by Alex Grecian
“The old man next door had trees then, when I was a boy. There’s nothing there now. The trees didn’t survive. I’ve outlived them by years and years. But back then there were still trees, and a great many of them. Plum trees. Damsons, I think. And one morning, very early, I got myself over the wall between our houses and I stole three ripe plums from that old man’s trees.”
The tailor smiled at the memory: the smooth feel of the plums, the rubbery flesh between his teeth, the purple juice spilling from his lips.
“We didn’t have money for fruit then. My papa did his best, but plums were dear and I had never tasted one. He beat me, of course. Beat me with this crop. Took me to the carriage house and made me fetch it to him, which in a way was worse than the beating. Because of the fear, you understand? The fear grew and grew until I couldn’t stand it, and the beating came as a release from that band of terror that had tightened around me.”
He looked over at Fenn, sharing the experience of being a boy with him. Fenn had quieted, but tears still spilled onto the pillow under his head.
“He beat me, my papa did, until I couldn’t lie down to sleep. And then that old man came round with the police. They took me off to the boy’s detention house and they put me in a hole that was so dark I couldn’t see my hand when it was this close to my face.” He held his hand an inch from Fenn’s nose, but the boy didn’t open his eyes to see. That was all right, the tailor thought; that was the darkness he meant to convey.
“I was there for a month. At first I couldn’t sit or lie down on the rocks and dirt in that cell because the scabs on my back would break and bleed. But after a week or more, I lay down and I slept. I slept for days and days, and when I finally woke I felt stronger and I knew that I had learned the lesson that my father had set out to teach me and that I would be a good father myself when I grew up.
“And I was a good father. My son, my boy, he was a good boy. He was a good boy. I didn’t get to be his papa for very long. He was taken away from me because I must have done something wrong. I must not have been a good papa to him because God took him away and I don’t know where he is.”
Cinderhouse swallowed hard. He felt his own tears gathering behind his eyes. He cleared his throat and stared at the bars over Fenn’s window.
“But that came much later. I remember when I was still a boy myself and I left that cell after a month, the light stung my eyes and the air burned my skin, but I grew used to it. It was easier then. Children can grow accustomed to anything over time.”
He nodded at the boy, hoping he understood. A boy will adapt and forget what came before. Children were made to do that.
“I never stole again. And I obeyed my father. I learned his trade from him and I became a tailor and took over his business and made it so much more successful than he ever did. And when he was dying, dying at my feet, he reached out to me and he told me that I was a good boy. He knew that a boy takes his father’s place. He knew that what I had to do to him was the right thing.”
Cinderhouse thought that perhaps he ought not to have told the boy this last part of his story. Perhaps this wasn’t a lesson he wanted the boy to learn yet.
“I’m going to untie you so you can eat. If I do that, will you try to run again?”
Fenn shook his head.
“Say it,” Cinderhouse said.
“No, sir. I won’t run.”
“Good. Good lad. We can’t have you starving to death. And we can afford fruit. I have fruit downstairs for you. No plums, but a fresh ripe apple for you. Things are different now.”
The tailor realized he had muddled his own childhood with that of the boy in the bed. Fenn hadn’t stolen the plums. He frowned and reached out to ruffle the boy’s damp hair.
“Anyhow, you’ll need to eat.”
“Please don’t hit me.”
“What, you mean this?” Cinderhouse chuckled and lifted the crop from his lap. He sat back and regarded his son. “I was only telling you a story about this. I wouldn’t hit you. I’m not like my father. I’m completely unlike him.”
He leaned forward again so that his son would see the intent in his eyes and understand that the time for play had passed.
“But if you run from me again, I will use this, and the skin will fall from your back in sheets and you will stand until your feet swell and throb with pain, and you will try to sit and there will be nothing to lean against without your back feeling as if it’s aflame, and you will try to lie down and scream in agony and leap to your feet again and the torture will be unbearable.”
Fenn’s eyes were huge with fear.
“Do you understand me, son?”
The boy nodded.
“We’ll have no more of this foolishness, then, will we?”
Fenn shook his head.
“We’ll have no more running away from your dear papa, will we?”
Fenn shook his head again and swallowed hard. “No,” he said.
“No, what?”
“No, Papa.”
“That’s good. That’s a good boy.”
Cinderhouse felt his chest ache with sudden pride and love for this boy who had come back to live with him again.
“I forgive you, son,” he said.
And he began to untie the ropes so that he could embrace the boy at last.
68
University College Hospital squatted at the corner of Gower Street and Euston Road in Bloomsbury. It was an unexceptional brick and stone building surrounded by an iron fence. The hospital had been built in 1834 and had expanded twice since then, but it was still too cramped to accommodate the hundreds of patients who passed through its doors every day.
Inside it was a madhouse, with great open wards, each holding the maximum number of beds possible in long starched rows along each wall. Nurses, doctors, and white-clad assistants glided from bed to bed over the blanched and bloodstained floor.
