The Queen's Accomplice (Maggie Hope Mystery #6)(63)

“Heaven help us,” Maggie said, taking a sip.

“We don’t have the details yet, but whatever’s going on over there, it’s evil incarnate,” Chuck said, taking a swig of her whiskey. “Look—‘Extinction Feared by Jews in Poland’—Henry Shoskes says the monthly average of those dying is ten thousand. Ongoing! I’m a nurse and I’ve seen dead bodies. Then I try to imagine one body times ten thousand—and that’s just a month—and my mind simply can’t do it.”

Maggie tipped her head back and gulped the remains of her whiskey.

Chuck looked to her friend. “Sorry. I know you’ve had a bad day.”

“Mr. Churchill once gave a speech and he changed ‘dark times’ to ‘stern times,’?” Maggie said softly. “But sometimes I think he should have left it that way—these really are dark times, aren’t they, Chuck?”

“More whiskey?”

“Yes.” Maggie held out her glass, trying to hold back thoughts of Brynn, and Calm Doggie, and the dead women in the morgue. “Yes, please.”

—



Brynn slept on and off, increasingly disoriented and unaware of time, of day and night, of days passing. The only markers she had were the meal trays left while she was asleep, usually toast with margarine, and tea, and the occasional sandwich and small, wrinkled apple.

Brynn was sure she was being drugged, but she couldn’t taste it in the food. Still, she ate sparingly, and drank the tea only to soothe her parched throat. Despite her precautions, her hands had tremors and she couldn’t shake the disoriented, foggy feeling that kept her in bed, or the waves of nausea rolling incessantly through her.

What was most disturbing, however, was how someone had access to her room, someone was coming in and going out, and she was unconscious when it happened. It was more than disconcerting. It was terrifying.

Still, she sat up and breathed, calming her heartbeat, giving her brain oxygen, clearing her mind. As she did, she became aware of a sound piercing through the heavy door and thick walls.

It was faint, but still distinct.

The sound of a woman screaming.





Chapter Twelve


The phone rang at five A.M.

Maggie scrambled out of bed and ran down the hall to answer it, shaking off a headache. “Yes?” she said, disoriented and out of breath. “Hello?”

“There’s been another murder,” Durgin stated without greeting or preamble.

Maggie was instantly wide awake. Work. Yes, work is what I need. “I’ll meet you and Mark at the coroner’s.”

“Just what I was thinking.” He hung up without saying goodbye.

—

DCI Durgin stood next to Mr. Collins, hands clasped behind his back, eyebrows drawn together, as he watched the autopsy. “The recent murder of Miss Olivia Sutherland is an exact reenactment of Jack the Ripper’s killing of noncanonical victim Emma Elizabeth Smith in 1887,” Durgin announced to Maggie as she walked in.

“Good morning, Detective, Mr. Collins.” She had wrapped a flowered Liberty of London silk scarf around her bruised throat.

She stopped short when she saw the body of the young woman. Oh God, poor Olivia Sutherland. She had a sudden urge to run out of there, run as fast as she could. Go back to bed, hide under the covers, and weep for Olivia—for all of them who’d ended up on a coroner’s table.



But instead, she bit the inside of her cheek and then asked, “Where’s Mr. Standish?”

“He called in sick.” Durgin looked disgusted. “Sick! Wouldn’t catch a Yard copper calling in sick. Ever. Not even with plague.”

“Sick?” Maggie had never known Mark to take a day off. As Durgin shrugged and rolled his eyes heavenward, she said, “Never mind. Where was Miss Sutherland’s body found?”

“Cross of Gloucester Road and York Street.”

With a deep sigh, she pulled the map of London that Mark had given her from her handbag and marked off the newest location with a red X. The Xs were making a loose circle, a hangman’s noose. She bit her lip. If her theory was correct, it was growing ever tighter around the place the Blackout murderer was holding and killing his victims.

“What’s that?” Durgin asked, approaching to peer over her shoulder.

“It’s—it’s something I’m working on. A map of the places the bodies were found. I’m working on a mathematical formula—it’s an idea I had while I was watching a darts game last night—”

“Oh, that reminds me—how was tea with the Queen?”

At this, Collins looked up from the corpse and gave Maggie a sour glare.

Maggie was in no mood to engage. “Her Majesty sends regards. Any witnesses?”

Durgin turned back to the body. “My men are doing the usual appeal now. And we’ve had press sniffing around. Can’t let them get hold of it—or we’ll have a panic on our hands.”

“Might not be the worst thing,” Collins interjected. “Maybe the young ladies will stay home at night for a change. They should all be under curfew—at least until this bastard’s been caught.”



Maggie’s hand crept to her bruised neck and worried at her scarf. “And why should the young ladies have to stay at home and off the street, Mr. Collins?” she asked in a preternaturally calm voice. “They certainly haven’t done anything wrong. Perhaps it’s the men who should be under curfew—they’re the ones committing these horrible crimes, after all.” Then, “Is there any way to test if the women were given a calming medication, such as a tranquilizer?”