And yet, as the bit Turk’s resin touched my tongue, I found myself straining. Listening. Eager to hear it.
A whistle in the dark.
It did not come. Instead, as I replaced the mashed globule of tar into my coat pocket, the latch clicked open behind me, and the door swung wide.
“Now I must be quite firm,” said a quiet voice, soft-spoken for a man but irritated beyond. “I already told you—”
What he’d told me went unsaid, for he looked into my collector’s mask—the cracked lens held by a strip of leather, the respirator protecting my lungs, my coat and trousers—and promptly amended his reprimand to a face gone pale as soured milk and a strangled, “Help!”
I had no clues as to how to behave, save that if he did not cease his haranguing, his neighbors might soon gain enough interest to come looking.
I pushed him inside his own home, shut the door hard behind me, and yelled over him, “Please cease your shouting, Mr. Lusk!” Muted though as it may have been behind my crafted vents, the intent appeared to have worked.
Mr. Lusk halted, mid-grasp for one of two large candlesticks set upon a narrow table beside him, and stared—open mouthed, no less. Finally, he found his tongue. “Who are you?”
A fair demand, for I’d just invaded his home.
He was not an imposing figure, fairly average in every way. He appeared a man of fifty, stern-featured, with a full mustache framing his mouth that still bore more pepper than the salt his thinning hair displayed. His prominent nose was faintly reddened at the tip—age, perhaps, or drink—and where I expected to find a man in his nightclothes, he appeared instead to have shed his outerwear and rolled up his sleeves. As if I’d only caught him after a long day’s work.
“Sorry for the pushing,” I said, making certain to maintain as much of my low street dialect as I dared without straining the bounds of understanding. “I’m a collector, here about your notice.”
He finally lowered his hand. I noted stains upon the fingers, primarily forefinger and thumb. I’d wager his other hand would show the same about the tips, where he’d test the blotted ink after it dried.
A working man, in ways wholly different than Hawke. Different even than the earl’s—that is, Cornelius’s... Oh, damn. A knot of pain plucked at me, and I fisted my own hands, forcing myself to finished the thought.
My late husband’s hands had been roughened a touch, by what I assumed was his time in Her Majesty’s Navy. I’d had no opportunity to ask him about it.
Fair, because he’d not asked me of my own. I could only imagine what he’d think of the scabbed mess I’d made of them now.
Mr. Lusk cleared his throat rather loudly, a polite and emphatic sound.
I shook myself hard, mentally more than anything. I did not want the man to think me a lunatic. Any more than he already did, anyway, as he asked with the patience of one who has already asked it in the seconds before, “Are you here for a reason, sir?”
I did not address the subject of my sex. Forcing myself to consider only the task at hand, I answered, “There’s enough rumor to fill the rags for weeks on end and run the printers out of ink. I’ve come for the source.”
His expression did not soften so much as ease out of wary lines. I noted creases about his eyes, time and wear taking a toll, but no longer did I see the tension that had possessed him the instant he’d opened the door. Instead, gesturing to me, he turned and led the way into the small home. “I apologize for the untowardness of my behavior,” he said, a sight more polite than I’d expected. “It has been a busy evening. Please, step into my study.”
This was the lamp I’d seen from outside. His study was smaller than the one I was to inherit—a study that had passed from my father to my executor, and from Mr. Ashmore to my husband upon my marriage.
So many things I’d intended to do with my Cheyne Walk home, and now I would do none of them.
Bloody fool, I was. I gritted my teeth behind the mask. It seemed I could not shake my own ghosts tonight, no matter how often I licked the resin I carried.
This would not do. I required focus.
I took a slow breath, silent enough so as not to alert my unwitting host to my troubles. “I don’t want to take up too much of your time,” I told him. “I’m sure you’ve a wife to see to, and I’ve a murderer to catch.” Best to be blunt, in these situations.
Mr. Lusk surprised me—he smiled faintly, a bit of nostalgia in the curve beneath his mustache. “Not a worry. My Susannah’s gone, rest her. The children are with family for the moment.”
A recent loss, then. Something in me softened—something I could ill afford to nurture, and had no intention to share with this stranger.
My throat tightened. “Right,” I said, rather than give voice to the condolences I wasn’t sure how to shape. Would a collector care? Like as not, no. Therefore, as a collector, I resolved not to. “Tell me what you know of this murderer, then?”
“Most the same as you and probably all the rest of your sort,” he said, easing his not overly extravagant bulk into his chair. He ran a hand over his balding head with weary dismay. I could read it in his bearing, hear it in his confession. “What’s done in the papers is as what we’ve got. Every day, another rumor of a sighting.”
“No truth to it, then?”
“None.” He rested his hands over his middle, studying me with more curiosity, now, than the fear he’d initially displayed. “I suppose you’re here to ask about the reward too?”
It’d seem odd not to, and I did need the bounty. I nodded.
“If that bastard Matthews had his way, there’d be none to have.” Mr. Lusk grunted his ire on the subject. “How many letters must we pen for him to understand the gravity of the need? People need incentive. It’s not enough to want to protect our homes and businesses.”
I confess to a momentary loss of understanding, but it faded quickly as I recalled the name. The Home Secretary, Henry Matthews, had flatly refused to fund a reward for capture of the Ripper.
“I take it you are funding the reward yourself?” I asked, surprised.
“That we are,” Mr. Lusk confirmed, his pride so palpable that I could have reached out to touch it. “The lot of us, the whole committee, each pitched in a bit to make a decent purse. I assure you, sir, you will not be shorted.”
That was in the eye of the beholder—or he who held the purse. Still, I did not pry more. The coin, at this point, was only an extra that I would be glad to have. It would not take much to acquire the opium grains I needed.
“Good,” I said. “Now, tell me all.”
He did, and I listened quietly, standing with my hands clasped behind my back as I’d seen men do. To be perfectly honest, he did not tell me anything I did not already know. It was simply that I enjoyed the sound of it. The words, oh, not so much, but the way his soft-spoken voice spilled forth, strained over some of the less delightful details, rose when he allowed his anger to color his comportment, delighted my opium-tinged senses.
He spoke of the first murders, which I recalled reading of quite clearly. He spoke of the troubles he’d had with the police, and the private detectives the committee had hired. He spoke passionately, but with a gentleness that someone else may have mistaken for weakness were they not paying close attention. The plight of the working class, the business all affected by the murderer’s rampage, and if the doxies being slaughtered did not rank very high in his list of reasons to care, I could forgive him the slight.
Few enough favored the women who chose—or were forced—to earn their keep between their legs. His lapse seemed rather more thoughtless than malicious.
I did not wander the study, because there was precious little room to do so, but I did scrutinize my surroundings. It was charmingly decorated, with bobs and ends tucked here and there, paintings framed upon the striped papered wall. I did note more than a few indications of Freemasonry about the décor.