“It was a man?” I asked, already disappointed in the discrepancy.
“He was in the right place at the right time,” Bertha continued in a hushed tone. “They found his body almost exactly where Mary Jane Nichols was discovered all those years ago. His throat was slit left to right, just like hers, and his abdomen slashed open. Only difference was the gender, but I don’t think that’s any reason to discount this for what it is.”
I leaned even closer. “So it’s true, then.”
“The Ripper’s back.”
4
Evelyn made her opinion known all the way home, through the night, and into the next morning. Whenever she had breath for it, she begged me not to look into the murder on Durward Street. This kill was a coincidence. She was sure of it, and the police would surely catch the killer in a matter of days.
“It happened on the exact same day,” I insisted over the full English breakfast I made for her the next morning. “At the exact same time! August 31, right around three in the morning. It has to be a copycat murder. I’d be naive not to look into it.”
Though I wished I could attribute Evelyn’s grumpiness to being out so late and up so early, she made it clear her mood was a direct outcome of my murderous curiosity. “You said yourself the murder didn’t match up with the original Ripper kill,” she pointed out, mouth full of sausage. “All of the original victims were women. If a copycat murderer is on the loose, they wouldn’t have strayed from that. They would have waited for a woman.”
“They would have taken the first opportunity that came along,” I countered. “The first murder isn’t as difficult to match. No organs were removed. If the second murder happens—”
“Which it won’t.”
“Then it should be a woman with her uterus removed,” I said, pretending I hadn’t heard her. I picked up the phone. “I should go to the police. They probably need a Ripper expert to help them out with this.”
Evelyn picked the phone out of my grasp and tossed it onto the couch. When I attempted to fetch it, she wrapped her good arm around my waist and forced me to sit back in my seat. “You will not badger the police,” she ordered. “Did you forget why you’re here? You’re supposed to be helping me, not solving a murder mystery from the eighteen hundreds.”
“No one can solve the Ripper case.” If her health was up to par, I would’ve wrestled free of her arm, but I didn’t want to risk injuring her shoulder again. “Sure, Carl Feigenbaum is the most likely suspect, but we’ll never be able to confirm that. This case, on the other hand, is different. We have forensic evidence and CCTV footage.”
“Exactly,” Evelyn said. “If the police have all of that at their disposal, they can find the killer on their own. They don’t need your help.”
“But what if—?”
“Jack. No.”
My lower lip jutted out. Evelyn’s scowl subsided.
“Don’t look at me like that,” she said, her grip around my waist loosening. “It’s not fair.”
I upped the drama of my expression, adding doe eyes to the equation. I knew Evelyn too well. She couldn’t resist me for long.
She shoved a sausage between my teeth and pushed me off her lap. “Get out of my sight, Frye.”
I skipped over to the couch and turned the TV on. Evelyn munched on back bacon while I found the local news channel. After a weather report and some fluff pieces passed, a perky reporter appeared on screen, his collared shirt buttoned so tightly to his chin that he seemed to be in danger of suffocation. I caught sight of Durward Street in the background of his shot, which was roped off to public access, and turned up the volume.
“The police have not made any further progress on the violent crime that occurred behind me three nights ago, mere yards from the Royal London Hospital,” the reporter said. “William Lewis was found murdered, his throat and abdomen severely cut. He bled out from injuries in the street and was dead upon discovery. Historians will recall this as the same location as Jack the Ripper’s first murder, but the police have discounted theories that a new Ripper is loose in London.”
The footage switched to a prerecorded interview with the chief inspector of police. He stood on the top step of the hospital, while journalists bombarded him with questions from below.
Someone thrust a microphone in the inspector’s face. “Inspector Baker!” the owner of the mic shouted. “Can you shed some light on the recent murder on Durward Street? Is it true the police have no leads?”
Baker already looked weary of questions. His eyelids hung heavy, and his jowls stretched downward, as if a toddler had taken hold of the skin on his face and swung freely from it. “We are in the process of examining the CCTV footage of the crime scene. As soon as we do, we’ll be able to procure a picture of our suspect. I intend to have the culprit in hand by the end of the day.”
Evelyn snorted, spraying beans across the countertop.
“You don’t believe him?” I asked her.
“If they had decent CCTV footage, they would have caught the bastard by now,” Evelyn said. “It’s been three days. They would have examined that footage right after the murder. It must not be viable.”
“How could it not be viable?” I asked. “Doesn’t CCTV cover every square inch of this city?”
“Yeah, it’s a panopticon,” she replied. “That doesn’t mean it works. CCTV gets thrown out in a lot of cases because the footage is too grainy or isn’t good enough to give the police an accurate picture to
