Ripper Read online

  For Shelby—because he’s always had that look

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  A division of Penguin Young Readers Group.

  Published by The Penguin Group.

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 375 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014, U.S.A.

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  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. All rights reserved. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form without permission in writing from the publisher, Philomel Books, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street, New York, NY 10014. Philomel Books, Reg. U.S. Pat. & Tm. Off. The scanning, uploading and distribution of this book via the Internet or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated. The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their content.

  Published simultaneously in Canada. Printed in the United States of America.

  Edited by Michael Green.

  Design by Semadar Megged. Text set in 12-point Bembo.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Petrucha, Stefan.

  Ripper / Stefan Petrucha.

  p. cm.

  Summary: Adopted by famous Pinkerton Agency Detective Hawking in 1895 New York, fourteen-year-old Carver Young hopes to find his birth father, but when he becomes involved in the pursuit of notorious killer Jack the Ripper, Carver discovers that finding the truth can be worse than ignorance.

  [1. Mystery and detective stories. 2. Jack, the Ripper—Fiction. 3. Orphans—Fiction. 4. Fathers and sons—Fiction. 5. Pinkerton’s National Detective Agency—Fiction. 6. New York (N.Y.)—History—1865–1898—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.P44727Rip 2012

  [Fic]—dc23

  2011017516

  EISBN: 9781101560556

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  RIPPER

  STEFAN PETRUCHA

  PHILOMEL BOOKS

  AN IMPRINT OF PENGUIN GROUP (USA) INC.

  Table of Contents

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  1

  MAY 23, 1895

  THE LENOX LIBRARY

  “LET ME show you a secret.”

  Elizabeth B. Rowley liked the man’s confidence. She usually mingled with balding walrus types or younger men, who were as awkward as the monkeys in the Central Park Zoo. This one was different… wolfish. She liked the way he’d removed her from the boring herd. While silk-stockinged men and fine ladies with grand hats and gowns swarmed about the high-ceilinged main hall, here they were among overflowing bookshelves, containing who knows what secrets.

  “Won’t we be missed?” she asked. “I wouldn’t want to be rude.”

  He smiled. “By all means, don’t let me lead you astray. I’m sure the party is far more interesting.”

  Beyond the stacks, Astors, Guggenheims, Rocke fellers and other prominent families talked of this and that. Business culture. The weather in May. The new police commissioner, Roosevelt, and if he would make any difference in a police force so corrupt, one could hardly distinguish it from the street gangs.

  “Where is your secret? Close by, I should hope, Mr.… ?”

  “Just downstairs. It’s a bit dark, I’m afraid.”

  “Then I shall count on you to guide me.” She slipped her hand into the crook of his arm, impressed with how thick his muscles felt. He was tall, too.

  He led her farther from the tedious crowd, deeper into the stacks, until they reached an old door that wobbled sadly on its hinges. Beyond it lay a steep staircase. Though lit by an electric bulb, it emptied into darkness.

  He walked down first. Her hand was still in the crook of his arm until they neared the bottom. There, he moved ahead, vanishing. She managed the last two steps alone and stuck her head into a wide space thick with the smell of books.

  “They couldn’t afford to electrify the entire building,” his bodiless voice said.

  “Pity,” she answered. She found his silhouette, watched as he twisted the valve of a rickety old gas lamp mounted in the wall. As a gentle hiss of gas emerged, he fished in his pockets.

  “Not for me,” he said, withdrawing a safety match. “I’ve always loathed Mr. Edison’s bulbs. Too harsh.” He scraped the match against the plaster wall, causing a spark, curls of smoke and finally a small, hot flower. When he touched it to the lamp, a yellow flame appeared, bobbing at the nozzle. “This is so much gentler.”

  Rows of tomb-like shelves appeared in the light. They seemed to extend forever. As the light quivered, the shadows pulsed. “Makes the dark livelier, too. Like a heartbeat.”

  Before she could think of a clever response, he led her down the central aisle. He stopped a quarter of the way down and ran his finger along the mottled spines. Worried she’d been silent for too long, she struggled for something interesting to say.

  “Are you in publishing? An aut
hor?”

  “Me? No, no. I’ve written a few… letters, but that’s all.”

  He withdrew a thick book.

  She edged closer, feeling the warmth of his coat. “Is this your secret? Aren’t you going to introduce me?”

  “How silly of me. Elizabeth Rowley, meet The Crimes of Jack the Ripper, published 1891.”

