The sequel to The Hangman's Secret, coming January 7, 2020

London, June 1890. Sarah Bain and her friends Lord Hugh Staunton and Mick O'Reilly are crime scene photographers for the Daily World newspaper. After solving a sensational murder, they're under pressure to deliver another big story. On a foggy summer night, they're called to the bank of the river Thames. The murder victim is an unidentified woman whose face has been slashed. But as Sarah takes photographs, she discovers that the woman is still alive.

The case of "Sleeping Beauty" becomes a public sensation, and three parties quickly come forward to identify her: a rich, sinister artist who claims she's his wife; a mother and her two daughters who co-own a nursing home and claim she's their stepdaughter/sister; and a precocious little girl who claims Sleeping Beauty is her mother. Which party is Sleeping Beauty's rightful kin? Is someone among them her would-be killer?

Then Sleeping Beauty awakens—with a severe case of amnesia. She's forgotten her name and everything else about herself. But she recognizes one of the people who've claimed her. Sarah is delighted to reunite a family and send Sleeping Beauty home—until one of the claimants is murdered. Suddenly, Sarah, her motley crew of friends, and her fiancé Detective Sergeant Barrett are on the wrong side of the law. Now they must identify the killer before they find themselves headed for the gallows.

"I just love dark passages that lead to God knows what," Lord Hugh Staunton says.

It's two o'clock in the morning, and we're outside a riverfront tavern whose sign, illuminated by gas lamps, reads, "Prospect of Whitby." The fog is so thick that the world seems to dissolve in its cold vapor. The Thames is so rank with the smell of dead fish and sewage that I can taste it, even though this is early summer and the stench is far from as bad as it gets. A distant foghorn bellows. I glance nervously around the deserted street. Shadwell is only a mile southeast of our home in Whitechapel, but it feels utterly remote, and the Prospect of Whitby is a notorious haunt of smugglers and thieves.

Mick O'Reilly aims his lantern into the narrow space between the tavern and the building next door. "Hurry, or we'll miss everything." Lanky and red-haired, fourteen years old, a former street urchin, Mick knows every inch of London's East End. Confident to a fault, he fears no danger until he's in the thick of it, and maybe not even then. He carries my tripod and flash lamp into the passage.

"After you, Sarah," Hugh says to me with a theatrical sweep of his hand.

I follow Mick, with my leather satchel and my trunk of photographic supplies. Hugh brings up the rear, lugging my heavy camera in its wooden case. An aristocrat from a wealthy family, he once belonged to the class of persons I only encountered when the wheels of their coaches splattered mud on me as I trudged along the street. A former popular man-about-high-society, he'd never worked a day in his life until two years ago, when his circumstances changed drastically for the worse. Now he and Mick are my partners in business, my comrades on late-night expeditions.

The river stench grows stronger. The fog dampens my face, invades my lungs. I shiver as anticipation mingles with dread and speeds up my heartbeat. At the end of the passage is a flight of wooden steps that lead to the water. They're slimy with algae. As we descend them, Hugh slips, stumbles, and curses under his breath.

"We should get hazard pay."

"We're paid quite well," I remind him. And we all enjoy the challenge. I'm as much attracted to danger as frightened by it—a quirk of my personality. But I sometimes yearn for the days when the most hazardous thing I did was taking portraits of fractious children at my photography studio. Now Mick, Hugh, and I are crime photographers, investigators, and reporters for the Daily World newspaper. Crime doesn't wait for morning, and scenes don't remain intact for long. The newspaper has informants who loiter around police stations, taverns, and other places where word from the streets comes in. The East End of London is rife with violence. Every day, sometimes more than once a day, I hear the knock at the door—or in the night, the rapping of a cane on my bedroom window—summoning my friends and me to a new scene. I've learned to sleep with one ear cocked and my equipment packed, ready to go.

"We won't keep gettin' paid unless we find somethin' good soon," Mick says. "Another deader from a brawl at a pub ain't gonna cut it."

That kind of crime scene, and many at which the victims were killed in alleys by cutpurses or at home by their relatives, constitutes most of our work. On the rare day without a murder, we photograph accident scenes. The inconvenient hours and hazardous conditions aren't the reason for our high salary. In the past, our photographs and investigations begot sensational stories that helped make the Daily World the bestselling paper in London and brought us the favor of its owner, Sir Gerald Mariner. But we've not produced anything lucrative in the six months since we solved the murder of England's top hangman, and our success has raised Sir Gerald's expectations.

