A/N - Whist this doesn't give any actual spoilers, it does refer to the cases from Episodes 3 and 4, so if you've not yet seen those episodes, I'd suggest you wait till you've seen those episodes before reading further.

Part 9

William arrived at Scotland Yard in a foul mood. He didn't like to admit it, but Mr Trewsbury had got to him, and he'd told more husbands, wives, and families about their loved ones deaths then he'd had hot dinners.

He'd left Eliza at her office totally focused on Clara's case, which he hoped meant that it would keep her busy and away from him long enough to do what he needed to do. He needed space to concentrate and didn't need her distraction this afternoon.

"Ah Duke." Detective Phillips caught him in the corridor as he walked to his office.

"Yeah,"

"This message came for you while you were out," Phillips said, holding out a folded note.

William took it from him, unfolded it and read it.

B Sherwood, 142 York Grove, New cross. M

William had to admit, Moses had come up with something pretty darn fast. He still didn't like him, but he was beginning to perhaps see why Eliza went to him to get her information.

William pulled out his pocket watch. It was just after 1. He gave a heavy sigh, pondering his next steps in this investigation.

"Have we heard back from any of the banks about Barnaby Sherwood yet?" He asked Phillips.

"Not yet, they have to check employment records, so might take a day or two."

"We don't have a day or two," William growled with frustration. "Right, you and Honeychurch, with me."

If this was the only lead they had, he was going with it.

York Grove was a long road with lots of small run down, one up one down house's. It was busy with people and carriages, and it wasn't going to be easy to be inconspicuous as three policemen looking round a house.

It took a while but they finally located the house and William walked up the steps with PC Honeychurch behind him and banged on the front door, while Phillips went down the steps and looked through the small window at the floor below.

"Looks a bit deserted Duke," Phillips called out.

William looked around the street and saw an older woman, dressed in worn out work clothes sitting out the front of her house in a chair with a cup and saucer. She seemed to be watching the world go by, and she'd certainly noticed them.

"Excuse, I'm Detective Inspector Wellington," William called from the top step to the woman. "You wouldn't happen to know who lives here?"

"There's a young lad, that lives there. Haven't seen him for a while though. He's not often around," she called back.

"Can you tell me what he looks like?" He asked. The woman took a second to take a sip of her tea before replying.

"Tall, fair haired, not particularly much to look at through." That description could describe half of London, William thought.

"You want me to break the door?" Phillips asked quietly, as he joined William and PC Honeychurch on the top steps. William nodded, they needed to look around, and he didn't want to wait for an invitation.

"Just try and do it without making a scene."

Phillips turned the door handle and gave the wooden door a good shove with his whole body. It didn't take much to open it. They glanced around and tried to make it seem like the door had been always open. William and Phillips drew their guns, and William motioned for PC Honeychurch to wait outside while they went it.

Carefully and quietly William and Detective Phillips entered the house to make a search. Slowly they walked in, listening for noise, guns held firm. William motioned for Phillips to go upstairs, while he took the main floor.

The house was dark and lacked basic furniture or lighting. As the women had suggested, it didn't seem very lived in. The fireplaces didn't look like they had been used recently. The drawing room was cold and empty, and the dinning room and kitchen not much better.

William found the door, which led to the downstairs, and what would normally be considered the servants room. The door was locked, but William gave it a kick to open it. It looked even darker down there then the main floor and the small downstairs window that Phillips had looked through seemed to not let in much daylight. Slowly he walked down the narrow staircase.

The downstairs room was one large dark and dusty room and it was mostly empty. William saw a candlestick with a partly melted candle, and a packet of matches on a small table next to the stairs. Once he was happy no one was there, he lowered his gun, and lit the candle.

Taking in his surrounding with more light, he could see the room more clearly. There was a mattress on the floor with just dirty pillow and a thin blanket, and a small fireplace, which was cold but had ashes in, so had clearly been used recently. However, there were no clothes, or wardrobe, or anything that else that might suggest someone lived here.

Slowly William turned around and held up the candle as he took in the wall behind him. He couldn't hide his shock, as he heard Phillips walking down the stairs.

"Nothing upstairs Duke… What the hell?"

What the hell indeed… Both of them stared wide-eyed at the collage of photographs and newspaper cuttings that were almost nailed to the wall. There must have been maybe 40 or 50 photographs, all of dead women, William reckoned, as he looked over the wall, and tons of newspaper cuttings related to different murders.

William stared in disbelief, as he looked over the pictures and picked out the photographs of the women from the files they've been going through. He found Sara Gilbert easily and then Hannah Sadler, along with some women he didn't recognize from their files. There were undoubtedly more dead women here then just the 6 they knew of.

Then something else, in the far corner of the wall from him caught his eye, something very familiar. He took a dew steps closer to the large newspaper cutting, and he stared at it, and the ones around it. He felt his blood run cold.

It was the police times cover of Eliza's case of ghostly terror, and around it was cuttings of the suffragette bomb plot with his name all over it, and the coverage of the foiled forgery gang, with both their names together in black and white.

If whoever was doing this wanted his attention, they had it, in full now.

