Page 124 of If Looks Could Kill
Mike watched me. “I didn’t know you were interested in the London killings.”
I quickly scanned the front page. “Isn’t everyone curious about it?”
I couldn’t see any headline that suggested the infamous killer. Then my eyes caught the word “Whitechapel” under the headingDR. TWOMBLETY IN TOWN.
Dr. Francis Twomblety, the eccentric American physician who was arrested in London suspected of the Whitechapel murders, arrived on the French steamship La Bretagne yesterday. He was shadowed to a boardinghouse in West Tenth Street by two of Inspector Byrnes’s detectives.
I scanned the rest: “… fugitive from Justice… cannot be arrested here… the fiend who so successfully eluded the London police… an inveterate hatred for women.”
The stealthy figure behind these diabolical killings might be someone namedDr. Francis Twomblety? He could have any name at all, I reminded myself. Jack the Ripper was an enigma. Francis Twomblety sounded like someone who might extract one’s aching tooth.
But perhaps any actual, specific name might fall flat. The fiend of Whitechapel was more myth than man. To unmask him was to defang him also. God willing.
Mike took the paper from me and read the article, then looked back at me through narrowed eyes. “Tabitha,” he said suspiciously, “what are you thinking?”
My heartbeat thumped in my veins.
“Arrived yesterday,” I whispered. “Shadowed to West Tenth.”
We work at punishing the men. The men who hurt women.
What might happen if you fused Fearless Pearl with Fanatical Medusa, then let her learnJack the Ripper was in town?
Mike peered at the article again. “He’s only a suspect, Tabitha.”
“That’s not the point,” I told him. “Whether he did it or no, if Pearl thinks he did, she might go there. She thinks she’s on a mission.”
“Like a true Salvation Army girl,” he observed wryly.
God in heaven, I prayed. It’s tonight or never. I leave in the morning. If you want me to find her, I need a sign tonight, and this is all I’ve got. Is this article the sign of where you want me to go?
It can’t be, said a voice in my head. It can’t be.
It’s patent insanity.
“What if she’s there, Mike?” I said. “I have to check. I have to make sure.”
Tabitha—The Boardinghouse(Monday, December 3, 1888)
I’d heard my dad say it many times: “The bigger the rush to press, the more mistakes you make.”
Newspapers, in other words, get things wrong.
We sprinted up the Bowery, heading for Tenth Street, ignoring the grease and cinders dripping from the Third Avenue El. Between breaths, I explained my vague and ill-formed theory to Mike.
“I would like to point out,” he panted, “that few young ladies of my acquaintance would runtowarda street if they knew that’s where Jack the Ripper might reside.”
I felt a stab of annoyance toward any other young ladies of Mike’s acquaintance.
We reached the intersection of Bowery and Tenth, and I was about to turn left to go west when Mike stopped me. “Look,” he whispered. “What’s going on here?”
A cluster of men, looking official, stood near the corner of the block to our right, onEastTenth, seeming to hover near the door of a McKenna’s pub, in the glow of a gaslight. Detectives, I’d wager. A few more men, withbaggy trousers and notepads in their hands, stood together. Reporters. And a uniformed police officer, pacing a short segment of the block. All of them, however they might pretend otherwise, watching the door to an ordinary house.
We crossed over toward the Irish pub. “Let me make some inquiries in here,” Mike suggested in a low voice. “I know you’re not in your Army getup, and it’s a saloon, but if you don’t mind, I’d rather you came in with me than having you wait outside alone.”
“What do you think?” I teased. “The Ripper’s going to come right out and nab me? Here on the street corner?”
Mike flinched. “Humor me, all right?”
