Page 99 of The Business of Blood
Aunt Nola had predicted that the Hanged Man deserved to die.
Oscar had told me to find Frank Sawyer’s Salome. His desire. His muse. It never would have occurred to me to look for an innocent child.
I searched myself for sorrow over Frank Sawyer’s death and found none.
“What—what about Katherine Riley?” I asked. “You butchered a woman exactly like the Ripper had done.” Exactly as I had explained to him the very morning Ms. Riley died.
Had I given him the instructions for Katherine Riley’s death?
He made a sound of pure revulsion. “She was the worst of the lot. Worse, even, than the Hammer, here.”
Worse than a gangster and a child molester?
“Those sweet, innocent babies.” Aidan’s voice broke, and tears filled the seams of his lids, darkening the whites of his eyes. “They never found homes, not on this Earth.”
My stomach rolled, and I put a hand to my corseted waist. “You can’t mean…”
“She murdered them,” he confirmed. “She took money from desperate mothers, left them with false promises, and strangled the unwanted children in… Cold. Blood. Ifoundher, Fiona, burning wee remains in her cavernous fireplace.”
I’d almost forgotten about Jorah until he emitted a tortured groan from behind me.
Aidan ignored it, staring at me as though I were the only person in the world. As if I were his confessor. “I stabbed her once for each woman I sent to her when I thought her an angel here on Earth. Each innocent baby Iknewshe’d killed. Fifty-three times in all.”
My heart broke then. Just shattered. Aidan and I wept together as he unburdened his soul, making mine heavier and heavier until I thought I might be ground into the dust by the weight of all the evil in this world.
“I stayed with her most recent victims until they were naught but ash.” He looked down at his palms, fingers spread as though the remains ran through them. “I tended to their little souls, prayed until I lost my voice.”
Sweet Christ. Aberline had rubbed that ash between his fingers, tested it, not knowing the unfathomable contents. I’d scooped out the ashes from the fireplace and dumped them in the rubbish bin, clapping the dust from my gloves and wiping it on my skirts.
The rubbish bins. What a dreadful urn for innocent little souls.
And Croft!
I shed a tear for his poor sister. All this time, he’d been searching for a nephew likely years dead. God, would I ever muster the strength to tell him?
How many children had become victims of Katherine Riley’s greed?
Hundreds, perhaps.
Bile clawed up my throat, washing my gorge with an acidic realization.
“You took her womb,” I realized aloud. “Because she didn’t deserve one?”
“I offered her corpse as St. Inocencia. One of the many named saints who were stabbed to death for their purity as a youth.”
I closed my eyes against the barrage of pain searing the rivers of my tears. Katherine Riley murderedinfants.She hadn’t deserved to live. I hoped she was burning in Hell alongside Frank Sawyer and anyone who stole the innocence of little children with their lust, greed, or cruelty.
“The Hammer is complicit in these crimes.” Aidan reminded me. “He sent many of his own women to Mrs. Riley.”
We both whirled on him, and I saw my ferocity reflected in the Hammer’s dread.
“I-I didn’t know.” His struggles renewed, with more vigor this time. He sensed my mercy being depleted with each blow Aidan delivered. “I was trying to keep the women in my employ from turning to dangerous back-alley abortions. To give their bastard children better lives. I thought she was a good woman, a reformed prostitute who would be kind to my girls.”
“The devil speaks with a honeyed tongue,” Aidan hissed. “Him, I turn into St. Bartholomew, flayed alive, then crucified. His pain will purify him, Fi. But, unlike the others, there is no chance of paradise waiting after death, not for a Jew.”
“Your Messiah was a Jew, was he not?” Time had seemed to rally the Hammer’s fighting spirit, and his lithe body flexed and strained against the ropes.
Aidan struck him, his hold on the calm of Christian devotion slipping into true fanatical fury. “Yourpeople slaughtered him!” His robes flared around him as he turned toward the brazier.
