The sequel to Garden of Sins, coming January 10, 2023

Award-winning author Laura Joh Rowland is back with the seventh in her critically acclaimed Victorian mystery series. Sarah Bain Barrett is pitted against a true-crime serial killer who may have ties to Jack the Ripper.

London, April 1891. When the severed torso of a woman washes up on the bank of the river Thames, London believes a serial killer from the past has struck again. Crime photographer and investigator Sarah Bain Barrett is on the scene with her friends Mick O'Reilly and Lord Hugh Staunton. This is their chance to solve a grisly cold case and deliver a monster to belated justice, with help from Sarah's husband Detective Sergeant Thomas Barrett; her sister Sally Albert, an intrepid newspaper reporter; and Hugh's psychologist, Dr. Joshua Lewes, who's a pioneer in the new science of criminal profiling. But the opportunity brings troubles galore: Sarah and her husband can't agree on what direction their inquiries should take. Barrett favors concentrating on two shady characters he knows from his days as a patrol constable in Whitechapel, while Sarah suspects the charismatic leader of a polygamous religious sect from which at least one woman has gone missing. Their discord threatens not only the investigation but their marriage.

To complicate matters, Sarah's bitter enemy, Inspector Reid, is leading the police's hunt for the killer they're calling the Torso Murderer. Obsessed with the Ripper case and his own failure to solve it, he thinks the Ripper and the Torso Murderer are one and the same person—a notion that could steer the police investigation disastrously off course. Hot in pursuit of the killer, Reid is also hell-bent on discovering what Sarah and company have been hiding about the Ripper.

The Torso Murder case threatens to expose a dangerous truth, tear apart Sarah's close-knit band of comrades, and send them to the gallows before they can put the killer out of action.

River of Fallen Angels
Chapter 1

At the edge of the River Thames, I position my camera on its tripod and aim it up at the man who dangles from the high walkway of London's Tower Bridge. Only a rope twisted around his ankle keeps him from plunging some hundred and fifty feet into the water. He's one of the many workers on the bridge, which has been under construction for the past five years. The bridge will be magnificent when completed, but now the two towers that rise from stone piers are mere steel skeletons.

"This is better than our usual job of photographing dead bodies," Lord Hugh Staunton says. "The poor fellow still has a chance."

"If someone don't rescue him before he falls, there will be a dead body," Mick O'Reilly says.

Hugh, Mick, and I are crime photographers and reporters for the Daily World newspaper, covering mainly the East End. Because of a recent, rare lack of notable crimes on our beat, we're temporarily assigned to other events, such as accidents. Today, chance has brought us to Bermondsey, on the Thames's south bank, to the foot of the Horsleydown Stairs. The narrow stone staircase, green with algae, descends from an alley directly to the water. The low tide has exposed a strip of mud on which we've stationed ourselves amid rocks, broken shells and glass, dead fish and wooden timbers, machine parts and torn nets. Brown foam soils the water's edge; drainage from sewers and cesspools flows directly into the Thames. The crowd around us includes the publican, barmaids, and customers from the Anchor Brewhouse beside the stairs. Smoke from nearby factories darkens the fog and clouds. On this cold April afternoon, the river's foul, fishy stench isn't as bad as in summer—a blessing. Wind that smells of coffee, tea, and spices in the warehouses blows the dangling man as if he's a toy on a child's mobile. His screams echo up and down the river, across the city, while men on the towers watch helplessly.

"Why don't they pull him up?" someone in the crowd asks.

"The part of the walkway he's hanging from looks pretty flimsy." Hugh, tall and blond, elegant in smartly tailored clothes, points to the short segment connecting the two spans that have grown daily, inch by inch, from each tower, to join in the middle. It looks like a thin, horizontal ladder. "If the other men go out there to rescue him, it might collapse, and they'll all fall."

Women in the crowd gravitate toward Hugh. That often happens because of his strikingly handsome looks. He smiles as he introduces himself and interviews them. "What do you think of the accident, miss?"

"Oh, terrible, sir!"

From his gallant, flirtatious manner, one would never guess that he's not interested in women. A bolder one asks him about me: "Who's your lady with the camera?"

"She's my dear friend and colleague, Mrs. Sarah Barrett," Hugh says.

