She shook her head, bit her lip. “I . . . I don’t want to be . . . next . . .”
“Ah. Of course you don’t.”
“I’ve got a baby coming,” she got out in a rush, “and a man who wants to marry me, when he gets another job, even though he knows what I’ve been. Joseph’s a good man, wants to take me off the streets, and he didn’t know what this horrible little letter was when he bought it, he was just doing Annie a favor, because she was so sick and needed the money for medicine . . .”
He took her trembling hands in his own and patted them, brought them to his lips. Mary shuddered, fighting more terror than she’d ever known in her young life.
“Here, now, no need for such hysteria, my dear. Of course you’re frightened, but you’ve done exactly the right thing, coming to me for protection.” He dried her wet face with his hands, brushed her heavy, strawberry-blonde hair back from her brow, planted a kiss there. “I’ll take very good care of you, my dear. Just leave the letter with me, that’s a good girl. I’ve a fair idea who might be profiting from these murders, knowing Eddy as I do, and the way certain men think. Yes, I’ll take very good care of you, my dearest . . .”
He was kissing her, unbuttoning her dress, sliding his hand up under her skirt.
He gave her two whole crowns, after, worth half a pound sterling.
Kissed her and told her to buy herself a lot of gin and a pretty new shawl and not to worry, he would see to it that she was never molested by whoever was hunting down Eddy’s sordid little letters. When she left the house, pulling her threadbare shawl tightly about her shoulders against the cold bite of the wind, Mary Jane Kelly was trembling far harder than she’d been when she’d arrived an hour previously. What’ve I done, letting him do that horrible ritual over me, like that, when he was in me, what in God’s name have I done?