he is a physician. He told me he was a member of a commission formed to investigate sanitary conditions in the slums of London. He went about inspecting houses and tenements. One day during the previous summer he knocked on the door of an old, decrepit house, and the man who answered was Niall Kavanagh. Dr. Metcalf was shocked by his appearance. Kavanagh was wearing dirty, torn clothes. He looked as if he hadn’t slept in weeks and he smelled as if he’d been drinking heavily. Dr. Metcalf tried to speak to him, to offer help. But Kavanagh shouted at Dr. Metcalf to go away, and he slammed the door. That’s the last I’ve heard of Kavanagh.”
This sighting was a year past, but it was my only clue to Kavanagh’s whereabouts. “Did Dr. Metcalf say where this house was?”
“Not the exact location,” Dr. Forbes said. “But he did mention that it was a white terraced house on Flower and Dean Street. In Whitechapel.”
By seeking out Dr. Forbes, I had gone back to the point where my perils had begun. Now my path lay in other familiar territory. Niall Kavanagh had been sighted in Whitechapel, the very neighborhood of London in which I had witnessed Katerina’s murder; now, to Whitechapel I must return.
I parted from Dr. Forbes and joined Ellen and Mr. Nicholls. As we walked through the cold, misty night toward our inn, Ellen said, “What did you and Dr. Forbes talk about?”
“A mutual acquaintance,” I said.
“Did you get what you came for?”
“More or less.”
Ellen fell silent, and I felt bad because my evasiveness had hurt her feelings. Mr. Nicholls said, “What shall we do now?”
“We should retire for the night.” I was exhausted.
“That suits me.” Mr. Nicholls yawned, bleary-eyed and bloated from a long day and a large supper. “What about tomorrow? Are we going back to Haworth?”
“Back to Haworth! Why, we’ve only just gotten here!” Ellen turned her pique at me on Mr. Nicholls. “How can you even think of going home?”
To his credit, he refused to be provoked into another quarrel. “If Miss Bronte wants to go, we’ll go. If not, we’ll stay.”
“We’ll stay another day,” I said. “Tomorrow we’ll rent a boat and go rowing on the lake.”
“That sounds capital,” Mr. Nicholls said happily.
“Yes, quite.” Ellen cheered up, too.
Late that night, while Ellen slept soundly in her bed in the room we shared, I wrote two notes by candlelight. The first was to Papa: Forgive me for breaking my promise. I cannot allow Ellen and Mr. Nicholls to accompany me. It would put them in grave danger. Please do not blame them. Whatever happens to me is my fault. I will explain later.
I only hoped I would live to explain. I was bound for the place where a fiend killed and mutilated women, in the city where I was wanted for murder. Would I ever see Papa again?
The second note I addressed to Ellen and Mr. Nicholls: Forgive me for leaving you. It is for your own good. Where I am going next, I must go alone.
I left the notes on the table for Ellen to find in the morning. Then I packed my things and quietly departed.
25
The secret adventures of John Slade
1851 February. That winter in Moscow was the longest and coldest winter Slade had ever known. By day he picked pockets in the streets and stole money from alms boxes in churches. At night he went to ground in Kitrovka, the haunt of brigands, drunks, itinerant laborers, artists down on their luck, and fugitives from the law.
A permanent pall of smoke and mist hung over the marketplace in Kitrovka. Vendors sold sausages and herring from stalls set up in the snow; toothless women kept pots of soup warm under their skirts. Dirty, unshaven, and haggard, Slade blended in with Kitrovka’s populace. He lived in its shelters-low houses with dark, smoky rooms that stank of boots, latrines, and cheap tobacco. The men slept side by side on and under bunks made of boards, like corpses dressed in rags. Fleas, lice, bedbugs, and rats abounded. Fights broke out often. Slade never stayed in the same place two nights in a row, because the police made the rounds of the shelters, looking for fugitives. He caught a bad cold that developed into a wracking cough. Still, he was thankful for the blizzards that swept through Moscow: the police didn’t like working outdoors during them, and the manhunt for him died down after a few weeks. By then Slade had saved up enough money for a long trip.
One frozen, gray morning he waved down a sleigh on Yauzky Boulevard and said to the driver, “Take me to Sergeev Posad.” That was a town some forty miles northeast of Moscow. Slade had a friend there who would smuggle him out of Russia.
The driver was a squat, red-nosed man with icicles in his shaggy beard. He looked Slade over and sneered. “I don’t give free rides to beggars.”
“I can pay. I’ll give you fifty rubles now and fifty when we get to Sergeev Posad.”
Greed vied with suspicion in the driver’s eyes. “You must be wanted by the law. Double the price, and we have a deal.” He held out his hand, and Slade dropped a hundred rubles into it. “But we can’t go now. It’ll be safer after dark.”
Slade had no choice but to consent. “Where should we meet?”
“Behind the Ryady Bazaar. Eleven o’clock.”
The night was as still as if an ice age had paralyzed the city. The smoke from thousands of chimneys rose in vertical columns. Trudging through the snow, Slade avoided the main avenues where street lamps burned, but the snow reflected light from the full moon and a million stars onto him. He felt conspicuous and vulnerable, alone in the glacial landscape. Twice he thought he heard footsteps nearby. Twice he stopped, listened, looked around, and detected no one. Ill and exhausted, desperate to leave Moscow, Slade ignored his instincts.
The four people converged upon him from different directions. They cornered him in an alley bordered by the blank walls and locked rear doors of shops. Two blocked each end of the alley. Slade cursed, angry at himself for getting trapped. He turned in a circle, viewing his captors. One was a beggar who wore layers of clothes, his feet bound in rags. The second was a hunter dressed in smelly, uncured leather and fur; the third a dumpy woman in long skirts and babushka; the fourth a slender man in the kind of cheap black coat and hat worn by many men in Moscow, including Slade himself. Slade realized that he’d seen these people before, separately, on several occasions. Maybe they were brigands who worked as a team; maybe they had marked him out as a target and had followed him in order to rob him. But Slade had an inkling that the truth was much worse.
“The great John Slade,” the hunter said. His face was smeared with soot. His eyes gleamed with malice. “We meet for the first and last time.”
He spoke English, his accent as British as high tea at Windsor Castle. Shock coursed through Slade as he realized who these people were and what they meant to do.
The woman reached inside her coat. Slade lunged at the same moment she pulled out a knife. He caught her wrist as she tried to stab him. She was stronger than he’d expected-she was a man in disguise. Weakened by illness and starvation, Slade could barely hold her off while she forced the blade toward his throat. Her companions drew daggers. They rushed Slade from behind.
He spun around, hauling her with him. The beggar jabbed at Slade. His weapon plunged into the fake woman’s back. She howled and staggered. Slade flung her at her companions. Her body struck the three men; they fell. Slade raced out of the alley, toward the Ryady Bazaar. The streets outside its cavernous buildings were empty of the crowds that shopped inside them by day. As Slade ran, he heard the assassins galloping over the rutted, frozen snow, gaining on him. The sleigh stood outside the bazaar. He was ten paces away from it when three men leaped out of the sleigh, drew pistols on him, and fired.
Slade dropped flat on the snow. Bullets zinged over him. Screams sounded behind him, then thuds. The shots had hit his pursuers. Slade scrambled and crawled in a desperate attempt to flee. The three men from the sleigh ran toward him. One of them was Plekhanov, the man who’d recruited Slade into the Third Section. He and the
