Page 82 of The Business of Blood
“Not Croft,” I said.
Aberline snorted and returned to the Ripper letter. “Nah. Not Croft. There’s a personal element to his vendetta against the Hammer, but no one knows just what that is.”
I could confess that a part of me was glad we’d not found Comstock just yet. In his notes, he’d speculated that I’d been an associate ofJR. At the time, I’d thought it a Ripper reference.
Did Comstock know the Hammer’s real name?
Did he have damning evidence regarding my association with him?
On any other day, I’d have obsessively chewed on this. But it was hard to focus on anything past the red ink on the Ripper letter right in front of us. All other concerns seemed to blur like the distinguishing features of the rest of the world without the clarity provided by my spectacles.
In times like this, one must focus on what is right in front of them. What else could be done?
“I must say, upon first glance, this letter bears a remarkable resemblance to that of theDear Bossletter, doesn’t it?” Aberline remarked. “Neat, even script. References to his emotions as ‘fits,’ and to his murders as ‘work.’ Short, simple sentences. Could be the same author.”
“Could be someone who was privy to it.” Neither of us liked what that implicated. “What about the handwriting? Does that match?” I tried not to let my eagerness show.
“I don’t think so, but it’ll be hard to say definitively until Watkins returns with the boxes of letters from storage. Wot’s this then?” Aberline smoothed his thumb over three roundish ripples in the paper caused by my earlier hysterical tears.
“I—must have gotten some rain on it.”
He flipped the paper over. “On the inside?” Once he glanced up, he must have read the truth on my features because his softened and then drooped with equal parts exhaustion and compassion. He knew the storm had been from my eyes, not the sky. “You’ll forgive me, Miss Mahoney. Sometimes, I forget that for all your strength and cleverness, you’re still just a woman.”
Justa woman.
When a man is weak and errs as humans tend to do, he shakes his fist to the sky.I am not a God, he rails.I’m just a man.What Aberline said to me was done in the same spirit.
I wasn’t a man. He exempted me as such. I was just a woman. The expectations of me regarding almost everything were less than his. Tertiary.
First, God made man. And then because he had to, woman, whose strength and cleverness could never entirely be relied upon, not like a man’s.
Aberline had meant it as an excuse, not a slight. As a reminder of my emotional gentility. But it rankled me still, enough for me to press my tongue between my teeth to render myself mute, lest I say something I’d later regret to a man I fondly admired.
He mistook my silence for something else. “You must be terrified to have attractedhisattention after all this time.”
Must I?WasI?
In short, yes. But I could confess to a great deal of other reactions battling within me, as well. If the Ripper watched me, then he was close.
And if he was close, he could be caught.
Unless he caught me first.
Apprehensively, I licked my lips.
“Have you been drinking?” Aberline regarded me oddly.
Stunned, I squirmed in my seat like a naughty child reprimanded at primary school. “What makes you think that?” A few hours and a few heavy courses of food had all but wiped the effects of the strong wine from my hearty Irish blood. I wasn’t feeling at all drunk, though perhaps still a bit warm and relaxed.
“Your tongue is as purple as your dress,” the inspector remarked.
“I had a few glasses of wine at the café,” I confessed sheepishly. “For the nerves, you understand. Not to worry, that was some time ago.”
“Which café?” His eyes narrowed. “Did it have a license to serve alcohol in the middle of the day? Or at all?”
“You’ll excuse me if I didn’t have the wherewithal to inquire at the time,” I retorted wryly. “I was more grateful for the libation than suspicious of it.”
“Of course. Of course. It’s just…you never struck me as the drinking sort,” he mused.
