Missing Susan Page 24

  As he led them into the fetid alley where Bucks Row had once been, he issued his usual warning to refrain from touching the walls, but he felt a flicker of satisfaction when he saw Susan run her forefinger along the brickwork.

  “Winos pee there!” he belatedly explained.

  Her scowl held him personally responsible. “Not in Minneapolis they don’t!”

  When they emerged from the alley, where progress had been single file, Elizabeth MacPherson appeared at his side. “So this was Bucks Row,” she remarked. “Polly Nicholls, right?”

  Rowan gave her a fishy stare. He’d be damned if he was going through the Ripper walk with a Greek chorus, even if she did know her facts. With the barest of nods, he recited his piece about the discovery of Polly Nicholls’ body, verbally sketching in the geography of the site at the time of her death.

  “It doesn’t look too scary now,” said Susan Cohen, yawning.

  “Thank the Luftwaffe,” snapped Rowan. “A lot of London geography changed during the Blitz. Some of it for the better. They got Crippen’s house up in Islington, too, by the way.”

  He led them down Durward Street, across Vallance Road, and along Hanbury, toward the site of the Annie Chapman murder. Susan, whose interest in Jack the Ripper seemed confined to his influence on crime fiction, was nattering on about The Lodger and The Threepenny Opera, with complete disregard for Rowan’s scheduled lecture. “Actually,” she was saying, “I thought the guy in Psycho was a lot scarier than Jack the Ripper. And has anybody read Silence of-” They were about to cross Brick Lane at this point and Susan, with her usual self-absorption, was not paying attention to the guide or to her surroundings. Blithely wittering about her reading list, she stepped off the curb and into the path of an approaching car.

  Rowan Rover was not sure what prompted his spontaneous reaction. Perhaps it was instinctive, or perhaps some part of him made an inevitable decision in that split second. He was never sure. He only knew that as the silly woman blundered out into the street, looking as usual in the wrong direction for English traffic, he lunged forward in an attempt to drag her back out of the path of the oncoming car. His fingers actually touched her coat. He nearly got a grip on it when he felt himself being shoved out of the way, back toward the curb, nearly falling with the force of the blow.

  The speeding black car, which seemed to come in slow motion, looming ever larger in their path, like a locomotive in a Saturday matinee film, missed the guide and the rest of the party by inches, but Susan, who had stood squarely in its path while she looked the wrong way, was struck with a chilling thud. She went down in mid-sentence without so much as a whimper.

  As he struggled to regain his balance, Rowan looked around to see who had prevented him from saving Susan Cohen. Standing nearest to him was Elizabeth MacPherson, regarding him with a frown of lofty disapproval. Her expression explained it all: she had been watching him, expecting an attempt on Susan’s life, and she had-she thought-prevented him from pushing her in front of the car. The silly girl! Another second and he would have saved her! (So much for his aptitude as a murderer.)

  By the time they reached Susan’s crumpled body, some yards away near the other curb of Brick Lane, the driver had stopped his car and had joined the throng hovering over the victim. “I never meant to!” the man kept saying. “She walked straight in my path, she did!”

  Charles Warren had run to the nearby pub to telephone for an ambulance. Kate Conway was kneeling over Susan, examining the body with medical precision. After a few minutes she looked up at the group of tourists and shook her head.

  Rowan fumbled for his cigarettes, feeling at once appalled and frightened but also relieved that her death was not on his conscience. He had not done it. He gave a deep sigh of relief and uttered a silent prayer of thanks to whatever saint looks out for criminals. He was standing a few feet away from the group, watching the scene with a detachment born of shock.

  A few moments later Elizabeth MacPherson appeared at his side. “I couldn’t save her,” she murmured.

  No, you bloody fool, and you kept me from doing so as well, thought Rowan, but his numbness prevented him from venting his exasperation.

  “By the time I figured out what was going on, it was too late to speak to you privately, but I thought that if I could just protect her tonight, you wouldn’t get another chance.” Elizabeth sighed. “Why did you do it, Rowan?”

  “I didn’t!” said the guide with perfect sincerity. Even to himself it sounded hollow.

