The Ripper Affair

“Coming from the east and taking jobs from poor honest Englene, the story goes. And socialist to boot. Bloody anarchists. The End’s full of them, and trouble every time one’s accused of anything from following a pretty girl to murdering a thief.” He shook his head. “Now this.”

“Has it truly grown so dire?” Well, of course. Why else would a full-blown detective inspector from the hallowed Yard be here at this hour? “Yes. I see. Three corpses and a workingman’s club–there have been unwholesome incidents founded upon much less.”

“Examiner’s been sent for. I hope you’ve some idea of what to do, Bannon. Can we move the body?”

I have no desire to endure another vision of murder. “It should be safe enough.” The Tebrem woman’s corpse was moved, after all. She stared at the mangled corpse, took two steps past the inspector and examined it more thoroughly. Yes, there was the head turned to the side, the ripping-open of the abdomen, entrails flung over the unfortunate’s shoulder. Thick legs in striped stockings, the legs obscenely splayed. Two dull farthings lay on a blood-soaked handkerchief by her curled right hand, and her pocket had been slit. The throat was cut, and there was a quantity of blood…

… but not nearly enough.

She decided it was perhaps time to remind the detective inspector just who held the whip hand in this particular situation. “Curious,” she murmured, and heard Philip Pico’s sharp, indrawn breath as he caught sight of the body. “Tell me, Inspector, do you still have dreams?”

He was silent for a long moment. Finally, he shook out his left hand, which had tightened into a fist. “Curse you.” Softly, conversationally. “Bloody sorceress.”

Yes. And you have, though not in the way you might think. I merely need to remind you to mind your duty, and your place. “Indeed. Tell me something else, Inspector. Where did the blood go?”

“I know where some went. See that?” He pointed, and she stared for a few moments. Even with her sensitive eyes, it took time for what she saw to become comprehensible.

“Leather. Cobbler’s apron?”

“Or slaughterer’s. Could have been there already. Soaked in the claret, Bannon, though still not enough. And you don’t need to be a mancer to know something’s amiss here. Look.” He jabbed two fingers at the shimmering over the corpse. It was akin to the heat-haze over a fire, or a slate roof on a hot day. “And underneath.”

“Yes.” Under the body, the Scab’s venomous green had been scorched. Where blood falls, the Scab greens, that was the proverb. Here, the blood–or something else–had burned down to ancient, slime-scarred cobbles and blackened, sour dirt that hadn’t seen free air in longer than Emma had been alive. “Yet she was not murdered elsewhere.”

“I’d ask how you know that.”

“And I would tell you I know, and that is enough.”

“Bloody sorceress.” No heat to it, he merely sounded weary. He scrubbed one flat-bladed hand over his face, precisely once, a familiar mannerism. “I happen to think you’re right.”

Chapter Twenty-One Answers In Other Quarters

The poor woman had perhaps never been as much a subject of attention in life as she was now. The surgeon–a round, jolly little physicker in a dark suit, his hands quick and deft as he performed incisions–muttered to a thin boy in a transcriber’s gown, while behind them a sour-faced barrowmancer tended to a charm-heated bowl of pitch, eyeing the body warily as if he expected it to perform some feat.

Which was much the way Miss Bannon regarded said corpse, too, when she glanced at it at all. Most of her attention seemed taken by rumination; certainly there was much in this turn of events to cogitate upon.

It was not like her to seem so… distracted, though.

The dank little stone room in this morguelrat warren was noisome enough, but it was also crowded. Clare stood at the periphery of a group clustered near the door, comprised of Miss Bannon, the ever-present Shield, the lad Pico, and the stout detective inspector who addressed Miss Bannon with quite amazing familiarity. The hall outside was packed as well, for the murder had attracted no little attention, and the broadsheets were already crying out its details. A small army of scruffy newsboys were having a fine time selling the sheets as quickly as they could be printed.

Clare leaned a little closer, using his height to advantage as he peered over the examiner’s shoulder. “Most curious,” he said. “The viscera… where has the uterus gone?”