trudged over a rickety drawbridge toward a narrow, little house, passing a horse trough and crooked pilings. The bridge was reinforced with wooden cross-boards that groaned underfoot.
A gust of cool air from a ceiling fan brought with it the smell of mud and the less pleasant odor of sewage as Katie approached the stone house. At right angles to the front door were a rusty iron bell and a metal plate with âNo. 13 Millerâs Courtâ hammered into it.
Peering through the first set of barred windows, Katie could just make out an assortment of dustbins and brooms, a water tap and sink. She saw no wax forms or faces, but heard a suggestion of a noise, like someone pacing up and down on the wooden floor.
Katie moved to the next window, which had two broken panes. The jagged edges of the glass looked real. She reached out her hand. The museum would never use real glass. It must be plastic or acrylic painted with a glimmering sheen to mimic real glass, Katie thought.
Sweeping her gaze through the iron bars, Katie willed her eyes to adjust to the dim light inside, which flickered, curled eerily, then shrank away. When the murky light finally held steady, Katie gasped in horror and withdrew her outstretched hand so quickly the jagged glass caught on her index finger, slicing it open.
What theâ? She raised her finger to her mouth and tasted her own blood.
With great effort she forced herself to move back to the window, waiting as the light winked on and off three times rapidly: a pause, another flash, then a longer pause until it held fast, illuminating the room in a murky glow. She took a deep breath, silently chiding herself for being squeamish. This wasnât real after all, even if they did use broken glass.
The room was roughly twelve feet square with brick walls and a wooden floor, obviously painted to look authentic. The door on the far side was padlocked. To the left of the window Katie was peering through stood a fireplace with a large painting of an angel hovering above the bow of a boat. Firelight crackled inside the iron grating, glowing strong, dying away, then growing strong again, as if on a pulsating timer. Next to the padlocked door was an open china cupboard revealing speckled teacups and saucers piled one atop the other, and on the lowest shelf, a hunk of bread, a tub of butter, two spoons, and a broken wine glass. Katie forced her gaze to the brass bed jutting out from the corner. The sheets had been ripped off and lay tangled and bloodstained at the foot of the bed.
Upon the blood-soaked mattress lay a raw mass of what looked like human flesh. The wax girl lay on her back, entirely naked. Her throat had been cut from ear to ear. Her nose had been cut off, and the face slashed until the features were unrecognizable. The stomach and abdomen gaped open, with the organs removed and placed on the girlâs right thigh.
Bloodstains splashed the wall and the ceiling. Laid out on the table beside the bed was the final horror. Like pieces of a nauseating jigsaw puzzle, mounds of flesh, presumably meant to look like the victimâs breasts, lay symmetrically arranged alongside a quivering heart and what looked like kidneys. There were even little bits of flesh hanging from the picture-frame nails above the fireplace.
âTâwas more the work of the devil than a man!â boomed Dr. Llewellynâs robotic voice, though he was nowhere to be seen. âNot even an insane butcher could have created such carnage. Her uterus was cut out and mailed to Scotland Yard.â The mechanical voice echoed and bounced off the walls in surround sound.
âOn the very day that the Lord Mayorâs procession wound through the City of London on its way to the Law Courts in the Strand, Jack the Ripper struck for the last and deadliest time at number thirteen Millerâs Court, a lodging house on Dorset Street, shaded beneath the steeple of Christ Church.â
In the distance, Katie heard the