by Alex Grecian
March materialized next to him from somewhere around the corner of the building.
“Surely you can unlock it, Walter,” he said.
“I can. But look.” He pointed at the heavy steel padlock, its swinging arm looped through a bolt on the outside of the door. “This has been locked from the outside, not the inside. It’s not possible for someone to be in there.” He raised his voice. “Sergeant, I think it’s clear.”
“Take a look at this,” came Hammersmith’s voice from around the corner of the shop.
Day stowed his weapon and walked around to the road. March followed him. Hammersmith was squatting, looking at something against the curb. Day leaned down and used one hand to steady himself against the wall of the building.
“Another one,” he said.
A jagged line smeared by rain, but still clearly visible in the wan light, was drawn in blue chalk on the curb. Above it was an arrow, pointing toward the wall above it.
“The rain’ll eventually wash this away,” Hammersmith said.
“We need a sketch of it. Too bad we don’t have Fiona Kingsley with us. She’s a good artist.”
“A terrific artist,” Hammersmith said. “But we hardly need her talents for this.” He pulled out his dog-eared pad of paper, turned to a blank page, and sketched a duplicate of the tiny chalk diagram with his pencil. “That’ll do, won’t it?”
“Looks just like it to me.”
“But it’s nothing,” March said. “What does it mean?”
“Well, it must be a relation to the other one we saw,” Hammersmith said. “Don’t you think?”
“I think so,” Day said.
“But what is it?” March said. “It looks like it might be a long arrow, but a piece of it’s missing. Rubbed out or washed away by rain.”
“Or maybe whoever chalked it there, maybe his hand slipped and made that gap,” Day said. “What did the other one look like?”
Hammersmith flipped a page in his notebook. “I think it was a number four, but I’ll . . . Yes, a number four with an arrow below it.”
“And this might be a number one,” Day said. “With an arrow up top of it. Maybe it’s not a gap in the line. Maybe it’s two separate lines.”
“What do you think it means?”
“Besides nothing at all,” March said.
“I think it means that four people escaped Bridewell,” Day said. “Somebody’s helping us find them.”
“Or somebody has his own agenda we don’t understand,” Hammersmith said.
“Or children play with chalk in the roads round here and you two are so desperate for a clue that you’re seeing meaning where there isn’t any.” March sighed and ran a hand through his hair. “I don’t mean to be a naysayer, I really don’t, but a manhunt doesn’t come down to chalk lines in the road. Believe me, I’ve been involved in my fair share of manhunts.”
“Yes,” Hammersmith said. “You did a brilliant job bringing in that Ripper fellow.”
“Nevil!” Day said. “I say, man.”
“I apologize.”
“No, no,” March said. “From your perspective, you’re perfectly correct.”
“I shouldn’t have said that,” Hammersmith said. “It’s just, you’ve been insufferable tonight. I don’t understand. We’re doing our best here, and yet it’s never quite right for you, is it?”
“I suppose I have been difficult,” March said. “Success, finding these men tonight, it’s important to me. More important than you know. I did not retire from the Yard under the best of circumstances and I would like to correct the impression I made in the Ripper case, if I can. I would like to win back some modicum of respect. I haven’t wanted to follow false clues because I fear those prisoners are getting farther and farther away from us with every passing moment.”
“We’re all tired,” Day said. “And we’ve all got a lot on our minds. Tempers fray. But we’ll find those missing men. We will.”
March smiled. “I believe you, Walter.”
Hammersmith held out his hand. March hesitated, then clasped it in both of his own hands and smiled.
“Again,” Hammersmith said, “I apologize, sir.”
“All is forgiven. Shows you care about what you’re doing, that’s all.”
“So,” Day said, “what say we take a quick look in this shop and then move on to the next clue?” He didn’t mention that he had no idea where they might find another clue.
The other two followed him round the side of the little green building to the door. Day leaned down and took another look at the padlock. He reached into the pocket of his waistcoat, produced the flat leather case, opened it, and took out two tools. One was a small pointed hook. The other tool was a tension wrench that resembled a thick pair of tweezers. He inserted the angled ends of the wrench into the keyhole and maneuvered it until he felt pressure against them, then slipped the tiny hook between them and turned it. It took him two tries, but the clasp sprang open and the heavy end of the lock fell loose and dangled against the doorjamb. Day smiled at his mentor and was pleased to see March smiling back.
Day motioned for Hammersmith to remove the lock from its bolt. He and March readied their firearms and took up positions on either side of the door. Day nodded to Hammersmith, and the sergeant pushed the door open with the toe of his boot and stepped back, all in one fluid motion. Day entered the room at a crouch and stood against the wall, just inside the door. He heard March and Hammersmith enter behind him, but he didn’t look around at them. He waited for his eyes to adjust to the gloom.
