"THUNDER AND RAIN OUTSIDE LIQUID IS POURED" "HE WINCES" "Artherton, what is this?" "Oh, the gout, Captain Jackson." "I'm sent for to attend a case of gout?" "Well, that would be...considerate, Captain Jackson, but it was not myself who..." "Then who?" "Come on." "Who?" "I have important matters to attend." "Who the hell sent for me, goddammit?" "!" "I sent for you, Captain." "You're not supposed to start until tomorrow." "THUNDER RUMBLES OUTSIDE" "No, Reid, no." "I have obligations." "I am..." "I am formally requested elsewhere." "DOOR OPENS" "Jesus..." "What did SHE do?" "Did she come quietly, Mr Drake?" " She did, sir." " Have her booked, Sergeant." "What charge, Inspector?" "Suspicion of murder." " THUNDER RUMBLES" " As you wish, Mr Reid." " HE CLEARS THROAT" " Your name, ma'am?" "Vera Kerswell." "Full name, if you please." "Vera Kerswell, Lady Montacute." "HE WHISTLES" "Now, if you'd go with Mr Drake, Lady Vera." "Ma'am." "Your dead room, Captain, the forwhy awaits you there." "Her name was Ida Watts." "She sold blooms from the steps of Christ Church, Spitalfields." "That woman, she upstairs of noble title, found lying naked in a Whitechapel boarding house, with this murdered flower girl." "She is, you've heard, of some standing in this country, and this lady, we have now only till daybreak before her people and the lawyers arrive to set her free." "Do you understand, Captain?" "PRISONERS SHOUT" "MAN WHISTLES" "Sit down, ma'am." "Come on, guys, get them up." "PRISONERS SHOUT" " MAN:" " Quiet!" "Quiet!" "Silence, you runts!" "I'm going to need this dress when you're through." "Through with what?" "The gathering of truth from your person, my lady." "My, you are thorough." "Well, I enjoy my work." "HE BLOWS" "A little keepsake." " You have all you need?" " Yeah, for now." "THUNDER RUMBLES OUTSIDE" "Go easy on him, will you?" "Now, what am I to do with you, Lady Vera?" "Ask me questions, I'd imagine." "Did you kill Ida Watts?" "Oh!" "Is that her name?" "No, I did not." "You were found laying in the same bed as her murdered body, her blood all about you." "How is that?" "I do not know." "I travelled to Whitechapel with friends and we took in a show." " Which hall?" " The Cambridge, on Commercial Street." "We brought champagne." "The party broke up and I remained." "You enjoy the music-hall theatre here?" "Yes." "It lacks pretence and that pleases me." "The acts you saw?" "There was a man in a hat, sawed a woman in two." "And two fat ladies sang on the subject of being two fat ladies on...how they wanted to put Mr Gladstone in a pie and eat him for supper." "It was all very amusing." "And thereafter?" "Well, more champagne and... ..nothing... until that shrill squawk of the landlady woke me up." "You say you were drugged?" "No." "YOU said that." " Although I imagine it so, yes." " Forgive me, Lady Vera, but given the fact of where we have just now brought you from, and where you were found, this face you offer to the world..." "..some could call it heartless." "I am calm." "It is how I was raised." "You are calm and then some more." "I do not believe it a pretence but... ..I believe you unafraid." "Perhaps I have nothing to be frightened of." "Murderesses hang just as surely as murderers do, Lady Vera." "Yes, but that is a title that I am suspected of, and you, Inspector, make great play of my actual one..." "..and you know, therefore, the forces that now rally to my side, and I make no boast of it, I promise you that." "In many respects... it is my great sadness, my family." "But... they will not allow me to linger here for long, whatever the charge." " KNOCK ON BAR" " Send her in." "DOOR SQUEAKS" "I look forward to resuming our acquaintance in due course." "SHE CLEARS THROAT" " Good evening." "I am Vera." " DOOR CLOSES" "Strip." "Now." "RAIN POURS OUTSIDE" "Denton." "Three..." "F." " Lady Montacute's dress." " DOOR CLOSES" "Just put it over there." "The bedding in which they were found." "Velvet quilts." "Silk sheeting." "You have a future as a draper, should this life let you down." "It is good fabric." "Quality." "The premises in which she and the lady were found... were NOT quality." "So, what, you think Her Highness down there was made to feel..." "She visits often enough." "She is made to feel...at home." "JACKSON SCOFFS" "In Whitechapel." "Such lengths gone to." "Just for a murdering." "I would not have given it credit." "Himself, I mean." "Strolling back into the office, as though all he'd suffered was a weekend's coarse fishing on the Wandle." "What would you prefer, Jackson?" " That he not come back at all?" " It's not a