51 pages • 1 hour read
Kerri ManiscalcoStalking Jack the Ripper
Fiction | Novel | YA | Published in 2016A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 7-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 7 Summary: “A Study in Secrets”
Audrey is withdrawn and preoccupied, not eating much and being distracted at mealtimes. She is obsessing over the case, and Nathaniel tells her that he is worried about her.
Under the pretense of going to bed early, Audrey sneaks into her father’s study to find records of Miss Nichols’s employment. She uses a brass key to open his desk. She finds no further clues; the records merely contain records of Miss Nichols’s pay while she was employed. However, Audrey is surprised and unnerved to find an article on Miss Smith’s murder; she wonders why her father would have kept this article.
Chapter 8 Summary: “Bring Out Your Nearly Dead”
Audrey and Thomas meet at the tearoom in the Great Western Royal Hotel, where they exchange flirtatious banter. Thomas buys Audrey a flower and then smokes haughtily; Audrey is irritated by him but also finds herself attracted to him.
Thomas correctly deduces that Audrey is planning to take the train to Reading to search for clues about Smith, and he has brought a ticket to accompany her. They board the train; Thomas is fidgety as he finds traveling boring. Audrey explains that they are going to see a man called Aldous Thornley who used to be the family’s valet.
When they arrive, a brusque young woman with a baby on her hip answers the door; she tells Audrey and Thomas that Thornley is close to death. Audrey implores the young woman (Thornley’s granddaughter) to allow them to see him, and she relents.
Chapter 9 Summary: “Message from the Grave”
Thornley is thin, wasted away, and covered with oozing sores. Audrey asks how her father knew Smith. At the same time, the young woman appears at the bedroom doorway and encourages her grandfather to tell Audrey and Thomas the truth. Thornley asks his granddaughter to fetch them tea and then tells them that Audrey’s uncle, Jonathan, was engaged to Smith. He refers to “dark secrets hidden within the wall” and the fact that “he knows what happened! He was there that night!” (98). Cryptically, Thornley says that “A-Alistair knows” (99) but dies before he can say more.
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Mary See”
As Audrey and Nathaniel sit together in the park, they discuss death, and Audrey asks if their father knows Alistair. Nathaniel confirms that their father does know an Alistair, but Audrey is evasive about the reason behind her inquiry. Audrey admits that she snuck into their father’s study; she pretends that this is where she saw Alistair’s name. Nathaniel explains that Alistair was their father’s old carriage driver; he now works on a ship called the Mary See. Nathaniel leaves, and Audrey goes to try to find the ship. Thomas, who is out walking a borrowed dog, runs into Audrey; Audrey is suspicious that Thomas has been following her.
They go together to the docks. Audrey asks about the whereabouts of Alistair Dunlop to the captain of a ship. He reluctantly explains, after Thomas and Audrey threaten to reveal that he is clearly selling cargo on the side, that Alistair is unloading in a nearby alley.
Chapter 11 Summary: “Something Wicked”
Audrey, attracting many stares in the black riding breeches that she is wearing, strolls through a tavern with Thomas to the back alleyway. They can’t see Alistair, but the woman working at the bar confirms that he should be in the alley. They return again and see a pool of blood. Thomas commands the dog, Toby, to find the source of the blood, and they follow Toby as he runs down alleyways. The dog leads them to a man—Alistair—slumped against a wall. Audrey assumes that he is drunk, but when she touches him his head, almost completely severed from his neck with a deep slash wound, lulls sickly to one side. The man quickly dies.
Later, a detective inspector arrives to question Audrey at her home. Nathaniel comforts Audrey, and Audrey manages to convince him to let her invite Thomas to come to their home so that they can discuss the case; although it is indecent, under the circumstances, Nathaniel relents.
Nathaniel and Aunt Amelia, who has arrived at the house, tell Audrey that Audrey’s father is arranging for Audrey to marry an unknown man. The news catches Audrey completely off guard though she secretly wonders whether the man is Thomas.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Family Ties”
Audrey stitches with her aunt for two hours. When Thomas arrives, they talk in the drawing room. Audrey feels slightly awkward being alone with him in her home; he is flirtatious and inappropriate and makes Audrey feel both tempted and embarrassed. They discuss Alistair’s murder—the man was murdered with a sharpened gear, which was also used at the other murders they are investigating. They discuss the fact that the murderer must have been tracking them and intervened before they could talk to Alistair.
They lean toward each other, about to kiss, when a clattering noise startles them, and they sit apart again. One of Uncle Jonathan’s servants arrives with an urgent message; Jonathan has been arrested under suspicion of murder, and the police are going through his laboratory. Thomas and Audrey rush to the lab. One of the policemen, Superintendent William Blackburn, introduces himself and offers to explain the situation to Audrey, telling her that “it doesn’t look very good” for her uncle (133).
