“It takes me a moment, but I gets it. ‘You killed Leather Apron? Ripper Jack himself? But he is from hell,’ says I.
“This draws a guffaw from Garrick. ‘He’s in hell now,’ he says. ‘His soul, at any rate. His body is sleeping with the rotting corpses of common hoodlums in the sludge on the Thames’s bed.’
“I know Garrick doesn’t like questions, but one pops out before I can stop it: ‘How did you find a demon, sir?’ But he isn’t angry; he seems to be in a mood for questions.
“‘Aha,’ says he, tapping his forehead. ‘With man’s deadliest weapon: the brain. Jack was a creature of habits, and that was his undoing. The first five girls were done in a frenzy, but after that Jack calmed himself and used the moon as his clock. For three years now I’ve been patrolling Whitechapel and Spitalfields on the nights of the full moon, and finally he shows outside the Ten Bells.’ Garrick laughs then. ‘It’s barely credible, this so-called genius plans to snatch yet another girl from the Bells. I spotted him right off, a toff in common getup, all twitchy with nerves.’
“Garrick leaned over me then. I remember blood dripping onto my forehead and I thought, That’s Leather Apron’s blood.”
Chevie was so enthralled by the story that she wouldn’t have moved even if the plasti-cuffs had miraculously fallen from her wrists.
“‘I let him take a girl, just to be sure,’ Garrick says. ‘And I trail him from the rooftops down to Buck’s Row. I can hear them talking and joking about poor Polly Nichols, who was done for at this very spot. Old Jack had a surprisingly feminine giggle on him, something he never boasted about to the papers. And all the time I am looming overhead with my favorite Cinquedea blade all blacked up and ready for blood.’ He showed me the short sword then. It had not been washed, and the blood was thick and lumped with gore.”
If Chevie had not been so engrossed in the tale, she might have noticed that, while there was still noise coming from outside the bathroom, the sounds of agents joking had ceased and there were thumping sounds that could not be attributed to the music pumping from the television’s speakers.
“‘As soon as he pulls out his own blade, a common-as-muck scalpel, I leaped down from on high and had him open from neck to nave. It was a clean swipe, like something from the theater. He went down like they all do, no special powers, no memorable last words. The girl was rightly grateful and fell to her knees, calling me Lordship. I should have killed her, I know, me lad. But the street was dark and my face was blacked, and so I simply says, “Tell your friends that London is rid of Bloody Jack,” and lets her run off for herself. It was a moment of weakness, but I was feeling well disposed toward the world. And then, what’s this? A little moan from the cobbles. My boy Jacky is still breathing. “Not for long,” says I, and set to work. Before he goes, Jack confesses to nineteen murders, with something of a gleam in his eye. “Nineteen?” says I to him. “I done twice that last year alone.” His heart gave out after that.’”
Riley drew a shuddering breath. “And that was when I realized that Albert Garrick was indeed the devil.”
The bathroom door buckled suddenly as a body was hurled forcibly against it. The crash startled Riley from his reverie. Again the door heaved, this time coming away from its hinges entirely, falling into the room, weighed down by the unconscious form of Agent Duff.
A dark figure appeared in the doorway and seemed to glide into the room.
“Orange?” said Chevie, but she saw almost immediately that, while the figure resembled the FBI agent, it was not in fact him.
Riley looked into the man’s cruel, dead eyes. “No. No, it’s my master. Now do you understand?”
Albert Garrick hammed it up for Chevie, striking a pose, then he gave a deep bow.
“Albert Garrick, West End illusionist and assassin-for-hire at your service, young lady—come down the chimney to introduce myself proper.”
As he bowed, a drop of someone else’s blood fell from his nose, landing on Chevie’s forehead, and she was struck to her core with a terror that she could barely contain.
“Now I understand,” she said.
Victoriana
LONDON. 1898
Albert Garrick had been apprenticed to the Great Lombardi for more than ten years, and in that time the little Italian became like a second father to the orphan boy. But young Albert never forgot his first father, who had killed for him, and it was years before the nightmares of those cholera days in the Old Nichol faded and he stopped worrying every time a patch of dry skin appeared on his elbow or his eyes seemed a little sunken.
