Ripped by Shelly Dickson Carr

liked to think of himself.
    Toby was studying Katie from under his dark brows, an amused expression spreading over his face. “ Ahem! That wasn’t so bad, now, was it?”
    Katie grabbed his elbow. “Okay, okay,” she said in a pacifying tone. “Lead on.”
    â€œWhere to, ma petite ?” He grinned. “The London Stone? The godawful Rosy Lee tea shop with its shepherd’s plaid, er, bad tea? Or the bleedin’ Ripper finale?”
    â€œ Jacques le Ripper, mon petit gars .”

Chapter Five

    Pancakes and Fritters say the Bells of St Peter’s
    K a tie thrust her head into the long exhibition room. Behind her came the sound of heavy footsteps as a crowd of kids pushed forward to see the final Ripper exhibit. Katie and Toby let them pass and then slipped in behind the smallest boy at the end.
    The long gallery was illuminated by low-hanging chandeliers that held dozens of electric candles, with great gobs of fake wax dripping down. It was a very big room, with black-and-white glazed floor tiles and two rows of faux marble pillars—spaced about eight feet apart—going to the back of the room where a wide Plexiglas staircase, in a direct line from where Katie and Toby stood, ascended to an open balcony above.
    Set into the two side walls stretched a row of arched niches displaying waxwork figures, seven on either side. At the rear, to the right of the staircase as one faced it, was a “Ladies” restroom door with a cameo of Queen Victoria.
    Extending down the middle of the room, between the marble pillars, ran a long, flat, glass-topped display case with Jack the Ripper memorabilia. Nestled in velvet in the end of the display case closest to Katie lay a set of old keys, a worn notecase, a watch and chain, fragments of a jar or bottle, and loose coins stamped “Britannia.”
    No eerie unreality here , Katie thought with relief. No waxwork dead bodies or eviscerated girls; nothing grotesque to catch the eye. The waxwork figures, positioned in the arched niches down the right- and left-hand walls, didn’t move or jump out at you. It was just an ordinary gallery exhibit.
    â€œI can handle this,” she assured herself, but her breathing quickened when she glanced down the row of seven victims, looming large and lifelike along the left-hand wall, unnatural smiles plastered on their wax faces, eyes scornful as if mocking their impending fates. Katie caught a glimpse of a feathered hat, a parasol, the flounce of a petticoat on the first girl, Mary Ann Nichols, before averting her eyes and fastening them on Collin in a throng of kids, his bright red head sticking out from the crowd like a roasted yam in a pot of other, bland vegetables.
    To their right, a low-hanging chandelier threw wagon wheels of light in front of the first Jack the Ripper suspect with a sign that read
    Who was Jack the Ripper? How did he manage to walk the streets of Whitechapel unimpeded when the whole of the metropolitan police force was standing guard on every corner?
Was he a supernatural phantom who could materialize at will?
Or a flesh-and-blood man bent on harrowing destruction?
    Katie heard a click and tumble sound like a lock being turned, coming from the first suspect. Katie moved hesitantly forward, Toby at her side.
    Take a guess! What sort of man could walk the streets of London and not look out of place? What manner of individual would have been above suspicion? Could Jack the Ripper
have been a minister? . . . The Right Honourable Jack?
    Standing on a pedestal, the waxwork figure showed a tall, lean man with a white clerical collar round his neck. The wheel of light from above caught the wax bulge of his Adam’s apple in a long, thin neck like a turkey’s. Red blotches in his cheeks extended to the tip of his long nose, with eyeglasses drawn low on the bridge. Clutched in knobby fingers was a gilt-clasped Bible.
    The next sign read
    Or was Jack the Ripper a