Eventually, we all found ourselves crowded into the common room, staring at the television. Every once in a while, the news would fill us in on some aspect of what was going on outside. The victim was female again. Her name was Catherine Lord. She worked at a pub in the City. She had last been seen leaving after they closed at midnight. A coworker had walked her to her car. CCTV had caught her car pulling away. Footage from various traffic cameras tracked her from there. She had not driven home. Instead, she had driven to the location of the fourth murder. Her empty car had been found three streets away from Wexford, and while there was a partial CCTV record of her walking away from it, no one could explain what she was doing or where she was going. The news showed a picture of her, taken earlier that evening. Catherine Lord had been beautiful, with bright strawberry blond hair, and she looked barely older than us. She wore a white Victorian-style dress with a tight bodice and lots of lace. Her pub had been hosting a Ripper night special, and she and all the other bar staff were in costume. The news couldn’t get enough of this—a pretty girl in a Victorian dress. The perfect victim.

That girl had died just outside my door. It was possible she was still in that white tent. Her dress would no longer be white.

“Julianne,” Claudia said, appearing at the door, “come here, please.”

Jazza looked at me, then stood and went out of the room. She was still gone when we were all taken over to lunch as a group soon after. It was absolutely pouring now, but that didn’t slow down any of the activity outside. The police had moved the media away. We could see them all huddled down at the end of the street, held off by a few police officers. They had their cameras trained on us, beckoning us to come closer. To combat this, the school was making a bunch of teachers stand out in the rain and haul anyone back who wanted to go be on television. The police had more or less taken over the streets and the square. It was now a given that we would only be permitted to go from our dorms to the dining hall or library. Any attempt to walk in any other direction was met by flailing arms and a shooing motion.