A Deadly Deception Read online

  Books by Tessa Harris

  Dr. Thomas Silkstone Mysteries

  THE ANATOMIST’S APPRENTICE

  THE DEAD SHALL NOT REST

  THE DEVIL’S BREATH

  THE LAZARUS CURSE

  SHADOW OF THE RAVEN

  SECRETS IN THE STONES

  Constance Piper Mysteries

  THE SIXTH VICTIM

  THE ANGEL MAKERS

  A DEADLY DECEPTION

  Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

  A DEADLY DECEPTION

  TESSA HARRIS

  KENSINGTON BOOKS www.kensingtonbooks.com

  All copyrighted material within is Attributor Protected.

  Table of Contents

  Also by

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  CHAPTER 10

  CHAPTER 11

  CHAPTER 12

  CHAPTER 13

  CHAPTER 14

  CHAPTER 15

  CHAPTER 16

  CHAPTER 17

  CHAPTER 18

  CHAPTER 19

  CHAPTER 20

  CHAPTER 21

  CHAPTER 22

  CHAPTER 23

  CHAPTER 24

  CHAPTER 25

  CHAPTER 26

  CHAPTER 27

  AUTHOR’S NOTES

  KENSINGTON BOOKS are published by

  Kensington Publishing Corp.

  119 West 40th Street

  New York, NY 10018

  Copyright © 2019 by Tessa Harris

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

  Library of Congress Card Catalogue Number:

  Kensington and the K logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

  ISBN: 978-1-4967-0660-7

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-0660-9

  First Kensington Hardcover Edition: September 2019

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4967-0662-1

  ISBN-10: 1-4967-0662-5

  For my husband, Simon, with love and thanks

  Oh, what a tangled web we weave . . . when first we practice to deceive.

  —Sir Walter Scott, “Marmion,” 1808

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  This, the third novel in the Constance Piper mystery series, is once again set against the backdrop of the so-called Jack the Ripper murders in Whitechapel, London, between the years 1888 through 1891.

  In my research for this book, I am indebted to so many historians who have spent endless hours trawling through archives and original source material in order that I could put my own interpretation on events and weave even more mysteries into this already-fascinating period of British history. My imagination has been fueled and sustained by Christy Campbell and his groundbreaking book, Fenian Fire (HarperCollins, 2002). The Observer newspaper described the work as “one of the most remarkable examples of a ‘black operation’ ” ever revealed, and I am most grateful to Mr. Campbell for his meticulous research, which was the trigger for this novel.

  For background reading I would recommend Paul Begg and John Bennett’s Jack the Ripper: The Forgotten Victims, which concentrates on murders contemporary with the canonical five attributed to the Ripper. I have endeavored to source my factual information from articles and accounts as they were reported in contemporaneous newspapers, and for these I am indebted to the seminal website on matters pertaining to Jack the Ripper, https://www.casebook.org.

  Conspiracy theories are nothing new and swirled around in Victorian London at this time, too. For more about these theories—most of which I view as completely implausible—I would recommend The Terrible Quiet by Peter Wilson and Jack the Ripper and Black Magic: Victorian Conspiracy Theories, Secret Societies and the Supernatural Mystique of the Whitechapel Murders by Spiro Dimolianis.

  As ever, my thanks also go to my editor, John Scognamiglio, and my agent, Melissa Jeglinski, and to my husband, Simon, and our children, Charlie and Sophie, for their support.

  CHAPTER 1

  London, Wednesday, July 17, 1889

  CONSTANCE

  It was the footsteps that woke me. From the cradle of my deep sleep, I supposed the noise to be rain splattering the window, or maybe even a trotting horse. Opening my gritty eyes, I looked up at the square of light on our moldy ceiling and thought perhaps I’d dreamed the sound. But then I heard the cry—the cry that we all know round here too well. That’s when I knew it was real. “Murder! Murder!”

