The Lights of London (38 page)

After adding a jade paperweight, a carved ivory stud box and a pair of gold cuff-links to his haul, Bill pushed the shutters to, to cover the still open window, and went over to the door.

He opened it slowly and looked along the landing.

All clear.

Then he made his way along to a flight of narrow stairs at the end of the hall that he guessed led up to the attics.

He presumed that they would contain the servants’ quarters, but that they might also prove to be a nice place for the doctor – God bless him, whoever he was, for having such tasty gear to nick – to stash any extra special valuables.

Bill was in for a shock.

Gingerly, he stepped inside the first room and, holding his breath, waited a moment. Definitely empty. He breathed again and immediately a terrible, familiar stench hit his nose and throat.

What the hell was it?

Then he remembered. He’d been just a little boy, and he and his family had all gone down with the fever. They had been taken to the hospital ward. That was the smell. The carbolic and something else they used to clean the place. It made him want to gag, as it brought back those memories.

All his family had gone into the fever hospital, but Bill had been the only one to come out again.

‘No time to start getting all maudlin, Billy boy,’ he muttered to himself and rummaged through his pockets until he found the candle he had brought with him. He had to have a good look at this. He reckoned it would definitely count as interesting.

As the match flared and the wick burst into a yellow and blue flame, what Bill saw in the shadowy candlelight made him wish he hadn’t bothered.

He threw himself back against the door, dropping his sack and spilling his haul across the scrubbed wooden floor-boards.

There, on the other side of the room, were three glass-sided coffins, each containing a dark-haired woman.

Setting the candle down on a strangely hinged wooden table, Bill gathered up his collection with shaking hands and stuffed it back into his sack.

With sweat beading his forehead he took up the candle and walked over to the dreadful caskets.

Had he not been worried about being discovered, Bill would have laughed out loud with relief. They weren’t dead bodies, they were sodding wax models! One of them even had the peculiar hinged lid that they all had on their torsos propped open on a little hinge.

He plucked up the courage to peer inside. Again, it wasn’t a wise move.

Blimey O’Reilly! There, like the mess on a
slaughter-house floor, were all her organs, picked out in vivid, stomach-churning colours.

But it was easy to see how he had been fooled. As they lay there, reclining provocatively on their piles of plump red velvet cushions, with their gleaming raven hair falling in loose curls about their creamy white shoulders, naked save for a single strand of pearls at their throats, they looked uncannily real.

Bill thought, very briefly, that he might open the coffins and help himself to the necklaces, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch them. Even though it was now obvious they were models, they were still too realistic for comfort as they languished there, immodestly exposing themselves.

With a shudder of distaste – even Bill had his standards – he took a quick look around the rest of the room and saw cabinets and shelves full of bottles of liquids and powders, and then – bloody hell!

Bill moved forward for a closer look. He was right. There was a whole row of jars full of bits of bodies.

He put his hand to his mouth as he felt the bile rise in his throat.

If there was any treasure knocking about up here then the doctor could keep it. He was going back downstairs a bit sharpish.

He snatched up his sack, snuffed out the candle and hurried back down to the floor below.

The first room he went into was a library.

Disappointed, he almost turned round and walked away, but then he noticed several books spread out, open, on the table and saw some very classy-looking gold-edged pages glinting lavishly in the firelight.

Firelight.

Shit! There must be someone in after all.

‘Keep calm, Bill,’ he whispered to himself. ‘Them
books look like they could be worth a few bob. Have some of them.’

He picked up one of the books and his mouth fell open.

‘Sod me!’ he said far louder than he’d intended.

He turned the book this way and that, staring.

He picked up another and flipped through the pages. How on earth could anyone …

He swallowed hard. He didn’t like this stuff. He didn’t like it at all. It wasn’t normal.

He dropped the book on the table and stumbled backwards to the door. He’d had enough of this place. He’d work his way back to the room where he’d broken in, shoving anything portable that he passed into his sack and pockets, and have it away on his toes before he come across anything else
interesting.

Just as he stuck his leg out of the window he heard a noise from the street below, then muffled footsteps trudging up the snowy path. Shit!

