Under pressure from Abigail, who was eager to repeat the experience of travelling on the underground, they caught the Inner Circle Line train from South Kensington and got off at Euston Square. The noise of the clanking train made talking difficult, unless shouted, so they waited until they had left Euston Square and were making their way through Somers Town towards their home before they talked about what Helena Swanwick had told them.
‘So Edmund Heppenstall seethes with anger over Walter Sickert’s affair with his wife. He wants revenge,’ said Daniel.
‘It’s a bit drastic to kill two women and try to implicate Walter just to get revenge on him for an affair. I mean, to actually kill someone deliberately, and butcher them the way these women were,’ said Abigail.
‘Unless he’s killed before.’
‘His wife?’
‘It’s possible. There’s been no sign of her. And he’s spent the past year letting the guilt for killing her build up, and all the time blaming Sickert for it.’
‘And finally it boils over in him?’
‘I’ve known it happen,’ said Daniel. ‘And he is a surgeon, perfectly capable of carving up those women.’
‘At the moment it’s just a theory, with nothing to back it up,’ Abigail pointed out.
‘We need to find out what happened to Catherine Heppenstall,’ said Daniel.
‘Aren’t we in danger of getting away from the course of action we’ve set for ourselves?’ asked Abigail. ‘The butcher. This business of Heppenstall could just be a red herring.’
‘Perhaps,’ agreed Daniel. ‘But it may not be. And I’ve been thinking about what Sergeant Whetstone suggested about talking to Fred Abberline. If Fred spent nine years as a local inspector in Whitechapel, he might well know the extended families of the murdered women. And he might also know something about Catherine Heppenstall, since she came from Clapham.’ He looked enquiringly at her. ‘I think it might be a good time to renew an old acquaintance.’
When they arrived home, Daniel wrote a letter to Frederick Abberline asking if he and Abigail could visit them. Meanwhile, Abigail sorted out her books and maps on the sun temple of Niuserre at Abu Ghurob. She expected that at any time now Conan Doyle would be in touch to arrange their trip to the Pyramids of Abusir, and she wanted to be ready when that happened.
Daniel put his letter in an envelope and said to Abigail: ‘I’m going to the post office to send this off; then I’m going to call on Bob Bones and ask if he can help us with finding our mysterious butcher. Every trade and profession is a small circle where everyone knows everyone else, and butchery is no exception. Do you want to come?’
Abigail shook her head. ‘I really need to catch up on my research for the visit to Egypt with Doyle. It’s a big responsibility to lead an expedition, and I don’t want to let him down.’
‘All right,’ said Daniel. ‘But don’t answer the door to anyone. Keep it bolted. I’ll call through the letter box when I come back.’
‘You still feel I’m at risk, even though Sickert’s left the country?’
‘I don’t know. I just don’t want to take any chances.’
Once he’d posted the letter to Abberline, Daniel made for Bob Bones’s butcher shop in Camden High Street.
‘Afternoon, Mr Wilson,’ Bones greeted him cheerily. ‘What can I do for you today? I’ve got some lovely mince. Perfect for a shepherd’s pie.’
‘Not today, thanks, Bob. I’m after a favour. Would you take me and Abigail to Smithfield the next time you go?’
‘Why?’ asked Bones, puzzled.
‘I’m looking for a butcher, aged about nineteen or twenty, born and raised in Whitechapel but he could be working in North London.’
‘Let me guess, this is the New Ripper, as they’re calling him?’
‘To be honest, Bob, I’m clutching at straws. I may even be barking up the wrong tree, but it’s all I’ve got to go on so far.’
‘You had a butcher in your sights before, I remember, with the original Ripper.’
‘Not for long. It was someone who had a grudge against him who gave us his name. Wrongly, as it turned out.’
‘But this time?’
‘All I know is I’ve had a tip-off that we might be looking for a butcher, originally from Whitechapel, who’d be in his late teens or early twenties. So I wondered if you could take us to Smithfield and maybe introduce us to anyone like that you know.’
Bones nodded.
‘You’re welcome to come with me, if you can put up with the smell.’
‘We’ll cope.’
‘You might but will Abigail? She’s a bit upper class, she might not be used to it.’
Daniel grinned.
‘Don’t let her accent fool you, Bob. She’s been in places like that before, maybe worse. Especially now Smithfield’s been smartened up. By all accounts, the markets in Egypt aren’t the sweetest-smelling.’
Bones nodded.
‘All right, but it’ll be an early start.’
‘When you say early?’
‘Two o’clock tomorrow morning. Butchers go to Smithfield in the early hours to make sure they get the best meat.’
‘We’ll be here at two,’ said Daniel. ‘And thanks, Bob.’
As Abigail sat at the kitchen table going through her notes on the Pyramids of Abusir, her thoughts went back to the conversation she’d had with John Tussaud of Madame Tussauds when they’d talked about the proposed expedition to the sun temple of Niuserre. Conan Doyle had told her he wanted to explore not just the physicality of the sun temple and the complex at Abu Ghurob, but the belief the ancient Egyptians held that the pyramids had restorative powers. It was John Tussaud who’d given her the explanation for Doyle’s obsession with looking into the pyramids and specifically the sun temple of Niuserre.
‘I’m not sure how much you know of Mr Doyle’s wife’s health,’ Tussaud had said.
‘Nothing at all,’ Abigail had replied. ‘It’s not a subject that has arisen between us.’
‘Her name is Louise, although he calls her Touie, his affectionate nickname for her. About three years ago she was diagnosed with tuberculosis and she suffers terribly with her lungs. Early last year Mr Doyle moved them to Davos in Switzerland in the hope the air there would offer some relief, and it did, for a while. The reason I’m telling you this is because I’ve gained the impression that Mr Doyle’s interest in the pyramids of Egypt is more to do with the restorative powers they are supposed to have. I may be wrong, but I feel that’s his real motive in undertaking this expedition, to try and find out if there is truth in the idea of the life-enhancing properties of the pyramid, and if so that there might be a way of utilising it to improve his wife’s health.’
Was she undertaking this expedition on false pretences, Abigail wondered? She did not believe the pyramids had the power to bring the dead back to life, or to extend the life of a living being; but Doyle obviously hoped they might. She could not believe her good fortune in being invited to take part in the expedition, and especially to be appointed as its leader, but she worried that she and Doyle – who was the person financing it – had very separate aims.
She heard the door open and Daniel appeared.
‘All arranged,’ he told her. ‘Bob will take us to Smithfield at two o’clock tomorrow morning.’
‘Two o’clock!’ she said, aghast.
‘According to Bob, butchers go to Smithfield in the early hours to make sure they get the best meat.’
‘Yes, but two o’clock!’
‘You don’t have to come,’ said Daniel. ‘I was the one who was attacked, I’m the one who saw him. Well, his boots and his left wrist with the tattoo on it.’
‘Of course I’m coming,’ said Abigail crossly. ‘We’re partners.’
There was a knock at their front door and Daniel went to open it, while Abigail put her notes about Egypt into a briefcase.
‘It’s John Feather,’ said Daniel, returning to the kitchen.
‘Good afternoon, John,’ said Abigail. ‘I’m guessing something’s happened to bring you calling.’
‘It has,’ said Feather. ‘There’s been another murder.’