A Buried Past Read online

Surprisingly, she laughed. “You can’t even do a single pull-up, Jack. I don’t think you could pull my arm out of place. You jostled it, that’s all.” With her good arm, she pulled up the hem of her T-shirt, revealing a set of eight-pack abs Thor would have envied. “Can you get this off me? I can do it myself, but it hurts.”

  With extra care, I pulled the shirt off. “I don’t know how you did this yourself the past few days.”

  “I’ve only changed once.”

  “So that’s where the smell is coming from.”

  She aimed a weak jab at my stomach. I let it land, knowing she would never unleash her full punching potential on me, and examined her bare shoulder. There were two small incisions as a result of the surgery, each one sealed with a few stitches. She had some bruising around the incision sites, but that was normal.

  “Have you redressed these at all?”

  “I haven’t managed. Could you do it?”

  “Let’s get you washed first.”

  Evelyn flushed pink as we worked her out of the rest of her clothes. She held on to me for balance as I pulled her sweatpants off her feet. “This is humiliating,” she muttered, covering her eyes.

  “For you or me?” I joked. “Because these muscles are nothing to be ashamed of.”

  To Evelyn, it didn’t matter that she was built like Adonis and bore no physical imperfections. She hated being helpless. I canned the jokes and turned around as she slipped under the stream of the shower. I hoped to give her some privacy, but it wasn’t long before she needed me.

  “I can’t do my hair.”

  Without a word, I kicked off my slippers and stepped closer. The water ricocheted off Evelyn’s broad shoulders, drenching me in seconds. The perfectly designed bathroom wasn’t so perfect for this sort of thing. I squeezed a dollop of shampoo into my palm and gazed up at Evelyn’s blonde hair.

  “Um, can you crouch down or something?”

  She ended up sitting in front of me while I massaged the soap into her scalp, rinsed it, and conditioned it as well. When I scrubbed her shoulders and back—methodically, medically—with a loofah, she dropped her head into her hands and didn’t say anything. I carefully washed her incisions with the soft pads of my fingers. Then I had her stand so I could reach the rest of her body.

  “All finished,” I said quietly, rinsing the last of the soap off her and turning the shower off. I might as well have worn a swimsuit for the job. We both needed towels, but I wrapped Evelyn’s around her first so she could maintain some of her dignity.

  She remained silent while I dried off her shoulder and put a fresh bandage over it. Then I helped her towel her hair dry and put on a fresh pair of pajamas. When I reached for the brace, she spoke again.

  “Leave it off,” she said. “They told me I don’t have to sleep with it.”

  I set the brace outside the bathroom for safekeeping. “Are you okay?”

  She knew I didn’t mean her shoulder. “I never expected to be this helpless. I don’t like feeling like this.” Her lower lip jutted out. “Am I being a pill? You can tell me to stop pitying myself.”

  “I get it.” Now that Evelyn was dry and dressed, I changed my own clothes. “Your whole job relies on your body and strength. Losing that must be tough.”

  “And this—” She gestured at the shower then to herself. “I don’t want anyone to see me like this. Not even you. I know we’re close and we practically grew up together, but this is different. I’m weak, Jack.”

  I squeezed her good arm. “You are not weak. You’re injured, and you need some help for the time being. It’s not permanent. Focus on that.”

  “I know.” She grimaced. “I’m sorry. I won’t treat you like a nurse this whole time. I promise.”

  “Honestly, if it makes you feel better to treat me like a nurse, then I don’t have any problem with it.”

  Evelyn fell asleep before me. I lay awake, listening to her breathe. My insomnia was likely because of my earlier nap and the time difference between here and San Diego, but certain thoughts kept me up too. They whirled in my mind like dirty water circling a clogged drain, fading out but not quickly enough, and leaving residue behind.

  I worried about Evelyn. Her job was her life. If her shoulder healed improperly, it would mean her livelihood. I vowed to keep her safe, even if my help embarrassed her.

  My head wandered other places too. This was the closest I’d been to my mother’s home in a long time. Windsor was hardly an hour away. If I could drive there—

  “No,” I murmured to myself, turning over. “Don’t go there, Jack.”

  Restless, I forced myself to fall asleep.

