Soon afterwards, her aunt left the house, confidant that her convalescing niece was in good hands. She was off to pay a morning call to their neighbor. Emma wasted no time in ambushing the poor housekeeper. In covert accents, she inquired after the ‘ghastly business’ she’d overheard yesterday morning in church.
“Well, miss…” Jenkins averted her gaze uneasily as she paused, her face tightening with dread. “You see, there were two murdered bodies lately discovered on Wood Street. Two young women!”
“Why, that’s not half a mile from here!”
“Very shocking circumstances too—very unnatural.” Though Jenkins had lived in London since her girlhood, there came into her accent a hint of the teutonic forest whence she’d come so long ago, plainly bespeaking her wild agitation.
“Unnatural?”
“Ay, miss. There’s talk of…exsanguination!”
“Exsanguination!” The word felt unnatural on her own tongue, viscous and coldly metallic as it hung in the brief silence that followed. It was not a word one often heard, and yet the horror it implied was strangely atavistic. The sound of it alone disturbed her flesh.
Jenkins grew pale and anxious under Emma’s wide stare, so Emma cleared her throat and gently urged the old woman to continue. “From the workhouse, I believe they were.” Jenkins wrung her hands. “Bless my soul, Mr. Haywood would chase me from this house if he knew what a long tongue I have!”
“Nonsense, Jenkins, you know he shall keep to his library until one o’clock. You mustn’t worry that I shall give you away.” It was, in any event, only a matter of time before Emma herself became aware of these horrible matters by some other means. She was nothing if not determined. “Do go on, please.”
“No, miss, I had better not say another word. It’s all quite monstrous! Not at all suitable for young ears.”
“I wish you would continue at once. I am no benighted young schoolgirl, you know.” In fact, six-and-twenty was hardly ‘young’ at all! She was old enough now to don a spinster’s cap, for pity’s sake.
Jenkins, apparently, was inclined to agree, for she quickly capitulated with a sigh. “Mr. Chapman—he’s a chandler on Wood Street—said he caught himself a glimpse of one of the bodies; watched them cover it up and all. It was him that told old Sarah, next door, that he might never sleep again for fear of seeing such horror, miss.”
“Yes, yes, go on. What horror?” Later, she would chastise herself for her ungodly morbidity.
“Gaping wounds! Eviscerations!” The words hissed out between the housekeeper’s teeth like an evil gust.
Emma caught her breath, the dread dragging at her flesh like a cold, grasping bog. “That is very shocking indeed! What is to be done?”
“Whatever is to be done had better be done soon, for these slayings were not the first of their kind, miss, and I wager they shall not be the last.”
“How beastly!”
“There’s talk of a curfew now, miss. I daren’t go out at night on my own.”
“No, indeed, Jenkins.”
“Seems the work of bogies or vampyres, if you ask me.” The housekeeper was clutching her crucifix with white fingers. “My mother, God rest her soul, told me stories from the Black Forest, when she was a girl—”
“Likely a mad butcher,” said Emma, sparing the housekeeper’s superstitions little heed.
“Pardon, miss?”
“Never mind. Thank you, Jenkins, that will be all.” Emma watched the housekeeper escape from the room, giving the library door, behind which her martinetish uncle was ensconced, a very wide berth.
Bogies indeed! They did not disturb Emma in the least. The superstitions and pantry-politics of old women, particularly those borne across the North Sea, were very easily flouted. But there was no denying or ignoring the bizarre circumstances of the Wood Street murders and the maniac that was stalking the streets of London. It was something out of a gothic horror. And though she enjoyed reading about murderous monks and dark abbeys, there was nothing romantic about the reality of two dead women found mutilated so close to her uncle’s home.
Returning to her room with a waxen countenance, Emma added deranged murderers to her list of crimes and grievances against London. Fortunately, she and her sister would be returning to Little Snoring after the season, where lady killers and mad butchers were not so rampant. And notions of bogies and ghouls were even less so. She just wished she could stop imagining the torsos of those women, empty and gaping.
Perhaps she would write to her cousin and inform Mary of her intent to join her in the convent, where she would be forever safe from night predators. It was a fact well accepted that monsters could not tread upon hallowed ground. Nothing could be safer than a church.
Grimacing, Emma then imagined the prioress’s gasp of horror as the old woman discovered Emma’s collection of unsavory books. Of course Emma would not go anywhere without her books. Heavens, how shocked the nuns would be! Did they sustain themselves on missals and scriptures alone or did even the prioress herself harbor a secret cache of contraband literature? She thought not. Perhaps Emma was better suited to the sordid company of Sufi palm-readers and crystal-gazers, for she would rather risk the inimical streets of London than part with her beloved novels.
Was it possible that Milli had the right idea? Perhaps she too ought rather stay home with her books and her sister this evening. No, that wouldn’t do—her uncle might overlook one malingerer in his midst, but he would not suffer two. At all events, there was every chance the Stapletons’ dinner party might be canceled now, what with a mad butcher thrashing about town, so there was likely no need to envy Milli her feigned dyspepsia.
Emma endeavored to forget about vampyres and bogies, or whatever aberration had fetched up on these shores from the Black Forest. She opened her book to the scene of Antonia’s imminent ravishment. There now, this was better occupation for the mind. It was this vicarious pleasure bound within the black and white safety and fragrant comfort of ink and paper, in which she preferred to lose herself. In fact, the only danger Emma felt herself in the way of was dying an old spinster, buried beneath dusty old tomes, her fingers black with ink. Certainly not a victim of exsanguination! After all, only beautiful young heroines faced monsters in the dark.
Chapter Three
Gypsy Fiend
Dearest Emma,—I think the effluvia of London horse leavings has caused you to take leave of your senses. The life of a traveling tightrope walker, or explorer of Egyptian tombs, would befit you better than vespers and veils. Do take care, Cousin, the London streets sound positively treacherous. God bless you and your mucky boots,
Mary.
They had gone to the Stapletons’ after all, and it had been decided that they should dine early and return home at sunset, in light of the murders. Before they’d set out, her uncle had finally seen fit to enlighten his womenfolk about the ‘unpleasantness’, woefully understating the gravity and violence of the crimes. No doubt for the sake of their delicate sensibilities. Poor man, did he honestly imagine women incapable of discovering from their neighbors and servants, if not the papers, all there was to know?