"Mick is right," Hugh says. "We need another sensational murder case."

At the bottom of the stairs, we step onto black mud strewn with clamshells, rocks, dead fish, broken wine bottles, and clumps of debris. The low tide has exposed it all, like dirty secrets. I hear water lapping the shore, but the river is invisible under the shroud of fog. Voices and raucous laughter erupt nearby. To my left, some thirty paces distant, flickering lights from lanterns set on the mud illuminate shadowy human figures gathered near the water's edge. By now I have a second sense about crime scenes, and I know that this one is murder and the body hasn't been removed yet. We've a chance for good photographs. I've seen so many corpses that I've become inured, but I have an ever-present fear that the next will be the one I can't take.

"The hyenas have beaten us to the kill." Hugh's black humor doesn't hide how much he dreads the sight of death. His stomach is weaker than mine.

"What are we waiting for?" Mick says.

We trudge through the mud that sucks at our shoes. Buildings rise from a retaining wall that's coated with algae below the high-tide line. Boats sit on the exposed riverbed. Behind the Prospect of Whitby, people on a terrace lean over the railing. The crowd comes into focus as we approach. It's some dozen men and two women. Lewd cackles arise as they gaze at the ground in the center of the circle of lanterns. There I glimpse a pale human shape. We weave through the crowd, which smells of liquor. I take a deep breath, steel myself, and look down at the shape.

It's a woman lying on her back, completely naked. Her white skin gleams; her face is hidden by her long, tangled golden hair, which stirs in the moist wind. Full breasts with pink nipples point skyward. The river laps at her, covering her legs up to her knees with foam. She looks like a mermaid that has washed ashore—a wounded mermaid. Blood stains her hair near the scalp, and bruises mar her torso, arms, and thighs. Her knuckles are scraped, her fingernails ragged. My heart contracts as painfully as if squeezed by a fist. Crime scenes involving female victims are particularly difficult for me because I'm a woman myself and because of my past experiences.

"This could be our big break," Hugh says with a mixture of hope and shame. We've learned that a female victim is more interesting to the public than a male, and nudity is a titillating detail that sells newspapers. "But I'd hate to get it at this poor woman's expense."

"So would I." The spectators aren't the carrion-eaters; we are. We earn our "meat" from other people's misfortunes. I wish that just once I could save a victim, not take photographs for the public's ghoulish delight.

A big, burly fellow with whisker stubble shoves the man beside him and says, "Go on—I dare you." He and his comrade look to be English boatmen or dockworkers. Others among the men are pigtailed Chinese and dark-skinned Indians from the merchant ships or their local enclaves.

"He ain't got the balls," says one of the women. She's young, slim, and pretty, her black hair an upswept mass of ringlets, her dark eyes as sharp, hot, and glittering as fresh cinders. The neckline of her yellow frock is cut low to reveal as much of her bosom as the law permits.

The other woman giggles. She's plainer and plumper, with frizzed, puffed brown hair, and is dressed in blue. Both look akin to women of ill repute I have encountered. The man accepting the dare swaggers toward the body. Small and long-armed like a monkey, he crouches and squeezes the woman's breast. The crowd guffaws. Appalled by this taking of liberties with the dead, I look around for the police. They're nowhere in sight. I fear the police for reasons that stem from my recent as well as my distant past. Usually, when I arrive at a crime scene before they do, I'm glad, but tonight I wish they would come.

The monkey man calls to someone, "How's this for a picture?" He grins, his hand still holding the woman's breast.

Now I see a man with a camera on a tripod. He wears spectacles, a derby, and a rumpled jacket and trousers. I recognize him as a photographer from the Telegraph. The competition has beaten us to the crime scene.

"Put me in the picture too." Another man, clad in a sailor's cap and middy, lumbers over to the woman and thrusts his hand between her legs.

The pretty black-haired woman jeers, "You can't get any action with a live woman, so maybe you'll do better with a deader." She and her friend laugh.

I'm usually shy with strangers, but I say, "Take your hands off her!"

"Have some respect for the deceased," Hugh says, careful not to look at the victim. His complexion is green and sickly, even though her condition is far from the worst we've ever seen.

"Who're you?" The burly, whiskered man's puzzled glance takes in Hugh, who's dressed in an elegant gray summer suit and silk bowler hat, and me, prim in my bonnet, brown jacket, and modest brown frock, my ash-blonde hair braided in a neat crown around my head. Mick always looks scruffy, no matter how new his clothes are or how fresh his haircut, and he fits in with this rough crowd; but Hugh and I look distinctly out of place.

