Reckless Wager: A Whitechapel Wagers Novel Read online

  Kate smiled. She would miss Alice’s plain-speaking manner.

  “He’s a decent man. But no. Not in the way I think you mean.” Kate took another sip of tea, avoiding the flash of pity she’d glimpsed in Alice’s gaze. “Do you know? I’m not certain he expects me to love him.”

  “But you’re eager to marry?”

  “You know I’m not. I’ve been a widow for nearly ten years.”

  Alice tossed back her tea, then pursed her lips, as if stifling one of her bald replies. After drawing a long breath in through her nose, she spoke on an exhale.

  “You’re a lady of means, Mrs. Guthrie. To my way of thinking, you should do as you please.”

  Alice stared at Kate, her gaze as adamant as her words.

  Those words were perilous. They echoed in Kate’s mind, enticing her to imagine a life of desire over duty. A life of wishes.

  “He’s kill’t me! Help me, please, missus. I fear the Ripper’s kill’t me.”

  Alice shot up first, upending her teacup as she missed the table where she tried to sit it. She rushed toward the door of the clinic with Kate close behind.

  The woman who’d stumbled across the threshold went down, leaning and then falling, all the while gripping her throat, where blood coated her neck and hands.

  Kate bit her lip to stop it trembling. All at once hot and cold, she struggled to control her emotions, to stop the tremors racking her body. The shudders echoed her reaction to Andrew’s cruelty so many years ago.

  She pushed the past away and focused on fresh terror. Could the woman truly have been attacked by Jack the Ripper? It had been over a month since the last murder, and most believed the Ripper was gone—dead or descended so far into madness he could not even manage the effort of tearing another woman apart.

  After cooperating to lift the woman onto a cot, Alice began coaxing her hands from her throat in order to find the source of the bleeding. Kate fetched warm water and clean linens to begin cleaning the blood and tending to the woman’s wounds.

  On closer inspection, Kate saw the victim’s face had been cut too, and not just cut, but bruised and battered. Kate recognized older bruises beneath the fresh abrasions. Shaded in yellow and orange and a purplish blue, they looked very much like the bruises she’d hid from family and friends after one of Andrew’s violent rages.

  “It were the Ripper. I swear it. On me life, I swear it.”

  “There now. Just let me wash your hands. I’m Kate.” Kate gave up forcing her mouth into a grin and instead attempted to show the woman with her gaze that she only wished to help her, that she could be trusted.

  “Rose, miss. Call me Rose.”

  Much of the blood on Rose’s hands was dark, nearly dried, and when she finally relented and pulled her hands from her throat, it was clear the worst of the bleeding had stopped. An ugly slash marred the left side of her neck, but the cut was shallow, just tearing the flesh, and with the blood staunched the woman was in no real danger.

  “All right, Rose. You will be all right once we wash this and bandage it up.” Alice’s strong, firm voice drew a wary glance from the wounded woman.

  “You ‘avin’ me on? Telling me a pork pie? He what near kill’t me, so he did. The Ripper.”

  The woman spoke in a pure Cockney accent and her rhyming slang of pork pie for lie was one Kate thought she’d heard young Vicky use at least once before.

  Alice lifted her hands to her ample hips and heaved a frustrated sigh. If Rose lied about her encounter with the Ripper, she would not be the first. Over the autumn months the clinic had seen a string of working women who blamed their injuries more likely received from customers or husbands on a run-in with the elusive fiend who haunted the streets of Whitechapel and set all of London on edge. Kate read every article about the attacks that she could get her hands on and prayed for the day when the monster would be brought to justice. But now that the murders had stopped, the police seemed less eager to solve the mystery. There were always fresh crimes that took precedence. Would the murders remain forever unsolved?

  “May I have a sip of tea, please?” Mrs. Burgoyne called out from her cot near the stove. Her injured foot, swollen near twice its size, still pained her and caused restless sleep.

  “Would you like me to sit with Rose or see to Mrs. Burgoyne?” Alice was the de facto manager of the charity clinic and Kate took her lead.

  “Would you finish bandaging Rose?” Alice leaned in close and whispered in Kate’s ear. “See if you’re able to get any sense out of her.”