Penelope Shaw was stationed at the open door to one of the wards when Blacker, Day, and Hammersmith arrived. She had clearly been crying, her eyes and mouth blotched and puffy, but her hair was up in a perfect swirl, her posture straight and elegant in a bright red dress. A rose standing tall among thistledown.
“Oh, Mr Hammersmith. Thank God you came. I was hoping it would be you.”
“Mrs Shaw,” Hammersmith said.
Blacker gave Hammersmith a suspicious glare, but Day grabbed Blacker by the elbow and steered him past Penelope Shaw before he could speak. Hammersmith held up a finger, asking Day for one moment alone with the victim’s wife. Day nodded and disappeared into the chaos of the ward with Blacker in tow.
“It wasn’t my choice,” Penelope said. “I mean, what I did to you. He made me do it. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“It hardly matters now, does it?”
“Will you arrest him?”
“From what I’ve heard, I doubt he’s healthy enough for me to bother.”
“What about me? Will you arrest me?”
“I haven’t made up my mind. I have more important things to worry about.”
“I’ll understand if you have to arrest me.”
“What is it that you want, Mrs Shaw?”
“I want…”
“Go on.”
“I want to be free of him.”
“Did you do this? Is he here because of something you did to him?”
Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. No. How could you even ask me that? You haven’t seen him, haven’t seen what was done to him. I could never. Not even to him.”
“You have reason to want him injured or dead. You’ve just told me as much.”
“Not like that. I only hoped … I hoped that you might act against him.”
“You’ve made a mess of things, Mrs Shaw. I’ve only met your husband once. Almost everything I know about him has come from you. Right now, I have more reason to act against you than against him.”
“I know. And I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But he’s … He
planned to follow you. He may even have been following you when this happened to him. He meant to do you harm.”
“What kind of harm?”
“I don’t know. He wanted to be able to stop you. You wouldn’t go away, even after he visited your commissioner.”
She looked down at her hands. Hammersmith took a step back from her and watched the nurses bustling to and fro at the end of the hall.
“I still don’t understand why he didn’t simply report the dead child. I wouldn’t even know who he was if he’d done the right thing in the first place.”
“He didn’t want it to reflect upon his reputation. Why is that so hard to understand? You threatened to cause a scandal that would have ruined his practice.”
“I never cared about him. It’s the chimney sweep I want. He’s the one who left the boy’s body there. I want to see justice done. I don’t care about scandals and reputations and all this ridiculous social claptrap.”
“Do you care about me?”
Hammersmith took a step back. He looked away toward the open door of the critical ward.
“I … I need to see your husband now,” he said. “Wait here.”
He started to pass her, then stopped and spoke without turning around, without looking at her.
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll die.”
69
Dr Charles Shaw lay on his back with pillows under his shoulders and neck. Between this arrangement of pillows there was a plank that held a shallow metal tray, there to catch the blood and pus that drained from his throat. Heavy black stitches spiderwebbed across his neck, but fluid seeped through and ran down both sides under his ears, dripping into the pan. A copper tube snaked out through a small gap in the stitches, and Day could hear air being drawn through it as Shaw’s chest rose and fell.
As Day and Blacker approached Shaw’s bed, a nurse quickly slid the full tray of gore from under his head and replaced it with a fresh tray. The movement jostled the pillows. Shaw made no sound, but his hands clawed at the sheets, and Day knew that no matter how efficiently the nurse acted, the procedure must be painful for Shaw.
The two detectives stood side by side at the edge of the bed and looked down at the doctor’s swollen purple face. The elaborate curly beard was gone and Shaw’s naked chin was weak and pale. The wound across his throat nearly separated his head from the body below and Day wondered that Shaw was still alive.
“Can you hear us, Dr Shaw?”
Shaw’s eyelids rolled up and his bloodshot eyes worked to focus on Day.
“Can you say who did this to you?”
“He can’t talk,” the nurse said. “His voice box is just … well, it’s just gone.”
“We’ll need to ask him some questions. Will he improve?”
She shook her head. The pan under Shaw’s head was already filling up again with brown and yellow waste.
“He needs to rest,” she said. “There’s nothing anyone can do now but let him rest.”
Day sighed and began to turn away, but Shaw reached out and grabbed his wrist. Shaw’s grip was so weak that Day almost didn’t notice. He looked down at the doctor’s wide and pleading eyes.
“Get me paper,” Day said. “Any kind. Something to write with.”
The nurse glared at him.
“Sir, I shouldn’t say this in front of the patient.”
“Say what?”
“I shouldn’t say.”
Day took her elbow and moved her away from Shaw. They stood at the end of another bed where a man with no arms was crying for a drink of water. Day tried not to look at the man.
“What don’t you want to say?”
“He won’t live through today.”
“Then you must allow us to talk to him.”
Hammersmith entered the ward and saw Day. Day nodded to him across the room and Hammersmith joined them. The nurse glared at Hammersmith, too, clearly resenting police intrusion on her premises. Day decided that she was the kind of petty bureaucrat who reveled in whatever small amount of power they had and she clearly ruled the critical care ward. Her attitude toward the police had no doubt been colored by the Ripper murders. So many people who might once have been glad to see the police were now immediately scornful.
