Her Dark Curiosity. Megan Shepherd

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СКАЧАТЬ mean to frighten you, miss. I forget you’re a proper lady sometimes.’

      ‘It’s quite all right, Joyce,’ I said with a shaky smile.

      I started to pick up the package to go when he said, ‘You just be careful, miss. Flowers dipped in blood, that’s his mark. That’s how they know the bodies are connected.’

      I slowly turned back to him. The professor had said that a flower had been found beside the body of that terrible solicitor, Daniel Penderwick, who had taken my family’s fortune on behalf of the bank. Shocked that I had been acquainted with the first victim of what the police thought might be a mass murderer, I pointed toward the paper. ‘On second thought, do you mind if I read that article?’

      He passed me the newspaper and I pored over it carefully. There was Penderwick’s name, listed as the Wolf of Whitechapel’s first victim. A second victim had been found last night, torn apart with violent wounds, and a white flower left nearby. The victim’s name made me start.

      Annie Benton.

      A creeping feeling began in my ankles, making my toes curl. Annie Benton had been my roommate when I worked as a maid at King’s College. She’d had a bad habit of digging through my belongings. A few months ago she’d gotten back in touch with me under the pretense of friendship, but had then stolen my mother’s small diamond ring – the only thing I had left of her.

      I leaned against the butcher’s stand to steady myself. If I’d read Annie’s name in any other context, I would have been seething with anger, but the thought of her murdered by such violent means left me feeling strangely hollow and out of place, as though time was moving backward.

      Was it coincidence that I’d known two of the victims?

      ‘These are the only murders? Annie Benton and Penderwick?’

      ‘Rumors of another one found just an hour ago. Unidentified body – so they claim,’ Joyce said. ‘I’d like to think there won’t be more, but Scotland Yard don’t have much to go on.’

      The creeping sensation ran up the backs of my legs. My vision started to go foggy as blood pooled in my extremities. I gripped the butcher’s stand harder and accidentally brushed against one of the glassy-eyed pig’s heads. I jumped and cried out.

      ‘You feeling all right, lass?’

      ‘Yes,’ I stuttered. ‘Here – some coins for this package, and to keep the dog fed. I should go.’

      ‘I’ll see you next week for the usual order?’

      I nodded before leaving, still clutching Joyce’s newspaper, along with the meat. It wasn’t until I was halfway to Highbury, and the sun had dipped behind the skyline, that I realized I’d taken the wrong road.

      I’d wandered into the seedy end of Whitshire, where rats outnumbered the people ten to one and more gaslights were broken than not. The hair rose on the back of my neck, reminding me of my altercation with the girl thief earlier. I’d been lucky that time to escape unharmed. I might not be lucky again.

      I took a deep breath as I mentally worked out a map for the direction I needed to go to get me back to a well-lit street. I hurried past a dress shop full of headless mannequins, taking care to avoid the open street, but a foggy feeling crept upon me.

      Stay near the lampposts, I told myself. Stay near the light.

      I turned the corner onto a shadowy street with only a single lamp glowing at the far end, and my heartbeat sped. After a few minutes I felt the neck-tingling sensation that I was being followed, and considered reaching for the knife in my boot. But as I strained my ears, I made out only the sound of little footsteps that stopped when I stopped, and when I whirled around to face my pursuer, the little black dog was behind me. He wagged his tail.

      ‘Oh, Sharkey,’ I gasped. He ran over and I gave him a good scratch. ‘You weren’t supposed to follow me! I haven’t time to take you back to the market now – I’ll be late getting home as is.’ I sighed. ‘Well, come on.’

      It was a quiet evening, save for the wind that ruffled the strands of hair that had come loose from my braid. I hurried through the streets with Sharkey at my heels, though I hadn’t a clue how I’d explain him to the professor. Lock him in the garden, perhaps, until morning. It was impossible to think about anything but the murders, until I nearly stepped on a white flower on the ground in front of me.

      I stopped.

      A flower itself was rare enough in winter. I knew all too well how much care and tending they needed to stay as fresh as this one was. It lay all by itself on a patch of sidewalk wiped of snow as though someone had left it for me, creamy white petals radiating from a gold center, a delicate stem no thicker than a bootlace.

      A tropical flower.

      There was a rustle in the alleyway to my side – a rat, no doubt – and the dog took off after it. I knelt in front of the flower. Five petals, not unlike the ones that had grown on Father’s island. Montgomery had picked one, once, from the garden wall and tucked it behind my ear. The memory of Montgomery made the place around my rib throb with familiar hurt.

       He loves me, he loves me not …

      My heart twisted at the memory, and I turned to go. I should get home, before I was late for supper and the professor grew suspicious. But the flower was so beautiful, delicate as a whisper there in the snow, that I couldn’t leave it.

      I pulled off a glove and reached down to pick it up.

      As soon as I did, I knew something was wrong. My bare fingers touched a wet substance beneath the flower. I held my fingers up to the faint light from the lamppost.

      Blood.

      Blood spotted the back of the flower, as though it had been pressed into a pool of it. It was still fresh.

      5

      Flowers dipped in blood, Joyce’s voice echoed. That’s his mark.

      In a blind panic I stumbled to my feet, screaming for Sharkey. His little face peeked out from the alleyway.

      ‘Come here, boy!’ I cried.

      He took a few shaky steps toward me, and my eyes went to the tracks he left in the snow.

      His paw prints were bloody.

      ‘Sharkey!’ I raced toward him, scooping him up and checking his feet, his legs, his body for cuts, but it wasn’t his blood in the snow, and I set him back down. Whose blood was it? He must have tracked the blood from within the alleyway, and whatever he’d seen or smelled in there now made him shiver and bury his snout in the fold of my arm.

      The light was dark, and I fumbled for a matchbox in my coat pocket. I knew I shouldn’t look, and yet it was impossible not to. I lit a match and took a step deeper into the alleyway, then another, and another, despite my every sense screaming to turn away. The match light caught on a dark pile of rags in the corner, splashed with blood that smelled sharp in the crisp air. A pale hand lay beneath the pile, missing a middle finger, heavily bruised as though it had been trampled.

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