Chapters 1-15:

Chapter 16

June, 1889

‘The answers are all out there, we just need to ask the right questions’

~Anonymous author, attributed to Oscar Wilde

‘You must be Mr.Graves. Do come in’.

Never before have I heard this phrase uttered in such a graceful way. Monty rarely mentioned how attractive his sister was, praising only her kindness and warmth - but I can tell you that Georgiana Hough, nee Druitt, was indeed a very beautiful young woman. Even her strict black dress, so common for clergymen’s wives, couldn’t hide the fact. She was thirty-four at the time, fair of complexion, tall for a woman of the era, with dark chestnut hair, deep eyes and chiseled lips. Her smile was welcoming, and when she shook my hand, I noticed the softness of her skin. She didn’t resemble William at all, although she certainly shared some fine lines with Monty and Edward. Even if I didn’t know who she was, I think, I’d have no difficulty in recognizing her.

‘Mrs. Hough’ I said ‘ I am so grateful to you for having me’.

‘Inspector was quite adamant we should talk’ Georgiana laughed ‘And you know, I agree - I take it, you knew dear Monty well’ her voice trembled slightly ‘I will help you however I can, Mr.Graves. With one condition’.

‘Anything at all’.

‘Call me Georgiana. When people call me Mrs.Hough I feel much older than I am’.

‘And become more tedious’ a younger version of Georgiana laughed from behind her back. Georgiana sighed.

‘Well, I cannot deny that. That, Mr.Graves, is my sister, Edith. Arthur would be joining us shortly - but please, do make yourself comfortable. We’ve laid everything out for tea, by the way. Would you care for a slice of lemon cake?’

‘I will be delighted’ I said ‘You’re overwhelmingly kind’

Edith snorted.

‘That’s because you’re her first guest in three months, and we’re not counting family. ‘

‘You can hardly expect parties in my condition, Edie’ Georgiana berated her lightly ‘And I can tell you, expecting a child isn’t easy…’

‘How far along are you?’ I asked before I could think it over ‘Please excuse me, it was inappropriate’.

‘I won’t tell anybody. They say, the child is due any day now, but I still hope it lasts until July - William wants us to visit his people in Surrey, and I just pray it goes well. Do you have a family, Mr.Graves?’

‘No, and it grieves me. But for almost two years, your brother was my family,’ I said, looking straight into her eyes. ‘ And I doubt that God will be as kind as to send me another affinity like that. ‘

‘I see’ Georgiana said quietly ‘ The moment I saw you I knew there was something special between you and Monty. You know, he always longed for depth, for genuine affection in relationships. He used to tell me that friendship seemed more important to him than any marriages, for he had our parents’ example growing up - and they were not always…compassionate or kind. I know it’s wrong to speak ill of the dead, but my father was a distant man, who never knew how to be a proper father to his children. He valued work, you see. Community, justice, greater good - even religion, I think - but if you asked him what his children were like, it would take him a million years to answer. He cared about William, that I can tell you - but I cannot say we - the rest - knew him as a person. ‘

Edith looked at her in slight surprise, but said nothing. Georgiana patted her hand and continued, quietly:

‘When Edie was born, father was forty-seven, and very busy. He remained active till his last years, I think. Too active sometimes’.

I caught the drift of allusion there - she was likely referring to her younger siblings. I looked at her, raising my eyebrow, and she nodded.

‘Edie, dear, would you be so kind as to fetch the box from my bedroom, the one with the green ribbon?’ she asked, turning to her sister. Edith nodded, sprang lightly on her feet, and ran out of the room in a gently rustling swirl of pale sage and grey, her long wavy hair of golden-brown flying behind her. Georgiana watched her fondly, like a mother, and turned to me.

‘Our mother, Mr.Graves, has been unwell since Monty was born. I am not sure how much he had told you, but when it happened, she changed - and, when he caught that terrible fever being but two years of age, I thought she might drive herself mad. She’d spend days and nights by his bed, and she was already with Edward at the time - and when he got better, it was the time for her to give birth to my brother, and she was so weak that father was frightened for her. I rarely saw him that scared - he loved her, but he never knew how to show her that. I tried to help, of course, but I was four, I couldn’t do much - it was more than William did, anyway. I think he earnestly wished Monty dead, he said awful things then. My poor mother, she barely could cope with us three, with her nervous disposition…and my father never stopped visiting her. Edward once said that father viewed it all like some kind of a medical experiment, but I refused to believe it. Now I think he might have been right. With each consecutive pregnancy she became…slightly different. She doted on Monty, she adored Edward, and when Arthur came five years after, she was almost unrecognizable, so elated, so emotional, that she could hardly sleep. Laudanum appeared when Arthur was two, I think. And just when we thought, well…there would be no more children, for mother was growing weaker - Edith was born, and then - Ethel. The doctor who treated mother during her last pregnancies, told her quite harshly that it would be too much for her. She was forty-seven with Edith, and fifty-one with Ethel. I remember what he said as if it was yesterday. He said, it would finish her off - if not in childbirth, then a couple of years after, for she wasn’t quite alright. Father just laughed it off - but when Ethel was five, she attempted to end her life with laudanum. The death of her mother, my grandmother, was a blow - she never got truly past it. While I was growing up, she tried that three times, at least. I was so scared, but I had to guard my siblings, to…shield them from this horror ... .Ah, Edie, there you are!’

Edith fluttered back into the room, a brightly colored box with a green ribbon in her hands. She looked at me, frowned, shot a discontent glance at her sister and said:

‘Honestly, Georgie! You could, at least pour Mr.Graves some tea before frightening him to death - look how pale he is! Is that your idea of hospitality, Mrs. Hough?’

Georgiana laughed, and the room became brighter in an instant. Edith shook her head disapprovingly and, having poured the tea, sat beside me on an ottoman.

‘You know, Mr. Graves...I sometimes wonder if anyone knows how wonderful he was. Monty, that is. Besides us- do you think they know? ‘

Our eyes met, and I replied, quietly,

‘I think everyone who ever knew him, knew it, Miss Edith. He was... extraordinary. Especially for a man of his profession. Barristers can be unpleasant, rash, haughty - but he never was that. ‘

Edith smiled, sadly.

‘Never. He was the kindest, most considerate, compassionate and honest boy’. Georgiana said ‘Just like Edward and Arthur. They are so alike, it’s unimaginable. I think, in terms of our family, they are...were...the glue holding us together. When Edward left...’

‘Left? Was kicked out, you mean’

An unfamiliar voice came from the door. A tall, slender young man with dark chestnut hair stood there. For a moment, my thoughts froze- it seemed Monty was back from the otherworld.

‘Arthur!’ Edith exclaimed, rushing towards him in a soft flutter of organza and silk ‘We weren’t expecting you so soon!’

He embraced her and looked at Georgiana guiltily.

‘I am so sorry, Georgie. But I felt I had to come earlier. So as soon as they let me go, I dashed here. Please don’t hold that against me - I missed you. ‘

She smiled.

‘ I am always happy to see you, you know that. I just wish you wouldn’t come creeping like a cat’.

Arthur chuckled and embraced her. She looked at him with a motherly smile, and I thought, how wonderful that must be - to have a family like that, to be loved the way Georgiana loved her siblings. Monty’s voice echoed in my head ‘Georgiana was my rock, bless her…’ he said, and I could see why he loved her so much. She truly was the embodiment of dependability and care. They were all so different, in a way, but so similar in bearing, warmth and genuine humanity, so like him. I could see Monty in Edith’s fleeting smile, Georgiana’s serious eyes, I could hear his inflections in Edward’s voice and now I perceived him in Arthur’s slender grace. God, I missed him, and it was hard to admit, as it turned out. I missed him painfully, like those bereft of rain dream of it in the scorching desert. I missed him, and being there, among his family, was both comforting and excruciating. I tried steadying my mind with breathing, but each breath echoed with sharp stings in my chest and back.

‘Arthur, where are your manners?’ Edith reprimanded him softly ‘We have a guest’.

Arthur straightened up and blushed slightly.

‘Arthur Druitt’ he said, shaking my hand ‘Pleased to meet you ‘

‘Lawrence Graves’ I said, shaking his hand ‘The pleasure is all mine’.

Judging by his expression, Arthur was eager to know more, but hesitated to ask directly. His sisters exchanged glances and Edith said,

‘Lawrence here was Monty’s friend, Arthur. That is why he came...’

‘I know I should have come sooner’ I hastened to add ‘But his death knocked the ground from beneath my feet. I was looking for him since early December, and to no avail. So I dared contacting Inspector Abberline, although I knew him only by reputation. December passed in a blink of an eye, and I was informed...on the 31st. I was quite ill afterwards, and...’

‘I understand’ Arthur said kindly ‘We were all shaken. I remember staring into space for a good quarter of an hour after seeing that article. Just to think - they never told us, directly, I mean. No one ever contacted us, and no one ever asked anything. Is that how the police work nowadays?’

‘William told us in January, you see. On the third. Well..I say, told - but it was more of...a note. They have found Montague in the river, don’t ask’. There were all those condolences, letters, notes, and someone sent flowers. Monty’s friends... Some were very kind. Henry Lonsdale...and that nice young man...’

‘Arthur’ Edith said ‘ I remember him, for he was called Arthur. And now I remember, his last name was Lawrence! What a strange coincidence!’

‘They were very polite, very sincere, I think. I was too shaken to talk to them, but my husband did. He will tell you when he comes down - he is working upstairs, on a sermon, I think. But those days, in January, were the darkest - I cannot tell you how lost we were, how overwhelmed’.

Arthur stroked her hand.

‘I have to say this’ he said slowly.’While we were all trying to realize what had happened, William seemed strangely withdrawn. I know, he had to go through all the proceedings, but I have never heard a word from him. He dragged me there at one point, to assist with the funeral, and I will never forget that moment... I’ve never told you that, Georgie. The funeral was so rushed, so hectic, and when we were ready to carry it out of the chapel, the lid...it must have been weakly bolted...it snapped. They had to open it and examine it, and William shuddered - I saw the fear in his eyes. He paid them to fasten it tighter, and he told me not to look, for it wasn’t quite Monty...something like that. It surprised me, for I knew that everybody marveled at how recognizable he looked, still. They told me that all Monty’s belongings would be buried with him, that it was agreed upon, for William had no interest in his watch or gloves, but I swear to God, while they were fumbling with the lid, William took something. I suspect it was the watch. ‘ he concluded darkly.

Georgiana gasped.

‘Are you certain? But, Arthur...I know you two didn’t always see eye to eye, but...’

Arthur wasn’t lying. I saw the watch myself, in William’s study. I sighed. It was my time to talk.

‘You are right’ I said ‘The watch...he still has it. I saw it with my own eyes. I supposed that they had merely given him all they had found with Monty, but I was later told that William took nothing. I went to Bournemouth in February, to talk to him. It was very foolish of me, and I fell ill shortly after, but the fact remains- he took the watch.’

‘Father would be furious’ Edith said ‘ Does uncle Robert know? James? Have you told anyone?’

Arthur looked at her incredulously.

‘What would you have me tell them, Edie? Look, William just stole the watch? Uncle Robert would be appalled even to think of it. He was beyond himself, Monty was his favorite nephew, after all. As for James...well, he kept quiet. For a reason, I think. They are both solicitors, William and James...working together has its...flaws, so to speak ‘.

Silence followed, and I could feel their emotions changing, thoughts beating wildly around the room like a flock of birds locked up in a hot iron cage. Finally Georgiana said,

‘Why did you never mention that, Arthur? I am at a loss to explain any of that, and the worst thing is, it somehow feels true. William told us so much, I think, in actions, not in words- but I dread asking the question burning my very brain: do we know the truth? ‘

‘I have to admit, we don’t ‘ Arthur said heavily ‘ Of course, the coroner ruled it out as a suicide...’

‘No, he didn’t ‘ I objected ‘he was made to. ‘

I told them everything I knew - Diplock’s final verdict, Jane’s suspicions, Abberline’s concerns. I have mentioned Edward’s thoughts, and William’s erratic behaviour at the station. Everything that has been driving me mad for months, was now laid bare. I felt a strange relief - finally, my thoughts were clear.

Arthur’s face turned ashen, Edith was visibly shocked. Georgiana, however, remained calm. Now I realized why Monty kept referring to her as his rock - that woman had extraordinary self -control. She looked at me, and asked, quietly:

‘Are you suggesting William had a hand in Montague’s death, Mr. Graves? Because if you are, I have to agree with you. My brother was never an easy man to handle. He was too much of a dark horse in our family, to try and puzzle him out. But before Monty died, I could reason with him, we were on good terms, although, God is my witness, I will never forgive him for admitting mother to Brooke’s, or denying Edward. It is, however, his sin to bear, and not mine. But what I cannot deny is that William is, deep inside, a God fearing man. He would never kill his brother, no matter how badly suited they were. We will never know the truth, I’m afraid’.

That was exactly Abberline’s logic.

‘That’s what Abberline certainly thinks,’ I noted ‘But at least, we are of the same mind here. I understand how difficult it must be for you all to hear what I am saying, for it is your brother - and he will always be your brother, no matter what. Both of them will be - whereas I am but a stranger who barges in, sharing his strange and frightening theories, involving your brother. And when I leave, you will have to cope with this on your own, and again, it will not be easy. I have known Monty for almost two years, and he was the closest friend I have ever had. I have thought, in my naivete, that I really knew him - but there is so much that I know only from his own words, and it is so little. Forgive me for asking what I am going to ask, but I have to know. ‘

‘Ask’ Arthur said, his eyes glistening ‘You have a right to know. In fact, I think you are the first person to do that. They came and went, his colleagues, his cricket opponents, his acquaintances, saying the same things over and over again - he was a decent man, he was a fine sportsman, he was this and he was that, he will be sorely missed. None ever asked anything. Even Lonsdale, that nervous wreck of a man, kept mumbling something shallow. Lawrence, I think, couldn’t even face us - he was crushed, I could tell by the blotches on his note. Grief works in different ways, that I realize, but it all seemed so strange to me. So many people knew him, yet none really did, if you see what I mean’.

‘Precisely’ Edith said ‘We had to endure endless words and visits, and I thought we would never see the end of them. I expected Monty’s friends to be completely different, you see. They were all…blank. It looked like they never actually cared about him. They wanted him to be efficient, keep working, turn up, solve the problems - they needed him, but they didn’t care if he was alright. ‘

‘What pained me most’ Georgiana said quietly ‘was that we were made to believe he did this to himself, and everyone kept repeating that. I wondered why - why was that the only thing of importance, when there was so much to say about Monty! I had the strangest feeling - it felt as if he had never existed, and they were trying to find any suitable words to say. I knew my brother, Lawrence, and I can vouch for his sensibility and sanity. He had willpower to match his intellect, and even though mother’s illness aggrieved him, he never, not for a single moment, let himself wallow in misery or fear of madness. We might have been frightened, all of us, and God knows we were, but Monty was our anchor in that storm. His reasoning, his compassion and his wisdom guided us all through that ordeal - that, and Edward’s calm thinking. William might have denied him entry, William might have renounced him - but Edward never, ever left us. He was there, always - and still is, writing to me constantly. He mentioned in his last letter that he met you and the Inspector, and of course, he told me about the scene William made at the station. Knowing William, it wasn’t difficult to believe that - since childhood, he thought the best way to prove his righteousness was to make a scene. ‘

Arthur nodded and recounted, painfully, how terrible his brother behaved when Edward came to visit and announce his engagement, and Edith shuddered.

‘Oh I remember that…what a terrible, terrible thing! Mother was overjoyed to see him, and I know, she’d forgiven him for anything, and would overlook the fact Christina was Catholic, just because it made her son so happy. She was never as prejudiced as William, I think. Father was - but she always said that in marriage, people must choose love over mundane things. Was she happy with father, I often wondered - but never dared to ask. Can people be happy in marriage at all, truly happy?’

Georgiana smiled and shook her head.

‘They can, I’m sure. Well, I am.’

‘I am so glad to hear it, my darling,’ a stern, yet very lively voice said, and Reverend Hough appeared. He kissed Edith on the forehead, embraced Arthur heartily and turned to me.

‘I am so happy you came, Mr. Graves’ he said, shaking my hand,’Tell me how I can be of service’.

Reverend Hough was destined to become a bishop one day, and he did become exactly that. He was four years younger than his wife, but they looked exactly opposite - due to his somber features and serious expression. He was tall, thin and lanky, and black made him even more gaunt, but his smile was warm, and his eyes twinkled when he laughed. All in all, they made quite a handsome couple.

‘There is something that only you, as a man of the cloth, can tell me, Reverend’ I admitted ‘ But I am not quite sure how to ask’.

William Hough looked at me attentively, took his glasses off and put them on again, perching them neatly on his long nose.

‘I think I know what it’s all about, Mr. Graves. But let me speak as a brother in law rather than a clergyman. Montague did believe in God. He believed in higher justice, in reason and he never doubted that there were some higher powers watching over us. He was not a zealot, but a very sincere, very serious young man - and although he was a bit older than me, he never looked down upon me. God forgive me, but my namesake did sometimes - and still does. But Montague - Montague would have been a fine priest, if he ever decided against being a barrister. The Church would have gained a compassionate, caring and inspiring shepherd in Montague. Of that I am quite certain. He cared deeply about people. Of course, to know that, you’d have to know him - as a man, as a person- and it would take quite some time, for he wasn’t that easy to decipher. He was a thoughtful, quiet kind of a man, but when something bothered him, he became a lion, defending the lamb, if you get my drift. ‘

William Hough was quite a poet inside, I thought - but these were the things I’d have felt myself, and witnessed myself - and to have them spoken of meant that I wasn’t wrong about Monty. How could I be?

‘When we heard the news, we were devastated. He was so full of life, so bright, so young - but the best thing they said about him was ‘decent’, as if no other words ever existed. It pained me greatly, I must say. I have known him for four years, and I had more things to say about him than those who knew him longer. He believed in people, Mr. Graves. And I think, - perhaps it’s strange to hear such things from a clergyman - that some people in his circle didn’t deserve it. He was intuitive, Monty, he knew how to choose people, how to communicate with them. He had this ability to see people through, and it looked as though he had many friends, but I wonder whether any of them really knew him. Did you?’

‘William!’ Georgiana said indignantly ‘ Be civil, you’re not in church. Do forgive him, Lawrence, he didn’t want to be rude. ‘

William Hough blushed, which made him look like a boiled cucumber.

