Nine Shillings

In The Wind

London - 1842

Tessa wasn't in her room at the brothel. I hadn't expected her to be.

I dug around through her wardrobe and drawers tipping clothes on the floor, rummaging through boxes of trinkets; faded tickets, flyers, bits of ribbons and lace.

There was a chain of events forming in my mind. Gale had known who the murderer was all along and when she told me more than she meant to she'd assumed I was on to them. Knowing the full picture, it might've slipped passed them that people I'd known since childhood being responsible would be inconceivable. Tessa's long illness didn't suggest anything strange, people could live years with syphilis.

I pulled out a drawer full of yellowing lady's magazines and newspaper clippings. I took out a magazine that had been read and re-read until the pages were crinkled and fragile. It was full of sketches of fashionable dresses, things for a 'lady of quality' to do, and pictures of happy families sitting around fireplaces appearing to hang on the father's words. I couldn't imagine my children doing that, not without digressing, telling Bran or Josef they were being silly, or deciding Papa and Dada made good climbing frames.

I stopped skimming.

One of the articles was about a fashionable party held by Lady Arton, 'everyone who was anyone' was there. Part way down the page was a mention of me. Mrs O'Connor was, apparently, 'resplendent in deep blue silk, and attended most diligently by her devoted husband, Mr Brandon O'Connor.' There was a rather purple description of Bran's adoration of his young wife. The page was brittle and Bran's name was underlined with a question mark in the margin.

I flipped the magazine shut and checked the date. It was two years old. The back of my neck itched with the feeling of being watched from afar, I never read lady's magazines, I wondered how many we'd been mentioned in, I doubted they would've given such a thorough description of us if we weren't mentioned. Wealthy people knew of me, London society knew everyone in London society, it was a select group and I was floating on the outskirts, both fascinating and repulsive. I hadn't thought other people might be reading about us.

I sat on the floor with my back against the bed and flipped through the collection. Every article on society parties had notations, names underlined and crimes listed in the margin, they weren't all about us. The Widow Merryborn and Goodington were 'child merchants', Galahad Thorpe was 'unnatural creature', and there were others. Some of the people mentioned were already dead, others were still gracing the ballrooms. I counted a dozen with increasing frequency who'd already been crossed off Tessa's list. The collection went back five years, I hadn't known she'd been infected that long, unless she'd made the notes before and life gave her an opportunity to act on them. Or she'd gone back through the magazines to find people to drain, some of the handwriting was faded, I wasn't sure it was five years of fade.

In the most recent magazines names, some of whom were recent deaths, were underlined with a ferocity that etched the page.

There was another article mentioning Bran and I, the charismatic and 'exotic' Sir Josef Mathers made an appearance too. They wrote about Josef differently. They painted him as a mysterious and dangerous seducer, an inherently sinister Jew out to corrupt English roses, and they delighted in it. My hands clenched on the pages, more people for my shit list.

Near the end of the article Bran's name was underlined again, 'pervert'.

Josef's was circled several times. 'Monster.'

The edges of the pages blackened in my hands, they gave way and the magazine fell into my lap. The dust stuck to my fingers.

I wasn't going to let Tessa take them.

Either of them.