  I wasn’t kidding about spending the next several days as a tourist. Though Evelyn and I had spent years in this area, we hadn’t been allowed to see much of it as teenagers. Occasionally, we’d snuck out to meet our friends across campus, but we never went far from the grounds of the boarding school. When holidays came, we flew home, and most of London went unexplored. Since I was back, I had every intention of taking advantage of it.

  After helping Evelyn get up and dressed—she was less upset about it this morning, perhaps because of the opportunity to leave the flat—we went to Oblix, one of the fancy restaurants in the Shard, for brunch. We spent a good few hours at our table by the window, gazing across London’s sweeping scenic views, loading our plates with meats and cheeses, and sipping coffee until our server grew weary of our presence. We tipped him well and then jumped on a red double-decker bus for the quintessential London experience. As we rode around on the top deck, the two of us tucked beneath rain slickers and umbrellas, Evelyn told me stories of her job that corresponded with the places we passed. Near Buckingham Palace, she’d prevented a stalker from jumping Hugh Grant. At Saint Paul’s Cathedral, Evelyn had put herself between a threatened stray dog and the naive child of a foreign diplomat. My favorite story was the one where she accompanied Emma Watson through Westminster Abbey while she promoted her newest project. A crazed Harry Potter fan had spotted “Hermione” and attempted to kiss her.

  “Right before he could land on her lips, I grabbed the back of his collar and yanked him off,” she said, mimicking the movement. “Like one of those claw machines where you win toys. Ding, ding! You got yourself a jumper, Miss Watson.”

  I sniggered. “What did she do?”

  “Thanked me profusely and gave the boy a stern talking-to about a woman’s personal space and right to privacy,” Evelyn answered. “I don’t think the lad will ever approach a lady again, politely or not.”

  We got on and off the bus wherever our hearts desired, usually when we wanted to inspect something we hadn’t seen before. Baker Street in particular caught my attention. Though Evelyn protested, we stepped off the bus and into the Sherlock Holmes Museum, where I proudly showcased my love for the fictional detective.

  “You would be obsessed with Holmes,” Evelyn said. “You’re both crazy self-professed investigators.”

  “I learned a good deal of deduction skills from the stories,” I babbled, deaf to her commentary. “Devoured the books. ‘A Scandal in Bohemia’ is my favorite because—”

  “Of Irene Adler,” finished Evelyn. She put on a poor imitation of my American accent. “She was the only person to outwit Sherlock, and she was a woman!”

  I swatted Evelyn’s good shoulder.

  When dusk began to descend on the city, we decided to call it a day. My feet ached, and we grew tired of the constant dampness around our collars and pant legs. We got off the bus in Whitechapel and began walking back to Evelyn’s flat. A handmade sign with slanted letters caught my eye: Nightly Jack the Ripper tours. Sign up here!

  I elbowed Evelyn and pointed. “There’s one starting in fifteen minutes.”

  “So?”

  “We should do it,” I urged.

  She fixed me with an unamused eye. “I am not feeding into your serial killer obsession.”

  “But he was the original. I’ve read all about him.” Noticing how weirdly re
verent I sounded, I cleared my throat. “It’s interesting to me. That’s all. I’d like to do it, if you’re not too tired.”

  Evelyn let out a hefty sigh. “Fine. Let’s get this over with.”

  The tour office was tiny, but the woman behind the ticket window was not. She was nearly as tall as Evelyn, though not as muscular, with blonde hair cropped close to her neck and the longer bits styled away from her face. She introduced herself as Bertha, the resident Ripperologist and guide of the nightly tour. The rest of the room was jammed with people who had already signed up for the tour. Many of them were American, like me, but I doubted anyone knew as much about the Ripper as I did.

  When it was time for the tour to begin, we all followed Bertha out into the streets. I kept to the front of the pack, dragging Evelyn along with me.

  “Good evening, everyone!” Bertha boomed. Though only ten or twelve of us were on the tour, she spoke loudly enough to turn the heads of those passing by. “Welcome to the only Jack the Ripper tour you’ll ever have to take. We’ll be together for the next couple hours”—Evelyn groaned under her breath—“so we might as well get acquainted. When I point at you, say your name loud enough for everyone to hear, yeah?”