‘I am ever so sorry, I simply meant…’

‘It’s quite alright’ I smiled ‘ I know what you mean. I saw him in various circumstances, and sometimes he was distraught, sometimes - cheerful, sometimes - too tired to keep his guard up. And I know he wasn’t afraid to be vulnerable. Monty…was exceptional. And I am not saying this because…I loved him, but because he truly was’.

William nodded and sipped some tea. Georgiana sighed, and patted him on the shoulder.

‘I have a feeling’ she said, and her voice sounded almost exactly like Monty’s ‘that you need to see Arthur Lawrence. He was Monty’s friend, and neighbour, much like poor Henry, but they were closer, I think. Do you remember Arthur, William?’

‘Most certainly, dear. I have his address somewhere, let me fetch it. I won’t be a moment’ and William left the room, returning briefly. In his hand, he held an envelope.

‘ I am sorry, it is a bit crumpled, I found it behind my books’ he said apologetically ‘But I believe Georgiana is right - if you wish to know more about Montague’s work life, Lawrence is the man you need. Be careful though - when I saw him last, he looked distraught and quite…not himself. It was only a brief meeting, a chance one, can you imagine. I met him at the train station - but I don’t think he’s past his grieving’.

Arthur Lawrence had a wonderful hand, and the address was very telligible, but if I wanted to get there, I certainly had to leave.

‘ Thank you so much for receiving me, reverend. Georgiana, I wish you all the happiness of a mother to be, and I do hope life is kind to all of you. I should go, although I do not want to - for you have made me feel at home, and that is something I rarely feel.’

Edith rummaged in a box she brought downstairs and, kissing me on the cheek, gave me a thin envelope.

‘He would want that to belong to you’ she said simply ‘Open it when you feel you miss him’.

‘I do hope we meet again’ Arthur said, shaking my hand again ‘I do wish you good luck. Please, keep me…us informed. For Monty’s sake’.

‘God bless you’ William Hough said finally ‘I will be praying for you, Mr. Graves. God’s justice be served’.

*

Soon enough, the train was carrying me towards Charing Cross, and the sky was already darkening. I hoped to reach Kensington before five, and somehow I did. Finding Arthur Lawrence wasn’t that difficult, I must admit - and soon enough I was there, in his office.

“How can I be of service…sir?’

Arthur Lawrence walked in and froze in the doorway. Fair-haired, of middling height, he wore a strict gray suit and dark-green tie. His eyes were greenish-blue, and he looked slightly taken aback.

‘Do forgive me’ he finally managed to say ‘For a moment I mistook you for…my friend’.

‘Mistake easily made’ I replied ‘ I have been told we looked similar. My name is Lawrence Graves.’

Arthur sat opposite me, pale and tired. Augustin would definitely say that poor fellow hadn’t been sleeping well for quite a time. He looked at me attentively and said, carefully choosing words:

‘ You came because of him, haven’t you? Montague?’

‘Yes’ I replied ‘ But I didn’t come to pester you with questions - I can see it hurts you to even speak his name. I have come here because Georgiana Hough, Montague’s sister, advised me to visit you. I would have notified you otherwise, but it is a pressing matter. I was told you were neighbours…and that you knew him well. I was his friend, Arthur. And I still cannot believe he died, moreover - that he did this himself. Please, help me’.

‘Help you? How? What do you wish to know?’

‘Anything you wish to tell me about him, his work life…people that envied him, perhaps…’

Lawrence looked genuinely surprised.

‘I don’t know what to tell you, Mr. Graves. I knew Montague well enough to tell you that he wasn’t the kind of person…I mean, he was generally liked by our peers. People who are envied, usually behave differently, I am sure you know what I mean. There were people in The Temple, who were, so to speak, high-born, or rich as Croesus, but they were simply that. They had nothing but their standing or money - whereas Montague had much more to him than good looks or social graces. He inspired respect for many things - his debating skills, his humility, his character, his cheerfulness and nobility. There was not a single soul among our peers that envied him - I am certain of that. Some chose their circle by birth, others - by standing, some - by mutual interests. We were alike in many respects, both of us coming from middle class families with many children. We shared views, but I lacked his eloquence, his conviction, his willpower at times. I was quite clumsy, I must say - something that can hardly be remedied with age. But he was different, graceful, light on his feet, equally kind and respectful with everyone - he didn’t care about status or money. He was there for studies, he was there for the greater good, clearly. You might say he idealised the barrister’s profession a little bit, but in truth, he knew well what the price was. He worked hard and it paid off - and I think, it eventually led to his demise. I don’t believe he took his own life - only a fool would dare suggest that. No, Montague was too good for it.’

He stood up and fell silent, observing the people in the street. It seemed for a moment that he was debating whether to be more candid with me. I felt his tension, it was almost palpable in the air, becoming denser by the minute. His breath was heavier now, and his heartbeat was close to hysterical. Silence rang in my ears, suffocating me, and finally I dared to tap him gently on the shoulder.

‘Arthur?’

He turned to me, his face - the mask of pain and despair.

‘I idolised him, Mr.Graves! I tried to be like him, I was in awe of him. The day we met, - I still remember that day- we almost bumped into each other in the hallway, and he was so quick and so effortless in catching the folder I have dropped, mid-air- with a single swift motion, that I didn’t even know how to react. I mean...I have seen things in Cambridge, I wasn’t bad at sports either, but Montague made it look almost...magical. I thanked him, and he smiled, you know - that easy smile he had,- and looking at the name on the folder, said simply,

‘I am very glad to meet you, Mr. Lawrence. ‘

‘Do call me Arthur’

‘I’m Montague. But you can call me Monty, if you wish’.

I wasn’t bold enough that day to invite him over for tea- but he was. He was being polite, I told myself, he was simply being polite. I liked him instantly, you see. In the world I scarcely knew, the world of pompous, serious and self - centered, Monty was a breath of fresh air. Sunshine, peeking out of a cloud. He was different, and being who he was, he couldn’t be dry or suspicious, or boring. I am somehow certain you know what I mean’.

Oh yes. I knew precisely what he meant. I’ve never been to the Inner Temple, but I’ve known my share of those who have. Monty definitely was different. Alive. Warm. Likeable. Genuinely good. Not nice - for he never wore a mask, but naturally, absolutely good.

Arthur stood there, by the window, eyes closed, pain written all over his face. I didn’t dare ask anything, as his grief was obvious, and having been through the similar depth of it, I knew too well how he felt. He spoke again, in a minute or two, and his voice betrayed him.

‘What does it all matter, Mr. Graves? ‘ he asked, hoarsely, turning to me. Tears were running down his pale cheeks. ‘ What does it matter now, when he’s gone? Oh how stupid I was then, how slow to act, and how I despise myself for being a coward! I loved him, I loved him madly, so madly that I still cannot understand how I passed all the exams then. I had to resort to opium once, when the pain was too maddening, and I couldn’t sleep. Oh, I did sleep that night, but I wish I hadn’t. Those dreams still haunt me, but I would be subjected to a bitter punishment for having such dreams. Only in dreams can one be so blissfully happy, and I have been - but reality crushed my dreams to pieces. I wish I had told him of my feelings earlier, and I have written so many letters to him, and never dared sending them. For fear, Mr. Graves. You see, he was brave, Monty. I wasn’t. He could challenge everyone in debates, he could be so convincing, so charismatic, so bright- and no wonder he was so successful. I saw how entranced by him they were when he defended that poor madman, I was there that day. I congratulated him first. He shook my hand, and briefly, I even embraced him, as any friend would do, and it was bliss, Mr. Graves. I don’t think he knew of my feelings, but I knew he was taken. Instantly. There was something changed about him, and let me tell you, I was so jealous then. But then again, he never was mine. He belonged to me in dreams, and dreams alone. But you know, I still wonder sometimes…’

‘Who stole him from you?’ I asked quietly. He shuddered at my question, but nodded.

‘Do you really wish to know?’

It was either my tone or a sudden insight, but Arthur looked at me incredulously, shocked and I felt his pain resurfacing.

‘You’ he said finally, his voice heavy as a lead coffin lid ‘I should have guessed…no one else ever tried…finding out the truth.’

‘ I am sorry’ I said, and I really felt it- Arthur was a decent fellow, and his feelings were raw, and familiar, and I knew that this agony of his would last for years - not only because he loved so deeply, but because he never dared attesting to it. Losing someone you loved always feels unbearable, but losing someone you loved in secret, is a torture. With this weight upon them, people usually live their lives alone, marrying out of fear of dying alone.

He was so young, this fair haired, pale barrister, so brokenhearted - that his emotions swept over the room, and for a moment it felt as if we were amidst the frozen wastes of Mary Shelley’s novel.

‘Do not, I pray, take it personally ‘ Arthur said quietly ‘I am happy that Monty was happy for the time he had with you. I don’t blame either of you for my misfortune, Mr. Graves. I blame myself solely. But I was no match for him, not in boldness, not in outspokenness. I was raised by a very astute solicitor and a preacher’s daughter. I am, in fact, a reverend’s brother. My feelings are supposed to be a burden, and never break out of their cages. Be an Englishman, my father said, in every dire situation, be, above all, an Englishman. And I tried, Mr. Graves. Look where it got me’. He laughed, but it was a bitter laugh.

‘You had much in common, Arthur’ I said ‘Solicitors and reverends, judges and priests, big families and idealistic nature. I remember you- you didn’t see me, of course, but I remember you. Spring, 1887, Old Bailey…’

He looked amazed.

‘Of course! How could I forget! We were supposed to have tea then…but we couldn’t figure out the convenient time. Ironic, isn’t it - Lawrence loves Monty who loves Lawrence… but there’s one thing that I think might have changed Monty’s perception of relationships quite a bit. ‘

‘What was it?’

Arthur frowned slightly, and, sitting down by me, said:

‘Back in 1885, the very year we both were called to the Bar, London was on fire- metaphorically, of course. I don’t know if you remember that, but William Stead’s article and subsequent investigation have changed law…and the way people viewed the question of…relationships between men, in particular. The very same year, a scandal erupted, involving one Lawrence Arthur Adamson. ‘

That definitely resounded in my head, but I couldn’t remember the details. Arthur sighed and seeing my quizzical expression, continued:

‘We both knew him. You might say, he was admitted to the Temple slightly earlier than both of us, in 1881. He was a very peculiar person, Adamson, the only son of the Grand Seneschal of the Isle of Man. Most of us were too below him, to be noticed, I think. With such people, there is an air of superiority, a sense of…’

‘Entitlement?’ I suggested. Arthur nodded.

‘Pompous entitlement. Self-aggrandizing selfishness. Take your pick. Adamson could be convivial, civil and charming, but you couldn’t help but feel…evaluated. Examined, measured, rarely appraised. He took no notice of me, but he noticed Montague, which wasn’t too surprising. I know they were on friendly terms for a time, but then it stopped - as if something happened, and months later, the scandal came about. Adamson barely evaded punishment - they shipped him off to Australia, on the pretend grounds of pleurisy. Pleurisy, I’ll be damned - the reason was him being caught with the sons of the Earl of Rosslyn. ‘

The scandal certainly could have been huge, loud and potentially harmful - to all parties involved. But the Earl was powerful and of course, did his best to smother it. The case was much aggravated by the fact of both the heir and the second son of the Earl being sixteen and seventeen at the time. Arthur went on, describing the thing, and I kept thinking that the year itself was a difficult one for Monty, with or without the scandal mentioned: his father died, his family was slowly unraveling, and he was getting ready to become a barrister. On top of that, the man he knew outed as a homosexual, and the laws he was expected to abide by and practice, changed again, dramatically.

‘So you see, Monty was shaken by that ‘Arthur explained ‘ And I think, it was partly the realization of his closeness to losing everything if he kept up the company of Adamson. The mere acquaintance with that man could’ve ruined Monty - were he less careful.’

Something in his tone sounded strange. Perhaps, it was the wording rather than intonation, but it made me uneasy.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Simply what I said. Adamson was quick in forging contacts, the man had charm to be sure, and people flocked around him as they usually do for those of high standing - for future’s sake, you understand. Montague was quite popular, but he never made a thing of it, he just did what he came to do, whereas Adamson…he was there for the sake of glamour. I think he knew too well that he’d be pardoned whatever he did. He noticed Montague the moment he stepped into the lecture hall. He was entranced, I could see it. He started asking around, and he got his answers. Whatever he heard about Montague, must have been to his liking, because soon enough he received an invitation from Adamson. I know because I was there. ‘

Was that a hint? Were they ever close? Lawrence seemed to have guessed my doubts and fears.

‘There was nothing between us, not then, not after. I told you - I suffered in the silence of my rooms. I was there, in his chambers, that evening - because we were working on a problem one of our mentors gave us to solve. Funnily enough, the solution was the same as in the case of Black vs Power - insanity. I couldn’t see it, and Montague generously helped me to sort it out. That’s when the invitation arrived with a maid. A simple card, with elaborately written initials and time. Nothing more, nothing less. He frowned when he saw the card, and he didn’t say a thing - until I asked him if he was planning to attend. He shook his head and resumed the explanation. That was it - and the invitations came twice more. I picked up the courage to ask him why he declined the invitations. He said he didn’t decline it, he simply ignored it. And then added that Adamson’s flair for parties couldn’t do him much good, no matter how well-connected the attendees were. That was his way of putting things - he could’ve called them entitled hedonists, but he didn’t - he was careful with words, even in the freedom of his own chambers. I learned from him, I must say. But that was the day for me - I finally realized that I had no chance at all. He never said a word against relationships between men, in fact, he had no objections towards it. He actually blamed his classicist education for the freedom in opinions, but he’d never allow himself to form any relationship while we were still studying. While his chambers were by King’s Bench Walk, Montague would remain single, and even more hardworking - for he knew that reputation worked miracles in the law circles. He was prepared to sacrifice his private life if needed. And he did, successfully - before he met you. So, you see, Mr.Graves - he really was impeccable. Irreproachable. Too good for the ordinary destiny. And now he’s gone - and I still cannot sleep at night, for I know something nobody knows. ‘

Lawrence took a deep breath and said, sadly.

‘I saw him that night. The very night he disappeared. I turned up unannounced, at his door. Foolish of me, but I knew that everybody would’ve been out - except him. He never liked parties. He opened the door and let me in, and I noticed he was getting dressed. He was polite and happy to see me, but he complained he had to go in a matter of hours. I told him everything I wanted to tell him since the day we met, and it shocked him. He looked at me, wistfully, and that was all I needed, really. But this whole situation was too much for me, so I…I dared to…’

He never finished the sentence, but his voice became raspy, and I could notice his nervousness. He must have kissed Monty - and left. I knew too well how it must have felt, so I didn’t say a thing.

‘You think I left, don’t you?’ he asked bitterly ‘I left his chambers, but I didn’t leave King’s Bench Walk. I knew I had to calm down, I walked up and down the street, and I saw him leaving. I saw him going out and I followed - ‘

‘Are you certain? Henry Lonsdale told me there was a carriage waiting for Montague that evening’.

Arthur frowned.

‘There wasn’t a carriage. Monty left home at about five, and headed east, towards Middle Temple lane, then crossed into Fleet street, towards the Strand. It was getting darker, but he was a fast walker, and it took him around twenty minutes to reach Charing Cross. He must have used the District Railway, - I remember him mentioning Hammersmith. So, he should have arrived there by six, certainly. I might not remember how I got home, but I do remember that there was no carriage. Henry Lonsdale - I do remember him, albeit vaguely, he wasn’t one of the Inner Temple fellows, surely - must be mistaken. ‘

‘He told me he saw Monty on the fourth’ I said quietly

‘That is complete nonsense!’ Arthur exclaimed ‘ I have no difficulties with remembering dates, Mr.Graves. Lonsdale, if I remember correctly, lodged at 4 King’s bench walk. He used to complain that his windows overlooked the inner yard, not the entrance. He could not have seen Monty leave. I am positive about it. Monty’s windows overlooked the street. Either Lonsdale is lying, or he’s mistaken. I can prove my story is true. Look’, he produced a thin leather-bound book from his vest’s inner pocket and handed it to me.

‘Go on’ he said ‘There’s a bookmark there. I have nothing to hide now, do I?’

I opened the marked page. The book was a journal, a diary of sorts, and the page said,

Dec.1

What a blithering idiot. Shouldn’t have visited MD. Never setting foot at KBW ever again. Why on earth did that seem a good idea? This will haunt me forever.’

‘You see? I’d ask Lonsdale again, if I were you. He could not have seen Montague on the fourth, for a very obvious reason - he quit law in 1887, therefore his chambers were free. Perhaps, he quit for the best - he was quite a scatterbrain, that doesn’t sit well with law. Knowing Montague - and I believe I did - he would never visit anyone on a day he was expected somewhere. He might have confused the dates, of course, but the story is either a fable, or a lie - and for that, a man aiming for a clerical career, must have had a motive. I am a barrister, forgive me. I think in multiple ways. But again, do check - and please, let me know when you find out the truth. And rest assured I am not holding any grudges against you. I hope we can be friends’ he added a bit too hastily, and I replied that I’d be happy to be his friend, to which he smiled gratefully. He was kind enough to walk me to South Kensington Station, and while the train was carrying me back home, I kept pondering over everything I had heard. I had no reason to mistrust Lawrence, who was completely honest with me, whereas Lonsdale’s story seemed more and more confused with time passing.

I had to tell Abberline, I had to make sense of it all - but I was so tired, that I crept upstairs as quietly as I could, and, finally allowing myself to stretch on my bed, resting my back, I remembered about Edith’s parting gift. The simple brown envelope was right there, by my bed, on a table - I opened it, and my hand trembled slightly. The picture glided out of it - a portrait of Monty, in his college years, or perhaps, university - beautifully made, with an inscription on the back.

William Savage, London, 1877

So, it was the Oxfordian Monty - full of hopes and dreams, glowing slightly - at least to my eye. I felt a lump in my throat, and blinked rapidly to stop the tears ready to spill - and through that haze, it seemed to me that Monty smiled.

Chapter seventeen

Summer 1889

“If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything.”

Mark Twain

‘He lied?’ Abberline was furious ‘But why would a clergyman lie?’

