The Reverend Mr. Barnett would love to know about this. But then, he’d have loved to know about it all. But “Leather Apron” wasn’t about to tell. Let the reforms come as the Reverend and his wife wished for them, and let them think their pamphleteering had done it, instead of the scalpels of Jack.

If he was dead, would his work be finished? He smiled to himself. If Heaven had taken him, then it must be that the work was finished. Successfully. But if that was so, then who was this Juliette who now lay spread out moist and cooling in the bedroom of a thousand mirrors? And in that instant he felt fear.

What if even God misinterpreted what he had done?

As the good folk of Queen Victoria’s London had misinterpreted. As Sir Charles Warren had misinterpreted. What if God believed the superficial and ignored the real reason? But no! Ludicrous. If anyone would understand, it was the good God who had sent him the message that told him to set things a-right.

God loved him, as he loved God, and God would know.

But he felt fear, in that moment.

Because who was the girl he had just carved?

“She was my granddaughter, Juliette,” said a voice immediately beside him.

His head refused to move, to turn that few inches to see who spoke. The Gladstone was beside him, resting on the smooth and reflective surface of the street. He could not get to a knife before he was taken. At last they had caught up with Jack. He began to shiver uncontrollably.

“No need to be afraid,” the voice said. It was a warm and succoring voice. An older man. He shook as with an ague. But he turned to look. It was a kindly old man with a gentle smile. Who spoke again, without moving his lips. “No one can hurt you. How do you do?”

The man from 1888 sank slowly to his knees. “Forgive me, Dear God, I didn’t know.” The old man’s laughter rose inside the head of the man on his knees. It rose like a beam of sunlight moving across a Whitechapel alleyway, from noon to one o’clock, rising and illuminating the gray bricks of soot-coated walls. It rose, and illuminated his mind.