Jack turned back to the wagon and climbed in. He patted the side of it with his palm and shouted up to the driver.
“We’re going to Primrose Hill, young man.”
“Where to in Primrose Hill?”
“Just get me to the area and I’ll sort it out from there. Do hurry. I promised a friend I would look in on his wife.”
56
Cinderhouse was careful about his approach. He did not go right up to the front door of the Day house. Instead, he left the road just after he crossed the bridge and traveled through the back gardens of the terrace houses connected to number 184. It was the same way he had left the house with the red door. When he had escaped that house, he’d been worried that Jack might be waiting outside for him. Here, he simply wanted the element of surprise. Day wasn’t as tall as the bald man, but he looked stronger, and Cinderhouse didn’t want to confront him head-on.
He had to climb a fence at the end of the row of homes, and when he fell down on the other side, his jaw bumped against his upper molars and the fresh wound in his mouth sent pain shooting up behind his eyes. He spit blood, wiped his lips on the sleeve of his jacket, and sat for a moment until the pain became bearable. Then he stood and straightened his collar and fixed his resolve. He needed to show Jack that he was capable, that he could follow through with a task. He needed Jack to respect him. And so he needed to kill Walter Day and his wife. It was the logical move to make.
He crept up to the back of number 184 and peered through the small window next to the door. There was a girl in the kitchen whom Cinderhouse took to be the housekeeper. She was filling a basin with water from a big pail. She struggled with the pail because it was heavy and she was quite petite, but she managed to get the water into the basin without spilling much. She added salt to the water and dunked a mass of fabric into the mixture.
Cinderhouse opened his lips and tried to lick them before remembering that his tongue now adorned the mantelpiece in Elizabeth’s home. The girl in the kitchen before him was perhaps a trifle old for his tastes, but she was nearly young enough and she was pretty, and it had been so long for him. She had straw-colored hair and quick little hands, and he imagined sitting by the fire with her after a day at the shop. They wouldn’t talk. He couldn’t talk, not anymore. But she would perhaps mend a sock with her clever little hands and he would read the paper and they would be happy together.
He blinked away a tear and smiled. And, after a moment’s further reflection, he turned the doorknob and entered the kitchen.
57
Fiona looked up when she heard the door open. The coverlet was soaking in a basin, and she hoped salt water would lift most of the worst of the stains. Her mind had already turned to her father and Claire upstairs, thinking about what they would need, and so she assumed that it was Constable Winthrop entering the kitchen with water, even though she knew that he was in the parlor rooting through Claire’s sewing basket for a spool of red-colored thread.
Of course, it was not Rupert Winthrop at the door. The man who entered the kitchen was thin and bald and he was wearing a very nice suit. But his jaw was badly bruised, purple and green, and his lips were puffy, and his eyes were wide and staring. Fiona glanced at the card of sewing needles on the table in front of her, then she saw the scissors and she grabbed them, but the bald man was already moving across the kitchen. He took hold of her arm just above the elbow and snatched the scissors out of her hand. He dragged her to the pantry-only four or five steps, there was no time for her to break free of his grip-and he shoved her inside.
It all happened so quickly that Fiona was still stunned. Later, she thought of several things she might have done: stomped on the stranger’s foot or clawed at his wide, madly rolling eyes, perhaps even slapped his tender bruised jaw or grabbed the scissors back from him. But she did none of these things in the moment.
As the pantry door closed on her, she did manage to scream: “Rupert!”
Then she was alone in the dark.
58
Cinderhouse heard a commotion down the hall, like someone dropping something. He kept the fist that held the scissors tight against the pantry door, holding it shut, and reached with his other hand for a low chair that was just within arm’s reach. It had a basket-weave seat and an embroidered back, all bright yellow and shiny blue, and he tipped it up and shoved it under the pantry’s doorknob.
Footsteps outside in the hallway, someone answering the girl’s scream for help. Cinderhouse opened the scissors, looking over the blades with an experienced eye. They were very much like the scissors he was accustomed to using, nice and sharp, hardly used and never dulled.
A man in a constable’s uniform, presumably Rupert, a policeman in another policeman’s house, lurched through the kitchen door as Cinderhouse swept his right arm through the air in front of him, left to right, a magnificent gleaming arc. One of the scissors’ twin blades sliced through the flesh of Rupert’s throat and a gout of blood erupted across Cinderhouse’s face and chest. It leapt from Rupert to him as if it had been waiting for him, longing for him. He smiled and bared his teeth and felt the warmth of the other man’s blood on his lips.
Rupert clapped a hand against his throat and stopped its joyous rush. The blood bubbled out and over and through his fingers like a rill over its rocky bed. It flowed down the constable’s arm, soaking his cuffs and shirtsleeves and jacket. His other arm hung down at his side, his fist clenched tight around some small thing.
But young Rupert was still able to talk. The scissor blade hadn’t severed his vocal cords and he still had a tongue, lucky devil. And, as he talked, he continued to move forward, pushing Cinderhouse back against the long wooden table in the center of the room.
“Miss Fiona?”
The girl was banging on the pantry door, but the chair held. Rupert began to turn toward the noise, but his free arm was still held out at an angle, forcing Cinderhouse down and back, his spine bending at an uncomfortable angle against the table’s edge. He fumbled for the scissors, but his hands were wet with blood, and he felt the blade, possibly the same blade that had snicker-snacked through Rupert’s throat, slice into his right index finger. He couldn’t see how deep the cut was, but he dropped the scissors on the table. He fumbled with them in the sticky pool already growing there and found the loop at the end of one blade. He stuck his first two fingers through the loop, ratcheted the blades apart, and drove one of them into Rupert’s thigh.
Rupert didn’t seem to notice. He continued through his turn and staggered toward the pantry. One arm still hung down at his side, the other bent up, his hand loose at his throat, his blood pumping sluggishly now, as if it had lost interest in the whole affair and was preparing for sleep. Rupert put one leg forward. .
“Fiona?”
As if he had forgotten who Fiona was or why he should care.
He put out the other leg, that side of his trousers sopping with whatever blood had been left over for the lower half of his body, the cheap fabric there puckering and clammy. His foot hit the floor without the force of his body behind it and he stumbled and caught himself, one hand, the fist still bunched, against the pantry door.
The banging against the other side of the door stopped.
“Constable?” Her voice was muffled and distant.
“I’m. . Fiona. . I’ll do that.”
And Rupert fell forward toward the door and bounced off of it, reeled away into the kitchen. Cinderhouse, free from the table, leapt upon the constable’s back and drove him to the floor and stabbed him in the back. And stabbed him again and again, and his teeth gnashed and ground against one another, and he brought the scissors down again and through the thin fabric of the constable’s uniform.