“Very commendable.” Jonathan held back a smile as he gave the boy a sweet.
He turned to the last boy, a small lad he’d not seen before. The child was almost sickly thin, and the way he hung back behind the others gave the impression of a boy who constantly expected to be either abused or ignored. Jonathan felt a pang of sympathy. Life in the rookery was difficult enough for those with strong constitutions.
“And what’s your name, young man?” He spoke in a softer voice, not wishing to frighten the child.
“Archie.” He glanced up, then cringed back. The boy’s eyes were enormous and appeared even more so in his gaunt face.
“Hello, Archie.”
“I’ve not done anything good today,” Archie said in a voice nearly too quiet to hear.
Jonathan crouched down to the boy’s height, resting on his haunches. “Nothing at all? That’s hard to believe. Did you help your mother?”
Archie shook his head, and Jonathan wondered if the boy was an orphan. It would not surprise him.
“Perhaps you offered someone a kind word?”
Archie shook his head again but paused and glanced up. He pursed his lips as if considering. “I helped a kitten out of a gutter drain,” he whispered after a moment.
“That was very kind, Archie. I could tell right away that you are a good lad.” Jonathan gave the boy a piece of peppermint.
Archie snatched it from his hand and stuck it into his mouth. Jonathan recognized the action. The boy was used to eating quickly before his food was taken. Very likely a skill developed in an orphanage. He wondered why the boy had left the institution. Had he been abused? Neglected?
Jonathan rose, knowing he needed to earn the boy’s trust further before inquiring about his situation. Doing so now would only cause the boy to be wary. “You may come to the station anytime, Archie.” He looked at the other boys. “And all of you. The police are your friends. Our duty is to protect you.”
The children thanked him and hurried away.
Jonathan watched them go with a mixture of affection and extreme sadness. He couldn’t save every poor, hungry, or neglected child. There were simply too many. But he’d decided when he became a constable that the one thing he could do was make them feel safe around the police. Let them know that he would help them when needed. Whether or not it made a difference, he didn’t know. But it gave him hope. The course of his own life had been changed by a police officer who had genuinely cared about a penniless orphan.
When Jonathan entered the station house, he greeted the desk sergeant with a wave. Constables at the end of their shifts sat in any unoccupied chair and wrote hasty reports, anxious to go home. Most of the detectives were finishing their work for the day. Some had already left. The door to Sir Peter Dennington’s office was closed, and no light shone beneath. The chief inspector did not work extended hours but expected his subordinates to do so. Though many of the detectives and constables complained, Jonathan didn’t begrudge the man wishing to spend time with his family.
Jonathan removed his coat, hanging it and his hat on a coatrack, and settled in at his desk, eyeing the stacks of papers and folders—many of which hadn’t been there when he’d left the evening before. He pushed a pile to the side, clearing a space, and opened a fresh folder to document the murder discovered this morning. He’d have the coroner’s report and the photographs when they were ready, but aside from a few paragraphs documenting his own observations at the scene, the file was nearly empty. He closed it and set it atop a stack, hoping as he always did, that it would grow, filling up with evidence, and the case would be solved. But he feared it would end up in a dusty cabinet somewhere, and the victim would be yet another unidentified body in a pauper’s grave.
He sighed and opened another folder, popped a piece of peppermint into his mouth, and set to work.
Four hours later he was barely able to keep his eyes open. His stomach rumbled, the noise loud in the nearly empty station house. Mrs. Simpson, his landlady, would have served supper hours ago. He put on his coat and hat and turned off the desk lamp but stopped in the doorway. He returned for the file on the woman from the alley outside the Porky Pie and then started for home.
When at last he arrived, he stepped quietly up the narrow steps until he reached the second floor and then unlocked the door to the small room that made up his lodgings. A tray with a covered bowl and a hunk of bread sat on the round table beside his one chair. Tossing his coat and hat onto the bed, he peeked beneath the cloth. Beef stew.Bless you, Mrs. Simpson.
He settled back and enjoyed the stew, not caring that it was cold and the bread stale. As he ate, he looked through the file. Over the course of the night he’d come back to this case time and again. Who was the poor woman? And what events had led to her body being discovered in a Spitalfields alley? There must be some clue they’d missed. But even Doctor Peabody’s report had given no new information.
Jonathan had originally thought his interest in this particular case stemmed from the victim’s singularity. She was most obviously out of place, a genteel woman in a dirty slum’s alley, but as the night drew on and Jonathan became more tired and less guarded, memories intruded into his thoughts.
He had lived the majority of his life without knowledge of what had become of his parents. He had never known his father, and aside from their shared name, he knew nothing about the man. He remembered his mother only through impressions. Her hair had been blonde, he was certain, and she’d been beautiful. In his mind, she wore a shawl and a necklace with a cross. But as hard as he tried to focus on the memories, they were slippery and wouldn’t form into a complete image. Sometimes he caught a fragrance or heard a voice that reminded him of her, but only as a vague feeling. He knew her name was Maggie, and as a child, he had whispered it again and again, loving the sound of it and fearing he’d forget the word if he didn’t say it.
His mother had disappeared when he was four. One night, she’d simply never returned home, and despite searching every police record he could get his hands on, he’d never discovered what had happened to her. Had she been buried in a common grave in Highgate or Abney Park? Had she ended up a victim with nobody to identify her? She’d never have deserted him; of that, Jonathan was certain.
He set aside the file and undressed for bed, setting his hat carefully over the preserved toad with tiny spectacles that sat in a miniature easy chair with one webbed foot resting on his knee and holding a copy of theTimes. The taxidermic amphibian had been a Christmas gift from Sergeant Lester, and though it made Jonathan’s skin crawl, he kept it, partly because it had undoubtedly taken the sergeant hours to create and partly because Christmas gifts had been a rare thing in his life.
As he laid his head on the pillow, his thoughts returned to the mystery woman in the alley. Who was she? She must be missed by someone, somewhere. And as his thoughts slid into dreams, they became images from a little child’s memories, of having a hungry belly and shivering beneath a threadbare blanket in a crowded Wapping tenement room waiting for the woman to come home.
Chapter 4
When Sophie opened the doorof theIllustrated London Newsoffice, she was met with the smell of printers’ ink and machine oil, the hum of news presses, and the general chaotic energy of deadlines and headlines. She felt a rush of excitement at the activity. Journalism felt like a living thing, something changing and vital, pulsing with life. Newspapers were important, and she longed to be a more important component, to provide meaningful information rather than merely trivial gossip.
A clerk rushed past with a stack of newsprint, and another hurried in the opposite direction, papers flying out of his overloaded arms. The main office in front of the larger press room was a small space with high windows that gave far too little light. Men and women worked in a crowded maze of desks, dipping quills and scribbling quickly beneath a cloud of cigarette smoke. In a far corner the engraving artists sat, hunched over a table lit by desk lamps.
Upon completion of her first story and illustration, Sophie had been fascinated at the process of wood engraving. She’d watched, mesmerized as her drawing was transferred to a boxwood surface by a series of intricate carvings, and considered the carvers much more talented than she was. When she’d said as much to the editor, Mr. Leonard, he’d discounted her observation with a shake of his head. “They merely copy, my lady,” he’d said, blowing out a cloud of smoke. “The artists and reporters—they do the real work.”