I keep a careful, protective watch over him. During our last investigation, he was seriously injured, his right arm almost crippled by a knife wound. His arm is still weak and tender, and he holds it close to his side, lest someone bump it. I hope nobody here recognizes him from the newspaper stories published a few years ago, after he was caught in a vice squadron raid on a club for homosexual men. His family disowned him, his aristocratic friends dropped him, and the public's hostility can be brutal. B

elow the bridge, water traffic halts as the crews on barges, ferries, and other boats gawk at the dangling, screaming man. Steamships are backed up behind them. Horns blast, in vain. I see photographers among the crowds massed on both banks of the river, on rooftops and the wharves outside St. Katharine's Docks opposite us. Word travels fast in London, from the streets to the public houses, to the newspaper offices. Mick greets two shaggy-haired street urchins who come running to see the spectacle. When I first met Mick almost three years ago, he was one of them, an underfed, undersized, grimy boy. Now fifteen, he's a tall, lanky, handsome youth, but his red hair still sticks up, and he has a raffish air.

One boy jingles pennies in his hand. "Wanna bet he dies?" He points at the dangling man.

"You're on," the other boy says.

"That's cold," Mick protests.

"Aw, you got deep pockets. Don't be tight," the first boy says, his voice sharpening.

Mick hesitates. I perceive that these boys, his friends from the old days, resent his good fortune of having a well-paid job and a respectable place in the world.

"I'm in." Mick obviously doesn't want to be thought a snob. "I bet he gets saved."

I duck under the black drape attached to the back of the camera and peer through the viewfinder. I'm using a special lens, purchased at a high price from an inventor, that functions as a telescope and magnifies far-distant objects. It gives me an amazingly clear, close-up view of the dangling man. He's young, muscular, and clad in rough, dirty clothes. He waves his arms as if in an attempt to fly to safety. The rope twists. For a moment his panic-stricken gaze turns directly toward my camera, and he screams, "Help!"

My heart clenches. This is in some ways worse than photographing murder scenes at which the victims, the blood, and the gore are still present. For those folks, the worst has already happened. With crimes, I at least can seek justice for the victims. With fatal accidents, there's no justice, no consolation. All I can do for this man is pray.

He wails as I snap the shutter. The wind blows the cap off his curly brown hair. The cap falls the long, long way down. The spectators groan. I imagine myself in his place, suspended in empty air, help beyond reach, with only the thin, straining rope tethering me to life. The mud beneath my feet feels less solid, and I tremble with vicarious terror as I change the negative plate. I imagine the snap as the rope breaks, then the heart-stopping plunge, the explosive collision with the water.

Sometimes I find danger thrilling and alluring—a quirk of my personality. I seek it out, as if my day is incomplete unless I find a sleeping wolf to poke and wake up. I never feel more alive than when danger threatens. But sometimes its sensations evoke memories of past dangers I've experienced. Now my vision darkens, a gunshot blares in my mind, and I smell sulfur as the old bullet wound in my shoulder throbs. Breathless, I fling the drape off my head.

I see a miniature steamboat—a police launch—chug down the river toward the bridge. A constable on board speaks through a megaphone, ordering the logjammed watercraft to move. Within half an hour that seems like forever, the logjam clears. A barge stops under the walkway. Atop the barge, a man operates a crane equipped with a steam engine and a long boom. Smoke puffs from the boiler as the boom rises. I photograph the expression of dawning hope on the man's face. The boom stops at its full vertical height, its tip level with his upside-down knees. The man wraps his arms around the boom and sobs with relief. But the rope still tethers his ankle to the bridge. He reaches in his pocket, brings out a knife.

"God, please don't let him drop it," Hugh murmurs.

A hush descends. The crowds are silent, paralyzed by suspense as the man contorts his body into an impossible position and saws at the rope. I take photographs, barely able to watch him. The rope frays, fiber by fiber, then breaks. Suddenly released, the man loses his precarious balance. He drops the knife, yells, and slides down the boom. My cry of alarm joins those from the other spectators. He's about ten feet above the water when he falls in with a big splash. The barge crewmen fish him out and drag him aboard. He stands on the barge, dripping wet and shaking violently, but safe. Applause erupts amid cheers and whistles.

"Whew," Hugh says, and wipes his brow.

I clasp my hand against my pounding heart. Mick says triumphantly to his friends, "Pay up," and holds out his hand. They fork over pennies. The barge moves toward shore. Photographers and reporters rush toward the pier to meet the rescued man and his saviors.
"C'mon, we gotta get photos." Mick grabs my flash lamp and the valise full of blank negative plates and other supplies.
"And interviews." Hugh packs up my camera, then carries it in his strong left hand as he and Mick and the spectators hurry toward the pier.
I fold the tripod and sling my satchel over my arm. As I race after my companions, a steamship thunders up the river. The wake swells and rolls. A huge wave laps the shore, hurling debris and foam. Amid wood scraps, rusted tins, and broken bottles, a larger shape washes up at my feet. It's about fifteen inches square and seven thick, a pinkish-gray color, red at the edges. A chunk of butchered cow or pig that fell off a boat? My photographer's eye takes a closer look. The shape is wider at one end, curved inward near the other, disturbingly familiar. Two pink circles top two round swellings near the middle.

