chapter 1
The Daily Telegraph
Monday, September 10, 1888
Another most horrible murder has been perpetrated in Whitechapel. At an early hour on Saturday morning, the body of a woman was found lying in the corner of a yard in Hanbury-street, a low thoroughfare, not far from Buck's-row, the scene of a similar tragedy ten days ago. The deceased's throat was cut, she had been disembowelled, and there were other circumstances of the most revolting barbarity. The body proved to be that of Annie Chapman, a widow, who had for many years been separated from her husband, and had of late been leading a somewhat loose life, taking up her quarters principally in the poorer sort of East-end lodging-houses. There is at present no very tangible clue to the murderer, but the police have issued a description of the man who is "wanted" for the deed. The coroner's inquest will be opened this morning.
September 11, 1888
As the third-class train carriage careened southward, Caroline Foster tried not to cry.
The window was open a crack-no more, for it was pouring rain; already the threadbare upholstery was stained dark where the drops had crept through-and Caroline raised her nose to the sliver of air, inhaling the sweetness of late-summer leaves over the body odors of her carriage mates.
She hadn't eaten anything since dawn, and then only a piece of bread. Despite her clenched stomach she had savored it, knowing it would be her last taste of home. How foolish not to bring the whole loaf, a lump of salted butter wrapped in wax paper, a jar of Cook's peach preserves.
Now the old faintness was creeping up, the sensation that her edges were bleeding away like an inked word under a drop of water, and she forced her eyes to focus on the green blur of trees through the train window.
She pulled at the ring she wore around her neck like a pendant, drawing the band across the links with a satisfying thrum. An old habit from childhood. Carys would have swatted at her hand, said something about young ladies and fidgeting. But Carys was not here.
Charlie, Caroline said to the panic rising like a tide in her head. Just find Charlie.
"That's a pretty piece, miss."
Caroline's head swiveled. It was a man's voice, pitched to be heard over the clattering steel. And the broad, suntanned face it belonged to was staring straight at her, nodding at the ring between her fingers.
She blinked. This man was speaking to her-to her, a young lady traveling without a companion. A laborer, she guessed, from his thick Midlands accent and chapped hands. Had she crossed paths with him in Stafford's high street, he would have stared at his boots and touched his cap.
"Gold, is it?" he asked, baring his teeth in a yellow smile.
Caroline cast a glance at their cabin's only other passenger, hoping she might intervene. But Mrs. Flaherty was snoring softly, her head lolling side to side with the movement of the train. The older woman had introduced herself to Caroline when they both boarded in Stafford, declared, We ladies need to stick together!, then promptly fallen asleep.
Caroline could feel the man's eyes on her. The seconds ticked away, marked by the beat of blood in her ears. God help her, she must say something. The silence was intolerable.
Channeling Eloise, who possessed a chilly haughtiness that sent the servants scrambling, Caroline straightened her spine to its full, unremarkable height, turned her pale gaze on the laborer, and said, "Yes. It's gold."
The man raised his eyebrows. "Family heirloom, is it?"
"It is."
"Fine piece. I'd pay a pretty penny for it, miss, if you're looking to sell."
Caroline blanched. "I would never sell it," she said, rather more loudly than she'd meant to. "It was my mother's." The engraving pressed against the skin of her chest: seven flowers hung with drops of blood. The Blevins family crest.
The laborer shrugged and leaned back against the carriage bench. "Just an offer, miss. Thought maybe you could use the coin." And with that, he pulled the brim of his hat over his eyes and crossed his arms over his chest.
Caroline turned her face to the window and tried to slow her cantering heart. This was the sort of familiarity she could expect now. Being spoken to by strangers. By strange men. If only Carys were here, occupying the seat beside her with the withering presence of a wimpled nun. But Caroline's maid had had left months ago, gone back to her family in Wales when Lord Foster could no longer pay her wages. Caroline had wept, wrapped her arms around Carys in a gesture of affection that she had never before dared to attempt, for though the woman was as unyielding as a piece of gristle, she was the last mooring rope that tied Caroline to the sunken ship of her long-dead mother.
