Whitechapel Vengeances

Out With It

Taking Lulu back to the place she was living at, Madame Redd's was an uproarious establishment that housed nearly two dozen girls that went out and made house calls to whoever the madame saw fit. Lulu shared a room with another girl, Vicky, and when Jean and I brought her home she flustered over her roommate and had a flurry of questions for us.

"Why, she looks like blancmange!" Vicky exclaimed. "What'd you do to her?"

"She was walking with me down to Hanbury Street to meet up with Jean—"

"Mrs. Chapman was dead, Vicky. She was jus' lyin' there. Dead."

"Good God, what's goin' on around here? First we here about happen on Buck's Row; now this happens."

"You girls need to take care. There's some sinister stuff going on," Jean said to the two girls. A soft knock came from the doorway and there was a girl that was familiar to me somewhat. She had poppy red hair and a face like a Victoria's Secret model with intense apple green eyes. This was the girl Jean had been making out with the last time we were here. She wore a deep scarlet dress that flattered her curves and showed off any feature a customer in her line of work would be interested in.

"Uh, Kitty, how nice to see you," Jean said his face was turning equally as red and I smiled. Someone definitely had a crush.

"Well you've got some cheek, Jean-Pierre. You give a girl like me a nice night out and then your snappy lil' darkie comes and snatches you away and I don't see you for a week." Kitty was definitely a feisty bee.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to leave like that," Jean said flustered. Kitty shrugged indifferently and noticed Lulu who was no longer trembling, but still pale.

"Lulu, why you look as if you've seen a ghost," the redhead went over and sat by her friend.

"A clocked Mrs. Chapman lyin' in a yaird in Hanbury Street. Her eyes were a' empty, her... Entrails were a' spilled aboot oan th' floor. Ah did not think ah could ever see anythin' so awful in a' mah life, bit Kitty, a'm tellin' ye. Ah don't think ah'll be able tae sleep a wink."

"Oh you poor dear," Kitty hugged her friend protectively and from seemingly nowhere Vicky made a cup of tea materialize. Where had they gotten the kettle? I noticed a small tin cup over the pitiful fireplace and it all made sense.

"We should get going," I whispered to Jean, "We have to get ready for the next murder which won't happen until three weeks from now."

"We can't leave these girls without giving them a heads up," Jean pleaded with me.

"They'll be safe until the next murder, and even then they're not the targets," I insisted. Clueing people in on the future usually didn't end well, and as much as I didn't want to leave these girls in the dark about Jack the Ripper I couldn't let their knowledge affect the future. I was already on the Board of Quality Control's permanent watchlist for rescuing Jean in 1794.

"I wanna stay," Jean said deftly. I blinked several times trying to understand what I'd just heard.

"I'm sorry what?"

"I... I want to stay the three weeks until the next murder. No fast forward, we actually watch this play out." I looked at Jean and saw the earnestness in his eyes. I hung my head and thought of the options. One major pro was that if we stayed we could better plan out the capture of Jack the Ripper in the following days, but the con was that we'd be stuck in Victorian England. The thought of no proper shower for three weeks made me shudder. All in all my logic beat out my need for basic hygiene.