The Doctor's Daughter
Mr Hazelby's coach dropped me off at the front gates at half-past nine. I feared my father would be dreadfully cross, but he was not home. Ellen let me in with a disapproving look.
"Where is my father?" I asked.
"'E's gone out, miss," she said. "And lucky for you, too. If he knew --"
I paused in taking off my cloak. "Ellen, I'll thank you to remember your place in this household. You are a serving-maid, not my mother."
"Yes'm," she mumbled, and took my cloak. I sighed and went off to the kitchen. Mr Hazelby had been most forward, and I needed some little morsel to refresh myself after the efforts of rebuffing his advances.
I took a slice of bread and butter and some tea up to my room and was just settling in when the front door slammed open. "Grace!"
I rose from my couch. "Yes, Father?"
"Fetch me my bag, would you, love? We've a difficult birth on Mitre Street, and neither of us brought our forceps." He stood at the bottom of the stairs, his hands stained with gruesome red. I sighed. Father was so forgetful, and his partner, Dr Brighton, was no better.
Father's study was absolutely wrecked, and at first I didn't see his bag. The anatomical specimens on his shelves -- hearts, lungs, jars of eyes -- made me shudder, as always; I had never been able to accustom myself to them. Finally, I spotted his bag, under his desk, and knelt to retrieve it.
"Grace!" Father called. "Hurry!"
"I'm coming, Father!" A sheet of paper fluttered from the open mouth of the bag, and without thinking I picked it up. It was coarse, utterly unlike his fine stationery. I had hardly had a chance to look at it when his shadow rose behind me in the doorway. "Grace! I need --"
He stopped, and I could feel his eyes boring into my back. He and I had realised what I held at the same instant -- but of course he already knew what it was. He had come back to retrieve it, and the signature was in his handwriting:
Yours truly,
Jack the Ripper