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added.
“Seems to select strangers,” Emma said. “This isn’t a crime of any personal vengeance or due
to an obsession with a particular woman.” She looked up at Trevor, her eyes seeming darker in the
candlelight, deepening from blue to navy. “Did the women have any similarities in terms of age or
coloring or some physical characteristic? Were they acquainted or intertwined in any way?”
He shook his head. “Quite the contrary. The only thing they seemed to have in common was
proximity to the depot. The two tradeswomen knew each other, but only slightly.“
“So it would appear at first reckoning that our fellow is an entirely logical sort of criminal,”
Rayley said. “But then we come to the business with the blindfold. It keeps the women from being
able to identify him of course, and thus makes a type of sense, but it also strikes me as a rather grand
sort of gesture. Theatrical, almost. Could any of the victims describe anything about the man?”
Trevor shook his head, then reconsidered. “Well, that isn’t entirely true. One of them did say
the blindfold he used felt like silk. Noteworthy it would seem in a rural town where most men wear
scarves made of wool if they wear them at all.”
“If that’s all the description three victims managed to collectively produce, then it would seem
that blinding the women, even momentarily, served his purpose,” Tom said. “And, I’m sorry Rayley,
but I don’t read anything symbolic or grand into the gesture at all. If you don’t intend to kill your
victim, and there’s no evidence suggesting that this particular rapist is warming up to murder, then
your most pressing task is to make sure she doesn’t see your face.”
“But I quite know where Rayley is going,” Geraldine said, suddenly jerking to attention in the
manner of a mechanical soothsayer at a traveling fair. “There are certain acts of dominance, are there
not, which are designed to break the spirit? The binding of the hands is one, and taking away
someone’s sight or hearing is another. I’ve seen it with the suffragettes.”
“The suffragettes?” Trevor asked cautiously. It was a bizarre non sequitur even for Geraldine.
She nodded and leaned forward to place her teacup on the table. “Do you all recall that dark
day when I was arrested at the protest about allowing women to row on the Thames? You surely
remember, Trevor, for that’s the very afternoon the two of us first met. And Emma, you and Gage had
to come down and give them money so they would let us all out.”
“They posted your bail,” Trevor corrected her. “You always make it sound like a bribe or some
other sort of impropriety when you say it that way, Geraldine. You simply must try to remember the