If anything, the shop’s interior seemed even smaller than it looked from without. Grey sunlight pushed into the room through the open door and around the loose-fitted shutters that covered half the opposite wall. Dust motes sparked silver and disappeared. There was a lantern on a peg over the long counter below the window. Under the counter were several deep drawers. At a right angle to it were shelves stacked with saucers, cups, trays, spoons, and tiny china milk jugs. All of it plain, unadorned, easily replaced if broken. A mesh bag full of lemons hung from a nail on the side of the topmost shelf. There was a hot plate on the counter and two teakettles set neatly beside it, but no oven. Day supposed the vendor must bring in cakes and sandwiches from somewhere else every morning, rather than trying to create them in this cramped space.
Lying on the floor at his feet was a man, moving slightly, but bound at the hands and feet with rough swaths of canvas that bunched and mounded over him and across the worn planks beneath him. A thin strip of canvas had been tied around his mouth and behind his head so that it bit into his jaw on both sides. The man’s eyes were wide and staring, the whites of them almost glowing. He was trying to speak, but his tongue was caught up in the gag and all he could muster was a weak grunting sound.
Day put his Colt Navy away and bent down next to the man. There was a nasty gash on his head, but it wasn’t bleeding and had already crusted over in his hair. He looked up at Day, who shifted slightly from side to side. The man’s eyes followed his movements and seemed to be tracking correctly. He had pulled at his bonds hard enough that the canvas had knotted itself into something resembling a wooden ball. It was instantly clear that there was no point in trying to untie him.
“I need a knife,” Day said. “Have you got one?”
March shook his head and stepped past Day to the counter, where he began poking about in the drawers. “There’s this,” he said, and held up a wedge-shaped cake knife. “It’s serrated along the edge.”
“That might work.”
March knelt down and began sawing at the canvas on the man’s ankles while Day worked the gag slowly up and down until he could pull it away from the man’s mouth.
The man gasped and gulped in air, worked his jaw back and forth. Then: “About goddamn time,” he said.
Day eased the gag back into his mouth.
“What’s your name?” he said.
He maneuvered the gag again so that the man could move his tongue around t
he saturated cloth.
“Get this shite off me!”
Day put the gag in place again. He straightened up and stood next to Hammersmith.
“Well, I don’t think he’s the proprietor of this place,” Hammersmith said.
“Could be,” Day said. “The escapee might have changed clothing with him.”
“Almost got this,” March said. He was still sawing away at the man’s feet.
“How are you holding up?” Hammersmith said.
“Me?” Day said. “I’m fine.”
“You’ve seemed a bit anxious of late.”
“Oh, you know, just the usual sort of thing.”
“Baby coming and all that?”
“Yes, exactly. I shouldn’t worry, I suppose. Been plenty of babies born before mine and they turned out all right, some of them without fathers of any sort.”
“Well, I hate to disagree, but really too many babies grow up and become this sort of person.” Hammersmith pointed at the man on the ground.
“Ah, that’s got it,” March said. He stood up and laid the cake knife on the counter, then reached down and hoisted the man to his feet. He held the man’s elbow, steadying him, and leaned him against the counter. Then March held up a finger and grabbed the cake knife back off the countertop. “Wouldn’t do to leave that within your reach, would it?”
“Let’s try this again,” Day said. “I’m going to take off your gag and you’re going to tell us your name. Leave the profanities out of it.”
The man nodded and Day pulled the gag down over his chin. The canvas was sodden with drool, and he wiped his fingers on the man’s filthy prison shirt.
“George,” the man said. “My name’s George.”
“George what?”
“George Hampstead. This is my shop. Someone broke in, some mad bloke with a murderous gleam in his eye, and he tied me up. Switched his clothes for mine and left me here for dead, he did.”
“He heard us suggest that just now,” Hammersmith said.
“Did not,” the man calling himself George Hampstead said.
“You were right here when we said it.”
“I wasn’t listening.”
Day grimaced. “Mr Hammersmith, do you remember those sketches we were shown of the escaped prisoners?”
“I do, sir.”
“Does this man resemble any of them?”
“He does, sir.”
“Which one? Do you remember?”
“The one called Napper, sir.”
“I never was!” the man in the prison uniform said. “You can’t go off a thing like that! It’s not no kinda proof.”
Day nodded. “We’ll get this whole thing straightened out. Don’t you worry.”
He turned and opened the door. The others had to shuffle about to make room for the door to swing inward. Day stepped outside and took a deep breath of fresh air. He hadn’t realized how stuffy it was inside the tea shop until he was out of it. Dawn had brought with it a bustle of people, up and down the street, most of them headed toward the far corner and away. Day presumed that was the direction of the commuter train to central London. He whistled and motioned to a little boy, who was sitting idly on a step in front of one of the homes. The lad ran over to him and Day produced a ha’penny from the pocket of his waistcoat.
“Would you like to earn a coin?”
“Like to earn a bigger one than that, if you’ve got it,” the boy said.
“How about a second coin just like it?” Day fished in his pocket again.
“What’ve I got to do?”
“Get to Scotland Yard and ask them to send round a wagon. Tell them one of the men’s been caught.”
“One of which men?”
“Never you mind. Just find Sergeant Kett and he’ll know what you mean.”
“Sergeant Kett,” the boy said. “He’s to send a wagon, you’ve caught a man.”
“Exactly right.”
