"That," Shahdi mused, "or he simply didn't meet Catharine Eddowes until he'd reached The City's jurisdiction. She had just been released from jail and was heading east, while Jack was presumably heading west."

"Well, even if he did just happen to meet her in The City, he doubled back into Whitechapel again, so it'd be the Metropolitan Police who found the apron he left for them under his chalked message, not constables from The City police. Somehow, Maybrick doesn't strike me as quite that clever."

"Perhaps, perhaps not," Shahdi said thoughtfully. "But one thing is quite clear. Our doctor is very clever. How has he managed, I wonder, to work so closely with Mr. Maybrick, yet keep all mention of himself out of Maybrick's incriminating diary?"

"Yeah. And why did Maybrick write a diary like that at all? I mean, that's tempting fate just a little too much, isn't it? His wife knew he was married to another woman, that he was a bigamist and having other affairs, probably with his own maidservants. At Florie's trial, everybody commented on how gorgeous all the Maybrick maids were. Florie might have gone looking for clues to who the other women were and found the diary. Or one of those nosy maids might have. They certainly helped themselves to Mrs. Maybrick's clothes and jewelry."

Shahdi Feroz was shaking her head in disagreement. "Yes, they did, but you may not realize that Maybrick kept his study locked at all times with a padlock. He kept the only key and straightened the room himself. Very peculiar for a businessman of the time. And he threatened to kill a clerk who nearly discovered something incriminating. Presumably the diary, itself. As to why he wrote the diary, many serial killers have a profound need to confess their crimes. A compulsion to be caught. It is why they play taunting games with the police, with letters and clues. A serial killer is under terrible pressure to murder his victims. By writing down his deeds, he can relieve some of this pressure, as well as relive the terrible thrill and excitement of the crime. Maybrick is not alone, in this. The risk of being caught, either through the diary or at the crime scene, is as addictive to the serial killer as the murder itself, is."

"God, that's really sick!" Margo gulped back nausea.

Shahdi nodded, eyes grim. "Maybrick's diary has always rung with authenticity on many levels. To forge such a thing, a person would have needed to comprehend a vast array of information, technical and scientific skills ranging from psychopathic serial killer psychology to the forensics of ink and handwriting and linguistic styles. No, I never believed the diary to be a forgery, even before we taped Mr. Maybrick killing Polly Nichols, although many of my colleagues have believed it to be, ever since it was discovered in the twentieth century. The thing I find most intriguing, however, is his silence in the diary about this doctor who works with him. Through the whole diary, he names people quite freely, including doctors he has consulted, both in Liverpool and London. Why, then, no mention of this doctor?"

"He mentions a doctor in London?" Margo said eagerly. "That's the guy, then!"

"No," Shahdi shook her head. "There are records of this doctor. He does not fit the age or physical description profile of the man on our video. I had already thought of this, of course, but we brought with us downloaded copies of everything known on this case. It is not the same man."

"Oh." Margo couldn't hide the disappointment in her voice.

Shahdi smiled. "It was a good thought, my dear. Ah, this is where we turn for Mitre Square."

They had to dodge heavy freight wagon traffic across Aldgate to reach Mitre Street, from which they could take one of the two access routes into the Square. This was a rectangle of buildings almost entirely closed in on four sides by tall warehouses, private residences, and a Jewish Synagogue. The only ways in and out lay along a narrow inlet off Mitre Street and through a covered alleyway called Church Passage, which ran from Duke Street directly beneath a building, as so many odd little streets and narrow lanes in London did. Empty working men's cottages rose several stories along one side of the square. School children's voices could be heard in one corner, reciting lessons through the open windows of a small boarding school for working families with enough income to give their children a chance at a better future.

As they studied the layout of the narrow square, a door to one of the private houses opened. A policeman in uniform paused to kiss a woman in a plain morning dress. "Good day, m'dearie, an' keep the doors locked up, what with that maniac running about loose, cutting ladies' throats. I'll be back in time for supper."

"Do take care, won't you?"

"Ah, Mrs. Pearse, I always take care on a beat, you know that."

"Mr. Pearse," his wife touched his face, "I worry about you out there, say what you will. I'll have supper waiting."

Margo stared, not so much because Mr. and Mrs. Pearse had addressed one another so formally. That was standard Victorian practice, using the formal address rather than first names in public. The reason Margo stared was because Mr. Pearse was a police constable. "My God," Margo whispered. "Right across the street from a constable's house!"

Shahdi Feroz was also studying the policeman's house with great interest. "Yes. Most interesting, isn't it? Playing cat and mouse with the constables on the very night he was nearly caught at Dutfield's Yard. Giving the police a calculated insult. I am willing to bet on this. Maybrick hated Inspector Abberline already, by the night of the double murder."

"And one of them had already started sending those taunting letters to the press, too," Margo muttered. "No wonder the handwriting on the Dear Boss letters and note didn't match Maybrick's. This mysterious doctor of ours must have written them."

Shahdi Feroz gave Margo a startled stare. "Yes, of course! Which raises very intriguing questions, Miss Smith, most intriguing questions. Such letters are almost always sent by the killer to taunt police with his power. Yet the letters do not match Maybrick's handwriting, even though they use the American phrases Maybrick certainly would have known."

"Like the word boss," Margo nodded. "Or the term ‘red stuff' which isn't any kind of Britishism. But Maybrick didn't need to disguise his handwriting, because Maybrick didn't send them, the doctor did. But why?" Margo wondered. "I mean, why would he write letters taunting the police using language deliberately couched to sound like an American had written them? Or somebody who'd been to America?"

Shahdi's eyes widened. "Because," she said in an excited whisper, "he meant to betray James Maybrick!"

Margo's mouth came open. "My God! He sent them to frame his partner? To make sure Maybrick was hanged? But... surely Maybrick would've turned him in, if he'd been arrested? Which he wasn't, of course. Maybrick dies of arsenic poisoning next spring." Margo blinked, thoughts racing. "Does this mean something happens to the partner? To stop him from turning Maybrick over to the police?"

Shahdi Feroz was staring at Margo. "A very good question, my dear. We must find out who this mysterious doctor is!"

"You're telling me! The sooner the better. We've only got a week before he kills Annie Chapman." Margo was staring absently at the building across the square, while something niggled the back of her mind, some little detail she was missing. "If he knew the East End as well as I'm guessing—" She broke off as it hit her, what she was seeing. "Oh, my God! Look at that! The Great Synagogue! Another Jewish connection! First the Jewish Workingmen's Educational Club, then he kills Catharine Eddowes practically on the doorstep of a synagogue. And then he chalks anti-Semitic graffiti on a tenement wall on Goulston Street!"