The Map of Time (Trilogía Victoriana #1)(12)

4


Breakfast had been laid out in the Winslow dining room for young Charles, who was doubtless still lazing in bed. On a table next to one of the French windows, the servants had set out a dozen covered platters, bread rolls, jams and marmalades, and several jugs brimming with grapefruit juice and milk. Most of it would be thrown away because, contrary to all appearance, they were not expecting a regiment, only his cousin, who, given his famous lack of appetite in the mornings would almost certainly be content to nibble on a roll, ignoring the extravagant spread displayed in his honor. Andrew was surprised by the sudden concern he felt at such waste, for he had spent years contemplating tables like this, here as well as at his own house, creaking under the weight of food no one would eat. He realized this curious response was the first of many that would result from his forays into Whitechapel, that dung heap inhabited by people capable of killing one another for his cousin’s half-eaten roll. Would his experiences there stir his social conscience in the same way it had his emotions? He was the type of person whose cultivation of his inner life left little time for worrying about the outside world of the street. He was above all devoted to resolving the mystery that was Andrew, to studying his feelings and responses: all his time was taken up in attempting to fine-tune the instrument that was his spirit until he felt satisfied with the sound it produced. There were times, owing to the constantly changing and rather unpredictable nature of his thought patterns, when this task appeared as impossible to him as lining up the goldfish in their bowl, but until he succeeded he sensed it would be impossible for him to worry about what went on in the world, which for him started where his own pleasant, carefully scrutinized private concerns ended. In any case, he thought, it would be interesting to observe in himself how hitherto unknown preoccupations emerged through simple exposure. Who could tell: perhaps his response to these new worries might hold the key to the mystery of who the real Andrew Harrington was.

He took an apple from the fruit bowl and settled into an armchair to wait yet again for his cousin to return to the land of the living. He had rested his muddy boots on a footstool and was munching on his apple, smiling as he remembered Marie Kelly’s kisses and how they had both, gently but completely, made up for all the years starved of affection, when his eye alighted on the newspaper lying on the table. It was the morning edition of The Star, announcing in bold print the murder of a Whitechapel prostitute called Anne Chapman. The news item gave details of the horrific mutilation she had suffered: besides her uterus, which he had already learned about from Marie Kelly, her bladder and vagina had also been removed. Among other things, the newspaper also mentioned a couple of cheap rings missing from one of her fingers. It appeared the police had no real clues as to the murderer’s identity, although after questioning other East End whores, the name of a possible suspect had emerged: a Jewish cobbler nicknamed Leather Apron, who was in the habit of robbing the prostitutes at knifepoint. The article came with a macabre illustration of a policeman dangling a lamp over the bloody corpse of a woman sprawled on the pavement. Andrew shook his head. He had forgotten that his paradise was surrounded by hell itself, and that the woman he loved was an angel trapped in a world full of demons. He closely read the three-page report on the Whitechapel crimes committed to date, feeling worlds away from it all in this luxurious dining room, where man’s capacity for baseness and aberration was kept at bay as surely as the dust tirelessly polished away by servants. He had thought of giving Marie Kelly the money to pay off the gang of blackmailers she thought were responsible for the crimes, but the report did not seem to be pointing in that direction. The precise incisions on the bodies suggested that the killer had surgical knowledge, which implicated the entire medical profession, although the police had not ruled out furriers, cooks, and barbers—anyone, in short, whose job brought them into contact with knives. Queen Victoria’s medium was also reported to have seen the killer’s face in a dream.

Andrew sighed. The medium knew more about the killer than he, even though he had bumped into the fellow moments before he committed the crime.

“Since when did you develop an interest in the affairs of Empire, cousin?” asked a beaming Charles behind him. “Ah no, I see you are reading the crime pages.” “Good morning, Charles,” said Andrew, tossing the paper onto the table as though he had been idly leafing through it.

“The coverage given to the murders of those wretched tarts is incredible,” his cousin remarked, plucking a cluster of shiny grapes from the fruit bowl and sitting in the opposite armchair.

“Although, I confess to being intrigued by the importance they’re attaching to this sordid affair: they’ve put Scotland Yard’s finest detective Fred Abberline in charge of the investigation. Clearly the Metropolitan Police are out of their depth in a case like this.” Andrew pretended to agree, nodding abstractedly as he gazed out of the window watching the wind scatter an air-balloon shaped cloud. He did not want to arouse his cousin’s attention by showing too much interest in the affair, but the truth was he longed to know every detail of the crimes, apparently confined to the area where his beloved lived. How would his cousin react if he told him he had bumped into that brutal murderer in a murky Whitechapel alleyway the night before? The sad fact was that, even so, he was unable to describe the fellow except to say he was enormous and evil smelling.

“In any case, regardless of Scotland Yard’s involvement, for the moment all they have are suspicions, some of them quite preposterous,” his cousin went on, plucking a grape from the bunch and rolling it between his fingers. “Did you know they suspect one of the Red Indians from that Buffalo Bill show we saw last week, and even the actor Richard Mansfield, who is playing in Dr. Jekyl and Mr. Hyde at the Lyceum? I recommend it, by the way: Mansfield’s transformation on stage is truly chilling.” Andrew promised he would go, tossing the remains of his apple onto the table.