  We went around. When Bertha pointed at me, I announced, “Jack.”

  “There’s one in every bunch, sweetheart,” Bertha said. “What’s your real name?”

  “Jacqueline, but everyone calls me Jack.”

  Bertha winked. “Jack it is, then. Gather round, everyone! This tour covers what we call the canonical five Ripper murders. Anyone know what that means?”

  My hand shot into the air, and I answered before Bertha called on me. “No one knows how many murders the Ripper actually committed, but it’s widely agreed that at least five deaths were connected to one serial killer. Mary Ann Nichols, Annie Chapman, Elizabeth—”

  “Whoa!” Bertha’s raucous laugh drowned out my voice. “We got ourselves a Ripper expert! You are correct, Jack. Lore attributes five deaths to the infamous Leather Apron, and we’ll be visiting the site of each of those murders tonight. Well—” Bertha rolled her eyes. “Four of them, actually. Durward Street is closed off tonight. The police found a body there.”

  Next to me, Evelyn tensed. Her breath tickled the back of my neck, or perhaps the rest of the crowd’s nervous chittering made the hair on my scalp stir.

  “Not to worry!” Bertha called over the murmuring crowd. “You’ll be perfectly safe with me tonight, but we’ll have to check out the first murder site from afar. Shall we?”

  This time, as the other tour-goers shuffled after Bertha, I pulled Evelyn to the back of the group. “What do you think?” I murmured to her. “Coincidence?”

  “Don’t start,” Evelyn said, suddenly interested in Bertha’s speech about Victorian England and the state of Whitechapel in the late 1800s. “I’m sure the police have it in hand.”

  As we turned toward the Royal London Hospital, the yellow crime scene tape and police vehicles came into view, blocking nosy passersby from entering the closed road.

  “But it happened on Durward Street!” I insisted in a hushed whisper. “Which used to be—”

  “Buck’s Row!” Bertha announced from the front of the group. Everyone halted as Bertha held up a laminated black-and-white photo of what the street looked like before modern-day construction paved everything over. “In 1888, Whitechapel was the poorest district in London. Women couldn’t make much of themselves if they weren’t married, so they often turned to prostitution. This was the case of Mary Ann Nichols, the Ripper’s first victim. On August 31, around 3:40 in the morning, Nichols’s body was discovered. Her throat was slashed, and her abdomen was ripped open by a knife estimated to be about six to eight inches long. No one in the vicinity saw or heard anything suspicious before Nichols was killed.”

  Bertha waited for the story to sink in before grinning slyly. “I like to play a game on these tours called Guess the Ripper. As you know, the person guilty of these murders was never identified. There are hundreds of theories out there, some more credible than others. At each location, I’ll give you the name and story of a suspect. At the end of the tour, everyone will vote on who they think was the killer. First up, H.H. Holmes—”

  My attention trailed off, and my gaze wandered across the street toward Buck’s Row. I longed to see the crime scene so much that my feet itched in my shoes, as if the only way to relieve the sensation was to walk over there. Evelyn kept a firm hand on my arm.

  H.H. Holmes, though a serial killer himself, was not the Ripper. I’d read enough to formulate my own theories about the man known as the Whitechapel Murderer, and a recent documentary I’d watched all but confirmed my guess. Without forensic evidence, no one would ever truly identify the Ripper, but we could get close. I wondered if Bertha knew what I did about the killer, but I had to wait until the end of the tour to find out.

  The group moved on to the second murder location, Hanbury Street, where Annie Chapman’s body was found in a backyard on September 8, 1888. Like Nichols, her throat had been slashed. Additionally, the killer had hastily removed her uterus from her body.

  “Disgusting,” Evelyn muttered under her breath when Bertha announced this information.

  “Brace yourself,” I said back. “It gets worse.”

  At this location, Bertha proposed Charles Cross as the Ripper. Wrong again. Though four out of five murders occurred on Cross’s route to work and he was a shady liar, there wasn’t enough evidence to place him as the Ripper. At least, I certainly didn’t think so.

