But she had more impressive game to hunt, I reflected as I studied her latest piece. They had not given her the front page; that honor was reserved for more senior writers bent on howling outrage against the Jews, the poor, the Catholics, the immigrants, and anyone else they thought might possibly be behind the appalling crimes in Whitechapel. They castigated Sir Charles Warren, the captain of Scotland Yard, with obvious glee, calling for his resignation in the face of his failure to apprehend the culprit. They speculated wildly on methods of investigation, and an entire column was devoted to letters from vulturelike members of the reading public urging ever more outrageous solutions. And page after page featured descriptions of the hideous mutilations inflicted upon the victims in stomach-churning detail.
J. J. Butterworth’s article stood out amid this orgy of sensationalism. Rather than focus on the crimes or the perpetrator, she had instead turned her pen to the subject of the victims. She named them, repeatedly, and described the lives they had led. She made them not faceless drabs who got no better than they deserved, as so many believed them to be. She told their stories, painting portraits of grinding poverty relieved only by the temporary respite to be found in a bottle of gin. She described the few options available to women who had been let down by society, by their families, by their menfolk. She talked of pathetic attempts at dignity and self-respect, the desperate cobbling together of an income by way of picking hops or making silk flowers, and how these uncertain wages must so often be augmented by the selling of the only commodity such women could command—their own bodies. Butterworth called out the evils of a class system that did not offer opportunities to women such as these; she condemned the church and the government and every other institution that regularly looked past these women as though they did not exist. It was a brutal and scathing indictment of those who held the power to amend but did nothing with that authority.
That J. J. Butterworth was such a firebrand was no surprise; that the Daily Harbinger chose to publish such a diatribe, albeit buried far towards the back, did give me a moment’s reflection. The proprietors prided themselves on stoking the fires of sensationalism, generating public debate about the most polarizing topics of the day. They attacked anyone they could rouse to reaction and thus sold more newspapers than many of the more sedate journals. But they were scandalmongers, not ideologues. They might champion the poor and downtrodden this week against the wealthy, but next week they would be just as likely to call for the expulsion of the Chinese from Limehouse on the grounds that they trafficked in human beings and opium. (The engagement of the Chinese in either of those practices was greatly exaggerated. There were far more native-born English selling their own kind into the basest of trades, and the only opium house I ever personally entered was maintained by a schoolmaster in Bloomsbury.)
I moved on from Butterworth’s piece to a lengthy article about the rising threat of anarchists, the tragic death of a famous lady mountaineer, and a detailed description of the monument to George Washington presently to open in the city bearing his name. It was a singularly odd-looking edifice, an obelisk of faintly Egyptian design.
“But with not a single hieroglyph,” I sniffed just as Stoker appeared, eyes heavily shadowed and a fresh growth of morning whiskers upon his jaw. Trotting after him were the dogs, Lord Rosemorran’s Caucasian shepherd, Betony, Stoker’s bulldog, Huxley, and his newest acquisition, a pretty Egyptian hound called Nut. Huxley and Bet had already produced a litter of extremely questionable attractiveness and were devoted to one another. But they had admitted Nut with good grace, and she was a dainty, unobtrusive creature given to displays of adoration where Stoker was concerned. He tossed sausages to each of the dogs, then reached for a piece of toast and dunked it directly into the pot of honey.
“How is Lady Wellie?” I asked.
“Resting,” he said. “I looked in on her a few times in the night. She roused once towards dawn and took a little brandy with an egg beaten into it, then slipped into sleep again.” I started to open my mouth again, but he shook his head. “It is too soon to know what sort of permanent effect this will have upon her health.”
He finished his toast and reached for another piece. “What are you reading?”
I did not mention the monument—Stoker had very strong opinions on architecture—but acquainted him with the latest on anarchists and deceased lady mountaineers before giving him the highlights of J. J. Butterworth’s article. He lifted a hand halfway through.
“Don’t, I beg you. It is too much to bear this early in the morning.”
The clock in the Belvedere was a singularly unattractive thing, enormous and held in the paws of a slightly cross-eyed sphinx. I gave it a meaningful look. “It is not morning. It has just gone noon.”
He groaned and reached for the teapot, pouring himself a large cup of tepid, muddy brew. As he sipped, I thought of what Lady Wellie had been trying to communicate when she had fallen ill.
“Do you think she was simply confused?” I asked. “She asks us to return because of the Whitechapel murders, says it is a matter of life and death, and then asks us instead to retrieve a jewel on the prince’s behalf. It makes no sense.”
Stoker shrugged. “It must have, at least to her. Somehow those things must be connected in her mind.”
“But what connection could there possibly be between a prince of the realm and those dreadful murders?” I demanded.
“Good morning, all!” came a cheerful voice from the doorway. The dogs roused themselves, welcoming our visitor with an enthusiasm that bordered on the ridiculous. Huxley sniffed him eagerly whilst Betony made a gurgling noise of pleasure deep in her throat and Nut applied herself to rolling ecstatically upon her back in front of him.
“Mornaday!” I exclaimed with mingled pleasure. Stoker was far less keen.
“Mornaday,” he said curtly.
Sir Hugo’s junior at Special Branch, Mornaday had been, upon occasion, both adversary and ally. We had encountered Mornaday during our first adventure in detection, and while I liked him—he boasted a pair of merry dark eyes and an endearing charm that could coax birds from the trees—Stoker found him decidedly less amiable. The pair of them raised one another’s hackles and they usually spent most of their time circling one another like feral cats. They tallied their grudges against one another with maddening accuracy and held them close, nurturing them with care.
“Well, if you are not a sight for the sorest of eyes,” Mornaday said, stepping neatly over Nut to kiss my hand. “Far too long, it’s been.” His gaze held the faintest touch of reproach. “Do I have to marry you myself to prevent you from haring off for parts unknown?” he demanded.
“I sent you picture postcards,” I reminded him.
“You did?” Stoker raised a brow and Mornaday beamed at him, settling comfortably onto a camel saddle with the air of a man well pleased with himself.