by Alex Grecian
“If that’s true . . . Adrian, if what you say is true, then you set murderers free in this city. In my city. My wife and unborn son may be in danger because of you.”
“It went wrong. There were supposed to be men at the gate to gather the prisoners up as they came through. They never would have made it beyond the main gate. We had a wagon, but it broke a wheel. We arrived just minutes too late.”
Realization washed over Day and he turned from the voice, looked at the shackles again. Candle wax had dripped down over the metal and pooled, dull pink, like blood and water.
“This place . . .”
“Yes,” March said. “This place is where we bring murderers, molesters, perversions of humanity. This place is the classroom where they receive instruction.”
“You’re mad.”
“No, Walter, I’m angry. Madness would be to stand by and do nothing.”
“Adrian, I . . . No, I understand now. It was the Ripper case. He did this to you, didn’t he? You never caught him, and the stress of it all, the pressure you must have been under to catch Jack the Ripper . . . I can’t imagine. But this isn’t the answer, man. Come with me. There are doctors who could—”
“There are doctors among us, Walter. Does that surprise you? The Karstphanomen has doctors, lawyers, Lords . . . Yes, even policemen. There’s a member of the royal family among us. We are not madmen. We are enthusiastic proponents of justice.”
“How many of you are there?”
“Very many. And, Walter, I’ve proposed you for membership.”
“Never.”
“You’re too quick to speak. Wait until you see what we’ve done.”
“I don’t want to see. I don’t want to know any of this. Adrian, if anything you’re saying is even remotely true, I’m going to have to arrest you.”
“You won’t arrest me. When you see what we do, when you see it firsthand, you’ll help me.”
“Help you to do what? Torture people?”
“They deserve it.”
“I thought you said you were teaching them something.”
“We are.”
“Are you teaching them? Or are you hurting them because you feel they deserve it?”
“Both, actually. Why can’t it be both?”
“Can you hear yourself? You’ve become a zealot.”
“Walter, you’re wrong. I didn’t fail. I caught Jack. I really did catch him.”
“You caught Jack the Ripper?”
“Lusk and Aberline and I. We caught him. Saucy Jack is down here right now. Has been for more than a year.”
“Oh my God.”
“Would you like to see him?”
“I . . .”
“Come with me. Just let me show you what we’ve done, and then you can arrest me if you still want to. I’ll go quietly.”
“I don’t want to see.”
“Yes, you do.”
Day took a step back. His heel hit the iron ring in the floor and it clanked against the stones. He turned and looked at the chains, at the hard-packed walls, at the dim glow of the candle. He could barely breathe. Monstrous things had happened here among the bones of untold previous generations. These men thought he could be one of them, had discussed him down here in the mud and clay. While he lay beside his wife and unborn child above them, evil men had made plans for Walter Day.
He turned back to the dark tunnel where his mentor lurked.
“Very well,” he said. His voice sounded far away to him, like someone else speaking. “Give me back my revolver. Then show me Jack the Ripper.”
36
When the Devil tipped his hat to her, Eunice Pye clapped her hands to her chest and waited for her heart to stop beating. She knew exactly what he was as soon as she saw him, and she cursed herself for staying in the window long enough that he noticed her. But the Devil kept on walking and turned the corner out of sight and her heart kept beating and she didn’t die. She sent up a silent prayer of thanks to Giles for watching over her. Then she rushed out of her home and across the lane without looking to see if there were carriages coming. She banged through the black iron gate and into the tiny courtyard in front of the Anderson home. She scooped up the girl who was playing there and hugged the child tight. The girl yelped and protested and squirmed, but Eunice didn’t even notice. She rang the doorbell, and when the Andersons’ housekeeper came to the door, Eunice handed the struggling child over to her.
“You keep watch over her today, Miss Bonnie,” Eunice said. “There’s evil about, and you ought to keep her safe inside.”
She didn’t wait for a response, but turned and marched back across the street. This time she remembered to watch for wagons in the lane. Of course the Andersons’ housekeeper would think Eunice was a madwoman, but that was fine with her. Whether they were worried about the Devil in the lane or worried about the madwoman in the house across the way, they were likely to make their girl stay indoors for the day, and that was all that really mattered.
Eunice didn’t go straight back to her own house, but veered to her right and went through the gate next door and crept through the garden to the front window of the Michaels’ home.
In a single morning she had seen one of the escaped prisoners whose likeness decorated the front page of the morning tabloid and then she had seen the Devil himself, and they had both come out of this house. She didn’t know whether the bald murderer of children had turned himself into the Devil or whether they were different people and the bald man was still inside somewhere, but she knew that she was not safe anywhere, not even in her own home where she could put up wards, as long as the Devil was about in the neighborhood. She felt she had to do something constructive, and she was not afraid of death as long as she knew where she was going when she died and that Giles was up there waiting for her. Good people did not hide and wait for evil to pass by. They acted.
The curtains were closed across the Michaels’ window, but there was a gap of perhaps an inch and a half where they did not quite meet in the middle. She went up on her tiptoes and held on to the bricks of the outside window ledge with her fingertips and peered inside.
