Annie's expression had crumpled. Tears filled her eyes. "You're right," she whispered. "Isn't my fault I'm sick. Not my fault this nasty chap went out and seduced a half-grown boy, either. God, to have enough money for real medicine. A warm place to live..." She coughed, swaying weakly. Misery and longing ploughed deep gullies into her face.
Polly patted her shoulder. "That's right, Annie. I'll share wiv you. There's four letters. You take three of ‘em. All I need's enough money to pay me doss ‘ouse for a few nights. Can you spare that much, Annie? A few pence for now... and a lifetime of medicine and rest in warm beds, after?"
Annie was searching through her pockets. "I've got to have enough for my own doss house tonight," she muttered, digging out a few coins. "I've had some luck today, though. Made enough money to pay for almost a week's lodging. Here." She gave Polly a shilling. "That's fourpence a letter. Is it enough?" she asked anxiously.
Polly Nichols had to work hard not to snatch the shilling out of Annie's hand. She was looking at enough money to buy four brimming glassfuls of gin. "Oh, Annie, that's a gracious plenty." She accepted the shilling and handed over three of her precious letters. "An' ‘ere you are, luv, three tickets to the life you deserve."
Annie actually hugged her.
Polly flushed and muttered, "I'll not forget this, Annie. An' we'll send the letter to this nasty Mr. Eddy together, eh? Tomorrow, Annie. Meet me at the Britannia pub tomorrow an' we'll compose a lovely letter to Mr. Eddy an' send it off. You got a better education than I ‘ave, you can write it out all posh, like, eh?"
By tomorrow she would have found someone to translate her remaining letter for her and be able to keep that promise. And she just might let Annie keep one of the letters, after all, rather than buying them all back.
Annie smiled at her, eyes swimming with gratitude. "You're a grand friend, Polly Nichols. God bless you."
They said their goodbyes, Annie tucking three of the letters into her pockets while Polly pocketed the remaining letter and her precious shilling. As they went their separate ways, Polly smiled widely. Then she headed for the nearest public house as fast as her steel-capped boots would carry her there. She needed a drink, all right.
To celebrate!
Skeeter wasn't certain what, exactly, he was looking for as he worked the Britannia Gate's baggage line. But the Britannia was the first gate to cycle since Ianira's disappearance. If Skeeter had kidnapped someone as world-famous as Ianira Cassondra, intending something more subtle than simply killing her and dumping the body somewhere, he'd have tried to smuggle her out through the first open gate available.
For one thing, it would be far easier to torture a victim down a gate. Fewer people to hear—or at least care about—the screams. And if her abductor really was the person who'd shoved her out of the way of an assassin's bullet, if he actually was interested in keeping her alive, then getting her off the station would be imperative. Too many people had far too many opportunities to strike at Ianira on station, even if her rescuer tried to keep her hidden. In a gossip-riddled place like La-La Land, nothing stayed secret for long. Certainly not an abduction of someone as beloved and strikingly recognizable as Ianira.
So Skeeter had abandoned his search of the station, donned a shapeless working man's shirt and the creaseless trousers of the Victorian era—the costume worn by all Time Tours baggage handlers working the Britannia—and reported for work, as planned. As Ianira had planned... He couldn't think about that now, couldn't dwell on the fear and the dull, aching anger, not if he hoped to catch what might be a very fleeting, subtle clue betraying a smuggler.
How someone might successfully sneak someone through a gate occupied Skeeter's thoughts as hotel bellhops arrived in steady streams from hotels up and down Commons, bringing cartloads of luggage tagged for London. Tourists generally carried no more on their person than an average passenger was permitted to carry aboard a jetliner, which meant—and Skeeter stared in dismay at the flood of baggage carts on direct approach to the Britannia's lounge—that bellhops and baggage handlers had to transport every last trunk, carpet bag, portmanteau, and ladies' toiletry case from hotel room door to down-time destination, through a gate which opened only so wide and stayed open only so long.
Sloppy handling, broken contents, and lost luggage had resulted in the firing of many a baggage handler, not to mention four baggage managers in just the past few months. And Celosia Enyo, the latest in that dismal line of unhappy managers, was not the kind of woman to tolerate mistakes by anyone, not on this gate's cycle, anyway. After all, this wasn't just any gate opening. This was a Shangri-La Event: Ripper Season's official kickoff. And true to ‘eighty-sixer predictions, the social gala on the other side of the departures-lounge barricades had roared to boisterous, ghoulish life.
"I don't care what those experts say," a severely dressed woman was saying as she passed through the check-in procedures, "I think it was that barber-surgeon, the bigamist. George Chapman."
Her companion, an equally severe woman with upswept, greying hair, said, "Chapman? His real name was Severin Klosowski, wasn't it? I don't think he was a very likely suspect."
"Well, Inspector Abberline named him as a leading candidate! Klosowski killed lots of women. Wives, mistresses, girlfriends—"
"Yes, but he didn't use a knife, my dear, he poisoned them. The Ripper wasn't that devious. Klosowski killed his women when they got too inconvenient. Or too expensive to keep. Jack the Ripper killed for the pleasure of it."
And behind those two, a professorial-looking little man in a seedy suit was holding forth at length to a drab little woman with a dumpy build and a rabbitty, frightened look in her eyes: "A serial killer needs to punish the woman or women he hated in his own life. He acts out the violence he wished he'd had the nerve to commit against the women who injured him. Jack the Ripper simply transferred that violence to the prostitutes of London's East End. That's why it can't be Klosowski," he added, nodding at the two severely dressed women in line ahead of him. "Personally, I favor the Mysterious Lodger, that Canadian chap, G. Wentworth Bell Smith. He went about in rubberized boots, changing clothes at all hours, railing against loose women. I'd stake my reputation on it, Bell Smith's the man..."
The nearest of the ladies championing Chapman rounded on the Bell-Smith supporter. "A killer proven is a killer proven!" she insisted, refusing to be swayed in her convictions by any amount of evidence or reason. "Mark my words, Claudia," she turned back to her friend, "Chapman or Klosowski, whichever name you prefer, he'll turn out to be the Ripper! I'm sure of it..."
While overhead, on the immense SLUR television screen, the scholarly debate raged on. "—a very common pattern," Scotland Yard Inspector Conroy Melvyn was saying in a taped interview with fellow Ripper Watch Team member Pavel Kostenka, "for a male serial killer to attack and kill prostitutes. Bloke sees ‘em as a substitute for the powerful woman in ‘is life, the one ‘e feels powerless to strike at, instead."
"Indeed," Dr. Koskenka was nodding. "Not only this, but a prostitute represents a morally fallen woman. And prostitutes," Dr. Kostenka added heavily, "were and still are the most easily available women to such killers. Add to that the historical tendency of police to dismiss a prostitute's murder as less important than the murder of a ‘respectable' woman and streetwalkers surge into prominence as victims of mass murderers—"
Skeeter tuned out the debate as best he could and grunted under the weight of massive steamer trunks, portmanteaus, carpet bags, leather cases, smaller trunks and satchels until his back ached. The arriving luggage was transferred case by case to a growing pile at the base of a newly installed, massive conveyor system which Time Tours' new baggage manager had finally had the good sense to install. Skeeter glanced up to the gate platform, five stories overhead. Thank God for the conveyer. Some of those steamer trunks weighed more than Skeeter did. Considerably more. He eyed the gridwork stairs he'd be climbing soon and blessed that conveyer system fervently.