“Wait.” I reach into my bag for my phone and pull up the photo I snapped earlier. The one I had forgotten about until now. I find it and use my fingers to zoom in as far as I can, before propping the phone up next to the screen.
“Where did you get this?”
I quickly explain about the hospital this morning. I’m tempted to leave out the bit about following a figure but screw it. I’m going all in.
“And I think . . . I think Jane Alsop has got something to do with this.”
Jess looks at me sharply. “Jane? Dead girl from 1838, Jane?”
“Yeah. I . . . had a bad dream.” I wince as I say the words out loud. “She was trying to warn me.”
“A dream?” Will says. He leans forwards in his chair, looking animated for the first time ever.
I start to explain the dream about the graveyard, the feeling I got when I went near the occult artefacts at the museum, the glimpse of a dress in the hospital this morning that led me to the photograph. “And my phone,” I realize. “Earlier today, at the museum. I always leave my phone in my locker, because there’s no signal down there, but today I didn’t.”
“What’s so weird about that?”
“It started working when I was in the parlour. When I was right in front of Jane’s portrait.”
“She’s trying to help you,” Will murmurs.
Jess shakes her head. “Could just be a co – Will, where are you going?” His chair legs squeak on the floor as he quickly pushes it back and disappears through the door into the main library. Jess looks at me in exasperation. “Seriously, no wonder we suspected him. He doesn’t half make life hard for himself.
“Here.” A large, thin book crashes down on the desk, announcing Will’s return. Jess rolls her eyes at me.
“See?” she mutters.
I look down and see it’s the scrapbook I saw that day in the library, the one he snatched away from me. Will leans over me to open it and I slide my chair back. I’m still not completely comfortable with him this close to me.
“What is this?” The first page is covered in clipping from ancient newspapers (“Photocopies, not originals I hope,” Jess grumbles under her breath). I study them and reach out to turn the page, revealing a familiar double spread. My finger pauses on the ink drawing, a man dressed up like a devil, arms outstretched, bat-like wings protruding from them.
“I’ve seen this before.” I rack my brain, trying to shake the memory loose. Something about Punch and Judy, or the theatre . . . wait. I’ve got it. “Spring Heeled Jack?”
Will looks positively delighted. Jess, on the other hand, does not.
“Come on, Will, explain.” She points at Jack’s sneering, moustachioed face, and then at the two pictures of the boy who looks so heart-wrenchingly familiar. “What’s this guy got to do with this guy?”
“I think they’re all the same person.” He’s so serious, I can’t help it. I start to laugh again but the solemn look on his face makes the sound die in my throat. “Really. Look.”
He flips through the book once more and I see he’s not only collected articles about Jack, but his victims. Attacks from as far back as October 1837 litter the pages, some accompanied by sketches and, as the cuttings become more modern, photographs, first in black and white and then colour. The last ones are dated from this month and the smiling earnest faces of Sara and Natasha beam up at me. I can see someone, presumably Will, has drawn a small, black cross and a neat inscription next to the photo of Sara. Deceased.
“OK,” I say slowly, desperately trying to fit the jigsaw pieces together. “So there have been all these attacks over, what, the last two centuries, pretty much?” Will nods and leans back in his chair as Jess studies the book. “That’s interesting and all, but how do they all link together? How do you have him down as Spring Heeled Jack?” I flip back to the first page and point to a heading,The Terror of London?“He’s only. . .” I hesitate. “Well, he’s not thatold.” I finish weakly.
I have no idea how old he is.
“Look at the date, Niamh.” Will points to the first article, and I skim it.
“Yeah, February 1838. So?”
“There was another attack, Lucy Scales, happened one week after Jane died, near a travelling fairground.”
“Ah,” Jess chimes in, eyes sparking. “If he was some ghoulie murdering revenant, wouldn’t he have started with Jane?”
Will’s eyes narrow. “I thought we were on the same side.”
“We are, we are.” Jess holds up her hands, the hospital band on full display now. “Don’t shoot, I’m just playing Devil’s Advocado, that’s all. I am, first and foremost, a woman of science, you know.”
“Right.” Will flips the page back to the pictures of the girls I’m so familiar with, the ones who could have – should have – been my friends. “If I’m going to play devil’s advocate—”
