This is my first Whitechapel story. I don't have much in the way of preliminary remarks. For the purposes of this story, I've made Buchan Catholic. It is not incredibly important, but in case he says otherwise in the show, then just know that I've made that change myself. As far as I can remember, he mentions that he went to see his mother sing in a choir at her church in the second episode of the first series, but he doesn't elaborate more than that. It's not a terribly important point, but one I wanted to preemptively explain in case I missed the official line.

I hope you enjoy the story and please review no matter the case! Rated M for now, may go up to MA in future chapters.


He was absolutely gorgeous, there was certainly no denying that. There was something off about him, though. She watched as he fiddled with his tie, smoothed his waistcoat, and ran his hand over his hair in quick succession. And then proceeded to do it again. Maybe it was a nervous habit. He took a small jar out of his pocket, dipped a finger in it, and rubbed something on his temples. He seemed to calm after that. Odd man.

He was turning toward her now. Introducing himself. She tried to not look like she'd just sized him up and found him so very strange. That would probably only make him more nervous. She shuddered to think what that would look like.

"I am DI Chandler, this is DS Miles," he said in what she had to admit was a terribly pleasant voice. He gestured to the older man standing next to him and then extended his hand.

She shook it obligingly and gave him a tight smile. She was not expecting to receive good news.

"You are Ms. Parker, correct?"

She nodded.

"Doctor, actually, but it doesn't matter. Emma, please," she answered.

"You are a doctor and a secretary?"

"Second in command is probably a better way to describe it. Not a medical doctor, though. I have a PhD. I am Monsignor Garnet's assistant. I've been holding the fort since he disappeared." She stopped speaking abruptly. She knew she was rambling, trying to delay the inevitable.

Chandler nodded his understanding and looked to Miles before turning back to her.

"Would you mind following me?" Chandler asked, turning to gesture toward what Emma presumed to be his office.

"Of course," she said softly, following the pair of detectives through the rows of desks.

"Please have a seat," said Chandler as he closed the door. Miles remained standing while he sat behind his desk. "I need you to identify something for me."

"Anything," Emma said immediately, beginning to hope that they may have found her boss.

Chandler pulled a plastic evidence bag out of a box on the floor next to his chair. He placed it on the desk and slid it toward her.

"Do you recognize this?"

Emma picked up the bag and studied the item inside.

"This is Monsignor Garnet's pocket watch," she said slowly, recognizing the distinctive timepiece. "Where did you find it?"

"With…the body," Chandler answered, almost reluctantly.

There was a kind of muffled ringing in her ears.

"Wh – erm – wh –," her shallow breaths were making it hard to speak. "What body?"

"I am sorry to have to tell you that Monsignor Garnet has been killed," Chandler explained.

Emma shook her head.

"What do you mean 'been killed'? Someone – you mean – he was murdered?"

Chandler nodded. Emma sat in silence for a moment, trying to gather her thoughts.

"Has, um – has the archbishop been told? He should have been told before me."

"Not yet," Chandler answered carefully. "You filed the missing persons report and we couldn't find any family."

Emma nodded absentmindedly. The priest's family was virtually non-existent. His parents were long dead and his older brother had recently died after a long battle with cancer. No other siblings and no nieces or nephews. Little wonder, then, that he and Emma had been so close. He had no one else.

"What happened to him? Was it a mugging gone wrong?" She wasn't intimately acquainted with the Whitechapel area, but could not be ignorant of its reputation.

Chandler looked again to Miles.

"Difficult to say," the older man spoke for the first time. Clearly he was the native.

"What do you mean, difficult to say?" Emma almost demanded, the pitch of her voice climbing. "You found him! How you can say he was murdered if you have no idea how he died?"

"Well, that is to say, we have some idea," Chandler insisted quietly, trying to defuse Emma's temper. She supposed it was something they dealt with every day. "It isn't – it isn't very pleasant."

"Is there a particularly pleasant way to be murdered?" Emma countered.