Chapters 7-12 Analysis
In this section, Maniscalco continues to make intertextual references that guide plot and character development. Chapter 11, titled “Something Wicked,” features the murder of Alistair Dunlop. Thomas and Audrey later conclude that the murderer was likely stalking them and murdered Alistair Dunlop just before they reached him. The allusion to the line “something wicked this way comes” (4.1.45) from Shakespeare’s play Macbeth is appropriate in these circumstances and denotes evil actions and deceptive behavior. Maniscalco also intentionally draws narrative parallels to the character of Macbeth; the once beloved and trusted Macbeth embarks on a wicked trail of murder, and his mental health declines because of his actions and by dread that he will be discovered and killed. This reference to Macbeth mirrors Nathaniel’s increasingly erratic behavior, and Maniscalco plants clues that Nathaniel is not as trustworthy as he may appear through his increasing distress.
Audrey misattributes Nathaniel’s stress to his concern about their father: “I could tell by the way his shoulders slumped slightly forward, as if they were growing weary from carrying a heavy load, that Father’s ill health was weighing on him” (70). In fact, Nathaniel is actually worried because his sister and uncle are investigating the murders for which he is responsible. Ironically, Audrey considers the identity of the murderer as she is relaxing with her brother in Hyde Park: “[I]t bothered me that such a savage could be walking amongst us” (104). Maniscalco plants this subtle clue to connect Nathaniel and the murderer in the minds of readers.
Maniscalco continues to cast doubt on other characters by planting red herrings about Thomas and Audrey’s father. As Audrey discovers the connections of the murdered individuals to her own household, she wonders, “[W]hat connected my father to these two murdered women?” (87). Furthermore, Thomas makes a sinister comment about the fact that he has heard of sharpened gears (the murder weapon) before; “It’s made of metal and has sharp ends. Any madman or drunk can manage killing someone with it. I, myself, have sharpened quite a few” (124).
A romantic connection continues to develop between Audrey and Thomas. At the teahouse, they tease each other flirtatiously, illustrating both characters’ quick wit and intelligence, as well as their mutual attraction. Tellingly, when Nathaniel explains that her father is planning a match for her, Audrey thinks immediately of Thomas because he is a suitable match: “Could his flirtations be real, then?” (120), she wonders, with an inkling of hope.
The theme of Women’s Roles in Late Victorian England continues to be prevalent in this section. In her work and interests, Audrey continues to flout societal expectations: “I tried imagining myself chattering on about a napkin design, but my thoughts kept turning to deceased bodies, and I laughed at my failure to even picture being a so-called normal young lady” (85). Audrey is attracted to topics considered unsuitable for young women and resents being told to curb her interests. Audrey’s Aunt Amelia, who values prettiness and decorum, is appalled when Audrey arrives home covered in blood, having discovered the body of Alistair Dunlop. Aunt Amelia, in her values and lessons, comes to symbolize society’s expectations for the kind woman Audrey should become.
On the other hand, Thomas, like Audrey, flouts social conventions. In the tearoom, he haughtily smokes in front of Audrey: “[S]moking in front of a girl without her permission was against social mores, but Thomas didn’t seem to care for that rule one bit” (80). His flirtations with Audrey are also inappropriate. Although this embarrasses Audrey, it also attracts her, as Thomas’s behavior represents a rejection of societal norms: “[I]t was nice having an acquaintance as abnormal in society’s eyes as I was” (126). As a man, Thomas does not face nearly as much scrutiny or reprimanding when he acts outside the realm of gentlemanly etiquette. With the contrast between the ways in which Audrey and Thomas are treated for their unique behavior, Maniscalco comments on how much more difficult it is for women to break social norms than it is for men.
Gothic imagery continues in these chapters when Audrey sneaks into her father’s study, which characterizes as a “crypt” for the “blackness covering everything like spilled ink” and the portrait of an ancestor posing in a pool of blood over a slain beast (73). These setting details cue the reader to expect sinister discoveries in the study and further the Gothic themes of violent death and family secrets.
Maniscalco uses Gothic imagery directly by including illustrations and images between chapters. At the end of Chapter 8 is the picture of the corpse of a child who died of tubercular leprosy (90), which sets the scene for the disturbing condition in which Audrey and Thomas find Thornley in the next chapter. These disturbing images, as well as the raging storm described in these chapters, add a sense of suspense and disquiet typical of Gothic literature, particularly of the work of American author Edgar Allan Poe. The line “he knows the dark secret hidden within the wall” (98) references Poe’s story “The Black Cat,” in which police find a body hidden behind a brick wall in a basement.
