Alex Grecian - Devil's Workshop

“What is this?” Day said.

“I’m sorry, Walter,” March said. “You really don’t seem to understand my philosophy, and I’m afraid we’ve come to a bit of a turning point here.”

Kingsley waited on the top step of the porch and let Fiona go ahead of him. She rapped lightly at the front door, then opened it and led the way inside. An awkward young man with ginger hair was posed in the foyer, half-risen from his chair, his hand on the end of a truncheon stuck in his belt. His mouth was open and his forehead was creased, and he appeared to be frozen with indecision. Then he saw Fiona and smiled and let out a great sigh of relief.

“Oh, it’s you,” he said. “I was afraid. . Well, I wasn’t afraid, mind you, but I was worried, concerned you might be. . you know, a fugitive.”

Kingsley smiled and transferred his bag to his left hand. He took a step forward, past his daughter, and patted the young constable on the arm. “If we had been fugitives,” Kingsley said, “I’m sure you would have dealt with us.”

The boy nodded, his expression serious. Fiona closed the door and ran to the foot of the stairs.

“How is she?”

“It doesn’t sound good,” the boy said. “By the way, sir, my name’s Winthrop. Constable Rupert Winthrop.”

“Dr Bernard Kingsley.”

“Kingsley? Are you. .?” He gestured vaguely at Fiona and back as if drawing a line in the air between them.

“Yes, we are. Tell me, you said just now it doesn’t sound good?”

“Sir, she’s done a good bit of screaming and shouting since Fiona left.”

“Yes, well, she’s having a baby. But she’s a healthy young woman and her pregnancy has been relatively normal, so there’s little enough to fear.”

“Yes, sir.”

“I’d better go check on her. I’ll leave you to it, Constable.”

“Sir? Is there anything. .? I mean, I wonder if there’s something I could do to make things easier for her. I know you said. . Still, it seems like it might be going rough.”

Kingsley smiled at the boy. Rupert’s hair had escaped from under his hat and was plastered across his forehead with sweat, like the wet tail feather of some nervous tropical bird. Kingsley felt a momentary urge to reach up and pull off the constable’s hat and set the bird free. He could see that thirty seconds spent talking to Rupert Winthrop now would help calm the household. The last thing Claire needed was a frantic boy running about the place.

“How are you at fetching water?” Kingsley said.

“I can do that.”

“Very good. I’m going to need clean water and lots of it, in both cold and warm varieties, so you’ll need to heat some up for me at the fireplace. I’ll also need every basin you can find in the house.”

Constable Rupert Winthrop stood at attention and saluted, then turned and trotted off down the hall toward the kitchen.

“He seems like a nice boy,” Kingsley said.

“He’s a bit hopeless, isn’t he?” Fiona said.

“Give him time. He just needs a bit of seasoning. Now, it’s high time we looked in on our patient.” And he followed his daughter up the stairs toward the bedroom where he could already hear Claire Day moaning.

T he sun was higher in the sky when Jack awoke, but he was sure he hadn’t slept for more than an hour. Sleep annoyed him. It smacked of weakness and mortality and inefficiency. But it was one of the many prices he had to pay in order to walk among his people as one of them.

He took a standing bath at the washbasin in Elizabeth’s bedroom, soaking a cloth in fresh water and wringing it out in the pail on the floor, using Elizabeth’s harsh soap, lye and ashes, scented with lavender. After, he pissed into the pail, watching the ripples spread across the surface of the dirty bathwater. There was a small tin of tooth powder that appeared to be brand-new and a toothbrush with a wooden handle behind the handbasin. He brushed his teeth hard, scrubbing them until his gums bled. Then he drank the rest of the water in the pitcher beside the basin and wiped his mouth on his bare arm.

Naked, he unlocked and opened the bedroom door and stepped over Cinderhouse’s body in the hallway. He crouched over the tailor, who was sound asleep, his eyelids fluttering, a smear of old blood on his chin. His mouth had not yet healed, and Jack resisted an urge to pry the tailor’s mouth open so he could see the stump of muscle that was left there. Cinderhouse was dressed very well in one of Elizabeth’s altered suits, and he was clutching a kitchen knife in his right hand, his knuckles white, his fingers rigid.

Jack smiled and clucked his whole and healthy tongue. Cinderhouse had been waiting for him, thought he would be able to kill his master and go free. He might even have succeeded had he not fallen asleep at his post. Silly little fly.

Jack gently opened Cinderhouse’s hand and took the knife from him. He stood and walked to the stairs and went down. He kept the knife with him, holding it loosely at his side. He liked the feel of it. He had always managed to find a use for knives.

He passed the open door to the parlor without glancing in and went into the kitchen. There was a heel of bread and a butt of ham on the butcher block by the back door. Jack used the knife he had taken from Cinderhouse to slice off a piece of the ham and made himself a sandwich. He stood at the back door in a beam of sunlight while he ate and watched honeybees flicker around the sweet purple flowers in the garden. When he had finished, he licked his fingers.

In the parlor was another of Elizabeth’s suits draped over the back of a chair, tailored and pressed and waiting for him. He set the knife down on the seat of the chair and took the trousers off their hanger. He held them up for Elizabeth to see. There was a subtle blue stripe in the black material and it shimmered in the light from the window. The homeowner, still tied tightly to a chair near the hearth, did not acknowledge Jack in any way. He stared into space, his eyes dead, his chest moving shallowly with each breath. Jack decided he would have to find a way to cheer Elizabeth up. He’d give it some thought when the other business of the day had been tended to.

He pulled the trousers on, thrilling at the feel of fabric against his skin, and left them unfastened, spreading his legs wide to keep the trousers from falling back down. He unbuttoned a dazzling white shirt, almost purple it was so pure and fresh, and he slipped his arms into the sleeves, shrugged the shirt up over his shoulders. He gathered the buttons in one hand and inserted them back into the holes, starting from the collar and working his way down his chest and abdomen, taking care not to drop any of them on the floor. Getting dressed was a thing so many took for granted, and yet he had not performed this simple daily operation in a very long time. He wanted to enjoy the process. He tucked the tail of the shirt into the top of the trousers and fastened the hooks on the fly. He wondered briefly why the front of a pair of trousers was called a fly, and he thought of his own stupid fly, his Peter, his rock, on the floor in the hallway upstairs, sleeping and missing the splendor of this ritual. He found the cufflinks, pretty chunks of silver with a blue porcelain inlay, and fixed his cuffs. He moved the knife and sat in the chair and pulled on a pair of sheer black hose that the tailor had left for him there. Elizabeth’s shoes were perhaps a bit loose, and Jack got up and went back to the kitchen, found a folded bit of butcher paper in the garbage that still smelled of meat. He took it back to the parlor, tore it in half, and stuffed the crumpled bits of it in the ends of the shoes. Elizabeth looked up at him when he heard the sound of tearing paper, but immediately lost interest and returned his gaze to the nothingness he saw in the middle of the room. The shoes were a better fit with the paper in them, so Jack tied them with a double knot, stood and put on the waistcoat and the jacket, went back to the kitchen, and gazed at himself in the mirror on the back of the pantry door.