‘I also have another problem,’ he continued. ‘Namely my friends you saw me with in the Ten Bells. The man, Walter, a common man, my driver, will leave the country with me, but the woman, Mary, they will never let her go. Her role is to procure the live specimens. She started as a whore – she has a varied past, as we all do – but she deserves better and I want her to come with me. Once the brotherhood realises that she is gone, they will know she’s with me. They will not be happy, though I suspect they will not be surprised. I will need to use all the currency I have earned during my service if we are to survive. They will never let a common prostitute leave. There is hypocrisy there, of course. The brotherhood prides itself on being free of cultural tyranny, but when it comes to women, I’m afraid you are still very much considered to be men’s property. There is theory, and then there is practice…’
He inhaled and came to a stop.
I didn’t need a lecture on hypocrisy but I let him give it. I was livid now, furious at myself for having got into this mess, worse than the one I had found myself in before, but how simple that seemed now. ‘I courted him in hospital and I simpered over him as he lay like the martyr in his bed…’
Dr Shivershev started and glanced at me with interest. ‘Ah, so that’s how you grew close, was it?’ He gave a little laugh. ‘You know Thomas was suspected of starting that fire at the hospital?’
‘What? Why would he do that? That doesn’t sound like Thomas at all, why would he want to burn himself?’
‘There was another doctor, a man called Dr Lovett.’
‘Yes, I know him. I mean rather I met him, Richard Lovett was best man at our wedding. Thomas carried him out from that fire.’
‘Well… he was Thomas’s best man in a variety of ways, for a while at least. You understand, of course?’
I coloured at this; I couldn’t help it. It made sense as I’d seen Lovett at the mollies’ house.
‘The night of the fire, Thomas and Lovett had argued – a lovers’ quarrel, I assume. Later, Lovett came to believe that Thomas had hit him over the head before the fire started. One minute he was awake and the next…’
‘How do you know this?’
‘Lovett is the nephew of the man with the medals you and Thomas bumped into at the Café Royale. After their affair had ended, the spurned Lovett didn’t waste any time reporting back to his uncle on Thomas’s indiscretions. The final straw was when an article appeared in the newspapers about a man who’d been making enquiries about the purchase of a fresh uterus on behalf of a client. The information came from Thomas, who’d apparently been talking while under the influence at a mollies’ house. And the person who witnessed this—’
‘—was Dr Richard Lovett.’
‘Exactly.’
It was time to change direction, I had had enough of being done to. As Dr Shivershev had been talking, I had been thinking and I had an idea, that sliver of hope had made me somewhat creative. ‘I know you don’t want to kill me—’ I said.
‘You deserve better.’
‘—and, besides, there is a way I think I can help.’ I looked him straight in the eye, made sure I had his attention.
‘What if the newspapers had a bigger distraction than that of a missing Chelsea housewife? What if Mary were believed to have been murdered? And if there was a body, no one would know she’d run away with you.’
My obsession with the Whitechapel murders might be put to practical use. I knew all the gory details, every last one of them. ‘You say Mary was a… well, that makes her ripe for being murdered by Jack the Ripper, does it not?’
I saw Dr Shivershev’s eye shift towards me and I knew immediately that he got it, understood there could be value in this.
‘What if we were to swap Mary’s body for another’s?’
His mouth twitched. ‘I take it you aren’t offering yourself as the substitute body, Susannah? Are you suggesting I wait for Mrs Wiggs and kill her instead?’
‘No,’ I said, ‘because she is dead already.’
‘Ah,’ he said, shifting in his chair. His face broadened into a smile. ‘I see.’
Marie Jeanette: la Grande Blonde
Mary’s heart leapt and fluttered. She wasn’t frightened, but she was desperate, and she knew her time was running out. She had caused many of her own troubles, but she only had a temper when she drank, and she would defy any woman to spend her youth as she had, underneath men flopping on her like pigs snuffling for truffles, and not take what they could to lighten the load, alcohol or otherwise. She was trapped between the impossible, between the men who had owned her and those who owned her now, dangerous men who would not be humiliated by a defiant piece of cargo.
At five foot seven and with long fair hair, Mary had been compared to all the famous beauties – Venus, Salome, Cleopatra. The name that stuck was Marie Jeanette, La Grande Blonde: the clientele in Paris had bestowed that on her. It was a testament to the shit men let tumble from their lips in the pursuit of fucking. The one man who hadn’t drooled over her or even said she was beautiful, had barely seemed to notice her at first, was the doctor, Robert. Meeting him had been her only solace. If everything went as Robert had planned, both of them would be gone by tomorrow. For the first time in her life, Mary would be really, truly free.
There was a rustle of skirts and a familiar bout of coughing, and through the door barged Lizzie Albrook, come down from upstairs to Mary’s room to hear about Sally’s flit.