  Kate nodded and sat next to Rose. She finished washing the cuts on her face before bandaging her neck. As she wrapped the linen, she noticed more bruises under the woman’s hairline.

  “Do you really think it was the Ripper, Rose? We should send for a police constable.”

  “No, miss, not a constable. Please, no.” A thin hand enclosed Kate’s wrist. Rose squeezed and beseeched her with her words. A look of terror lit her eyes. “I’m beggin’ you, miss. Don’t fetch the rozzers. It was that dark. Per’aps it weren’t the Ripper at all.”

  Rose’s prevarication about her attack made Kate believe what Alice probably suspected. Rose’s assailant could likely be found among the men she knew, perhaps a customer for whatever service she offered. Then again, she might be as unlucky as Kate had been when it came to choosing a man who would protect a woman and treat her kindly. But what if she had truly encountered the mysterious killer who had yet to be brought to justice?

  Kate lowered her voice and placed her hand over Rose’s where it still grasped her wrist.

  “Rose, if you truly saw the Ripper, you must tell the police what you remember. What if you have the one bit of information that will assist them in catching him?”

  The woman shook her head slowly, not meet Kate’s gaze. Now that Kate had washed her face in order to clean her wounds, it was clear Rose was a young woman. Someone had treated her cruelly, but she refused to be cowed. Frightened, perhaps, but the girl appeared far from hysterical, and Kate admired her mettle.

  Rose finally looked up at her. "They can't catch 'im. And most of 'em rozzers won't believe me. No one cares wot 'appens to the likes o' me."

  Though her tone was defiant, it was clear Rose wanted someone to care. Everyone needed someone to care. Though Kate had been blessed with a loving family, in the midst of Andrew’s rages, she’d had dark moments, hopelessness, fear that what her husband said was true—that she was unlovable, that no one cared.

  “I care, Rose. And whether or not it was the Ripper who attacked you, you should speak to the police. We must do what we can to stop him hurting anyone else.”

  When Rose finally lifted her head and looked at Kate directly, her expression was resolute. Kate knew Rose would agree to speak to a constable.

  “Aw’right, miss.” She nodded her head once, sharply, to seal her agreement.

  Kate patted the young woman’s arm and smiled, truly grateful and impressed with her bravery.

  “Very well, Rose. Let me just go and fetch a constable from the—”

  “No, miss. I’ll speak only to Sergeant Quinn. None other. ‘E’s a good man.”

  “I don’t know Sergeant Quinn, Rose. Where do I find him?”

  “Is there no one else what can go, miss?”

  Kate had already walked to the coat hook near the door and begun donning her cloak.

  “No one else, I’m afraid. Miss Cole is needed here.” Kate peeked through the street-side windows and saw a splash of red-gold light burnishing the tops of the buildings down the lane. Dusk drew near and she had to hurry if she didn’t wish to get caught wandering Whitechapel at night. “It’s not yet dark, Rose. Just tell me where I can find him and I’ll fetch him here straight away.”

  Rose twisted the blanket that covered her body and then picked at a scab on her lower lip. When she lifted her finger, her mouth quivered. “You shouldn’t go there, miss.”

  “I must, Rose. Please. Quickly. Tell me where he is.”

&nb
sp; “The Ten Bells. You’ll find him there, I ‘ave no doubt.”

  The pub was notorious. Simply hearing its name was enough set off gooseflesh on Kate’s arms. Two of the Ripper’s victims had been seen in The Ten Bells before they were attacked, and the body of the fourth victim, Annie Chapman, had been discovered in Hanbury Street, just footsteps away from the pub.

  “Very well. It’s not far. I’ll return directly.”

  “Do ‘ave a care, miss. The Ten Bells is no place for a lady such as yerself.”

  “Of course. I’m always careful.” Kate attempted to offer the young woman a reassuring smile, but what began as a grin turned into a battle to steady the trembling of her lips.

  Kate prayed she could find this Sergeant Quinn without much fuss and without getting caught up in the nighttime devilry in Whitechapel.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “No sign of ‘im tonight, guv?”

