We got on and off the bus wherever our hearts desired, usually when we wanted to inspect something we hadn’t seen before. Baker Street in particular caught my attention. Though Evelyn protested, we stepped off the bus and into the Sherlock Holmes Museum, where I proudly showcased my love for the fictional detective.
“You would be obsessed with Holmes,” Evelyn said. “You’re both crazy self-professed investigators.”
“I learned a good deal of deduction skills from the stories,” I babbled, deaf to her commentary. “Devoured the books. ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ is my favorite because—”
“Of Irene Adler,” finished Evelyn. She put on a poor imitation of my American accent. “She was the only person to outwit Sherlock, and she was a woman!”
I swatted Evelyn’s good shoulder.
When dusk began to descend on the city, we decided to call it a day. My feet ached, and we grew tired of the constant dampness around our collars and pant legs. We got off the bus in Whitechapel and began walking back to Evelyn’s flat. A handmade sign with slanted letters caught my eye: Nightly Jack the Ripper tours. Sign up here!
I elbowed Evelyn and pointed. “There’s one starting in fifteen minutes.”
“So?”
“We should do it,” I urged.
She fixed me with an unamused eye. “I am not feeding into your serial killer obsession.”
“But he was the original. I’ve read all about him.” Noticing how weirdly reverent I sounded, I cleared my throat. “It’s interesting to me. That’s all. I’d like to do it, if you’re not too tired.”
Evelyn let out a hefty sigh. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”
The tour office was tiny, but the woman behind the ticket window was not. She was nearly as tall as Evelyn, though not as muscular, with blonde hair cropped close to her neck and the longer bits styled away from her face. She introduced herself as Bertha, the resident Ripperologist and guide of the nightly tour. The rest of the room was jammed with people who had already signed up for the tour. Many of them were American, like me, but I doubted anyone knew as much about the Ripper as I did.
When it was time for the tour to begin, we all followed Bertha out into the streets. I kept to the front of the pack, dragging Evelyn along with me.
“Good evening, everyone!” Bertha boomed. Though only ten or twelve of us were on the tour, she spoke loudly enough to turn the heads of those passing by. “Welcome to the only Jack the Ripper tour you’ll ever have to take. We’ll be together for the next couple hours”—Evelyn groaned under her breath—“so we might as well get acquainted. When I point at you, say your name loud enough for everyone to hear, yeah?”
We went around. When Bertha pointed at me, I announced, “Jack.”
“There’s one in every bunch, sweetheart,” Bertha said. “What’s your real name?”
“Jacqueline, but everyone calls me Jack.”
Bertha winked. “Jack it is, then. Gather round, everyone! This tour covers what we call the canonical five Ripper murders. Anyone know what that means?”
My hand shot into the air, and I answered before Bertha called on me. “No one knows how many murders the Ripper actually committed, but it’s widely agreed that at least five deaths were connected to one serial killer. Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth—”
“Whoa!” Bertha’s raucous laugh drowned out my voice. “We got ourselves a Ripper expert! You are correct, Jack. Lore attributes five deaths to the infamous Leather Apron, and we’ll be visiting the site of each of those murders tonight. Well—” Bertha rolled her eyes. “Four of them, actually. Durward Street is closed off tonight. The police found a body there.”
Next to me, Evelyn tensed. Her breath tickled the back of my neck, or perhaps the rest of the crowd’s nervous chittering made the hair on my scalp stir.
“Not to worry!” Bertha called over the murmuring crowd. “You’ll be perfectly safe with me tonight, but we’ll have to check out the first murder site from afar. Shall we?”
This time, as the other tour-goers shuffled after Bertha, I pulled Evelyn to the back of the group. “What do you think?” I murmured to her. “Coincidence?”
“Don’t start,” Evelyn said, suddenly interested in Bertha’s speech about Victorian England and the state of Whitechapel in the late 1800s. “I’m sure the police have it in hand.”
As we turned toward the Royal London Hospital, the yellow crime scene tape and police vehicles came into view, blocking nosy passersby from entering the closed road.
“But it happened on Durward Street!” I insisted in a hushed whisper. “Which used to be—”
“Buck’s Row!” Bertha announced from the front of the group. Everyone halted as Bertha held up a laminated black-and-white photo of what the street looked like before modern-day construction paved everything over. “In 1888, Whitechapel was the poorest district in London. Women couldn’t make much of themselves if they weren’t married, so they often turned to prostitution. This was the case of Mary Ann Nichols, the Ripper’s first victim. On August 31, around 3:40 in the morning, Nichols’s body was discovered. Her throat was slashed, and her abdomen was ripped open by a knife estimated to be about six to eight inches long. No one in the vicinity saw or heard anything suspicious before Nichols was killed.”
Bertha waited for the story to sink in before grinning slyly. “I like to play a game on these tours called Guess the Ripper. As you know, the person guilty of these murders was never identified. There are hundreds of theories out there, some more credible than others. At each location, I’ll give you the name and story of a suspect. At the end of the tour, everyone will vote on who they think was the killer. First up, H.H. Holmes—”
My attention trailed off, and my gaze wandered across the street toward Buck’s Row. I longed to see the crime scene so much that my
