Free Death at Whitechapel by Robin Paige

Manfred thought with irritation, as if the journal were one of her intimate friends. He preferred to think of it as The Anglo-Saxon Review , a name that had dignity and merit and should certainly command attention in the literary world.
    The content of the magazine would command attention, too, if Manfred had anything to do with it. And he would, in spite of the fact that Lady Randolph had made it clear that she meant to have the last word with respect to the editorial decisions. He smiled to himself as he finished bundling the manuscripts. Of course, she did not go through the daily post that arrived here in the office of the Review, as he did. She could not know that he had already received, read, and discarded as unfit several submissions that she had invited. That silly thing from Pearl Craigie, for instance, which was so light and shallow that it would never do. He would simply tell her that the expected manuscripts had never arrived, and she would be none the wiser.
    At the thought of Lady Randolph, Manfred’s lip curled slightly. Of course, he had nothing against her personally, except that she was Winston’s mother. And even that in itself was not a high crime, for everyone knew that it was Winston’s father who had shaped his son’s worst attributes: an overweening arrogance, a total lack of principle, a misconceived impression of his own importance, the lack of any compensatory quality except for compulsive industry and an astonishing ability to make things happen. At Aldershot, one of the instructors had said that Winston was nothing but a spoiled rich boy endowed by some absurd chance with the brain of a genius and the ambition of a Napoleon, and Manfred, bitterly, agreed.
    Aldershot. Manfred sank down in his office chair and turned to stare out at the dirty yellow fog that rose from the tiled roofs and curled around the chimney pots on the opposite side of Fleet Street. Aldershot—where he and his brother Arthur, both of them victims of a vicious and immoral intrigue, had been stripped of their right to a military life. Aldershot—where the dearest thing in the world had been taken from him, the entire tragedy set in motion at the whim and fancy of a spoiled boy who ...
    Sudden tears blinded him, but Manfred blinked them away and hardened himself. The loss was immeasurable and inconsolable, but it lay in the past, and if he dwelled on it too long, he would drown in bitter rage. He did not intend that to happen. At some cost to himself, he had already taken steps to ensure that the ghastly wrong would be redressed. If that plan did not serve, he felt confident that he could think of something else.
    He stood and began to pace the room, his hands behind his back, his head bent. His confidence in himself was no mere shallow conceit, or feigned, like Winston’s, to cover a deep uneasiness about his merit. After all, he had managed to recover from the very worst thing that could befall an ambitious young man bent on bettering himself, had he not? The glory of a military career was forever denied him, but he had already made a name for himself in the publishing business and his present position as managing editor of Lady Randolph’s Review —the reward for working diligently and playing his hand just right—suggested that even better and more prominent situations lay ahead.
    Outside in the street, a lorry horn blared, a horse whinnied, and a man shouted. Recalled to himself, Manfred stopped in his pacing and glanced with satisfaction at the well-appointed office, with its bookshelf and filing cabinet and typewriter and leather chairs and fine walnut desk. Whatever the ambiguities and unhappinesses of his private life, he reminded himself, he was in a good place. And once the old scores were settled and the old wrongs redressed, he would be in a better.

10
    Horror upon Horror Whitechapel Is Panic-Stricken at Another Fiendish Crime
    London lies to-day under the spell of a great