Jack the Ripper Victims Series: The Double Event Read Online Free PDF Page B

again!
    In wonder, she thought about her amorous feelings toward the man the previous night. That tenderness had fled.
    Robert stirred and looked at her with a smile. “Good morning,” he said, an English phrase she readily understood.
    Elizabeth had nothing to say to him. She dressed, left the room, and sought Klaudio elsewhere in the house. She found him asleep upstairs in a bedroom, presumably his uncle’s.
    “What have you done?” she shouted.
    He awoke with a start, a confused look on his face. She waited for an answer as he shook his head and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes.
    “You had a good time last night,” he said. “Did you not?”
    “No!”
    “Robert had a good time. He likes you.”
    “I don’t care what he likes!”
    “I do,” Klaudio said, raising his eyebrows. He slid open a drawer in the table beside the bed, took out a box, and opened the lid. The currency inside the box, mostly coins, was more money than Elizabeth had ever seen in one place.
    She was confused—why would he count money in the middle of their conversation?
    “Hold out your hands,” he said. When she did, he dumped into them numerous silver and bronze coins. She could barely hold them all. Roughly counting the skilling and öre, she decided there was enough to make six riksdalers, an amount equal to half a week’s wages at a menial job.
    “This is what you earned for your trouble. I hope it’s enough.” He seemed genuinely concerned.
    Elizabeth grimaced and folded her fingers over the handful of coins, already thinking about how she might spend them. Her anger toward Klaudio turned on her with a shaming accusation: Whore! Holding her hands out before her to avoid the money’s contaminating influence, yet unwilling to drop the coins, Elizabeth backed away and left the room with her head bowed. Once out of Klaudio’s presence, she dumped the money into a pocket in her top skirt. She fled down the stairs and left the house to return to Fru Andersdotter and belatedly prepare the old woman’s early meal. She had a lie prepared about missing a ferry across the river and having to spend the night at the home of one of Klaudio’s female cousins.



Chapter 5: Providence
    Fru Andersdotter lay dead on the kitchen floor in her stained nightclothes. The old woman that had been Elizabeth’s friend was gone.
    The fires had gone out. In the January chill, the air in the house had become frigid, perhaps near to freezing. Hortense’s face and chest were warm, her hands cold.
    Elizabeth sat heavily on the floor beside the old woman and leaned back against the peeling wall. Coins spilled out of the pocket of her skirt and some rolled across the hardwood floor. She was in no hurry to put them back. Tears ran down her cheeks and into her blouse as she took the old woman’s crooked hand in her own. She looked at Hortense, not knowing what to do.
    I’ve failed her when she needed me most. No, I’ve killed her. I might as well have cut her throat.
    She knew she would be blamed. To keep from suffering that blame, a remedy immediately came to mind: She would flee to London, where she might be lost among the multitudes. But, then, she hadn’t the funds to book passage .
    If I’d listened to Liza, I might have left Klaudio last night and been here to help.
    You’d have only stood in Fru Andersdotter’s way, Bess said. She got her wish. She’s gone to heaven to be with her husband before the money ran out.
    The old woman was miserable and at death’s door, Liza said, and none of it was going to get any better. At least her suffering is at an end. Perhaps she left something for you in her will. Look through the house to see if you can find stray coins.
    Inconsolable, Elizabeth paid little attention to the voices. She hung her head and cried for Hortense and for herself.
    Time passed and the house grew colder. Elizabeth could not sit on the floor forever. She would have to go home.
    No, there’s nothing for me there. Caspar and Svein