question of what I prefer." "I'm just merely confused as to what he chooses." "Last time I see him, him and his girl, they were leaving." "The only thing to stop them, him taking two bullets." "THUNDER RUMBLES OUTSIDE" "ELECTRICAL CRACKLING / LAMPS FIZZLE" "The strength required..." "Is a woman..." "That woman in our cells, is she capable?" "Women are capable of almost anything, Drake." "By way of example, if I'm not at the Cafe Monaco to toast the birthday of Miss Hermione Morton by ten, she's going to use her butter knife to scalp me and not think twice." "ARTHERTON SIGHS" "DOOR OPENS" "Ahem..." "Good evening, Sergeant." "Sir." "I'm searching for my wife." " The lady's name?" " Her name is my name." "Montacute." "Oh." "HE GRUNTS" "There is a parlour beyond, sir." "If you will wait a while," "I shall see someone...shall come and speak to you." " Then she's here?" " As I've said, sir, have yourself a seat." "Let me go, copper!" "I swear it!" "Bloody rotten..." "Thomas Denton." "Picked up by a request of Mr Reid, sir." "This the cousin, Constable?" " Miss Watts's cousin, Mr Drake." " Good work, Grace." " Take him down to lockup." " Get off!" "Ah, there is a lady down there already, however." "She you remove to Mr Reid's office." " Got it?" " Yes, Inspector." " ICE CLINKS" " Aah..." "GRACE:" "Excuse me, ma'am." "You are excused." "DOOR CLOSES" "Move a step, would you?" "There." "Good." "Now I can see you." " Sergeant." " Inspector Reid." " He is in the parlour?" " Indeed, sir." "Ah..." "Oh, word of advice." "Never ice for the gout." "Then what, sir?" "What?" "!" "Prayer, Mr Artherton." "Lord Montacute." "THUNDER RUMBLES" " My apologies for keeping you waiting." " Yes." " You are...?" " Reid." "I am in command here." "Is she here?" " When last were you with her?" " Last night, the night before this." " Where that, sir?" " Here, near here." "Er...the music hall." " Which?" " I don't know which." "Erm..." "Vera brought me to it." "Which entertainment did you enjoy?" "HE SIGHS" "Well, a fellow performing magic tricks." "Erm...two women singing about Gladstone, in poor taste." "I left and she remained." "Goddammit, man!" "Is she here?" "She is." "She's well and... unharmed?" "She is unharmed." "Then why do you keep her?" "Forgive me, sir, but you are both a good ways off your natural territory." "Well, I assure you, Inspector, it's not by my choosing." "She brought me to the music hall." "I left and she remained." "And you leave her to travel about this borough alone and as she pleases?" " Well, I do not lock her up." " Nor worry about her overly, it seems." "What I mean to say is that so much of her seems a mystery to you, sir." "Huh." "Well, we're all mysteries to one another, Inspector." "Wives are nothing if not the exemplar of that fact." "Now, you heard this from me..." "Yes, Lady Vera is detained at your pleasure." "But habeas corpus is a powerful tool in the hands of an expensive attorney." "You may rest assured that I retain the most ruinous." "Now, you know who I am, who my family is." "Come morning, Inspector Reid, the weight of the world will break over your station house..." "..and my wife will come home." "SHE CHUCKLES" "Oh, dear!" "It is only a name, Constable." "I shall give you mine." "It is Vera." "Vera Violet Elizabeth." "That was three names, and you haven't even given me one." "It's Robert." "Well, Bobby... ..you are a far sight too handsome for this work..." "..and yet... ..you wear a uniform." "My goodness, take it from me, uniforms have an effect on a girl." "There is a girl, isn't there, Bobby?" "Is she pretty?" "Oh." "Good." "I hate to imagine you with a plain girl... ..and imagine you I shall, Bobby, you...and your girl." "See here, this knifed cavity in the chest?" "Now, that's not one wound but many." "From the lesions and damage to the heart and lungs," "I count nine strikes of the blade." "Chop, chop, chop." " You wish my reading of it?" " It is fury." "Many repeated blows in the same location." "It is rage." "Hatred too, perhaps." "You found him?" "Denton?" "He has known the inside of this station house before." "Mr and Mrs Daniel Fairfax of Blandford Street, Marylebone." "Drugged and thieved, two years past." "They named Thomas Denton." "Drugging." "That is the woman Montacute's defence, is it not?" "The claim is then withdrawn, however, once Mr Denton is allowed response to the allegation, and points out that, amongst other vices, the drugging was at Mr and Mrs Daniel Fairfax's invitation and billing." "He, Denton, is their waged pilot into a world of vice." "He procured for them seats at the music