Page 3 of The Business of Blood
I didn’t have to be on their side of the partition to see his gentle, encouraging smile. I could hear it. I’d been the recipient of it more times than I deserved.
“Take comfort,” he soothed. “Death is only anguish for those who believe it is truly the end.” Aidan handed her a bottle of something I suspected to be a spirit of the unholy kind.
“You Irish are full of blarney.” Inspector Croft’s shadow slid over me like the cold specter of winter, and I had to suppress a shudder. “That man suffered plenty of anguish before he gave up the ghost.”
If Aidan’s presence was a balm to me, then Inspector Grayson Croft was the rash. My entire being prickled with defensive awareness. I mustered the most vitriolic glare I was capable of and retreated outside to where Hao Long, my assistant, patiently stood by the cart with our supplies.
Croft ambled after me, all loose limbs and hulking shoulders. He seemed uncomfortable in his gray suit. In any suit, really. With his slick, dark hair, and undignified jaw that always wanted shaving, he would fit in with the bruisers at the ironworker’s union meetings rather than the upright fellows at Scotland Yard.
Perhaps that was more of a help than a hindrance to him here in Whitechapel.
“Shame on you, for saying such things within earshot of a grieving widow,” I admonished him, plucking a scraper and pail from my cart with curt, angry movements.
“Shame on your priest for lying to her,” Croft rumbled. “He didn’t know Mr. Sawyer’s secret sins. The ones he never dared to confess.”
“Do you?”
“Nay, but a murder like this has a way of revealing them.” He glanced to the door beyond which Frank Sawyer’s corpse still swung in the darkness. “My point is, your priest can’t promise the widow that her husband’s gone to Heaven.”
“He’s notmypriest,” I snapped.
Listening to him was like traversing the gravel pits with only moonlight to guide me. Inspector Croft wasn’t from London. Anyone could tell by the lilt of his accent that he had been born somewhere south of Scotland but north of Hadrian’s Wall.
Armed with my scraper and pail, I stepped eye to eye with him. Which was to say, I stepped eye to throat, as he was somewhat tall, and I was on the short side of average. “Furthermore, you’re supposed to give condolences and the like to grieving people, it’s just what’s done.”
“Youdon’t.”
“Not generally,” I admitted. “But that’s not my job, is it?”
“Nor is it mine.” Our glares clashed and held with mutual repugnance, and he lit a fragrant cigarette, which drove me to step around him. “My job is to collect evidence and apprehend murderers.”
“Well then, Inspector Croft, why haven’t you finished your job so I can do mine?” I asked. “If you’ve summoned me here, you’re no doubt aware that I’m unable to clean up after the cadaver until it’s gone, and I’d rather be away from Whitechapel sooner than later, all told.”
His gaze flicked down the lane toward an address we’d both like to forget. When eyes the color of the moss clinging to the cliffs of Moher met mine, an uncharacteristic humanity lurked in the verdant depths.
I’d come to be intrinsically wary of Inspector Croft as he gave the impression of a man with violent secrets buried beneath a rough but respectable façade. “Miss Mahoney, you must know that neither Aberline nor I would call you back to Dorset Street.”
“Why not?” I challenged. “I answered the call, didn’t I? Same as you.” I’d returned to Dorset Street despite the fingers of ice gripping my spine.
Beneath their chill, a whisper of providence drew me toward the past.
I only dreamt in nightmares because of Dorset Street. If I were honest, I’d come because I wanted to prove that I was as stout-hearted and stalwart as the others who bore witness to the most infamous butchery in Whitechapel. Those few men who’d gained their life’s notoriety from the death of my dearest childhood friend, Mary Kelly.
Without even solving her murder.
Some could argue—would argue—that I’d purchased my life from her death, as well…
Which is why I still searched for her murderer after everyone had given up.
My two-year quest for justice was not what had summoned me to the scene of my nightmares on that night. Indeed, it had been one of the bone-thin errand boys who flitted through the streets of London, delivering beatings, packages, threats, or summons in a network far wider and more economical than the newly implemented telephone lines. He’d eyes as hard as marble beneath his grimy cap as he relayed his midnight message. A death on Dorset Street needed seeing to immediately.
My presence had been requested.
He disappeared into the vapor of the Thames before I’d a chance to inquire as to who’d sent him to my door.
I figured I’d witnessed enough death and blood to inoculate myself against the malevolent memory of Mary Kelly’s corpse.
Once I’d arrived, something about the way the night shifted, the darkness claiming the many nooks and alleys of Whitechapel, the most wretched borough of London, sent a thousand insects skittering across my skin.