  Detective Sergeant Benjamin Quinn didn’t bother answering the barmaid, but he offered her a weary smirk. Her question was a tease, much like the jests about offering him her many other talents for free. He could never spend time in The Ten Bells, no matter how inconspicuous he tried to be, without a bit of ribbing from Maggie.

  “Never forget my offer, will ya?”

  “How could I?”

  Maggie was all right. An incorrigible flirt, without a doubt, but she had a keen eye and provided precious information about the goings-on in Whitechapel’s most notorious public house. And her ribbing was good-natured. On the rare evenings when her taunts were not suggestive, Maggie reminded him a bit of his younger sister, Annabel, who’d somehow caught an earl and become the Countess of Davenport—both women were overly curious, keen eyed, and quick witted.

  “Yer wastin’ your breath on the likes of ‘im, love. Don’t fink he likes women.”

  The most boisterous member of a group of workingmen at a table nearby lifted his pint to Quinn as he spoke. The men had been offering him wary glances all evening. As a detective, he never wore a uniform, but even without brass buttons and a domed hat, he suspected they knew what he was. Perhaps they’d guessed why he haunted The Ten Bells. Though they sure as hell had no idea why he hadn’t touched a woman in years. He’d wrestled temptation like any man, though even the part of him that craved a woman’s touch had grown numb over the years.

  “Take no mind of them, guv.”

  Ben managed a smile of gratitude at Maggie and hoped she’d move on to cleaning the next table. If the Ripper still frequented The Ten Bells and Ben had a prayer of encountering and finally apprehending the man, it would hardly do to draw attention to himself. Never one for drink, he usually sat in the corner and nursed a single pint of ale for hours, but tonight, sore in body and mind, he’d allowed himself three pints and was dangerously close to ordering another.

  Despite the blurring warmth of drink, his day-old injuries throbbed after his scuffle with Dorian Penhurst. Whatever evil or madness ailed Penhurst, the man was quite skilled at fisticuffs; though Ben’s swollen knuckles reminded him he’d landed a few solid blows of his own.

  Every instinct, every circumstance, deepened his conviction that Penhurst was the fiend who fashioned himself Jack the Ripper. But there was the matter of proof, and there’d never been a single solid piece of it linking the failed young physician to the crimes. Yet Penhurst had cultivated Ben’s suspicion like a gardener tends a seedling, feeding it with his taunts and claims of guilt—always as emphatically retracted as they were offered. When Penhurst had shown up at Ben’s lodgings spouting his claims, ridiculing the Met’s inability to solve the crimes, and finally pushing his way into Ben’s rooms, Ben had reacted, not at as a detective but as a man at wit’s end. Reacted, as Chief Inspector Ainsworth put it, in a manner unbecoming an officer of the Metropolitan Police.

  Wincing at the spike of pain in his chest, Ben reached into his vest pocket to check the time. His fingertips brushed the folded square of paper he’d placed there after meeting with Ainsworth in the morning. He lifted the half sheet Notice of Suspension and tossed it on the table before easing his timepiece out. The polished metal was cool in his hand. He flipped it, rubbing his thumb over the inscription on the back. Semper Fratres.

  Snorting in disgust, Ben turned the pocket watch again. Not even nine o’clock. Still early. Far too early to return to his cramped lodgings and ruminate on his suspension from the force.

  “There’s a pretty piece.”

  Maggie lingered at a table nearby, wiping at it absently while watching his every move.

  He knew the fastest way to sate her curiosity. Ben released the chain and held the pocket watch out to her. Only a fool would display the single valuable they carried so openly in The Ten Bells, but the taproom was nearly empty and he knew Maggie could be trusted.

  “It was a gift from a friend.”

  “And a fine friend too.” She turned the watch back and forth in her palm, as if examining the facets of a gem. “Wot’s this ‘ere say?” She sounded out the Latin phrase and then cocked a brow at him expectantly.

  “It means Brothers Always.”

  “It’s from your bruvver then?” She returned the watch to him reverently, cupping it in both hands.

  “No, just a friend, though he was like a brother to me. Not anymore.”

  “Fell out with ‘im, did ya?”

  She leaned in, no doubt eager for details, but it wasn’t a tale he wished to tell, not even with the effects of three pints loosening his tongue.

  “You might say that, Maggie.”