We were all there, at the pub that morning. Abberline, pacing around the table nervously, Molly and George, constantly bringing in more food and tea, Solomon, frowning from across the table, and Augustin, who, as it seemed, preferred Whitechapel to Mortlake.

‘There is nothing I can do about it’ he said unapologetically ‘Mortlake is a den of murderers and poisoners, and I am so relieved I can be somewhere else. Of course, you can disagree with me, but - although Whitechapel (he pronounced it in a slightly French manner - Why-shapel), is dangerous to some, it is certainly not to me. So let us leave that subject and revenons a nos moutons, shall we?’

And to our sheep we did return. The news I’ve brought from Blackheath and Kensington were, to put it mildly, a sensation. Everybody pitied poor Lawrence, of course, but the testimony he gave was absolutely unexpected.

‘Well, Inspector’ Solomon said ‘A clergyman, or not, one lies when one is made to.’

‘Or has to, because he’s scared to bits’ Molly suggested ‘ I would stick with that. That Lonsdale, he knows them lot, the Druitt folks, you say - could someone scare him into lying?’

‘Bah, it’s simple’ Augustin smirked ‘That will be William - we already know he is good at that, don’t we?’

Abberline frowned and glared at him.

‘Prove it was William, and I’ll make you a constable’

‘I already have a job, Abberline. Merci, but I don’t need another one. But if you wish, I can try. The man knows the family, the family knows the man. William needs his witnesses, justement in case. So, knowing Lonsdale was Montague’s neighbour, he scares him or bribes him to lie - and, mind you it is not a very big lie, just saying a couple of things if needed.’

‘So if William knows anything about our boy Henry here, he has something to make him say anything, is that whatcha sayin?’

‘Exactly, George. The thing is…what might he know?’

‘Knowing William’ Abberline said slowly ‘It most probably is something quite inappropriate about Reverend Lonsdale. But it’s all guesswork, we need him to tell us. Is anybody willing to go to Dorset?’

‘There’ll be no need’ Molly said ‘If that’s the same Henry that’s been here, eating George’s pies, he’ll turn up sooner or later, mark my word. Let me go check something’

She left only to return in half an hour, smiling triumphantly.

‘What did I tell you? That same Henry is in town, so it will be your job, Inspector. You can always invite him over for a pleasant chat. ‘

Abberline shook his head and sighed:

‘I don’t know how you do it, but I will ask the boys to fetch the good reverend, and you’d better come too, Lawrence. As I recall, our friend Henry is a bit of a wobble, so your calm demeanor might soothe him just enough to spill the beans.’

‘You forgot to thank the lady, Abberline!’ Solomon called out with a laugh ‘ And a lady never forgets that!’

‘Do forgive me’ Abberline took Molly’s hand and gallantly pressed it to his lips. “I don’t know what I would do without you, Miss Molly,” he said with a dazzling smile. Molly’s lips trembled clearly suppressing a smile, but she bowed her head slightly and said, quite regally:

‘You are pardoned, and may leave if you so wish’.

Her laughter echoed in my ears still when we reached the police station. PC Parker, a twenty-something year old young man with mousy hair and a nose that’s been broken at least twice, met us outside.

‘What is it, Parker?’ Abberline asked wearily. Parker took a deep breath and blurted out:

‘There’s a commotion inside, sir, a calamity! ‘

‘What on earth are you blabbering about, Parker? Stand up straight and explain yourself!’

‘There is a gent, sir, and another one, which knew Mary Kelly, sir, and a wobbly one! They are all waiting for ye’.

‘When will they learn to express themselves properly’ Abberline sighed ‘ So, there are some men waiting for me, is that right, Parker? A man who knew Mary Kelly, and a nervous one. Is that right? ‘

‘Aye, sir. And another one, who looks like a thundercloud, sir’.

‘And the newspapers promised us sunny days…tell them all to wait, will you? Let’s use the back door, Lawrence - the gents sure sound frightening’.

Little did I know that the aforementioned gents, as different as they were, would prove quite a challenge to overcome. As you may have guessed, they were all waiting for Abberline, almost rubbing elbows in the station lobby - a crammed space, full of sergeants running about, people coming and going, and an all-pervading smell of sweat, unwashed bodies and, quite surprisingly, tea.

‘Lawrence, do me a favor’ Abberline asked, taking his hat off and hanging his jacket on a chair ‘ Use your stealth skills and venture out - I trust your eyes more than Parker’s judgement. He’s a good lad, but he’s easily scared.’

‘I think there would be no need,’ I replied, nodding at the door. ‘Listen’

Someone was surely stomping outside the room. A muffled argument reached us moments before the door almost flew off hinges.

‘No, sir, you mustn’t sir, the Inspector will see you in order of precedence, sir, please’.

‘Damn your orders,’ a familiar voice barked, ‘I shall see him right now!’

Abberline shot an apprehensive glance at me, and I noticed a slight, almost indeterminable, yet clear, tinge of panic in his eyes. He recognized the voice, as did I, and none of us was looking forward to meeting that man again.

The door flew open, and William Druitt appeared, visibly enraged, his face almost purple, his eyes wild with fury.

‘Mr. Druitt’ Abberline did his best to sound polite/ ‘How may I…’

William stormed closer, and I could swear he saw nothing but Abberline in the room. With a disgusted expression, he threw a crumpled newspaper on the table, as if it was something rotten.

‘Explain!’

Abberline picked up the newspaper, frowned and began reading. His face fell, then became paler.

‘I do not understand’ he finally said ‘I never said anything to anyone. Neither did my colleagues.’

‘How did this vile thing end up in the press, then?’ William shouted ‘ It must have been one of your lot!’

‘What is it?’ I asked quietly, in spite of myself ‘ Show me’.

Abberline handed me the wretched newspaper.

‘I have no idea how that happened’ he repeated ‘The case was not even ours, that’s for the T division to answer. Superintendent Fisher’s lot. We have nothing to do with it. ‘ He sounded calmer now, and his confidence seemed to have cooled William down.

‘Fisher, you say? I’ve been there. They said you’d know’.

‘Mr. Druitt, I know absolutely nothing about this. And I do not hold dominion over the press.’

I read the article. It wasn’t a big one, but one name caught my eye.

‘That is absurd’ I said, perhaps a tad louder than I meant. William’s head turned towards me, swiftly, as the snake’s.

‘You’ he breathed out hoarsely ‘You’.

‘Mr.Graves is my personal guest’ Abberline said coldly ‘And I would advise you to leave now, Mr. Druitt, before your behavior might, as we say here, in Whitechapel, do you brown’.

‘Are you kicking me out, Inspector?’ William growled ‘The Commissioner will hear about this!’

Abberline sighed.

‘He might also hear about your appalling behaviour here, or, perhaps, I should also mention how you confused the court at your brother’s inquest? ‘

William’s eyes flashed, and when he spoke, his voice sounded hollow and strangely dead:

‘You weren’t there’

Abberline smiled knowingly, and I marveled at his composure.

‘We all have friends in all sorts of places, don’t we? Coroner Diplock wasn’t very impressed with your manners, as I recall’.

‘Old codger’ William muttered ‘He never listened’.

‘Be as it may, Mr. Druitt’ Abberline sighed ‘ We both have our own arguments here. But I won’t stand this sort of behavior while I am the Inspector in charge. And whatever you do, Superintendent Arnold will not see you, and neither will the Commissioner Monro’.

‘And why is that?’ William growled. Abberline sighed again.

‘He can’t, you see. He resigned last month’.

William’s face became purple again, and I was certain he’d say something, but he growled something incohesive and turning on his heels, stormed out of the room.

Abberline breathed out.

‘That was a close one. Luckily, Monro did resign, otherwise I’d be bluffing. What do you think, Lawrence?’

‘The newspaper doesn’t say much, but in naming Montague…’

‘Let’s be honest, it doesn’t name him directly. A surgeon’s son who committed suicide, it says. Whoever did this, he must have his own sources, and I can bet my hat I know who the main tea-spiller is’.

I frowned. Abberline wasn’t known for his colourful expressions, but that one just slipped off his tongue, and he laughed, uneasily:

‘That’ll be Melville. Sir Melville, I must say. Our recent addition, straight from Bengal. Monro’s chum, if my memory serves me right. Affable - until he starts voicing his opinions. I am blessed not to be graced with his illustrious presence too often, he’s of the CID, you see. Can’t stand the man. But,’ he added merrily, ‘ we have but three gents left now. That is quite a feat’.

‘You’re ready to face all the rest at once? Abberline, be reasonable. ‘

Abberline chuckled and slammed his palms on the table. He walked to the door, and I noticed how light on his feet he was, despite the warm weather - it often gave him pains, due to his varicose veins, but he certainly felt somehow invigorated after meeting William.

‘Parker!’ he yelled ‘Bring up the bodies! In order of arrival, one by one, if you please!’

Parker appeared on the doorstep, considerably paler than he was.

‘That stormy gent, sir, he was cursing so badly there. The wobbly one says he’ll wait, but the one who came next, he is…well…here. You may come in now, sir. Can I take your name?’

‘That’s Joseph Barnett, Parker’ Abberline shook his head disapprovingly ‘ Off you go, and let poor man in’.

Parker scurried off, and Joe Barnett walked in, nervously clutching his cap. He was neatly dressed, and by the looks of him, he hasn’t been sleeping well for some time. He smiled, seeing me.

‘Mr. Graves’ he said, ‘George said you’d be here. G’day, Inspector. I decided to come, you see, because of Mary Jane, sir. I remembered something, but I’ m not that sure if it helps, you know. It has to do with a gentleman, sir. And Mary Jane, of course. ‘

‘Do sit down, Joe’ Abberline said kindly ‘ And don’t fidget about. A cup of tea, anyone?’

‘I’d prefer some water, if you please, sir’ Joe said gratefully, sitting down ‘You might think that I’m being too late with all that, but you know how memory is, sir - you just remember things. And I keep seeing her in me dreams, Mary Jane, that is. And I remembered yesterday how scared she’s been in her last weeks. She seemed cheerful to some, I reckon, but in her own home, she was on edge, sir. She wouldn’t sleep, she’d just pace around the room. For nights on end, sir. She was on and on about some gent dogging her about, and I asked her, I did. Mary, I said, you tell me his name, and I’ll make him leave you alone. And she said, she knew he’d never leave her alone. Not for a million years, she said. She called him a dastardly type.’

Abberline squinted slightly and turning to me, asked,

‘Wasn’t that the thing she told you, Lawrence?’

I nodded, preferring to spare Joe the details - he looked miserable enough. He sipped a bit of water from a glass Abberline offered him, and asked, quietly:

‘Do you think I should have…said that at the inquest?/

‘Well, Joe’ Abberline shook his head, shifted in his chair opposite Joe and replied, slowly’ Yes and no. Mentioning this at the inquest would provoke more questions and I don’t think you were exactly in the right state to answer them. Somehow it seems to me it would only make the case worse, don’t you think, Lawrence?’

‘It might have,’ I agreed. Joe, why didn’t you mention this before?’

‘To be honest sir, I was too baffled. Some things came back to me months after, and besides, she never ever told me his name. She only said he was very angry at her, and that she pushed him off a couple o’times, and he tried giving her money to make her get back to him. So I thought, it must have been the same gent that took her to France back then.’

‘I see. Did she ever describe him to you?’

Joe licked his lips and swallowed nervously.

‘That’s what I came for, Inspector Abberline, sir. She did recall his likeness to me, and she ‘specially mentioned the eyes and the ‘stache. But I could not remember the whole of it. I came here today, because I felt I had to, and everything she said just came back to me.’

Abberline nodded, approvingly.

‘So, can you describe the man to us?’

‘You’ve seen him, sir’ Joe replied ‘ he’s only just been here’.

I felt the floor give way under my feet. Of course, you might say, Mary Jane has done it before, but getting confirmation from Joe was essential. Knowing Abberline, he was thinking in the same vein. However, confirming Mary Jane’s stalker’s identity wasn’t enough, and we both knew that.

Joe was a sharp fellow, and he read our silence correctly. Rising up, he looked at us sadly and said:

‘I know there’s not much to be done. I heard the man - he knows his way around the big nobs, doesn’t he? I know my word is not enough to get him into jail, but, Inspector, I had to tell you. For her, you know. ‘

‘Listen, Joe’ Abberline replied heavily ‘ You are right. That is not a simple man to get around. But right now, we don’t have enough on him to even get near him. The man you just saw is William Druitt. Lawrence here has as many reasons to put him away as you do. You both lost those who were dear to you, and William is linked to both deaths - but in Mary’s case, we cannot even fathom…imagine the extent. Do you think he might be the killer?’

Joe shook his head incredulously.

‘No, sir. Mary never said anything about him wanting to harm her. Only that, their ways parted, and she was scared he’d go after her, cause he wanted her back- and she didn’t want to. She did call him strange, that’s true, but he wouldn’t…’

‘What if I told you we believe he might have killed his brother?’ Abberline asked quietly ‘Would your mind change then?’

Joe shifted from right to left and shrugged.

‘That is a big thing to say, sir. Did you know the poor fellow?’

‘I did’ I said ‘he was my…friend.’

Joe looked as if he’d been hit over the head with a flour sack.

‘Corblimey’ he said hoarsely ‘That’s the young man they found in the river, isn’t it? I am so sorry, Mr. Lawrence, sir. ‘

‘It’s quite alright, Joe’ I said ‘But Abberline is right - right now the only thing we can do is to collect the evidence, as the lawyers say. I wish we could do more, but…pardon me for asking…didn’t Mary mention anything else in her last days?’

Joe bit his lower lip and a deep crease formed on his forehead.

‘Now as you mention it…she recalled him offering her money to visit him in Holborn. He had fancy dresses at home, she said. And only two servants, women. She was sleep-talking, you see. And I remember I was really frightened once, cause she sat up in bed, crying. She said, she’d do something if he promised not to hurt her. She had this scar on her arm, I reckon it was him. She didn’t tell me a thing about it all, she knew I’d be mad jealous. I wish I knew why she even went with him’.

‘That is not my secret to tell’ I replied ‘ But Molly can tell you. The only thing you should know is, she loved you. And she didn’t want you in harm’s way. While their meetings were nice, she had no second thoughts - money is money, and she wanted to support you. But once they got out of hand, she was seeking a way to escape his attention. He didn’t kill her, that’s true. He looks vile at times, but he would never kill anyone. Not directly.’

Joe looked confused but somehow relieved. Putting his cap back on, he said:

‘Whatever they say, I wanted to marry her. I wanted her to be safe. I couldn’t make her quit street-walking. And I’m still sorry for it- if you need me, you’ll always find me at the Market, Inspector. I hope the bastard gets what he deserves, for both their sakes. Thank you for remembering her’.

I couldn’t tell him about the child. I knew I wasn’t supposed to - although, by God, I wanted to. It would not have eased his suffering, of course - to think of it, it could’ve sent him in a completely opposite direction. Abberline fell silent for quite a time, and I used the momentum to think everything over again.Finally, I spoke.

Turning to Abberline, I said:

‘Abberline, we could have…I could have…’

Abberline looked at me, visibly sorry.

‘Look, Lawrence, I know what you’re thinking. But we do not have enough on William. And what is his crime, precisely? If you want him to answer for Montague’s death, we need more proof. If you want him to answer for Mary Jane’s - and we know that he didn’t kill her - I cannot see how you envisage it all. I know how you feel, believe me. But we need more evidence.’

‘What else do you need? Abberline, the man is guilty - face the facts. You know that, I know that. Jane knows him better than anyone, and….’

‘She will never testify against her employer, Lawrence.’ Abberline said ‘ She is very careful in her judgement, and I can see why. I have received a letter recently, from Jane, and there she mentions a fact that somehow slipped her mind last time. She asked William to get her some rat poison in London, for the pests have got used to the rest of the poisons she used. He got her some - liquid strychnia, she said - but the bottle wasn’t full. That seemed strange to her, but she thought that it must have leaked. His coat smelt strange when he got home, she writes, and his favorite flask was missing too. Does that tell you anything?’

He was right - it did tell me something. I remembered the things both Philip and Augustin told me, about poisons being so easily confused with medicines, and whole families poisoned accidentally or on purpose, and I knew I had to talk to Augustin again, to get his expert opinion on liquid strychnia and the things it might be confused with. It would have to wait, I told myself, since we were clearly not done with the visitors. As soon as Joe left, the third act of almost Dickensian scale began, and if Joe looked like a grown up version of Nicholas Nickleby, the next visitor reminded me of Tom Pinch.

Reverend Lonsdale was even more nervous than the first time we saw him. Ruffled, suspiciously looking around, he stumbled into the room with a look of a mouse scared to death by a passing cat, which, together with his lankiness, created quite a memorable sight.

‘What can I do for you, Reverend?’ Abberline asked ‘It’s not often that we see clergymen here. You’ve come all the way from Wimborne, I believe?’

Lonsdale nodded, adding that he came on business - and then, something seemed to break inside his fragile shell.

‘I had to come’ he said quietly, but desperately ‘ I had to come because my conscience is heavy. I wasn’t completely honest when we last met, and no good Christian lies. I know, I should have come sooner…but…’

‘Is it about you not being at KIngs Bench Walk in December, or about something else?’

Abberline’s tone was icy, and poor Lonsdale, taken aback by it, only nodded, clasping his hands so tightly that his knuckles turned white.

‘I should not have told you all that,’ he whispered, ‘but I had no other way, you see. Or I could simply wave goodbye to my career in the Church. There are sacrifices along the way, thorns, and we all learn the hard way…’

‘Please, Reverend’ Abberline was starting to lose patience ‘Are you telling me betraying someone is a good thing? Since when Judas was a candidate for Heavenly spheres? You lied, you, a clergyman - lied, and what’s worse, you’ve lied about a man you knew. You knew it was important, and you lied. Why?’

Lonsdale looked at him the way a punished dog looks at its master, his eyes flooding with tears.

‘He made me’.

Abberline said ‘ Who made you?’

Lonsdale’s voice was barely a whisper.

‘William Druitt’

I looked at Abberline, he looked stupefied. I wasn’t as surprised, somehow, knowing William was certainly able to handle that sort of thing. Trying to sound compassionate, I asked him what he meant, and poor Lonsdale told us a story that would make both Dickens and Collins envious. It is important that I present it here as it was, so that you might have a complete picture at your disposal.