The boy nodded once, sharply, and marched away, joining the throngs of men headed for that nearby train. Day turned around and almost bumped into an elderly man, who was stopped outside the tea shop and was staring at him with a puzzled expression.
“I say,” the man said.
“Terribly sorry,” Day said.
“What are you doing?”
“Police,” Day said. “My name is Inspector Day. Nothing to worry about. Please go about your business, sir.”
“But I can’t go about my business.”
“You can’t?”
“You’re blocking the way. That’s my tea shop.”
Day smiled. “Ah, very good, sir. Then you have the opportunity to clear up a small mystery for me.”
“A mystery?”
“Do you have anyone working for you here? Small fellow named George Hampstead? A bit jumpy?”
“No.” The man pulled himself up to his full height. “I’ve never had anyone working here except me. Never a need. What’s going on here?”
“Well,” Day said, “it’s all a bit complicated. Do you have a few minutes to spare?”
21
The contractions were coming every few minutes, and Claire didn’t know what to do. She curled up under the coverlet and hugged her knees and closed her eyes and tried to imagine the tiny life inside her. One day that life would be a person. One day that life would be a policeman or a housewife, a mother or a father, a living breathing human being. But right now, that life wanted to come out.
Claire reached under the edge of the mattress and brought out her diary. She unsnapped the catch and opened it and looked over the last entry she had made. Nothing much. Nothing that made her proud. Just a jot about feeling lonely and having trouble getting the buttons right on Walter’s shirts. There ought to be something more there. What if she died in childbirth? It was more than possible. Dr Kingsley told her not to think of such things, told her she was safe and healthy and that he would do his all for her. But he didn’t know. He’d never felt a contraction, he’d never given birth.
She turned a page and took her pencil and bit her lower lip. Another contraction hit and she grimaced, almost made a sound, but didn’t. At least there was that. She felt like pushing back against that pressure, but she was afraid of what might happen if she did.
Instead, she thought of her baby and what she could tell it. Her eyes closed, she felt the room moving, and she remembered skipping rope when she was a girl and hadn’t worried about dying. She thought about what it was like to be a child, and she hoped that she would be able to make her baby feel the way that she had when she was young. She opened her eyes and she wrote in her diary:
My skipping rope,
It passes over and it passes down.
My skipping rope,
She couldn’t think of anything that rhymed with down. She felt dizzy and unconnected, so she concentrated harder on the words. She crossed out the second line and wrote It passes under and it passes up. This posed the same problem. Cup? What did that have to do with skipping rope? Pup? Maybe the child was skipping rope with a dog? That seemed unlikely.
She tossed her diary aside and lay watching the ceiling swim around above her. There were more than enough nursery rhymes for children. She didn’t need to write her own.
Another contraction hit. She clenched her teeth and moved to her hand to her stomach. And then she felt something warm and wet moving under her bottom and up to the small of her back, and she pulled aside the blanket and there was liquid soaking into her fresh linens, a whole day’s work undone by her rebel body. Tears sprang to her eyes and she wiped them away.
Another contraction, this one the worst yet. Terrible pain, and why was it necessary to feel such pain when childbirth was such a common thing? She tensed up into a ball in the wet spot, but it wasn’t a spot, it was an ocean, and she clenched her hands into fists and thought about her horse, the little horse her father had given to her on the occasion of her thirteenth birthday, and she wondered if that horse was still galloping about somewhere on her p
arents’ land wondering why she didn’t visit it anymore. Why didn’t she take it apples and ride it anymore?
The pain passed, although she could still feel it, a faint drumbeat like her pulse somewhere far away. She sat up and looked down and there was blood in the bed, blood mixed with something clear and viscous, flecking the coverlet and soaking into her nightgown.
“Fiona!”
She licked her lips and concentrated on not panicking, except that everything felt wrong. Her body was somebody else’s body and it didn’t fit her properly, hadn’t been hers to begin with. She gasped and closed her eyes; again there was a twinge low in her belly, a soft strum of muscle and grit, and she screamed as loud as she could.
“Fiona!”
22
Jack stood patiently in the center of the parlor while Cinderhouse moved around him. The tailor had Jack try on the jacket first. Elizabeth sat quietly in his chair in the corner of the room, watching them alter one of his suits. The jacket’s shoulders were broader than Jack’s own shoulders, but not by much, and the slight difference helped with the sleeves. Jack’s arms had always been much longer than average and his enforced starvation hadn’t altered their length. Cinderhouse silently noted a few things, then had Jack try on the trousers. They were a bit long, but the tailor pinned up the hem of the left leg, made sure it broke properly against the top of Jack’s foot. He measured Jack’s waist, using a piece of the same twine they’d tied Elizabeth with, and had Jack take the suit off again.
Cinderhouse retired to the dining room table and began to sew, while Jack rooted through the drawers in Elizabeth’s bedroom until he found a pair of underpants that fit him well enough if he bunched them up at the waist. He found a smoking jacket in the closet in the hall and put that on, too, and paced about the house, barefoot. He hovered over the bald man for a while, watching him work, but the tailor kept pricking himself, his hands shaking with fear, and so Jack wandered away. He didn’t want blood on his new suit. At least, not just yet.