hall, pipes of opium in a Limehouse den." "He brought guards with him for their wanderings through the rookeries." "No wonder, then, the allegation is forgot." "Here." "This was found." "It's been emptied, but there are dregs." "It's a... a powdery composite." "A narcotic?" " Now, that's an assumption, Inspector." " Then let us make another." "Let us think on the forwhy that Lady Vera Montacute might feel a yen to come visit us here." "Slum tourists." "You wish to feel what the extremes of life might sound, look, taste like." "And this is the place to find out." "Velvet and silk, home from home." "The wealthy and the privileged come for the thrill of their corruption on this...this girl, here." "She, I come to believe, the collateral for those desires." "Vera, Lady Montacute, her husband and his title, are sat in our booking hall, waiting, alone for now, but his minions now gather." "So, we must forge a proof so sound that it may stand strong against the combined weight of this island's ruling class altogether, and we must do this by dawn." "This." " There is sufficient remaining for an examination?" " Perhaps." "Then you do it." "This is surely not your first excursion to this corner of London here?" "How quaint you make it sound, Inspector." "Whitechapel, the place that so very nearly took your life from you." "It is not simply the music halls of this borough on which you fix your attention." "It is not." "They are diverting, but..." "I read your newspapers." "The real entertainments are found in your streets." "That is not music hall, Countess." "That is life." "Indeed." "Believe me, Inspector, it is in the life of this city that my fascination is rooted." "YOUR life, for most pertinent example." "A man who climbed out of death's grip and has now returned to his life's duty." " SHE SIGHS" " I cannot tell you how pleased I am to have met you, Inspector." "Such fascination, such an eye for event..." "..and yet that eager witnessing of yours so dulled that around you, beside you, even perhaps by your hand, a woman is stabbed ten times over and you unable to bring to mind a moment of it." "Perhaps it is because you are callous... ..that though you watch and that you titillate yourself in that watching, you do not care." "Goodness." "Such insight, Inspector." "Oh, and how you are jaded, my lady." "Are you really so without hope for your life?" "Perhaps I am." "I should say, Lady Vera, that the life that I imagine you wish to escape, that which brings you far from its genteel restrictions, perhaps at least the few hours you pass with us, that life is here." "Now." "It's come for you." "Your husband waits beneath." "STICK THUDS" "He is a soldier, you know?" "So I understand." "My knight errant." "DOOR OPENS" "DOOR CLOSES" " RAIN POURS OUTSIDE" " Ida, she's your cousin." "Of a kind." "My auntie's half-brother's girl." "So, her old man, that would be Frank Watts, would it not?" "Known to you how?" "Her mother was an Ivory, therefore?" "I knew her brother, Samuel." "We ran together awhiles." "Then how is it that you're stood there and myself..." "CHAINS CLINK ..in these here?" "Army." "Now, here's what I'm thinking, Tom." "I have no fight with you taking an opportunity when it comes." "These gents and ladies, they come a-wandering down here, as if our lives were naught but a fairground sideshow." "To my mind, they are ripe for a fleecing, and you, son, would not be sat there were that all we thought you tangled in." "Your Ida lies dead, naked as the day she were born, her skinny ribs plundered with the sharpest of knives..." "..and you the cause of it." "Not me." "No, I done nothing." "You find me a soul to say otherwise." "But they do say otherwise, Tom." "They do now, leastwise." "Now you are fetched here under suspicion of it." "I told you." "I done nothing." "I know nothing... ..and you, copper, you may scrap your attempt to make kin of me." "Could be that you once walked on my side of the street, but you walk there no longer." "First a theory, second a fact." "In both cases, the motives and forwhys leave me stumped, but you're going to want to hear them." "Here, Grace, you... you tell them." ""It is indeed narcotic," ""but it is not pure and it is not orthodox." "It is a blend." ""Cocaine hydrochloride and morphine sulphate, combined in..." ""i-insufflation."" "Ida." "The same residue is caught in her nasal cavity." "It's a powder, it's combined and it's snorted." "And the effects?" " I haven't sampled it myself." " Give the man time, however..." "But, in principle, the two would balance one another." "The jitters of the cocaine