Alex Grecian - The Yard

Hammersmith climbed into the cab and shut the door behind him. Blacker stood on the curb until the coachman came back out.

“Did the sergeant fix you up, then?”

“He did. Thank you, sir.”

“Then we’re off.”

“My pleasure. Where to, sir?”

“Here.”

Blacker wrote the address in pencil on the back of a calling card. He handed it to the coachman, who squinted at it.

“It’s not far,” Blacker said.

“Not at all. No trouble, sir.”

“Good man.”

Blacker clapped the coachman on the shoulder and clambered into the cab. He felt the hansom shift as the coachman settled into position above. There was the sound of reins snapping and the cab lurched into motion.

Blacker looked over at Hammersmith. The constable had pulled his hat down over his eyes and was snoring softly. Blacker smiled and pulled the curtains closed over the windows. In the darkness he leaned his shoulder against the wall of the cab and shut his eyes. Within moments, the gentle rocking of the hansom had lulled him to sleep as well.

Sergeant Kett was so buried in his paperwork that he didn’t notice when the postman rapped twice on the doorjamb. The mail sat in its box for more than an hour before Kett’s internal clock reminded him that the post was overdue.

He fetched the mail to his desk and looked through it, quickly sorting it into piles for the runners to deliver about the building. He always looked through the messages to the Murder Squad room himself, though, to be sure there wasn’t anything that might disturb his detectives. The Ripper fiasco had led to a fair amount of hate mail and even, once, a letter bomb.

There was an envelope addressed to Inspector Day. No return address. Kett slit it open. Inside was a lady’s handkerchief and a note. The handkerchief had the initials CC embroidered on one corner. Kett opened the note. It said:

Inspektor Day, you no who this belongs to amp; I can get at her agin. Stop what your duing and declare it insolvible or the wurst will hapinn.

The note wasn’t signed.

Kett read it again. It was nonsense, clearly meant as a threat, but so vague as to be pointless. Just one more crazy Londoner.

He tossed the envelope, note, and handkerchief in the rubbish can next to his desk. His duty was to serve and protect the detectives who in turn served and protected the great city. Inspector Day didn’t need to be heckled by anonymous citizens.

Kett bundled up the remainder of the mail for the runners and returned to his paperwork.

I t had been a long morning and he had barely slept the night before, but there was work to be done, and so he locked up the house and took the boy to the shop with him.

He had just entered the shop when he heard a carriage roll slowly down the street and stop outside the door. But he wasn’t expecting clients today. He pointed at the boy and Fenn nodded. Fenn moved to the back wall of the shop and stood still, waiting. Cinderhouse watched him with pride. The boy was learning.

Cinderhouse quietly turned the bolt on the front door, easing it into its casing in the jamb, and watched through the smeary picture window as Inspector Day alighted from the carriage and approached the shop. Cinderhouse noticed an oily handprint on the glass, no doubt left there by Constable Pringle the previous day. He cursed under his breath and pulled back into the shadows.

What was the detective doing here now? Had he already received the note? How could he know who sent it? Unless he’d talked to his wife. She was entirely too smart for her own good. Or maybe there was a question about the shears. Maybe they had somehow been traced back to Cinderhouse. Had his driver talked? Why would the coachman betray him? More money?

There were too many questions.

He could slip the bolt, open the door, and welcome the detective, show him in, maybe even serve tea. If luck was with him, he might learn more from Day than the detective learned from him. But Fenn was here and the situation would be tense. Suppose the boy spoke up?

Day tried the front door, and when it didn’t open for him, he peered in through the window, past Pringle’s handprint, shading the glass with his own hands. Cinderhouse froze in the shadows. From the corner of his eye he watched Fenn. If the boy moved or called out now, Cinderhouse would have to take drastic action again. He wasn’t sure he could overpower the policeman, but he could move fast enough to reach Fenn and make sure that his son wasn’t taken from him. If he couldn’t keep the boy, he would make sure that nobody else would, either.

The detective moved away from the window. He shook his head and clambered back into the carriage.

Cinderhouse leapt across the room and grabbed Fenn by the upper arm. The boy protested, but there was no time to explain things. He shoved Fenn into a cupboard under the long counter with a slit in the top for cutting fabric. A small padlock fit through two iron loops set into the wood and fastened the cupboard tight. He had used this cabinet to seal away the bleaches and dyes he used so that his first son wouldn’t find them and hurt himself. It would work as well to keep the new son in place.

If there had been time, he would have given Fenn food and water, but he assumed he would be back within the hour.

Cinderhouse grabbed his hat and a pair of shears from a nearby drawer, then hurried out the door and locked it behind him. He looked for his regular hansom and remembered that he’d sent it away. A bright red coach rolled past and he flagged down the driver. He gave terse orders and hopped into the back as the horse was whipped into motion. Up ahead, the wagon carrying the policeman was still visible. The smaller, faster coach would have no trouble catching up to it.

Why had Day come to the shop? Had Cinderhouse overplayed his hand by going to them in the first place? Did the men of the Yard finally suspect that their official tailor was a murderer?

Cinderhouse shook his head. There was nothing to connect him to the murder. He would follow Day and, if necessary, dispatch him. If he had learned anything in the last few days, it was that the police were just as vulnerable as anyone else.

Fenn heard the tailor leave and he immediately began to explore. There wasn’t a lot of room to work with in the cramped cupboard. He pushed on the door, but it budged only a fraction of an inch. The hinges felt solid. He knocked over a few bottles next to him. There was some sort of liquid in them, but Fenn didn’t see how that would help him escape. He kicked at the wall to his left and heard a squeak. A moment later, something furry ran across Fenn’s ankle and he jumped, banging his head against the counter above him.

He rubbed the top of his head and scrunched up against the opposite corner, as far away from the furry thing as he could get. After a while he realized that the rat-he was almost certain it was a rat-wasn’t in the cabinet with him anymore.

Wherever it had gone, maybe Fenn could follow.

He probed the corners of the cupboard with his fingers, feeling for any crack or hole. Nothing. He wiped his hands across the walls and then over the floor, moving from one end to the other, shifting his body to feel beneath himself. Three inches from the back wall he found a small half-moon-shaped hole in the floor. He poked his finger into it cautiously, worried about rat bites, but there was nothing on the other side that he could feel. Just empty air.

He prodded the sides of the hole and ran his fingers along a crack that ran from the top of the hole to a point three inches from the wall next to him. The crack made a right angle and, three inches from the cupboard door, made another right angle. He traced the crack all the way around the floor and established that there was some sort of panel in the bottom of the cabinet.