Breasts.

My heart and my stomach lurch simultaneously.

The shape is a woman's torso. The red at the top, sides, and bottom are raw flesh where the head, arms, and legs are missing. A yell of horror bursts from me. Accustomed to grisly sights, I can view them with aplomb when braced to photograph them, but this has caught me off guard. I clap my hand over my mouth as sour bile rises in my throat.

Hugh and Mick hear my yell; they stop and turn. I beckon frantically. They come running, and when I point at the torso, Mick exclaims, "Gorblimey!"

Hugh retches, drops the camera on the mud, doubles over, and vomits. Two years of crime scenes and murder investigations haven't toughened his stomach.

My own stomach will fail me unless I distract myself. I resort to speculating about what happened to the poor woman. "She must have fallen in the river and gotten cut to pieces by a steamship propeller." I don't believe it, but it's better than the alternative.

"It weren't no propeller." Mick voices my terrible thought: "It's the Thames Torso Murderer again."

Dread coils through me as I recall the case. In spring 1887, a sack was found floating in the Thames at Rainham, a town some sixteen miles upstream from London. The sack contained a woman's torso. Over the next two years, severed torsos, arms, legs, and hands from three other women turned up in various locations in or near the river. Their heads were never found, and only one of the women was identified. The cause of their deaths was presumed to be murder but never proven. The police investigated, but they had so little to go on, and the killer was never arrested. The newspapers covered the case, but without developments other than the discoveries of more remains, the press and the public quickly lost interest, their attention diverted by a more notorious case.

In Whitechapel in 1888, Jack the Ripper began his reign of terror. He savagely murdered and mutilated Martha Tabram, Polly Nichols, Annie Chapman, Liz Stride, Kate Eddowes, and Mary Jane Kelly, one after another, between August 6 and November 9. His malevolent shadow fell across all of London. The police interviewed multitudes of witnesses and arrested dozens of suspects. The investigation had all the high drama that the Torso Murders lacked.

I didn't cover the Ripper case for the Daily World, as my employment there didn't begin until April 1889. My interest in that case was personal.

My personal interest, shared by Hugh and Mick, led us to undertake our own private, illicit investigation, which was so engrossing and life transforming that we had no attention to spare for the Torso Murders.

Now excitement dawns on Mick's face. "We wanted a big case to investigate."

Hugh gags, spits, says, "Sorry," then, "Yes, I thought a big case would be just the thing to brush up my detective skills." He had taken time off while recovering from his injury. "We should be careful what we wish for," he says ruefully. "Oh God, any case but this one!"

"I agree." I too had wanted a new challenge, but I quail at taking on the Torso Murders, and not only because of the gruesome corpses. What kind of person could butcher a woman like a piece of meat? For Hugh, Mick, and me, the Ripper is a known quantity—merely mortal, no matter how vicious— whereas the Torso Murderer is a nameless, faceless, unfathomable evil.

"We solved the Ripper case. We can solve this one." Mick speaks with the brash confidence of youth.

"With the Ripper, we had a special advantage," I remind him. "We knew who he'd chosen as his next victims. With the Torso Murderer, all but one of his victims are still unidentified, and nobody knows who's next."

Hugh wipes his mouth on his handkerchief and keeps his eyes averted from the torso. "We're getting ahead of ourselves. It's Sir Gerald who decides what cases we investigate." Sir Gerald Mariner, our employer, owns the Daily World.

"He'll put us on this one," Mick declares.

I hope so, despite my misgivings. We put the Ripper out of action, but not before he killed all those women, and I feel responsible because a mistake of mine had brought them to his attention. If not for me, they might still be alive! The Torso Murder case offers a chance to replay the Ripper investigation with a better ending, to atone for my mistake.

"For now, I'd better fetch the police." Hugh runs toward the launch moored by the barge.

I set up my tripod, mount the camera on it. Mick opens the trunk and hands me a fresh negative plate. We're going to photograph a dead body today, after all.

The clouds thicken; the sky grows darker; drizzle threatens to turn into a rainstorm. I work as fast as I can. Mick loads powder into the flash lamp. White explosions light up the torso. Looking at it through the viewfinder distances me from the horror. My nausea fades even as I take close-ups of the severed white neckbone, the ragged flesh where the limbs were amputated. I move the tripod to capture the torso from different angles.

Who was she? What led her to this terrible fate?

The Ripper victims had traits in common, which included their association with me. What traits did the Torso Murder victims share?

