Read Chapter 10: Abberline's Eye

The summons arrived at half past eight, a grubby constable with a note folded tight as a coffin seam. Edward had not slept. His eyes felt like gravel pits, and the taste of last night's gin still clung to his tongue. But he dressed with care, selecting his darkest coat, the one that made him look like a man who attended funerals out of habit rather than grief.

Abberline's office at Leman Street was smaller than Edward had imagined, cluttered with files and the sour smell of tobacco that had gone stale hours ago. The inspector sat behind a desk buried beneath paper, and he did not invite Edward to sit.

"Mr. Graves," Abberline said. "You've been busy."

"I report on the news, Inspector. You make it."

"Then you'll be interested in this." Abberline held up a sheet of paper in a gloved hand, pinched between thumb and forefinger as if it might bite. The ink was blue-black, unmistakable. Edward's own handiwork stared back at him, the looping capital P of the Phantom's signature catching the gaslight like a scar.

Edward kept his face still. "Another letter?"

"The third. Delivered by hand, as you know. Since you were so eager to see the last one." Abberline's eyes were flat, the color of a winter river. "You have a habit of arriving before the story breaks, Mr. Graves. First at the Berner Street scene, asking questions the police hadn't yet asked. Then at the latest body, minutes after the call went out. And now this letter—" he tapped the paper—"finds its way to us, and I find you outside, waiting like a dog for scraps."

"I was heading to the office. The Chronicle —"

"Spare me." Abberline leaned forward. "I've read your articles, Mr. Graves. The ones before your little fall from grace. You have a talent for detail. Perhaps too much detail. The kind that gets men hanged."

Edward's throat tightened. "I'm a journalist. Precision is my trade."

"Then you'll appreciate this." Abberline withdrew a second sheet from his coat. This one was yellowed, clearly a copy, creased from repeated folding. "The letter describes the murder method in exacting prose. Weapon, location, a certain flourish with the blade. All matched the scene. But there was one detail the newspapers never printed. One detail only the killer—and the letter writer—could possibly know."

He held up the copy. Edward could see his own handwriting reproduced in a clerk's neat script, and beneath it, a notation in red pencil.

"The victim's fingers," Abberline said. "The letter describes how they were arranged. Three fingers folded, the index extended, as if pointing toward something. The killer arranged the body that way. And the letter knew it before the body was found."

The room seemed to contract. Edward heard his own pulse in his ears, a dull drumbeat of accusation.

"Curious, isn't it?" Abberline's voice had gone soft, almost conversational. "I've shown this letter to no one. Not the press, not the coroner. Yet you wrote about the Phantom's methods with the precision of a witness." He set the papers down, folded his hands. "So tell me, Mr. Graves. Where did you learn to describe a murder scene you had never seen?"

Edward's mouth had gone dry as ash. He forced a smile, a rueful tilt of the head. "I invented it, Inspector. Every detail. That's what I do. I'm a failed journalist, and I needed a story. The letters buy my rent. I write them in the Phantom's name because the public wants a monster to read about over their breakfast. I had no idea—" he spread his hands—"that the reality would match my fiction. It terrifies me as much as it does you."

Abberline studied him for a long moment. His face betrayed nothing, but Edward saw the calculation behind his eyes, the weighing of a man unsure whether he was holding a fool or a fiend.

"And the fingers?" Abberline asked. "The extended index. Did you invent that too?"

A trap. Edward felt its teeth close around his ankle. If he said yes, he proved nothing—but if he said he'd guessed, Abberline would press for the logic, and there was none. The detail had come from nowhere, a flourish of dark imagination that now hung around his neck like a noose.

"Yes," Edward said. "I invented it to sound gruesome. Hidden meaning—the Phantom as a teacher pointing the way. I write melodrama, Inspector. It sells papers."

Abberline's lips thinned. "Then you have an unfortunate gift for prophecy, Mr. Graves."

"I've been told."

The inspector rose, circling the desk until he stood too close, close enough that Edward caught the smell of him, bay rum and old leather. "Let me be clear. I don't believe you're the killer. You lack the stomach—you sweat too much when I mention the wounds." A flicker of contempt. "But I believe you know more than you've told, and I believe you're playing a game you don't understand. Whoever this man is, he's reading your work. Your letters. Perhaps your mind. And he's using them to kill."

Edward's throat clicked as he swallowed. "How? I keep them locked away. No one—"

"The scarred man." Abberline cut him off. "Our mutual acquaintance. I've heard you've been asking about him. So have I. And I've heard he asks about you." He returned to his chair, settling like a man who had delivered his verdict. "You're free to go, Mr. Graves. For now. But stay close. If another body appears, and if that body matches another of your letters—" he gestured toward the door—"I'll ensure your next residence has bars on the windows."

Edward walked out on legs that felt borrowed. The morning fog swallowed him, cold and damp, and he stood on the pavement for a long moment, breathing, trying to convince himself he was still a free man.

He was not.

Abberline had watched him lie, and had not believed. And somewhere in Whitechapel, a killer was reading a letter Edward had not yet written.