Among the Darkness Stirs

She picked up her worn copy of London Labour and the London Poor by Henry Mayhew and placed her hand over the cover. It was an important documentation of the squalor of London and the slums people were forced to exist in.

It was a disgrace, she thought. It was an absolute disgrace. She looked at the clock above the fireplace on the mantel and saw the time was mid-afternoon. She wanted to rest for a half hour before supper and the sewing circle. She knew the ladies would all be in attendance and she wanted to be prepared for them.

Caroline lay back upon the mattress and closed her eyes. The thoughts collided inside her head. Sanitation, health, clean water, nutritious food were all important, but housing was the utmost. Without safe, clean structures to live in; without mold and rats; nothing else mattered. That was the key. She knew it. She felt herself drift off. She must find a way to move forward. Housing was the key she thought and she slipped into a quiet slumber.

Malvina looked over the menu for

the evening supper and sighed. A clear gravy soup, fried sole, veal with spinach and pudding with raspberry cream. Malvina sniffed and laid the piece of paper aside.

“Is it all right, Madam?” Cook asked as she stood to one side waiting for her instructions.

Malvina eyed the menu again. Her son Hubert wanted to host a small dinner party, which he did periodically and that was well and fine, but she was left with planning the evening and their Cook was many things but not inventive.

“It’s a bit underdone,” she said, and thought much like the Cook’s soufflé, but didn’t voice the last part.

“I’m not sure I agree, Madam. You asked for a menu for a small dinner party. I can add or substitute whatever you wish.”

Malvina nodded. “Leave it with me. I’ll make the changes and return it to you.”

“Very good, Madam,” the Cook bobbed and then left.

Malvina pinched at her eyes, removing her spectacles to wipe them thoroughly with her lilac-colored handkerchief, before returning them to her face.

Her son was a well-respected physician and a lecturer at several medical colleges and she boasted about him often to her friends. Her granddaughters were something completely different. Not that they both weren’t attractive and each with their own attributes, but they were night and day and odd and confusing to her.

The youngest, Irene, was not so odd except she was flirty, silly and interested in nothing more than the latest fashion and had an eye for anything in trousers. Caroline was the opposite. Intelligent, beautiful, she was also set about destroying her reputation by traipsing into the poorest districts of London helping people that should help themselves. She had gotten it into her head that the slums needed to be purged and the people saved. As a child, she handmade toys for the poor children with her father’s consent, and as she grew older, she wanted to do more.

Malvina sighed.

The best option for both the headstrong girl and the flirty one was to get them married. Irene would not be a problem. She was silly but pliable. Caroline was another matter entirely. What man would want a woman who had a mind of her own and used it? Unheard of. She must watch and wait for the time to come and then marry them to suitable men. It was the natural course of events.

Valentine Pierce rubbed the back of his neck and cocked his head from side to side releasing the pressure. It had been another long day with little accomplished. He had pored over the same records, the same reports, the same interviews, the same pictures, learning nothing new. The pictures were not something he liked to look at often, but he forced himself to look at them to remind him of the three women who had been murdered, with three families left behind to mourn them.

Detective Chief Inspector Val Pierce was in charge of the investigation into the death of three women who had been murdered in the span of nine months.

He had been working on the case since the beginning and only recently been able to see a slight pattern. It was not much to go on, but it was something. The three women were not of the poorer class. The victims were all from good families who did not lack for money, and yet had been killed all the same. The first woman was Effie Whitson, whose father owned a small bank, and the second victim was named Bessie Turner, the daughter of a successful green grocer who had several stores in and around London.

Finally, the third victim, Aida Harris, was the daughter of a prominent judge who had been engaged to Pierce. Though he was extremely attached to the case, and it was personal, he had not been pulled off of it. Superintendent Osgood had allowed him to stay, declaring that if he thought it became too much, he would remove him.

Val glanced back down at the pictures. Physically, the women looked nothing alike. He pulled the pictures closer and studied them. The photographs were in stark black and white, but Val remembered each woman in vivid detail. Effie had hair the color of straw and a slender body, while Bessie’s strawberry tresses had been long and tangled and her body voluptuous.

Then there was Aida. His finger caressed the curve of her face and he traced her figure until he could stand it no longer. He abruptly turned it over and away from his view. She had been a slender woman with dark hair and eyes.

The women had all been strangled and in each of the three cases, the bodies had not been disturbed in any way. Effie had been placed in a sleeping position with her hands crossed over her chest, and Bessie’s long hair had been combed. Aida had been placed in a similar final resting pose, but unlike the other victims, her nails had been broken and bleeding. He knew that Aida had most likely fought her killer until the very end, and left him with a final memento of a small scar or wound on his hands or face. But even that was no help as the wounds would heal in little time.

And time was something that was never on the side of the detective, he mused. With little to go on, it was only a matter of time before the killer struck again, and another woman was dead and another family torn apart. He sighed heavily.

A knock on his office door sounded and Val looked up. His sergeant Felix Grant was standing in the doorway. Felix and Val had been working together for two years and he liked him well enough. Felix had an easy way about him although he was sometimes flippant. He dressed simply every day to work with a jacket, trousers and vest. He was unmarried, though Val knew he frequented the music halls with certain ladies who admired his perpetually sloppy brown hair and smiling brown eyes.

He didn’t begrudge Felix’s off-hour enjoyments and they never spoke much about their personal lives. He liked working with the man because he was young and optimistic, dedicated to the job with a quick mind. More than anything, Val respected those who wanted to learn and were curious by nature. Detective work was mostly research, interviews and hard work, no matter what Edgar Allan Poe and Wilkie Collins wrote.

“Sir,” Felix addressed him.

“Felix. Have a seat.” He addressed his sergeant by his last name.

Felix took the chair opposite Val and waited.

Val placed the three photographs of the murdered women in front of him so that Felix could view them as well. His gaze flickered over them and then he looked at Felix.