Michael Prescott - Riptide

“It’s so far away.”

“Now, now, Evelyn. I’m sure you’ll visit us someday. And think of the lovely postcards you’ll receive.”

He withdrew, returning to his seat. When he looked her way again, he saw that she was weeping.

No one else noticed. It was natural for a mother to weep on her daughter’s wedding day.

When plates were empty and bellies were full, the tables were carried out of the room to make space for dancing. Hare and his wife shared the first waltz. Some among the guests chuckled at his missteps, but for once he didn’t mind being laughed at.

He remembered his first night on American soil, alone in a flophouse, his head in his hands as he mourned the life he’d lost. Never could he have imagined the triumphs that awaited him. His success had taken him by surprise even as it unfolded. He had seen no reason for it.

But latterly, he had understood. He knew why he had risen in business. He possessed the very traits of character required of the successful competitor. He was ruthless, unscrupulous, and when necessary, savage. The men who came up against him might fancy themselves sharp operators, but none of them had ever sunk a steel blade into a whore’s belly.

He disarmed them with his charm, his becoming modesty. He recited poetry. He attended church. He allowed himself to be rated a fop and a naif. Only after he had outmaneuvered his rivals and driven their enterprises into bankruptcy did they understand with whom-with what -they had been dealing. By then it was too late.

His financial success was gratifying. But it was the blood sport that fascinated him. He savored the game. In Iowa he harried a man to suicide after taking his business and his home. No one thought less of him for it. On the contrary, he was respected all the more. He embodied the prevailing ethic, the domination of the weak by the strong. A society that coddled weakness would encourage its own degeneracy. This, at least, was the substance of countless editorials and stump speeches and even the occasional sermon.

It was the one moral lesson in which Hare needed no instruction. He was, by nature, a man who knew how to get ahead in life. Americans honored such men. They were an uncouth people, easily impressed by an English accent and a smattering of erudition, and still more impressed by riches and the will to increase them. Hare could have been their king, their god. Had he not been of foreign origin, he might have been their president.

Jack the Ripper in the White House. The thought made him smile.

“Darling, where are you?”

It was Maddie, gazing at him as she swayed in his arms. “Right here, my love.”

“I don’t think so. You seem so distant. And your expression-I don’t know whether it was a grin or a grimace.”

“A smile, I assure you. There will be only smiles for you.”

“You wouldn’t keep secrets from me?”

“Never.”

“Promise?”

“From you, Maddie, there will be no secrets, ever. No secrets and no lies.”

The answer satisfied her. She believed him implicitly. She was such a fool.

By ten o’clock, though the party continued, Hare knew it was time to bed his bride.

His bride. Of all women before Madeleine, only Kitty had come close to earning that appellation. It had been a near thing with Kitty, but he had escaped her thrall. Wiser now, he had selected a companion whose chastity could not be doubted.

Even so, he did not want to leave the festivities. Far better to while away the night in revelry, dancing quadrilles and singing sentimental songs. But he knew what was expected of him.

He found Maddie at the center of a gaggle of female friends and drew her away while the geese tittered and clucked.

“Shall we?” he asked simply.

He expected shyness from her and was bemused-and a trifle alarmed-by her upraised face and frank expression. “Of course, darling.”

Boarding a hired motorcar, they left in a hail of salutations. They said little as they rode through the streets. The moon was big and nearly full, and the snowy peaks of the Rockies gleamed like chalk. He was very far from London, from the congested slum courts, the vagrants huddled under railway arches, the bobbies with their bull’s-eye lanterns, the clop of hooves on cobblestones.

Their driver chauffeured them to the Brown Palace Hotel, the city’s finest. The bridal suite was more than satisfactory. Hare tipped the bellman, and then he was alone with his wife.

“Well,” he said, “here we are.”

“It’s lovely. So romantic.”

“Yes, well,” he said, then stopped, at a lack for words.

She smiled at him. “I shall make myself ready.” She disappeared into the bedchamber.

He sat in his armchair. A long time passed. Hare drummed his knee.

He thought of Whitechapel.

Whores.

Kitty, so pristine in the garden of her cottage, concealing her sinful past. A pious masquerade, a whitewashed sepulcher.

He really should have killed her. Forbearance had been a weakness on his part.

“Darling.” A seductive whisper from the next room. “I’m ready now.”

He stood. His balance was unsteady. There was a peculiar heaving in his gut. He thought perhaps he had overindulged in food and drink.

It didn’t matter. He need only do his duty.

He took a step toward the bedroom. The narrow doorway became the gate to a fenced backyard, stinking with trash, the yard where he killed Annie Chapman. He remembered pulling her backward against the fence as he throttled her from behind-the thump of their bodies against the rotten wood. Later the papers reported that a man on the other side of that fence heard the noise but lacked the curiosity to investigate. He had run a grave risk, killing her in such a public place, and yet he’d felt no fear.

But now…

Now he was afraid.

“Dearest?” Maddie’s voice.

He straightened his shoulders. Fear would not unman him. He had carved up whores; surely he could bed one. No, that was all wrong-not a whore- she wasn’t a whore. She was his wife, and a virgin. Or so he had assumed. But the way she had looked at him tonight, so boldly…

Perhaps not a virgin.

How would he know? They said if the woman bled on her wedding night, then she was chaste.

If she bled…

But they always bled. Chapman and Kelly and Brown, and the others. Always there was blood and more blood; it was all women were made of, it seemed; they bled with the cycles of the moon; they bled in childbirth; they bled when he gutted them with his fine, sharp blade…

He reached the doorway of the bedchamber. The room was dark. In the shadows Maddie was a dim, pale shape amid the bedclothes.

The image flickered, and it was Mary Kelly he saw, her face stripped away. Shapes shifted, and now it was Carrie Brown, Old Shakespeare, legs spread wide, dress hitched up over her hips.

“Darling? Are you all right?”

He didn’t answer. He stared into the darkness, seeing other women on other nights. Different names, different faces. Yet all the same. Peel away their disguises, and they were all whores, every one.

“You disgust me,” he whispered.

She sat up. “What?”

His voice was low and firm, and he felt no more fear, only a deliriously righteous certainty. “You are an abomination. I would not sully myself with your touch.”

“You-you can’t mean that…”

“I mean every word.”

He left her. As he returned to the parlor, he heard her quiet sobs. She was the second woman he’d reduced to tears tonight.

Without undressing, he stretched out on the divan. He would sleep here until they departed for California. In their new home they would have separate bedrooms. He need never share a pillow with her. She might protest, but it would make no difference.