‘You must understand’ Lonsdale began ‘ That a position at the Minster is highly coveted, and it’s not easy to get it. I always wanted to minister there, but could I even hope? I knew that the position would most likely go to someone of the family - Druitts, you see, almost rule the county. I must have lamented the fact too openly, and Charles Druitt, the cousin to William and Montague - God rest his soul - was my best friend since childhood. He overheard me once, speaking to the staff there, at the MInster, and said he’d put in a word for me. The matter lay dormant for a while, and I almost forgot of it, when suddenly William appeared at my door, and he was all smiles and charm - and he said Charles told him of my plight, and that he would help me get the position, if in return I’d help him when he needed me to. That was strange, but I was so overjoyed that I agreed. In a couple of months, whilst in London, I received an official invitation. The matter was settled, and I came back home, rejoicing. I even had a prospective bride, and we did get married last year. So, when William appeared again, in December, I received him joyfully, and he reminded me of my promise. Of course, I said, and he said…’

Lonsdale stopped short, took a deep breath and continued,

‘He said he needed me to say certain things if asked. Namely, that I saw Montague on the 4th of December. I asked why that was of importance, and he said, that if I wanted to remain at the Minster, I’d better not ask. I reminded him that I was a clergyman, and therefore lies were a sin, and he said - your Church will be your shield. They will believe you, no one will doubt a man of the cloth. And, leaving, he turned to me and asked, quite innocently, if the friendship between men is approved by the Church. I said that naturally, God is never against friendship. And he said, what about the intimate friendship between men? Then he bade me a good day and left, and I knew I had to do what he asked. If I wanted to remain…at the Minster’.

Abberline frowned. Of course, we both knew what William meant, but with that knowledge, the situation was becoming even more repulsive.

‘Pray tell what he meant, Reverend’.

‘Charles. I told you, we have been friends since childhood. Our friendship…extended into adulthood. He used to stay with me quite often, and…his personal possessions remained in my house. Last year, someone tried to rob me, and they aimed for Charles’s letters and antiques he left with me for safekeeping. Were they to succeed…you might guess the outcome. William helped Charles to get out of trouble. Then he got married, very quickly. And so did I. So you see..William knew the truth. We were close, me and Charles’.

In truth, I pitied him. He was manipulated, blackmailed, and clearly frightened.

‘I liked Montague. Everybody did. I didn’t know what happened to him, but now I do suspect…God forbid…that William had a hand in it. I know you know - tell me’.

Abberline replied, carefully weighing words:

‘Reverend, whatever I tell you, would be a theory, nothing more. I am glad you came forth, and I am very sorry you were coerced into lying. It must have been hard for a man in your position - I hope your marriage has a place for genuine warmth in it, too. Believe me, I would love to make him pay for everything - and we’ve heard quite enough today, haven’t we, Lawrence? Do forgive me, I must exchange a few words with PC Parker’.

He left the room swiftly, and returned shortly.

‘There, I have resolved the matter. No more visitors today. Parker graciously agreed to manage without me today.’

Lonsdale shook his hand nervously, and was gone, visibly relieved to be out of the police station. Abberline looked at me and shook his head.

‘The clouds are gathering round Mr. William Druitt, Lawrence. He’s put himself into the eye of a storm, and I have no idea when it hits us. I am afraid you’re right about him, but we still need something. Do ask Augustin about that…what’s it called..’

‘Liquid strychnia? I shall. What will you do?’

Abberline chuckled.

‘I am going out to have some tea’ he said ‘And I was secretly hoping you’d ask me around. George’s cooking is simply delicious, and he did promise me his famous tea’.

Sometimes Abberline amazed me - after hearing all that we’ve heard, I felt drained - me, an immortal creature, quite capable of withstanding anything,- whereas he, a mortal man, was almost cheerful when we left the station.

‘How do you do that, Abberline?’ I asked him, while he was having a go at George’s famous tea and pies ‘ Where do you get your strength from?’

‘Life’ Abberline said, downing the fourth cup of tea ‘You live, you learn. You will too, one day’.

Leaving him all alone with a platter of food, apparently enjoying himself, I joined Augustin upstairs, where he was examining Solomon.

‘Really, Solomon, at your age…’ I heard him say.

‘I’m old, I just don’t look it’ Solomon replied cheerfully ‘Go on’.

Augustin was listening to Solomon’s heartbeat, sceptically frowning.

‘Ah, do come in,’ the latter said, beckoning me in ‘ This young man is trying to convince me I am dying’.

‘I never said that,’ Augustin said indignantly. ‘I said, your heart needed care. Tomorrow I’ll fetch you a good herbal, just don’t use that awful thing anymore. Promise’.

‘Alright, alright. But Aaron said it was good’.

Augustin growled a little.

‘Let him treat you then, eh? This tincture is no good, Solomon. It has camphor, opium and prepared chalk in it, not to mention quinine and a ridiculous amount of alcohol. It is not an all-heal, it’s an all-kill. I’ve had too many patients confusing it with strychnine, and apothecaries being foolish, and whole families dead because of the concoctions like that, used with no moderation, or dissolved in brandy…’

‘What did you say?’ I asked, examining a little bottle on the nightstand ‘ Did you say, confused with strychnine?’

‘Bah, oui’ Augustin replied, ‘ They look the same, hein?’ He produced a similar bottle from his bag ‘ See? The one on the right is Warburg’s tincture, the one on the left - liquid strychnia. You can get both in London, for a moderate price, and if you’re lucky, your name won’t even end up in a ledger. That is, if you bribe the apothecary. Why do you ask?’

Hearing the story you already know, Augustin nodded.

‘That is possible, yes. It’s very easy to confuse it in the dark. I shudder at the thought of what it can do to a person if diluted in strong alcohol…the death would be swifter than a breath. And more horrifying than any nightmare.’

Chapter 18

August, 15th - 31 October 1889

All the darkness in the world cannot extinguish the light of a single candle.

~Francis of Assisi

I entered the iron gates of Wimborne in the first grey hours of the day, my boots crunching softly on the gravel paths that wound through the city of the silent. It was an early August morning that had forgotten it was August; the sky was a bruised and curdled ceiling of rain clouds, and a fine, persistent drizzle hung in the chilly air—uncommon for the season, yet strangely fitting for a day so steeped in the damp of memory.

As I neared the white marble cross, I saw her. Jane was already there, a solitary silhouette against the pale stone. She was bowed by a grief that seemed to double her weight, her shoulders heaving with silent, racking sobs that the mist swallowed whole. Seeing her there, so utterly broken, sent a sharp, jagged pain through my heart—the kind of physical ache that leaves one breathless.

Today was the fifteenth of August. It ought to have been a day of light; it was Monty’s thirty-second birthday. My mind reeled with the cruel “ought-to-haves”—we should have been somewhere else, somewhere safe, happy, blissful. Somewhere. Anywhere- but here, in the weeping mud. He should have been laughing, his topaz blue eyes glinting, his beautiful laughter echoing his vitality and hopes of a different life - and instead, he was here, buried under the cold stone, all alone. The year without him felt immensely heavy, almost a burden, something so devoid of sense and meaning that all words felt redundant, blank and stupid.

Jane turned as I approached, her face a pale oval of sorrow.

‘I thought I’d meet you here’ she said quietly ‘By his side. Oh how I miss him’.

I embraced her, and felt her pressing against me. She was slightly shivering, and I thought that it was due to the weather, too damp for her dress and shawl. But Jane was crying, and trembling.

‘This is so unfair’ she said hoarsely ‘They have all left him here, as if he was an old glove. I thought someone would visit him today, but…’

‘But Jane, it’s but eight in the morning’ I said softly,’ They might come later. Is that your bouquet there?’

She nodded.

‘He always liked simple flowers, you know.’

The bouquet lay upon the white marble plinth, a vibrant bruise of color against the pale, weeping stone. The moisture acted as a catalyst, drawing the scents from the flowers with raw intensity. The crisp, bracing fragrance of rosemary - green, needle-fresh - served as an unyielding anchor of remembrance. Beneath it, the lavender released a silver-sweet perfume of purity, while the honeyed sigh of the purple loosestrife whispered of tranquility. The brilliant cornflowers stood as silent, blue sentinels of hope amidst the grey.

‘Thank you, Jane’ I said ‘He would have loved it. But how did you manage to come?’

‘I took my day off’ she smiled sadly. ‘I told him I’d be going to Wimborne to visit my aunt, and he conceded. So I came. For Montague. And, there is something else. I had hoped to find you here for one particular reason.’

She extended a gloved hand. In it was a heavy vellum envelope.

“I found this,” she said, her eyes searching mine with a terrifying intensity. “In William’s bedroom. Hidden in the dust beneath the bed, like a secret he intended to bury.”

With trembling fingers, I broke the seal. Inside lay a strip of silk—a necktie of a particular, dark grey bleeding into blue, with tiny dots of off-white. The world seemed to tilt. I recognized it instantly; I had seen it knotted at Monty’s throat a thousand times. It was the same tie I had given him for his last birthday. It was a fragment of Monty’s life, wrenched away and stowed in the dark.

“Under the bed?” I breathed, the chill of the grave finally seeping through my coat.

“Yes,” Jane whispered, her gaze falling back to the white cross. “Found in the very place he sleeps. A trophy, Lawrence. Or a penance. I no longer know which is more frightening.”

The cemetery seemed to draw in its breath. The marble angels stared down with sightless eyes, and for a moment, the quiet of Wimborne was not a peace, but a suffocating shroud, binding us all into a single, agonizing knot of silk and stone.

‘For his sake, Lawrence, you must see this through’ Jane said, bidding me goodbye by the gates ‘Please, I know you can. He mustn’t be left there like that’.

‘Of course’ I said, and it wasn’t a simple courtesy. ‘I will do everything in my power to uncover the truth.’

She smiled, gratefully, and suddenly gasping, as if remembering something, gave me a pouch of dark blue velvet. I weighed it in my hand.

‘What is it, Jane?’

‘Consider it a gift. From him’ , and Jane vanished in the misty drizzle of the path, leading away from the cemetery. I opened the pouch, its string falling on the ground. Monty’s watch, my Christmas gift to him.

The last remaining key to the chest of mysteries was in my hands. I knew how to open the watch, and I knew what Augustin would suggest doing to the tie.

William was as good as caught red-handed.

***

I returned to London, visibly shaken, yet the discovery of the tie and the watch excited me, and I could tell both Abberline and Augustin were looking forward to examining the things closely.

‘It is a major step’ Abberline conceded, the triumphant glint in his eyes growing brighter ‘But we would need a laboratory for this sort of test, wouldn’t we?’

Augustin contemplated the answer for the moment and said that his Mortlake apothecary conditions would be appropriate - provided that Philip agrees to let him work there.

‘I haven’t been there for months’ he explained ‘Philip is a kind man, but he is also a very strict employer. ‘

I promised him that I would accompany him and explain our situation, and that seemed to have resolved the matter.

‘I would advise you, however’ Abberline said ‘to try and pry the watch open as soon as possible. Better yet, tell me how to do it, and I shall take it to Diplock. We will do it officially, albeit with no report. ‘

‘What is the use without it?’ Solomon shook his head ‘Do it now. At least, the watch looks quite unharmed, and you, I believe, know a bit about watches, Inspector ‘.

Abberline nodded.

‘I would need something sharp and thin, a knife or..wait, I have it on me.’

‘You’d better use the back room’ George suggested, and Abberline nodded ‘It’s safer there, and the light is a tad better’.

The back room of the Ten Bells was a private world tucked away from the grime and sorrow of Whitechapel. Unlike the dimly lit, public space, this room was brightly lit, a welcome beacon of clarity that banished every shadow.

It wasn’t just a pantry room, but a study in immaculate order. The floor, scrubbed raw and pale, reflected the sharp glare of two gas lamps hanging from the low ceiling. A large, sturdy wooden table, smoothed to a satin finish by elbows and scouring brushes, dominated the center of the room. It was bare save for a precisely folded linen cloth and a small basket of fresh rolls, waiting with anticipation for the next meal.

The walls were lined from floor to ceiling with shelves laden with a surprising bounty. It was a pantry meticulously curated: plump rounds of cheddar wrapped in muslin sat beside jars of glistening preserves—apricot, plum, and strawberry—their colours startlingly vibrant. Neatly stacked plates of sturdy blue-and-white transferware were piled in careful equilibrium, each set a testament to George’s hidden fastidiousness. Hams and dried sausages hung from hooks beside strings of onions, their smells mingling into a rich, savoury aroma that promised warmth and nourishment, a stark and comforting contrast to the cold, damp air outside. It was a room that felt cared for, a bastion of simple, clean abundance in a city that often forgot such things existed.

I watched, barely daring to draw breath, as Abberline cleared a space on the wooden table. The inspector I knew—the man of grit and London fog—seemed to recede, replaced by the precise, ghost-like stillness of the clockmaker he had once been. He drew a leather roll from his coat, unfurling a row of delicate, needle-fine instruments that gleamed with a surgical coldness under the lamp.

The silver watch lay between us, a tarnished home of secrets. Abberline didn’t rush; he donned a jeweler’s loupe, his eye swelling behind the glass into an all-seeing, searching orb. With the steady hands of a man who had spent a lifetime navigating the hairsprings of time, he took up a fine-edged brass casing knife. He ran the blade along the seam of the case back with a sensitivity that was almost sensual, searching for the microscopic notch where the silver met its match.

“The metal is stubborn, Lawrence,” he murmured, his voice a low vibration. “It has been fused by more than just time.”

He found the point of resistance. With a sharp, controlled flick of his wrist, he applied pressure. There was a faint, metallic ping, a groan of protesting silver, and then the back plate surrendered. But as the inner mechanism was laid bare, it was not the gears that drew our gaze, but the face of the watch itself, visible through the crystal as Abberline tilted it into the amber lamplight.

The internal organs of the timepiece were a graveyard of motion. The balance wheel sat paralyzed, a golden heart stopped mid-beat, and the tiny rubies stared up like unblinking eyes. Most chilling of all were the hands. They were frozen in a rigid, permanent V, gripped by a sudden violence that had snapped the mainspring and halted the flow of seconds. They were stuck at precisely 1:20—a silent, silver witness to a moment of finality that the clockmaker’s skill could never hope to restart.

“One-twenty,” Abberline whispered, his thumb tracing the cold glass. “The gears didn’t fail, Lawrence. The world simply stopped at that very breath.”

“How would it happen?” asked Molly, her voice small and brittle against the vast silence of the room. She stared at the frozen hands of the watch as if they might suddenly spring back to life and tell her the truth.

Abberline did not look up. He remained hunched over the silver casing, his jeweler’s loupe still fixed to his eye like a grotesque, glass growth. He answered without a moment’s hesitation, his voice dropping into a register of cold, professional finality.

“It happened when the Thames got inside,” he said.

He finally set the instruments down, the clink of metal on wood sounding like a bell tolling in a vault. He turned his gaze toward her, the magnified eye behind the lens appearing unnervingly large and ancient.

“Do you understand what it means, Molly? Water is the great enemy of the clockmaker. It doesn’t merely stop the gears; it chokes them. The silt, the salt, the weight of the river—it rushes into the casing and seizes the balance wheel in an instant. It is a violent, drowning halt.”

He gestured to the hands, still fixed at that agonizing 1:20. “This watch didn’t run down. It was murdered by the tide. The moment the river claimed the man, it claimed the time, freezing his last breath into the silver.”

‘Does it mean he died then?’ George’s voice was hollow, quiet. ‘Do we know it for sure?’

‘Yes and no’ Abberline replied ‘The watch ended up in the water at 1.20, and it surely was the night. But does that mean that he was already dead, I am not quite certain. He might have been…but we would need the last cog in that mechanism to know that. And to get that, we need William to talk’.

‘And for that,’ Molly concluded gloomily ‘We need to watch and hunt him down’.

Sometimes the way lights up like that - unexpectedly, swiftly, becoming clear in a spur of a moment. The watch told us everything it could, but we still needed the necktie to talk, too - and that would have to wait, as the autumn promised to be intense in all possible ways.

***

London was quiet that autumn. Was it the aftermath of the Ripper’s shadow, still crawling through London’s veins, like poison, or perhaps, the overall sense of gloom, pervading the air - I could not tell.

It wasn’t a London of Pre-Raphaelite, fairy-tale wonder and mirth, but rather, a London of sallow mists and suffocating breath—a city half-strangled by its own industry. By the close of October, the Great Fog had descended, a “London Particular” of such thick, sulfurous yellow that it seemed as if the sky itself had fallen into the gutters.

The sun, a pale, defeated copper disc, had no power against the gloom. It hung uselessly over the Thames, which rolled beneath the bridges like a river of liquid soot, carrying the bloated secrets of the East End out toward the sea. Along the Embankment, the gas lamps struggled to pierce the murk, their flickering flames casting long, trembling fingers of light that reached for the shivering wretches huddled in the shadows of the stone.

Everything was damp; a cold, persistent moisture that clung to the wool coats of the clerks and seeped into the very marrow of the crossing-sweepers. In the City, the air was a cacophony of iron rims on cobblestones and the rhythmic, ghostly clatter of horse-hooves, muffled by the fog until a carriage seemed to materialize out of nothingness like a phantom.

From the soup kitchens of Spitalfields to the velvet-draped parlors of Belgravia, the smell was universal: a pungent cocktail of coal smoke, rotting river-sediment, and the sharp, metallic tang of the coming winter. It was a season of coughing—a hacking, hollow chorus that rose from the tenements, where the poor burned their furniture to stay warm, and the rich drew their heavy curtains tight, as if they could shut out the misery of the century’s end with a simple pull of a cord.

London did not merely exist, it breathed heavily, a weary giant waiting for the frost to finally turn its mud into iron. As Dickens would’ve put it, the collective soul of London was as frayed as the cuffs of a counting-house clerk. A strange, shivering tension sat upon the city’s heart—a heavy sense that the century was growing old and toothless, and that the shadows were lengthening in ways no candle could ever hope to chase away.

Among the high and the mighty, there stirred a restless, shivering dread. Behind the bolted doors of the West End, the Great Fog was not merely weather; it was an intruder, a silent witness that seeped through the cracks to whisper of the darkness in Whitechapel. A year had passed since the Ripper’s knife had ceased its gleaming work, yet the terror remained, curdled into a permanent suspicion. Every footfall in the mist was a threat; every stranger’s face, half-glimpsed in the yellow gloom, was a mask for a monster. They lived in a state of gilded claustrophobia, clinging to their tea-services while the world outside grew increasingly unrecognizable.

