A nearby Time Tours guide in down-time servant’s livery, was saying, “Ducks, don’t you know, just everybody wants it to’ve been a nice, juicy royal scandal. Anytime a British royal’s involved in something like the Ripper murders or the drunk-driving death of the Princess of Wales, back near the end of the twentieth century, conspiracy theories pop up faster than muckraking reporters are able to spread ‘em round.”
They finally gained the farthest corner, out of sight of reporters, if not out of earshot of the appalling noise loose in Victoria Station. “Thank you, my dear,” Shadhi breathed a sigh. “I should not be so churlish, I suppose, but I am tired and reporters . . .” She gave an elegant shrug of her Persian shoulders, currently clad in Victorian watered silk, and added with a twinkle in her dark eyes, “So you believe none of the theories about Mary Kelly?”
“Nope.”
“Not even the mad midwife theory?”
Margo blinked. Mad midwife? Uh-oh . . .
Shahdi Feroz laughed gently. “Don’t be so distressed, Miss Smith. It is not a commonly known theory.”
“Yes, but Kit made me study this case inside out, backwards and forwards—“
“And you have been given, what? A few days, at most, to study it? I have spent a lifetime puzzling over this case. Don’t feel so bad.”
“There really is a mad midwife theory?”
Shahdi nodded. “Oh, yes. Mary Kelly was three months pregnant when she died. With a child she couldn’t afford to feed. Abortions were illegal, but easily obtained, particularly in the East End, and usually performed by midwives, under appalling conditions. And midwives could come and go at all hours, without having to explain blood on their clothing. Even Inspector Abberline believed they might well be looking for a woman killer. This was based on testimony of a very reliable eyewitness to the murder of Mary Kelly. Abberline couldn’t reconcile the testimony any other way, you see. A woman was seen wearing Mary Kelly’s clothes and leaving her rented room the morning she was killed, several hours after coroners determined that Mary Kelly had died.”