Page 86 of The Business of Blood

Jack did not do this forme.

I ventured forward, regarding the drawer with the apprehension one would a thousand spiders.

It wasn’t the tiny missing body parts all piled together in the rear of the drawer that stole my breath. It was the letter scrawled in red ink pegged to the bottom by the sharp end of a scalpel.

I did this for you, Fiona.

I slammed my lids shut. Grappling with my lungs, with my burning tear ducts, my careening heart. Those parts of my body betraying me.

Not now. I couldn’t fall apart now.

I swallowed thrice. Once for my tears, a mad gulp for air, and the last to force my heart from my throat back to my chest where it belonged.

I opened my eyes to a blurry, silent Aberline, and steeled every part of myself to finish the letter.

Do you like my gifts? I say gifts because Comstock is the first, and the second is this instrument he used to cut your neck. He claimed it was an accident, hurting you. Screamed it. What a dunce. Barely a brain at all.

Do not mind the mess. The inspectors will gather the trifles. The coroner will take the body. The rest can be demolished with the building. There is nothing for you to clean. Consider that a professional courtesy. Not my first.

During our time together, Mr. Comstock convinced me he was not responsible for the recent Whitechapel deaths, and neither am I. Look elsewhere, Fiona. You have so many questions. If only your father was not already a dead man. He’d provide some of the answers you seek.

You must not fear me. You are safe now.

Yours always,

Jack the Ripper

Fumbling in my pocket,I snatched out the letter I’d received this morning and hastily compared the writing.

An exact match. The script, the paper, the prose.

“What’s this, then?” Croft leaned over my shoulder.

Aberline joined our little conclave around the open drawer, casting his shadow across the words, darkening the red. “Miss Mahoney and I were at Scotland Yard examining this letter she received from the Ripper this morning when you summoned me here,” he told Croft.

“We still can’t be certain itisthe Ripper, can we?” My voice sounded high-pitched and desperate, even to me. “I mean, this could still be the work of some other delusional reprobate. Someone mad enough to believe he is the Ripper.”

“Anything’s possible,” Aberline conceded. “But I think it’s safe to operate under the assumption that it’s him.”

“May I?” Croft reached around me to pinch the first letter between two large fingers.

That he asked, surprised me. That he asked gently should have worried me.

As usual, the hairs on my body, the fibers of my skirt, all tuned to his nearness, following him with some strange, magnetic awareness.

My skin prickled with such intensity, it hurt.

I surrendered the note to him and retreated to the front of the desk while both Aberline and Croft scrutinized the letters written to me.

By Jack the Ripper.

He did all this for me.

Never in my life had I received a gift so utterly unwelcome.

Poor Mr. Comstock. I searched his unfamiliar face. I’d never actually met him but for our encounter in Crossland Alley. Of course, I’d fantasized about hurting him. Or worse. He’d terrorized me that night, after all.

He’d been unscrupulous and ambitious, but I did believe he never truly meant me any harm.