With the blood drumming in his ears, Bill ducked back inside. Leaning close to the shutters he peered down, praying that whoever it was would hurry up and come in so he could get out of the bloody place.

As the figure drew nearer to the porch, Bill shook his head in amazement.

Surely, it couldn’t be. Not in Belgravia.

Bill would have been even more shocked had he known that while he was creeping about upstairs, directly below him in the drawing-room the owner of the house was sitting in a wing-backed leather armchair.

The only illumination in the room was a heavily shaded lamp on the side table by the chair. In the pool of light around its base were a leather strap, an empty
glass phial with the top snapped off and a hypodermic syringe.

Somewhere in his head Tressing could hear a bell ringing.

He frowned, as his fuddled brain was disturbed by the noise. He was already angry. At Fisher. How could that simpleton think he could buy him off? Could treat him as if he were settling an account with a vulgar tradesman? Him, Dr Bartholomew Tressing. Fisher wouldn’t get away with it.

And that girl, that damnable Kitty. Who did she think she was, refusing him like that when he’d asked her –
asked
her! – to come to his house?

He’d show Fisher and he’d show that pathetic slut.

The ringing started again. What was going on?

It finally occurred to Tressing that it was the doorbell and that he had deliberately given his staff the night off.

He rose to his feet, infuriated by the stabbing pains in his head, and went to answer the door.

Tibs and Kitty had finished for the night, but rather than going straight to bed as Kitty had done, Tibs insisted on seeing home Joe’s old aunt, who had been looking after Polly, in case she slipped in the snow.

With the old woman safely indoors, Tibs still didn’t go home. Instead, she went to the corner of Ship Alley where, as agreed, Spiky Bill was waiting for her.

‘Tibs,’ he began, shaking his head, ‘I don’t know what to say.’

‘Just hurry up will you, Bill? It’s sodding freezing out here and I wanna get to me bed. And I don’t want no lies or no old fanny. Right?’

‘You asked me to see if there was anything interesting.’

‘Yeah.’

‘Well, it was interesting all right.’

‘How d’you mean?’

‘It was strange. Definitely not normal.’

‘Blimey Bill, you ain’t exactly normal yourself, but it don’t really tell me much about him or his house, now does it?’

‘There was this hospital thing.’

‘Hospital?’

‘All these bottles and bodies.’

‘
Bodies
?’

‘Well, bits of bodies, and these wax model things that you could open up and look inside at all the giblets. Bloody disgusting it was. Nearly had me fetching up the tater I had for me tea.’

‘Bill, the bloke’s a doctor. That’s what they do. Look inside bodies. Now, I am getting very cold and more than a bit fed up, so how about if you …’

‘And there was all these books.’

Now Tibs was getting angry as well as cold. ‘Just ’cos a bloke can read …’

‘Not reading books. Well, not all of them. Some of ’em had these pictures. People with not a stitch on.’

Tibs rolled her eyes. ‘Bill, they was probably medical books.’

‘Medical? Well, if they was, I can’t think what they was meant to be curing. You should have seen ’em, Tibs. I like a bit of sauce as much as the next man and round the docks you can see plenty, believe you me. I’ve even bought one or two pictures meself. Here, don’t mention that to my Bet, will you, Tibs?’

‘Bill!’

‘All right. All right. Well, like I was saying, if you want the truth what they was doing in them pictures made my stomach turn right over. I’m telling you, they wasn’t the type of pictures your average sort of a bloke
would get any pleasure from. Bloody criminal, they were. I just hope that girl’s all right.’

‘What girl?’

‘I was just about to creep away when I saw that young Marie. The one who works the Lane of a night. Honest, Tibs, he let her right in the front door. A bride, as bold as bloody brass, like he was having some posh lady-friend round for a sodding tea party.’

Christmas Day had arrived, and Tibs and Kitty were sitting round the table that Jack and Archie had set up in the downstairs bar of the pub.

Archie was leaning on the counter, smiling as he watched Polly playing on the floor; Kitty was watching Jack sharpen a lethal-looking carving knife on a butcher’s steel and Tibs was watching Kitty.

Since that strange, northern woman, Tess, or whatever she called herself, had visited that night, Kitty’s attitude towards Jack had developed in a way that Tibs was finding touching, but also highly amusing. And Jack was lapping up every little bit of fuss and help that Kitty had dropped his way.

