Alex Grecian - The Yard

“He said it was Richard, didn’t he? No, Robert.”

“Yes, he said Robert. But the name of the man we’re looking for is Sam.”

“Oh, yes. That’s what the wife said, isn’t it?”

“Penelope. Yes.”

“She’s a lovely thing.”

“I hadn’t noticed.”

“You hadn’t? How could you not?”

“Perhaps that accounts for the good doctor keeping her out of sight.”

“I would, if I were married to her.”

“She may have more to tell us, if we could talk to her alone.”

“Well, I’m willing to make the attempt.”

“It might be better if I have a go at her myself, Colin.”

Pringle smiled and clapped Hammersmith on the back. “Oh, I quite understand.”

Hammersmith shook his head.

“We should hurry,” he said. “The sun will be up soon, and we have a long walk ahead of us.”

Esme whimpered in her sleep.

Liza rolled over and traced her fingers lightly down the length of Esme’s scar. The puckered red line began under Esme’s hair and ran diagonally across her forehead, jumped over her left eye and exploded in a starburst on her cheek before commencing down over her chin, her throat, and disappearing under the top of her loose-fitting nightgown. The endpoint of the scar was a crater where Esme’s left breast had once been.

Liza leaned in and brushed her lips against the coarse fabric of the nightgown, gently kissed the absent breast.

Esme stirred and smiled. She wrapped her arms around Liza and groaned.

“You was havin’ the dream again,” Liza said.

“Did I wake you?”

“I was awake already.”

“You ain’t slept, have you?”

“I’m fine, love.”

“You should sleep.”

“I will.”

Esme mumbled something that Liza couldn’t hear and slipped back into her dreams. Liza watched her for a long while after. Watching her beautiful girl Esme was all that Liza ever wanted to do. The one time she hadn’t watched, hadn’t been there, Esme had met Saucy Jack.

And now they both dreamed of Jack when they slept.

Liza wasn’t there when it happened. Liza never saw the Ripper. In her dream, as in reality, she was too far away to help poor Esme, Esme who went down a dark alley with the Ripper. Him with his midnight cloak and his yellow teeth.

And his wild black beard.

Esme had been working-both women had been working that night-and she had chosen the alley herself.

In hindsight, of course, taking a strange man into an alley was a foolish, even fatal, mistake. But the Ripper hadn’t arrived in the popular press as yet, and going down alleys with men was what Esme, Liza, and countless other women in Whitechapel had to do in order to put food on the table.

And so Esme got lost in the dark with the man and his knife.

Liza was with a different man, down a different alley. But Esme had told her everything, and Liza’s dreams replayed for her what had happened as if she had been in that alley on that night. And night after night ever since.

She imagined the scent of the Ripper as he pressed against her, briny and rank. The feel of his beard against her face, wires in her eyes, blotting out the gaslight from the street so far away. The sting of the knife on her face, on her throat. On her breast. The sound of her blouse ripping open and the warmth of her blood trickling down her ribs.

She screamed and he pulled her face into his chest so that she breathed in the hair of his beard. She beat against him and she pushed against him and he didn’t seem to notice. Her strength left her more quickly than she would have dreamed. She let her arms fall to her sides and she shut her eyes and she waited for the end.

Jack held her like a father might hold a bawling infant, and he spoke a single word. Through his beard, his mouth smelled of metal and fish and old rope.

“Slowly,” he said.

And then there were other voices, the voices of women, far away at the alley’s mouth. She felt herself fall to the stones as Jack disappeared. There came the sound of boot heels on cobblestones, and then she felt soft hands on her skin and she heard a soft voice in her ear.

“Don’t die,” someone said.

And so she didn’t die.

Instead, she slept.

Liza woke again for the third time in a night and gasped at her false memory of Esme’s ordeal. She watched the ceiling of the tiny rented room they shared, and when that proved unsatisfying, she rolled onto her elbow and went back to watching Esme.

And Esme whimpered in her sleep.

T he bald man woke with a start. He lay listening to the dark house and the rain beating against the roof above, unable to pinpoint what had awakened him. He fumbled along the bedside table for his spectacles and put them on, then went searching for the box of matches he kept next to the candlestick. He was a firm believer in the old ways of doing things, and a candle would do just fine. There was no electricity in his house. He felt strongly that mankind had grown too arrogant and had harnessed an elemental force that would eventually turn on its master. He waited nervously for all of London to burn to the ground, done in by the fiery electrical wires strung here and there over the city.

He struck a match and contemplated the sudden blue flame for a moment before lighting the tallow candle and snuffing the match between his fingers. He felt a sudden cramping in his bowels and, jamming his feet into the slippers on the floor beside his bed, he hurried out of the room and down the hall to the water closet. Not all of the new ways of doing things were bad. Indoor plumbing, for instance, was marvelous.

When he had finished, he pulled the chain to flush and took his candle back out to the hall. The house was old, and the floor creaked under his weight. He walked against the wall where it was quieter and eased open the boy’s door.

At first he didn’t see anything amiss. The candle’s glow didn’t penetrate far into the room. He crept closer, just wanting a look at the boy before heading back to his own bedroom. He had given Fenn a room of his own after they’d returned from the park. The bald man had been proud of the boy for obeying him in public. There had been no shouts for help or attempts to run away. The bald man was sure that Fenn was beginning to think of him as his natural father and to think of this house as his own. Of course, the bald man wasn’t stupid. He had still tied the boy to his bed.

The flickering candlelight played over the boy’s bed, chasing shadows into the folds and curves of the blankets. Too many folds and curves. The bald man approached the bed. He swallowed hard and reached out, grabbed a corner of the topmost blanket and yanked too hard. The blanket flew at his face and he almost dropped the candlestick. He let the blanket fall to the floor and pulled at the other blankets. The ropes he had used to tie the boy were tangled at the foot of the bed.

Fenn was gone.

Panicked, the bald man rushed to his own room and pulled a pair of trousers on under his nightshirt. He used a snuffer to put out the candle and hurried into the hall and down the creaking stairs to the front door.

How had the boy made it down the stairs without the sound of those dry old boards awakening the bald man?

He cursed himself for a trusting fool. He hadn’t double-checked the ropes before going to bed, hadn’t taken out the slack. He had been too kind. Of course the boy wasn’t ready yet to accept his new family situation. It would take more time. The bald man had rushed things, trying to recapture his past. He hesitated, trying to remember his first son’s name, but it wouldn’t come to him. He shook off the sudden twinge of sadness and regret. It hardly mattered now.