The house was very dark, but when her eyes got used to the gloom she was able to see well enough. The parlor looked normal at first glance, and she was unable to see beyond it except for a wedge of the hall that she assumed led to the kitchen in back. She was certain that the Michaels’ home followed the same floor plan as her own, and so the stairway to the upper floors would be just out of sight across from the parlor, but she couldn’t see it from where she was.
Her toes started to hurt. They weren’t used to bearing all of her weight, even though she was not a large person by any stretch of the imagination. She scowled, disappointed, at the empty room beyond the window and decided there was nothing to see. She would have to go directly to the police and bring them round, rather than waiting for them to respond to her earlier correspondence. But just at the moment she began to lower herself back to the ground, something moved at the periphery of her vision and she sprang back up on her toes and focused on the corner of the room between the window and the fireplace. There near the hearth was a blind spot where she could not see, but there was a foot, or more precisely a shoe with a foot in it, and the shoe was moving. Just a little bit, but it was enough to command her attention. She pressed her cheek against the glass and followed the shoe with her eyes, up a leg, and there was a hand, but the hand was twisted at a very odd angle, and there was a bit of rope about the wrist, and that was as much as she could possibly see.
Her toes hurt and her eyes hurt and her back hurt, but she paid them no mind.
There was a person tied to a chair in the parlor of the Michaels’ house.
Her eyes widened with the realization and she drew a deep breath, and then she noticed something else. Nailed above the fireplace were two objects. They were small and oblong and dark in color. Then one of the objects moved, shriveled a bit and curled up on itself just the slightest amount, and it
looked to her like it might be talking to her.
And it was a tongue. There were two tongues nailed to the mantel.
Eunice let herself drop back down into the garden. She went to the gate and around to her own little garden and inside her house. She opened the door under the stairs and found her stoutest garden hoe and went back out of the house and next door again.
There was no time for policemen now.
The red door was not latched. The Devil had left it open for her, and she did not know whether that had been a mistake or he had set a trap, but she knew that she had to do something or she would hate herself forever.
Eunice Pye pushed open the door and, brandishing her garden hoe, she stepped over the threshold and into the Devil’s house.
37
Adrian March knew the tunnels beneath this part of London as well as he knew the streets above them. He lit his candle again and led the way past sunken buildings, through an underground train station, to a large pond, which they crossed in a two-man skiff. Day followed along, but his mind wandered despite the marvels he saw around him. He knew that he wouldn’t be able to backtrack through the tunnels without becoming hopelessly lost. He remembered that they were supposed to meet Hammersmith at the door of the church before they struck out underground, but Day didn’t know where the church was anymore or how to get back there. It was entirely possible that March intended to abandon him down here, leave him to wander in the darkness until he died.
He turned his mind to the twin concerns of food and water, as if March’s betrayal were a certainty: The water in the underground pond was fresh, and they saw wildlife living in the tunnels, deer and foxes and rats. There were fish in the pond, too, blind white things, and Day thought he might be able to fashion some kind of hook and line. He could catch a fish, he assumed, more easily than he could hunt a deer in the dark. Of course, he was unlikely to find a cask of brandy in any of the caverns they passed through. There would be no cases of wine that hadn’t long ago turned to vinegar. He might live for a time, but he wouldn’t be comfortable. And he wouldn’t be present at the birth of his child.
Still, he followed March deeper and deeper down and he prayed that his mentor had not completely lost his mind, that there was still a trustworthy man somewhere in there.
Beyond the pond, March led the way into a side passage that grew narrower as they traveled. The ceiling angled down so that Day had to stoop to walk, and the walls were unfinished red clay rather than the hard-packed soil and stone he had seen in the larger tunnels. He followed March down a series of steps that might have been accidental shapes in the earth, not anything hewn by men. He thought again of his friend Hammersmith, who had grown up working the coal mines of Wales and who still feared enclosed spaces. Perhaps it was best after all that they had not gone back for the sergeant.
At the bottom of the soft clay steps, March leaned down and waved his candle over the ground at his feet.
“What do you make of this?”
Day came down off the bottom step and stood next to his mentor. There were dark spots in the dirt and they gleamed in the candle’s light. Day squatted and touched one of the spots. It was thick and gummy. He brought his fingers to his nose and sniffed at the black liquid, then stuck out his tongue and tasted it.
“Blood,” he said. “It’s been here for some time, but it hasn’t dried yet.”
“Oh, no,” March said. He stood up straight and reached out his arm so that the candle illuminated a tiny bit more of the dark passage ahead of them.
Day found his flask and took a drink of brandy, swished it around his mouth to get rid of the metallic taste of blood and clay.
“One of the prisoners, perhaps,” he said when he had swallowed the brandy.
“Or an animal,” March said. “I hope it’s an animal. A wild dog or rats fighting each other. That’s possible, isn’t it? Rats fight each other.”
“That’s a lot of blood to have come out of a rat,” Day said. “And there’s a trail running off down there. No way of knowing if it’s human blood, but we should be careful.”
