by Alex Grecian
“Them, yes.”
“Have they paid us yet?”
“Not entirely.”
“We should get them results then,” Mrs Parker said.
“It’s a problem. I’m afraid we’ve taken an impossible case. We can’t actually find Jack the Ripper, no matter how formidable we may be. That gentleman has slipped through every trap ever set for him and taunted the newspaper and police in the bargain. Our only real hope was to be in place when he acted.”
“But he doesn’t appear to want to act against Mr Carlyle, darling.”
“So far as we know, Jack doesn’t even know Mr Carlyle exists.”
“What if he doesn’t attack Carlyle?”
“Our reputation will suffer.”
“And we won’t be paid for more work?”
“We will have trouble getting more work.”
“Husband?”
“Yes?”
“Who knows that Mr Carlyle has hired us?”
“I don’t know,” Mr Parker said.
“Do you think he was acting on his own, or do you think others know about us?”
“I shouldn’t think very many others do.”
“And none of them have met us. None of them can verify that he actually employed us, am I right?”
“I believe you are, light of my life.”
“What I mean to say is . . .” The carriage rumbled over a hole in the street, and Mrs Parker grabbed Mr Parker’s arm to steady herself. He caught his breath and tried not to look at her. “What I mean to say,” Mrs Parker said, “is what if Mr Carlyle were to disappear?”
“We would be in a very bad place. He’s our only way of finding Jack.”
“No, my cabbage, what if he disappeared and we went home?”
“Oh, you mean . . . ?”
“I mean what if we were the instrument of disappearance, if you insist on making me say so?”
“We would not be paid the full amount agreed upon,” Mr Parker said. “We like to be paid.”
“We would eventually be paid by someone else for something else. This all seems so pointless, doesn’t it?”
Mr Parker nodded. “It’s not really the sort of thing we customarily do.”
“Not at all.”
“In fact, it’s rather more work than usual.”
“I don’t like it to be so much work.”
“Of course.” He tensed while patting her hand, but she seemed to welcome the gesture. “Let’s give it the afternoon. Imagine if we were the ones to bring Jack the Ripper down.”
“The afternoon, then,” she said. She let go of his arm and moved away from him, and he wondered if he’d said the wrong thing to her. “We’ll follow Mr Carlyle for the rest of the afternoon, and if nothing interesting happens, we’ll go home.”
“Agreed,” Mr Parker said. “Not such a big commitment of time after all, is it?”
“But, Father, what if we do meet Jack?”
“There are two of us to his one. I shouldn’t think he’d be too much trouble.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“What then, turtledove?”
“What if I don’t want to kill him? What if I admire his work and find him to be . . . Well, what if we like him? As a person.”
Mr Parker smiled at her. “Then we shall invite him to tea and Mr Carlyle will still disappear.”
But Mr Parker was not at all sure he wanted to have tea with Jack the Ripper. He would be surrounded and outnumbered by dangerous animals in human guise. He realized that his time with Mrs Parker was coming to an end, and he didn’t think their parting would be pleasant for him. He wished he were capable of walking away and leaving her, and he cursed himself for a fool because he knew he could not do that.
52
There’s a lamp beside the door,” Jack said. “Reach over to your right and you’ll feel it.”
Hatty took a moment, wondering if there really was a lamp or if she might encounter something awful hanging there instead. But, In for a penny, in for a pound, she thought, and felt along the wall in the dark. To her great relief there was indeed a lamp. She detected an earthy mix of odors in the room, sweat and musk and something else she couldn’t place.
“Matches are on the table there,” Jack said. “Be careful, don’t burn the place down.”
Hatty fumbled the lamp off its hook and shuffled around until she bumped into a table. She patted along the surface and found a wooden box, opened it, and struck a match. When she’d lit the lamp and slid back the shutter, the room flickered into view around her. It was just like the rooms on the floor below: there was the bed, the chair, the table, and the wardrobe. The men and women did not live noticeably different lives. But in many subtle ways, this room was more comfortable than the others, reflecting Joseph Hargreave’s better position within the Plumm’s hierarchy. The wardrobe was not made of cardboard. The bed was canopied, with thick mattresses that set it higher off the floor than the others she had seen downstairs. There was a figure on the bed, obscured by heavy blankets and pillows. The chair was upholstered in leather, with bright brass studs glowing along the seams.
The man sitting in the chair was surrounded by a mane of dark wavy hair, thick and unfashionably long. He smiled at Hatty, but he didn’t rise to greet her. He was slumped over, leaning heavily on his left elbow, and his face looked pale to her. She recognized him from the gallery railing of the store, from the moment before a sheet of glass had sliced one of Plumm’s staff in two.
“Mr Oberon,” Hatty said. “Are you quite all right?”
“Good of you to inquire, Miss Pitt,” he said. “The best answer I can give is that we shall see.”
Hatty kept her eye on him and went to the bed, keeping it between them in case Jack suddenly leapt from the chair. She thought she might be able to reach the door again before he could reach her. She wondered how much damage a swinging lamp might do to a man if she aimed it properly and hit his face.