What kind of woman ends up cut to pieces and dumped in the river as if she were mere garbage?
Other reporters and photographers charge toward me, the crowd of spectators close behind them. People exclaim. Photographers block my view of the torso, jostling for position, setting up their equipment. I've enough pictures, so Mick and I lug our equipment to the edge of the crowd. In the distance, the rescued man and the barge crew stand alone, forgotten.

Hugh returns with a police constable. In his late forties, with graying brown hair under his helmet, the constable wears the oilskin trousers and mackintosh of the Thames River Police. The crowd parts to let him approach the torso. He frowns and shakes his head but seems neither shocked nor sickened. The River Police mostly handle thefts on the ships and docks, but the Thames has a long association with dead bodies—from wars, accidents, and murders, from the recent and distant past. Skeletons from the Roman period have surfaced, and when the Princess Alice pleasure steamer sank in 1878, some seven hundred people drowned. The Thames is also a popular place for suicides. I once heard that more than five hundred bodies in total are recovered every year. The constable must have seen his share of corpses.

He yells and gestures. "This is a crime scene. Everybody, stand back!" Reporters and photographers grumble as they move. "Who found this?"

I nervously raise my hand. I've an ingrained fear of policemen, no matter that my work puts me in frequent contact with them, and no matter that I'm married to one. My fear dates back to the time when I was ten years old, and police came to my house and interrogated and threatened my father, Benjamin Bain. I didn't understand why. Many years later, I learned he was the prime suspect in the rape and murder of a teenage girl. The shocking discovery contradicted everything I'd ever believed about my family and altered the course of my life.

Hugh and Mick stand protectively beside me. The constable asks, "What's your name?"

"Mrs. Sarah Barrett."

The constable raises his eyebrows as he recognizes my name. Voices among the crowd repeat it. Reporters pepper me with questions:

"Have you seen your father since his trial for the murder of Ellen Casey?"

"Are you certain he didn't kill her?"

"What's he up to now?"

His trial, concluded four months ago, was a public sensation, and some people still think he's guilty despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary and the fact that the judge dismissed the charges. My past escapades as a crime investigator had already made me notorious, and the trial has increased my unwanted fame.

"No comment," I say coldly.

My father lives in Brighton, where he operates a photography business. As a result of his own notoriety, he never comes to London, and I haven't visited him. We're estranged, a sad development in our troubled history. I'm thankful he's a free man, but the trial drove a wedge between us, and he's as absent from my life as if he'd been convicted and executed.

"You just happened to be here when these remains washed up?" the constable asks me.

"That's correct," I say.

"You oughta be glad she spotted 'em," Mick says. "You can tell your bosses the Torso Murderer's struck again."

The constable glares at me as if I've tossed him a handful of worms. I doubt he wants to bear the bad tidings about a new murder in an unsolved series that everyone thought ended two years ago.

"PC Wilson," Hugh says, "Mrs. Barrett, Mr. O'Reilly, and I work for the Daily World. We would appreciate it if you would let us observe while you examine the crime scene."

The charming manner that wins over other people doesn't work on PC Wilson, who says to us, "Get lost." He waves away the other reporters and photographers. "The rest of you too."

The reporters shout questions at him: "Any new leads in the four previous Torso Murders?" "Are detectives still investigating, or have they given up?" The photographers snap pictures of the torso. The spectators loiter.

"We can help you look for the other body parts," Mick says eagerly.

"No thanks," PC Wilson says.

"Seems like you could use some help," Mick says. "You ain't caught the Torso Murderer yet. You couldn't even find all the other victims' parts."

Anger flushes the constable's cheeks.

"You didn't catch the Ripper either," Mick taunts.

"Mick, that's enough," I say. Jabbing the police's sore spot won't gain us favors, and to mention the Ripper is to enter dangerous territory. My friends and I number among the few who know why the Ripper has never been caught. It's a deep, dark secret that, if made public, would condemn us to death.

"You owe Mrs. Barrett five shillings," Mick tells the constable. "Anyone finds a body in the river gets paid five shillings—it's the law."

Hugh smoothly talks over him. "We've solved some major cases, including the Hangman Murder and the Sleeping Beauty mystery. We'd be happy to lend our expertise."

"The Daily World has a special arrangement with the police," I add. "We're privy to their investigations, and in exchange they get publicity that helps them catch killers."

"That's not my business. Move along, or I'll arrest you." The constable then addresses the crowd: "The same goes for everybody else."

More policemen arrive; they must have been watching the rescue from other vantage points and come to see what's caused the commotion here. Their presence backs up the constable's threat. My friends and I escape ahead of the disgruntled crowd.

"Let's hurry back to the Daily World," I say, "so we can get our pictures published before anybody else's."

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