As William had suspected, Eliza didn't wait long to go and find Moses to see if he had any information for her. Moses tried his best to distract her, send her away elsewhere, but Eliza could always detect when Moses was lying to her. Despite his best efforts, she knew he was playing her for a fool, and he'd buckled and told her he'd given the address straight to The Inspector instead.

Furious wasn't nearly a strong enough word to describe how mad Eliza was. In fact, after she left Moses and found a carriage to take her straight to Scotland Yard, her anger only grew along the journey. William was about to get a piece of her mind.

"Where is he?" She declared angrily to Detective Phillips as she stormed into the main office building and saw him walking towards her in the corridor.

"In his office?" Phillips said slowly, as he backed well away from her. Eliza didn't stop, she moved quickly passed him, with a face like thunder. She saw William's office door was open and headed straight to it.

"William Wellington you absolute…" she raged as she stormed into his office, with every curse word she knew running through her mind.

"Eliza…" William said politely, knowing what was coming. He stood up from his desk quickly and walked over to close his office door, though he was pretty sure that wasn't going to hold the sound of her shouting.

"How dare you!" She fumed at him.

"How dare I what?" He tried to pretend he didn't know what she meant, but he knew full well why she was mad. He was more annoyed that Moses hadn't bought him more time.

"Oh don't you give me the innocent act! You know exactly what I'm talking about. I didn't realize you and Moses had become such good friends!"

"We're not," he clarified seriously.

"Well you seemed quite happy to ask him for his information! The information I asked for, and then, you tell him not to tell me! How's that work?"

"Eliza I needed that information straight away. I couldn't wait for whenever you decided it was worth me knowing." William tried to keep calm for once, but that was quite hard when she was shouting at him.

"Excuse me! I thought I was working this case with you, my mistake!" Eliza started pacing, "You had no right to do that."

"No right to do what? Try and keep you safe?" William's own frustration was rising and he couldn't help but raise his own voice.

"Keep me safe! This had nothing to do with that. You just can't take that I might have got some vital piece of information before you."

"Oh come on I couldn't careless about that. What I care about is that I know you, you would have gone straight to that house, by yourself, without me or any back up."

"You don't know that," she returned, but she knew he was probably right.

"Do you want to know what we found in that house?" William shouted as she stood still again, and glared her anger at him.

"He's got pictures, of dead women. Loads of them! 12 dead women at the last count, and those are the ones we can identify. He had them all laid out like some sort of trophy."

Eliza shook her head, he was not winning this one, she was not letting him off the hook. She had just as much right to be there as he did. She opened her mouth to reply but William didn't let her get a word in.

"He had cuttings, of our work, mine and yours. He wants Scotland Yard to notice him. He knows we've work together, he knows to get my attention he only has to get to you!"

Eliza went to speak but she held back, something flashed in William's eyes, a fear she'd never noticed before. It was just for a moment, but it was there, and made her stop.

"Now you can hate me as much as you like Eliza, but your safety is important to me, and I will not apologise for that!"

He was now shouting at her, and staring at her straight in the eyes, almost pleading with her to listen to him, hear the words he wasn't saying to her. She paused just for a moment and narrowed her eyes at him.

"We are not finished with this conversation William," She told him coldly, but her anger slightly dispersed. She wasn't afraid, but she could see his concern for her was there and genuine.

"Fine," William returned, his anger slowly calming.

"Now I'm going to go outside and ask PC Honeychurch to escort you home in a carriage, and he will stay there until I come and see you. Is that clear?"

Eliza rolled her eyes, shook her head and growled at him. He just had to take over didn't he? Had to send her home in a carriage with police protection. Had to…. Eliza stopped as something clicked in her mind.

William turned round to walked to his door, but she grabbed his arm to stop him, pulling him back round to look at her.

"That's it William," she said, strangely calm after their shouting just moments earlier. Her mind was suddenly whirling.

"What is?" William asked confused.

"A carriage. He must have a carriage. He's a carriage driver."

"What?" William asked confused, having no idea what she was talking about, because she hadn't actually given him a full sentence, and he hadn't suddenly turned into a mind reader.

"Think about it, we all do it everyday, get in a carriage, go somewhere. I've taken about 5 today, you don't think about the person driving it. If he drives a carriage, he could arrange to pick up these women any time, see who they meet, befriend them, but not enough for anyone to notice them…"

"I thought he was a banker?" William asked, wondering how she had made a jump to a carriage driver.

"Have you found any evidence of that? He might have just said he was a banker, to sound successful. Maybe he was a banker, I don't know, but he has access to a carriage and a horse. He'd be able to create a trusting relationship with each of these women, move the bodies at night without being noticed."

William rubbed his beard and thought for a moment processing Eliza's words in his own mind. Everything she was saying made perfect sense. She was perhaps on to something.

"You're right, that's a strong possibility. Each one of the women that we know about, they were on their way to somewhere that they never turned up to."

They both sighed, and stared at each other. This was bad. This was very, very bad. They were both quiet for a moment, while they breathed and gathered their thoughts.

A gentle knock on Williams door made them both jump. Phillips opened the door and carefully leaned his head round, unsure what sort of a reception he might get, having heard their shouting.

"Duke, I thought you should know, there's a couple at the front desk. They want to report their daughter missing," he told them calmly.

Eliza and William shared a look, and they knew things were about to get much worse.

To be continued….