suppressed, the languor of the morphine elevated." "Euphoria, less the attendant despair." "An amalgam a woman such as Lady Vera might have made on demand." "Although not in such a ratio as this." "Three part morphine to one part cocaine." " HE WHISTLES" " Goodnight, sweetheart." "It is overbalanced with intention." "Mr Denton, this is his chosen system." "He drugs then he robs." "Then why use the cocaine at all?" "So that the effects appear initially consistent with that which the lady desires." "But once achieved, one person may react to the effects in a fashion entirely the reverse of another." "Where senselessness might be brought out in one, rage instead might be born in another." "The rage to murder?" "So this, these powders, this drug - that is fact, Captain." "Your theory?" "Imagine her, Reid, alive once more." "She's a pretty girl." "She's got some spirit." "But...she's a girl of these streets." "These streets - how many flower girls do you know that have the time and inclination to see their hair so structured?" "It..." "It is dyed, also." "Cut and dyed to make her the lowly pauper to our princess above." "She is made Lady Vera's twin." "And there you have it." "Our theory." " Oh, you wish to leave us?" " I am expected, Reid." "Captain, if you feel that you have done... all you might... to see her story told, of those who brought her to this exposed, then... by all means, you go, please." "Enjoy your evening." "You know that man Capshaw?" "He should have asked me, because I would have shot you clear through that bleeding heart of yours." "Inspector Drake, my sense of it is that your attempt to find comradeship with the man Denton was not an unqualified success?" "He hates me." "Ah." "But he has knowledge, of her, knowledge that I want." "Mr Reid, you may not ask that of me." "I do not ask that of you, Bennet." "But I would ask that you might remember a face you once made." "LOUD CLANK" "What is that?" "What is in it?" "Believe me, son, when I say you do not want to know." "You have cause to find out, means you have displeased me." "Now, here's how we travel." "I tell you what I think." "You tell me what you know." "For some whiles now, you have rented the rooms on Puma Court for the pleasure of a Miss Lady Vera Kerswell." "Amongst the entertainments you fix for her, you mix pharmaceutical cocaine with powdered morphine." "That's right, boy." "We here educate ourselves on you." "Were you there when Ida had a snort of it?" "No?" "But you do know forwhy you fetched her there?" "Forwhy you had your cousin made up to be the very mirror of that good lady above?" "This is... a story." "Your mad mind, copper." "I done...nothing." "I know... nothing!" "See, now you have displeased me." "STOOL BANGS" "When I was soldiering in Egypt," "I saw a man's toe shot off." "Yeah." "I could not move for enemy fire, however, not for an hour or two." "SHOE FALLS" "He bled right out, he did." "Fast, too." "That bugger, that great toe..." " HE GRUNTS - ..it is a bleeder." "HE GRUNTS" "Now," "I am told... that eventually... this one will get through bone." "No!" "Please!" "I..." "I beg you!" "You cannot!" " OTHER PRISONERS SHOUT" " No!" "Please!" "No, don't!" "Shush now, Tom." "Be still." "You tug around like that, there will be a fearful mess and the pain surely greater an'all." " OTHER PRISONERS SHOUT" " You tell me!" "You had the narcotic mixed up different." "More morphine, less cocaine, to drug and then to rob, as is your way." "No!" "Please, stop!" "Inspector Drake!" "No, sir!" "No!" "You do not hide your barbarism from me!" "This is an outrage!" "You get out of my sight!" "Thanks." "HE SOBS" "Mr Denton, I can only help you," "I can only protect you from him if you will speak to me." "Come, come." "Oh, Jesus." "What is that, Don?" "ARTHERTON GRUNTS" "Tincture of wolfsbane." "No." "I have just come from the threat of severing that exact same digit from the lad Denton." "Oh, do not threaten here, Ben." "You may cut the bastard thing clean off and hear nothing but my cheering you on." "We all have our crosses." "Good evening, Mr Drake." "Miss Morton." "Sir." "Mr Drake." "My brother will not say for why I am accompanied by him." "But here he is." "For my part, I have come to string that American up by his most prized appendage." "Do you mind terribly?" "You, er..." "You go right to it, miss." "I do hope you can look after yourself from hereon in." " Mimi." "Go away." " Charming!" "You follow me, Miss Morton." "I'll take you to the Captain." " MIMI:" " Oh, dear, Sergeant!" "What have you done to yourself?" "Oh, nothing, miss." "It looks worse than it