"You need to restrain her so I can see what we're dealing with."
Even a doctor as inured to life in the brutal East End as Blake had never seen anything like this.
The examination only made her writhe more, though the sounds the hapless woman was making now were more like…
He found a trace of greenish black powder on her genitals. He shook his head. "Cantharides. Also referred to as Spanish fly. A powerful aphrodisiac. It can be eaten or absorbed through the skin. Whoever did this exposed her to it in some way, either with his hand or genitals. I am hoping he poisoned himself too, but I can't be sure."
"So she's been half swived to death?" his young colleague gasped.
"Nearly all the way by the look of it. It causes kidney failure. The Marquis de Sade once poisoned an entire orgy full of prostitutes with some laced sweets. We need to get some fluid into her, now."
It felt like the longest night of Blake's life as he and Dr. Herriot tried to save the girl's life. She did not have the acute stomach pains associated with the ingestion of the poison, but her kidneys had already started to fail, and thus her heart and lungs.
Poor Molly had eventually shouted and begged and sworn herself hoarse. It was only as she began to weaken from all the poisons in her system that she calmed down.
"Who did this to you! Who did this?" Blake asked her for the hundredth time.
At last her wild-eyed look calmed for a moment and she began to register some sense. "A man, tall, dark, like you. Only thinner. Meaner. Younger," she croaked.
"Where did he pick you up? Bethnal Green?"
She nodded weakly.
"Eyes, what color? His clothes, a name, anything."
At her look of alarm, Blake said quietly, "I know you don't want to speak for fear of the police. But the time for you to worry about that is long past. You're dying, child. You need to help me get whoever did this, and stop him from doing it to anyone again."
"I never saw his eyes. Dark, I think. Clothes were evening ones. Black. One thing, though. He couldn't manage. You know. Like he was an old bloke or something."
"Then what did he-"
She gestured a couple of times.
Dr. Herriot began to gag and fled the room.
Blake gulped and shook his head. "My God." He looked at her again. "Did anyone else see him, any of your friends?"
"It was a cold evening, funny time of day," she rasped. "About four, it was. Not too many of us working yet. I don't think anyone else saw him. You'll go see my sisters, won't you?"
She gave him her address. "Tell them I loved them. Make sure they don't end up Haymarket ware like me, eh? The youngest is only five. One bloke tried to buy her off me for his new virgin house the other week. It's terrible, sir."
He shuddered in horror. "I promise. I'll find them. They won't be bought or sold. I swear it," he vowed.
She lapsed back on the pillows in exhaustion.
Blake went for pen, ink and paper, and wrote down all she had told him while it was still fresh in his mind. Then he sent for the Bow Street Runners.
Molly was terrified as soon as she saw them.
Blake eventually persuaded her to talk to them, while he sent out one of the nurses to go find the children and bring them to see their sister one last time.
A heavy coating of face powder covered up her bruises somewhat, though it was marred by the tears which streaked down the girl's cheeks.
"This is a bad business, a bloody bad business," Blake said to the constables.
"It is. And it doesn't look like the first time either. Found a couple of similar looking women in alleys in the last couple of weeks. All dead, though. Do you know where she was found exactly?"
"You would need to ask my colleague Dr. Herriot. I've been at home all day and then at a soiree. I got here long after she had been brought in. I only wish I'd got here sooner."
"And what of the children? Will you be able to look after them?"
"The Duke of Ellesmere's wife will see to it they're looked after properly. Would you like to take them over to the townhouse now, with a note from me?"
"It would appear to be best, sir."
He scribbled a quick note for Charlotte and handed it to the constable. "Take my nurse with you so they won't be frightened. And catch the bastard who did this."
Little Molly died at one o'clock that afternoon.
Blake, in a fit of remorse for having not been there when he was really needed, stayed at the clinic all day and a second night, taking on more than his fair share of the work and patients.
He also asked the constables for a list of the dates and times the other women had been found, the locations. Maybe one of the other girls working the area would remember something?