Stalking Jack the Ripper (Stalking Jack the Ripper, #1)(77)

The song was “A Violet from Mother’s Grave,” and the way her voice sounded so sweet while recounting such a horrid occurrence sent chills under my skin. Thomas tugged on my sleeve. “Your father’s rounding that corner. Shall we follow him?”

I glanced toward the young woman, then down the opposite way, watching Father turn onto the next street. The same feeling of Death lurking close by caressed my sensibilities. I couldn’t shake the feeling something awful was going to occur.

I shook myself out of my daze, then nodded. I was still frightened of our earlier attack. It was nothing more. The young woman singing her sad song would be safe tonight. The monster was heading home.

“Yes.” I tore my gaze away. “Stick to the shadows, and be quick.”

“City Police have made an official report that a woman was found cut to pieces at a house in Miller’s Court, at ten forty-five this morning,” I said, collapsing onto the ottoman in Uncle’s laboratory, reading the Evening News with utter disbelief.

Thomas watched me over his steaming cup of tea, a folded newspaper sitting across his lap. He’d tried comforting me by spouting a bunch of nonsense about how we’d done all we could, but I disagreed.

Now he said nothing and it was driving me mad.

“I don’t understand,” I said for the fourth time as the same shock kept coming back around, slapping me in the ribs. “We watched Father go straight home. Did he see us, then wait until we’d gone before committing such a vile act? We were so careful. I can’t understand how he slipped by.”

Still, no response from my companion.

“A lot of good you are,” I huffed. “Master puzzle solver, indeed.”

I checked the heart clock, my anxiety growing with each tick and tock. Uncle was called to the scene nearly four hours ago. Taking that long to inspect a body was never a good sign. From what the paper had printed, I could only imagine the horror Uncle had walked into. He’d been instructed to go alone, and I was ready to tear hair from my scalp, strand by strand.

When news broke of the murder, Thomas and I confronted Uncle with what we’d seen. He dismissed Father’s involvement with a flick of his wrist, saying to keep searching for clues. Lord Edmund Wadsworth couldn’t possibly be guilty.

I wasn’t as convinced of his innocence but did as I was told.

A woman was found cut to pieces. I read that same line time and again. Perhaps I was hoping it was a mistake and by the thousandth time I’d read it, it’d simply disappear like magic. If only life worked that way.

“This is impossible.” I tossed the paper aside and watched the clock again, willing it to speed along and bring Uncle back home already.

I was both sick with worry about who’d been murdered, and fighting the dark curiosity of wanting to know what remained of the woman. How had she been cut up? Did the reporter mean her throat was slashed, or were there actual pieces of her flesh missing? I shouldn’t want to know those morbid details. But, oh, how I couldn’t control those unseemly questions from springing up like new blades of grass in my mind.

Given the address in the paper, I was fairly certain Thomas and I had spied the unfortunate victim speaking with Father only hours before. Questions married other questions and had theories for children.

“All the unknowing is driving me mad.” Now I understood how Uncle felt while waiting for Thomas to come back with news that time several weeks prior. If curiosity plagued him the way it did me, it was a terrible affliction to suffer from.

I shoved myself off the ottoman and paced around the laboratory. The maids had done an excellent job putting it back together. One would never know Scotland Yard had nearly ripped it apart in their mad search of Uncle’s belongings.

I walked over to the specimen jars, looking, but not really seeing objects the murky liquid contained. There was no quieting my mind.

“How had Father managed to throw us so easily from his trail?” I asked. “We were so careful, falling a safe distance behind his carriage, moving from one darkened alley to the next until he arrived home.”

Once we hit my street we waited a few breaths before following. We’d just managed to see Father slinking into the house before the lights dimmed.

To be sure he was in for the night, we’d stood guard until three o’clock in the morning. No other murder had taken place that late, so we foolishly assumed it was safe to leave. How very wrong we were. The first rule in tracking a madman should be to never believe their moves were predictable. It was a hard lesson to learn, with astronomically devastating consequences.

I’d never felt like more of a failure in all my life.

“Do you think all that pacing will help the situation out? You’re distracting me from my work, Wadsworth.”

I threw my hands in the air, making a disgusted sound in the back of my throat before walking to the other side of the room. “Must you be so obsessively annoying at all times? I do not criticize you when you walk about in circles, deducing preposterous things.”

“When I pace, it actually results in something clever. You’re just kicking up dust and the scent of formalin and it’s ruining my tea,” he teased. Taking in my sour expression, he softened. “There’s nothing to be done until Dr. Wadsworth arrives. You might as well eat something.”

I tossed him a disgusted look and kept pacing.