Chapter 20
Eight little whores, with no hope of heaven,
Gladstone may save one, then there’ll be seven.
Seven little whores beggin for a shilling,
One stays in Henage Court, then there’s a killing.
Six little whores, glad to be alive,
One sidles up to Jack, then there are five.
Four and whore rhyme aright,
So do three and me,
I’ll set the town alight
Ere there are two.
Two little whores shivering with fright,
Seek a cosy doorway in the middle of the night.
Jack’s knife flashes, then there’s but one,
And the last one’s the ripest for Jack’s idea of fun.
What lay behind the scarred door on the second floor haunted Caroline: a specter lurking in her periphery, never glimpsed straight on.
She saw the manacles winking in the darkness whenever she closed her eyes, and a nameless, hollow dread took the place of her organs.
But as the days passed, as the nights grew darker beneath a waning moon, no explanation for what she had seen revealed itself, and she grew terrified that another woman would be murdered before the boardinghouse gave up any more of its secrets.
Three women had died beneath a full moon.
Mary Jane, Catherine Eddowes, and Elisabeth Stride.
But not so Annie Chapman, nor Polly Nichols.
Perhaps the first two had been practice.
Surely it was only a matter of time before the police put it together, before they realized that the peeling letters on the boardinghouse doors proclaimed to all the world its connection to the Whitechapel Murders.
With Commissioner Warren’s resignation, had the Full Moon Society lost its protection?
Every morning Caroline wondered if today was the day that Sergeant Corbet and a battalion of officers would march up the front steps and demand to search the house from cellar to gable. But day after day, they did not come.
When Mrs. Easton hummed to herself, when the kitchen sang with the smells of butter and salt, when the guests thanked her for clearing their breakfast plates, or asked for another slice of bread for their soup, Caroline second-guessed her fear.
Perhaps the metal chains and rings were nothing more than stations for some exotic good, she reasoned.
Something that must be hung above ground lest the mice get it.
The boardinghouse was a smuggling ring. Illegal, to be sure. Unsavory. But not evil.
But as twilight stole earlier every evening through the windows, and as Caroline lay in her bed listening to the groans of the house settling like an old dog before a fire, she knew her instinct had been right. Something nefarious happened in that room. She was certain of it.
But what?
The fact that there were a dozen sets—one for each guest at the Full Moon’s supper table—was not lost on Caroline. Perhaps it was the guests themselves who were shackled at the wrists and ankles. But again, for what? To participate in some horrific sexual act? To be drugged?
Caroline chewed her lips and considered. That would make some sense, given Rab’s stock in trade. Although being held upright by cuffs and chains while under the influence of the liquor she had drunk seemed nothing short of torture.
—
She tried to sleep. She did. And most nights she drifted off for half an hour or so, overcome by exhaustion, to return to the same dream.
The flowers, and Charlie, and the beast behind her, until the scene lost the quality of a nightmare and became almost comforting in its familiarity.
Always, she woke with a terrible certainty that, if she could only remember the monster’s face, the whole mystery would come tumbling down around her.
—
By day, she performed her tasks more sloppily than usual, and Mrs. Easton began to lose patience with her.
“These carrots still have skins, Miss Huxley. Peel them properly, please.”
As Caroline lifted the knife, she imagined Mary Jane’s flesh peeled from her abdomen, from her thighs.
“Closer to the spine. It’s a fine piece of sea bream; don’t waste it.”
As Caroline sliced through the fish’s flesh, she saw Polly Nichols’s throat, slit all the way to the bone.
“What’s the matter, Miss Huxley? You haven’t touched your kidney pie.”
As Caroline swallowed a mouthful of bile, she thought of Catherine Eddowes’s kidney. Half of it the murderer had sent to the Whitechapel Vigilance Committee. The other half he claimed to have fried and eaten.
She became careless in her snooping.
“Mr. Tythe said the books on his desk were rearranged,” said Mrs. Easton one morning, with a sidelong glance at Caroline. “You know how particular he is, Miss Huxley. You must take more care.”
“Sorry,” Caroline replied, not looking up from the potatoes she was mashing, pretending each one was Rab’s face. “I was dusting. You know how cluttered his room is.”