But for the multitude—the heaving, blackened masses who claimed the streets as their only inheritance—the prevailing spirit was one of a dull, aching endurance. There was a hollow look in the eyes of the flower-girls and the draymen, a resignation born of the knowledge that the frost was coming, and that the coal-scuttle was empty. Hope had become a luxury as expensive as hothouse grapes.

Yet, beneath this exhaustion, there crackled a low, dangerous electricity. It was the fever of the dock-strikes and the grumbling of hungry bellies—a feeling that the gears of the world were grinding toward a halt. The air was thick with the scent of unread newspapers and whispered grievances. Men looked at the towering chimneys of the factories not with pride, but with the weary gaze of a prisoner looking at his bars.

It was a time of spiritual bankruptcy, where the Charity of the great houses felt like a stone in the hand, and the bells of St. Paul’s rang out with a sound that was less like a call to prayer and more like a tolling for the dead. The people of London did not walk; they drifted, ghosts of their own ambitions, waiting for a New Year that promised nothing but more of the same cold, grey, and unforgiving fog.

I observed the change even in the forever optimistic nature of my old friend George, whose prolonged periods of thoughtful silence became weighted down, heavy and dark. Solomon stopped complaining of his rheumatism, but rarely left his room, and when he did, he wouldn’t venture out but for a short period of time. Molly took up knitting - something that was hardly expected of her - and spent her evenings quietly whispering her incantations - make one, knit two, make one, two together, knit three being the most audible of them all.

Even Augustin, the ever-unafraid, calm and impenetrable, was affected by October’s gloom.Yet, as October’s end drew its damp shroud tighter, a change had come upon him. That steady, iron composure—that grand indifference to the prowling dangers of the East End—had begun to soften and dampen, like a page of fine parchment left out in the rain. It was not fear that unmade him; fear was too common a currency for a soul like Augustin’s. It was a strange, vibrating expectancy.

His eyes, usually as cool and impenetrable as the grey waters of the reach at Mortlake, now burned with a new, unsettling phosphorescence. They caught the guttering gaslight and held it, glowing with the feverish intensity of a man who watches a fuse and waits for the spark to reach the powder. There was an anxiety in his gaze, but it was the anxiety of the predator who senses the wind shifting, or the prophet who hears the first faint crack in the foundations of the world.

He took to silence and long walks alone, and that newly acquired habit was a secret to us all, until one night I noticed his shadow gliding along the side-streets. What was I doing there? Anxiety plagued my mind, and just like Augustin, I tried soothing it by walking the streets at night. I observed Augustin from afar, sensing his desire to be alone. He moved through the choking yellow gloom of Whitechapel gracefully, following the swirling mist and shadows, as a silent wanderer of the night. To him, the labyrinthine alleys—where the brickwork sweated grease and the darkness felt solid enough to lean against—held no terrors. He had spent seasons enough in the sodden, riverside isolation of Mortlake, where the Thames mists possessed a more ancient, chilling quality, to find the city’s urban rot almost domestic by comparison. He walked with the easy stride of a man who knew that the shadows were merely curtains, and he, the master of the house.

The night we met, I almost walked into him - he was standing at the corner of Flower and Dean Street, the soot settling in the creases of his coat, no longer merely passing through. He was lingering, listening to the muffled heartbeat of the city, expecting at any moment to be summoned by a rift in the very atmosphere. But the silence was shattered not by a phantom, but by the heavy, rhythmic strike of a boot against the cobbles—a sound too deliberate for a specter. I stepped out of the sulfurous curtain, right behind him, so close that I could see his collar turned high against the damp, and when he turned to me, his face was a mask of startled recognition. He looked different—not weary, not scared, but... ignited. His eyes held a strange, desperate light that felt entirely out of place in the damp gloom.

For a heartbeat, we stood paralyzed, a pair of mirrored shades caught in the same flickering gaslight. The surprise that rippled through Augustin was a cold, sharp blade, as it seemed to me. It was the jolting shock of a man who believed himself the only ghost in the graveyard, only to find another soul haunting the same tomb. His glowing eyes widened, the feverish anxiety of his vigil momentarily replaced by a raw, naked vulnerability. In his silence, I saw the reflection of my own hidden life, and for the first time, the impenetrable dark of Whitechapel felt crowded, as if the secret he was so hungrily waiting for had already begun to unravel in the most inconvenient of ways.

“Augustin?” my voice came out as a strangled croak, more question than greeting.

He flinched, the glow in his eyes dimmed just a fraction.

“Lawrence,” he inclined his head, a gesture of almost formal politeness that was absurd given our location and the hour. “A peculiar place for a constitutional, don’t you think?”

“I could say the same for you,” I countered, finding my footing. My heart hammered a nervous rhythm against my ribs. “I thought you were in Mortlake.”

“The city called, and I had to follow the call.” He gave a non-committal shrug, then fixed those intensely bright eyes on me, a new, almost clinical curiosity overriding his initial shock. “You look unwell, mon ami. You haven’t slept well again. And look how pale you are!.”

He was right. I felt unwell. I shuffled my feet on the greasy pavement, suddenly desperate to confess the gnawing unease that had driven me from my bed.

“I am, I fear. Strangely nervous these past weeks. A persistent uneasi-ness that defies logic. Sleep has become an elusive phantom, and I find myself wandering the streets like some sort of vagabond.”

Augustin listened, his expression softening into something close to understanding. He stepped closer, the thick air momentarily muffaging the din of the distant city.

“It is not entirely without logic, Lawrence,” he murmured, his voice lowered to a conspiratorial tone. He made a gesture encompassing the fog, the decay, the turning leaves that had long since rotted into muck. “Observe the time of the year. The veil between the living and the... permanent... grows thin. The city knows it. The air knows it. We are merely sensing what the atmosphere is whispering.”

I frowned, caught off guard by his mystical turn of phrase. “Whispering? Come now, Augustin, that’s hardly scientific.”

He ignored me, his expression turning oddly gentle, a look I had never seen on him before.

“But the whispers are loud, and they seem to be troubling your soul more than most.” He paused, then delivered a suggestion that truly stunned me. “Perhaps... perhaps you should seek solace in a church.”

I stared, my jaw likely slack. “A church? You, the pragmatist, suggest I attend a sermon?”

“Do that for the sake of the architecture, if not for the sermon,” he said with a half-smile. “For the quiet. For the simple act of sitting in a space that has absorbed the prayers of centuries. It might quiet the noise in your mind.”

He spoke with such quiet conviction, his own glow momentarily subdued by a profound sincerity, that the sheer absurdity of the suggestion faded. In the gloom and the fear, in my sleepless nights and nervous ramblings, I had been searching for a rational answer in an irrational world. The simplicity of his advice struck me with the force of a revelation. The noise in my mind needed quieting, not explaining.

“You... you might be right,” I said, the realisation settling over me with a strange sense of comfort. “The noise. Yes. That’s precisely it.”

I felt a genuine shift in my chest, a small easing of the tension I had carried all month. Augustin simply nodded, a silent co-conspirator who understood the secrets of the dark night and the desperate need for light.

We turned our backs on the gutter-slinking shadows of Flower and Dean Street, moving as one toward the smoldering orange glow of the Ten Bells. It was a pleasant walk, although a silent one; the fog, which had felt like a suffocating shroud only an hour before, now seemed to wrap around us with a soft, protective hush. We both felt strangely relieved, for the weight of our clandestine lives had, for the first time, found a shared gravity.

The pub, as we had expected, was silent. No clinking glass or muffled voices greeted our arrival; instead, a single lamp sat alight upon the counter, its flame a steady, lonely beacon in the gloom. Yet, even thus dimly lit, the establishment provided a much-needed comfort and shelter. The brutal, cold abandonment of the streets outside, where the wind whistled through the stained brick like a mourning cry, stood in stark contrast to the quiet warmth within these heavy timber walls. This corner of Whitechapel was more welcoming than any sterile parlor; it had, in this moment of shared solitude, become a home for us both.

The floor, usually scuffed by the desperate boots of the East End, had been meticulously swept, with fresh sawdust laid down in neat, pale patterns that caught the amber lamplight. It was a silent, touching labor—a sign of George’s quiet efforts to make the cavernous room feel homely and welcoming. It was as if he had known, with the uncanny intuition of a seasoned publican, that Augustin and I would eventually emerge from the murk in need of this mute gesture of belonging.

“It is as if the fog has swallowed the very inhabitants of the earth,” I whispered, my voice echoing strangely.

“Or as if they have finally fled from what we are still chasing,” Augustin replied. He moved further into the room, then stopped short at our usual table. There sat a tray with a steaming teapot and cakes, guarded by Monty the cat, who occupied my chair with a proprietary slumber.

“It appears our needs have been anticipated,” Augustin said, a slight smile touching his lips.

I stared at him, and in that moment, the secrecy of our nocturnal wanderings, which has been a guarded secret, was transformed. It became the very mortar of our friendship, a silent pact forged in the dark, something so profound that no man in the sunlit world could ever hope to understand.

“The church can wait until morning,” I decided, feeling the tension finally giving way. “I think the universe has just served us tea.”

“Either that, or George” Augustin nodded with a smile, his glowing eyes finally softening to human warmth. He poured the tea, and we sat in that empty room, bound by a closeness born of the night. The world was changing, but for tonight, the dimly lit Ten Bells was the only cathedral we required.

***

I woke in the grey, airless hour before dawn, the silence of the Ten Bells pressing against my temples like a physical weight. My sleep had been less a rest than a shallow, feverish haunting, and through the haze of my exhaustion, Augustin’s words from the night before continued to chime with a cold, rhythmic insistence: “Seek solace in a church… it might quiet the noise.” The suggestion, which had seemed so alien in the sulfurous dark of Flower and Dean Street, now felt like a command. Driven by an urgent, almost violent pull toward the sacred, I rose and dressed with trembling fingers, slipping out of the pub as a silent shadow. I left George’s sanctuary behind, my mind a cacophony of disquieting echoes and unasked questions, as I began my long, solitary pilgrimage toward the West.

The journey from the jagged, ash-laden arteries of Whitechapel and the teeming, wretched warrens of Spitalfields was a passage through a city divided against its own soul. On this All Hallows’ Eve, the fog did not merely drift; it thickened into a suffocating blindness—a sifting of coal-smoke and despair that reduced the heaving metropolis to a collection of “muffled, coughing ghosts”, in the words of Mr.Dickens. I picked my way through the wreckage of the East End, where the industrial decay seemed to leach the very color from the human face, and found my mind wandering, pensive and heavy, toward my saintly namesake, Saint Lawrence of Rome, the champion of the poor and the hungry.

Surely, I mused as I navigated the slick, greasy cobbles, the great Saint Lawrence would not be found in the gilded parlors of the West, where the firelight dances on mahogany. He would be here, treading this same bitter muck, his hands extended to the shivering flower-girls and the hollow-eyed draymen who haunt the shadows of the docks. He would have recognized these people—the broken, the thirsty, the forgotten—as the only true “Treasures of the Church.” It was a thought that bit deep: the realization that the Rosminians at St. Etheldreda’s were treading that same path of embers, performing a daily, quiet miracle of bread and bandages for a multitude the century had cast aside like worthless refuse.

The sallow murk of London clung to the very glass of St. Etheldreda’s, yet within the nave, the air was clean—luminous with the promise of frankincense and beeswax. To my eyes, the church felt almost startlingly empty, a vast, echoing space of profound silence. It was true what they said - the sanctity resided there, and for a brief moment I felt the same elation, mingled with profound faith that I once felt in my native church of San Lorenzo Fuori Le Mura. It had been years - no, more than that, I realized - since I visited Rome, but it has seemed now the Holy Spirit has chosen St.Ethelreda’s as its primary residence for this tumultuous century.

Only one soul moved within that hallowed quiet: Father Lockhart. He stood near the high altar, overseeing the final preparations, a man possessed of a stillness that defied the dying century. His face, usually a map of “pensive gloom and exuberant glee,” (those were the words the newspapers chose to describe him, and I was of the same opinion) was illuminated by the flicker of a single lamp, and when his gaze fell upon me, it lit up with a brilliant, welcoming warmth that wiped the fatigue from his features.

“Lawrence!” The name erupted from the shadows not as a mere greeting, but as a cry of startled, profound joy. He hurried toward me, the man whose vitality seemed to defy the grey exhaustion of the day. Before I could offer a word of apology for my long absence, he reached out and drew me into a firm, paternal embrace—a gesture of such solid reality that the frantic shadows of my mind were instantly rebuked.

“My dear boy,” he whispered, his voice thick with emotion. “To see you here, on this of all nights—it is as if the first blessing of the feast has arrived an hour early.”

He was, perhaps, the only person in the whole world who could address me with such familiar, unadorned affection. Though in the hidden arithmetic of my years I was much older than he, spiritually Lockhart possessed a gravity and a grace that made him the only father figure I had ever truly known in my London life—the one man whose presence offered a shelter I had long thought vanished.

He stepped back, keeping his hands upon my shoulders.

‘What brings you here, after all these years? Can I help you in some way? You look…gracious God, you look exhausted! Come with me, let us talk, while there is still time’.

We descended into the crypt, where the confessions were held, and I told him of Montague’s death, and everything that has haunted me since. He listened with compassion, as he always did, his brilliant eyes dimming slightly in the dancing lights of the candles.

‘And so, you see, I am, much like a prodigal son, returning to your understanding and wisdom. I thought…I honestly thought I could live through the pain of losing on my own, and although, I must confess, there are friends around me who care deeply, I am utterly alone. Something pushed me to visit you here, and I am immensely happy that the church is now resplendent in its glory under your protection and guidance’.

“The Holy Spirit sometimes works in ways unfathomable!” Lockhart replied with a smile, ‘And I attribute your visit to Providence. But, Lawrence, although I am very happy to see you, I cannot help but notice how…shaken you are. Grief is the hardest thing to be experienced, and I must admit the soul never heals itself completely after loss. You must have loved that young man deeply, and I can feel how his absence scars your life. I would be the happiest person alive to tell you it would change one day - but I cannot say that. Some absences are never dulled by time.’

He was right - and I knew that Montague’s death meant much more to me that I could admit myself. It marked what would be later called by writers, the loss of innocence, the loss of the last connection to humanity I possessed. Of course, there would be friends, like George or Augustin, who would never change, but my heart - and I was certain of it - would never dare love another soul with similar fervor.

‘I have heard your grief, your pain, your doubts - but I fear that you crave much more than empathy. Is it the absolution you seek? Would you like to confess?’

Father Lockhart was, indeed, as all-seeing as they said, I thought. I took a deep breath.

‘Bless me, father’ I said, heavily ‘For I have sinned - in my mind, hundreds of times, by imagining myself an angel of revenge, the one to execute mercy - by inflicting death. I have known the wretched and the poor, and the women killed last year, some of them were my friends. I knew Mary Jane Kelly, father. I have spoken to her not long before she died, and I know deep in my heart, who might have brought her to the death’s door’.

He gasped and crossed himself.

‘Are you telling me you know who killed her, Lawrence? Have you told anyone?’

I shook my head.

‘You are familiar with English justice as well as I am, I believe, father. Presumptions are not exactly what the police cherish’ I said bitterly. He took my hand, and the warmth of his touch had the same effect the call of Jesus had on the long-gone Lazarus.

‘I have known you now for years now, Lawrence. You might be unsure of yourself. You might doubt yourself, and I think it’s a very Christian thing to do - for doubt always walks with great faith, - but in all these years, I have never stopped praying for you. I know that your acumen is of a far superior quality than the mortal one. Let me tell you a story of a priest who was lost once, and the only thing he truly wanted was to breathe life into the ruin of a church. And a young man appeared, and he told the priest that faith is always rewarded. And he was gone. And the next morning the priest saw, to his amazement, the necessary sum of money on his doorstep. It was as if the stones themselves had cried out to be redeemed. That gold allowed us to buy the dream back from the darkness.”

He looked around, and I knew what he saw - the decade of labour, the church rising from the dust and ashes, like a phoenix, spreading its wings and soaring high, basking the surroundings in the golden red light of love and faith. From the crypt to the nave, from the scrubbed stone to soaring archways, St. Ethelreda now stood as an island of sanctity amidst the industrial rot.

“From a ruin to a city set upon a hill.’ Lockhart said in his most preaching voice ‘ It is now a bastion for the poor, a place to be revived at. You have found your way home, Lawrence; let the peace of this House be your shield. I know you are in need of absolution, but I can give you only this ‘ he placed his hand on my head ‘ my blessing and my prayers. Let not your soul be a melting candle, Lawrence. Be the light. Remember what Saint Francis said - live by his example. I am old, my friend, but in my blindness I have never noticed one simple truth - your weight is much heavier than that of loss or grief. It is the weight of knowledge. Let the others take it off your shoulders once in a while, no immortality is durable enough for the hardships the knowledge brings.’

‘How long have you known?’ I asked, despite myself. Lockhart smiled, his grey-blue eyes glinted.

‘I have witnessed many a miracle since the day God has spread his wings over me. You have never changed - whereas the world has. The advice you gave me twenty five years ago, in Kingsland, remember? Oh yes, that was you, of that I have no doubt. You quoted Saint Vincent de Paul to me that day, and I will never forget it. It was after that that we began working with the good sisters of Saint Vincent. “You will find that charity is a heavy burden to carry, heavier than the bowl of soup and the full basket... but you must keep your gentleness and your smile. It is not enough to give bread; the poor need your love more than they need your food.“

‘It was always the way of your order, was it not, father? You always knew that, you just…’

‘Needed to be reminded’ Lockhart smiled softly ‘That is how the Lord works, my friend. He worked through you that day - and today He brings you back to be revived, again. Would you stay for the service? ‘

‘Of course. I wish I could bring him here. He would have loved it here’.

‘You have’ Lockhart replied ‘He is within you, and will always be. That I know. He lives in Christ, and we shall pray for him tonight. And for you - to find a way. Let us ascend now - I hear the bells ringing out’.

As the bells began to toll for the First Vespers, the church felt like a living, breathing Body, and for the first time in many a weary year, I did not feel like a wanderer, but like a son who had finally found the door to his Father’s house left ajar.