  “I can’t prove it,” said Elizabeth in a low voice. “And perhaps what you said was right: really clever killers usually get away with their first murder. Frankly, I think you’re a rather good fellow, and for all I know you might get acquitted anyhow.”

  “I didn’t do it,” Rowan said plaintively.

  She fixed him with a meaningful stare. “But this must not happen again, do you hear? I shall say nothing to anyone, but if I ever hear of anyone else on your tours meeting with an accident, I shall go to the police at once. Do you understand?”

  He sighed. “Yes. It shan’t happen again. You have my word.” There was no use arguing with her, he thought. Her mind had seized up like a frozen motor, holding this one thought against all suggestions to the contrary. There was nothing for it but to play the humble felon, and vow to sin no more. Then she would feel noble. He supposed it was better than telling her the truth: that if anyone had killed Susan Cohen, it was she.

  Sometime later, after the police had investigated the incident and had sensibly deemed the matter a case of accidental death, Rowan had led the quiet gaggle of tourists to the Ten Bells, where he’d insisted on standing them drinks to counteract the shock. They had talked for some time in sorrowful tones about poor Susan and what a sad ending to the tour this was. No one wanted to finish the Ripper tour: they had seen death enough that evening.

  As they left the pub to summon taxis to Bloomsbury, they each shook hands with Rowan Rover and wished him well. Elizabeth, the last to leave, regarded him more in sorrow than in anger. “It was like Leopold and Loeb, wasn’t it? You thought you were smarter than the police. You had to prove you could get away with it just once?”

  “I’ve often thought of that,” Rowan admitted truthfully. He did not add that he had never been tempted to try it.

  “It stops now,” she said firmly, and walked away.

  Rowan stayed in the Ten Bells for another hour, smoking a pack of cigarettes and thinking about murder. It was an art for which he was grateful to have no talent whatsoever.

  Several days after the end of the tour, Rowan Rover had reflected farther on the unfortunate matters of the past few weeks and he decided that greater penance was required. After much thought and even more Scotch, he wrote a carefully worded letter to Aaron Kosminski, telling him that his niece Susan had been killed in an unfortunate traffic mishap in Whitechapel. It was an accident, he wrote, underlining the phrase twice. He was not daft enough to spell out the murder-for-hire agreement in a letter, but he hoped that his explanation of his own innocence would be clear and that Kosminski would read between the lines and realize that his orders had not been carried out The sacrifice of the money was a small price to pay for a clear conscience, Rowan decided. Well, not a small price, but he wasn’t used to having any money anyway. With his lectures and his crime writing, he could continue to scrape by as he always had, living mouth to hand.

  He had not expected to receive a reply to his ostensible letter of condolence, but in mid-October an airmail letter bearing American astronaut stamps arrived at his London postal address. It was postmarked Minneapolis. With shaking hands, not entirely attributable to a hangover, Rowan Rover tore open the envelope and read the terse reply:

  Dear Mr, Rover:

  I remember with pleasure our meeting at your lecture in Whitechapel.

  I know that my niece Susan enjoyed her travels on your mystery tour, and we are grateful for your expression of sympathy to the family. We want you to know that we do
not blame you in any way for her death, which the London police assure us was a tragic accident.

  Please accept the enclosed donation from her estate for the Ripper project that we spoke of at our dinner together. I wonder if you remember how I like my steak.

  Yours sincerely,

  Aaron Kosminski

  Enclosed in the letter was a check for fifteen thousand pounds, the remainder of the agreed-upon sum for the killing. For almost thirty seconds Rowan toyed with the idea of destroying the check, but a recent spate of financial ultimatums dissuaded him. After all, he reasoned, Kosminski is guiltier than I am. Why should he receive all the ill-gotten loot? He decided to send a present to Emma Smith, who was recovering nicely in Colorado, and to give some of the money to charity in Cornwall. The rest would be distributed among his needy creditors. The wages of sin, he decided, were minimal, all things considered.

  The final paragraph of the letter puzzled Rowan Rover for quite some time, since he clearly remembered that he and Kosminski had not dined together. Their only meeting had been over drinks in the Aldgate pub. Finally the reference to the steak enlightened him, and he was able to decipher Kos-minski’s own encoded comment: well done.

  Sharyn McCrumb

  ***

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