The Candle Man by Alex Scarrow

Author:Alex Scarrow [Scarrow, Alex]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Hachette Littlehampton
Published: 2012-04-26T06:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 31

8th September 1888, Whitechapel, London

Annie Chapman looked down Hanbury Street. She could still see another two of them beneath the gas light halfway down, chattering in noisy voices in the stillness of the early hours. She recognised their faces, even if she didn’t know them by their names. They were the last girls on the street, apart from her. No doubt forlornly hoping for one more customer before the sky started to lighten with dawn and the early-risers came for Spitalfields market.

Half an hour ago, they’d both spotted an old man staggering and tripping his way home. They’d caterwauled at him to come over, both lifted their skirts to show stocking tops and bare thighs in an attempt to entice him, but he was too far gone to even acknowledge them.

She sat on a low wall in a pool of darkness, far away from the nearest lamp. Normally, like those other two, she would gravitate to the glow beneath a lamp for the sense of safety it provided, but also to be able to show herself off to any passing potential customers. Tonight, though, she wanted to be entirely invisible until the morning returned and the streets were full and she could feel safe again.

And she so wanted tonight to hurry up and be gone.

Foolish. Stupid. She could have been tucked up in the relative safety of the lodging house she’s been using this last week. She’d bloody well paid for tonight with the last of her money, but then she’d had a fight with that bitch, Eliza, in the next room earlier this evening. A stupid fight that had flared up in mere seconds down in the washroom. A fight over a bloody bar of soap, would you believe.

Annie was inclined to agree the incident had been more her fault than Eliza’s, not that she’d admitted as much. So Annie borrowed her bar of soap and lost it and then Eliza had started accusing her of trying to steal it. Well, she’d lost control of herself and fists flew. The others there were unanimous in saying that Annie had thrown the first punch.

Possibly they were right. Annie wasn’t herself. Was very much out of sorts. In truth, she was a jangling skin of sharp-ended nerves. Ever since she’d heard the news that Polly Nichols had been knifed up. Quite horribly, if the Chinese whispers were to be trusted.

She was dead. That much was true. And then the morning after Annie had heard that news, one of the men in the lodgings, who bought the occasional paper, had spotted a small notice in the local reports. Just a couple of paragraphs.

Just another unlucky tart.

Polly was right, that’s what Annie realised now. Certain of it. ‘They’, whoever the hell ‘they’ were, were going to come for her next. Absently, she fingered her bag. All that she owned was in there: a comb, a nice piece of muslin, some cheap brass rings that her last man had bought her (just a

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