Page 70 of The Business of Blood

Don’t mind me giving the trade a name.

He’d been known onlyas the Whitechapel Murderer before then.

The penmanship and prose of theDear Bossletter didn’t match that of the letter sent to Mr. Lusk.

But the ink had matched.

Red ink. Identical to that of the letter I now held in my trembling hand.

The missive bearing my name.

Nola laid her fingers on my cuff. “I couldn’t give it to you in front of him.”

She meant Croft, of course, and I applauded her for her foresight. “Thank you, Nola, that was very well done of you.”

“Burn it,” she urged. “You should send it back from whence it came.”

From Hell.

Nothing in the world could stop me from reading this letter.

Just as soon as I summoned the courage to break the seal.

“Aunt Nola? Did this come by courier or post?”

“I couldn’t say. Whoever left it slipped it through the mail slot when I was in my sitting room.”

I wobbled across the foyer to the staircase and lowered myself with the help of the mahogany banister. Nola went to the gas lamp at the bottom of the stairs, by way of the dark squares, and loosened the wick, providing light to read by on such a stormy day.

I took off my gloves and wiped my damp palms on my skirts before running tentative fingers across the red wax seal. A strange line was the only impression in the wax. A sword, maybe. A blade?

With a bracing breath, I broke the seal and unfolded the letter. The first sentence spread brittle tendrils of ice through every extremity.

And then it got worse.

Dearest Fiona,

I’ve been watching you since that day. You know the one. The one that haunts us both. The day I made Miss Kelly my masterpiece. You’ve been looking for me, haven’t you? You see me in the blood of every corpse. You erase me every time you clean. What would you like to do to me, I wonder? What mess could we make together? You are so clever, but I begin to fear you are not clever enough. Still so innocent. So provincial. And yet unlike the coarse, violent drunkards who populate your island. Unlike the drunken whores in the East End. I’d hoped you’d absolve me of these new Whitechapel murders by now. I shan’t abide plagiarism; the very thought gives me fits. I’ve sharpened my knife again. I might have to go to work.

Yours truly,

Jack the Ripper

A note:to find the killer, look to his victims. They are chosen because they are the same. Like mine. Good luck.

I scannedthe letter a million times, dissecting each sentence. The prose. The pacing. The penmanship. So achingly similar to the ones I’d pored over countless times when Aberline allowed me into the records room.

Jack the Ripper considered himself an artist. A painter of masterpieces. One whose technique sometimes evolved. But his preferred hue remained the same.

Red. Always red.

And his canvas a woman who sold her body.

I couldn’t feel the tears until they dripped onto the paper. I didn’t realize I’d ceased breathing until I screamed in a gulp of air and sobbed it back out again. The band clamped about my ribs threatened to squeeze the life out of me. To paralyze my lungs forever. To trap my heart in its cage while it threw itself at the bars like a panicked bird, only to collapse with exhaustion.

The letter drifted to the floor. I didn’t hear it land. I couldn’t hear a thing but the ocean in my ears.

It settled on a dark square. Thank God.