He shook his head and turned his gaze away from me. “If you don’t know, then there’s no point in explaining.”
I frowned. “That doesn’t make any sense.”
“What else can you tell me about Annie Chapman?”
I blinked several times, trying to grasp what he’d meant, even though he had tried to change the subject. “What don’t I know, Austen?”
When his blue eyes returned to mine, there was a question in their depths. “Do you really not know, Kate?”
My pulse sped at the intensity in his gaze, but the answer was just out of my reach—not because I was an idiot, but because I wouldn’t allow myself to search for the truth.
Instead, I answered his earlier question.
“I don’t know a lot about Annie Chapman. That’s why I want to speak to her.”
Austen’s mood shifted from vulnerability to indifference in a heartbeat.
“I’m afraid that there is something connecting the five victims,” I continued, needing to talk about something other than us. “But I don’t know what it might be. The first four victims are similar in age, marital status, and living conditions, but they all came from very different places. Annie’s husband, John, was a coachman in Windsor for a man named Francis Tress Barry.”
“I’ve heard of him. He is a good friend of Prince Albert Victor and often hosts the prince in Windsor.”
I nodded, thankful that he would change the subject with me. “From the records I have in 1938, Annie was arrested for drunkenness so often her husband’s employer, Barry, said that if she didn’t leave his property, John would lose his job. So, Annie and John separated, and Annie has been in the Whitechapel District for the past three years.”
“And what of the other one? Polly Nichols? Have you found a connection between her and Annie?”
“Not yet. Polly’s husband was a printer on Fleet Street. They lived a very respectable life until her last child was born. She claimed that her husband was having an affair with the neighbor who helped her deliver the baby. Polly eventually left him and thechildren and spent years on the streets, and in and out of workhouses.”
We came to a stop at number 29, which was a dilapidated building with broken windows, rotting doorframes, and cracked brick. An old storefront window was covered with advertisements and years of smog and dust.
“Does Annie live here?” Austen asked me quietly.
“No. She stays in a boardinghouse on Dorset Street when she has her doss money. This is simply a dark corner for her to take—” I paused, my cheeks growing warm.
“Her customers?” Austen asked with a raised eyebrow.
I didn’t respond but motioned to a door that led into a passageway. “It happens in the courtyard behind the building. Sometime between five and six in the morning. Around 5:15, a neighbor in the next yard at 27 Hanbury Street will come down to use the lavatory, and he’ll claim to hear a woman say no twice before something or someone falls against the adjoining fence.”
“Can you spare a sixpence?” a woman asked from behind us.
Austen and I turned and found a middle-aged woman standing on the street with no umbrella to protect her from the rain. Her dress was worn and tattered, and her dark, curly hair was streaked with strands of gray. She extended a dirty hand to us as she turned and coughed into her shoulder.
My hand tightened on Austen’s arm.
It was Annie Chapman.
Her eyes were glossed over as she stared back at me.
“Annie?” I asked.
Slowly, her hand came down and she frowned, squinting at me. “Who are you?”
I couldn’t tell her my name in case she repeated it to someone who would tell the police after her death.
Her death.
Gooseflesh covered my skin as I realized this woman would be murdered by Jack the Ripper in less than a week.
“I’m ...” I smiled, trying to calm my nerves. “I heard that you might know someone I’m looking for.”
