He is held at Bethlem Royal Hospital, known as Bedlam, a notorious psychiatric institution. They find Alistair’s body at the London docks he was killed just before they arrived-presumably by the murderer.īecause Uncle Jonathan is so involved in the investigation and has taken items from the murder scene, he is arrested on suspicion of being the murderer.
The man turns out to be Alistair Dunlop, Audrey’s family’s former carriage driver. Amidst his cryptic ramblings, he mentions someone named Alistair but dies before he can give more details. When they arrive, Thornley is old and gravely ill. Back in Uncle Jonathan’s lab, Audrey and Thomas find a diary entry on the murder of Emma Elizabeth Smith that happened months ago and seems to fit the model of the recent killings of East End sex workers.Īudrey is determined to find out her family’s connection to the murders, and so she and Thomas travel to Reading to meet with Audrey’s family’s former valet, Aldous Thornley. While Audrey is looking through her father’s desk for details on Miss Nichols’s employment in their home, she comes across an article detailing Miss Chapman’s murder and becomes disconcerted. This time, the victim is Annie Chapman-a young woman who worked as a sex worker in London’s East End. Not long after this, another murder is committed. Audrey is disconcerted to learn that the murdered woman used to be employed in Audrey’s family’s home. They note the surgical precision of her wounds and wonder whether the murderer has medical training. The body is from a murder victim, Mary Ann Nichols, and Uncle Jonathan is assisting Scotland Yard in the investigation. One day, Audrey and one of her uncle’s young students, Thomas Cresswell, assist Uncle Jonathan in an autopsy. Her father strongly disapproves of this she has to sneak out or make up excuses to get to her uncle’s lab. She also is sometimes permitted to sneak into his lectures on forensic science. Above all, Audrey loves forensic science, in particular, spending time in her Uncle Jonathan Wadsworth’s basement laboratory, where she assists him in performing autopsies on cadavers. Her father is the esteemed Lord Edmund Wadsworth, and her brother is the roguish but kind Nathaniel Wadsworth.
Audrey is a 17-year-old girl from an aristocratic family in London. The novel is divided into 30 chapters, which are narrated in the first-person past tense by the protagonist, Audrey Wadsworth. Content Warning: This guide refers to violence against women and gore, which are depicted in the novel.
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