To a devotee of detective fiction, ignorance of Jack the Ripper would be as unthinkable as a Christian never hearing Gabriel’s name. The shadow of that butcher still looms—a specter who slithered through Whitechapel’s fog in 1888, carving his legend into five women’s flesh. His taunting letters to Scotland Yard birthed the modern serial killer archetype, inspiring countless imitators and fictional horrors. Though his identity remains entombed in history, the macabre allure of his unsolved crimes transformed Whitechapel into a grisly Mecca for mystery lovers.

  When Yvette overheard Strychnine mention a prostitute-slaying killer, her brow furrowed. “Birmingham? I thought it was Whitechapel.”

  “Whitechapel?” Strychnine scoffed, pipe smoke curling like a dismissive wave. “Mandrake, while Whitechapel’s denizens aren’t saints, even they’d balk at this brand of madness!”

  Save that quip for 1888, Yvette mused silently. Here in 1839, the Ripper’s grandfather might still be in leading strings. Her past-life memories knew the ending—modern forensics had exhumed the truth from a bloodstained shawl. The Whitechapel fiend was no Londoner, but an Eastern European barber whose trade granted him a surgeon’s intimate knowledge of viscera.

  “Is Birmingham’s constabulary consulting us?”

  “Hardly. They’re too busy dodging pitchforks. The plea comes from a…specialized guild.” Strychnine’s pause spoke volumes. “A union for women in certain trades. Let’s convene with the others.”

  They found the team in the club’s opulent meeting room. “Mandrake!” Oleander crowed, flourishing a newspaper. “The ‘Baron Pedro’ charlatans cracked like eggs! A dozen continental swindles, yet undone in glorious Albion before earning a farthing!”

  Yvette accepted a teacup from a liveried servant. “A dozen? I’d heard tales of a ‘gentleman thief’ with hundreds of heists.”

  Antiaris chuckled. “A farce sustained by crumbling aristocrats. Imagine—families selling heirlooms invent a phantom thief to mask their shame. Scotland Yard’s burying it to spare Europe’s blushes.”

  Ah. The glamorous “gentleman thief”—a fiction woven by threadbare nobility. Yvette filed the revelation away, mental quill noting potential plot twists.

  “And Birmingham’s troubles?” she prompted.

  Oleander’s humor vanished. He brandished a letter thick with dread. “‘Troubles’? These are abominations. Only a hellspawn could…Christ. The victims…” His voice shrank. “They found…seed on the bodies.”

  The House of Magdalene—the letter’s elegant script clashed with its grotesque contents. Magdalene: the redeemed harlot turned saint. A fitting patroness for a union of fallen women.

  Strychnine exhaled a smoke ring. “The killer hunts Birmingham’s streetwalkers. The police falter. The women despair.”

  Yvette skimmed the hysterical prose. Beneath the lurid adjectives lay a pattern—bodies defiled beyond Ripperesque butchery, marked by the killer’s perverse...enthusiasm. She swallowed bile.

  “Mandrake!” Oleander pressed. “Surely you’ve deduced something?”

  “The killer’s male.”

  “By Jove, a revelation!” Oleander threw up his hands. “Next you’ll tell us water’s wet!”

  Strychnine’s pipe clinked against his teeth. “Patience. Mandrake trades in facts, not fancies—unlike some who’d spin webs from thin air.”

  This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

  The familiar bickering continued, but Yvette’s mind raced. A Ripper copycat? Here? Yet this world pulsed with darker rhythms. What if this wasn’t mere madness, but a cult’s offering? A vampiric appetizer? Meddling in another cabal’s domain risked more than embarrassment—it risked war.

  Birmingham itself posed another riddle. Unlike London’s intimate gaslit murders among gentlemen, this industrial labyrinth thrived on anonymity. How does one hunt a shadow in a city of shadows?

  Three Days Later

  Birmingham greeted them with a phlegmy cough of coal smoke. Even London’s soot seemed refined compared to this grime-choked crucible. The station stairs oozed black mud, a mosaic of工业filth.

  Oleander hissed as his Hessians sank to the buckles. “This is not in the brochure.”