is." "Oh, poor you." "I much prefer things to be worse than they look." "Mr Morton..." "I have not seen her, sir, not since the night at Blewett's." "I know it." "HE SNIFFS She has been happy with me." "Mr Drake, I know you are not a cynical man, that you act with your heart." "ELECTRICAL CRACKLING" "HE SNIFFS" "I ask you to think on the life Rose will have, of the life her children will have." "They will run free, know what it is to climb an oak, to... swim in a stream... and she...she will be cared for, and honoured and loved, sir, every day that she lives." "Can you offer her these things?" "And, most importantly, would you deny her them?" "Captain Jackson, sir, I bring a visitor..." "Now, you listen to me, knife man." "I made changes for you." "I behave in ways that are surprising to all who know me, myself included." "You were to meet my father and..." "SHE SCREAMS" "TOE CRUNCHES Aaaaagh!" "RAIN POURS OUTSIDE" "Why, Thomas?" "Why was your Ida fetched from her blooms?" "What use was she?" "The lady made the request...for the man she was to bring with her." "A man?" "A man you knew?" "No, sir." "Special, weren't it?" "She wished for you to find a woman for this male companion of hers, so you whored your cousin to this man?" "It was what the lady asked for... ..but not what I intended." "All was to be done with before that arrangement needed meeting." "And that was where the heavy morphine blend " "Lady Vera and her companion were to be sedated." "Ida was to... ..dispense it." "And then she was to rob them both blind." "Only, your drug failed you, and Ida was killed." "Who by?" "Lady Vera?" "Or this man you speak of?" "I do not know, sir." "I beg you to believe me." "I was not there." "And this man, Lady Vera's companion, can you describe him?" "There is no need, sir." "You have him here already." "He is... above." "If there was a file on you, what would it say?" "Erm..." ""He had a talent for running..." ""..until..."" "Until?" ""Until he decided to stop."" " And yours, Miss Morton?" " Hm." "Mine is not written yet." "Listen to me, darlin'." "Now, these people, your people, that come to these streets and they find whatever kick they can before they go home again..." "Is that all I am to you?" "No." "Not all." "Just most." "Word has it that this civilian has been wandering freely about my station house." "Well, what can I say, Inspector?" "The mountain came to Muhammad." "That man," "Lord Montacute, Major Christopher Kerswell, come here so brazen, entitled as he is, thinking to hide in plain view." "HE TUTS" " Ida, she was not interfered with?" " She was not." "And yet we know from Thomas Denton that his cousin was ordered up and made the twin of his wife for his, Lord Montacute's, pleasure." "For his imagined pleasure." "Quite so, and all at the whim of Lady Vera." "We do not know whether he greeted her whim with distaste or delight." "So, Lady Vera unconscious..." "Denton's narcotics taking their desired effect." " But not upon Lord Christopher, however." " Who is nowhere to be seen." "The drug, different powers over different bodies." "Then let us imagine." "Lady Vera unconscious." "Ida perhaps sufficiently euphoric to partake in whatever debauchery had been intended." "But the gentleman, the narcotic running through him, has now become homicidal." " He kills her." " And in his shame and mania, he runs for home." "Imagine him returned to Regent's Park." "The fog of the narcotic gone, he cannot recall with clarity what has passed, but he does know that his lady wife was left behind here in Whitechapel." "And somehow presents himself to the police of that borough." "And the lady..." "The beautiful lady, just sleeps her innocent sleep throughout." "Meanwhile, just hours since, you have the knife in her hand and evil in her heart." "Mm." "One or other of them, however." "One or other." "Captain, I think we may consider your work done." "If Miss Morton still has need of you, that is." "Oh, she'll keep." "I need you to lend me Grace a while longer, though." "Fingerprints by Francis Galton." "What say you and me make the Inspector a little homecoming present?" "See what it says there, in the margins?" "You see what he wrote?" ""Incontrovertible truth?"" " With a question mark." " With a question mark." "DOOR OPENS" "Major Kerswell." " Your rank?" " Sergeant, sir." "Although, in this force, I am Inspector Drake." "Your service seen where, however?" "Egypt, in the main, sir." "Oh." "Under whose command?" "Colonel Madoc Faulkner." "At El Teb." "You saw the worst of it, then." "I was glad to get home, sir." "As you must be, each time you