Chapter 19

November, 1889

The truth is rarely pure and never simple

~Oscar Wilde

After the graveyard chilliness of October, came the biblical floods of November - and London heaved, grumbled and moaned under the deluge. The heavens over London did not merely open; they surrendered to a watery despair. It was a rain of a most peculiar and aggressive character—a relentless, vertical siege that seemed intent on liquefying the very foundations of the metropolis.

The rain fell not in drops, but in long, grey needles of ice-cold malice, stitching the sky to the earth until the horizon vanished behind a curtain of liquid iron. This was the worst kind of deluge imaginable. Solomon christened it ‘the plague of Egypt’ and I must say, he was entirely right. It was a bane, a punishment, perhaps, a purge of the most absolute sort, for it did not wash the city clean, but rather stirred its darkest secrets to the surface. It drummed upon the roofs of Whitechapel with the rhythm of a thousand phantom hammers, and it hissed against the gas lamps like a thousand snakes, threatening to extinguish the last feeble glimmers of civilization.

Underfoot, the earth ceased to be solid. The "black butter" of the streets—that vile soup of soot, horse-refuse, and industrial bile—dilated under the downpour, transforming the cobbles into a treacherous mire. In the low-lying courts, the gales drove the water upward through the drainage pipes, causing the subterranean world to vomit back its waste into the parlors of the poor. And the poor were those - as ever in history - to suffer for those in high places. Families were forced to sleep on tables, in fear of being drowned by the cold floods, nobody dared venture out for fear of not returning.

To the west, in Mortlake, the Thames had forgotten its banks entirely. It rose with a slow, bloated majesty, a "vast lake" of silt and brewery-runoff that crept over the doorsteps like a cold, grey hand. The river was no longer a thoroughfare but a predator, silent and rising, turning garden walls into piers and cellars into cisterns. The only thing that the persistent rains brought in, was the absence of crime, as Abberline bitterly said one evening, when the ‘bloody thing’ brought him to the pub. We watched, in superstitious horror, how the streets and their inhabitants changed into the stuff of nightmare,and wished only for a pause that could allow us to catch our breath and go out, helping those in need.

In the midst of this horrendous first week of November, Solomon decided to go out, driven mad by the persistence of the water ‘banging through the roof right to the brain’, and returned in an hour with a small child wearing nothing by rags. The poor thing was shivering all over, and was hardly six years of age. Molly knew better than to ask questions - her heart always went out to the poor, especially children. George only raised an eyebrow, which, in his language meant, that he was wondering what was to be done. Solomon, shaking the rain off his coat and cap, said only,

‘'Mitzvah goreret mitzvah '’ and added ‘can a man have a cup of tea here?’

‘One good deed brings around another’ Augustin translated almost absent-mindedly, observing the street. Solomon smiled and patted him on the back.

‘Er iz gut in shprakhn’ he muttered, shuffling off to his room to get something dry. Augustin sighed.

‘I am rather good at languages, that is true. But what I am not good at is paddling to Mortlake. If it continues to rain in that abhorrent fashion, we shall have to postpone all the experiments, I am afraid’.

‘Could you not do your experiments here?’ George suggested, peeking out of the back room, his apron on, and his legendary bread-making bowl in his hand. Augustin frowned and said, with a visible doubt that he could try, of course, but wasn’t certain if George’s larders held potassium dichromate and concentrated sulphuric acid.

‘I don’t think so,’ George said with the dignity of a university fellow ‘But I can always send young Angus to get those’.

He retreated into the back room, and I looked at Augustin.

‘I know you are doubtful, but what if it rains till the end of the month? Can we really wait that long?’

He took off his glasses, cleaned them and put them on again.

‘In that case, better late than never, Lawrence. I will, however, do my best, if you agree to wait.’

Saying this, he put his coat on and in a minute, was gone.

‘Is he mad, or what?’ Molly said, reappearing again in the common room ‘What did you say to him when he went out?’

‘I promise you, I said absolutely nothing’ I protested.He asked me to wait and went out. What of the child?’

Molly’s face hardened.

‘Her name is Annie. She is six, and she remembers her ma’s name is Mary, and she has a brother…well, he works at ‘Mother Muffs’ and she is sure that it’s a nice place’.

George gasped, entering the room again. We all knew what kind of place ‘Mother Muffs’ was, and we knew the risk of working at an establishment like this. To put it mildly, the boys who worked at the ‘molly houses’ as they were known, then, risked their necks indulging the spoilt brats of the high society in their every whim, be it having a fine dinner in a company of a young boy, or proceeding to more intimate, sometimes cruel, ending in mutilations and despair. Such places were the exact soil upon which the Cleveland street scandal flourished later. The police worked around the clock to rid the city of the molly-house plague, but it was easier said than done.

‘Poor dear. How is she now?’

‘She is asleep, I washed her and warmed her up, but I think we will need something nice to cheer her up. ‘

George scurried off to the kitchen, muttering something about chicken broth and sweet pies. Molly smiled fondly.

‘God bless him, he’s such a dearie with children. Solomon found her wandering round Dorset street. I can try finding her mother, but my heart tells me the child is on her own now. Blasted rain-killer!’ and she darted upstairs to look after her new protege.

Meanwhile, Augustin came back. His coat almost ruined by the rain, he looked somehow refreshed by the walk. Hanging his coat by the fire, he took a small package out of its pocket and smiled triumphantly.

‘I see you’ve waited. Maintenant, le temps presse. Do you know if George has a white porcelain plate? Better yet, a couple. And, where is the tie?’

‘Are you really going to…’

‘Bien sur’ he said coldly ‘ A professional can work in any given environment, and that is precisely the thought that I have just had’.

George mercifully lent him his two best porcelain plates, immaculately clean and of the best quality one could own in Whitechapel.

‘I’d prefer ‘em…unharmed, if you don’ mind me sayin’ so’ he said, handing them over to Augustin, who solemnly promised to keep the plates whole. ‘If only just a little stained’ he added mischievously ‘Justement a bit’.

George took a jagged breath and retreated downstairs. Augustin, meanwhile, cleaned the table in my room, sorted out the contents of the package he had brought in - a velvet case, a surgical blade and chemicals in bottles and tins - and turned to me.

‘What you will see now, my friend, is the demonstration of the Otto-Stas method. Observe - here, before you, are the ingredients we need. Alcohol, tartaric acid, water, sodium carbonate and solvent. I am told the police use it to detect poisons, and they have a reason -it is the only thing that can spot the tiniest amount of poison on any surface. But before the test, I will need to examine the tie by the light.’

‘How did you procure all these?’ I wondered, entranced by the glint in his eyes. Augustin merely shrugged.

‘Oh, I have methods. Besides, a good apothecary at Whitechapel road knows me well…’.

The gas lamp on the mahogany table hissed, casting a flickering, jaundiced light that struggled against the relentless, iron-grey rain drumming upon the windowpanes. Augustin sat motionless, the anthracite grey silk necktie draped across his palms like a dead serpent. He leaned toward the flame, the light catching the silver-grey sheen of the fabric. With a jeweler’s precision, he manipulated the silk until he found it: a faint, sickly discoloration near the knot, where the fine weave had turned a dull, matte shade, as if the fibers had been parched by a caustic breath.

"Watch closely," Augustin murmured, his voice cutting through the rattle of the deluge against the glass. "Strychnine is a ghost, but even ghosts leave a footprint if you know which threshold to salt."

From a velvet-lined case, he produced a small porcelain evaporating dish—stark white against the anthracite silk. With a surgical blade, he carefully scraped at the discolored fibers, letting the microscopic debris fall into the basin. To this, he added a few drops of alcohol, swirling the mixture with a glass rod until the liquid evaporated, leaving behind a nearly invisible residue of purified alkaloid.

Then came the ritual of the test.

He reached for a glass stoppered bottle labeled in a sharp, academic hand. With a steady hand, he let a single drop of a clear, heavy liquid fall into the center of the dish. It sat there, a bead of liquid.

"Now," he whispered, "the indicator."

He took a tiny, crystalline grain of a brilliant, orange-red spark and dropped it into the acid. He moved the glass rod in a swift, decisive stroke, dragging the orange crystal through the bead.

The transformation was instantaneous and terrifyingly beautiful.

A clear liquid ignited with color. It did not merely change; it throbbed. First, a magnificent, deep violet erupted from the center, a royal purple so dark it was almost black. Within a heartbeat, the violet bled into a vivid, pulsing blue, as if the very spirit of the poison was screaming in the dish.

"The reaction," Augustin noted, his eyes reflecting the blue glow. "See how it shifts?"

Even as he spoke, the blue began to expire, fading into a dark, bruised red, like a fading sunset, before finally settling into a stagnant, sickly yellow. The entire sequence—from the violet birth to the yellow death—had lasted mere seconds.

Augustin set the rod down. The anthracite tie remained on the table, an elegant garment that had once felt the pulse of a throat, now proven to be the shroud of a murderer. Outside, the rising Thames growled in the dark, but inside, the truth had been written in a streak of fading purple.

I was silent. Augustin remained hunched over the porcelain dish, his silhouette cast long and jagged shadow against the floral wallpaper by the dying hiss of the gas lamp. He did not pull away until the last vestige of the bruised red had surrendered to that stagnant, jaundiced yellow—the final, silent confession of the salt.

"There is no ambiguity in such a spectrum," he said, his voice dropping to a low, clinical rasp. "The dichromate does not lie, nor does the silk. This discoloration near the knot... it wasn't a spill, but a condensation. As the wearer sweated in the heat of his final struggle, the poison—exhaled or purged—reacted with the very air and the dye of his finery."

He picked up the anthracite tie with a pair of silver tongs, holding it aloft like a trophy of some grim hunt. The fabric, once an emblem of love and style, now seemed to possess a sinister weight.

"Strychnine is a cruel master," Augustin continued, turning the tie so the light revealed the parched fibers again. "It locks the jaw and arches the back until the spine snaps under the weight of its own muscles. And here, in the shadow of the knot, the killer left us the ledger of his deed. He thought the grey would hide the stain. He thought the Thames would wash the world clean."

He looked toward the window, where the relentless downpour continued to lash the glass, blurring the lights of Whitechapel into distorted smears of amber. The room felt colder now, as if the chemical revelation had stripped away the last of the pub's meager warmth.

"The test is complete," he declared, the tongs still gripping the anthracite silk. "We have our absolute 'what,' but the 'who' has been lurking in the periphery of this room all along. This tie belonged to Montague—there is no doubt of that—but look at the stain once more. The discoloration isn't just the work of the salt; it is the work of a solvent. The strychnine was dissolved in a spirit, likely a heavy brandy or a sharp whisky. Even now, through the copper tang of the acid, I can still detect the faint, cloying odour of the bottle."

He leaned in closer to me, the gaslight flickering in his pupils. "We know precisely when his watch stopped, frozen at the moment the convulsions claimed him. We know the vessel of his death. And, if we are honest with ourselves in this dark hour, we know exactly whose hand offered that poisoned glass under the guise of a 'nightcap' to warm the December chill."

He carefully lowered the tie into a glass evidence jar, the anthracite fabric folding over itself like a shroud.

"All that remains is to document this spectrum—to put the violet, the blue, and the yellow death into a formal ledger. Once the ink is dry, we shall corner him. He thinks the rain has washed away his footprints, but he forgot that the truth is etched into the very fibers of his victim's necktie."

He looked toward the door, his hand resting on the sealed jar. "I think we both know who he is. It is time we invited him for a final drink."

The idea of course, was quite attractive, but the weather made sure we stayed indoors. Of course, it also prevented William from leaving Bournemouth, as the railway lines were flooded too, stopping all the motion around London and the Thames valley. On the more positive side, it also meant that nature itself was giving us a chance to plan what we could not escape or postpone - meeting William Druitt.

***

The rain suddenly subsided around the 26th of November. Descending downstairs, I heard little Annie crying out in joy, and Molly joined her.

‘The sky is out of rain’ they sang, ‘The sky is clear again’.

‘Is that so?’ Augustin asked sleepily, his hair still tousled from another night of rain-infused sleep. George poured him a cup of strong tea, and Augustin smiled gratefully.

‘I would die without you, George’ he said, sinking his teeth into a savory pie ‘I would’.

‘O’course you would’ George agreed cheerfully ‘Ye all would, look atcha, you sorry lot. Pies, anyone?’

While we were eating, the skies cleared up a bit more, and the inhabitants of Whitechapel started to venture out, still distrusting their own eyes - the absence of torrential rains seemed a miracle, something straight out of a fairy tale. Solomon wasn’t as trusting as the rest of us, claiming that monsters always come back, but soon enough he joined us in our little impromptu celebration. He was on his third cup of tea, when the door burst open, and in came Abberline, dressed immaculately - as always, mind you, - freshly shaved and by the looks of him, ready for the fourteenth feat of Hercules,

‘Let there be light!’ he exclaimed, and I noticed an envelope in his hand ‘How marvelous to see you all dry and safe! ‘

‘Vraiment merveilleux’ Augustin muttered ‘ I am happy to see the police is unsinkable’.

George chuckled and poured another cup of tea.

‘Pies, Inspector? Or, perhaps, a slice of cake?’

‘I wouldn’t mind it, George’ and Abberline sat down opposite me. ‘I have brought you good news. Rejoice’.

‘The kingdom of heaven is nigh?’

Passing Augustin’s remark, Abberline said:

‘William is coming in three days, ladies and gentlemen. Jane wrote to me, that he will be coming on the 29th of November, to stay for three or four days, for business - and he will be staying, she says, at the White Hart’.

‘That is wise’ George said ‘A respectable spot, the Hart. He will be seen going in and out, too. But I bet it wasn’t that’.

‘He likely chose it for respectability’ Abberline nodded ‘Jane says, he always stays there when he needs to come alone, and she asked him to visit her mother for her, and the old lady lives in Whitechapel. How can we catch him?’

We fell silent for a moment, and then Molly spoke.

‘That’s easy, Inspector. I know old George there, and he’ll do me a favor, I think. He’ll keep an eye on those who stay, and as soon as William appears, he will let me know. ‘

Abberline nodded approvingly.

‘That seems reasonable enough, but he mustn’t suspect anything. Any suggestions?’

‘What is that place you want to…how you say, trap him in? ‘ Augustin asked ‘Have you chosen it yet? We cannot follow him like bloodhounds’.

Abberline shot a glance at me, and I caught the idea midair.

‘Essex Wharf building’ I said, and Solomon gasped.

‘Why on earth this place, of all? It is a cursed ground’.

I knew what he was thinking of - Buck’s row, the spot where Polly Nichols was found, was several yards down the road, and to get to it, one would need to pass by - or through- Dorset street, and Miller’s court. Abberline grinned.

‘I see the plan in there. You want him exhausted, mentally, emotionally…you want him…’

‘Half-roasted’ George suggested ‘And it would be the best way not to overcook him’.

We spent the next half an hour devising the plan that would lead William into the trap, and I must say, it was probably the best plan we could have created.

‘Let me sum up’ Molly finally said, visibly tired of men disputing around the table ‘ I go to the Hart, where George alerts me as soon as William leaves the building. As soon as it happens, George alerts Abberline, who is at the ready at the police station. Lawrence knows it happens, because we know William is gone, and leaves the pub. Augustine joins him…where?’

‘Look’ Abberline said patiently, unfolding a map he always carried around in his coat, not because he needed consulting with it, but because people always needed someone to point them in the right direction. ‘Look. We simply need to follow him. But sensing he’s being followed, he would dart into the sidestreets, and he doesn’t know them well enough. He will end up by the Wharf building, for it is unmissable. There we’ll be. So I suggest this scheme. William leaves, George Cross alerts our George, who tells me. I leave the station. Through Hanbury street, I get there in what, ten minutes at most. Lawrence follows - again, along Hanbury street, because he knows where William is headed. Molly remains with Augustin at Miller’s court, and alerts him, and he follows from Dorset street to Hanbury street. We will be there before he arrives - to corner him there. We know the shortcuts, he does not’.

‘Fair enough’ Molly said ‘What do you want to do to him?’

‘I want him to talk, Molly. I have no interest in killing him in front of Augustin and Abberline. But I need them as witnesses, so he would not lie’.

Molly looked at me and I could feel shock rising in her mind.

‘He killed Montague and you will just let him go?’ she asked incredulously ‘Are you out of your mind?’

‘He is right, Molly’ Abberline’s voice sounded hollow ‘We cannot do anything to William. Just imagine the consequences.’

The consequences, as he saw them, were dire indeed. I couldn’t risk their lives, even if I didn’t care about my own. We had to follow the plan, if we wanted to succeed. Time was running out, hastening the anniversary of Monty’s death.

Justice couldn’t wait longer.

***

On the evening of November 29th, as a bruised and sickly twilight surrendered to the freezing fog, William Druitt stumbled across the threshold of the White Hart. He looked less like a man and more like a ruin; his step was heavy, his coat wet from the November drizzle, and his face was a pale mask of exhaustion, etched with lines that the gaslight only deepened into shadows of despair. He moved to a corner table with the gait of a man carrying an invisible coffin, seeking refuge in the dim, ale-soaked silence of the taproom.

The next day was a day of transition—a bridge of cold stone between a month of violent gales and a winter of suffocating, stagnant gloom.

The atmosphere was heavy with a profound, unnatural stillness. The barometer, which had been dancing a frantic jig for weeks, finally settled with a heavy, ominous weight. As the cyclonic winds died away, the vast "inland sea" that had claimed the Thames Valley ceased its churning and became a mirror of leaden grey. But there was no relief in this silence; it was the quiet of a sickroom before the end.

As evening approached, the chill descended with a predatory swiftness. The saturated earth of the East End began to exhale a thick, spectral vapor. a fog that did not fall from the sky, but seemed to seep upward from the very mud of the streets. It met the coal-smoke of a million chimneys at the rooftops, creating a ceiling of soot and moisture that trapped the city in a lightless box.

In the counting-houses of the City and the taverns of Whitechapel, the gas lamps were lit by mid-afternoon, their flames struggling against a "smoke-fog" so dense it tasted of copper and wet wool. The "black butter" of the cobblestones—the foul slurry of soot and silt—began to stiffen under the plummeting temperature, turning the mire into jagged, frozen ruts that bit at the boots of the weary

It was a day that seemed to suspend the laws of nature. Sound traveled with a muffled, ghostly distortion; a carriage a block away sounded like a phantom rattling in the next room, yet the footsteps of a man directly behind were swallowed by the mist. London was no longer a place of movement, but a place of secrets, held fast in the grip of a cold that promised to preserve the month's miseries in ice.

