cloak that smelled of mothballs, which had belonged to the mother she did not remember.
Caroline glanced up to find the older woman lingering on the threshold, watching her. Something about the set of her mouth prickled the skin on the backs of Caroline’s hands.
“Desperation is a funny thing, Miss Foster,” Mrs. Flaherty said. “It turns some people toward Christ’s light, and others toward darkness. Whitechapel is full of people who have chosen darkness.”
Before Caroline had a chance to reply, the older woman was gone, swallowed by the stream of people making their way toward the open train doors.
St. Pancras was three times the size of Birmingham’s New Street Station, its glass hall and redbrick spires such a modern juxtaposition that it made Caroline’s head spin.
There were so many people, more than she had ever seen, an ocean of faces and hats and shoulders.
Brass-buttoned customs officers rubbed shoulders with white-gloved conductors, vendors carried stacks of paper-wrapped sandwiches and flasks of tea, and a chorus of men’s voices shouted prices for hansom cabs and boardinghouses.
“Police bungling Whitechapel murder investigation!” shrieked a newsboy from halfway up the center staircase. “No suspects yet charged for three brutal murders! Special evening edition!”
It took all Caroline’s willpower to not buy a paper and read it then and there. But only a handful of coins jingled in her purse, enough for a cab and a hot meal. So she turned, instead, to the luggage car, where a tangle of rough-looking men haggled over the passengers claiming their belongings.
“Cab?” “Need a cab, miss?” “Miss, miss! Best prices in London!” “Safe and comfortable!” “Miss!”
Caroline approached the most trustworthy-looking of them—a man in a dented bowler and worn but shined shoes—and asked, in a voice much more confident than she felt, “How much is the cab fare to Whitechapel?”
The man blinked. “Whitechapel? Ye mean Whitehall.”
“No,” Caroline said, aware of the other cabbies watching her now, a sea of masculine eyes, appraising her. “I mean Whitechapel. Old Montague Street.”
The man looked her over, from the tips of her boots to the black ribbons on her bonnet. “Sure, missy. Fer two shillings, I’ll take ye to Whitechapel.”