Nine Liars (Truly Devious, #5)(39)

Death. Plague. Destruction. Torture. Beheadings. Merry old England!

She couldn’t help but admire the mastery of Izzy’s play. Izzy had set her up to hear Angela’s story, and to hear Angela talk about this place of beheading and violence and torment. Once you start thinking about murder by axe, you tend to keep thinking about murder by axe.

Axe murder is serious business. In the Tower, it was a brutal message and vengeful justice. It was rare in most murder mysteries—axes were scary movie territory. Someone might sneak around with a knife or a gun or a bottle of poison, but someone will notice your axe. In this case, it sounded like a weapon of convenience. It was in the shed, most likely, since it was a woodshed. If someone in that group of nine had murdered two of the others, it must have been on the spur of the moment.

Also, there was the practicality of it. How did one person with an axe murder two people in a shed? Was it a crazed bloodbath? Why didn’t the two take on the one?

What was it Angela had said? A little bit of fakery. That’s what the swordsman had used to get Anne to turn her head, to make it easier to kill her.

Maybe that’s all it took to murder someone and get away with it. A little bit of fakery.





11


WHEN THEY ARRIVED AT CRAVEN HOUSE, HAVING WALKED MANY MILES and thousands of years through London, David was waiting for them in the lounge. He was wearing a dress shirt and a tie and already had the coat on. He had been curating a mist of shade around his jawline. Somehow, it never got to stubble. Between that and the way he leaned back on the steps, stretching out his legs . . . he knew exactly what he was doing.

“Hey, sicko,” he said, getting up to kiss Stevie on the lips.

That feeling never got old. That moment of contact. Feeling that warm puff of air from his nose, the softness of his mouth, the way he reached around to cradle the back of her head, his fingers in her short hair.

“Ready to go?”

“Now? Could I . . .”

“Five minutes, Bell. Then we ride.”

“Where are we going?”

“Another surprise,” he said with a wolfish grin.

Again, they were going to walk, taking the same path they had the other night—snaking down the streets. There was a special pleasure in knowing the path a bit now. It was already a little familiar.

“You keep looking at me weird,” he said.

“You just . . . you look good. You’re all dressed up. And, you know, the coat . . .”

“You only like me for my coat,” he said.

“Yup,” she replied. “It’s a long game I’m playing to get that coat.”

“Starts at five,” he said.

“What does?”

He shook his head.

They went to Embankment Station and took the Circle Line, which was a yellow spaghetti on the map, one that was twinned with the green District Line. They took the eastbound train, getting off in a few stops at a place called Aldgate. He walked her down a wide commercial street, mixed with large, modern office buildings made of glass, countless construction sites, some older, ornate places of gold brick, several betting shops, and a Burger King.

“Seriously,” she said.

“Almost there.”

As soon as she saw the first sign that said WHITECHAPEL, she knew. They turned a corner and found many people milling around—all tourists, like her.

“This way for the original tour,” a man in a top hat said. “Tickets are available. You should have a code if you bought online, so please have your mobile out so I can scan it and we can be on our way.”

“Is this . . . a Jack the Ripper tour?”

“Nothing’s too murdery for my princess,” he said. “I even coordinated with Janelle.”

David held out his phone and allowed the jowly man with the shock of long white hair to check them in.

Like any person who followed true crime, Stevie knew the basics of the Jack the Ripper case. London, 1888. A man haunted the streets and killed sex workers, women who were poor and trying to survive. He was famous for his rapid mutilations, some in places where he could easily have been discovered. But what he really was, was some dirtbag. The press had given him the nickname Jack the Ripper, and the case had been pumped up in the press. There was debate about how many victims he had, but most people had settled on five. Now he was a spooky folk hero.

She had by now been on a lot of tours. Unlike the other places she had been visiting, there were no fine buildings on this walk—no towers or turrets, no marble busts or spires. Henry the Third had never come this way. Instead, this walk led them down some pretty mundane streets in East London, mostly deserted for the night. They walked past fried chicken places, banks, pubs, vape shops, fabric stores . . . most of them were closed. There were streets of old warehouses of brown brick, now converted into luxury flats. The guide gave a low-key summary of the socioeconomic conditions of Victorian-era London, and the fact that the canonical victims of Jack the Ripper had been forced into sex work because they needed to eat. Many were addicted to the cheap gin that was sold absolutely everywhere, and was the only thing that made the rough life on the streets of the East End at all bearable.

Except he didn’t say it quite that way, and he didn’t call the victims sex workers.

People had come for the murders. People always come for the murders. Stevie had to admit that she was one of the people who had come for the murders—but it was not as simple as that.