“I promised I wouldn’t touch you,” he said, as if he could read her mind. “Don’t you trust me?”
“No.”
“I should stop asking that question. I never get the response I want.”
Hatty leaned over the bed and had to look away again. She closed her eyes, then realized she was leaving herself vulnerable. She snapped them open again, but Mr Oberon had not moved.
“What did you do to him?” She was certain she was going to vomit, but didn’t want to give him the satisfaction of seeing her do it.
“I did many things to him,” Mr Oberon said. “It would take some time for me to describe them all to you, but I will if you like.”
“He’s dead,” Hatty said.
“Don’t look so put out about it. I believe in the end he welcomed death.”
“He looks like he’s been dead for days.”
“Oh, no,” Jack said. “If he’d been dead for days, I would’ve moved him. I moved all the others. Can’t draw attention with a stink. No, he was alive when I left for work this morning.”
“You went to work every day? While you were pretending to be a Plumm’s employee?”
“Oh, but I am a Plumm’s employee. The old man kept me on when Smithfield and Gordon moved away. Mr Hargreave’s disappearance was a boon for me. I was promoted like a shot, if it’s not immodest to say.”
“You wanted Mr Hargreave’s position?”
“I wanted his apartment. Or perhaps I wanted his cottage at the sea.”
“That’s where you took him.”
“Joseph and I had some fun there before we decided to return to the city. His brother was a bit too nosy.”
“Why not kill him, too?”
“Who says I didn’t? Oh, but I did enjoy Joseph so very much. There are few of these Karstphanomen left, and I like to savor their last moments when I can.”
<
br /> “I heard Mr Hargreave cry out. When I was outside the room just now, he made a noise.”
“Oh, that was me. I thought it might get you in here, and I wanted to cry out anyway. It served two functions. I do like to be efficient whenever possible, don’t you?”
“Why did you want me here? What will you do now?”
“You are convenient, that’s all. No greater design this time. And you look like a kind sort of a person. There’s a stack of clean linens in the wardrobe, and a corset in there, too. Hargreave was a vain man, but I think the corset might work to my advantage, keep my guts where they belong. I was rather hoping you would help me dress this.” He opened his jacket and showed her a dark wet stain on his shirt.
She glanced at the closed wardrobe and wondered what surprises Mr Oberon had waiting inside it. “You’ve been wounded,” she said.
“There were four of them there, and I only expected two. They got me in the end.” He lowered his voice to a fierce whisper and bared his teeth at Hatty. “But I got more of them, didn’t I?”
Hatty moved back toward the door. She held the lamp up high in front of her, hoping Jack couldn’t see the fear she felt. “Is it fatal, then? The wound?”
“There are things I know that no one else knows, Miss Pitt.”
There was a long silence, and Hatty stood still, waiting for him to talk again. If he had answered her question, she couldn’t understand the meaning of it. At last he grunted and began to speak again, but his voice was lower and weaker.
“Quite often people decide to die because it’s the easier choice than living. I’ve seen it, Miss Pitt. Time after time, I’ve watched their eyes as they make that decision, and then I watch the light leave them. And I’ve never really understood. Wherever they go when the light leaves, is there still blood?”
“I don’t think anyone knows the answer to that,” Hatty said. “Not for sure.”
“So much of what men do is undertaken only to avoid humiliation. That is what makes yours the stronger sex, Hatty Pitt. You are able to bear up under constant humiliation, to turn it slowly to your advantage. We men wither and beg to be killed, while you bide your time.”
“So you’re the champion of my sex, Mr Oberon?”
“Why not me? Who knows more about women than I? The linens. Fetch them, would you? I’m afraid the wardrobe’s a bit far for me to reach at the moment.”
“No,” Hatty said. “I will not help you. It’s time for you to think about making that decision you mentioned. I urge you to make the proper choice.”
She backed out the door and down the passage to the stairs, but he did not chase her. She thought she heard him chuckle quietly in the dark, but she couldn’t be sure. She dropped the lamp at the landing and turned.
Behind her there was a great whomp as oil hit the flammable carpet and exploded outward, but she didn’t turn round or slow down. She pelted down the steps and kept running.
Let it burn, she thought. Let it all burn to the ground.
BOOK FOUR
A dozen sets of miniature farm animals, all carved from soft pine and stained dark brown, stampeded out of the smoke, and Anna leapt to the side of the path. There were twelve little sheep and twelve little cows and twelve little goats and twelve little horses, along with a hundred or more chickens and geese and ducks, all of them running as fast as they could and making a tremendous noise. One of the little pigs broke one of its legs off and it stumbled. Anna reached out to pick it up and rescue it from being crushed, but the pig grunted and turned on its side and rolled away, disappearing amongst the other creatures.
Anna coughed and wiped her watering eyes. The sky was obscured by billows of smoke and ash, and all round her the furniture and toys and carriages and statuary were ablaze.
“All of this from a single match,” Anna said. “Oh, why must matches also be made of wood?”
