Ripped by Shelly Dickson Carr Read Free Book Online Page B

the Ripper was!”
    â€œRight,” Toby laughed. “That’d be a good Turkish bath, mate. You and ten thousand others before you have tried . . . and failed.”
    Collin’s fingers tightened around Katie’s arm. The wide grin eased off his face and was replaced by a frown. “Bet ya ten quid.”
    â€œNo way to know for sure, mate. So you can keep your speckled hen squid.”
    Katie, holding back a smile, wriggled her arm free. “Speckled hen” must mean ten; “squid” was quid. And she was pretty sure that “Turkish bath” meant laugh. She liked the sound of Toby’s Cockney voice and was getting used to his rhyming slang.
    Collin looked slightly hurt, or maybe angry. His eyes narrowed and then flashed at her. She had expected her cousin to say, “ Dammit, where have you been? ” when he finally found her, but Collin was too wrapped up in trying to figure out Jack the Ripper’s identity to give a thought to where Katie had wandered off to, or why.
    â€œOkay. It’s like this—” Collin said rapidly, moving his hand back and forth as if brushing away an annoying fly. “I know you already know all this,” he said to Toby. “But it’s new to me.” He swiveled his eyes back to Katie. You take a stab at it, Miss Smarty Pants , his voice implied. “Here’s the problem, or puzzle, as they refer to it in there. From September of 1888 to December of that same year, when Jack the Ripper was murdering girls, no one, absolutely no one , was out walking the streets of London at night. The police were on every corner of Whitechapel. The pubs were deserted. Only those who had to make their living at night, or ply their trade, dared go out at night. Police were giving free escorts to those who had to walk home alone. And everyone, especially girls , were being told to walk in pairs, day or night, for protection. Therefore, the Ripper had to be someone people trusted or at least were used to seeing on the street. I think Jack the Ripper was a policeman! Had to be. Stands to reason.”
    â€œThat’s one theory.” Toby nodded, amusement sparking his dark eyes. “Another is that good ol’ Jack was a woman. Victorians refused to believe that Jack the Ripper could possibly be a twist ’n’ swirl due to the old-fashioned notion that the weaker sex was incapable of brutal violence”—he winked at Katie—“so the supposition that he was a she is a much later theory. But Jill the Ripper might have been a midwife, due to his or her intimate knowledge of evisceration.”
    â€œOr a man dressed as a woman,” Katie put in, getting caught up in the excitement. “If women were being asked to walk in pairs, and a girl saw another female walking up ahead of her in the dark, she’d probably call out to the other and be totally relieved when the first agreed to walk with her.”
    â€œRight! Good one, Katie,” Toby said. “ Cross-dresser Jack! That would explain why none of the girls put up a fight, as if they were all caught unawares. And, remember, those girls would have been on their guard, especially if they were walking with a man. And East Enders didn’t trust peelers. Hated policemen, in fact. So I’m with you, Katie. It was either a woman or a transvestite.” He held up his palm in a high-five, and this time Katie raised her fist for him to bump.
    â€œCome on!” Collin pivoted around.
    Katie watched her cousin trot across the hall and dart back toward the archway. Redheads have a tendency to look either very young, or wrinkly and old, like little gnomes. Collin, though almost eighteen, looked impossibly young. And his shirt, a violent purple striped pattern (a gift from his mother, of course) didn’t help matters. It only added to the overall impression of Collin as young and dorky rather than intellectual and sophisticated, which is how he