Alex Grecian - Devil's Workshop

In the light from the open door, Day could see that the room was used for storage. It was stacked floor to ceiling with the sort of superfluous items a church might collect over the course of several decades: old broomsticks, candelabras, incense burners, three long dusty pews with broken legs, chairs, buckets, bolts of fabric, an enormous chipped slab of marble, some sort of font that leaned to one side, a chandelier, carefully labeled boxes of clothing and vestments. But no people, no missing prisoners. There was another door on the far wall. It was closed, and Day stepped carefully around a hole in the floor and tested the doorknob. It didn’t move. Locked from the other side. Which might mean that the prisoner had come through here and locked the door after him, but Day was willing to bet the door was always locked. It wouldn’t do to let a child wander into the storeroom. Too many opportunities for an accident.

He went back to the hole in the floor he’d skirted a moment before. March was already there, on his hands and knees, peering down into the darkness. There was a flat slab of wooden flooring upended against a stack of boxes next to the hole, scattered dust and dirt and splinters around the opening where the floor had been pulled up and cast aside.

“He’s down there, then,” Day said. He was suddenly seized by an urge to do something, to make some difference. Things were happening all around him, things he couldn’t control, and he wondered if he would feel better in action. Without time to worry, perhaps he would stop worrying altogether and feel better about everything in his life. What would Hammersmith do? Of course the sergeant would leap into the darkness, whatever the cost. Day had promised Hammersmith that he would stay aboveground, but Day wasn’t a child. He certainly wasn’t Hammersmith’s child. He was on the cusp of becoming a father, after all, someone who made decisions and acted on them.

“I suppose he could be down there,” March said. “It’s possible.”

“It’s definite.”

“By now?” March looked up. His features were pulled down into an ugly quizzical expression by the tension from his neck. “No, by now he’s gone through there, whatever tunnels are down there, and come up somewhere else. Somewhere far away. We’d never find him.”

“Maybe. Or maybe he’s hiding down in the dark somewhere, waiting for us to stop looking for him so he can escape into Ireland next week.”

“How would he do that? What would he eat for a week?”

“I don’t know his plan, Adrian. But I’m saying I think we should go down there and look for him.”

“I’m not going to let you get killed or lost in the sewer with a baby on the way.”

“Baby’s got nothing to do with anything.”

“Anyway,” March said, “we should look elsewhere for this man.”

“Look where? There is nowhere else. We don’t really know who we’re looking for, we don’t know what he looks like. We know almost nothing about him.”

“We know he’s wearing a prison warder’s uniform. Or a part of one.”

“I mean this is the only clue we’ve got,” Day said. “We follow the clue. You taught me that.”

March sat back, leaning on his arms, and smiled. “I did. Very well, then.”

“Even if he’s not there, we may find some trace of him, some indication of where he went, what direction he’s traveling in. It’s a starting point.”

March put his hands up in front of him, palms out. “We’ll go. You’ve made your point. But keep that revolver at the ready. And let’s find another lantern.”

They looked behind the pews and the marble and the bolts of moth-eaten fabric, and they dug through several of the boxes, but they didn’t find a lantern. They did find a can of oil, but it was useless without something to put the oil in. Finally, they settled for pulling several of the candles out of the old chandelier. Day put four of them in his pocket, and March put several in his own pockets. They lit one candle apiece and poked them through the trapdoor as far as their arms would reach, looking around for signs of danger. They saw a crude staircase leading down and there were scuff marks in the dust, indicating that somebody had gone this way recently. But they already knew that much.

Day trained his Colt Navy on the center of the hole and March sat at the edge of it, swung his legs around, and descended slowly down the stairs. When he was out of the way, Day followed him into the shadows below. He felt barely a twinge at the thought that he was breaking his promise to Nevil.

Claire gritted her teeth and closed her eyes and held on tight to the thin sheet that covered her belly. Each contraction lasted a little bit longer than the one before it. They were stronger now and they were coming closer together. Claire wasn’t sure what she was supposed to do, whether there was something she could do or not do to make the cramps less painful or to make them more productive somehow. She wanted the whole thing to be done with, her baby healthy and in her arms at last.

When it was over, she lay panting, waiting for the next contraction. She didn’t know when it would come or how long it would last. She tried to remember the things Dr Kingsley had told her to expect, but it was hard to concentrate on that when she knew he’d be coming to help soon. He would tell her what to do. If he arrived in time.

She knew that Constable Winthrop was somewhere downstairs, but that didn’t reassure her. He was nice, but seemed a bit hopeless about practical matters. Much like her husband sometimes was. She thought of Walter and hoped he was safe. She hoped he would come home very soon and hold her hand and simply be there with her. There was nothing he could do to help her, but he could be there. That would somehow be enough.

She rolled onto her side and sat up at the edge of the bed. She felt like some wild animal in a trap, a fox with the dogs at her heels. The lamplight hurt her eyes and so she closed the shutter. She stood and tottered the four steps to the window and opened the shade. Just enough light filtered through to illuminate the room, but it was diffuse enough that it didn’t make her headache any worse. She got back into bed and breathed a sigh of relief. Then the next contraction hit.

Eventually, she opened her eyes again and lay there, drained. She wondered how she could be so limp and tired and yet so tense. It didn’t seem possible.

Outside, a cloud moved in front of the sun and Claire watched the shadows on her wall flow. They contracted and then expanded, moved smoothly along the top of the baseboards and danced around the corners of the room. She wondered about the baby inside her, about what shapes and colors it would see with its new eyes.

She reached for her diary and the pencil on the table beside her and, using her belly for support, scratched out the fruitless lines about skipping rope. She began to write a new poem for her future child.

The door is closed, the candle snuffed.

Hear Mummy’s footsteps in the hall.

Claire stuck the point of the pencil in her mouth and sucked on it while she thought. It was good to have something to puzzle over besides the workings of her own body.

Something moves, but nothing’s there.

It’s just a shadow on the wall.

She decided she didn’t like the first two lines and crossed them out, thought a bit, and added more. She worked out the verse in her head and smiled as she rearranged the words on the paper, building couplets as she went.

Distracted, she only paused long enough to ride out each new contraction, and she didn’t fret about the passage of time. She didn’t notice the room grow darker and the shadows on her wall begin to converge.