  Scrambling out of bed, I rushed over to pull up the sash and there he was, in our street, a little nipper, shouting at the top of his voice. “Murder! Murder!” Cupping his hands round his mouth, he called out once and then he cried again. He hollered words that turned my blood even colder, and everyone else’s, too. “Jack’s back!” he bellowed, and a chill ran down my spine quicker than a rat along a drainpipe.

  For a moment I was numb. I couldn’t believe it. Still can’t. Just as we were all feeling safe in our beds, just when we dared leave our windows ajar at night on account of the warmer weather, just when we could walk out at twilight again, we hear there’s been another killing. Of course, the cry made us all sit up and take notice. If Jack is back, none of us is safe.

  Flo was quick off the mark. Pushing me out of the way, she shoved her head through the window.

  “Where?” she yelled. “Where’s the murder?”

  The lad turned and, still running backward, gulped and yelled up, “Castle Alley, by Goulston Street Wash’ouse.”

  Ma shuffled in with her shawl drawn round her shoulders and a frown on her brow. “What’s amiss?” she wheezed, all blurry-eyed.

  Flo and me swapped glances. We knew she wouldn’t take it well.

  “There’s been another killing,” I said as soft as I could, but it still didn’t stop her from gasping for air, like a fish out of water. I feared the shock would bring on another attack, and it did. I rushed over to her and sat her down beside me on the bed.

  “I’ll go and see what’s what,” Flo told her, pulling on her skirt. She tried to act all cocky, as if she could make things right, but, of course, she couldn’t. We both knew that if Jack was back to work, then no amount of brave words would help soothe the terror that’d return. There’s been nothing since November; not since Mary Jane Kelly was found on the day of the Lord Mayor’s Parade. She was Jack’s fifth—or, some say, sixth victim. After her, of course, came poor Rose Mylett. At first, we all thought she was one of his, too. With the help of my friend Acting Inspector Thaddeus Hawkins, I proved Rose’s murder weren’t Jack’s handiwork, after all. So that’s why, eight months on from the foulest murder of all, it’s come as the most terrible shock to everyone to think the fiend stalks among us again.

  EMILY

  Yes, eight long months have passed since Jack last struck. Eight months in which the people of Whitechapel and beyond have tried to rebuild their lives. Yet, the brutal killings still cast their shadow. I well remember the morning they found the body of what everyone prayed would be the Ripper’s last victim: Mary Jane Kelly. In a squalid room in Miller’s Court, it was. I was there when the rent collector first put his eye to the broken pane, but couldn’t quite comprehend the scene at first. He’d been banging on the flimsy door for the past few seconds, fearing it might splinter under his fist. He’d even called the tenant’s name. “Mary Kelly! Mary Jane!” He was used to her scams—the way she’d pretend she didn’t know what day of the month it was, or how she’d sometimes just flutter those long lashes of hers and beg a favor. Her wiles were enough to make a grown man weak at the knees. Or how she’d call him “dear Tommy” in that singsongy voice of hers, which reminded him of a skylark on a spring morning. But six weeks is a long time in any landlord’s book, and Mr. McCarthy wasn’t having any more of her shilly-shallying, so on this occasion Thomas Bowyer was under instructions to return with the rent, or not at all.

  His knocking having met with silence, Bowyer went around the corner of the premises to where he knew the windowpane was broken. Carefully he reached through the jagged glass and drew back the curtain so that he could see inside. It was a sight that would come to haunt him for the rest of his days. He withdrew his hand so quickly from the broken pane that his skin was caught and torn by the glass as he staggered back. Yet, he did not make a sound, save for a violent retch in the gutter nearby. Despite his dizziness and nausea, he managed to alert his boss to what he had just seen—to the two pieces of cut flesh on the table and to the blood on the floor and to the fact that the body of Mary Jane Kelly, the prettiest and sweetest of the street girls he knew, lay mutilated beyond all recognition.

