Ripper. Part 7

As I stepped out of his carriage, I felt curious and excited about the impending evening. I antic.i.p.ated that this would be very different from my evening at Lady Catherine's.

"Welcome!" Dr. Bartlett exclaimed as he opened the door for me and took my coat.

He led me to an enormous drawing room immediately to the left of the front entranceway. The room had dark green patterned wallpaper and long narrow windows heavily curtained in sage velvet drapes; it had a grand, earthy feel. Giant potted plants abounded along the walls and in every corner of the room. I saw at least three large fish bowls; one, under a gaslight in the center of the room, was huge, globelike. This globe aquarium absorbed and reflected prisms of light above it into every angle of the room. Unlike the two smaller aquariums, this aquarium contained jellyfish. They were tiny and silver-each a pulsating thimble with long tentacles floating behind like hair. Part of Dr. Buck's collection, undoubtedly.

Across the room, past the fish bowl, several young men, many of whom I recognized as physicians or medical students from the hospital, sat around smoking cigars, small gla.s.ses of gin or sherry in their hands. The conversation lulled a bit when they saw me, and I saw glimmers of disappointment in the gazes that flashed toward me. Undoubtedly they thought that a woman would cramp and exasperate their conversation. The only warm gaze came from Simon. He drank only wine.

Several men, whom I took to be Dr. Bartlett's housemates, sat beside the large bookcases near where we stood. Like Dr. Bartlett, the housemates appeared to be middle-aged or late middle-aged-except for one.

I stifled a small gasp when I recognized the youngest man as the one I had slammed into when leaving the hospital. He stared at me now with his leopard green eyes and cast me a nod. My curiosity rose regarding his ident.i.ty. I had thought he was possibly a physician at the hospital, but he lounged on an ottoman near the others in a manner that seemed far too familiar for a subordinate physician.

He stayed where he was while the others rose to meet me.

Dr. Bartlett began introducing them at once.

"Abbie, this is Reverend John Perkins."

Reverend Perkins stepped forward and took my hand. Dressed all in black, he wore a clergyman's collar; however, unlike many of the pleasant, powder-haired clergymen in England, he exuded shrewdness. More lion than lamb, I concluded. Tall, and sporting a long pepper-colored beard, Reverend Perkins-though polite-had an imposing and formal appearance.

Dr. Marcus Brown, meanwhile, was of average height, had short brown hair, and seemed much friendlier. He stepped forward to shake my hand and we exchanged pleasantries. The scholar, I remembered William saying as he introduced himself to me.

"Do you teach at Oxford occasionally?" I asked.

"Yes." He chuckled lightly. "But not medicine. My mind is not inclined anywhere in that direction of study. I lecture for the history and philosophy departments at Kings College. Robert here," he said, patting the man next to him, who I a.s.sumed was Dr. Buck, on the back, "is our scientist-both botanist and zoologist, specifically. You can find him lurking around the laboratory upstairs at Whitechapel Hospital, though he has his own laboratory here that he shares with Julian."

Dr. Buck, tall and spectacled, seemed almost as formidable as Reverend Perkins. He stepped forward, giving me by far the firmest handshake of the group.

After meeting them, I wondered when the younger man would arise to greet me, but when I looked toward the ottoman again, he was gone. Discretely, I glanced across the room to where the small group of guests sat.

He was not there, either.

Dr. Brown placed a drink in my hand.

"Is Scotch all right?"

"Perfect, thank you."

I had never had a Scotch. I rarely drank anything stronger than wine, but having noticed that most of the others drank hard liquor, I did not want to seem weak.

For the first time, I noticed that Dr. Bartlett and his housemates had no servants. They served the drinks, closed the drapes as the evening progressed, and turned the lamps on and off.

Two hours pa.s.sed; my head began to swirl after I unwisely drank a second Scotch. I became hesitant to talk too much for fear that anything I said at that moment might sound foolish. Then, perhaps because of the alcohol, I felt a wave of nausea.

"Are you quite all right?" Simon whispered from where he sat beside me.

"Yes, quite. I'm just going to find the water closet."

"It's upstairs. Do you need me to ... "

"No, no. I can find it myself."

I focused on walking steadily as I crossed the drawing room. I paused at the jellyfish aquarium when another small wave of nausea swept over me. Stepping closer to the gla.s.s, I waited for the bout to pa.s.s. The talk and laughter from the other part of the room funneled away, and I became completely absorbed in the swimming creatures. I had only seen sketches of jellyfish in books, and they had seemed much larger than these. Also, no sketch could ever do justice to their gossamer loveliness.

