“Polly?” he interrupted, reaching for the little notebook and stubby pencil he always kept in his breast pocket. “What’s her last name?”
“Polly... Keys? I think it’s Keys.” She sighed and pressed a hand to her temple. “I’m so frazzled right now.”
“Here, lass, sit down,” he coaxed, taking her gloved hand and leading her into the nearby sitting room. To his horror, a bit of Irish brogue had crept into his voice, and he rigidly forced it back down. He’d tried so hard to eradicate any trace of his humble beginnings, but she always seemed to bring it out. “Take a few deep breaths and then continue.”
She did as he’d instructed, then squared her shoulders, visibly gathering her courage. Once again, the urge to offer more support than he should assailed him. Though a bit spoiled, she was a brave little thing. He’d always admired that about her.
“When I arrived this afternoon, Lucy told me she was worried about Polly. That she hadn’t come home last night before curfew, but her door was locked today.”
“And who is Lucy?” he inquired.
“Lucy Peele. She takes care of things for me here.”
Vague recollections of both women registered in his mind from their working days. Lucy had been badly treated during her time walking the streets, and he was glad she’d found a soft place to land. And Polly Keys... Bloody hell. He remembered that saucy little hoyden. He’d been the one to send her to Mercy House after he’d found her badly beaten in an alley one night.
“What happened next?”
“Lucy, my lady’s maid Heather, and I all went up to Polly’s room,” Allison said in a rush. “Lucy unlocked the door, and the most overpowering stench flooded the hall. Lucy cried out and got sick, and I stepped around her, thinking an animal had died in there....”
He knew that scent far better than he had any wish to. “It’s all right,” he murmured, unwilling to make her relive the terrible moment any more than he had to. “That’s all I need for now.”
He heard the unmistakable sounds of the uniformed constables arriving to take control of the scene and placed his hand on her shoulder, squeezing gently. “You don’t have to stay here if you don’t want to. If I need to ask you any more questions, I can come speak with you at your home, or you can meet me at the station tomorrow.”
She blinked back a wash of tears, then shook her head. “The other girls will be getting home from work soon. They’ll be frightened. I need to be here for them.”
He bit back a sigh of exasperation. What did this gently bred woman think she could do in a situation such as this? The reformed prostitutes who lived in this pretty house had far more experience with the ugliness of the East End than she did. She was the one who needed comforting, not them. But he didn’t have time to argue with her, and it wasn’t his place, anyway.
“Just keep everyone out of our way,” he told her as Sergeant Ness entered, followed by Constables Rolland Skinner and Wallace Ivers.
“Upstairs,” he directed them, giving Lady Allison one last glance before following in their wake.
As promised, the smell hit him before they reached the top of the stairs. He pulled out a cigarette, lit it, and inhaled. It didn’t block the smell of death completely, but it helped a bit.
He entered Polly’s room, taking in her naked, butchered body as dispassionately as he could. He wished he could say this was the worst thing he’d ever seen, but it wasn’t. He was forever dismayed by the harm people could do to each other.
Sergeant Ness approached the bed carefully, making certain not to disturb anything. “Her throat’s been slit. I’m guessing that’s the cause of death, though whoever did this certainly had his fun with her.”
“How long has she been dead, by your best guess?” Quinn asked.
Ness took her hand, then let it fall stiffly back to the mattress. “Several hours at least. Rigor mortis has set in.”
Quinn frowned and circled the room slowly. “She wasn’t here at ten o’clock last night when Lucy did the curfew check. So she came back sometime after that. She must have let him in because the doors are locked at night, and there’s no sign of a break-in.”
“So, he does this while the other girls are sleeping in their rooms?” Ness shook his head. “Ballsy bastard. That seems to give more weight to him slitting her throat first, then doing the rest of this after she was dead. If she’d cried out, someone would have heard.”
At last, Quinn let his gaze settle once more on poor Polly. Her dark hair was matted to the white sheets with her blood, her face frozen in a look of shock. Such a waste.
“I don’t think she was fully committed to giving up her old ways,” Skinner said, pointing to something at the foot of the bed.
A photograph lay between Polly’s bare feet, carefully left for their benefit, the word whore written across it in red ink. The picture was of Polly, completely naked, reclining on a velvet sofa, a coy smile on her lips.
Quinn sighed. For all Lady Allison’s kindness and charity, Mercy House probably felt like a prison for these girls. They were fed and housed, but their new jobs required them to work their fingers to the bone for a mere pittance. Posing for a naked picture? Polly had probably made more on this one shot than she did in a week at the mill. For a girl who’d made her living on her back for years, posing for dirty pictures probably seemed an easy payday.
“I have a few ideas of who we can talk to about that. But if the photos are being widely distributed, he might not have anything to do with this at all.” Quinn waved his hand in Polly’s direction.
“Whoever did this wanted to shock everyone who saw it,” Ness said, shaking his head. “But if he wanted it to look like the Ripper, he missed several key details.”
“I want all of this photographed,” Quinn told Skinner, knowing he’d be poring over those pictures far more often than he wished in the weeks and months to come, trying to find answers. “Have the body taken to the dead room. We’ll have Dr. Lockwood work his magic and see what he can tell us.”