Mayhem Read Online Free PDF Page B

sharply like a schoolteacher. ‘Back to bed, everyone, or we’ll die of exhaustion tomorrow.’
    Aaron didn’t get back to sleep, and he was quite sure that Matilda, lying beside him, was awake too.
    *
    Two days later the news made its way through the shtetl, spreading as fast as dysentery. Aaron heard it at the barber’s; his mother heard it at the synagogue: Tsar Alexander II had been assassinated, a bomb thrown under his carriage as he made his way to a military roll call. He hadn’t died immediately, but had been carried back to the Winter Palace. According to those whispering the story, his legs had been so badly shattered that they were just a bloody pulp, and his insides had tumbled from his ruined stomach.
    *
    That night, without any further conversation, the Kosminski women and the two daughters’ husbands packed up their belongings and headed out of the shtetl. They did not look back, and when they were finally on board a ship to take them to a new home in England, Aaron’s dreams of hate and darknessstopped as suddenly as they had arrived. No one was more relieved than Aaron himself. He had no desire to share his grandmother’s gift.

4
    The New York Times
Wednesday, October 3, 1888
    LONDON’S RECORD OF CRIME ANOTHER MYSTERIOUS MURDER BROUGHT TO LIGHT A PERFECT CARNIVAL OF BLOOD IN THE WORLD’S METROPOLIS – THE POLICE APPARENTLY PARALYSED
    LONDON, Oct, 2. – The carnival of blood continues. It is an extremely strange state of affairs altogether, because before the Whitechapel murders began several papers called attention to the fact that there have been more sanguinary crimes than ever before known in this city in the same space of time. The Whitechapel assassin has now murdered six victims and crimes occur daily, but pass unnoticed in view of the master murderer’s work in the East End.

5
    London. October, 1888
    Dr Bond
    It was just before seven when Dr Charles Hebbert arrived at the Millbank Street mortuary, and even though I had not been there long myself, I was glad to have my friend and colleague’s company. He was by nature a far more jovial man than I, and his presence immediately lifted the hovering dark cloud of my mood. Sitting alone in the mortuary I had begun to feel slightly ill at ease; I wasn’t sure if it was the dregs of the opium or just my current sleepless exhaustion, but I was finding the odour and the cramped confines far more macabre than was normal, and Hebbert’s brisk cheer was entirely the tonic I needed.
    ‘So, what have we got here?’ He took off his coat and rubbed his hands together as he smiled broadly and peered behind the wooden partitions that separated the other current occupants of the mortuary from our cleared post mortem examination area.
    ‘Oh dear, oh dear,’ he muttered, although still with good cheer, ‘explosion of some kind?’
    ‘Boiler room.’ I didn’t need to ask which cadaver had caught his eye. ‘The other woman started an argumentwith her husband over another man while he was drunk and holding a knife. The gentleman at the end hung himself after losing very heavily in a game of cards. All within three streets.’
    ‘At least they’re residents of Westminster and not ladies of Whitechapel this time,’ Charles said, reappearing. ‘Although’ – and for the first time I saw his humour slip away slightly – ‘there has been so much murder and violence in this city of late – our Whitechapel friend aside – that I have begun to dream of it. Perhaps I should drink less coffee.’
    ‘Or more brandy,’ I countered, and as we both smiled, the sparkle returned to my friend’s eyes. My smile, however, was a touch forced. If the city’s behaviour had started to affect one so well-balanced as Charles, then what chance did I have of shaking my insomnia and fits of anxiety?
    ‘Shall we get to work?’ he said, and I nodded. The day – and the torso – would not wait.
    *
    By the time we’d carefully removed the remains from the