Chapter 6 #2
“Coroner’s inquest for the murder of Polly Nichols!” shouted a newsboy from the opposite corner. “Throat and belly slit! Murderer still on the loose! Read all the details here!”
Despite the mildness of the early-autumn day, a shiver walked down Caroline’s spine. She glanced at Monsieur Rodart from under the rim of her bonnet. But his eyes were fixed straight ahead.
Lives like Polly’s always end in tragedy. He had known her, at least obliquely. They all had.
At the next corner, the Frenchman paused and pointed right. “This is where I leave you, chérie. The chemist is just one block down. I shall pray for Madame Easton’s return to full strength.”
He left her, walking south toward the Thames with his arms swinging.
Caroline stood still for a moment, watching him go. Then she set her sights down Brick Lane and commanded her feet forward.
A strange thrill ran through her. She was alone, in the streets of London. She felt frightened and brave all at once.
Caroline examined the faces she passed, searching for any sign of acknowledgment that she was an unaccompanied woman. A raised eyebrow, a disapproving frown. A few appraising glances at the fine black wool of her cloak, her bonnet’s silk roses. But no one spared her a second look.
—
The chemistry window was filled with displays, artfully stacked bottles in every color, and handwritten signs.
Cure All Forms of Stomach Problems with Giles’ Dyspepsia Tablets
and
Dr. Kilmer’s Female Remedy: Purify the Blood and Tone the Nerves
But the sign on the door read Closed.
Caroline looked up and down the street in dismay. A hay cart rattled past her. A group of women chattered beneath dingy parasols. But there was no sign of Rab.
He’s stepped out, she told herself. Gone for something to eat.
But he had eaten heartily that morning, as he always did, and before the head cold forced her upstairs, Mrs. Easton had insisted he take a sandwich.
With every minute that ticked by, Caroline’s heart pumped faster. Her brash excitement died, replaced by cold, trickling fear.
Foolish. Foolish to have left the boardinghouse.
Foolish to be alone, even in the bald light of day, even in a street teeming with pedestrians.
Why had she offered to perform this errand?
Rab would be back by dusk, as he always was, with the medication in hand.
Mrs. Easton only had a cold. And Caroline could return later, or indeed visit a different chemist, for her own medication.
Caroline turned back the way she had come, toward the corner where Monsieur Rodart left her.
She would walk quickly, she told herself.
Left down Brick Lane, left on Old Montague Street.
Five cross streets, then the cool safety of the boardinghouse walls.
But she had only made it halfway down the block before her feet stopped.
For there, a head taller than the other men in the street, was Rab.
Caroline opened her mouth to call out to him, relief coursing up her limbs like bathwater. But her tongue froze around his name. For he was not alone.
A woman walked beside him. The curves of her body swelled and contracted like a violin under her simple black dress, and in the syrupy sunlight, her bare hair shone gold.
As she turned to look up at Rab, Caroline glimpsed her face in profile.
Full cheeks, wide-set eyes. Nose lifted at the tip. She wore no cloak.
Bareheaded. Uncloaked. The woman was a prostitute. And Rab’s fingers were wrapped possessively around her upper arm.
A pair of Jewish men, their black gabardines swinging, stepped out of a shop in front of Caroline, blocking her view. When she had dodged around them, Rab and the woman had disappeared.
Caroline blinked. They had been there, just a moment ago; she looked up and down the pavement, narrowed her eyes at the line of carriages and mule carts in the street. But the two figures were nowhere to be seen.
She hurried forward, peering through shop windows on the pretense of eyeing their wares.
At the spot where she had last seen them, the brick walls gapped, opening onto the mouth of a narrow little alley.
She glimpsed a kick of skirts, a man’s shoe sole, before the walls twisted sharply and pulled them out of sight.
Without thinking, Caroline followed.
—
As soon as she stepped out of the high street, it was as though a fist had closed around the sun. The walls of the buildings on either side leaned toward each other, the sky above reduced to a distant strip of blue. The cobblestones were slick under her boots.
Caroline slowed as she approached the turn in the alley, but she heard no voices, and each step revealed only another empty foot of stained brick.
A rat, disturbed from its pile of refuse, scuttled across her path, but she swallowed her scream and pressed on.
The alley forked. Caroline paused, but the branch to her left was even narrower and reeked of urine. She continued straight.
Ten more steps. The alley split again. From the sharp turn to her right, she caught the low murmur of voices.
“I could ask you the same question, Rab Ripley.” The woman’s voice, clear as a bell. “The last time I saw Charlie Foster, he was on his way to you.”
Caroline’s heart throbbed in her throat. She pressed herself against the wall and listened.
“And you’ve heard nothing from him since?” Rab’s voice, low and strained. “Received no notes, no news of him through your…your friends?”
A humorless laugh. “You mean from other whores? For someone who calls himself Charlie’s best friend, you seem to barely know him at all.”
Silence. When Rab next spoke, his words were measured. “Please, Mary Jane. You knew him for a few months. I grew up with him.”