The doctor, whose medical treatments had left Maybrick feeling more powerful, more vigorous and invincible than he’d felt in years, glanced briefly past the whore’s shoulder to where Maybrick stood in concealment, nodding slightly to indicate that this was Polly Nichols, herself, the woman he had brought James here to help murder. Dressed in a brown linsey frock, Polly Nichols had smiled up at John Lachley with a whore’s calculating smile of greeting.
“Evening. Is a bit wet, innit?”
“A bit,” Lachley allowed. “A lady such as yourself shouldn’t be out with a bare head in such weather.”
“Ooh, now aren’t you the polite one!” She walked her fingers coyly up his arm. “Now, if I were to ‘ave the coin, I might buy me a noice, fancy bonnet and keep the rain off.”
“It just so happens,” Lachley smiled down into her brown eyes, “that I have a few coins to spare.”
She laughed lightly. “An’ what might a lady need t’do to share that wealth, eh?”
“Consider it a gift.” The physician pressed a silver florin into her palm.
She glanced down at the coin, then stared, open-mouthed, down at her grubby hand. “A florin?” This pitiful alcoholic little trollop now held in her hand a coin worth twenty-four pence: the equivalent of six times the going rate for what she was selling tonight. Or, marketed differently, six glasses of gin. Polly stared up at Lachley in sudden suspicion. “What you want t’give me an whole, entire florin for?” Greed warred with alarm in her once delicate little face.
John Lachley gave her a warm smile. “It’s a small token of appreciation. From a mutual friend. Eddy sends his regards, madam.” He doffed his rough cloth cap. “It has come to his attention that another mutual friend, a young man by the name of Morgan, loaned you a few of his personal letters. Eddy is desirous of re-reading them, you see, and asked me if I might not do him the favor of speaking with you about obtaining them this evening.”