And again.
Rupert stopped moving, stopped trying to crawl across the slimy red kitchen floor with Cinderhouse on his back. His hands scrabbled one last time in the syrupy blood, and then he let go of his last breath. Cinderhouse felt it go, felt himself sink down against Rupert’s rib cage. Rupert’s fist opened up and a spool of red thread rolled away from him, red against red, leaving a lopsided trail until it bumped up against a table leg and stopped.
The banging on the other side of the pantry door started up again, but Cinderhouse ignored the noise. He stood and set the blood-slick scissors on the tabletop. He listened for any other sound in the house, for anyone else who might be coming to see what had happened. He heard a woman scream, once, and felt a moment of blind panic, thinking that Jack had somehow followed him here, but the scream had sounded far off, and no one was approaching down the hall beyond the kitchen. He and the girl and the body of the policeman seemed to be alone.
He examined his finger where it was cut. The two edges of skin and flesh gaped apart, smooth and even down the middle of the finger, all the way to the first knuckle. He could see blood welling up and out, but couldn’t tell how bad it was. The finger was already covered with blood, dripping with it, some his, some Rupert’s.
He pulled the sopping white coverlet out of the basin of water on the table and wrapped it around his hand and gasped. He had forgotten that the little bitch was soaking the thing in salt water! He sat heavily on the chair against the pantry door and felt it creak beneath him. Salt water in the basin. A trap for him. She was a crafty girl, and comely. A valuable prize to be had. After he had finished his business.
“What did you do?” Her voice soft and frightened behind the door. “Where’s Constable Winthrop?”
Cinderhouse pursed his lips and looked around the kitchen. Perhaps there was notepaper and a pencil somewhere in a drawer or a cabinet. But even if he found it, even if he wrote a note to the little girl and pushed it under the door to her, she wouldn’t be able to read it in the dark. Still, he stood and paced about, twisting the balls of his feet so as not to slip when he walked through the smeared and pooling blood. There was no notepaper, but he did find a key on a shelf in the cupboard closest to the kitchen window. It was tucked up against the side and he took it out and looked it over. He walked back to the pantry door and tried the key in the keyhole under the knob. It was a perfect fit.
“Rupert! Rupert!”
I should be very surprised if he answered you, Cinderhouse thought. He chuckled, a rasping sound in the back of his throat, and wished he could share this joke with his new girl.
“You’ve made a mistake, sir! This is the house of Detective Inspector Walter Day. Whatever you’re doing here, this is the wrong house. He will find you and arrest you.”
Cinderhouse nodded at the closed door and smiled again. It wasn’t the wrong house at all. He turned the key and heard a confident snick as the lock slid into place.
“No! You can’t do this!” And then louder: “Father! Father!”
He pulled the chair out from under the knob. Father? Who might that be? Walter Day?
He picked up the spool of thread and grabbed the card of needles from the table and carried the chair over to the body on the floor. He sat down again, poked at the body with the toe of his boot. It was as dead as a person could get. He used his foot to roll the constable over. Rupert’s eyes were open, staring blankly at the ceiling.
Mustn’t have that.
Cinderhouse slipped off the chair onto his knees. There was no point in worrying about the blood. He was covered with it, head to feet; it was dripping from his chin whiskers. He broke off a length of bloody red thread with his teeth, wet the end of it with his lips, and poked it through the eye of a needle. He tied a knot in the thread’s hanging end, then bent over the body and stuck the needle through Rupert’s left eyelid. He pulled it through and around and hummed to himself as he began the work of quieting Rupert’s accusing eyes for good and all.
59
It’s not time to rest,” Kingsley said. “Push again.”
“I can’t,” Claire said. “I won’t. I’m tired.”
“Well, you may be tired, but nature hasn’t given you a choice. You’ll push or you’ll die.”
“Just take it out.”
“If I do, you’ll surely die.”
“Please stop saying that I’ll die.”
“I’m sorry. It’s my hope that I might motivate you to avoid death.”
“Well, you’re scaring me.”
“Yes.”
“No more.”
“Once more.”
“Only once?”
“I think once might be enough. I know you can do it. Just one more time.”
She didn’t answer. Instead, she leaned forward, her hands tight around the bedposts behind her, and she screamed and she bore down.
Kingsley held his breath as he saw the furry crown come into view. He did not consider childbirth to be a miracle. It was a natural animal occurrence, and he would prefer that a midwife be in attendance.
Where was Fiona? He had heard a racket downstairs and assumed that the clumsy constable-what was his name? — was tripping over himself in an effort to collect basins and heat water at the fireplace. He hoped the boy hadn’t burned himself.
The baby emerged amid a slurry of fluid and Kingsley caught it, felt her body pushing it toward him. He snipped the cord and expertly tied off the end. He turned with the infant girl in his hands, but there was no towel ready, no basin of fresh water, nobody to help.
Fiona should have stopped in by now to check on Claire.
Claire slumped, exhausted, back against the bed, and Kingsley used a face flannel from the washbasin on the table to wipe the baby down as well as he could and warm her, and she made the same tentative movements that he had seen from dozens of healthy newborns. She gurgled and tested her new voice, and he came around the side of the bed and rested her in her mother’s arms. Claire managed a weak smile and touched the baby’s face with her fingertip.
Kingsley went to the bedroom door and opened it, poked his head out hoping to see Fiona, but the hall was dark and empty. He went to the top of the stairs and heard the doorbell ring below him just as Claire called out to him from the bedroom.
“Doctor! I think something’s wrong.”
60
Jack asked the driver to stop as soon as they reached Primrose Hill. He got out and strolled away from the two-wheeler with no destination in mind and a clear sense of anticipation. Fate would provide. Fate and the city.
And so, when he turned the corner, he was not surprised to see a man standing at a door at the end of the street ahead. The man was very tall and very thin and, Jack thought, quite beautiful. But he was dressed in a shabby blue uniform that appeared to have dirt pressed into its many creases. The jacket might have been taken from a corpse. Lying on the footpath behind the man was a boy’s bicycle, cast hastily aside. This could be no one but Sergeant Hammersmith.
Hammersmith was pounding on the door of the last house and took no notice as Jack passed behind him in the lane.
“Claire!” Hammersmith said to the door. “Fiona! Someone answer!” No one did, and Hammersmith began to frantically pull the bell cord.
Jack turned the corner and passed out of sight of the agitated policeman. There was a low fence behind the house, just above waist level, and Jack hopped it, landing neatly on the other side of a nettle bush. The instruments in his medical bag clattered against one another, but the clasp held tight.