“Very well. We’ll wait.” I settled against the cold stones of the building, waiting and watching. Time dragged by one hour for every second, it seemed.
I was freezing and exhausted from the attack we’d already been through, and scared of the encounter I’d yet to have with Father. I couldn’t tell which was making me shiver more. I wanted Father to have an excuse for being here.
I wanted desperately to be wrong about him.
Nearly forty-five minutes later the front door swung open, revealing the two figures from the lodging house—a man and a woman. I strained my eyes, searching for definitive proof it was, indeed, my father standing before us. The couple remained a respectable distance apart, before the man stepped into the lamplight.
Lord Edmund Wadsworth glanced up and down the street, his attention pausing on the alleyway Thomas and I were camped out in, causing my heart to shout a warning. Fumbling in the dark, Thomas grabbed my hand and held it securely between his. The warmth of him steadied my nerves.
I knew Father couldn’t see us, but I cringed all the same. I’d never been more grateful for the blanket of fog wrapping us in its cloudy embrace. Father scanned the area again, then climbed into the driver’s seat of the cab, cracking the reins and lumbering off toward our home.
“Pay attention to the cab,” I instructed Thomas, my own focus flicking back to the woman Father had been speaking to. Now she was standing in the light, speaking to another woman, who’d come from the adjacent building.
I was startled to see how young she was. Though I couldn’t make her out clearly, she didn’t look to be more than in her mid-twenties. Her hair hung down in long, ginger curls and she was taller than most men.
I hated that Father had sought her out. Nothing good could come from their association, even if he wasn’t planning on murdering her. How could my father have so many secrets? After she finished her conversation with the other woman, she reached inside her broken window, then checked the door handle. I drew my brows together. It wasn’t a good idea to lock your door without a key in this neighborhood.
She stumbled down the cobbled street, tying a red scarf about herself, singing a familiar song, its lyrics washing over me as they dripped from her honeyed voice.
But while life does remain to cheer me, I’ll retain
This small violet I pluck’d from my mother’s grave.
The song was “A Violet from Mother’s Grave,” and the way her voice sounded so sweet while recounting such a horrid occurrence sent chills under my skin. Thomas tugged on my sleeve. “Your father’s rounding that corner. Shall we follow him?”
I glanced toward the young woman, then down the opposite way, watching Father turn onto the next street. The same feeling of Death lurking close by caressed my sensibilities. I couldn’t shake the feeling something awful was going to occur.
I shook myself out of my daze, then nodded. I was still frightened of our earlier attack. It was nothing more. The young woman singing her sad song would be safe tonight. The monster was heading home.
“Yes.” I tore my gaze away. “Stick to the shadows, and be quick.”
“City Police have made an official report that a woman was found cut to pieces at a house in Miller’s Court, at ten forty-five this morning,” I said, collapsing onto the ottoman in Uncle’s laboratory, reading the Evening News with utter disbelief.
Thomas watched me over his steaming cup of tea, a folded newspaper sitting across his lap. He’d tried co
mforting me by spouting a bunch of nonsense about how we’d done all we could, but I disagreed.
Now he said nothing and it was driving me mad.
“I don’t understand,” I said for the fourth time as the same shock kept coming back around, slapping me in the ribs. “We watched Father go straight home. Did he see us, then wait until we’d gone before committing such a vile act? We were so careful. I can’t understand how he slipped by.”
Still, no response from my companion.
“A lot of good you are,” I huffed. “Master puzzle solver, indeed.”
I checked the heart clock, my anxiety growing with each tick and tock. Uncle was called to the scene nearly four hours ago. Taking that long to inspect a body was never a good sign. From what the paper had printed, I could only imagine the horror Uncle had walked into. He’d been instructed to go alone, and I was ready to tear hair from my scalp, strand by strand.
When news broke of the murder, Thomas and I confronted Uncle with what we’d seen. He dismissed Father’s involvement with a flick of his wrist, saying to keep searching for clues. Lord Edmund Wadsworth couldn’t possibly be guilty.
I wasn’t as convinced of his innocence but did as I was told.
A woman was found cut to pieces. I read that same line time and again. Perhaps I was hoping it was a mistake and by the thousandth time I’d read it, it’d simply disappear like magic. If only life worked that way.
“This is impossible.” I tossed the paper aside and watched the clock again, willing it to speed along and bring Uncle back home already.
I was both sick with worry about who’d been murdered, and fighting the dark curiosity of wanting to know what remained of the woman. How had she been cut up? Did the reporter mean her throat was slashed, or were there actual pieces of her flesh missing? I shouldn’t want to know those morbid details. But, oh, how I couldn’t control those unseemly questions from springing up like new blades of grass in my mind.
Given the address in the paper, I was fairly certain Thomas and I had spied the unfortunate victim speaking with Father only hours before. Questions married other questions and had theories for children.