Chandler folded his hands on his desk, resisting the urge to engage her anger.

Emma angrily wiped away a tear. She knew the grieving was inevitable, but she needed to hold it off until she found out what happened.

"She'll find out from the papers anyway," Miles said to Chandler, who cleared his throat and nodded.

"It appears that he was – ah – dismembered."

Emma's vision swam before her eyes. She rather wished she hadn't asked at all. The tears were falling thick and fast now and as she sniffed, a handkerchief appeared before her eyes. She looked up to find Chandler leaning over his desk to hand it to her.

"Thank you," she said thickly, gratefully taking the piece of white cloth. She dabbed at her eyes and cheeks, vaguely hoping her mascara hadn't run down her face. It was a stupid thing to think at such a time and she chastised herself for it.

Chandler watched the young woman compose herself. He'd had to take a moment himself after his preliminary investigation. The crime scene had been brutal, even by Whitechapel standards. Crime scenes, he should say. The four pieces of the body, which themselves had been mutilated, in addition to the head had been distributed throughout the district. It was only by luck that they had collected everything before something vital had been carried off by scavengers. They hadn't known the man was a priest before connecting him to the description provided by Emma. They still didn't know if it was relevant. Given his position and the highly unusual manner of death, it seemed unlikely that it wasn't.

"Is there anything you need from me? Any questions you need to ask?" Emma asked finally, placing the handkerchief on the corner of Chandler's desk.

"Do you know anyone who would want to harm Monsignor Garnet?"

Emma shook her head forcefully.

"No," she said insistently. "I mean, there were minor tiffs in the journals, but what scholar doesn't have those?"

"The journals?" Miles asked.

"Oh, um, academic journals, I mean," she explained. "He was the director of the Liturgy Office. He published regularly in theology journals. The kinds of people who publish in those will certainly trade insults, but they're almost always based in some kind of valid criticism and it's generally never more than sarcastic remarks in a footnote. There was never anything personal. He was well-liked."

"Would he have had business in Whitechapel?"

"We had business all over the diocese. The Liturgy Office is in charge of worship for the entire country. I would have to check his diary to see if he had anything particular here. His personal assistant usually kept track of that."

"I thought you were his assistant," said Miles, taking the seat next to hers.

"Not really," she said. "I am one of two assistant directors, so I fulfill a lot of the same responsibilities as he does. There are just too many requests for training and resources and he can't do it all himself."

Emma paused for a moment.

"Did, I should say," she muttered, once more reminded of the terrible reality.

She was stirred from her reverie when Chandler moved suddenly, reaching his hand into his jacket.

"I'm going to give you my card," he explained as he began to write on the back. "My mobile number is on the back if you remember anything else. You may want to warn his secretary that we'll be wanting a word."

"Of course," replied Emma, sliding the card into her wallet. She rose from her seat. "Is there anything else?"

Chandler shook his head and stepped around his desk and moved to open the door for her. She nodded her thanks and walked rather quickly toward the main door. She wasn't sorry to be leaving. Before either he or Miles could deflect her attention away from the whiteboard at the end of the room, Emma had already stopped in her tracks. She was horrified at the photos of the crime scenes, bloody limbs and all, taped underneath the neatly printed name: WILLIAM GARNET. She slowly approached the board, her fingers lightly touching the photo the medical examiner had taken of his face, the bloody stump that was left of his neck carefully cropped out.

"What did they do to him?" Emma whispered, her hand over her mouth.

"You don't want to be looking at these," said Miles, gently, but forcefully, guiding her out of the room.

She looked to Miles and then back to Chandler.

"What did they do to him?" She asked again, more insistent. "God, it looks like he was drawn and quartered."

Chandler's eyes took on a glint of interest. Miles never liked it when he got that look.

"What did you say?"

"His body – it wasn't just dismembered," she said, swallowing the bile. "He was disemboweled and quartered. I'm sure I don't need to tell you that it was the prescribed execution for those convicted of treason through the nineteenth century. It's what they did to the English martyrs."

