Nine Buck's Row Read Online Free PDF

taken to a dreadful shed behind the workhouse in Old Montague Street for the postmortem, as there was no mortuary in East London, and the surgeons had been indifferent, incredibly sloppy. I had had to go to that sordid shed to identify the body, although I had already done so once, and later on I had to attend the inquest, an amazing parody of courtroom procedure. There was no coroner’s court in this part of the city either, and the proceedings were conducted at the Working Lads’ Institute on White-chapel Road.
    I was not called upon to give evidence. I had been interviewed a dozen times by a dozen different policemen, but none of them had shown any interest in what I had to tell them. Marietta had been murdered by a fiend, the same fiend who had butchered the other women, and all this talk of a gentleman and a diamond bracelet was sheer nonsense. The bracelet had been returned to me along with the rest of Marietta’s belongings, and everyone assured me it was paste, a gaudy bauble like those worn by thousands of prostitutes.
    After the funeral, I went back home with Millie. I was staying with her until other arrangements could be made, and I couldn’t have endured that week without her. She stood by me, loyal, devoted, sharing my grief and my outrage at the unbelievably blundering way the police were handling the affair. It was almost as though they didn’t want to find Marietta’s murderer. A group of wildly undisciplined children could have conducted the investigation with more order.
    Two hours after the funeral Sergeant Caine came to fetch me. He was a tall, slender young man with stern features and thick blond hair that kept tumbling over his forehead. His eyes were bright blue, and he spoke in a low-pitched voice that was little more than a mumble, yet he had an air of unmistakable authority. Caine seemed to be my official escort. He had taken me to the mortuary, to the inquest, to the various interviews, and now he was taking me to Scotland Yard. He gripped my elbow as we went downstairs, grim and protective, keeping an eye out for the journalists who had been plaguing me ever since that dreadful night a week ago.
    â€œThose bastards’re hanging around outside,” he said.
    â€œThe journalists? But why can’t I talk to them? I don’t understand.”
    â€œOrders’re orders,” he said grimly.
    â€œWho ordered you to keep me away from them?”
    â€œNever you mind,” he retorted, holding my elbow firmly and leading me across the shabby foyer.
    My name had not appeared in any of the newspaper accounts of the hideous murder, and I had not been allowed to speak to any of the journalists. Once, outside the mortuary, I momentarily eluded Caine and talked to a man named Greene from the Penny News , telling him of Marietta’s rendezvous with the mysterious gentleman and mentioning the diamond bracelet. He had been extremely interested, jotting down notes on a yellow pad, but the story had not appeared. Caine gave Jacob Greene a severe tongue-lashing when he discovered us outside the mortuary, and thereafter he kept a closer watch over me as we went about police business.
    They swarmed around now as we stepped outside. Sergeant Caine glared at them, his eyes like blue fire, his fingers resting lightly on the butt of his truncheon. They fell back, grumbling, a tatterdemalion group with unkempt hair and ink-stained fingers.
    â€œCome on, Caine,” one of the journalists shouted, “give us a break. What’s happenin’? Where’re you takin’ her now? We won’t print her name—after what happened to Greene none of us’d dare. Fired he was, his story ripped to shreds. What’s happenin’ now? Somethin’ new developed?”
    Caine didn’t deign to reply. He gave them a menacing look and helped me into the waiting carriage. I sighed deeply as it clattered over the cobblestones. The streets were wet, and there were