Free Anatomy of Evil by Will Thomas

the stair. I hazarded a guess that the place had been built during George III’s reign, when this street was the very edge of town and green fields were all one saw to the east. No sooner were we in the room than my employer handed me a tin and a spoon.
    “Keating’s Bug Powder?” I asked, reading the label.
    “It’s mostly boric acid. I bought it earlier. Spoon it along the walls and a little between the sheets of the beds. I have no wish to share mine with bedbugs and cockroaches.”
    “As long as we’re going first class,” I said.
    “That’s the pity of it, lad. In Whitechapel, this is first class.”
    I looked about. The wallpaper was old and yellowed, unless that was their original color, and there were two single beds, a desk, and a large chest of drawers that might be as old as the building. A window faced the dreary street, but it was better than no window at all. When I first came to London, I had stayed in worse than this. I set to work, armed with my trusty spoon. It felt like I was preparing for some sort of unholy ritual: stay inside the circle and you will be safe.
    “So, this is where you went today,” I said by way of conversation.
    “Aye,” he growled. “One cannot catch criminals from an armchair in Charing Cross. We shall spend the next few hours observing where the people congregate at night, what they do, and how they live. I’m given to understand that Mary Nichols drank in the room below us just prior to getting her throat cut.”
    “So you did not simply pull the name out of a hat.”
    “A hat?”
    Having spent half his life in China, Cyrus Barker sometimes misses common idioms.
    “A conjurer’s trick,” I explained.
    “Ah. No, if you recall, this was mentioned in her report.”
    I tried to recall the mention, but I had read a lot of information that day.
    “Are you finished?”
    “Almost.”
    I pulled back the covers of the first bed and sprinkled more Keating’s Bug Powder onto the sheets. I did the same with the second.
    “What about a change of clothes, sir? Should I call Mac on the telephone set in the morning and have him bring a steamer trunk?”
    “No, in the morning, we shall purchase clothing in Petticoat Lane.”
    “The booths won’t be set up until Sunday, sir.”
    “No, but the permanent shops will still be open. A half-dozen boiled shirts and some twice-turned trousers should allow us to blend into this crowd without being noticed.”
    “If you say so.”
    Between the bed and the bug powder and the thought of wearing someone else’s trousers, my limbs were beginning to itch.
    “How long will we be out, would you say? A couple of hours?”
    “Oh, Thomas, the district doesn’t fully waken until after midnight.”
    “But I have work in the morning!”
    “That cannot be helped. Strong tea must stand in place of a few hours’ rest.”
    “What about washing?”
    “There is a public bath a few streets away.”
    At least I could take comfort in the knowledge that his needs were taken care of.
    “What will Etienne say?” I asked. “You know how he gets.”
    Etienne Dummolard used Barker’s kitchen to prepare our breakfast and experiment on recipes for his restaurant, Le Toison d’Or. He was temperamental and would pack his equipment and leave at the slightest provocation, such as our disappearing without notice and interrupting his routine.
    “Coddling only makes him worse. He should relish not having us underfoot and catering to our needs.”
    “Oh, come,” I said. “Etienne hasn’t catered to a need in his life.”
    “Just so,” Barker muttered.
    “What about the W.C.? I don’t suppose—”
    “There is a privy out back.”
    “Wonderful. Have you tried the food here?”
    “I thought it best to wait until you arrived. Your palate is more sensitive than mine. Shall we go downstairs and try it now?”
    As it turned out, there was a red-faced cook in her sixties who ran the kitchen and was known in the East End as an excellent cook. True to