  The next two locations were a fifteen-minute walk from each other. Elizabeth Stride and Catherine Eddowes were killed on the same night, a mere forty-five minutes apart. Some believed the Ripper had been interrupted while he slaughtered Stride and, unsatisfied with his first kill, tried again with Eddowes. Others believed the Ripper wasn’t responsible for Stride’s death at all, as certain details of her murder didn’t match the Ripper’s modus operandi. Personally, I was in the latter camp.

  “Aaron Kosminski,” Bertha belted out as the group followed her through Mitre Square. “He was a Polish immigrant who worked as a hairdresser in Whitechapel. A few years ago, someone extracted mitochondrial DNA from a shawl found at the site of Eddowes’s murder. It matched Kosminski’s. Was he our Ripper?”

  “Nope,” I said into Evelyn’s shoulder. “That DNA study was never subjected to peer review. Besides, there’s no proof the shawl was ever at the crime scene, and it was handled by too many other people before it was tested. The evidence was contaminated, for sure.”

  “Why are we here?” Evelyn asked dryly. “If you already know all of this stuff?”

  “I’ve never been to the locations.”

  The last canonical Ripper death was, by far, the worst. On November 9, 1888, Mary Jane Kelly had been mutilated and disemboweled in her private room. The entire surface of her abdomen and thighs had been removed. Her organs had been placed around the room—except for her heart, which had gone missing from the scene. The gashes and incisions the Ripper had made left her face unrecognizable. The Ripper had all the time in the world to do what he liked with his supposed final victim, and he sure as hell took advantage of it.

  Evelyn’s face took on a gray tinge as Bertha described the murder. I slipped my arm through her solid one and pulled her closer to my side. Miller’s Court, where Kelly was killed, no longer existed, but the moonlight seemed eerier on this street.

  “And for your final suspect,” Bertha said. “Mary Pearcy. My personal favorite. Some people believe Jack the Ripper could have been a midwife performing unsanctioned abortions. In 1890, Pearcey killed her lover’s wife and baby in a similar style to the Ripper’s. She was hanged for her crimes the same year.” Bertha clapped her hands together. “That concludes our tour and our suspects. Time to vote on the killer.”

  I raised my hand. “What about Carl Feigenbaum? He confessed to the crimes, and there’s evidence he was in Whitechapel at the time of the murde
rs.”

  “That’s speculation,” Bertha said. “He confessed to the Ripper murders the day before he was supposed to be executed, hoping to extend his life.”

  “Or he actually did it,” I suggested. “A retired murder squad detective reopened the case last year. He connected Feigenbaum to the murders. Feigenbaum was a merchant sailor, and he worked for a company that had two different ships docked near Whitechapel during the Autumn of Terror. The shipping records—”

  “Went missing,” Bertha finished. I’d underestimated her. She did know about the Feigenbaum situation. “Yes, I’ve seen that documentary too. If the shipping records showed Carl Feigenbaum to be in Whitechapel during that autumn, I would absolutely believe he was Jack the Ripper. As it is—”

  “It’s obvious his lawyer found and discarded the shipping records,” I cut in. “In order to separate Feigenbaum from the Ripper murders.”

  “His lawyer was the one who outed him as the Ripper,” Bertha countered. “Why would he later try to conceal Feigenbaum’s guilt?”

  The eyes of the tour group bounced back and forth between Bertha and me as we argued. A random teenage boy shouted from the back, “I think it was Carl!” His mother raised a hand and added, “I think it was Mary Pearcey. We shouldn’t underestimate women of that time period.”

  “I agree!” Bertha bellowed.

  I rolled my eyes. There was no arguing with a bunch of people who didn’t have all the facts. Evelyn nudged me.

  “Don’t pout,” she said. “I believe you.”

  Back at the ticket office, Evelyn got a call from work and took it outside for some privacy. While the other tour-goers either left or milled about in the gift shop, I walked up to Bertha as she accepted tips.

  “Sorry if I put you on the spot,” I said, handing her five quid. “I’ve read everything about the Ripper, and it’s fun for me to hear other people’s opinions.”

  She tucked the money into the front of her coat. “Don’t worry about it. It’s nice to get someone who knows about the Ripper every once in a while. Cheers for coming out tonight.”