William Druitt didn’t seem particularly affected by the changing atmosphere. He came down around ten, looking much better, and ate a full breakfast. Molly, who has returned from a walk with Annie, now dressed with a splendour of a young Victorian high-born lady, reported seeing William around Threadneedle street. He kept his word then, I thought - for it was the place Jane’s mother lived. He returned to the pub, as George Cross let us know, around two o’clock, had a hearty meal, downing two pints of the best ale George Cross had, and went upstairs. The bells of Saint Mary rang right times when he suddenly came back to the taproom and left the pub. George froze by the backdoor of the White Hart, as was the plan.

George Cross, watching William disappear into the shadows, passed George on his way to the back yard and leaned to him.

"He’s gone," Cross hissed. "Heading for Whitechapel High Street. And he looks like a man who has seen his own ghost."

The word moved like a spark through the tinder of the East End. George alerted Abberline, who uncoiled from the shadows with a hunter’s precision, trailing Druitt like a silent, vengeful shadow. At the corner of Commercial Street, I joined the pursuit, the sound of my boots muffled by the "black butter" of the freezing slush.

By the time Druitt reached the labyrinthine narrows near Hanbury Street, the panic had taken him. He could feel the eyes in the fog—the rhythmic, spectral echo of boots that were not his own. He began to run, his breath resembling the last gasps of the hanged, vanished into the sulfurous air. Every shadow was a phantom; every hiss of a gas lamp was a whispered accusation. At Hanbury Street, Augustin emerged from the mist like a dark sentinel, joining the Wild Hunt - as we pursued the frantic figure on its way toward the river.

Druitt’s flight ended at the Essex Wharf. Here, the lighting was sparse and dim, the flickering lamps barely revealing the yard and the oily, rising tide of the Thames. He scrambled toward the great iron gateway, his fingernails clawing at the cold metal, but the lock held fast. Trapped between the silent, hungry river and the approaching shadows of his pursuers, William Druitt almost collapsed against the bars—a man finally broken by the weight of the secrets he had tried to outrun.

The cold November air, now stiffening into the December chill, settled over the Essex Wharf like a heavy cloak of despair and broken promises. We were there, three shadowy judges, looking for confession more than an execution.

I stood just behind Abberline, the immense iron gates casting long, skeletal shadows across the yard. William Druitt was cornered, his breath coming in ragged, white swirls. The only illumination came from a solitary, flickering gas lamp at the corner, barely enough to read the desperation on his face. The river, a black mirror behind the locked gate, licked at the piers with a hungry sound.

Abberline stepped forward, his voice a surprising island of calm in the chaotic night. "Good evening, Mr. Druitt," he said, his tone polite, yet as cold and sharp as the frost forming on my collar. "A word, if you please."

William’s frantic eyes focused on Abberline and he froze, recognizing him. Trapped and exhausted, he snarled in response:

"What do you want? I've done nothing! Let me pass!"

He darted forward, but Augustin was there, barring the way, his eyes shining dangerously, - a silent, grave, dark sentinel of truth. He held the glass jar containing the anthracite silk tie like a reliquary of the damned, his eyes fixed on Druitt. His face, I have to admit, would have scared anyone, for it was the face of the avenging angel, pale, shimmering, as if made of the finest marble.

Abberline only took another measured step. "We believe you have something to tell us about Montague's passing, sir."

The mention of Montague broke the composure but not entirely. Druitt’s eyes widened in panic, his hand clawing at the frozen iron gates. He began to babble, suggesting Montague was prone to melancholy, that his death was a suicide. "He was a desperate man! He failed at his profession! He made his own bed and had to lie in it!"

‘Liar’ I said, remaining in the shadows.

Augustin held up the jar. "The clock stopped at the hour of his death, Mr. Druitt," he said, his voice quiet but carrying immense weight. "And the silence was broken by the chemical confession of strychnine." He displayed the tie, the faint, discolored patch near the knot visible even in the dim light. "The poison was delivered in a spirit, a brandy, perhaps. A final drink to ward off the chill."

Druitt tried to outsmart them, arguing the evidence was circumstantial, that the science was newfangled nonsense. But he was cornered, his arguments dissolving in the face of their quiet certainty. I watched, waiting for my moment, sensing the dam of his lies was about to burst.

‘Did you hate him so much?" Augustin asked, stepping closer.

"Brothers sometimes do hate each other!" Druitt retorted, the confession tearing from him. "He was a failure! He would have ruined us all!" He mumbled something half audible about Monty being a bad barrister and a lousy teacher, the arrogant brat and a self-centered fool.

‘Liar’ I repeated, stepping out of the shadows. Seeing his defenses crumble, I knew my moment had arrived. I reached for the heavy silver buttons of my dark overcoat. With a slow, deliberate motion, I unburdened myself of the grey wool that had served as my disguise throughout the soot-choked streets of Whitechapel.

As the coat fell open, the transformation was sudden, startling even my companions. Beneath the common wool lay the startling, regal defiance of my scarlet robe—the deep, arterial red of a Cardinal. The fabric seemed to draw what little light remained in the yard, glowing with an inner fire.

The lamp flickered then, and a beam of yellowish light struck the heavy golden crucifix resting against my chest. It did not merely reflect the light; it appeared to blaze, a piercing, holy spark of judgement in the center of that desolate yard.

Druitt recoiled as if the light was a physical blow, his face ghost-white against the iron bars. The sight was a powerful one, even to him, a non-Catholic, a pragmatic solicitor and a cynical man.

"The time for lies has ended, William," I said, the golden cross gleaming with every breath I took. ‘Confess now. Hell is patient, but it cannot abide the liars’.

"Did you kill Mary Jane Kelly?"

My question rang in the air as a silver knife cutting through ice. William looked at me with wild eyes, his jaw trembling.

‘I’ve never touched the woman, I swear’.

‘What did you do to her in Holborn, then?’ Abberline asked politely ‘Played cards? Discussed the weather? The walls have ears, William. We know you slept with her’.

William’s face fell.

‘Listen, Inspector, the woman blackmailed me. She told me some foolish lies about being with my child, and asked for money - my God, she asked for a sum I could not afford! I told her she’d get no money from me, and she said she’d write to Bournemouth, or visit my barrister brother - that bitch knew all about me, see? And I refused, and so a fellow I helped out once, advised me to find a local man, a Pole, I think, the one they were all scared of, to frighten her a bit. And I found him, a barber of sorts, gloomy fellow, a woman-hater. He tried visiting her, but her man was indoors, and he left. So he came back the other day…and she must have angered him somehow. I didn’t kill her’.

Abberline and I shared a look. "Klosowski," Abberline whispered to me, and Druitt frantically nodded agreement.

‘Yes, yes, now I remember, the very same’.

‘Mary Jane wasn’t lying, William,’ I said heavily ‘she was with child. Your ‘local woman hater’ murdered two innocent souls that night.’

William moaned and sank onto the ground.

‘Idiot’ he lamented ‘what an idiot I was…But I never intended to kill Monty! He was my brother, my brother…’ his voice drowned in sobs and tears. We stood by, waiting for him to calm down. At last, he stood up and spoke, as calm as he could, yet his voice was ready to betray him any second.

‘My brother was always a thorn in my side, I envied him immensely. Look at me and picture him next to me - he turned heads wherever he went, and he was naturally good. Not nice - he was good, to the core. It angered me while we were children, but I thought I have outgrown that childishness. As time went on, I realized my sentiment remained the same. But we were living in different circles - until that last case.We worked together, back to back, head to head, with arguments of course, but he was right all along, and we won. Monty looked awful, he barely slept, and I could tell he was tired. I was, too, and I pitied him but I was mad at him for succeeding again. Instead of hailing a hansom that night, after the party ended, I had proposed to walk by the embankment. I don’t know why I did this, I knew he was not quite right, and the party exhausted him. He never liked those celebrations, but couldn’t refuse - you don’t refuse the politicians, do you? He agreed although he did this only in courtesy. Suddenly I noticed….’ his voice broke again, and we had to reconstruct the story from bits of speech that came between the tears of remorse.

The scene stood before our eyes as clearly as never before. William whispered, regaining his composure once more:

‘I made a mistake. I confused the damned bottles. Now I know it - all my actions were brought on by panic, nothing more. I am a damned man, for I have, in my own mind, killed three innocent souls. I loved my brother - I just didn’t understand it. I lived in constant envy, I idolised him, and I couldn’t tell him - I wanted to be him, to be like him, adored, admired, popular - but I was mediocre compared to him - or Edward, to that matter. My brothers were always better than me, whatever I did. I am a damned man…’

We stood in silence for sometime, watching William scramble to his feet and wander off into the darkness. Before he was completely gone, he turned to us, and looking at me, whispered, his voice dead and bleak:

‘Forgive me’.

The bells of Saint Mary’s rang out through the fog, their chime almost gentle, as the parting kiss.

‘One twenty’ Abberline said. ‘It is done’.

Chapter Twenty.

February, 1909

"Forgiving means pardoning the unpardonable, or it is no virtue at all".

~G.K Chesterton

Time went past, and the world was changing around me - although, locked in my grief, I paid no attention to the occurring changes. They never concerned me - and even if we were all called Edwardians now, it meant virtually nothing to my mind. I had no desire to go out - but that day, in February, I had a sudden desire to experience life again.

I should tell you, that to step out into the London of 1909 after two decades of seclusion was to discover that the world had not merely aged, but had been violently reborn in steel and electricity. It was as if the heavy, velvet curtain of the Victorian era had been torn aside, revealing a stage set for a drama of terrifying speed and glaring light.

The most immediate assault was upon the ears. The dignified, rhythmic pulse of the city—the clatter of the hansom and the organic breathing of a thousand horses—had been murdered. In its place was the mechanical, guttural roar of the motor-omnibus. These petrol-breathing monsters, now careened through the streets with a democratic indifference, rattling the very foundations of the old stone edifices. The horse, once the king of the cobbles, appeared now as a tragic, flickering ghost amidst a torrent of vibrating iron.

At night, the city did not sleep; it burned with a cold, white fire. The soft, jaundiced haze of the gas lamp—the "London Particular" that had once shrouded the city's sins in a merciful amber—had been banished by the ruthless brilliance of the electric light. Piccadilly Circus was no longer a place of shadows, but a palace of artificial day. The newly opened Selfridges on Oxford Street stood as a temple of glass and incandescent wire, where the silence of the old drapers was replaced by the frantic, glittering hum of modern commerce.

Even the very ground beneath one’s feet felt hollow. The "Tuppenny Tube" had burrowed deep into the clay, creating a subterranean world where the soot-choked tunnels of the old steam-engines were forgotten. One entered a station of white tile and emerged, minutes later, in a district that used to require a morning's journey through the mud.

But it was the faces that were most unrecognizable. The heavy, funereal gloom of the late Queen’s reign had evaporated. Women moved with a new, brisk defiance; the Suffragette purple, white, and green flashed in the crowd like a signal fire of coming revolution. There was a sense of an ending—an intuition that the opulence of this Edwardian afternoon was a brittle thing. The city was no longer a Dickensian maze of brick and fog; it was a humming, restless engine, driving headlong into a century that promised to be as brilliant as an arc-lamp and as cold as the steel of a new Dreadnought.

My feet took me through the alleys and streets, and finally brought me to the train station. To my amazement, I realized I was on the train to Bournemouth, a place I rarely visited before, - but it had a couple of connotations linked to it - Abberline and William Druitt. I haven’t seen Abberline in years, but I knew he was quite alive and well, so I decided to pay him a visit. Now as I think of it, February was not the best time to go, but as you will see, everything in this life has its purpose.

In the years of my seclusion, the news of the world reached me through muffled ears. I have lost two people during those years, both of whom were dear to me. Father Lockhart passed away unexpectedly in 1892, and Solomon followed him in 1901, - him and the late Queen Victoria, I should say. George and Molly were still alive, and Annie was now a pretty young woman, joyfully helping George around the pub. She never asked any questions, but I believe she quite fancied Augustin, who remained impervious to all glances and advances.

He hasn’t changed much, although there were silver threads in his hair now, and his voice became lower. His laughter was still the same, and he was the only person who spent many an hour trying to coax me into leaving my room. He cared about me, and finally I understood how deep his affection was. He knew me better than anyone, and I knew that my time with him - however long it might be - would be a much-needed healing.

Meanwhile, the train brought me to Bournemouth. As I stepped down from the train, the place almost blinded me with its modernity. However, it was illusionary, as well - it was a town poised on the razor-edge of a seasonal betrayal. The day was marked by a deceptive, biting clarity—the kind of Edwardian afternoon that masqueraded as spring while holding a dagger of frost behind its back.

The station itself was a hive of modern efficiency, far removed from the soot-stained quietude of the era gone by.. The air, though crisp, carried the resinous perfume of the pines, now mingling with the ozone of the Electric Tramway that hissed and sparked along the Holdenhurst Road. The town felt like a well-oiled machine of pleasure, its white-stuccoed facades gleaming under a sun that possessed light but no heat.

The day itself, the 18th of February, sat within a period of hardening cold. The "perfect character" of the early month had soured; a northerly wind had begun to scour the cliffs, turning the English Channel into a churning expanse of slate-grey. In the Lower Pleasure Gardens, the walkers moved with a new, brisk urgency, their motoring furs pulled tight against a breeze that promised snow.

I observed the town at its most opulent yet most precarious. The Winter Gardens stood as a glass fortress of culture, where the Bournemouth Municipal Orchestra played to crowds seeking refuge from the sharpening chill. It was a world of "arrested life," as G.K. Chesterton might have mused—a civilization of lace and symphony oblivious to the fact that, in just one week's time, the "Great White Silence" would descend, burying these manicured lawns under ten inches of Arctic snow.

To walk toward the Royal Bath Hotel that Thursday was to walk through a city of amber gaslight and white electric fire, beautiful and brittle, standing defiant against the vast, encroaching darkness of the winter sea. I had to confess, I almost fell in love with that beauty, the sharpness and innocence, that dangerous grace of the great water, glistening in the wintery wind.

I didn’t know Bournemouth as well as I knew London, so I explored the streets and the alleys in search of Abberline’s Estcourt - the home he lovingly chose and where he resided nowadays.

I walked down the Cambridge road, observing the much-changed houses and feeling strangely out of place in my late-Victorian attire, when a man, hurrying towards the railway station, as I realized, stopped on the opposite side of the road, and gasped, noticing me. Then it dawned upon me that the man was none other than W.H Druitt.

Of all the people I could have met that day, fate has decided to bring that man to me - perhaps, because it was the time of forgiveness, the time of finality, the time to let go.

The years have changed William. His moustache was more opulent now, and his gait much slower. His eyes were hidden behind the glasses, and there were more lines crossing his forehead. He was fifty-three now, but looked older, frail and worn-out. I knew, from the letters of Monty’s sisters and brothers, that William was much changed, and even made peace with Edward, attending his wedding. Perhaps, I thought, Dickens was right, and even the Scroogiest of Scrooges could be reformed once his own fate comes knocking.

William stood there, his hand on his heart, pale and trembling. His lips moved, and I could decipher the only word, ‘You’ that froze as he collapsed on the pavement. I was quick enough to catch him mid-fall, and our eyes met. He looked at me, but I could swear he was seeing someone else - his brother, coming back to take him away to a place everyone dreads and yearns for at the same time.

‘Forgive me’ he whispered, and his memories, his emotions from the days of his youth and his mature years, scuttled and huddled in his eyes. I watched, with amazement, as a boy William marveled at the sight of his newborn brother, and called him beautiful, only to scorn and beat him in a couple of years. Entranced by his heartbeat, the muffled drum of approaching eternity, I leaned closer.

‘Forgive me’ he repeated ‘Forgive me’

‘I forgive you, brother mine’ I whispered.

He smiled through the mist that was already shrouding him.

‘Brother…dear’

Those were his last words, and I felt they were as important to me as they were to him. That was, in your modern words, closure. The moment in time where the past ceased to be, and the new life started - yet in it, a seedling of a pure, innocent love was blooming into a strong, mighty tree.

His memories were still dancing around us, like shards of colored glass in a kaleidoscope. I watched them changing, and the Druitt brothers growing up, so different yet somehow alike - Monty, slender as an aspen, Edward, steady as a mountain, Arthur, the ever dreaming, and William, solitary, gloomy, with - believe it or not - a loving heart, that he never really cared for. This heart proved to be his downfall.

As his last breath swirled past me, the last memory seemed still to linger - the one that had been haunting him for years. That day. The day Monty died. It danced, like a butterfly on the crisp february wind, and I watched the scene unfold before me.

They were walking by the Thorneycroft’s, and Monty, visibly drained, finally realized he had forgotten his scarf and hat at the pub.

"God’s sake, Monty, you’d forget your own head if it weren't bolted on!" William berated him, the words cutting through the fog. "You're shivering like a cur. Here, take a sip of this." He offered a flask of whisky, but Monty turned his head away with a feeble, nauseated gesture.

"A tonic, then," William suggested, trying to sound convivial. In the pitch-black shadows of the embankment, his numb fingers fumbled in his heavy overcoat. He felt the smooth glass of a vial—the one he believed held the restorative tonic for Monty's nerves. In his blind, shivering haste, he did not realize his hand had closed around the bottle of strychnine rat poison Jane had asked him to bring from London. He poured the liquid, transparent, odorless, into the flask with a frantic, rhythmic shaking.

. "Drink it, man, before the cold takes what’s left of you."

Monty took a weary, trusting sip.

The change was instantaneous and horrific. One moment he was standing; the next, he struck the stones of the pier with a sickening thud. His feet began to slide, drumming a frantic, involuntary tattoo against the wood as the convulsions seized him. Then came the paralysis—a sudden, frozen silence. Before William could catch him, Monty’s stiffened form tipped over the edge and vanished into the black maw of the river.

Panic, cold and sharp, replaced William's rage. He scrambled down the embankment, his hands tearing at the frozen rushes until he found the body caught in the reeds lower down. He grabbed Montague by the neck, bracing his feet to haul him up, but as he pulled with a desperate, guttural cry, the anthracite silk necktie snapped. The collar gave way, leaving William clutching nothing but the air and the weight of his accidental sin. Terrified and certain no one would believe the truth of his mistake in the dark, he began to frantically gather heavy stones from the bank, weighing the coat of his own brother before consigning him to the depths of the Thames.

