“No, you’re both wrong, it’s the gay lover of the Duke of Clarence, the queen’s grandson, the tutor with the head injury who went crazy!”
Skeeter shook his head. La-La Land, gone totally insane. Everyone was trying to outguess and out-bet one another as to who the real Ripper would turn out to be. Speculation was flying wild, from genuine Scotland Yard detectives to school kids to TT-86’s shop owners, restauranteurs, and resident call girls. Scholars had been pouring into the station for weeks, heading down time to cover the biggest murder mystery of the last couple of centuries. The final members of the official Ripper Watch team had assembled three days ago, when Primary had last cycled, bringing in a couple of dandified reporters who’d refused to go down time any sooner than absolutely necessary and a criminal sociologist who’d just come back from another down-time research trip. They’d arrived barely in time to make the first Ripper murder in London. And today, of course, the first hoard of tourists permitted tickets for the Ripper Season tours would be arriving, cheeks flushed, bankrolls clutched in avaricious hands, panting to be in at the kill and ready to descend on the station’s outfitters to buy everything they’d need for eight days in London of 1888.
“Who do you think it is?” Ianira asked, having to shout over the roar.
Skeeter snorted. “It’s probably some schmuck nobody’s ever heard of before. A sick puppy who just snapped one day and decided to kill a bunch of penniless prostitutes. Jack the Ripper wasn’t the only madman who ripped up women with a knife, after all. The way those Ripperologists have been talking, there were hundreds of so-called ‘rippers’ during the 1880s and 1890s. Jack was just better with his PR, sending those horrible letters to the press.”