Page 4 of The Business of Blood
Beleaguered gas lamps were few and far between, allowing the darkness to drift between their pallid spheres. A presence more insidious than the ghosts of the past regarded me from the shadows of the archway leading to the room that painted my nightmares with blood.
The fine hairs on my body vibrated. Lifted and crackled with the shocking energy that arced between two bodies in a painful zap. I felt as though, at any moment, someone would snatch me from my feet and pull me into the blood-soaked past.
Two years is a respectable distance where death is concerned, but an evil so potent leaves a trace behind. Echoes rippling through time like an iridescent overlay or carbonless copy paper. I tried to convince myself that it was the hour, the circumstances, or the gruesome murder in front of me that summoned the shifting specter of a killer in my periphery.
But I knew it was the place.
13 Miller’s Court.
The archway beneath which I, Fiona Mahoney, had been well and truly broken.
I couldn’t accurately claim that I’d been repaired after all this time, but let us say I’d salvaged myself. Repurposed, even.
I stared down to the dark horizon along the row of common houses, distinct in their tight quarters and shoddy craftsmanship. In these dwellings barely fit for pigs, several impoverished families would often huddle together for warmth, or drunkards, whores, and thieves would pay a ha’penny for a dingy, flea-ridden bed, anemic tea, and a crust of bread.
They’d cram inside smelling of sweat and sex and liquor in an untenable mélange of vice and villainy.
Lifting my chin, I refused to look toward that arch. I did my utmost to maintain my decisive focus on the murder in front of me, not the one in my history. I toed up to the threshold, tucking escaped wisps of my dark, sleep-tangled knot behind my ears as I surveyed the gruesome scene.
“Who do you think sent for me?” I asked after clearing a gather of nerves from my throat.
His exhale, thick with smoke, reminded me that autumn would soon give way to winter, and my business always thrived in that season.
“Someone who didn’t know better.” He gave the shadows another dark glance.
Most of the men who worked at Scotland Yard knew of the painful, sanguinary past I shared with Whitechapel. You see, it was there that I began my profession as a Post-Mortem Sanitation Specialist.
I couldn’t shake the sense that I’d pleased the devil just by being here. That he observed me from his lair and smiled. A cold feeling, that. The coldest. It had me squinting over my shoulder into the night, searching for shades. For the demon I’d claimed as my own.
Because Dorset Street belonged to Jack the Ripper. Ask anyone.
I suspected it always would.
2
Constable Hurst leaned on my cart and lifted the burlap cover with his nightstick. He inspected the contents with all the disgusted curiosity an inquisitor owed a witch’s lair. To be fair, it contained a few less than potable concoctions.
And some less than legal, to boot.
He wrinkled his nose as he unstopped a vial and sniffed. If you wanted my opinion, I’d say he had the olfactory abilities of a bloodhound with a nose as beakish as his. He could simply sniff his way to a murderer. That he remained a mere constable at forty years of age or so, spoke volumes regarding his ineptitude. Men his age were usually promoted.
“Hao Long is a Chinaman’s name, Fanshaw?”
I tried not to shudder at how many of Hurst’s chins wobbled as he laughed.
“I dunno, Bob, ‘ow long is it?” Constable Fanshaw resembled a bundle of kindling leaned against the chipped brick of the common house. All long, spindly limbs and bristled whiskers.
“I’m telling you, Fanshaw, Hao Long is a Chinaman’s name.”
“Sounds like you’re asking me, Bob, and all I can say’s I don’t rightly know.”
“All’s I know is their names are about half as long as their—”
“That’s quite enough,” Croft intoned from the doorway. He used his sinewy frame as a sort of bulwark, letting nothing in nor out, while still giving Mrs. Sawyer and Aidan some privacy.
I appreciated his terse brand of chivalry, though I didn’t want to rely on it. So, I said, “I imagine you two lackwits think you’re as clever as the last dozen people I’ve heard have this exact conversation.” Tying my white apron around my trim waist kept me from gesturing at them, though I had a few particular gestures in mind. “I assure you both, it’s as tedious now as it was the first time.”
“Aw, we don’t mean no’fing by it, Miss Mahoney.” Fanshaw’s whiskers lifted in an attempt at a conciliatory smile. “Besides, ‘e don’t understand us, do ‘e?”
