Druid's Daughter by Jean Hart Stewart Read Free Book Online Page B

of the younger policemen and Lance gave him
time to regain a little color. Still Rainley seemed anxious to get his story
told and blurted out the rest soon enough.
    “We got a note brought round by a young boy, Sir, who
scampered before we thought to stop him. It was poorly written but told us to
go to Cow’s Head Alley. Somebody wanted to alert us without getting involved. Of
course we went, Sir. There was a body there, Chief Inspector, a horrible body.
Her throat slit from one side to the other by a big knife. She’d also been
stabbed with a real thin knife in her back. Inspector Davis is with the body, Sir,
waiting for you to come.”
    Rainley gulped again and Lance waited until the boy’s
breathing became more normal.
    “There is something else bothering you,” he said gently.
“Tell me the rest.”
    Seeing the pallor of Rainley’s face, Lance went to his desk
and pulled out a small flask. He strode to Rainley and held the flask to the
boy’s lips.
    “Drink a little,” he said. “Your news can wait a moment.”
    Rainley took a big swallow and his face flushed as the
powerful liquor hit him. He quivered from head to toe before he recovered
enough to speak.
    “The corpse is just horrible, Sir. She was facing away from
her murderer, we think. Facing a wall. Her hands were holding up the back of
her skirts and her bum was bare. We, that is, the Inspector and I, think the
murderer paid her to have sex from behind so she couldn’t see him as he stabbed
her.”
    Lance sat motionless and without speaking. A horror story
which left him understanding why the youngster in front of him, actually seeing
the mutilated body, was so distressed.
    “Do you think it’s Jack the Ripper again?” burst out the
sergeant.
    Jack the Ripper had never been officially charged, but
Scotland Yard felt fairly sure they knew the identity. Most experts in the case
thought the guilty person fled to America. True, the Ripper also killed prostitutes
and speculation was most had their hands busy lifting their skirts when
attacked. But the Ripper killed with his victims facing him. Also, the Ripper
usually carved a grisly piece of female anatomy from the victim, sometimes
leaving the gruesome evidence beside the body and sometimes carrying a bloody
bit away. There was a complete viciousness about the Ripper’s murders just a
little different from this case. This one seemed to Lance just as vicious, but
definitely not the same.
    No, he didn’t believe the Ripper was back, although he
couldn’t blame the young sergeant for thinking so.
    “I doubt it.” Lance made his voice purposely cool and almost
disinterested. The sergeant must go back with him and sympathy would be the
worst emotion Lance could show.
    “Jack didn’t attack from the back, for one thing. And he
never used a thin blade. No, someone is trying to make us think he’s the
Ripper. And if you found her with her hands still lifting her skirts there was
probably no overt sexual act. Merely a ruse to get her to turn her back.”
    The sergeant followed his Chief out the door when Lance
beckoned to him. The boy stiffened as rigid as a plank, but forced himself to
move. If his step was halting at first, Lance did not blame him.
    They were soon at the scene of the atrocious crime. A young
woman, little more than a girl if one noted the pathetically smooth limbs.
Their thinness also suggested a sparsely fed youth. She was lying on her
stomach. The Inspector in charge must have pulled down her skirts, so she at least
now had a modicum of respectability. Her garish clothing, the blazing red hair
with dark roots, the short length of her dress, all proclaimed her calling.
    Lance stayed still for a long moment and then began circling
the body. He bent over twice without touching her, but said nothing. The
Constable had reason to be so revolted. This was a hideous crime, made more so
somehow that a poor and young prostitute agreed to perform what must be a
degrading act. That selling