  She swallowed a nervous laugh. “Oh my! Talk about lurid dime novels! Isn’t that the Whitechapel killer who butchered those poor women in London seven years ago?”

  “Poor in more ways than one,” he said, flipping through the pages. “They lived in the worst circumstances, barely scrounging enough to eat. He never touched a wealthy woman.”

  “Of course not. He wouldn’t dare.”

  He turned to her. “They didn’t catch him, so it’s hard to tell what he might dare, don’t you think?”

  “What is it about such a horrible murderer that interests you?”

  “It’s just this particular book,” he said. “It’s terribly done, full of factual errors and grammar that would make a schoolboy blush. That’s why there aren’t many copies. It does, however, have the distinction of also being the only book about Saucy Jack with… this.”

  He handed it to her, open to a photographic plate. Even in the light of the distant flame she could make out the words written in a crude hand.

  “I’d read about this, but never saw the actual note,” she said.

  He took the book back. “Not many here have. This is the only copy someone in New York could easily get ahold of without contacting Scotland Yard in London.”

  With a sharp snap, he tore the page out and slipped it into his pocket. “Now… there are none.”

  Her eyes went wide. The destruction was daring, but he must have his reasons. As he slipped the book back into place, her mind searched for an explanation.

  “Are you in law enforcement, Mr.… ?”

  “Depends on what laws you’re referring to. I follow my own.”

  A glint turned her head down to his side. His hand now held a long, sharp knife, its silver mixing with the gaslight’s yellow. By the time Elizabeth B. Rowley looked back up, his right hand was at her throat. Any sound she might’ve made, any objection she might have raised, was stifled by his grip.

  He lifted steadily until first the heels, then the balls of her feet no longer touched the floor.

  “And please, let’s not get all tangled up in formalities,” he said. “Call me Jack.”

  2

  SURROUNDED by unsettling sounds, Carver Young struggled to keep his hands still. He had to focus. Had to. He could do this. He wasn’t some infant, afraid of the dark. If anything, he loved the dark. But the cracks in the attic let the wind run wild. Old papers fluttered like hesitant birds. Musty clothes rustled as if touched by spirits. And then the cleaver, wedged in the ceiling right above him, wobbled.

  It was too much. He stumbled back, making the floorboards creak.

  No! If someone downstairs hears me…

  Cursing himself, he crept back under the blade. It’s not going to fall. It’s been there for years. No reason it should fall now. Taking a breath, he studied the lock again. The keyhole was thin, the pins that held the cylinder tough to reach. Of course this would be the only lock in Ellis Orphanage that ever gave him trouble.

  It wasn’t his first crime, but it was the only one that could change his life. Breaking into the kitchen or nabbing some school supplies could be forgiven, chalked up to what Miss Petty called “youthful indiscretion.” This time, though, he could be thrown in jail.

  Wouldn’t Finn and his gang have a great laugh at that? Scrawny Carver locked in the Tombs, trapped among murderers and robbers, while Finn, a real thief, stayed free. But wouldn’t Sherlock Holmes or Nick Neverseen do the same thing? Bend the law to get at the truth?

  The cleaver creaked again as if eager to punish someone. Until Carver saw it for himself, he thought it was a lie the little ones used to scare each other. The story went that a nameless boy was caught stealing cookies by Curly, the cook. Drunk as a skunk, mad as the devil, Curly grabbed a cleaver and chased the boy up to the attic. But when he raised it to strike, the poor sap went to his knees bawling. The cook relented and hurled it up instead.

  Maybe it was left as a warning, like the skull and crossbones on a pirate’s treasure. No, it was more like that old Greek legend, the Sword of Damocles. How’d it go? Damocles envied a king, so the king offered to switch places. “King” Damocles was thrilled, until he looked up and saw a sword over his head, hanging by a thread. He got the point. Fear was the price of power.

  Was that why Carver’s hands shook?

  Beyond the door were the private files for all the orphans at Ellis, those who’d left, those who, like him, had been here over a decade. Carver knew nothing about his own parents, not their names, not how they looked, not how they lived or even if they had died. His last name, Young, was something Miss Petty made up because he was an infant when he arrived. Ever since he’d started picking locks, he’d thought about coming up here and finding out if there was anything Miss Petty hadn’t told him. She was always so hesitant about discussing his past. Now, with the headmistress gone for the day, he had the time he needed.