return." "THUNDER RUMBLES OUTSIDE" "I have ever been a bachelor, sir, and so can only imagine how it is to ever be leaving and returning, leaving and returning, an endless reacquaintance with those we love." "Well... it is duty, Inspector Drake." "But what of our duty to our families... ..to our wives, sir?" "But you've only just now told me that you lack for a wife." "I must conclude, therefore, that you...you talk about me, and I wonder what right you believe you have to do so." "A policeman's right." "One who investigates murder." "HE SCOFFS" "Best you now see me as a man to be obeyed, Major Kerswell, as a man who owns your secrets." "Your wife's secrets also." "One of you... has killed a young lady this night last..." "..a girl made to resemble your wife, sir." "The three of you enjoying a little party in our corner of London here." "Yes." "We know it all, sir, all save one fact - which of you it was drove the knife into her." "The girl, made up to resemble your wife, her name was Ida." "What pleasure did your wife believe you might find in that act, sir?" "HE SIGHS What pleasure indeed?" "She wished me... to..." "HE CLEARS THROAT" "..make love to both of them." "Two Veras." "It's a mountain to climb to find love for just the one of her." "That..." "That boy, that earnest Toynbee type, fool enough to strike you, he thinks it an Arcadia in waiting, but if there's doubt in him now, it'll be a...a hell." "A hell, Mr Drake." "Your wife, Major." "Let us stay on the subject of your wife." "Such a...an arrangement." "What did she stand to gain from that?" " Your...affections rekindled?" " Perhaps." "That woman's mind is her own." "And so...you did not?" "I tried." "She asked me to try... ..so I did." "And then, sir?" "She laughed at me." "Who did?" "Er...both of..." "No." "Vera." "Er...the other." "I..." "The..." "The powder." "Whatever she had given me, I... ..I couldn't tell them apart." "And so...you picked up the knife." "You struck out." "No." "No, I..." "I do not..." "She laughed at you." "You thought it your wife humiliating you." "You struck out." "Sir, why did you... come here tonight, if not, in truth, because you hoped to unburden yourself?" "No..." "Sergeant." "I do not remember." "If you would stand for me now, Major." "You make no denials, therefore?" "Denial would be predictable, would it not?" "It would be customary." "Well, then, there you have it." "I do try not to be boring." "You consider that the worst of sins, I imagine?" " SHE SIGHS" " What is it you want to know?" "Which of you and your husband performed the act?" "Hmm." "I am inclined to tell you." "You will have my gratitude." "As inducement, however, I would hear something from you, Inspector." "What do you remember?" "Five days in death's maw." "What did you see there, as you stood at the border between life and death?" "I give you my word." "You tell me something, and I will give you all that I know." "You ask me what I saw?" "Yes." "Nothing." "But I might tell you what I...felt." "All the better." "I was not afraid." "Not for a moment." "I sensed that I was...held." "By what?" "By God?" "I put no name on it." "ELECTRICAL CRACKLING" "Are you aware, my lady, of a medical procedure known as trepanning?" "Yes, the boring of a hole through the skull." "Quite so." "It's been practised since prehistoric times." "But there is evidence to suggest that, er... a small section of bone that is removed to expose the dura mater of the brain was then worn as an amulet around the neck." " A charm?" "Against what?" " Who can say?" "But I know what malignancy I now wear mine against..." "..and what I imagine the prehistorics felt guarded against." "Self-regard." "They looked out from their caves across unsheltered plains and knew that all that layout there was savage and hostile to their existence on that earth." "They saw the threat and felt only the urge to stride out... ..to find food, bring it home... ..to survive." "Continue." "JAR RATTLES" "The necessity of struggle." "The collective placed above the self." "In death, the affirmation of life." "You think me cliched." "No, on the contrary." "Where is that constable of yours, the pretty one?" "Have him come here with copy paper... ..and a pen to write with." "Grace!" "I, Vera Kerswell, Lady Montacute, wish to confess to the murder by stabbing of Ida Watts in the attic rooms, rented by myself, of Alderman's lodging house on Puma Court." "You keep writing, Constable." "What time did this event take place?" "I cannot say." "I was incapacitated, due to the effects of a cocaine and sulphurous morphine amalgam that I had a