Lachley gave her a courteous bow she did not merit and left her walking down Whitechapel Road. Maybrick’s clever mentor had carefully instructed him in the exact method he must use to murder this bitch, to keep the blood from splashing across his clothes when he struck. The brilliant physician and occultist had guided him to the worst of the slatterns walking these streets—deserving targets of the monumental rage he carried against the bitch who lay with her lover, tonight, in Liverpool. Maybrick almost loved his mentor, in that moment, as he thought of what delights lay ahead. As Polly wobbled drunkenly off into the night, Lachley circled around silently, sent a secretive little smile in Maybrick’s direction, and followed Polly Nichols once again.
Maybrick trailed at a leisurely distance, smiling to himself, now, and caressed the handle of his concealed knife with loving fingertips. Polly Nichols, stumbling ahead of them, first visited an establishment that sold clothing of dubious origins. There she acquired a reddish brown ulster to keep off the rain, which fastened up with seven large brass buttons, and a fetching little black straw bonnet with black velvet trim and lining. She giggled as she put it on, then paraded down the wet streets to pub after pub, steadily drinking the remaining change from the silver florin.
Twice, both he and Lachley paused in dense, wet shadows while she disappeared into a secluded spot with a customer to earn three or four pence “for my doss money” she explained each time. And twice, after she had earned a few more pence, they followed along behind again as she found yet another pub in which to spend the money on gin. Well past midnight, she staggered out of the locally famous Frying Pan Public House, just one more in a long series of pubs, and found herself another customer with whom to earn another fourpence. She spent this money just as quickly as she had the rest, pouring it down her alcoholic gullet.