53
The house was empty.
Tiffany dispatched two of the constables to check the bedrooms upstairs. The other two went into the parlor, and Hammersmith went with them. Tiffany and Blacker proceeded down the hallway to the kitchen.
There was an odor of rotting meat in the parlor. A single ray of sunlight beamed through the front window, but did little to dispel the gloom. A bee buzzed lazily through the room and back out.
A chair was tipped back next to the hearth. Bits of twine curled around its legs and arms and around the cushioned back. Hammersmith knelt beside it and saw dark flecks that he was certain were blood on the brocaded seat.
“Oh, God almighty,” one of the constables said. Hammersmith looked up and followed the constable’s gaze to the mantelpiece. Two objects were nailed to the wood just below eye-level.
“That explains the smell in here,” Hammersmith said. “But why would there be meat on the mantel?”
“It ain’t just meat, Sergeant. Look at it.”
Hammersmith stood and took the three steps to the fireplace. He covered his nose with the back of his hand and leaned in for a better look. It took a moment for him to realize what the things were.
“Do you suppose they’re human?” the other constable said.
“Surely they’re lambs’ tongues,” Hammersmith said. But he wasn’t at all sure.
He heard the other two constables come down the stairs and clomp past the parlor door on their way to the kitchen.
“Get some more light in here, would you?” he said to the constable who had found the tongues. “And get those down from there.”
“I don’t wanna touch them things.”
“Find a pry bar. Put them in a basin. I’ll send for Dr Kingsley. He might be able to verify what sort of animal they came from.”
He started out of the room, then turned back.
“No, on second thought,” he said, “leave them there. Kingsley’s daughter can draw this all out for us. It might be important to know where everything is.”
He saw both constables relax, clearly pleased that they wouldn’t have to touch the bloody tongues.
Hammersmith went out of the parlor and turned left. The two constables who had been upstairs passed him on their way back out. One tipped his hat to Hammersmith. They went back past the parlor and out through the front door. Hammersmith watched them go, then walked down the hall and found the two inspectors in the kitchen, huddled over something on a big table. They looked up when he entered the room.
“It looks like they’ve gone,” Blacker said. “But they left a map. It might tell us where they went.”
“But it’s covered with markings,” Tiffany said. “They could be anywhere.”
Hammersmith looked around the room, at a piece of ham on the counter, shiny and hard, at breadcrumbs on the floor. He noticed a small stub of a pencil against the bottom edge of a cabinet leg. It looked like it had rolled off the table and across the room and lodged where it was unlikely to be noticed. The honeybee from the parlor careened past his nose and bumped into the edge of the back door, then corrected its flight path and disappeared outside.
“The back door’s open,” Hammersmith said. “Did you check the garden?”
“Of course,” Tiffany said.
“Look at this,” Blacker said. He led the way out the back door and past a flowering bush where more bees were hard at work tending to bright purple blossoms. There was a high wooden fence at the back of the garden, covered with thick leafy vines. Blacker pointed at the fence. “See that? See how the vines are torn away here? And here?” He pointed. “And up there?”
“Somebody climbed over that fence,” Hammersmith said.
“And they were none too neat about it. Maybe saw us coming and left in a hurry.”
“What’s on the other side?”
“Don’t know. Just sent two of these boys around the end of the street to find out.”
A voice came through the fence: “Over here now, sir!”
“That was quick,” Blacker said. “Anything to see?”
Hammersmith could hear the two constables tromping about in the garden on the other side.
“There’s some kind of a little tree over here,” the constable said. “Branches all broken away like somebody hung on ’em. And leaves all over the ground. Somebody tipped over a table here, too.”
“Is anyone at home over there?”
“Yes, sir. Got the lady of the house here with me. She seen one.”
“How long ago?”
“Not sure, sir. Should I go ask?”
“Just get her inside. We’ll be over to talk to her.”
Blacker turned to Hammersmith, excited. “We’re right behind them. At least one of ’em went over the fence and through the house on the other side.”
They went back into the kitchen, and Blacker grabbed Tiffany by the elbow. “We’ve got ’em,” he said. “Come on!”
Tiffany turned back as they left the kitchen. “Sergeant, why don’t you take the rest of these lads and go from door to door? Talk to everybody on this street and make sure the fugitives didn’t come back round. They could be hiding somewhere along here, waiting for us to leave.”
Hammersmith nodded, but once the two inspectors had left, he bent and picked up the pencil from the floor. He took it to the table and stared down at the map. Some of the markings there were in ink or wax crayon, but he saw the fainter trace of graphite here and there. In one place, a pencil had been pushed down against the parchment so hard that it had torn through. Hammersmith leaned forward and stared at the rough loop made by the end of a blunt pencil. Someone had circled a spot in Primrose Hill again and again.
And Hammersmith knew all at once who had drawn the circle on the map. Cinderhouse was not on Phoenix Street or even the next street over. He was on his way to 184 Regent’s Park Road. He was on his way to Walter Day’s house. Day wasn’t at home and Hammersmith was sure he was in no danger. But Claire would be there and she would be alone with young Fiona Kingsley. There was a constable guarding the house, but Hammersmith didn’t know who it was. He couldn’t believe Sir Edward would post someone very good on guard duty. Not during a manhunt.
Hammersmith ran past the parlor, where two constables were busy trying to coax the two tongues into a dirty washbasin with the tips of their truncheons. A third man was there, his back to Hammersmith, apparently supervising the removal of the tongues. He wore a tall black hat and was holding a medical bag. Hammersmith briefly wondered why the doctor hadn’t gone next door to take care of the injured homeowner, why he would override Hammersmith’s own orders regarding the tongues, but he didn’t stop to ask. He banged out through the front door and past the two wagons, the old lady, and the children. He grabbed the bicycle out of the hands of the boy who was still standing by the gate across the street.
“I’m sorry,” he said, “but I need this. I’ll get it back to you straightaway. Tell the inspectors to get someone to Walter Day’s house in Primrose Hill. That’s where one of the fugitives has gone. Tell them Sergeant Hammersmith is going there now and to meet me there.”
And before the boy could answer or protest, Hammersmith leapt on his bike and pedaled away down the street.
“Well,” Eunice Pye said to the children. “Rude.”
54
Fiona rooted through Claire’s sewing basket, looking for a spool of red thread to match the embroidered names on the coverlet. She had found a spool of white, which she set aside on the small table next to Claire’s chair in the sitting room, but all the other spools were spread across the bottom of the basket underneath fabric remnants and thimbles and cards with needles poked through, and Fiona had to be careful not to stick herself while she looked. There was no rhyme or reason to the way that Claire had stuffed her things into the basket. Fiona needed the white thread in case she had to take apart a seam in order to get the blood out. She’d have to restitch it. And she needed a pair of scissors and the needles, of course. But it was dark down in the basket and Fiona was tempted to upend it onto the table. She could sift through everything on the tabletop, in the bright sunlight streaming through the window, and then shove it all back in the basket. Claire would probably never even know. It was very clear that Claire didn’t spend a lot of time mending things.