With Polly so happy as well it would have been a perfect day, had it not been for Tibs’s unease over Archie. But she wouldn’t let that spoil things for Polly. She was going to make this day special if it killed her.

‘It’s no point waiting for One-Eyed Sal any longer,’ Tibs said, looking at the big round clock over the bar. ‘You can bet she’s got herself caught up at some party or other and don’t know even know what day it is, let alone what time.’

‘If you’re sure.’

‘Yeah. Go on, Jack, get carving.’

She beckoned to Polly, who was staring in wonder at the china doll that Archie had bought to go with the
sailor boy he’d got for her at Southend. ‘The smell of all this grub’s making me belly think me throat’s been slit from ear to ear.’

Realising what she’d said, Tibs glanced furtively at Archie to see his reaction to her talk of cut throats. He didn’t even flinch.

‘If you’re sure,’ said Jack and turned to Archie. ‘Want to do the honours?’

‘Don’t look at me, boss,’ he said, tapping his bad arm. ‘I have trouble cutting me dinner up.’

This time Tibs stared openly at him. Trouble cutting his dinner up? It hadn’t occurred to her before. How could he have done all that to Albert? Crafty, snidey, violent Albert who you couldn’t even surprise in a dark alley because the artful bastard would always be there before you. It must have taken brute strength and surely more dexterity than a man with only one good arm could ever have?

‘You all right, Tibs?’ asked Jack, waving the big knife around like a pirate captain showing off his cutlass. ‘I’m not taking your job away, am I, lass?’

‘What? Er, no. No. You do it, Jack.’

Jack was just dishing out the fat slices of goose, when Sal began bashing on the pub door, yelling to be let in.

‘All right, girl,’ called Tibs, ‘we ain’t ate your share.’ She turned and winked at Polly. ‘Not that we wouldn’t have if you’d been any later, mind.’

As Tibs slid back the bolt, Sal came rushing in, her hair flying wild and loose behind her, as though she’d got out of bed and had set straight off on the hundred-yard dash. ‘It’s Marie,’ she wailed, dragging her fingers down her face. ‘Ivy from up the Anchor just told me. They’re burying her the day after tomorrow.’

‘Burying her, Sal? What on earth …’

‘She’s been mullered.’ Sal pointed at the groaning table. ‘All carved up, she was, just like that Christmas goose. Just like that other bride and like Albert.’

Tibs could barely breathe. Marie was dead.

‘It’s like the Old Boy’s walking the streets again,’ Sal moaned into her hands.

‘What?’ asked Jack, trying to keep up with the madness.

‘It’s what people round these parts called the Ripper.’ Sal grabbed a glass from the table, swigged it back and slumped, defeated, on to Tibs’s chair. ‘But this wasn’t done round here. They found the poor little mare’s body over in bloody Belgravia.’

The day after Boxing Day had dawned as cold, grey and desolate as the huddle of shivering brides felt, as they walked away from the bleak graveside, slipping and sliding on the snow, wondering which of them would be next to feel the cold steel across her throat.

Kitty was standing with Jack, too shocked to weep.

Tibs touched her on the arm. ‘Kit, I’ve got something I’ve gotta tell you.’ She looked at Jack. ‘We won’t be a minute.’

‘Take as long as you like, girls. I’ll go and have a cigarette.’

Tibs drew Kitty aside and led her close to a snow-laden yew tree – protection from the wind and from prying eyes and ears.

‘I’m sorry to do this to you, Kit, but if I don’t tell someone I don’t know what’s gonna happen.’

‘You can tell me anything, Tibs, you know that.’

Tibs nodded, but wasn’t really sure that she believed it. ‘Someone I know saw Marie going into a house. A few days before Christmas.’

‘And?’

‘The house was in Belgravia.’

‘But that’s where they found her.’

‘Kit, it was Tressing’s house.’ She chewed on her bottom lip, staring into the middle distance as though there were something only she could see. ‘And you heard what they’re all saying, Marie was done in the same way as Albert and that girl they found up by the mint. And there were other girls. Last year. All the same. It’s him, Kit. He’s the one.’