Lombardi worked him hard but was not cruel and never once struck him unless he deserved it. They traveled the length and breadth of England, working the theaters, and once even took the Boulogne ferry for a summer season in Paris’s Théâtre Italien, where sections of Lombardi’s act were woven into a street scene for a Verdi opera. Lombardi wept at the final curtain every night and often told young Albert that he saw working with Verdi as the crowning achievement of his career.
“I have searched all my life for real magic,” he said some years later as he lay dying from tuberculosis in their digs in Newcastle upon Tyne. “And I found it in the music of Verdi. An Italian. Dio lo benedica.”
Lombardi died that night, forcing his apprentice to appear in his stead at the Journal. The night was not an unqualified success, but many of the doves survived, which encouraged young Albert to adopt the Lombardi name and to fulfill his master’s engagements.
Garrick inherited not only his master’s bookings but his assistant, too. Sabine was the most exotic and beautiful creature Albert had ever seen, and he’d been in love with her since that first day, when he had watched, slack jawed, as she emerged unscathed from Lombardi’s Egyptian saw-box.
THE GARDEN HOTEL, MONMOUTH STREET. LONDON. NOW
And now, in the Garden Hotel, Garrick felt an echo of the passion of his youth as he took his first proper look at Chevron Savano.
She looks like Sabine, thought Garrick, gazing down at the girl.
He cupped Chevie’s jaw in his hand, tilting it back. It’s uncanny, the resemblance.
And another part of his brain told him, There’s a passing likeness, nothing more. Garrick was shaken, all the same. His resolution to pierce this maid’s heart had evaporated like morning mist.
What is happening to me?
Garrick bowed once more to Chevie. “Beg pardon, Miss Savano. I need a moment to gather my thoughts.”
Garrick ducked out of the bathroom and strode to the kitchenette, where there stood what looked like a squat refrigerator of the American style. Garrick pulled open the door and inside, instead of rows of chilled food and beverages, he saw Agent Waldo Gunn, sitting behind a sheet of bulletproof glass.
Garrick knew from Orange’s expertise that this fake fridge was a personal panic pod and was just as secure as the president’s bunker under the White House.
Waldo sat shivering behind the glass, as though he were seated in a real refrigerator. He punched numbers into his phone with shaking fingers.
“This pod is not in the system, is it, Waldo?” said Garrick. “You have been augmenting your security.”
Garrick slammed the door so hard the catch snapped, and the door swung open. The fact that Waldo had been able to secure himself made Garrick’s own escape more urgent. The FBI would be aware of his existence now and would soon be—what was the expression?—hot on his trail. This century was becoming a dangerous place. Time to go ho
me.
No more dallying! he told himself. In there you go, mate. And kill her. She is puny and helpless. One slice across the windpipe will more than do the trick. The noise will be distasteful, but there it is—too late now to be letting your qualms get in the way.
Garrick froze in mid-pace.
My qualms? But I don’t have qualms.
And, in a bolt of self-awareness, it came to him.
These are Smart’s qualms. He was fond of this Savano girl, and this fondness bleeds across my neurons, reinforcing this false identification with Sabine. This young woman is no more a reincarnation of Sabine than she is of Her Majesty, Queen Vic. I shall kill her and be well rid of an adversary.
Garrick stocked up on weaponry from the FBI arsenal, including Duff’s switchblade, which he had casually knocked from the agent’s grasp.
How charming, thought Garrick. The standard of weaponry has really improved. Killing in this time will be so much easier.
This notion cheered him immensely and he reentered the bathroom, bolstered for his grisly work.
Inside the bathroom, Chevie had her foot hooked underneath the unconscious Agent Duff’s chin and was trying to haul him toward her when Garrick’s frame filled the doorway.
“Most enterprising, Agent. Perhaps he has a blade of some sort on his person? One never knows, eh?”
Chevie glared at the assassin belligerently. “You killed them all, didn’t you? Smart, the hazmat team, those officers outside?”
Garrick twirled the blade. “Not all,” he said, nodding pointedly at Duff. “Not yet.”
Chevie withdrew her foot, hoping that Duff at least would be spared. “Riley was right about you.”
“Oh?” said Garrick, prepared to listen to this before silencing this girl forever. “And what did my wayward assistant say?”