“You should leave now,” the nurse said. “Any exertion at all will speed the process of that man’s death.”
“Please forgive how plain this must sound,” Day said, “but what does it matter if he’ll die today anyway? Let us talk to him now. We’ll be easy on him, but he may be able to lead us to a murderer, someone who has killed before and who we believe will kill again. Don’t you think he’d want to help us with that? To help us find the man who murdered him?”
“Every moment of life is sacred. Let him spend his last moments in peace.”
“Every moment of life should be spent accomplishing something,” Hammersmith said. “Could someone get this poor man some water?”
He pointed to the man in the bed who was still screaming for a drink.
“He’s just had a drink of water. He wants attention, that’s all.”
“Then perhaps someone should pay attention to him.”
Hammersmith fetched a pitcher from a nearby cart and poured a small amount of it into a shallow bowl. He stepped around Day and lifted the crying patient’s head, held the bowl to his lips. The man grew quiet and sipped at the bowl of water.
The nurse stomped away and Day saw her talking to a doctor at the far end of the room, pointing back at them. The doctor broke free of her and waved his hand at the nurse to stay where she was. He had dark pouches under his eyes and his tie was askew. This wasn’t a man who was accustomed to sleeping well. When he approached them, Hammersmith handed him the empty water bowl. The doctor took it and nodded.
“There’s too many of them,” he said. “We do what we can for them, but the men in this ward are just waiting to die. We’re not cruel, but we haven’t the time.”
“I’m not asking for your time, sir,” Day said. “I apologize if we’ve distressed anyone. I am a friend of Dr Bernard Kingsley, who works here in the hospital, if you’d like to inquire about my discretion and habits.”
“I know Dr Kingsley. I’m sure it won’t be necessary to trouble him. What is it we can do for you?”
“You have a patient. Also a surgeon. Dr Charles Shaw.”
“I don’t recognize the name. Does he work here?”
“I don’t know, sir. But he’s lying in that bed, with a wounded throat.”
“Oh, my. Yes. I wasn’t aware he was a doctor. I’ve done what I can for him, but I’m afraid there’s no hope. All we can do at this point is pray.”
“We’ve no use for idle praying,” Hammersmith said. “We need information from this man.”
“I’m afraid he can’t talk to you. By that I mean he’s incapable of any speech at all.”
“Then could we have a notebook and a pencil?” Day said. “He may be able to write something down that could help us.”
“I don’t see any harm in that, if he’s awake. But he won’t be able to sit up.”
The doctor snapped his fingers to get the nurse’s attention and made a scribbling gesture in the air. She nodded and hurried from the room. The doctor shook their hands, made sure they were satisfied, and returned to his futile rounds. The nurse came back a moment later with a small brown cardboard-covered notebook and a wooden pencil, sharpened at both ends. Day took them and thanked her. She nodded curtly, spun on her heel, and retreated to the far side of the room.
“I don’t believe we’re making friends here, Constable,” Day said.
“Were we here to make friends?”
Day raised his eyebrows. “No. But I’ve found that the more friends I have, the easier my life seems to be.”
Hammersmith nodded, but didn’t speak.
“I don’t know about you, but I became a policeman because I care about people. We’re under a lot of pressure and you’ve suffered a horrible loss,” Day said. “
But you can’t let it change you or you’ll be no better than that hard-hearted nurse over there.”
“I’ll keep that in mind, sir.”
Day turned away. He wasn’t accustomed to being called sir and had no idea how to respond. He didn’t like it much and realized he had now created a certain formal distance between himself and the constable. He resolved to bridge that gap later. For now, he led the way to Dr Shaw’s bed, where Blacker had kept vigil. Blacker shook his head at them as they approached. Shaw was asleep. The sound of his breath as it echoed up through the copper tube was irregular and wet.
“He’s been in and out of sleep,” Blacker said. “I don’t think he has long.”
“We heard that from the doctor as well,” Day said. “Perhaps one of us should stay here and monitor him. When he wakes, he may be able to write something for us.”
“If he wakes,” Blacker said.
Hammersmith reached out and jabbed Shaw in the side. Day and Blacker looked at him, their eyes wide, but Shaw started awake and a deep rasping sound vibrated the copper tube. Day leaned over the dying man and held out the notebook.
“Can you hear me, sir?”
Shaw blinked twice at the three police.
“We’re sorry to intrude upon you, but we’d like to find the man who did this. Do you have the strength to write?”
Shaw tried to shake his head from side to side, but the effort appeared to cause him pain and they stood for a long moment, letting him recover. Finally he took the notebook and pencil from Day’s hands. He laid the pad flat on his stomach. Even moving his hand was clearly an effort, and Shaw didn’t lift the tip of the pencil from the paper as he wrote. Day watched him scrawl curlicues across the paper. Since Shaw couldn’t see what he was writing, the strokes didn’t link up properly, and the continuous line made unintended connections between letters. When Shaw finished, Day took the notebook from him and held it out so that Blacker and Hammersmith could help decipher what was written.
“No,” Blacker said. “This first word is no.”