“And Senhor Perreira said the drawer of his desk was left open.”
“Wasn’t me,” Caroline lied. “He must have forgotten to close it.”
She must be more careful. None of the guests must suspect her.
Lost in her thoughts, Caroline looked up to find the landlady surveying her, hands on hips.
“What?” Caroline asked. “What am I doing wrong now?”
Her snappishness surprised her, and Mrs. Easton’s mouth fell open.
“I’m sorry—” Caroline began, at the same time Mrs. Easton said, “Are you all right?”
It was so far from the riposte that Caroline expected that tears flooded her eyes, and she glanced back down at the mashed potatoes so the landlady would not see.
She was not all right. She was completely and utterly not all right. She felt like a bullet searching for its mark: hot as the sun, spinning around its own center.
But Mrs. Easton could not know that.
“I’m fine.” The words rang hollow and false.
“It’s just…” Mrs. Easton scanned Caroline’s face. “Well. The past few weeks you’ve seemed…out of sorts. Distracted. I know I am your employer, but I hope you also consider me a friend. If something is amiss, Miss Huxley, if you’re in need of help, I do hope you’ll confide in me.”
The sincerity of the landlady’s words made the tears spring up anew. What would Caroline give to not be alone in her terrible knowledge, in her terrible suspicions? What would she give to not be alone?
But Mrs. Easton must be complicit in the Full Moon’s crimes, whatever they were.
Her deep affection for Rab was evident in the wax-paper-wrapped sandwiches she left him each morning, the way her eyes followed him, full of maternal warmth.
If push came to shove, she was certain, the landlady would choose Rab.
Not her. So Caroline shook her head and, without looking up, said, “Thank you for your concern, Mrs. Easton. But I’m fine.
Really. Just a bit homesick, I suppose.”
Homesick for the simple, boring safety of her life at Audley House, lonely though it was. Homesick for the open sky and green trees out her window. Homesick for the girl she had been.
Homesick, most of all, for Charlie. Charlie waiting for her behind the garden wall, a book under one arm and a pastry box under the other. Charlie eating an apple, spitting out the pips. Charlie laughing, Charlie frowning. Charlie, Charlie, Charlie.
Each night, Caroline watched the moon grow fuller and brighter through the fog and felt as though its newly gained weight were settling on her shoulders.
Time was running out. If there was any clue as to what had happened to Charlie, where he had gone, it would be hidden in Rab’s room. She must find a way in. She must.
December rolled in thick and wet as a head cold.
Despite the little brazier Mrs. Easton found to warm Caroline’s garret room, there was a layer of ice in her pitcher each morning.
She had thought Audley House unpleasant in winter; the thin Tudor glass and ancient flues made every room drafty, even as the servants stoked the fires higher.
But winter in London, she learned, was different.
There was a dampness to the cold here, an insistent creep that started in the fingers and toes but soon settled into one’s bones.
She doubled up her socks and skirts. She borrowed a hat and a pair of wool gloves from Mrs. Easton and wore them even while sleeping.
But she felt as though she would never be warm again.
The whole city seemed to slow.
The morning and evening rush of factory workers down Whitechapel High Street thinned and grew somber.
Faces hid beneath caps and behind billows of frosty air, bodies became sexless under coats and cloaks.
Even the newsboys, the hardiest creatures of the East End, tucked chapped hands into their pockets and abandoned their posts well before sundown.
The streets became a knee-high sludge of muck and rainwater that froze each night and thawed each day and coated her skirts in a stinking patina.
The trees were black and leafless, the sky empty of birds.
Despair colonized Caroline.
She moved about her daily tasks in a numb stupor. She had, perhaps, led the killer to the woman her brother loved. Even if Charlie were to stride up Old Montague Street and knock on the boardinghouse’s door, Caroline did not think she could face him.
Twice she stopped at the Leman Street police station.
There was a frantic energy in the building that she had not felt on her first visit; the walls were papered in WANTED posters with a half dozen sketches of the Ripper, each face entirely different from the last. Blue-uniformed London City Police officers came and went through the counter hinge, and she could hear voices—raised voices—whenever the door behind the desk swung open.