Evelyn fixed me with suspicious eyes. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing.” I closed the book and hid it behind my back.
She held out her good hand. “Give it here.”
“You won’t like it.”
“I didn’t expect to.”
When I showed her the title, she let out a groan.
“You never said I had to stop reading about the old Ripper cases,” I reminded her. “Please don’t be mad at me.”
“I suppose you found a loophole,” she grumbled.
I bounced on my toes. “Yeah, but…”
She waited for the rest of my sentence. “What is it?”
“Okay, I know I said I wouldn’t think about it anymore, but look at this!” I showed Evelyn the piece of paper. “I picked up etchings from the margins of the Ripper chapter, and someone has been—”
“Etchings?”
“That’s what it’s called when you shade the paper like this,” I explained, exasperated. “Look what this person wrote in the margins.”
Evelyn squinted down her nose to make out the faint letters. “Jack’s a killer, not a murderer,” she read off in a halting voice. “I’m a murderer, not a killer. My modus operandi. What the hell is this, slam poetry?”
“‘I’m a murderer,’” I repeated, pointing at the words on the page.
“Don’t say that so loudly.”
“Someone wrote it.” Why wasn’t she grasping this concept? “Someone read the chapter on the Ripper and confessed to being a murderer in the margins. Doesn’t that seem suspicious to you?”
Evelyn flipped through the book. “First of all, there’s nothing actually written in the margins. Secondly, anyone could have done that. People go bonkers during exam week. They probably had to write an essay on the Ripper and wanted to kill someone. Perfectly natural.”
“You do realize what you just said, right?”
“I meant that stress levels during certain times of the semester can skyrocket.” She slammed the book shut and shoved it into an empty space on the shelf, which was not where it belonged. “I’m sure someone got overwhelmed and wrote in their journal about it.”
“That’s your theory?” I asked. “A stressed student needed research for a paper on the Ripper, got overwhelmed, and decided to make a creepy journal entry instead?”
“And what’s yours?” Evelyn challenged.
“I think someone wanted to know exactly what the Ripper was thinking when he committed those murders,” I replied. “That way, they could replicate them as authentically as possible.”
“Need I remind you we’re two hours away from Whitechapel?”
“Does it matter?” I opened the book again and snapped a picture of the page the possible suspect had been reading while writing their so-called diary entry. “It’s too big of a coincidence to ignore.”
“We need to get you out of here.” Evelyn took me by the collar of my coat and dragged me out of the row as one would a misbehaving child. Students peered at us curiously or chuckled as I scrambled to regain my footing under Evelyn’s influence. “I thought coming to Oxford would be a good distraction, but apparently getting you out of Whitechapel wasn’t the answer. Why can’t we do anything fun?”
“This is fun for me,” I countered, shaking off Evelyn’s grip as we emerged from the shelves. “I wasn’t purposely looking for that book. I happened upon it.”
“Just like you weren’t looking for those etchings?”
“I wasn’t!”
Evelyn’s frustration with me manifested in the downward turn of her lips and the crinkled crow’s feet I could have sworn weren’t there when I’d arrived in London a few days ago. This time, she didn’t bother hiding her feelings from me. She glanced outside. “The rain’s letting up. I’m exhausted. Let’s head home.”
The rain had not let up at all. It came down in thick, gray sheets. Those who rushed through the streets, raising umbrellas or books overhead to protect as much as possible, appeared and disappeared into the rain, as if the code that kept the artificial reality around Oxford intact had gotten a bug in it.
I did not want to step outside, walk all the way back to our car, and drive two hours to Whitechapel soaking wet. I also did not want to upset Evelyn further, so as she led me toward the door, I took a deep breath and braced myself for the cold rain.
“Jacqueline?” asked a warm, familiar voice. “Jacqueline Frye?”
Grateful for the opportunity to turn away from the inclement weather, I spun on my heel to face the voice. The woman I’d seen earlier—the one that had jogged my memory—stood across from me. She held a cup of tea in one hand and a textbook in the other. She wore, appropriately, a light-blue Oxford shirt, a tweed jacket, and jeans, the perfect combination of casual and professional. Now that I could see more than her profile, I immediately recognized her.
“Miss Nadine?”
She smiled and hugged me, careful to keep her tea level so it didn’t spill. “I thought that was you, Jack! I think you can drop the ‘Miss’ now that you’re an adult.”
I couldn’t help but beam at the older woman. “Old habits and all that.”
“What are you doing here?” she asked. “I thought you were in America.”
“I live there,” I clarified. “But I’m here helping out a friend. Evelyn?”
Evelyn came forward, temporarily rearranging her expression to suspend her beef with me and smile widely at Nadine. “Hi, it’s nice to meet you. You are?”
“Nadine Patel,” she replied. “I was a friend of Jack’s mother. We taught here together before she—” Her eyes flickered toward me. “Before the accident.”
I decided to glaze over the awkward moment. “Nadine used to babysit me when Mom had classes. We go way back.”
“Yes, I’ve known this one since she was in diapers.” Nadine checked her watch—she wore a beautiful gold-faced one with a leather band that matched her wise, professorial appearance—and grimaced. “Listen, I’ve got to teach a class in ten minutes, but we must catch up. Where are staying?”
“Whitechapel.”
“I’ll be in Windsor tomorrow visiting an old friend,” Nadine said. “Would you care to meet for tea? Is that too much of a drive
