Maureen Johnson - The Name of the Star

“Oh, God,” I said. “Please. Not again. Not again with this guy.”

This guy, James Goode, had seemed to be on about half of all the television shows I saw in England before this happened. Now his smug face was on TV all the time, on every station.

“James, many people are saying that you should have turned the package over to the police immediately,” the interviewer said, “not shown the contents on the air.”

“People have a right to know,” James replied, leaning back. “And we arranged it so that one very critical piece of information was left out. Only Scotland Yard and I know the full contents of the message.”

“You’re saying you intended for your own broadcast to be cut off so abruptly?”

“Of course I intended it.”

“Who is this jackass?” I asked. “Why is he always on TV?”

“James Goode? I don’t know. He was a journalist, and they gave him a show. Everyone hates him, but he’s really popular, which makes no sense, I suppose.”

“He’s a jackass,” I repeated, and Jazza nodded sagely.

“It’s always been a subject of debate whether or not the original ‘From Hell’ letter of 1888 was a hoax. That letter, like your letter, contained half a human kidney, which could have come from the fourth victim, Catherine Eddowes. Of course, now we possess the capability to determine these things for certain. It has been confirmed that the kidney sent to you was the left kidney of the fourth victim, Catherine Lord. Why do you think you were chosen, James? Why you, and not the police?”

“I suppose the killer wanted to send a message,” James said. “He wanted to make sure the kidney was seen by as many people as possible, and he knew I had the pull to make that happen.”

“And of course the one thing this last murder has shown is that the killer probably has extensive medical knowledge. This was always a matter of debate in the case of the first Ripper, but this time, there is a consensus amongst the medical professionals involved that this murderer almost certainly has some medical training. The kidney was removed with great skill. We have an image of the kidney taken from that broadcast. Viewers are advised that the following image is quite graphic, and—”

“I am getting so sick of looking at this kidney,” I said.

“It’s a farce,” Jazza replied. “They act like they’re shocked and horrified, and then they show it off twenty times a day.”

“Have you seen the singing kidney video?” I asked.

“Ugh. No.”

“It’s really funny. You should watch it.”

“Can you switch it off?”

The computer was at the end of my bed. I closed it with my socked foot and continued reading my selections from The Diary of Samuel Pepys (which is pronounced Peeps , not Peppies , something I found out the hard way in class)—specifically, a section in which he describes the Great Fire of London. There was a knock at our door. Charlotte opened the door when we called.

“Benton, Deveaux, you’re wanted downstairs.”

In Hawthorne-speak, downstairs meant Call Me Claudia’s apartment, and last names meant the business was in some way official.

“What for?” Jazza asked.

“Sorry. No idea.”

She and her hair left us. Jazza shoved her German off her lap and spun toward me.

“Oh, God . . . ,” she said.

“It’s fine,” I said. “It’s fine. She would have killed us by now if she wanted to.”

“She was probably waiting until the police left.”

“Jazza.”

“Why else would she want us?”

“Jazza,” I said again.

“What do we do?” she said, rocking on the edge of her bed. “Rory? What do we do?”

“We go down.”

“And?”

“And . . . she says stuff,” I said. “I don’t know. We just go.”

We gathered ourselves together, put on our most innocent faces, and walked downstairs as a united front. Claudia called us inside on the very first knock.

“Ah, girls . . .”

I immediately relaxed. It was a cheerful “ah, girls.” Not an “I’m going to murder you now with a hockey stick” kind of “ah, girls.” She gestured for us to take a seat in one of her floral chairs. Jazza swallowed so hard I heard it.

“You’re getting a roommate tomorrow,” she said. “Her name is Bhuvana Chodhari. Late admission.”

“Why is she moving into our room?” I asked. “Eloise has a room all to herself.”

“Eloise has severe allergies. She needs an air purifier in her room.”

This was so obvious and outrageous a lie that I almost laughed out loud. Eloise didn’t have allergies. She smoked more than a tire fire.

“Your room was originally a triple,” Claudia went on. “There’s plenty of space. If you have anything in the third wardrobe, you need to get it out tonight. That will be all, I think.”

We returned to our room and shut the door.

“She knows,” Jazza said.

I nodded.

“This totally blows,” I added.

After briefly analyzing the dimensions, we concluded that there was no way this room was a triple. At most it was maybe four feet wider than the rooms around it, and it did have an extra window, but that was it.

“You never know,” Jazza said. She had recovered from the initial shock and was trying to be the ever-bright-and-cheery one. “She may be lovely. I mean, I like having just the two of us in here, but it might not be bad.”

“We’re losing our sofa.”

I looked mournfully at the extra bed we had turned against the wall and loaded down with Jazza’s two hundred cushions.

“We hardly ever use it,” Jazza babbled on. “And it could have been worse. It could have been so much worse.”

But I think she felt the same way I did. This was our room, our little peaceful spot in the universe, and we’d lost it because we’d snuck out. I fell silent and looked up at the sky through the panes of the window. It was getting dark so much earlier. It came on fast here. The trees were black outlines against the dark lavender of the London night sky.

“Crap,” I said.

17

THE NEXT MORNING, WE TOOK A FINAL LOOK AT OUR room as it was before we headed off to breakfast. When I returned to do a book switch-out after lunch, our room had a new occupant. Bhuvana was stretched out on the bed, talking on the phone. She gave me a little wave and a smile and wrapped up her conversation. She seemed fine with the position of the bed and had redecorated it with a huge pink and gray duvet and a stack of metallic silver and pink pillows. There were bags everywhere—suitcases, duffel bags, shopping bags.

Bhuvana was, as her name suggested, of Indian descent. She had very straight, very black hair, with one bright streak of artificial cherry red on the right side. It was cut into a severe line just at the shoulders, and she had razor-straight bangs. Along with the fact that she wore a lot of black eyeliner and long, dangling gold earrings, she reminded me of pictures of Cleopatra. She clearly wasn’t from India, though. Her accent was as British as they come—fast, urban, kind of Cockney, I guess. I could barely understand her at points.

“Aurora, yeah?” she said as she hung up the phone. She bounced off the bed to embrace me and give me two air kisses.

“Rory,” I corrected her. “You’re Bhuvana?”

“Boo,” she corrected me right back. “Only my gran calls me Bhuvana.”

“Only my grandma calls me Aurora.”

So we had that in common. Boo was several inches taller than me. She too had put her uniform on right away, but she wore it with a swagger, her tie slightly undone and jerked to the side.