Carys had stiffened under the embrace. But she did not pull away, nor raise her own bony arms to hug Caroline in return. When Caroline had once more gained control of herself, she had drawn back, self-conscious and sniffling, to find the Welshwoman gazing into her face as though memorizing it.
Take your medicine. The last thing she had said before trundling toward the waiting coach. Don't forget to take your medicine.
Caroline hazarded a glance at the man seated across from her. Already, soft snores emanated from beneath his lowered hat. Mrs. Flaherty's fingers were twitching in her lap like the legs of a sleeping dog.
Slowly, silently, Caroline opened the purse at her waist and slid the tin box free. She hooked a fingernail under the lid's edge and drew a rust-colored pill from its companions.
She had meant to call for Dr. Hoffman before she left. When the bank accounts were empty and the jewelry pawned, the old doctor had accepted an enamel snuff box as payment and promised to return the next week with Caroline's medicine. But he had not. And, drowning as she had been beneath her father's debts, she had forgotten to send for him.
She still had a month's supply, Caroline told herself as she returned the box to her purse. And there were doctors aplenty in London; Charlie would pay the fee. Besides, she had never liked Hoffman, with his jar of leeches, the way his hands lingered on her body during his examinations.
The pill dissolved on her tongue, metallic and bitter and oddly floral. The pressure in her head immediately lessened. Caroline rested her forehead against the cool, beaded glass of the window.
Find Charlie, she said to herself, to the passing sheds and fences, the sodden fields. Just find Charlie.
She had left Audley House that morning with nothing but her father’s battered steamer trunk and five shillings in her purse. The wealthy American who bought Audley House had not wished to meet the penniless daughter of the deceased owner, so she had left the keys as bidden on the parlor mantel and climbed into the Foster carriage for the last time.
She and Charlie had dreamed of sharing the house one day. They would race horses through the woods, eat supper picnic-style beside the parlor fire instead of in the uncomfortable high-backed dining room chairs. They would pull quilts out of the cedar-lined linen closets and drag them to the front lawn each August to watch the stars fall. The Staffordshire wives could call them savages from behind their gloves and fans, but they would not care, for they would be happy, and free, and, at long last, masters of their own lives.
But life was not a story, Caroline reminded herself. It did not follow the predictable beats of a novel.
And it was a childish dream, anyway.
So she had left the hallways of locked rooms, with their ghostly perfume and broken windowpanes. She had left the black-spotted mirrors that flaked gold leaf on the carpets like dandruff. She had left the silent kennels, the stables long emptied of horses.
She had left her father in the churchyard at St. Mary's beneath a new white headstone that shone as garishly as a gold tooth beside the time-worn marble of the others:
Helen Anne Foster,
beloved wife and mother
Mary Grace Foster,
called to heaven after twenty-one days of life
Anne Elizabeth Foster,
called to heaven after seven days of life
Charles Wallace Foster,
born sleeping
But Charlie's bones were not buried in the black Staffordshire earth.
He was Caroline's most precious secret. Her brother was alive.
And she was going to find him.
The rain stopped by the time they reached the outskirts of London.
Caroline had watched the countryside thicken from fields to villages and from villages to factories. Belching smokestacks stained the rain-wet windows gray and gritty. Black scars scored the green land: mines and quarries and new roads.
Mrs. Flaherty's yawn filled the carriage with the sharp smell of onions. "Looks like we're nearly there," she said, smacking her lips and peering through the glass.
"Last station was Camden Town," the laborer replied helpfully. He had snorted awake the last time the train lurched to a halt but had not addressed Caroline again. "About five minutes more, I'd wager."
"Birmingham to London in three hours," Mrs. Flaherty said with a shake of her head. The saliva had dried in a track down one side of her mouth, like that left by a tear. "A miracle, that is. Whereabouts are you all headed? My sister rents a flat off Charing Cross Road. If either of you are going south, we could split the price of a cab."