  That was last November. On the ninth day of the month, to be precise. Not that time means anything to me. It is but a ticking of a clock. I am no longer of this earth, you see. I am a revenant. I died, or, more accurately, was murdered, because I tried to expose a secret society of powerful men that preyed on my young pupils. I was handed over to a cruel bully, who I now know went by the name of the Butcher, and paid the ultimate price for my discovery when he cracked my skull against a wall. Now, however, I have returned to right the wrongs committed against me and so many others who cannot defend themselves against the powers that control their lives. br />
  London’s East End, where this shocking crime against Mary Jane Kelly was perpetrated, is where I usually roam. Unseen by nearly all, I am to be found underfoot in the cobbles of Whitechapel, on the panes of grimy glass, in the fabric of people’s clothes, on wood and on brick, even floating on the air you breathe. There are traces of me all around—of what was, what is, and what will come—but only the chosen few can sense them. Constance Piper is one of them and I am able to live on through her.

  CONSTANCE

  This time the killing’s even closer to home, just a couple of streets away from us. The washhouse is where Ma, Flo, and me go for a bath now and again. ’Course we have to go second class: a cold bath and a towel for your penny. Someday I’ll treat myself to first class: that’s two towels and warm water. Someday.

  “Let’s get the kettle on,” I say, guiding Ma downstairs. I sit her in our one good, horsehair armchair by the empty hearth just as Flo steps over the threshold to find out what’s what.

  “I won’t be long,” she calls back to Ma, trying to reassure her; only, she’s wheezing that much, I’m not sure she’s heard. So we sit and we wait.

  Already there’s a dreadful brouhaha outside. People are coming round our way to get to Castle Alley. You wouldn’t ever catch me down that dingy rat hole. Never gets any sun, even when there’s some to be had. In shadow all day, it is. It’s where some of the local costermongers park up their barrows for the night. You get all sorts coming and going and all manner of diseases lurking there, so they say. Some ragamuffins and unfortunates even kip down under the carts. If you can put up with the stink, I suppose it’s out of the rain. But I needs hold my breath just when I’m passing, the stench is that bad.

  At least half an hour goes by before Flo’s back. She takes off her shawl as she blusters through the front door. “It’s Bedlam out there,” she tells us, like she’s the one who’s having it hard. “There’s crowds all round the mortuary, as well as where she was found.”

  It’s been raining in the night and there’s mud on her boots. She’s all flushed as she sits down to ease them off. I’m watching her and I’m waiting for her to say something more. It’s like she’s trying to think of how to get something off her chest. But she just gives me the eye and bites her lip.

  “Oh, God!” I mutter, watching her stand up real slow, like she’s trying to put off what she knows she must do. “It’s someone we know, ain’t it?” I keep my voice low, but Ma, still in the chair, senses something’s amiss.

  “Well, Flo?” she puffs.

  Dread flies up like a black crow from somewhere deep inside me. My whole body tenses as I watch my big sister stand in front of Ma, take a deep breath, and say, “Word is it’s Alice Mackenzie.”

  EMILY

  Florence is correct. Indeed, it is Alice Mackenzie who has been slain, and it was her imminent murder that brought me back to Whitechapel last night, shortly before the attack happened. Like all the other barbarous murders I have witnessed, I recall the event vividly.

  It may be mid-July, but last night was unseasonably chilly. Earlier in the evening, skies had threatened rain, and building up to midnight they began to deliver in heavy intermittent bursts. The potholes and muddy ruts quickly filled with rainwater. It was not a good night to be abroad and Police Constable Joseph Allen was not relishing pounding the beat. Such was the reputation of Castle Alley that, up until last month, there’d been extra police patrols in the area. A filthy cut-through that harbored the twin evils of disease and vice, it is no place for God-fearing souls. The patrols had, however, been stood down, even though the police were still vigilant in the vicinity.