She was alone again, her friends having run away at the first sight of fire. She did not blame them in the least. They were all quite flammable.
“It is becoming quite hot now,” Anna said.
“Then you should leave.” Jack appeared out of the smoke, hopping toward Anna on his spring. The tip of his false cigar was alight now and it glowed a bright rosy red. “You are not made of wood as the rest of us are, and so you do not belong.”
“But I can’t leave until I find Peter,” Anna said. “He must be very scared now, as he has never stayed outside during the night alone, except one time when I went in to dinner and forgot he was with me and accidentally bolted the door and left him.”
“Peter will burn here, and so will you, Anna,” Jack said. He bounced all round her in a circle as the fire drew closer to them.
“And you will burn, too,” Anna said. “I do not believe you have thought this through well enough. You are made of wood just as Babushka and poor Mary Annette are, and also the Kindly Nutcracker you so cruelly broke apart.”
“I know that I will burn,” Jack said. “And that is what I want.”
“I don’t understand,” Anna said.
“The workmen would have come and taken all of the things here away,” Jack said. “The wood will never be allowed to be together as we were when we were trees. And so I have decided to burn us all away and leave our ashes here where there was once a vasty forest, and where for a single day and a single night we were able to return.”
“But you are the only one who has decided such a thing, and it is not your place to do so,” Anna said.
“It is my nature to surprise others, and that is what I am doing,” said Jack. “You should not expect me to be anything other than what I am.”
“What you are, you nasty little Jack, is a man in a box,” said Anna. “And in a box is where you shall go.”
And with that, Anna plucked Jack off the ground by the top of his head and pushed him back down into his case, which was painted all over with colorful circus scenes that were now bubbling and melting in the heat from the fire.
“I do not want to go into my box anymore,” Jack said. “It is dark in there and lonely.”
He struggled mightily and his spring was very strong, but Anna pushed until he was packed away tight, and then she closed the lid and latched it.
“You might have thought of that before you struck that match,” said Anna. “That was not a pleasant surprise in the least.”
She put the box under her arm, holding it closed so that Jack could not open the latch and pop out, and she marched away from the flames in what she hoped was the right direction. She had very little time now before everything would disappear and her childhood playground would be reduced to ash, as Jack had threatened.
“Oh dear,” she said. “I wonder if the fire will spread to my house. That would be bad indeed. I must find Peter so that we can put out the fire with buckets of water. I know he will help.”
And with Jack bumping and thumping inside his box, Anna began to run as fast as she could, all the while calling Peter’s name.
—RUPERT WINTHROP, FROM The Wandering Wood (1893)
53
Everything’s ruined,” Hammersmith said.
Day whistled long and loud and looked round them at the deserted department store. “It’s been picked clean.”
Much of the metalwork had been disassembled and carted away, the electrical wires pulled from the walls, and the plumbing and much of the wood paneling taken, leaving great mounds of plaster and dust and ruined carpeting. A box fell to the floor in the toy department, causing Day and Hammersmith to jump. They turned and watched as a startled fox ran past them and vanished among the shattered remains of cut crystal glassware.
“How’d that get in already?”
“I’m just glad you saw it, too,” Day said.
“The office you say Oberon was using . . .”
“Up there.” Day pointed at the crumbling gallery at the back
of the store. “He can’t possibly be using it now. There aren’t any stairs.”
“I don’t see a ladder, either,” Hammersmith said.
“Unless he’s using that,” Day said. He pointed at the lift, which stood open, the iron gates ripped from their hinges sometime in the night.
“I don’t know how that thing works and I’m not gonna gamble on it,” Hammersmith said.
“Neither me. I doubt there’s any electricity left to power it, anyway.”
“Don’t understand electricity. Never seen any.”
“You can’t see it, but it’s all round us.”
“What, inside the walls?”
“Wires and cables.”
“Then how do they keep the walls from catching fire? I don’t see it letting off any steam or releasing pressure.”
“We’ll ask Dr Kingsley. I’m sure he knows,” Day said. “But this is a dead end. Even if there were a ladder, I doubt I could climb it.”
“How’s your leg?”
“Not at my best, but not at my worst, either. I’m not as bad off as you remember me. I exercised well this past year and got a good bit more mobility out of it. It’s these ribs bothering me at the moment. Can hardly breathe without it feeling like I’ve been stabbed in the chest. Oh, sorry, Nevil, I forgot.”
“What, my chest? I’ve still got a horrible scar over my heart, but it doesn’t bother me anymore. It’s a miracle, really.”
“You have an uncanny knack for healing. Your ear seems to be functioning now.”
Hammersmith put a hand to his ear. “Not so much. I still can’t hear from this one, but if I stand on the right side of you, it seems I do all right. The other ear compensates.”
“We’re a fine pair, aren’t we?”
“Hullo!” They turned at the sound of the voice. An old man clambered over a distant mound of splintered wood and glass and picked his slow way toward them. “Hullo, I say!” He held up one arm, waving a rifle over his head.
“Oh, no,” Hammersmith said.
“You know this fellow?”