The laborer shook his head. "No cab for me, miss. I'm to Hoxton. The omnibus is good enough."
Mrs. Flaherty wrinkled her nose. "The bus is so crowded. Last time I took it, a woman got on with a crate of chickens. Live chickens, mind you. Sat right next to me. She rode for four stops, them all the while squawking and molting and dropping shit on my best boots." She gave Caroline's mourning gown an appraising glance. "What about you, Miss Foster? Headed southwest? Mayfair, I'll wager. Or Green Park? Charing Cross will be on your way. It won't put you out three minutes to drop me first."
Caroline resisted the urge to slip her fingers into the purse at her belt, feel the reassuring edges of Charlie's last letter.
"I'm headed east, I'm afraid," she said with a polite smile. "But thank you for the offer."
"East? Which borough?"
Caroline swallowed. "Whitechapel."
Silence fell in the carriage.
"Whitechapel," Mrs. Flaherty repeated, as though the word were foreign. "Are you quite sure?"
"Yes." Caroline breathed against the faintness that was rising within her again, despite the mollifying effects of Dr. Hoffman's medicine. "Quite certain. I'm meeting my brother."
"And this brother can't be bothered to meet you at St. Pancras?" Mrs. Flaherty's face was incredulous, her wide jaw slack. "He expects his sister to make her way to the East End, unaccompanied?"
"I'm surprising him."
At least it was the truth.
She hadn't heard from Charlie in months, not since the bleak weeks in early spring after their father died and she learned the family fortune had been squandered at horse tracks and whist tables. Her brother's note had been strange and short, the handwriting so frantic she barely believed it belonged to him.
Stay in Stafford.
Missing was the salutation, her favorite two words in the whole of the English language: Dear Cat. The margins were wide and empty, devoid of the drawings that always decorated his letters.
Don't come here, whatever you do. Something has changed. I can't say more, but it's not safe. I'll come to you. As soon as I sort things, I'll come to you.
-C
But Charlie hadn't come. He hadn't written back, not even when she had begged him, sent a dozen letters warped with tears. Every day, as she sold off the horses, the furniture, the paintings of their ancestors, she stared through the windows as though she could summon him. He would appear now, now, now. She would glance up and see him at the turn of the drive, his dark hair incorrigible as a cock's comb, his long arms swinging.
On the sweltering August morning when she signed the deed over to the American's beady-eyed lawyer, Caroline had kept glancing past his shoulder at the door, expecting her brother to burst through it.
But he had not come. So, despite the strangeness of the message, despite the warning to remain where she was, Caroline was going to him.
"A young lady such as yourself has no business in Whitechapel," the laborer said now, his face somber. "No business at all."
"You've heard of the murders, Miss Foster?" Mrs. Flaherty spoke with such vehemence that her jowls trembled. "The women?"
A ripple ran up Caroline's spine.
"Aye," the man confirmed with a nod. "A man has been murdering women in Whitechapel. Two last month alone, found with their bellies slit. And the police making a botchery of it, as they always do."
It had been months since a newspaper had been delivered to Audley House. Caroline knew nothing of the outside world, had heard nothing but her own frantic thoughts since Lord Foster's heart stopped beating.
"You must have another place to stay," Mrs. Flaherty said, eyeing the black silk roses bunched in Caroline's bonnet, the mother-of-pearl buttons on her boots. "Another relative in London?"
Her mouth had gone dry. But she must say something. They were staring at her.
"I appreciate your concern." The words sounded cool, iced with Eloise's borrowed superiority. "But I will be under the care of my brother. I will be safe."
Ignoring the weighted glance that passed between her two companions, Caroline turned imperiously back to the window.
Women murdered. The words thundered through Caroline's head alongside the clattering of the train. Bellies slit. Was that why Charlie had forbidden her from coming? Because there was a murderer of women at large?
Caroline took a long, shuddering breath.
But she had nowhere else to go.
Copyright © 2026 by Elizabeth DeLozier. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