  “Perhaps trade those for Wellingtons,” Yvette suggested, nodding at her own practical boots. Around them, wheezing workers shuffled through the miasma—a living indictment of progress.

  Antiaris murmured, “One wonders if the killer does these women a mercy, sparing them this….”

  A coal cart rumbled past, baptizing Oleander in gritty spray. As he spluttered, Yvette’s hand drifted toward her concealed pistol. Shapes moved in the fog—hungry shapes.

  “Gentlemen,” she said quietly, “I suggest we blend in before Birmingham blends us.”

  "There wanders through our mortal realm a monarch called King Steam, Who tramples human hosts beneath his iron-shod reign. His fiery heart breeds endless woes, devouring children's breath, Mocks fathers' tears and mothers' cries that echo unto death. This soulless tyrant, vile and base, spreads death where'er he treads, In his cursed kingdom's blighted realm, the reaper's scythe he weds..."

  A shuffling mob of tattered men closed in on Yvette's party, their threadbare coats hanging like scarecrow rags. Sunken eyes burned with feral hunger in skeletal faces as they chanted the bitter rhyme, the cadence of their褴褛 cadavers' march syncing with the rhythmic condemnation.

  "By Jove! These vagrants flout the law brazenly! Where's the constabulary?" Strychnine exclaimed, aghast at the organized beggar company.

  Under Albion's Vagrancy Act, the homeless, beggars, and street charlatans risked imprisonment - left to rot on starvation rations in dark cells. London's paupers slunk through shadows like sewer rats, but here in Birmingham they swarmed openly, demanding alms through menace rather than mercy.

  "...The gilded parasites shall fall, crushed 'neath our righteous heel! Down to perdition's flames they'll plunge, to death's cold kiss they'll kneel!"

  The mob tightened their circle, stinking of desperation. Yvette noted their matching jackets - factory-issue uniforms marking former mill workers.

  The Industrial Revolution devoured workforces entire: mills shuttering upon owners' whims, men replaced by clattering looms or cheap child labor. Police turned blind eyes to their plight - whether from corruption or compassion mattered not. These walking dead had transformed textbooks' dry "Luddite riots" into visceral reality, each word now blood-stained truth.

  Her hand drifted from pistol grip to coin purse. The muffled clatter of stacked sovereigns drew lupine stares. Though banknotes circulated, tangible coins still ruled daily trade. This pouch held a small fortune in gleaming metal - more than commoners saw in years.

  The ringleader's cracked lips parted at the offered bounty, then narrowed spyed the golden chain at Yvette's throat. "The necklace too," he rasped.

  Cold steel answered. "Charity, not tribute," Yvette corrected, pistol unwavering. "Test this distinction at your peril."

  The pocket pistol's appearance sent ripples through the crowd. While blunderbusses plagued rookeries, such refined firearms signaled wealth and lethal intent. Pale but swift, the leader snatched the purse, fleeing with pack mates who cast backward glances like beaten curs eyeing unexpected meat.

  "Ingrates!" Oleander hissed at their graceless retreat.

  "A beggar bearing calfskin invites arrest," Yvette shrugged. "Had constables come, our testimony would've stretched their necks at Newgate. Now gentlemen - shall we continue this sartorial advertisement? By nightfall we'll have made every cutpurse's acquaintance."

  As her companions hastened tailors' ward, Yvette struck out alone - her officer's riding habit (gray whipcord jacket, garish plaid waistcoat, and gleaming Hussar boots) projecting rakish swagger rather than aristocracy. Sword at hip and concealed pistol dissuaded most threats... perhaps too effectively she mused, watching a glossy-coated mastiff pad after her through Birmingham's refuse-choked lanes.

  Past feeding friendly strays with butcher scraps, she noted her shadow - too robust for common strays in dog-eating Europe. Cornering it in a reeking alley, she leveled her pistol. "State your business, wolf."

  The beast cocked its head. "No treats for good doggos?"

  "Your tail betrays you," she countered, noting its unnatural droop. "Shall we converse as equals?"

  The hound's golden eyes glinted with disquieting mirth. "As milady commands..."