  Or so he thought. After an hour of trying, the lock would not yield to his collection of bent nails. They were either too thick or the wrong shape, and he had no way to bend them now.

  He stepped back and looked around for anything else he could use. The long, wide space was cramped with helter-skelter boxes, clothing racks and trunks, a graveyard of mementoes. A bit of color in the gloom caught his eye. Among some chewed, weathered alphabet blocks sat what was once his favorite toy, an old windup cowboy mounted on his horse.

  It’d come from Europe, a rich person’s toy, donated because it was old and broken. Miss Petty marveled when Carver, only five at the time, fixed it. Cowboy Man, he called it. Now fourteen, he picked it up. The windup key turned freely. It was broken again, but maybe it could help him one last time.

  Using his thickest nail, he pried off the side of the horse. It looked like someone had poured milk inside it years ago, but the pieces were all intact. He could fix it again, but he didn’t need a toy. Instead, he pulled out the wire that moved the horse’s legs back and forth. It was thin enough, but rust came off between his fingers. It would probably snap. Still, it was worth a try.

  He bent it carefully and, once satisfied with the shape, slipped it into the keyhole. Slowly, he turned it. Something clicked. The cylinder turned. The door swung inward. He had it!

  Snickering at the cleaver, he moved into a room full of gray file cabinets. It was too dim to read their labels, but he guessed the bottom-right drawer would hold X-Y-Z. When he pulled it open, the dry metal squeaked loudly. It didn’t seem right this should be illegal. The only thing he wanted was his, anyway.

  He pulled all the files out and carried them into a scant beam of sunlight. As he sifted through the awkward pile, a breeze snatched a bit of paper from the last. Afraid he’d drop the pile if he bent to pick it up, he put his foot on it and left it there as he worked.

  No X’s, but a few W’s, Welles, Winfrey, Winters. There it was, at the bottom: Young, Carver.

  He set the pile on an old steamer trunk and weighed it down with a birdcage. Excited, he opened his file. Nothing. It was empty except for an annex card, the same sort he’d seen in Miss Petty’s office, listing the orphan’s name and any belongings that had arrived with them. Spaces for the parents had been left blank. It didn’t even mention the woman Miss Petty told him had brought him to Ellis as an infant.

  The card had only one entry, in the headmistress’s small, neat handwriting. It was dated 1889. A letter had been received from England. From his parents? It didn’t say.

  Carver looked down. The folded paper was still lying under his foot. Dropping his file, he snatched up the small, imperfect rectangle. It was a letter. The paper was thick. The fountain pen ink blotched in spots. The h
andwriting was harsh, almost garbled.

  He read it again, then again. The fourth time, pieces began to make sense.

  Thought she died too quick to have our one and only, but no, he’d be eight now.

  I hear he has a cut ear on the shoulder…

  The writer thought his son died in childbirth, along with his wife. Carver was eight in 1889 and he had an ear-shaped birthmark. The letter was written by his father!

  Carver’s father had tried to come for him… What if he was still alive? What if his father was out there still, trying to find him?

  3

  AFTER STEALING a few apples from the larder, Carver sat on his too-small bed in the boys’ dorm. Before bedtime, the lonely hall was empty, everyone working or playing, making it the perfect place to be alone with his prize.

  He was so engrossed, studying the letter line by line, memorizing every curl of the ink, that he almost didn’t notice Miss Petty had appeared at the doorway. He’d barely shoved the letter in his pocket when the long thin woman crooked a finger at him and sullenly commanded, “Come with me.”

  Had she found out? Already? He’d been so careful.

  He followed in silence as the matriarch marched him downstairs to the narrow hall between the dining room and kitchen that held her office. She was always stiff, but not like this. She must be furious. This was it, then; he’d gone too far.

  He was about to apologize, to explain, when he saw that her office was already occupied. Finn Walker and Delia Stephens were sitting on a child-size bench, looking terribly uncomfortable.

  At the sight of Carver, Finn narrowed his eyes and grunted in his already-deep voice, “If he said I did something, he’s lying again.” Big as he was, Miss Petty silenced him with a glance.

  Finn was in trouble more than Carver, but what was Delia doing here? The dark-haired, round-faced girl had been at Ellis nearly as long as he and Finn, but her behavior was impeccable. Her thin cotton dress was too light for the weather, and she was flushed and sweating, as if she’d been yanked from the laundry room in the middle of her chores.

  What was going on?

  “Sit,” Miss Petty said.