"Lovely, aren't they? But deadly. This type will kill within minutes, often within three minutes."

Blood roared in my ears and I felt a scalding flush spread across my cheeks. The man I had encountered at the hospital now stood quite close beside me, staring into the gla.s.s and smoking a cigar. I had not heard him approach; neither had I smelled the sweet cigar smoke, which in my less-than-sober state dizzied me a bit.

He glanced down at me. In the light from the aquarium, he was darkly handsome, and his eyes arrested me. He averted his face, blew the smoke away, and refocused again on the aquarium.

"Dr. Buck discovered them in the waters around Indonesia last year. They are, as yet, uncla.s.sified as a species."

He looked back down at me. My spine p.r.i.c.kled and I straightened, not wanting to succ.u.mb to his spell.

"I remember you from the hospital, but I don't believe we've met. I'm Abbie Sharp." I put my hand out.

He hesitated for a moment, looked down at my extended hand, something of amus.e.m.e.nt upon his face. His expression seemed uncomfortably intimate, as if a handshake between us was foolishness.

But after a second, he took my hand and squeezed it firmly. "Max Bartlett, Julian's nephew."

"Are you a physician?'

He chuckled and did not answer. He stared listlessly at the jellyfish, then back at me.

The chuckle puzzled me. Was I supposed to know who he was? I wondered if he was perhaps offended that I did not know of him.

But he did not appear offended as he continued to stare at me. He took another lingering draw upon the cigar. "Au revoir, Miss Abbie Sharp."

With that he walked away, past the loudly conversing guests and through a set of French doors. All I saw beyond the doors was greenery and shadows.

Odd, I thought, as I finally left the drawing room.

Once I was in the entranceway again, I ascended the stairs and found the water closet. Splashing water on my face from the washbasin made me feel a bit more sober. When I emerged, I noticed an open door across the hallway. A soft glow emanated from the room. I remembered that William had mentioned some sort of gallery near the stairs in the Montgomery Street house, but I had not yet asked him what he meant.

As I stepped through the doorway, my surroundings suddenly disappeared. Vaguely, I felt my body tremble, and I panicked as I plunged into blackness. I did not like this loss of control, and I fought hysteria as I felt another vision coming on.

The darkness dissipated a bit, and I saw a silver chalice-there was some sort of inscription on the side, in Latin, but it wasn't clear enough to read. Feeling a magnetic draw toward the cup, I reached for it, to take it as I would kneeling at a Sunday church service.

The vision evaporated and I was once again in darkness. My body fell, hitting a hard floor, and, distantly, I felt pain.

Then I found myself standing in a dead-end alley at nighttime. I smelled rotting meat-some type of spoiled beef and fish from the cluttered trash piles of the alleyway. A cat leaped from one of the piles, sending an ale bottle rolling loudly across the flagstone ground.

That's when I heard the sc.r.a.ping noise, from high on the wall at the end of the alley. I looked upward and saw a shadow moving through the darkness. I felt rising terror; I could not move.

The figure of a man crawled down the bricked wall. His movements were unhurried, even-paced-the sc.r.a.ping noise I had heard was his fingernails and boots upon the bricked surface. With each crouching movement, he came closer to the ground. I tried to run, but the rotting meat smell became overwhelming. Then nausea and fear overwhelmed me and I felt paralyzed.

His head was almost to the ground when he looked up at me, and though I could see very little in the darkness, I saw the flash of a smile and a knife blade clenched between his teeth. There was something serpentine about his movements as he crawled downward, defying gravity, and yet I knew that he was a real human being closing in for a kill.

"Abbie. Abbie." I felt Simon's cool hands gently shaking my shoulders. And then I saw Simon's face in front of my own.

Somehow I had fallen onto the floor of the gallery. I refocused my eyes. A new panic rose inside me. I could not tell Simon about the vision. As understanding as Simon seemed, if I told him I was having visions, he might think me insane; it might mean an end to my work at the hospital.

"What are you doing here?" I asked him.

"You looked unwell when you left the drawing room. I thought I would make certain that you were all right. I found you in here, collapsed."

Slightly annoyed by his chivalry-this was the second time Simon had caught me falling-I stood up abruptly, smoothing my skirts.

"Thank you. I think I just had a bit too much to drink."

A single lamp shone behind us, and Simon peered at me in the semi-darkness. His eyes dropped to my hands, which I felt trembling.

d.a.m.n. He doesn't miss a thing, I thought.

"Where are we?" I asked suddenly as I scanned the gallery, which although not particularly large, was long and lined with gla.s.s cases. I saw a closed door at the other end of the room.