Emma let herself slide willingly into her historian voice; anything to distance herself from the present.

"Who are the English martyrs?" Chandler asked, genuinely interested now. Perhaps this was their precedent?

Miles heaved a sigh. Emma heard him mutter something about never introducing her to someone named Buchan. She turned her attention back to the eager man in front of her. Ignoring reality really was for the best, she decided, as she realized once again how very attractive DI Chandler was.

"They were mostly priests and religious who were hanged, drawn, and quartered for high treason throughout the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries," Emma explained. "Forty have been canonized, but there are about a hundred and fifty more who have been either formally beatified or whose venerations are approved."

"Forty?" Chandler asked, sounding vaguely worried. Before Emma could question him, he spoke again. "Do you have a card I could have? In case I need to contact you again and don't have the file readily available."

"Yes, of course," said Emma, reaching into her bag for her card case. She pulled out a pen and scribbled a number on the back. "And my mobile, as well."

"Thank you."

"Yes, well, I should be getting back. I need to tell the archbishop what's happened," Emma said with a sigh.

"I will be in touch," said Chandler, already turning back toward the squad room. He looked back to see that Emma was already half way down the stairs. He certainly didn't blame her for wanting to put distance between herself and this place.

"And what kind of historical copycat have we got now?" Miles asked with a long suffering sigh.

"I am not looking for copycats, Miles," answered Chandler wearily. He really needed to do something about that reputation. "I need to talk to Dr. Llewellyn. There is a chance she missed something in the autopsy."

Chandler walked back to his office to grab his watch and phone before heading back out toward the staircase down to the medical examiner's office.

"Kent," Chandler called upon reaching the squad room door. "Phone Ed and tell him to put together all the information he can on the English martyrs."

"Sir?" Kent asked, though his hand already was on the phone's receiver. The young man was loyal almost to a fault.

Chandler shook his head. Buchan would know what he meant, no use wasting time explaining something he knew nothing about. He'd only half understood Emma's explanation, but the number forty had certainly caught his attention.

Caroline Llewellyn was never short of work as a medical examiner in Whitechapel. But even with everything she'd seen, the remains of William Garnet remained to be among the worst. She had spent two days on the report and still had not been able to come to a conclusion for cause of death. Too much had been done to the body to determine with any certainty what had finally finished the poor man off.

"Caroline, darlin', how're you doing?" Miles said as he entered autopsy, Chandler following just behind.

"If you're coming for answers, Ray, I don't have any yet," she said with a sigh.

"Did you happen to notice any ligature marks on his neck?" Chandler asked without greeting, focused as he was on trying to avert his eyes from the remains without anyone noticing he was doing so.

"There isn't much left of it thanks to the multiple blows of the axe used to decapitate him, but I can have another look," said Llewellyn, pulling on a pair of rubber gloves.

She and Ray leaned over to examine the head while Chandler remained rooted near the door. He stood with his hands tightly clasped behind his back, resisting the urge to fiddle with his cufflinks. Though he had tried to continue to wear the rubber band Morgan had given him before she was killed, its efficacy had been destroyed upon her death. Rather than reminding him to step back from his control issues, it simply reminded him of her and how her death had happened in his own station while she was under his protection. If anything, it had come to symbolize what happened when he relinquished control. He certainly didn't need any reminders of that.

"I think there might be something here," Llewellyn said, pulling Chandler out of his morose memories.

"The woman who reported him missing said it looked like he'd been drawn and quartered," Chandler explained. "Does that fit the evidence?"

Llewellyn looked pensive for a moment before returning her attention to the remains.

"It would certainly explain the mutilation," she said, gesturing to the torso. "At first glance, it just looks like gutting, but drawing is specifically emasculation and disemboweling. It would have occurred while he was still alive."

Chandler gaped at her. Llewellyn nodded back at the unspoken question.