"We're from the Daily World," Hugh says, and introduces us with a debonair bow. "Miss Sarah Bain, Mr. Mick O'Reilly, and yours truly, Hugh Staunton."

"Ooh." The pretty woman's glittery eyes fix on Hugh. "I'll take him."

Tall, slender but muscular, with blond hair and noble features, Hugh is among the handsomest men in London.

Her friend pouts. "You take all the good ones, Rose."

Rose curls her arm around Hugh's and bats her eyelashes. "Buy us a drink?"

"I'm sorry, Miss Rose," Hugh says with his usual good manners. He pats her hand before gently detaching himself. "I'm working tonight." He's also not interested in women. His preference for men led to his estrangement from his family and social set, his downfall from his privileged life. He and I are the best of friends, our romantic affections engaged elsewhere.

Rose looks disappointed. "Maybe some other time?"

The whiskered man beholds us in surprise. "Hey, didn't you solve the murder of the hangman? I've heard of you. You're famous."

Our role in the hangman's murder investigation and the newspaper stories about us have made us celebrities—a mixed blessing.

"Hello, Lord Hugh, Mr. O'Reilly, and Miss Bain," says the photographer, whose name is Craig. "Here to get the goods for Sir Gerald Mariner and earn your daily gold-plated roast goose?" He's among many of our counterparts who envy our success and would love to take us down a notch. "Well, I got here first. Piss off."

Mick snorts in derision. "There's no dibs on crime scenes."

"We'll see about that." Mr. Craig moves toward me like a steamroller ready to flatten anything in its path. "This is no job for a woman, even if you do sleep with Sir Gerald Mariner."

It's not the first time I've been accused—wrongly so—of improper relations with my employer. I march toward Mr. Craig, my shoulders squared, my chin high. Under my sedate faŤade, I have a temper that surfaces on not always convenient occasions— usually when I perceive injustice to myself or other people— with sometimes catastrophic results. Already angry with the men molesting the dead woman, I feel the familiar heat in my blood. Mr. Craig is about to get a tongue-lashing at best or a wallop with my satchel at worst.

Mick reads my intent in my face and steps between Craig and me. "Leave Miss Sarah alone."

Craig laughs. "Or you'll—what?" Almost twenty years older than Mick, but some four inches taller and twenty pounds heavier, he raises his palm. "Get a spanking?"

Mick puts up his fists. I say, "Mick, don't." Concern for his safety cools my temper.

But Mick has a temper too, and it's been short lately. He's in love with Catherine Price, a beautiful young actress who's not in love with him and refuses to see him. Sometimes he takes out his hurt on people who cross him. Now he swings at Mr. Craig. As Craig dodges, he bumps against his camera. It teeters on its tripod, then falls with a thud. The lens pops off and rolls into the river. Foamy, dirty water washes into the round hole on the front of the camera, where the lens had been attached.

"You little bastard!" Craig gropes for the lens. "See what you've done?"

"I didn't even touch it," Mick says with innocent glee.

The crowd laughs while Craig collects his damaged equipment. He points a finger at my friends and me. "You're riding high for a fall. I'll laugh when you crash."

"Good riddance!" Mick calls as Craig stalks off.

Hugh addresses the crowd. "Ladies and gentlemen, this is a crime scene. Would you kindly remove yourselves before you contaminate it?"

Monkey Man pinches the woman's nipple before he rises. "Are you a copper now?"

"No, but I'm an experienced private detective," Hugh says. Before we started working for the Daily World, he and Mick and I had our own private detective agency. It was formed out of necessity when Hugh had to earn his own living and I lost my photography studio. Mick joined us after he ran away from an orphanage. "My friends and I solved not only the murder of England's top hangman but also the Robin Mariner kidnapping." We mustn't mention the Jack the Ripper murders, our biggest triumph. Our role in the case is a deep, dark secret.

"That so?" Monkey Man says with a challenging grin, "Well, let's see you solve this one." He points at the corpse.

"I'll certainly try," Hugh says. "Tell you what—you can help me."

"Help you how?"

"You're all witnesses who may know something that could crack the case. If you help me find the villain who killed this poor woman, then I'll get your names printed in the newspaper. With your photographs." Hugh gestures toward my camera and me.