Simon remained silent, and I felt his eyes still upon me as I began examining the gallery. Each case contained various archeological and anthropological displays. The one nearest to me contained coins-medieval coins. They were neatly aligned in rows, arranged, I a.s.sumed, by the time period from which they came. Then I noticed a case at the far end of the room lined with bones-human skulls, finger bones, human hair. I found the case both morbid and intriguing, and I wondered where the remains had come from-undoubtedly they were collected by Dr. Bartlett and Dr. Buck in the course of their medical and scientific researches.

Many of the other displays, such as the one with the coins, contained items that had nothing to do with medicine. I noticed one filled with ancient and medieval weaponry. Another contained various styles of pistols. Some cases contained more recent weapons. I even recognized a famed bowie knife from America, st.u.r.dy and slightly curved for frontier hunting.

"It's like a museum."

"It is a museum." Simon seemed to relax a bit and walked to where I stood in front of the bones case. "It's a private museum. Very extraordinary. It's actually connected to another gallery," he said, nodding toward the other door. "But I have not been in that one."

"The house must be absolutely sprawling," I said, peering into one of the cases. "These bones ... where are they from?"

Simon shrugged, standing beside me, staring at the case's contents.

"Do they bother you?" he asked.

"No. Just a bit macabre."

"Yes, I understand." In the darkness of the room, his angelic face seemed luminous. I felt a rising curiosity about him. Ever since our brief discussion that morning in the carriage, I had wondered why he had chosen this profession, why he would be drawn to the East End. Most often, Kensington produced Chester Clairmonts.

"You grew up in Kensington. How did you become a physician-in Whitechapel of all places?"

"My work is more selfish than you might think, Abbie."

"I am not understanding you."

That smile again. "It's my search for G.o.d."

"But you're a seminary student. Wouldn't your theology studies give you those answers?"

His mouth curved into a smile as an answer, but his eyes took on that distant look.

A throat cleared loudly from the door.

I whipped around. Reverend Perkins stood in the doorway. His expression was unfriendly, and I wondered how long he had been watching us.

"Miss Sharp, the carriage is ready. It is late, and I'm certain Lady Westfield would want you home at a decent hour."

There was something condescendingly sharp in his voice, and I picked up an accusatory undertone. I blushed at the thought that perhaps he thought it was forward of me to be alone in this upstairs room with a young man.

Either way, I took my leave immediately.

Nine.

I.

sensed a heavy atmosphere at the hospital when I arrived for work on Monday morning. The cl.u.s.ters of children in the first floor ward played more quietly; the nurses went about their work with strained, preoccupied faces. Mothers spoke in hushed voices from their beds. I pa.s.sed two constables leaving as I entered the front doors.

"What has happened ?" I asked Josephine as she rushed past me.

Her small brown eyes flashed. I could see that she debated within herself whether or not to tell me something.

She pulled me toward the side. "There's been another murder."

I saw Abberline's broad back following Dr. Bartlett up the stairs.

"One of our patients?"

Josephine nodded. "Annie Chapman. We think she was killed within a few hours of being discharged from here-sometime in the early hours on Sat.u.r.day morning." She lowered her voice to a barely audible whisper. "The killer mutilated the body in the manner of Polly Nichols."

My mind flew back to the vision I had had on Friday evening-of the man in the alley.

With a wave of dizziness, I tried to pinpoint the time that I'd had the vision: I had left Dr. Bartlett's home late, around eleven o'clock-only a few hours before Sat.u.r.day morning. I pushed away my persistent memories of my mother's episodes. The inexplicable was too much for me to deal with at that moment.

Josephine informed me that I was needed on the second floor that day, and then rushed back to the nursery.

When I arrived in the second floor ward, I found Simon sitting beside the bed of a patient, reading to her from a volume of Great Expectations. His voice reminded me slightly of Dr. Bartlett's-soothing, hypnotic. I knew that Simon St. John was the only physician-in fact the only staff member anywhere in the hospital-who would take a few moments to read to a patient.

The woman pouted as he closed the book. "Wish you didn't hav' to stop readin' it, doctor." She was sharply thin, with brown hair and light blue eyes. I guessed her to be somewhere in her forties. I heard in her voice the hint of a Scandinavian, possibly Swedish, accent.

"I have other patients, Miss Stride. But I'll return later."

Simon ushered me into a side room to show me the schedule for the day.

"I know, Simon," I whispered. "Josephine told me of the murder."

"What did she tell you?" His ice-blue eyes remained expressionless.

"The truth. That Annie Chapman was discharged in the early hours of Sat.u.r.day morning and that she was found not too long afterward, dead and mutilated."