"The lack of severe ligature marks around the neck suggests that he was not hung for very long, which fits the pattern. A person was hanged and then cut down before dead, emasculated and disemboweled while still alive, and only then were they beheaded before being quartered."

Miles spoke first.

"Emasculated?" He asked, sounding like he didn't really want to know the specifics.

"In contrast to castration, emasculation is the complete removal of the genitals," said Llewellyn. "Which is what we have in this case."

"Could he have been a paedo?" Miles asked Chandler. "Maybe it was revenge."

Chandler shook his head.

"I don't think so," he said thoughtfully. "Emma said this manner of death was reserved for those convicted of high treason. If it had been sexually motivated, the killer likely would have only emasculated him, rather than go through the whole process of hanging, drawing, and quartering. But we'll look into it. It wouldn't be the first time a killer tried to hide their primary motivations in other methods."

"Emma, is it?" Miles joked. Of course he would latch onto that.

Chandler grimaced at him.

"It's what she told us to call her," he said sourly. The woman was certainly attractive, but his track record spoke for itself. No use courting trouble when plenty found him on its own initiative. "Thanks, Caroline."

"I should be thanking you," said Llewellyn with a laugh. "I'll be able to finish this report now."

Kent met Chandler and Miles on the main landing, Buchan in tow.

"I don't have any modern case history for you, Joe, but there are descriptions of this type of execution in the archive," Buchan stated without preamble, for once. "There are also descriptions of the martyrs themselves, though it is primarily in religious literature."

"Shall we?" Chandler asked, already turning around to go back down the stairs.

"Oh yes, of course," said Buchan, hurrying to catch up.

Chandler stopped and turned to look back at Miles and Kent.

"Miles," said Chandler. "Look into Garnet's background. Just to rule out…anything."

Miles nodded, wisely remaining silent on the matter. Chandler didn't want to get any rumors started if there was nothing in the victim's past to warrant it. The press would run with the story like an untrained dog if they detected even the mere suggestion of it.

"Am I to understand that the young woman who came in today is Dr. Emma Parker?" Buchan asked almost breathlessly as they descended the stairs to the basement.

Chandler stopped and glanced sideways at Buchan, who looked almost sheepish in response.

"Dr. Parker did a talk at my mother's church," he explained quickly. "She is quite something."

Chandler gave a non-committal hum in response and resumed the descent. He didn't particularly want to hear her praises sung. Not that he had anything against the woman, but he remembered what had happened after he'd done the same to Morgan.

"Yes," Buchan continued, oblivious to Chandler's discomfort. "It was on religious practices in the Restoration period. Fascinating, of course, what with Charles II's close association with Catholics and Parliament's continued refusal to even consider toleration legislation."

Against his better judgment, he was interested.

"I thought she worked in the Liturgy Office," he said, remembering clearly that she'd said she was the assistant director. He still wasn't quite sure what the Liturgy Office did, but he was sure that was what she'd said.

"Yes, yes she does," Buchan said with an enthusiastic nod. "She's also interested in history, so she often combines the two. Very sharp."

"Often?"

Buchan again looked slightly embarrassed.

"I may have read an article or two she's written. Gone to a few talks," he said, cheeks red.

Could it be possible? Did Buchan have a crush? Chandler didn't tease him, though. That was one thing that certainly united the two men. Both were too easily embarrassed, especially when it came to such things as women. Chandler knew the public perception of the hyper-masculine world of the police force, and knew that to a certain extent it was true; especially in East London. But he had never been able to join in on the boasting and graphic stories of sexual prowess. Thankfully, those who worked closest with him were either men like Buchan and Kent, who seemed to have no such stories, or Miles and Mansell, who knew him well enough to not do it in front of him.

"Well," Buchan said, clearing his throat. He was more comfortable back in his archive. "As to the martyrs. She said there were forty, correct?"

Chandler nodded.

"She said forty were canonized," Chandler clarified, not entirely sure what the difference was. He knew it meant they were saints, but any more than that was unclear.

