One might have imagined that the carnival of horror parading across the front pages every day now, fresh in the newspapers each morning, was some novel new entertainment for the delectation of the hungry public, such was the lurid detail and melodrama with which they competed for the ravenous audience. The Illustrated Police News ran a full three pages on the recent murders, including several pictures, depicting the grisly scenes of discovery, for the apparent purpose of their vivid imagining. What on earth will they print tomorrow? thought Grace. As if there wasn’t enough sensation already for people disposed to such things, if not on their very doorsteps then surely a short ride away from their perfumed gardens to the scrag-end of their fair city. Grace was haunted by her last sight of poor Polly Nichols, in her brand-new bonnet, weaving down the Whitechapel Road into darkness. Once or twice she had dreamed of running after her, only to find she was gone.
Ivor Squall hid in his office for three days, breaking cover only to scurry home–very early or very late–while Mr Blunt scoured Whitechapel, loitering at street corners, engaging the locals, making what he hoped were casual enquiries, without any luck at all. This infuriated him on many counts, the least of which was that he loathed the district, though he suited it well. It beggared belief that of the very few who thought they might know a Grace Hammer, none was able to be specific about where she lived, or any more informative than to enthuse about what a lovely family the Hammers were. He felt himself sicken as he smiled along, keeping up whatever long-lost-relative story he had invented. Where was she? Had she given him the slip? Waiting and failure were feeding his viciousness. He felt he would grab her by the throat when he found her and shake her like a rat.
He stopped at the end of Church Street and clenched his fists. He would catch Ivor Squall before he left his office tonight. Outside the Ten Bells Mary Kelly was basking in the lamplight.
She took him down Red Lion Court, rather than to her room. She didn’t like the look of him. Down the dark alley past the heaving shadows, white thighs in black stockings. He was rough and his hands felt damp. After soiling poor Mary’s skirts he felt not soothed but rather stoked; he strode down Brick Lane, growling at the evening, and fuelled himself in the Frying Pan. Mr Byron Stanley watched him go from under his green felt hat.
Ivor Squall was tidying away his stationery for the night, with difficulty–he had taken to working in the back room (which was more of a large cupboard) so that his candle would not be visible from the street, and nothing was in order–when the bell rang. The sound shrilled up the back of his ears and tugged at his scalp. He froze, with his precious envelopes clutched to his chest. He need not ask himself who that might be. Trembling, he crept upon his hands and knees to the front window and peeped out. Below on the step was the dread shape of Mr Blunt–unmistakable even from Ivor’s curious aerial view–grunting and cursing at the door. Ivor cowered below the still and listened to his own heart thumping until he heard the heavy steps retreat, rumbling east.
A knocking, weak but urgent, brought the goblin to her door, cursing the absent fellow she had posted to answer it while she took stock upstairs. Ivor Squall was lurking on the slick stairs, undulating.
‘Good evening, Emmeline,’ said he, with a glutinous smile, little rodent hands clenching as if he was counting invisible money. ‘I wonder if you might spare me a moment.’
It was most unusual for Ivor to call upon Miss Spragg at home. She looked him up and down, shrinking him a good foot further as he writhed on the step.
‘Why, of course, Mr Squall. Do come in. I’ve some sausages cooking. Perhaps you might eat with me.’
‘How kind, thank you, but no,’ said Ivor, who never ate in company.
‘Now,’ she said, settling herself into a bundle, poking at the rancid frying pan, ‘what brings you to Limehouse, Mr Squall?’ She knew it was something desperate. ‘An unexpected pleasure indeed!’ She beamed with such glee at Ivor that he quite mistook her meaning and the awful notion flashed through his mind that she had taken a shine to him. He wanted to turn tail and run but he was, indeed, desperate.
‘There’s a woman I’m looking for,’ he said, surprising himself, and Emmeline Spragg, with his boldness, ‘by the name of Hammer.’
She looked inside his head with her black eyes. ‘Hammer,’ she said. ‘Hammer.’ The sausages hissed in the pan. ‘I’m afraid I shall disappoint you, Mr Squall. I know no Hammers.’
Ivor seemed to deflate as she said this, the weight of the world on his shoulders.
‘Is it very important Mr Squall?’
She never seems to blink, he thought. ‘Perhaps,’ he said, carefully. ‘She is wanted most urgently on the business of a special client. Most urgently indeed.’
‘Evidently.’
Miss Spragg took a sausage from the pan. Brown grease dripped down the fork on to the putrid wool of her gloves.
‘Won’t you sit down and make yourself comfortable, Mr Squall?’ He did so, touching as little of the chair as was reasonably possible. ‘I expect your special client will be offering some reward. On such important business!’
‘Well, yes, perhaps, I expect so, yes, they might.’
‘So, who is it wants to know?’
He found he was quite unable to sit up straight, much less look Miss Spragg in the evil eye. ‘Ah, ha ha ha ha!’ was his best effort.
Her eyes twinkled black at him. ‘Are you not at liberty to say?’
‘Well, exactly the point I was coming to, Emmeline,’ he said. ‘Most regrettably not.’
‘Regrettable indeed.’
Ivor Squall is a tiresome little man, thought Miss Spragg, after he had scuttled out–with a little sympathy perhaps for his predicament: he seemed so very agitated. She was human, after all. She cackled at the very idea, black blood oozing through her veins. Tiring of this whimsy she turned her villainous thoughts to the woman Hammer–such a private creature–and why the business had thrown Mr Squall into such a frenzy. He would crack for sure, eventually. She might keep a special eye on the Hammer family.