Day drew his Colt Navy and they proceeded down the tunnel.
“How far do we have to go?”
“Not much farther,” March said.
“I’ll take the lead.”
“Not necessary.”
“I’ve got the gun.”
“It could be one of us,” March said. “A Karstphanomen. He wouldn’t know you.”
Day didn’t bother to reply. He held the gun out at his side and led the way down the passage, the clay underfoot muffling his footsteps. He worried that the candlelight might give them away to anyone waiting ahead of them, but there was no getting around that. They couldn’t very well douse the only light sources they had.
The tunnel widened out as they went along, and they passed waterways and narrow branches. Day began to see more of the alcoves along the sides, shallow recesses that had been dug to contain bones. He guessed they were in another section of catacombs, perhaps beneath another church in another parish. He walked carefully, but the blood trail led directly down the center of the tunnel floor.
“Here,” March said. He was close behind Day. “Just up here to your right.”
Day slowed down and stopped when he saw another pile of bones in the passageway. The alcove opposite the bones seemed larger than the others, as if it had been hollowed out and expanded.
“Not this one,” March said. “It’s the last one down here.”
Day stepped past the bones and found another pile of bones, another large alcove, and then a third pile and a third alcove. The tunnel abruptly ended two feet beyond the third alcove. It was the last one. Day crept up to it and shone the candle into it, his gun held up even with his chest, at the ready.
Inside, a man was chained to the wall. The man was wearing a dark blue uniform jacket, much like that worn by the police, and a dirty white pair of trousers decorated with black darts. His leg was badly broken, a splintered fragment of bone jutting from the fabric of his trousers. He raised his head and looked at Day, an expression of horror on his face.
“Behind you,” he said.
Day heard a muffled cry and a thump, and he turned to see March’s body falling. Day swung the gun around and brought the candle up at the same time. A man stood in the darkness beyond March’s silent body. The man was only a dark shape cut out of the tunnel’s air, his eyes black and glittering in the candlelight.
“Welcome,” the man said, “to my home away from home.”
Day pointed his gun and squeezed the trigger just as the man’s arm came up and something lashed across Day’s face. The gun’s report was deafening in the enclosed space of the tunnel, and Day reeled backward. He felt blood running into his eyes and he thought he could hear someone laughing, but he couldn’t be sure because the gun blast was echoing around and out and back at him. Then something struck him in the head and his knees turned to tissue paper and he fell into the darkness. He saw the candle fall next to his face and he saw a boot come down on it, extinguishing its flame. Then he saw nothing at all. The tunnel went quiet and closed in on him and crushed the breath out of him, and he lost consciousness.
38
Dr Kingsley smiled at Claire Day and then at his daughter, who stood anxiously by the door, wringing her hands. He put the stethoscope back in his bag and took a look around the bedroom. There was a table next to the wall that was being used as a bath, with a basin, towels, a pitcher, and a pail. There was the usual complement of tooth powder and soap and talcum. He set his bag on the table and scooped those small items up and went across the room to the giant wardrobe. The wardrobe was useless for his purposes, and so he opened its doors and tossed the toiletries inside and closed it again. He moved the curtains and took a look out the window. They were on the corner and above the ground floor, and there were no nearby homes with windows that looked out on the Days’ upper floors. He pulled the sash and opened the curtains and cranked open the window to let in
some fresh air. The room was stuffy and dark, and he imagined both Claire and Fiona might appreciate a light breeze.
“I would prefer to take you to a hospital,” he said. He turned from the window and scowled at Claire. Her hair was sweaty and plastered to her neck. She sucked in her breath as a contraction hit, then relaxed a bit as it passed. “You’re moving ahead earlier than I’d like.”
“I didn’t mean to,” Claire said.
“No, of course not. Babies come when they’re ready to come, and we have little say in the matter. You’ll have the child right here and it will be fine.”
“Will it, though? Is everything all right? It hurts and there’s blood and I don’t feel very good.”
“No, you don’t feel very good. You’re having a baby. It’s not meant to be a picnic.”
“But is anything wrong?”
“There is only a small amount of blood, and you mustn’t let it alarm you. It’s perfectly normal and I should have told you to expect it. We doctors call it the ‘bloody show,’ and that’s frankly an apt description of the entire process.”
“Father,” Fiona said, “she’s scared.”
Kingsley sighed. Childbirth was always a risky proposition. His record was good, better than that of any other doctor in London. He had helped in the delivery of nearly a hundred babies and had lost only seven of them. Only three of the women had died. He remembered them all and they haunted him still, but he knew the numbers were regarded as acceptable. Years ago, after the first young mother’s death, he had learned to keep them all at arm’s length. He did his work and he did it well, but he did not need to be a friend to these women. He was their doctor, and if they died . . . well, people died. He did his best and he hoped they would not die, but he could not control the process as well as he would prefer. There were too many things that could go wrong in an instant.
But Claire Day was already a friend, and there was no way he could maintain his usual formal distance.