"Yes, she would make that distinction," Buchan replied, sounding almost smug on her behalf. "There were, overall, more than three times as many as that who were killed in the period we're talking about, but not all have become saints."

"She said the others were – em – beatified." Chandler knew even less about what that meant.

"Beatification is the step before canonization," Buchan explained. "And others still have had their veneration approved, but have not been beatified. By that, it means that places – usually shrines or locations significant in the martyrs' lives – where there is an established practice of veneration receives official approval for continued veneration. To put it simply, it means that the Church recognizes the importance of the martyr to the local community, even though sainthood is not on the table."

"How does all of this apply to our case?"

"I think you will find it interesting that our victim shares a surname with one of the canonized forty," Buchan began in that storytelling voice he was so fond of. "Father Thomas Garnet was a Jesuit priest, the nephew of the Jesuit superior, Henry Garnet. Young Thomas had quite an adventurous life during his education and early days as a priest. He was captured once while trying to cross the Channel from Calais to England, imprisoned, and subsequently released. Shortly after the Gunpowder Plot, he was again arrested. This time, he was tortured for information about his uncle, who was so centrally implicated in the treason and who was eventually executed for his supposed participation. After more than half a year in the Tower, he was exiled to Flanders."

Buchan was so thoroughly involved in the narrative now that he likely would have continued even if Chandler had left the room.

"But did he stay away? Oh no, not our young Thomas. He returned to England a year later, but his freedom on English soil did not last long. Not six weeks after his return, he was arrested by an apostate priest. Father Garnet was offered the choice of taking the Oath of Allegiance to King James I or execution. I am sure, Joe, you can guess which he chose."

Chandler raised an eyebrow at his archivist, but remained silent. Buchan had a tendency to get annoyed if people actually answered his rhetorical questions.

"Father Garnet, aged just 32, was put to death at Tyburn in 1608 for high treason. Hanged, drawn, and quartered; just like our own Monsignor Garnet," Buchan finally finished. "I might also add that the date on which Monsignor Garnet was murdered, the twenty-fifth of October, is the feast day of the English martyrs."

"Are there any other significant dates for these martyrs?" Chandler asked.

Buchan shook his head.

"Not in the coming weeks, at least," he said. "The next memorial day in the calendar is the first of December. Other than that, there may be individual anniversaries of executions, but nothing that is officially celebrated."

"Okay," said Chandler, only slightly relieved. "Put together a list of all the dates you can find. And find out if our Garnet is in any way related to the original. If any of the other martyrs have descendants who are Catholic, it would be good to know."

"I am on the case, Joe," said Buchan dutifully. He looked apprehensive for a moment. "Um, Joe, if Dr. Parker comes back in, could you…"

Chandler smiled.

"I will be sure to bring her down here."

Buchan smiled back broadly and very nearly skipped back to his desk. There was certainly a bounce there.

Chandler walked a little more slowly than usual up the stairs to the squad room, allowing himself to get lost in thought on the way. There was a lot to think about where the case was concerned, to be sure, but that wasn't the direction his thoughts were going in. He was thinking about the woman that had put Buchan in such a tizzy. It wasn't hard to imagine how that could happen, and not just to Buchan, but to any man. He found himself…not immune to Emma Parker. Try as he might, God knows. She was smart enough to have greatly impressed Ed Buchnan who was, as naïve and awkward as he might be, easily one of the most intelligent men Chandler knew. And she was certainly a sight for sore eyes; fair, clear skin, bright green eyes, impossibly red hair. She dressed well, too. He of all people knew bespoke tailoring when he saw it. Her tailor definitely knew how to play to her strengths…

"Joe!" Miles yelled, standing directly in front of him.

Chandler jumped at the sound and proximity. He must have let himself get a little too carried away with his musings. Well, that wouldn't do at all. Loss of control was not something he usually allowed, especially not now. He knew where it led. Whitechapel didn't need any more martyrs than it had already claimed.