Page 35 of The Business of Blood

Well, that was Oscar Wilde for you.

Blushing furiously, I pushed the playful playwright toward the stoop next to mine. His entire suit was plush, a rich and extremely velvet trimmed with burgundy silk which matched his cravat. His long cloak must have cost the blood of several minks.

“I’ll thank you not to mention my unmentionables on the street, you cad!”

“Very well.” He allowed himself to be propelled with his usual conviviality. “Let’s discuss them in the garden in a quarter-hour.”

“That’s not enough time to dressandmake decent tea.”

“Half-past, then.”

Releasing him to stumble up his own steps, I checked the watch I kept on the end of a very delicate chain.

If I planned to attend Mr. Sawyer’s autopsy by eight o’clock, then I’d missed my window for sleep. “Better make it coffee, I’m dead on my feet.”

“Níl luibh ná leigheas in aghaidh an bháis.” He yawned half of this in our native tongue and disappeared inside.

I shuddered as I mounted my own stairs, acknowledging the prophetic veracity of his words.

There’s no remedy for death.

Maybe not, but coffee came close.

Somewhat refreshed by a cold wash and fresh clothing, I arrived a little late in my cheerful back garden, unhinging the latch so Oscar could let himself in. Hollyhocks, lobelia, and violas lent a perfect fragrance to our cherished—if ill-timed—meals.

An eerie silence settled about me. It was as though all the ambient sounds of the bustling morning had been smothered by an intruder. No larks called, no doves cooed in the eaves. The air became thick and still. Expectant.

I again felt that gaze upon me. The one that seemed to reach through the layers of my clothing—and perhaps even deeper, still. Through the layers of my skin.

The dread I felt was not an abnormal sensation for a woman who more or less lived alone. Especially at night. But I’d never felt it so intensely, and never in the middle of a sunlit morning.

I turned to inspect the fences, crawling with ivy, and the thick hedges providing my little oasis of privacy in such a crowded city.

Could someone conceal themselves in the shadows beyond? Could they be watching me, even now?

Not without alerting my neighbors, surely.

But I didn’t know that, did I? The hedges were thick enough to—

The gate banged shut behind me, and I nearly leapt out of my skin.

“What are you looking at?” Oscar squinted toward the hedgerows hiding the wrought iron fence that separated my garden from the one adjacent. He looked fresh as a spring daisy in a cream linen morning suit with a matching brimmed hat and carried with him a tray of sumptuous dark coffee and fresh scones.

“Nothing,” I said, rather too brightly. “A shadow caught my eye.”

“That doesn’t surprise me, you are a woman of the shadows. Of course, they appeal to you.”

I couldn’t think of a reply to that, so I accepted a linen and draped it across my lap as he arranged our repast.

We preferred to sit in my garden, as Aunt Nola tended to the flora out here as carefully as she did her own neuroses.

“I’ll dish the scones,” he offered, “whilstyoudish the dirt.”

I measured my words with the concise extents of an alchemist. One did not simply blurt to a well-connected writer that they had met Jack the Ripper in a dark alley unless one wanted to read the story in the papers the next morning. Not that I worried dear Oscar would write the article himself, but I was under no illusion that I was the only confidant with whom he shared gossip.

What was it the Hammer had quoted? Two people could keep a secret if one of them was dead.

It struck me then that I wasn’t exactly certain how dangerous my secrets were…to either of us. But Oscar was privy to almost everything about my past, and as far as I knew, he hadn’t even whispered of it.