The memory fluttered before me, and was gone. Someone was tapping me on the shoulder. A young man, a doctor, judging by his bag and manner. I answered his questions, and left William in his care.

William was dead in an hour.

***

Memories can be cruel. They have the ability to haunt us, suffocate us, twisting the threads as well as the picture they create on the canvas of our lives. William Druitt died, and his memories remained with me, as a parting gift - and I had no other way to break free from them, but to write it all down. Yes, I knew now how difficult, how complex their relationship was, and how twisted William’s mind could be at times - but I also knew that he yearned for forgiveness - an absolution, if you will - and that he died at peace. Isn’t that the only thing we crave, after all - to transcend the mortal bounds, passing into perpetual peace?

In a trance, I followed the road to the station, and having returned home, I realized I haven’t visited Abberline - but, perhaps, seeing him wasn’t the task I was fulfilling that day?..

Epilogue,

Wimbourne cemetery, 15 August, 1929

“He is not dead, this friend; not dead,

Gone some few, trifling steps ahead,

And nearer to the end;

So that you, too, once past the bend,

Shall meet again, as face to face, this friend

You fancy dead.”

~ Robert Louis Stevenson

And August came again, as it always did, bringing the long-awaited promise of calm after the heatwaves of July. A shimmer of heat-haze danced upon the Strand, a golden liquor poured over the grey, grit-toothed city. London exhaled—a long, stiffened breath—as the heavy rains of early August retreated, leaving a sky of bruised lavender that paled into an improbable, aching blue. This was the long-promised hope, a summer glow that saturated the air like honey in water, a gilded reprieve for a city that had forgotten the touch of the sun. We believed it. God, how we clung to the warmth, even as the heart knew that bliss is but a tenant, never a master.

The streets were a palimpsest, the old ink of Victorian opulence scrubbed thin, the Edwardian flourish now a ghost. The world moved with a different, jagged gait—tormented, gasping, a lung-shot veteran of the muddy trenches, trying to find his once youthful rhythm in a dancehall. It was a city fighting for breath, desperate for the “better” that the posters promised and the pockets denied.

In a window-glimmer, King George V peered out from a silver frame: bearded, seafaring, a steady eye in a crumbling house. He was the anchor, yet the tide was pulling out toward a nameless horizon. We called it a new morning, a New Georgian dawn, but the stones knew better. They knew we were hovelled in the Interbellum, a hollow space, a parenthesis of light caught between the thunder of the war that was and the lightning of the war that would come. The wheel of Chronos spun, silent and indifferent, grinding the years to dust.

Under the iron ribs of Charing Cross, the steam hissed—a white, scalding sigh against the glass. I boarded. The train pulled its length out of the city’s grip, the rhythm of the rails a staccato pulse: gone-gone, gone-gone. Green Dorset rose to meet the windows, a lush, rolling indifference to the city’s ache.

Wimborne. The air here was thicker, tasting of dry grass and the slow, slow turn of the earth. The cemetery gate groaned a rusted greeting. I walked the path where the shadows lay long and cool, like fingers pointing toward the inevitable.

Montague.

The name on the stone was unchanged by the sun and rain. Today, the arithmetic of the living demanded he be seventy-two. Seventy-two! The number was a grotesque riddle, a cipher that refused to resolve. How to map seventy-two years onto a face that had frozen in its gilded frame at thirty-one? It was a trick of the light, a cruelty of the clock. I tried to conjure him—the silvered hair, the steady eye of a patriarch, the slow, heavy step of a man who had seen the seasons out. But the image shattered. He remained youthful, forever thirty-one, forever vibrant with the heat of a vanished world, while I stood in the golden dust of 1929, feeling the cold wind of the future blowing through the gap where he should have been.

The golden balm of the afternoon had begun to curdle into the long, blue shadows of evening as I turned from Montague’s stone. The air was cooling, carrying the scent of damp earth and cut grass. And there he was, standing by the large stone cross at the junction of the paths, a silhouette sharp against the fading light.

Frederick Abberline.

He looked as if time, that relentless thief, had hesitated around him. He was eighty-six now, in this year of 1929, an age that should have bowed his shoulders to the dust, yet he carried himself with a coiled vigilance. His eyes, though netted with fine lines, still held that piercing, almost surgical blue, missing nothing in the gloaming. He looked younger than the sum of his years, a monument to a stubborn sort of energy that refused to yield to the spinning wheel of Chronos.

“Fred!” I said, my voice warming with genuine affection as I reached him.

He smiled properly then, that rare, real smile that lifted the weary years from his face like mist off the Thames. “Lawrence. Good to see you, old friend. Come to visit Montague?”

I nodded. I did this every year, but fate was merciful, and his own island of eternity was a wasteland of memories, free from the prying gaze of time.

“Seventy-two today,” I offered.

He grunted, a soft, familiar sound, looking at the stone for a moment. “A good age. A lucky age.” He turned his gaze back to me, the sharpness in his eyes softened by warmth. “We were not all so lucky in our time, were we?”

Our time. The time of ghosts and specters, the time of the great uncertainty. The time that was no more. A sudden thought hit me: we were still of the old days, both of us - the best Detective of the era and an immortal creature created by an unknown Frankenstein so long ago. The words hung in the air, not with ash and smoke, but with the quiet companionship of shared memory. We walked slowly toward the cemetery gate, the ground crunching softly under our shoes.

“I hear life in Bournemouth treats you well, Fred,” I said, a smile on my face. “A far cry from the soot of Leman Street.”

“It’s a peaceful life, Lawrence. The sea air does wonders for the lungs, and Emma—well, she keeps me steady as a rock. We have our quiet at Estcourt, and a garden that demands just enough of a man’s time.” He chuckled, a deep, easy sound. “She sees to it I don’t go chasing shadows down the lanes. A man needs a faithful captain when the tide starts to turn, and I’ve the best in her.”

“Whitechapel,” I murmured, a ghost rising from the gravel path between us. “Do you still come back to those days, Frederick?”

He stopped, his expression growing serious, the mask of the pensioner falling away to reveal the Inspector.

“Every day the sun rises and the sun sets, the thought crosses the mind,” he said, the lightness leaving his voice but the friendship remaining steady. “Mary Jane Kelly.” He said her name with a sigh of lasting regret. The last one. The most brutal one. We shared a silent moment for the horror we had both witnessed in that tormented London of old.

‘Have we done her justice, Fred?’ I asked, doubtfully, ‘ Have we done them justice?’

Abberline sighed.

‘We did what was right. They got him in the end. George Chapman’.

George Chapman. A wrong name for a wrong man, a name weirdly respectable, chosen for whatever reasons - be it a former love flame, or a victim, perhaps. A name that echoed menacingly in the dim sidestreets of Whitechapel, even after all those years. Abberline looked out over the fields. “He got the noose for poisoning his wives. Three of them. He died well, they say. Didn’t flinch.’

“Justice?” I said.

“Justice,” he echoed, but this time his voice held a strange, resonant conviction. He turned his blue eyes onto me, the old detective’s fire flickering behind the glass. “I was there at the Borough when they took him. I watched him. And when the news of his capture broke, I told the boys straight: ‘You’ve got Jack the Ripper at last.’”

“You always were certain of him, Fred.”

“I was sure of him even then, Lawrence,” he said, his voice dropping to a conspiratorial rasp. “Back when he was still using his real name—Severin Klosowski. He was there, right under our noses, renting that cellar at the White Hart. A man who moves in the dark of a basement, a man with a surgeon’s past and a butcher’s heart. I suspected him all along. The Home Office, the Commissioner... They wanted a different phantom, a gentleman in a cape, dancing his way through blood and dark. But I saw the darkness in Chapman. I told Godley then, and I’ll tell you now: we got him. It wasn’t the justice the papers wanted, but it was the justice the girls deserved.”

The shadows had lengthened now, stretching across the grass like the long memory of the city we had left behind. We leaned against the cool stone of the perimeter wall, the silence of Wimborne a soft balm after the clatter of the Interbellum.

“It is the change in William that baffles me, Fred,” I said, my voice caught in the evening air. “To haunt him then, suspecting him all along, and learning about his complete transformation. He made peace with Edward, I hear. His will was a complete opposite to that of his father - he left all his money to his family, Fred. He was mourned when he died - an honor he denied Montague. Look - he rests there now, on Montague’s right, and I cannot reconcile the two men. Did they reach their reconciliation at the end, in death?.”

Abberline stayed silent for a long moment, his sharp blue eyes fixed on the horizon where the Dorset hills met the deepening sky. When he spoke, the old Inspector’s rasp was gone, replaced by the gentleness of a man who had seen the inside of a thousand tragedies.

“Remembrance is a treacherous thing, Lawrence,” he said softly. “It’s a lantern we carry, but if we hold it too close, it burns the hand. I saw them both—Montague - in the words of those who knew him, through your eyes - and William, barging in, destroying, insisting, battling the light his brother carried. I still remember how he broke before our eyes. That was his moment of transformation, I think. The living do not need the presence of Ghosts of Christmas Yet to Come to change, but if it comes, the time waits for noone.’

He turned to me, placing a steady, weathered hand on my shoulder. His grip was firm, the touch of a friend who had walked the same foggy miles.

“You’ve spent years pacing the cells of your own memory, Lawrence. Looking for clues, for reasons. But as a man who has spent his life hunting for the truth in the dark, I’ll tell you this: some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved. They are only meant to be carried.”

“How do you do it, Fred?” I asked, looking at where the two brothers lay together. “How do you go back to Estcourt, to Emma, and not take the ghosts with you?”

“I don’t leave them behind,” he replied with a small, sad smile. “I just stop trying to fix what’s already happened. Letting go isn’t forgetting, Lawrence. Montague will always be there, a vibrant, youthful, admired, beloved part of your soul, and I see no betrayal in trying to let go of the pain you cast over him like a funeral drape. That is of no use. Do not burden him with your pain, your grief, your doubts. He wouldn’t want you to. It’s been too long, Lawrence. Live on - but remember him as he was. With love, not despair’.

He squeezed my shoulder once more, a final, grounding gesture.

“The dead don’t want us to stand guard over their sorrows. They’d rather we sat in the sun while it’s still shining. Go back to London, Lawrence. Breathe the air of this new, strange time, however heavy it feels. The ghosts will be here when you return, but for now, let them rest. And let yourself rest, too.”

I knew he was right - deep inside, I knew. But my stubborn, guilt and grief-ridden soul refused to listen. I smiled, although it felt painful/

‘You are wise, Fred. I wish I was that good’.

‘Ha!’ he exclaimed ‘ Wiser than Solomon - but not immortal. And, I have lost those I loved, too. My first wife - God rest her soul- left me six months into our marriage. Consumption has claimed her quicker than a cheap candle burns out, but she was brave, even at the end, when most crumbled. I was so crushed that I took to drinking, and it took me much to get back on my feet and collect the broken pieces. And then I met Emma - she saved me, although she still refuses to admit it. I’m standing here because of her, really - she urged me to leave London when she noticed I was beginning to get restless. ‘

‘She is a remarkable woman’ I observed ‘You are lucky to have her, Fred’.

‘That, I cannot deny’ Abberline said ‘But, between us, I will be relieved to die before her. I could not bear the parting’.

I knew what he meant - it wasn’t the parting, but the burying, the funeral he was scared of. I have done this so many times some parts of my heart turned numb. Abberline looked at the shadows dancing on my face and when he spoke, his voice was full of compassion:

‘How painful it must be to be you, Lawrence’ he sighed ‘ I cannot imagine…’

The shadows deepened, turning the cemetery into a sanctuary of violet and grey. I turned to Fred, the weight of the years suddenly pressing heavy on my chest, a sudden, sharp ache that the Dorset air couldn’t soothe.

“It’s the silence that gnaws at me, Frederick,” I confessed, my voice trembling. “That I never said goodbye to Montague. One day he was there, a vibrant part of the world’s fabric, and the next—nothing. Just an empty space where a man should be. I was left standing on the shore, guilt-ridden and desperate, wondering if there was a word I could have said to anchor him. And then... going to Bournemouth, in a sort of trance, driven by a premonition I couldn’t name, only to find William in that state. To witness his end...”

Abberline’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “I remember the letter you sent me after that meeting with William, Lawrence. Every word of it. You described his eyes, the way life seemed to have leaked out of him before he even drew his last breath. It was a haunting piece of writing.”

At the mention of William, I saw a visible tremor pass through Abberline. He shuddered, a quick, involuntary motion of his shoulders that had nothing to do with the evening chill.

“I’ll confess something to you, Lawrence,” Fred said, his voice dropping to a low, uneasy rasp. “And it isn’t right to speak ill of those who’ve gone to their rest, God knows, but... I never liked William.I could never envision him being different to a bully, a man who would stop at nothing to get his way. There was a coldness in the marrow of that man that always set my teeth on edge.”

He looked away, his jaw set in a hard line. “Even after all these years, I cannot bring myself to think better of him. When I think of Montague, I think of a light extinguished by a cruel hand of fate—an accident of the soul and the river. But because there was no official investigation, because the powers that be wanted the book shut and the ink dry... I was left powerless. I’m a detective, Lawrence. I live for the ‘why’ and the ‘how,’ and to have Montague’s death dismissed without a proper looking-into... it’s a failure that sits in my gut like lead.”

He turned back to me, his blue eyes fierce with a sudden, protective empathy. “You carry the guilt of the survivor, but you mustn’t. Montague’s death was a tragedy, a terrible accident of time and tide, but it wasn’t your burden to prevent. And William...” He shook his head again, that dark shadow crossing his face. “William was a man of his own making. You did more for him by showing up at that final hour than most would have done in a lifetime of friendship.”

“But I feel so empty, Fred,” I whispered.

“Then fill that emptiness with something other than ghosts,” Abberline said, his voice regaining that iron-shod authority that had once commanded the respect of every beat cop in the East End. “Listen to me, Lawrence. The guilt you feel is just love with nowhere to go. You still want to save him, but he is beyond saving now. Your work is with the living.”

He stopped at the edge of the path, the station lights flickering in the distance like fallen stars. He turned to me, and for a moment, the old Inspector looked at me not as a friend, but as a man seeing a truth that defied the laws of the very world he had spent his life policing.

“Go back to London,” he said, his gaze unwavering. “Go back and try to live again. Not just for Montague, but for the man you are meant to be in this new, frantic age.”

He paused, a flicker of something like awe—or perhaps a profound, weary envy—crossing his features.

“And besides,” he added softly, the words hanging heavy in the violet air, “I suspect there is no other choice for you. The wheel spins, and it will eventually grind me and Emma and the memory of 1888 into the Dorset soil. But you... you are different, aren’t you? You are locked in your own Interbellum, one that has no end. You are immortal, Lawrence. You are the one who stays while the rest of us fade.”

He reached out, his hand trembling slightly as he patted my arm—a final, mortal blessing.

“Since you cannot follow them into the dark, you must learn to walk in the light. Go and see what this century has to offer. Witness the change, bear the burden of the years, but do not let them bury you while you still breathe. London is waiting, and whether you like it or not, the future belongs to those who endure. Now, move along—before the steam gives out.”

He waved me goodbye as the train departed, and though the tears choked me, I tried to smile - to reassure him, my old friend, my brilliant old friend the Inspector - I knew he was right, and his advice echoed the one given by Father Lockhart so long ago. Sometimes immortality doesn’t guarantee wisdom, I thought. It does give a different perspective, though - the one of compassion and knowledge. I took Montague’s watch out of my pocket - the hands were now alive, and the pulse of time audible in the well -hidden mechanics. That was the gift of good old Solomon - his great nephew Aaron was a dab hand with watches, and his ingenuity returned the beat of time into the watch.

The initials glimmered on the inner lid of the watch, and for a moment it seemed to me that Montague’s smile glided across the silver.

‘I will try’ I whispered ‘I promise’.

My journey back ended when I left Charing Cross - but I felt the new part of a bigger journey was only beginning. I have no other option, I thought - but to live. And I was ready to make every day count.

***

That was the last I ever saw of Abberline. He died in December, and his faithful and loving Emma followed him soon after. It was a loss sharply felt at the Ten Bells, where we raised glasses in his memory.

‘I will miss him’ Augustin said, his eyes darkening ‘It was an honor to know him’.

‘You were bickering half the time’ George chuckled ‘Remember?’

‘Bickering? Mais non - we were keeping each other on our toes, that’s true. But I respected the man’ he looked at me over his steaming cup of tea ‘ What are you going to do now, Lawrence?’

I sighed.

‘Live, my friend. And I thought it was high time that I wrote a book’.

Augustin nodded approvingly.

‘To Abberline’ he said, rising from his seat ‘ And to friends who are gone but never forgotten!’

***

I did what I promised to do - I wrote the story down as it was, adding and omitting nothing, and I hope I did justice to those who deserved it. I am writing this as the sun sets over London, the new, turbulent era uncoiling like a giant serpent before my eyes. But through all the tumult of time, memory remains vibrant and alive - and so it will remain. Take what I know, make the most of it - and carpe diem, for life is fleeting. Love. Be the light.

I am done.

London, January, 2026.

Acknowledgements.

I would never reach the end were I not blessed with those who cared. And, while this book is dedicated to Monty, there are people I must thank for believing in me and remaining close through all the pain and sleepless nights.

David, thank you for seeing the potential in all that story, and for being incredibly helpful and loyal along the way.

tarotbyphil, you are my George. Wise, compassionate and optimistic, and so patient with me. Thank you for being there.

Treading Water. Thank you for being my criminology support:)

Augustinus Lemovicinus , without you there would be no Augustin. Merci, mon ami.

Gustave Deresse , without you, I’d never knew things I know now - you came in at the right time, with a lantern I much needed. Elbows up.

Michael Barrett , Emilia Elucidates , RJ Sykes and Author Ed Anderson , thank you for being there in all your kindness and sharpness.

Kyle (Horrorble Writer) , Elara Kleinhaus , Molly | Bone and Mirror Tarot , tomrambler319 and Mark Arend, S.A. Dehnadi and Margaret Estelle, Althenar, and my amazing Substack family - thank you for being my family.

And, of course, I must mention my all-forgiving, patient husband who was forced to listen to me talk of Monty for the last four years at least. Thank you, fy nghariad.