“How are you at fetching water?” Kingsley said.
“I can do that.”
“Very good. I’m going to need clean water and lots of it, in both cold and warm varieties, so you’ll need to heat some up for me at the fireplace. I’ll also need every basin you can find in the house.”
Constable Rupert Winthrop stood at attention and saluted, then turned and trotted off down the hall toward the kitchen.
“He seems like a nice boy,” Kingsley said.
“He’s a bit hopeless, isn’t he?” Fiona said.
“Give him time. He just needs a bit of seasoning. Now, it’s high time we looked in on our patient.” And he followed his daughter up the stairs toward the bedroom where he could already hear Claire Day moaning.
34
The sun was higher in the sky when Jack awoke, but he was sure he hadn’t slept for more than an hour. Sleep annoyed him. It smacked of weakness and mortality and inefficiency. But it was one of the many prices he had to pay in order to walk among his people as one of them.
He took a standing bath at the washbasin in Elizabeth’s bedroom, soaking a cloth in fresh water and wringing it out in the pail on the floor, using Elizabeth’s harsh soap, lye and ashes, scented with lavender. After, he pissed into the pail, watching the ripples spread across the surface of the dirty bathwater. There was a small tin of tooth powder that appeared to be brand-new and a toothbrush with a wooden handle behind the handbasin. He brushed his teeth hard, scrubbing them until his gums bled. Then he drank the rest of the water in the pitcher beside the basin and wiped his mouth on his bare arm.
Naked, he unlocked and opened the bedroom door and stepped over Cinderhouse’s body in the hallway. He crouched over the tailor, who was sound asleep, his eyelids fluttering, a smear of old blood on his chin. His mouth had not yet healed, and Jack resisted an urge to pry the tailor’s mouth open so he could see the stump of muscle that was left there. Cinderhouse was dressed very well in one of Elizabeth’s altered suits, and he was clutching a kitchen knife in his right hand, his knuckles white, his fingers rigid.
Jack smiled and clucked his whole and healthy tongue. Cinderhouse had been waiting for him, thought he would be able to kill his master and go free. He might even have succeeded had he not fallen asleep at his post. Silly little fly.
Jack gently opened Cinderhouse’s hand and took the knife from him. He stood and walked to the stairs and went down. He kept the knife with him, holding it loosely at his side. He liked the feel of it. He had always managed to find a use for knives.
He passed the open door to the parlor without glancing in and went into the kitchen. There was a heel of bread and a butt of ham on the butcher block by the back door. Jack used the knife he had taken from Cinderhouse to slice off a piece of the ham and made himself a sandwich. He stood at the back door in a beam of sunlight while he ate and watched honeybees flicker around the sweet purple flowers in the garden. When he had finished, he licked his fingers.
In the parlor was another of Elizabeth’s suits draped over the back of a chair, tailored and pressed and waiting for him. He set the knife down on the seat of the chair and took the trousers off their hanger. He held them up for Elizabeth to see. There was a subtle blue stripe in the black material and it shimmered in the light from the window. The homeowner, still tied tightly to a chair near the hearth, did not acknowledge Jack in any way. He stared into space, his eyes dead, his chest moving shallowly with each breath. Jack decided he would have to find a way to cheer Elizabeth up. He’d give it some thought when the other business of the day had been tended to.
He pulled the trousers on, thrilling at the feel of fabric against his skin, and left them unfastened, spreading his legs wide to keep the trousers from falling back down. He unbuttoned a dazzling white shirt, almost purple it was so pure and fresh, and he slipped his arms into the sleeves, shrugged the shirt up over his shoulders. He gathered the buttons in one hand and inserted them back into the holes, starting from the collar and working his way down his chest and abdomen, taking care not to drop any of them on the floor. Getting dressed was a thing so many took for granted, and yet he had not performed this simple daily operation in a very long time. He wanted to enjoy the process. He tucked the tail of the shirt into the top of the trousers and fastened the hooks on the fly. He wondered briefly why the front of a pair of trousers was called a fly, and he thought of his own stupid fly, his Peter, his rock, on the floor in the hallway upstairs, sleeping and missing the splendor of this ritual. He found the cufflinks, pretty chunks of silver with a blue porcelain inlay, and fixed his cuffs. He moved the knife and sat in the chair and pulled on a pair of sheer black hose that the tailor had left for him there. Elizabeth’s shoes were perhaps a bit loose, and Jack got up and went back to the kitchen, found a folded bit of butcher paper in the garbage that still smelled of meat. He took it back to the parlor, tore it in half, and stuffed the crumpled bits of it in the ends of the shoes. Elizabeth looked up at him when he heard the sound of tearing paper, but immediately lost interest and returned his gaze to the nothingness he saw in the middle of the room. The shoes were a better fit with the paper in them, so Jack tied them with a double knot, stood and put on the waistcoat and the jacket, went back to the kitchen, and gazed at himself in the mirror on the back of the pantry door.
He looked magnificent.
He smoothed his long hair and walked down the hall. He had seen a coin purse on the chimneypiece and he found it again. He weighed it in the palm of his hand before slipping it into his pocket. He picked up the knife from the chair in the parlor and took it with him. He did not say good-bye to Elizabeth. If the homeowner chose to be rude and uncommunicative, Jack could match him. He put the knife in his medical bag on the floor and took a tall hat from the rack by the front door. He quietly snicked back the latch and opened the door, stood for a moment in the stream of sunlight that rushed in to greet him, then stepped outside and pulled the red door almost shut behind him. He took the four steps along the path in the little front garden, swinging his black leather bag by the handle, and went out by the gate. He passed a little girl playing across the lane. She stuck her tongue out at him and he wondered how it would look lined up next to the other tongues he had nailed to the mantel in Elizabeth’s parlor. But he smiled at the ill-mannered little girl and tipped his hat to the old lady he saw peering out the window next door. He walked away down the lane and turned the corner, and was gone.
35
Day put his hands up. It was a universal gesture, an automatic reaction to the gun pointed at him. Adrian March moved backward a step. His foot brushed up against a skull, and it rolled across the ground toward Day, zigzagging as its cheekbones took its weight, first left, then right, then left again. It bumped against the toe of Day’s shoe and he looked down. It was very small, a child’s skull, two front teeth missing and an open hole at the top of the head. Some sort of crushing blow had shattered the bone, exposing the brain and ending a life much too early. Day looked back up at March and took a deep breath. The air was damp and musty.