Read Chapter 17: A Second Body

The body was found at dawn, tangled in mooring ropes at Wapping Stairs, half in the water and half out. A dockworker had spotted it when the tide turned, and by the time Edward arrived the police had already strung a cordon of canvas and constables along the wharf.

He flashed his Chronicle press pass at a sergeant he didn't know and slipped under the tape before anyone thought to stop him. The body lay face-up on the cobbles. A woman, mid-thirties, red hair matted across her throat. Her dress was cheap muslin, the kind sold in Petticoat Lane for pennies. The wound was what stopped him breathing: a single clean line across the neck, deep enough to show white, and below it, on the wet stone, someone had arranged her shawl into a fold that looked—no, wasn't accidental.

Edward crouched, squinting. The shawl had been arranged in a pattern too deliberate for the chaos around it. Two folds crossing a third, like fingers—

"Graves." Inspector Abberline's voice was flat, unsurprised. "You have a talent for appearing at scenes that concern you."

Edward stood too quickly, his knees cracking. "I was told a body was found. It's my beat."

"It's my investigation." Abberline's eyes held a cold assessment Edward had come to know over the past weeks. "And you know this victim."

A jolt went through him. "What?"

"I asked if you know her. You looked at her like you recognized her."

Edward forced himself to look again. The pallor erased much of her face, but the jawline, the way she'd worn her hair in a careless twist even in death, came back to him in a rush. The woman from the auction. The one who'd been bidding against the scarred man—no, not the scarred man. This woman had sat two rows back, bidding on a letter with a raised hand and a nervous smile. She'd lost. And she'd caught Edward's eye on the way out, and he'd looked away, thinking nothing of it.

"I've seen her," he said slowly. "At the auction. The Ripper letters. Three days ago."

"An auction of forgeries," Abberline said, with pointed emphasis.

"Of letters," Edward amended. "She bid on the large lot. The one that went to—" He stopped.

"Yes?"

"The man who was murdered. After the auction." Edward's mouth went dry. "She was in the same room. She may have spoken to him."

Abberline's expression didn't change, but something tightened at the corner of his eye. "Interesting. Because we found something else. Inside her bodice." He drew a small leather envelope from his pocket and held it out. Edward took it, unfolded the flap, and found a sheet of paper.

His own handwriting.

Three pages of his fifth letter draft—page two, page four, page six of the missing folio that Sam had cleared from his room. The text of the letter sent to the police two days ago. The letter describing a killing near the docks. The letter containing details only he and the police knew.

Edward's hand trembled. Abberline saw it.

"Do you recognize that?"

"No," Edward lied. "I've never seen it."

But Abberline was already stepping closer. "I spoke to the Chief Constable this morning. He showed me something curious. A letter arrived three days ago describing precisely how this woman would die. Down to the angle of the cut and the placement at the waterline." His voice dropped. "It matched the murder to the degree. The letter was signed 'Jack'—but the handwriting matches letters you've written to this station, Mr. Graves."

Edward's throat closed. "You're suggesting I killed this woman."

"I'm suggesting that letters have a way of walking ahead of events. And that perhaps the author of those letters is closer to the events than he's admitting." Abberline's eyes bored into him. "Where were you last night?"

"Home," Edward said. "Alone."

"Alone. Of course." Abberline reached into his coat and removed the letter. "Unless you can explain how the details in this draft—a draft that never went to me until yesterday morning—ended up in a dead woman's bodice, I have no further questions for you today. But I will have them tomorrow."

He turned and walked back toward the body, leaving Edward standing at the edge of the cordon with his heart hammering.

Sarah Doyle found him twenty minutes later, drinking a pint he hadn't ordered in a public house off Ratcliff Highway. She slid into the booth across from him without asking, her hands around a glass of water, her face unreadable.

"You look like a man whose ghost has grown legs," she said.

Edward laughed without humor. "I've just seen a body that matches a letter I wrote. A letter I haven't finished drafting yet."

Sarah's eyes narrowed. "Explain."

So he did. He told her about the missing pages from his draft, the auction letter, the murdered winner, the woman in the crowd. He told her about Abberline's accusation, and the look in his eye that said the inspector was already building a case in his mind.

When he finished, Sarah was silent for a long moment. Her fingers traced the rim of her glass. "You write letters. The killer reads them. The killer kills."

"Yes."

"But you also sent that draft to the police."

"Three days before he did it, yes."

"So the letter exists in exactly two places after you write it." She held up a finger. "Your room—where pages go missing." A second finger. "The police files—where Inspector Abberline keeps his copy." A third finger, extended. "So either your missing pages are being read by someone who then kills, or the police are leaking your letters to someone who then kills. Or—" She paused.

Thomas. Her voice dropped. "Or the killer is inside the police force."

Edward stared at her. The thought had crossed his mind five minutes ago, but hearing it said aloud made it worse. A man with access to unsent letters. A man who could read a draft before it was ever posted. A man who could choose a victim from those pages.

"Abberline showed me the draft," Edward said. "The version my thief took. It contained details never sent to the press. The kind of geographic specificity that only the police would recognize. And that woman's body matched it perfectly."

"Then you have to tell him about me," Sarah said. "Not about the forgeries—but about the letters. He needs to know that someone in his station is reading them."

"He already suspects me of writing them," Edward said. "If I tell him the forgeries were mine, he'll have a motive. He'll arrest me."

Sarah leaned forward. "He can't arrest you if you give him the real killer."

"And how do I do that?"

"You make him reveal himself." Her eyes were bright with a hunger that almost frightened him. "You're a forger. Forge a trap."

Edward opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. The idea snaked through him like something electric. The killer had used his fiction as a blueprint. What if he could use his fiction to build a cage? Write a letter so perfect, so tempting, that the killer would have to follow it. A scene so specific that only one location in all of London could match it. Then wait. Watch. Catch him in the act.

But the letter would have to be perfect. And to write it, he needed to know what the killer had taken from the fifth draft.

Sarah was watching him. "You're thinking about it."

"I'm thinking that if I write a sixth letter, I have to know what he took from the fifth. Otherwise he'll see the trap coming."

"Then ask him."

Edward blinked. "What?"

"If he's been in your room, he's reading over your shoulder." Sarah reached into her coat and pulled out a folded paper, slid it across the table. Edward unfolded it—his own handwriting again, but a sentence he didn't remember writing. It read: *If you want Mary Kelly to live, come to the water at dusk. Come alone, forger, and I'll show you what you became.*

The sentence wasn't his. It had been inserted between two lines of his fifth draft, in a hand so similar to his own that he had to look twice to notice the tremor at the end of the last word.

"He's not just following your letters," Sarah said. "He's editing them."