  Shortly after the midnight bell sounded at St. Jude’s, during a dry spell, PC Allen decided to stop for a snack in an archway that leads off Whitechapel High Street. Standing under the glare of a lamppost, he took from under his rain cape a paper parcel containing a sausage roll. As he munched away contentedly, he looked around him. He neither saw nor heard anything suspicious. Making light work of the pastry, he proceeded to walk on in the direction of Wentworth Street, passing the Three Crowns public house. The landlord, he noticed, was shutting up for the night. Shortly after, he met a fellow constable, PC Walter Andrews, heading toward Goulston Street. The two men exchanged greetings; then they proceeded to go their separate ways. Five minutes later, PC Andrews was plodding down Castle Alley when the beam from his bull lantern picked up the figure of a woman slumped on the footpath between two wagons. At first, he thought she was just sleeping off the drink, like so many of her sort do. It was only when he raised his lamp that he could see her sightless eyes gazing back at him. Her throat was slit from ear to ear. But perhaps, most telling of all, her skirt had been pulled up to expose the lower half of her body. It was covered in blood.

  Two blasts were sounded on his police whistle and within seconds more officers arrived at the scene. Yet, in their haste to give assistance, not one of them noticed what I saw quite clearly in the nearby darkness. As the constables stared wide-eyed at Whitechapel’s latest murder victim, my own gaze was firmly fixed on a shadowy figure creeping quietly away with all the stealth of a professional assassin.

  CONSTANCE

  I’m glad that Ma is sitting when she hears the news; else I’m sure she’d have keeled over. Her lips fly apart in a gasp. She holds her hankie to her mouth and I see her horrified eyes fill with tears.

  “Oh no! Oh no!” she blurts. I put an arm around her and feel a shudder building up in her chest, like an Underground train, until it breaks out into a full-blown sob.

  “They’re not sure,” insists Flo, trying to put on a brave face. “Her old man and Betsy Ryder from the lodgings have still to see her.”

  But the thought of her friend lying cold on a slab is enough to set Ma off. “Oh, Alice! Alice,” she wails until, a moment later, it strikes her. She darts up at Flo, a look of terror twisting her face. “Was it . . . ?”

  It’s like she can’t bring herself to say his name. Flo doesn’t have to. I can tell by the fear on that pretty face of hers that it’s what we all dreaded as soon as we heard. Jack’s wielded his knife and left poor Alice bloody as a butcher’s shambles.

  “I need to go!” coughs Ma, all of a sudden. She’s heaving herself up from her chair.

  “Go where?” says I with a frown.

  “I can tell them if it’s Alice or not.”

  Flo’s scowling, too. “You want to go to the dead house?”

  Ma looks put out and seems suddenly stronger, like she’s had a slug of hard liquor. “Well, I ain’t just going to stay here and twiddle my thumbs, and that’s a fact,” she counters, reaching for her bonnet.

  We watch helplessly as she ties the ribbons under her chin.

  “Well, are ya coming with me, or not?” she asks, stomping toward the door, huffing and puffing. She’s got the wind in her sails, and that’s for sure.

  All three of us make our way through Fashion Street to Old Montague Street, where they’ve taken the body. The mortuary is where Polly Nichols and Annie Chapman have lain, too, but mortuary’s a grand name for a place that’s little more than a brick shed. I know some of the medical men have complained about having to do their business in there, so cramped and dirty and dark, is it.

  In ten minutes we’ve reached the gates at Eagle Place. There are two or three coppers trying to keep order, but the crowd’s growing by the minute. There’s a lot of jostling and a fight breaks out a few yards away from us. I spot a couple of the usual suspects from down our way: nosey Mrs. Puddiphatt and Widow Gipps. Keen as mustard they are, to find out who’s copped it this time. But there’s another familiar face that I’m happy to see. Gilbert Johns towers above most people. Flo sees him, too, and by jabbing both her fingers into each corner of her mouth, she whistles as loud as any docker can. It does the trick and Gilbert whips round. His face cracks into a grin when he clocks us and he plows toward us through the crowd.