  She straightened up and began wiping his table. “Want annuver?” She tipped her head toward his near-empty pint glass.

  Ben shook his head and Maggie moved on to the table of working men, chatting and encouraging them to order another round.

  The wretched ale at The Ten Bells held no appeal except to quench thirst. Ben only haunted the pub in the hopes of overhearing a conversation or encountering an as yet unknown witness to the Ripper crimes. Or perhaps, if he was wrong about Penhurst as his colleagues maintained, he might just come face to face with the man himself. Scotland Yard had long surmised the killer was a regular at the pub. Its proximity to two of the murders made it a point of interest throughout the investigation. Maggie, the barman, and those who included The Bells in their nightly jaunts had probably seen the killer, talked with him, served him pints of ale.

  But Ben wouldn’t find him tonight. Tonight he wasn’t even a detective.

  He pushed the round disk of his pocket watch across the table, aligning it with his suspension notice. It seemed fitting the two reminders of his failings should rest side by side—the gift from a friend who’d betrayed him and a reprimand for forsaking his duty. After scrubbing at the day’s growth of beard that furred his chin and cheeks, Ben folded the document and placed it in his vest pocket. Sliding his pocket watch in beside it, he patted the space and ignored the pinch of pain from his bruised ribs.

  Another pint was out of order. He already regretted every sip he’d taken. Drink hadn’t dulled the pain of his injuries and only seemed to stoke his self-loathing. It was getting late, and the pub had grown quiet. He and the table of working men who’d given him grief were the only patrons other than one quiet, solitary soul in the opposite corner. The man’s grizzled head was bent over the table—asleep or in a drunken stupor, no doubt.

  Ben slid out of his wooden booth just as the creak of the pub’s door drew his gaze. A gust of icy December air preceded a woman who looked completely out of place in Whitechapel. With her honey blond hair and skin as pale as cream but for the wind-chapped splotches of red on her cheeks, even Ben’s riddle-loving mind couldn’t fathom a reason for such a woman to enter The Ten Bells. He settled back in his corner, determined to solve the mystery.

  “Excuse me, sir. Yes, hello.”

  She’d snagged the attention of the barkeep who’d begun to busy himself with tidying behind the bar.

  “Would you tell me where I might find Detective Sergeant
Quinn?”

  A frisson of awareness made Ben shudder. The woman knew his name. He hoped the rough-looking gents at the table nearby didn’t, but they shot a pointed glare at Ben nonetheless.

  “What’s your business with him, miss?” The barkeep and pub’s owner, Max Winsome, had made it clear to Ben that he appreciated his presence in the pub. Ben calmed the madness, Max had confided, and the barman said he wished to play his part in catching the Ripper.

  The woman glanced around before answering, her eyes skimming past him as she took in the few lingering patrons in the pub.

  What impulse had brought her to this infamous place to find him?

  Ben’s detective reflexes warred with the treacle-thick haze of drink as he catalogued the woman for clues. She’d not come by carriage. Her dress beneath her cloak was caked with muck, as was the skirt of every woman who walked these streets. The mad little woman had walked here, through the most dangerous streets in London. Ben couldn’t detect any signs of mending on her cloak. The seams appeared tight and glinting jet beads were sewn into the hood and hem. It was clear from her clothing that she possessed a measure of wealth. Ben deduced the woman did not live in Whitechapel, yet here she was. He had no theory to explain it.

  “I’m your detective, right here, lovie.”

  The slurred comment rose from the grizzled loner. He’d roused and sat leering at the woman. Ben clenched his fists. Wouldn’t his chief inspector love hearing about his suspended sergeant’s second round of fisticuffs in two days, this time at The Ten Bells? He needed to convince his boss he was fit for service again, better able to stomach the challenges of the Ripper investigation. But he couldn’t allow the lady to be manhandled.

  The diminutive woman stretched up a bit taller, straightening her back, and took a deep breath before approaching the man who’d called to her from the corner.

  Ben was conflicted. His duty as a policeman—suspended or not—dictated he protect her from harm, yet he’d no desire to reveal himself. They hadn’t caught the Ripper, and there might be many more nights of watching and waiting in The Ten Bells ahead.