Mr Thomas Denton make for me." "Explain the presence of Miss Watts." "I asked Mr Denton if he would find a girl who could be made to look like me." "He found her and I saw her hair dressed and coloured and her face made up." "Why do this?" "You asked me... ..why it is I come here, to these streets, where you find your daily struggles with its dirt and its deaths and its chaos." "Everything that you would see rid from this world, Mr Reid... ..I glorify and, so, yes," "I brought my husband to those rooms and that girl, because I thought that..." "Well, I thought that he might want to join me in that...glorifying and that I might, perhaps, not be so alone..." "..in all that I did... and thought... and felt." "But he did not join you?" "No." "He looked at me with the same incomprehension with which you look at me now." "How many times did you put the knife into Ida Watts?" "For reasons I have already stated, I..." "I cannot be sure, but... ..it was more than thrice but less than ten times." "And why?" "Why did you kill Miss Watts?" "Because she did not prove amusing... ..and because I wanted to know how it would feel to do so." "Now..." "I imagine you want me to sign beneath?" "DOOR SHUTS" "SHE SIGHS" "Do not worry, Robert." "They're not all like me." "I'm not like a single woman alive." "He claims not to recall." "And she has confessed." "And yet I do not feel the truth shine upon us, Bennet." "You two, come see what I made." "It is the smear... of blood...on the knife." "It is the magnified bloody imprint on the thumb rise of the handle." "What is it you've made, Jackson?" "REID GASPS" "It is the incontrovertible truth." "Well... it's an attempt." "Look here." "Now, after the third or fourth thrust, Ida's blood got gluey." "So, that there is the mark of the thumb of the hand that killed her." "Mr Galton's theory runs thus - the tip of each and every finger contains parallel ridges." "See, Bennet, see your own there." "These ridges form whorls, or patterns, each one entirely distinct from its neighbour, and each one entirely distinct from human to human." "The print of such is therefore entirely unique." "The chances of any two prints being alike are, so Mr Galton has it, one in 64 billion." "We wouldn't be the first either." "There's a detective in Argentina that used this very same method to bring a woman to trial for the murder of her children." "Mr Galton recommends a printer's ink for the best sample." "Which we are unlikely to find at this hour." "There is little time remaining to us." "I've got another idea, however." "Morning, Your Highness." "Now, place each thumb in the soot." "Make your mark." "They are the same?" "The two forkings at the end of the two ridges that meet the island there, they are identical, yes." "And these?" "These prints are whose?" "Lord Montacute." "Inspector Reid." "Inspector Drake." "Morning, Chief." "Edmund, a word." "So that I understand, you have a signed confession on the part of the lady..." "I do." "..and somehow it does not suffice?" "I believe that she, for reasons too perverse to imagine, but I believe that she wishes herself guilty." "She wishes herself hanged." "Now, she may have been there, she may have watched, but she is not the girl's killer." "And this knowledge arrived at by way of... ..a thumb mark printed in soot." "You have a confession, Mr Reid." "You use it." "Lady Vera, please." "It is not too late." "It is never that." "Dear Mr Reid... ..it was always too late." "Inspector Reid, you have the keys, I understand?" "One last question for you, sir." "What kind of man is it that allows his wife to go to the rope for him?" "Confess." "Know the release." "Enough!" "Your feet not even back under the table and a murder solved." "This shall be spoken of, Edmund." "Aah!" "Last warning." " That is a good drop, Don." " Mm." "Good gentlemen, I shall see you the morrow." "HAWKERS CRY" " Reid." " Captain." "Come on." "Really?" "You're just going to sit there, and we all just pick up right where we left off?" "I saw you." "You were leaving." "You had your girl and you were leaving." "I was." "We were." "And so?" "Mathilda asks the same." "I'm sure she does." "I tell her what I tell you." "I..." "I cannot further account for it." "I woke from my sleep knowing only this " "I was not saved so that I might go...fishing." "And the event?" "Your shooting, do you have any recall of it?" "Little." "Barely an image." "But before..." "Obsidian... ..as I stepped into that place..." "..I've never known fear like it." "Forgot my hat." "It's a ridiculous hat." "Nonetheless." " MIMICKING REID:" " Ridiculous."