"Let's get out of here!" Margo choked out roughly. She headed for the narrow doorway that led back to Dorset Street. She had barely reached the chandler's shop when Shahdi Feroz caught up to her.
"Margo, what is it?"
Margo found dark eyes peering intently into her own. Shadows of worry darkened their depths even further. "Nothing," Margo said brusquely. "Just a little shook up, that's all. Thinking about what's going to happen to that poor girl..."
Mary Kelly had been the most savagely mutilated of all, pieces of her strewn all over the room. And nothing Margo could do, no warning Margo could give, would save her from that. She understood, in a terrible flash of understanding, how that ancient prophetess of myth, Cassandra of Troy, for whom Ianira Cassondra was named, must have felt, looking into the future and glimpsing nothing but death—with no way to change any of it. The feeling was far worse than during Margo's other down-time trips, worse, even, than she'd expected, knowing it was bound to strike at some point, during her Ripper Watch duties.
Margo met Shahdi Feroz's gaze again and forced a shrug. "It just hit me a lot harder than I expected, seeing her like that. She's so pretty and everything..."
The look Shahdi Feroz gave her left Margo's face flaming. You're young, that look said. Young and inexperienced, for all the down-time work you've done...
Well, it was true enough. She might be young, but she wasn't a shrinking violet and she wasn't a quitter, either. Memory of her parents had not and would not screw up the rest of her life! She shoved herself away from the sooty bricks of McCarthy's chandler shop. "Where did you want to go, now? Whitehall? That's where the torso will be found in October." The decapitated woman's torso, discovered between the double-event murders of Elizabeth Stride and Catharine Eddowes and the final murder of Mary Kelly, generally wasn't thought to be a Ripper victim. The modus operandi simply wasn't the same. But with two killers working together, who knew? And of course, the rest of London would firmly believe it to be Jack's work, which would complicate their task enormously as hysteria and terror deepened throughout the city.
Shahdi Feroz, however, was shaking her head. "No, not just yet. To reach Whitehall, we must leave the East End. I have other work to do, first. I believe we should go to the doss houses along Dorset Street, listen to what the women are saying."
Margo winced at the idea of sitting in a room full of street walkers who would remind her of what she'd fought so hard to escape. "Sure," she said gamely, having to force it out through clenched teeth. "There's only about a million of ‘em to choose from."
They set out in mutual silence, walking quickly to keep warm. Margo would've faced the prospect of viewing piles of people left dead by the Black Death with less distaste than the coming interview with doss-house prostitutes. But there literally wasn't a thing she could do to get out of it. Chalk it up to the price of your training, she told herself grimly. After all, it wasn't nearly as awful as being raped by those filthy Portuguese traders and soldiers had been. She'd survived Africa. She'd survive this. Her life—and Shahdi Feroz's—might well depend on it. So she clenched her jaw and did her best to stay prepared for whatever might come next.
Chapter Thirteen
Cold and rainy weather inflicts enormous suffering on those with lung ailments. The dampness and the chill seep down into the chest, worsening congestion until each breath drawn is a struggle to lift the weight of a boulder which has settled atop the ribcage, crushing the lungs down against the spine. Worse than the aching heaviness, however, are the prolonged coughing spells which leave devastating weakness in their wake, transforming a simple stroll across six feet of floor space into a marathon-distance struggle.
Cold, wet weather is bad enough when the air is clean. Add to it the smoke of multiple millions of coal-burning fireplaces and stoves, the industrial spewage of factory smokestacks, smelting plants, and iron works, and the rot and mold of anything organic left lying on the ground or in the streets or stacked along water-logged, dockside marshes, and the resulting putrid filth will irritate already-burdened lungs into a state of chronic misery. Toss in the systemic, wasting effects of tuberculosis and the slow deterioration of organs, brain tissues, and mental clarity brought on by advanced syphilis and the result is a slow, pain-riddled slide toward death.
Eliza Anne Chapman had been sliding down that fatal slope for a long time.
The summer and early autumn of 1888 had broken records for chilly temperatures and heavy rainfall. By the first week of September, Annie was so ill, she was unable to pay for her room at Crossingham's lodging house on Dorset Street with anything approaching regularity. Most of what she earned or was given by Edward Stanley—a bricklayer's mate with whom she had established a long-term relationship after the death of her husband—went to pay for medicines. A serious fight with Eliza Cooper, whom Annie had caught trying to palm a florin belonging to a mutual acquaintance, substituting a penny for the more valuable coin, had left Annie bruised and aching, with a swollen temple, blackened eye, and bruised breast where the other woman had punched her.
She had confidently expected to receive money soon for the letters she'd bought from Polly Nichols, to pay for the medicines she desperately needed. But no money was forthcoming from Polly or from the anonymous writer of the letters she carried in her pocket. Then, to Annie's intense shock, Polly was brutally murdered, more hideously stabbed and mutilated than poor Martha Tabram had been, back on August Bank Holiday. Even if Annie had wanted to ask Polly who the letter writer had been, it was now impossible. So Annie had dug out the letters to look at them more closely—and realized immediately there would be no money coming, either, not anytime soon. Had Annie been able to read Welsh, she might have been able to turn the letters into a substantial amount of cash very quickly. But Annie couldn't read Welsh. Nor did she know anyone who could.
Which left her with a commodity worth a great deal of money and no way to realize the fortune it represented. So she did the only thing she could. She sold the letters, just as Polly had sold them to her. One went to a long-time acquaintance from the lodging houses along Dorset Street. Long Liz Stride was a kind-hearted soul born in Sweden, who bought the first letter for sixpence, which was enough for Annie to go to Spitalfields workhouse infirmary and buy one of the medications she needed.
The second letter went to Catharine Eddowes for a groat, and the third Annie sold to Mr. Joseph Barnett, a fish-porter who'd lost his job and was living in Miller's Court with the beautiful young Mary Kelly. Mr. Barnett paid Annie a shilling for the last letter, giving her a wink and a kiss. "My Mary lived in Cardiff, y'know, speaks Welsh like a native, for all she was born in Ireland. Mary'll read it out for me, so she will. And if it's as good as you say, I'll come back and give you a bonus from the payout!"
The groat, worth four pence, and the shilling, worth twelve, bought Annie the rest of the medicine she needed from Whitechapel workhouse infirmary, plus a steady supply of beer and rum for the next couple of days. Alcohol was the only form of pain medication Annie could afford to buy and she was in pain constantly. She felt too ill most of the time to walk the streets, particularly all the way down to Stratford, where she normally plied her trade; but the medicine helped. If only the weather would clear, she might be able to breathe more easily again.
Annie regretted the sale of the letters. But a woman had to live, hadn't she? And blackmail was such a distasteful trade, no matter how a body looked at it. Polly had dazzled her with fanciful dreams of real comfort and proper medicines, but in Annie's world, such dreams were only for the foolish, people who didn't realize they couldn't afford to indulge their fancies when there was food to be gotten into the stomach and medicine to be obtained and a roof and bed to be paid for, somehow...