I, Ripper

“I thought Jack worked up the street a bit,” I said.

“Maybe he’s come slumming, like you. We don’t get many gentleman. This is mostly sailortown.”

“I would never characterize my efforts as ‘slumming,’ my dear. To me, all women are equally beautiful and equally desirable but, alas, not equally available.”

“I’m thinking this is a night for availability, then, not beauty nor desire,” she said. She was a game one!

“Well said, my dear. A mile that way, the tariff is thruppence. What would it be closer to Mother Thames?”

“Can’t give you no discount for your long walk,” she said. “Ain’t my bother the coppers is all over that street up there. We’ve got our pride in Wapping, too.”

“So a thruppence, then, and both are happy.”

“I daresay.”

“Proceed. I’ll follow upon.”

She launched herself from the lamppost, tossed the cigarette, and I saw why she had elected to go permanently at mooring: She had a limp, some mangled business at the hip that probably was something tragic out of a Russian novel that I didn’t care to hear of. She made her progress at less than spiffy pace, up one block, up another, and at long last, she turned between two brick buildings a short distance away, whereupon we came to another street, small and darkish, and continued. Just a few more feet and I could see the gently rocking hulls of two great vessels at mooring on the quay.

It fell to darkness, and except for the heaving and cracking of the ships at rest, I could hear nothing and see nothing. We were in a passageway between the walls of two great warehouses, on cobblestones far from the interest of the street traffic. It was perfect.

She turned, exactly as Polly had turned, exactly as Annie had, exactly as Liz had, exactly as Kate had, and in turning offered me her long bare throat, and as my right hand slid inside my coat and I felt the grip of my Sheffield, I could see the tendons, the muscles, the softness of the skin, and knew exactly where I would drive the edge for maximum carnage.

“Now, guv’nor,” she said, “I’ll take me coin, if you please.”

And at that point, someone hit me hard on the back of the head, and all the stars in heaven exploded behind my eyes.

CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT Jeb’s Memoir

confided to O’Connor what I was up to, omitting key details that I knew would bore a man with the attention span of a gazelle. He was substantially impressed, so he gave Henry Bright the word that I was to be left alone as I continued my individual inquiries; Harry Dam could cover the Yard and keep the fires stoked. O’Connor also set up a meeting with a man of our staff who covered military matters and was on good terms with a more august personage named Robert “Penny” Penningham, who had covered the War Office for decades for the Times and had been to more wars than most major generals and, it was said, had ridden unofficially with Cardigan at Balaclava. He knew everything there was to know about issues of war and more war, as waged by Her Majesty’s forces from the wedding-cake building at Whitehall called Cumberland House.

I loved Penny straight off. He was a bounder, a cad, a merry fellow full of grand gesture and good heart, and he drank fishlike in a rear room of a Fleet Street pub called the Pen and Parchment, where, it was said, Mr. Boswell had sat inscribing the words of Dr. Johnson. It was quite possible, judging from the ancient air of the place, and I was willing to play Penny’s Boswell.

He drank stout out of a monster pewter tankard with “47th (Lancashire) Regiment of Foot” inscribed in gold across it. No doubt there was a tale behind it. In fact, I guessed Penny to be a walking Canterbury’s full of tales of life on campaign or in barracks.

“Now, yes, I do know a fellow at the War Office. I made him to be a hero in Africa during the Zulu business, when he was actually a bumbler. I knew his da and couldn’t let that old color sergeant down. As per my account, the man was decorated and advanced, and now he occupies one of those key spots in Cumberland House where everything passes across his desk. He pulls strings far in advance of his rank and can ferret out anything. He would fetch this bit in a day or so, for me and me alone, if I asked him. But tell me again, laddy, why it is you’re needing it?”