The Curiosity Killers by K W Taylor Read Free Book Online Page A

direction.
    “Miss Polly, please, dear, don’t rush off so.”
    She turned with some reluctance. “You got a lot of nerve, gov. Didn’t pay me nothin’, ’spite me doin’ me best, and didn’t even buy me breakfast.”
    The man withdrew a small leather purse from the inside of his coat. He smiled as he shook it, coins inside jingling together like bells. In one hand he carried a smart bag, cornered like a doctor’s.
    “Blimey, you got a bit of a windfall there, eh?” Polly imagined how much was inside and what it might do for her—a bed for a week, perhaps? Food? Drink ? Oh, glorious drink. Polly could enter that beautiful oblivion that took away memories of her father’s yelling, her husband’s other women, her children…oh, God, her beautiful children whom William never let her see since he turned her out. Henry would be almost ten now, yet the last time she laid eyes on him he hadn’t even been walking yet. When she drank, Polly forgot her womb had ever been full, forgot the rough men and unforgiving women who’d made her resort to this life.
    “Polly, we’re going to have to send you off.” Anna Cowdry, her last employer for her last respectable position, had held out a satchel to her. “We can’t have you drinking. This is a dry house, girl, and my husband—”
    “Your husband’s been givin’ me eyes like he wants to wet his whistle,” Polly spat out. “Fine. You lot put on your airs and your do-goodings and whatnot, but I know why I bother the both o’ ya, and it’s got less to do with the cooking sherry ’n’ more to do with my unlocked bedroom door.”
    The satchel held a week’s worth of funds and a list of addresses of inns in the city. Polly spent the shillings on alcohol; it had lasted her two days.
    Was this man, this gentle man, going to fund her better? Going to give her some respectability? Fellows just wanting a night with her didn’t flash their money like this one did. If he was the sort to have trouble with the act itself, maybe he just wanted companionship, someone to keep house. And if he let her have her whiskey, Polly wagered she’d be right chuffed to sweep the man’s floors. Doctors needed housekeepers, ’specially poor bachelor doctors who also might need a bit of company without the hassle of a wife.
    “It is quite the windfall, Polly.” The man’s grin widened. He held out an arm to her and escorted her into the alley.
    ~
    An hour later, a horse-drawn carriage stopped short near Buck’s Row. The driver got out to unlock the stable doors and nearly tripped on Polly’s corpse as he did so.
    Across the street, a man drew the brim of his hat down over his eyes, pressed the center of his palm, and walked ten feet to his right to the alley from which he’d dragged the woman’s body. He never exited the other side.

    Saturday, July 12, 2070, Flussville, South Carolina, RAA
    “You do what you wanted to back there, sir?”
    Claudio felt a rush of information enter his mind—articles, books, documentaries, comic books, all of it soaked in blood and shadowy sketches that resembled his own slender frame clad in Victorian garb.
    The press-bestowed nickname hung in his mind like a slap in the face, like a cruel playground taunt.
    “Jack the Ripper.”
    “Sir?” Ambrose gasped. “Oh, hell, sir, I don’t know why I didn’t warn you about that first time you…you didn’t see him, did you? Were you near the scene of one of the murders?”
    “Ambrose,” Claudio said, “do you remember the first time you heard about Jack the Ripper?”
    Ambrose looked puzzled. “What? I don’t know. Back home, it’s somethin’ you ’ear ’bout soon as you’re old enough to get told not to run off by yourself at night.” He took another step back. “Why d’you ask?”
    “Just curious, son.”
    “With all due respect, sir,” Ambrose said, “you can be right barmy, y’know that?” He placed a blood pressure cuff on Claudio’s left arm. “Did you decide who you’d