“If you think I killed Emily Davison,” Arthur had said furiously, spitting the words wetly from his mouth, “then you had better lock me up this very instant. Do not dare let my station in life deter you from bringing the full weight of the law down upon my back, do you hear me?”

The inspector had demurred. He’d defused the situation quietly and then had a constable show Arthur to the door. Arthur had been sputtering with rage when he grabbed the rock from the dirty cobblestones along Victoria Street and pitched it at the ugly stone face of British justice.

He found Bram less than three-quarters of an hour later in one of the Lyceum’s basement dressing rooms. Arthur entered to find Bram polishing the mirrors himself, wiping them clean with an old rag and a stick of Lever Bros. Sunlight Soap. Bram’s sleeves were rolled past his elbows as he scrubbed the soap streaks from the brilliant surfaces. The electric bulbs which surrounded the mirrors were reflected in the newly clean glass, doubling their brightness and making it appear, for an instant, as if the entire mirrored wall were constituted only of bursting flame.

Bram turned to face Arthur, setting down his rag.

“I’d know that face anywhere,” said Bram. “Welcome back, Mr. Holmes.”

Arthur did not smile. Rather he unburdened himself upon his friend, sharing the events of the past few days in detail, and in a rueful tone. When Arthur had finished, Bram scratched at his bushy red beard thoughtfully.

“The boy,” said Bram. “Bobby Stegler. He just let you leave? After he’d near confessed to you? He let you walk out of there in one piece?”

“Yes,” said Arthur. “Don’t you see? Once he knew who I was… well, he’d thought he’d found a fellow in his cause. And for my own part, I didn’t see much point in disabusing him of that notion. Strange, damn it. Everyone thinks I’m on his side. Inspector Miller thinks I’m trying to help him cover up my own crimes. And Stegler thinks I’m working to help him cover up his own.”

“So then, whose side are you on really, Arthur? That of justice? That of law?”

“No. Emily’s. Sally’s. Anna’s. I’m on the side of the girls.”

“Well then, what do you think your girls would have you do now?”

Arthur considered the question, turning to face both men’s reflections in the dressing-room mirrors. He noticed how well his own mustache had grown back, how quickly his visage had again taken on the form of a proper man’s. A strange image appeared in his head. It was of his own wedding day. Except that Arthur was not wearing his black tuxedo. Rather he was wearing a sparkling white wedding dress. He imagined himself stitched all in white silk, a flowing train following behind him as he walked blushingly down the aisle toward his betrothed. He imagined the smile on his face, the exuberance of a bride on her wedding day.

Arthur noticed Bram regarding him curiously, and he shook himself from this vision. What a queer thing to imagine!

“I think,” Arthur said at last, “that these girls would have us see to it that their killer was brought to justice. At any cost. Any cost at all.”

Bram stood and began unrolling his sleeves. He fastened the buttons on his cuffs one by one before he spoke again.

“Very well,” said Bram. “Then I am with you.” He took his coat and slid it over his outstretched arms. “Whatever that cost might be.”

December 6, 1900

Arthur and Bram stood on Bridge Street, just across from the Jews’ Burial Ground. Though it was quite dark, they could still make out a few of the tallest headstones, chipped and ragged, illuminated by the lights of the workhouse behind them. They heard the groans of drunks from somewhere beyond, and from the large road they heard the faint pitter-patter of prostitutes’ feet along the dirt. Arthur had not planned this return to the East End, to be sure. But now that he was here, and had been venturing here for the past two days, he realized that of course there was nowhere else for this matter to properly end.

Arthur regarded the Stegler family’s staunch two-story in front of him. He and Bram had found the house easily, by a simple search of the public records regarding the Stegler printing business. Over the last two days, they had kept watch over the property. In a small black notebook, they had kept track of the identities and schedules of each resident of the house. First there was Bobby, who left the house early every morning to attend to his duties at the family press. Bobby’s father, Tobias, left each day a bit later in the morning, stopping in on the press and then on other errands in regard to his business. Bobby’s sister, whose name they learned was Melinda, lived in the house as well and seemed to be at home most of the day, watching after the various servant girls who came by and attending to some of the chores herself. In the evenings she would dine out with friends. These three characters made up the sum of the house’s residents-a search of the death notices revealed that Bobby’s mother had passed many years ago, when he was just a boy.

Arthur had followed Tobias Stegler the day before, and to Arthur’s shock he learned that the man owned a number of houses on Watney Street, near Whitechapel, including the one that had been rented out secretly as a boardinghouse by its caretaker-the one behind which the body of Sally Needling had been found. When he’d seen Mr. Stegler give a few raps on the outside of that house’s door and then saw the lady of the house answer, Arthur had almost lost his wits with surprise. The last time he’d seen this woman, she had been disconsolate, sitting on the narrow staircase of her black-market boardinghouse and crying over the body she’d found and robbed. And here she was calmly opening the door for her landlord, the father of the boy who had done that very murdering. Arthur remembered her fear, he remembered that she’d been keeping the business she ran from this house secret from the landlord-from the man he now knew was Tobias Stegler. Arthur watched as she passed Mr. Stegler a clump of bills and sent him on his way. He never entered the house, as he was seemingly content to have collected his rents and saw no need for further inquiry into the state of his property.

Clearly, this was no coincidence. But it took an hour of talking through the situation with Bram, later that night, before Arthur figured out what it meant. Tobias Stegler did not know about the boardinghouse being run out of his property, they reasoned. If he did, then the woman of the house would have had no cause to respond to Arthur’s threat, all those weeks ago, that he would tell her landlord of her secret. But, they also reasoned, somehow Bobby Stegler did know, and he’d used this to his advantage. He knew that he would need an out-of-theway place, a quiet boardinghouse without a lot of guests, to bring his first victim. When he learned, probably through some simple accident, that one of the women his father rented to was secretly keeping lodgers, it only made sense for him to make use of it. He would not, however, have risked a second trip to the same house, for his second victim. He had gotten lucky enough that the woman hadn’t recognized him once-though as far as Arthur and Bram could tell, she might not even know the boy’s face.

If Arthur had harbored any doubts as to Bobby Stegler’s guilt in the murders, this revelation eliminated them. Bobby had particular means to have committed these crimes, he had the opportunity, and he certainly had a motive, however perverse it might be. What the boy had done was more evil, Arthur knew, than simple murder. He had toyed with his victims first; he had seduced them, he had said he loved them, he had made them feel love, and then he had strangled them in dirtflecked bathtubs. He had not simply slaughtered these women; he had first violated their womanhood. He had cruelly struck each woman at the core of her female being. It was worse than murdering a man. And it was worse even than simply murdering a woman. He had struck at the entire womanly sex.