“What did you say?”
“London Emily. I hear you’re giving two-and-six fer London Emily.”
“So did everybody in Angel Meadow.”
“I’m London Emily.”
“A dozen ladies told me the same. How can I believe you?”
“’Cuz I know what they don’t.”
“What’s that?”
“I know what yer gonna ask me.”
Intrigued, though not yet hopeful, Bell said, “Go on. What do you think I want to ask you?”
“Jack the Ripper.”
Bell shook his head. “Everyone knows that London Emily ran from the Ripper.”
The old woman stepped closer to Bell and spoke in a stronger voice. “Not in Manchester.”
“What do you mean?”
“I never told a soul. He’d-a found out.”
Isaac Bell moved subtly to corner the old woman. Would she scream when he showed her Barlowe’s sketch of a face that had been emblazoned in her memory before the Ripper attacked and long after the night of mind-rending terror? Would she run at the sight of the man who nearly killed her?
He pulled the stiff protective envelope from his seabag and carefully slid the sketch from it. London Emily fixed her eyes on it. She stiffened under her shapeless shawl. She stared. She broke into a toothless smile.
“Do you recognize him, Emily?”
She whispered.
Bell asked, “What did you say?”
“So handsome.”
“Do you remember?” Bell asked gently. “Where did you see him?”
“Hanbury Street.”
“Do you remember what number?” He was making a conscious effort now to quiet his excitement.
Emily nodded vigorously. “Number 29.”
“What did he say to you?”
“He asked me, ‘What’s your name?’”
Bell waited. She said nothing more. He asked, “What did you tell him?”
She stared at the sketch with a half smile.
“What did you tell him when he asked your name?”
“I told him, ‘Emily.’”
“What did he say?”
“He said, ‘What a lovely name.’ He said it suited me.”
“What did you say?”
“I said, ‘Thank you, sir.’”
“What next?”
“We went in the backyard and he grabbed me by the neck.”
She was getting agitated again, and Bell tried to ease her mind. “Was he really this handsome?”
“Oh, aye. Even more.”
“Emily,” Bell asked gently. “Could you have confused him with a memory of a different man? Some man you had known before? Or seen on the street?”
“Who could forget such a beautiful face?”
“Was he really this young?”
She shrugged. “I was young.”
“Are you absolutely sure he was the Ripper? Not someone else? Not a different handsome man?”
“Not someone else.”
“Even though you had only seen him once.”
“Not once! Not once! What do you mean?” she asked indignantly.
Bell felt the ground reel under his boots. He himself had speculated. Had the Ripper known his first victim? Obviously, Emily was not the woman buried under Scotland Yard. But was she someone else he had known, too?
“You saw him before you saw him in Hanbury Street?”
“Of course.”
“Do you remember where you saw him?”
“Oh, aye.”
“Where?”
“Wilton’s.”
“Wilton’s? What is Wilton’s?”
“Wilton’s Music Hall. In Wellclose Square. I went if I could find a penny or a man to pay my way.”
Isaac Bell felt as if the black sky had fallen on his head.
A young girl’s crush, just as Wayne Barlowe had guessed. If not the angelic gentleman the illustrator had proposed, could a handsome actor have caught her eye? All the more dazzling in limelight and theater makeup?
“He was an actor?”
“No.”
“No?” Bell’s hopes soared as quickly as they had fallen.
“They never let him act — except once he carried a spear.”
“Then what did he do at Wilton’s?”
“Everything. He wore a sandwich board to tout the show. He ran for beer. One day, I watched him paint the scenery in the backyard. He sold sweets and passed out programs. Sometimes, he was a callboy, knocking on dressing room doors. And he stood right at the elbow of the prompter himself.”
An all-rounder, thought Bell. A boy-of-all-work assigned every job that needed doing in the theater. But how deep was their connection?
“Did he hand you a program?”
“I couldn’t get in that night. I had no money. By the time I earned it, he was gone.”
“Did you help him paint scenery in the yard?”
Emily’s face fell. “He chased me off.” She grew restless, her hands fluttering.
Bell asked, “How often did you see him on the stage with a spear?”
“Once.”
“Only once?” How did one sighting on the stage stick him so deep in her memory?
“And once when he carried a lantern.”
“So only twice?”
“Twice.”
“But you said you went often.”
“He wasn’t always there.”
Bell was aware that laudanum addicts were prey to hallucinations. As hallucinations went, her handsome callboy was a doozy.
“Emily, would you like to keep his picture?”
“Yes, please.”
Bell helped her work it inside the envelope. She hid it in the folds of her shawl.
“Where do you live?” he asked.
“They give me a cot at the Salvation Army. I help in the kitchen.”
“I’ll walk you home,” said Bell.
“Why?”
“Because I am going to give this sack of half crowns to the Army commander to be sure you’re taken care of.”
Emily got a crafty look in her eye. “If you give it to me, I can take care of myself.”
“I would rather give it to someone I can trust to keep you safe.”
“You think I might spend it on laudanum.”
“No ‘might’ about it,” said Bell so firmly that she dropped the subject with an abject nod.
At the door of the soup kitchen, she blurted, “Don’t tell nobody what I said.”
“I won’t.”
“He’ll come for me.”
“Don’t worry,” said Isaac Bell, hearing his own words ring hollow, “I’ll make sure he doesn’t… Emily? What was the callboy’s name?”
“Jack.”
“Jack? Do you remember his last name?”
“Spelvin.”
“Jack Spelvin?”
“Handsome Jack.”
20
“Here’s a strange one,” said Harry Warren, reading from the Research Department report that Isaac Bell had ordered sent every morning to the Cutthroat Squad.
Helen Mills, James Dashwood, Archie Abbott, and several other detectives in the New York field office bull pen not of the Cutthroat Squad looked up from their work.
“What’s strange?”
“Woman throat slashed and carved up in Cleveland.”
“Sounds like our man.”
“Except she was a six-foot-tall brunette.”
“Prostitute?”
“Banker’s wife.”
“Crescent carvings?”
“None reported.”
“Shouldn’t Cleveland send a man to the morgue?”
“Already did. No carvings.”
“Sounds like a coincidence.”