I watch the suspicion on the people's faces turn to pleased surprise and hear murmurs of assent. Hugh's charm is his great strength as a detective.

"First things first," he says. "Who found the body?"

"It were us." The plain woman points to herself and an Indian man. "We were in the pub, and we came out for . . . well, a breath o' fresh air."

Hugh favors the woman with his best smile. "Then you're the most important witnesses of all." She simpers. "When was this?"

"About an hour ago."

"Exactly what did you see?"

She points at the victim. "Her, lyin' there just like that—naked as the day she were born."

"Did you see anyone around? Or hear anything out of the ordinary?" When she and the Indian say no, he asks the crowd, "What about the rest of you?"

Everyone replies in the negative.

I suppose one of these people might be the killer, but I can't believe he would risk staying at the scene instead of fleeing into the night. "Does anyone know the woman?" I ask.

Heads shake. The whiskered man says, "It's hard to tell, 'cause of her face."

The wind lifts the woman's hair, and I see what was hidden underneath. Her face is a mask of blood; her forehead, cheeks, nose, and chin scored by jagged red cuts. Dark, swollen bruises circle her throat; whoever strangled her left fingerprints. My stomach lurches, and vicarious pain stabs my own face. What monster could have done this? The savagery seems so vicious, so personal— almost worse than the blows to her head and body that must have caused her death.

"Gorblimey!" Mick says.

Hugh gulps; his face turns even paler. I watch him struggle not to be sick in front of the bystanders and lose their respect. He clears his throat and says, "Terrible, terrible. All the more reason why we must catch her killer." He sidles away from the corpse. "Have you noticed anyone behaving suspiciously in the neighborhood lately?"

The crowd moves with Hugh. I lug my equipment nearer to the body and spread the tripod. As I adjust its height, my gaze wanders to the woman. She commands my attention as if she's calling me in a voice that I perceive with some sense beyond ordinary hearing. I mount the camera on the tripod, and when I peer through the viewfinder and crank the bellows to adjust the focus, I see her more clearly than with my unaided eye. She's slender and well proportioned, with a tiny waist and long, shapely limbs. Her blonde hair appears natural, not darker at the roots. Her skin is smooth; she can't be much older than thirty. She might have been beautiful when alive. I wonder what her name is. Was she the beloved treasure of her mother and father? Although there's no ring on her finger, she could have been married. Did she kiss her husband goodbye when he went to work this morning, and put her children to bed tonight? Someone must have tortured and killed her and dumped her here like garbage. Someone else must be waiting and praying for her safe return. Aching with sorrow for a life stolen in its prime, I fill the flash lamp with powder and open the camera's shutter.

The flash powder ignites with a loud bang. In the momentary white-hot light, the woman's image blazes, the blood on her hair shiny and crimson as enamel, the bruises on her white skin like red tattoos. I remove the exposed glass negative plate, insert a fresh one. I take photographs from various angles and distances, and each time I note some new detail. Her hair isn't wet and stringy, which it would be if she'd just washed up from the river. There's mud on her arms and thighs. Long scuff marks in the muddy ground, trampled over with footprints, lead toward the stairs. I take some shots of the surrounding area. I don't see a knife or other weapon.

Now I have more than enough photographs for the newspaper, but not the most important one. Sir Gerald—and the public—will want to see the worst that the killer has done. I crouch by the woman and wince as I lift the hair away from her face. The golden strands feel like silk floss. I force myself to bear witness to her ravaged features, and inside me swells the urge to know who did the evil, and to see justice done. As I tuck her hair behind her ear, I feel a faint, fleeting, damp warmth on my bare wrist.

My heart jolts.

I freeze.

Then I hear a soft noise like liquid sucked through a whistle. I see mucous bubbles at her nostrils.

"Ma'am?" I say. "Can you hear me?"

She doesn't answer, doesn't move. I touch her shoulder. It's cold. Maybe I only imagined that she breathed; maybe the process of decay pushed air out of her dead lungs. But a wild hope fills me. I put my ear to her bruised chest and listen.

I jump to my feet, looking for Hugh and Mick. They've left the crowd to greet two police constables who are descending the stairs. Dressed in tall helmets and blue uniforms, the constables carry bulls-eye lanterns that cast bright beams of light through the fog. I run toward them, waving frantically, my usual fear of the police all but forgotten.

"Sarah, what is it?" Hugh says.

"She's alive!"

Pre-Order The Woman in the Veil:

Indiebound | Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iBooks