I’d lied and told Blackburn that Thomas lived two blocks down and had been slowly making my way toward the correct address.
I wasn’t sure what I was doing here so late at night and was collecting my thoughts. Silly fears had bubbled up. What if the girls at tea were wrong and he did live with his family? They’d be scandalized by my unchaperoned presence at this hour.
It’s not as though he’d offered me his address. I’d found it in one of Uncle’s ledgers and was contemplating simply going home. Now I was hesitating because he was acting… suspiciously.
I held my breath, certain Thomas had somehow spotted me or deduced my arrival, but his attention never touched on my location. He flipped the collar of his overcoat up, then strode down the gaslit street, his footsteps purposely quiet.
“Where are you off to?” I whispered.
Fog hovered in steamy puffs, obscuring everything from the ground up. All too quickly I lost sight of him. Cool fingers of fear slid down my spine, coaxing gooseflesh to rise. Though it was a fashionable neighborhood during the daytime, I didn’t want to be stuck alone when everyone shuttered up for the evening.
Gripping my skirts, I scurried after Thomas, carefully sticking to shadows between the lamps.
A minute later I caught up with him near the end of the block. He’d stopped and was looking one way then the next. My heart crashed into my ribs, and I prayed he wouldn’t turn around. Quickly stepping back into the fog, I let its icy wall envelop me.
Thomas cocked his head but continued down the next road, resuming his silent yet fast pace. Exhaling, I counted three breaths then followed, taking more cautious steps.
We traveled through deserted streets, meeting only one horse-drawn cart returning from the park. The scent of manure followed in its wake, and I fought the urge to sneeze, lest I give myself away.
Thomas didn’t halt again, his long legs carrying him in great strides toward Westminster Bridge Road and the River Thames. In the distance I made out the stone archway of the London Necropolis Railway Station.
The station had been built thirty years ago to help ferry the dead from London to Surrey, the site of the Brookwood Cemetery. The spread of disease—like scarlet fever and other contagious infections—made extra graves necessary, and the distance from the city helped keep contamination away from the living.
Another chill tangled itself in my hair the closer we drew to the water. I hadn’t forgotten the river was one of the places Thomas suggested our murderer had committed his heinous deeds. So why, then, was he stalking that very location this late at night? Before I thought on it too much, a second figure emerged from a sunken access road where carriages delivered corpses to the Necropolis under the river.
I didn’t mind the bodies as much as I feared the living, breathing creatures lurking about such a place. I had a terrible suspicion this wasn’t some secret meeting of the Knights of Whitechapel. Sneaking into an alleyway adjacent to the building, I craned my neck, hoping for a better view of Thomas and his unidentifiable partner.
Their conversation was hushed, so I couldn’t make out any particulars. It didn’t take much to garner the gist of it, however. One simply did not loiter outside a place where hundreds of deceased were ferried by railway to Brookwood Cemetery.
Especially when one was studying the inner workings of the human body and needed more test subjects than were volunteered. As if he heard my internal admonishment, Thomas abruptly turned in my direction and I nearly tumbled to the ground.
I closed my eyes and imagined a wall erupting around me, willing Thomas to remain blind to my presence should he investigate this alley. I listened hard, but no sounds of pursuit met my ears. Eventually, I crept back to the corner.
Thomas faced the opposite direction now, deeply immersed in conversation.
The Necropolis had an ominous aura surrounding it, even with its ornate ironwork gate and chiseled stonework doing their best to bring peace to mourners paying their last respects.
Minutes passed, then the two figures disappeared down the access road. Drat! I paced in my spot, caught between wanting to sprint after them and knowing there was no place to hide should I be spotted in that subterranean passage.
If I waited, I could be standing here until dawn. There was no telling if Thomas was getting on the railway to travel to the cemetery or if he was only going into one of the mortuaries or funeral rooms. I’d visited the building on two occasions. Once when I retrieved a body for Uncle this summer and once when my mother died.
I barely remember her viewing, but recall every detail of the room in which she rested before taking her final train ride to the cemetery. I couldn’t bring myself to go with Father and Nathaniel to her grave that horrible morning.
On Father’s orders Mr. Thornley had escorted me home, safely tucked beneath his arms, sheltering me from the cruel reality of the world.
I stared into the dark, wishing Thomas would materialize and distract me from my memories. I sighed. “Oh, fine. I shall go to you, then.”
A leaf crunched behind me. My blood spiked as if a million mortuary needles pricked me at once. I spun on my heel, ready to fly all the way home, then stumbled against the building, my hand covering my heart. “Goodness! You scared the devil out of me.”
Thomas leaned against the wall beside me, getting entirely too close for decency. I didn’t dare move. I hardly remembered to breathe with his face mere inches away. He tapped his fingers on the stone, never taking his eyes off mine, his lips quirking up. “Well, you terrify me, Wadsworth. Seems we’re even.”
Som
e of the shock was wearing off, yet my tongue and muscles felt incapable of movement. The way he stole through the night like a thief was unsettling.
I wanted to yell at him, scream about how wrong it was to creep up on someone, but could only stare back, breathing hard. There was something thrilling about being caught by his stare in the dark.
Squeaks of a carriage carrying a heavy load broke the charged silence, and he watched as it passed the alleyway. Once horse hooves clacked against the cobblestones in the distance, he turned his attention back on me.