“Good Lord,” Tiffany said.
“What do you suppose happened here?”
“As long as nothing else happens. .”
They stepped carefully past the girl and Hammersmith, both of the inspectors alert for any sound in the house. Blacker checked on Kingsley and his daughter, then moved them into more comfortable positions. Tiffany bent over Hammersmith and felt for a pulse.
“He’s alive,” he said. “Do you believe that?”
Blacker shook his head. “I really don’t,” he said. Hammersmith’s shirt was torn open and his chest was a railroad switchyard of red and black stitches.
Constable Jones followed them through the door. Inspector Day was behind them, but he was barely upright. Sir Edward had sent him to hospital, but Day had ignored his orders. Neither Blacker nor Tiffany could blame him. They had only asked that he stay well back until they could look through his house to make sure it was safe.
Day stopped and bent unsteadily over Fiona, filled with guilt and shame and fear for the girl. What had she seen?
Tiffany waved Jones past them down the hall to the kitchen. Blacker started up the stairs, but turned and hurried back down when he heard Jones gagging. He and Tiffany came up behind Jones and looked into the parlor.
The man on the floor was spread-eagle, a horizontal Vitruvian Man. He was bald and naked, and his torso had been cut straight up the middle, the flaps of skin and slabs of muscle folded to either side. His rib cage was broken, the bones pointed up at the ceiling. His major internal organs had been removed, but were still attached, their veins and arteries spun like fishing line to various points around the body. The intestines had also been removed and had been spooled out to the farthest corner of the room, then arranged along the baseboards like an elaborate red and grey glistening picture frame, made to show off the artistry of the killer. The bald man’s hands had been cut off and lay several inches away from the stumps of his wrists, as if they had flown off his arms in surprise. The same had been done to his feet. His eyes had been removed and laid on his cheeks, each of them looking away in a different direction. His genitals were entirely missing. Neither Blacker nor Tiffany nor any of the policemen or coroners who followed them would find those particular anatomical items.
His clothes were neatly folded on a nearby chair.
Three or four fat houseflies lazily circled the body, darting away and then back after bumping into the big window at the front of the house.
Tiffany left the house and went to the street, where he vomited. He spat and wiped his mouth, then instructed the watching carriage driver to send for more wagons and for as many doctors as could be found. Meanwhile, Constable Jones walked away from Cinderhouse to the kitchen, and so had the dubious honor of having discovered both of the corpses in Day’s house. Jones had come up at the Yard with Rupert Winthrop, and the sight of the body caused him to lose himself. Tiffany found him sitting at the kitchen table, softly crying and squeezing a damp coverlet.
Blacker accompanied Day up the stairs. They went as quickly as Day could manage. Halfway up, they could hear an odd mewling sound, and Blacker left Day there on the staircase. He ran ahead, while Day called out his wife’s name.
He was relieved beyond words to hear her answer him.
By the time Day got to their bedroom, Blacker was already coming back out. Blacker nodded at him and went to check the other rooms on that floor.
Day stood in the doorway and held on to the wall. Claire smiled at him from the bed. She looked sleepy, but relaxed. In her arms, she held two tiny babies.
“Walter,” she said, “would you like to come say hello to your daughters?”
Day smiled and let go of the wall. He took a step forward.
And fainted.
66
Jack stopped outside and knelt by the curb. He took Griffin’s blue chalk from his pocket and drew a large zero on the footpath. Above it, he drew an arrow pointing toward the house. He stood and put the chalk back in his pocket and went to the door, pulled the bell.
He had been busy in the two days since saving Sergeant Hammersmith’s life. He had a lot of time to make up. When the housekeeper came to the door, he handed her Inspector Day’s card, lifted from the occasional table in Day’s hall, and was ushered into a reception room. He sat in a chair next to the door so that he wouldn’t be immediately noticed by anyone entering the room, and he waited. There was a large portrait above the fireplace of a jowly man with thinning hair. Jack stared at the portrait and folded his hands in his lap and felt utterly at peace.
Some fifteen minutes later, a man was preceded into the room by his voice: “So, Day, you’ve decided to join us, have you?”
A stout man stopped just inside the door and looked around, confused. He didn’t see Jack until it was too late. Jack rose and stepped into the doorway and grabbed the man about the throat from behind. With his free hand, he closed the reception room door, pushing it gently until the latch clicked.
The stout man resembled the jowly man above the fire. Jack wondered how they were related.
“Dr Martin Bickford-Buckley?”
“I’m Dr Bickford-Buckley. Who are you?” His voice was strangled and hoarse.
Jack let go of the man’s throat and allowed him to turn. As soon as the doctor saw him, he gasped.
“It’s you,” he said.
“You weren’t expecting me?”
“How did you. .”
“I thought I’d take the time to return your bag,” Jack said. He held up the black medical bag with the initials MBB stamped into the side. “And now that I have, perhaps there is a thing or two we might discuss.”
“I’ll discuss nothing with you.”
There was a knock at the door.
Jack whispered, “If you say a word that I don’t like, I’ll kill her, too. You have a last opportunity to be a noble man. Do you understand?”
Bickford-Buckley nodded, and Jack opened the door. The housekeeper entered with a silver tray. She set it on the table, curtsied, and left again without ever looking up at them. Jack closed the door behind her and latched it.
He smiled at the doctor. “How do you take your tea?”
“You’ve come to kill me. I regret nothing, so get on with it.”
“Gladly. But first, I hope you’ll give me the names of our mutual Karstphanomen friends. Not too soon, mind you. I have some sharp clinky metal things here I’d like to show you. Tell me, have you ever heard the phrase ‘divine retribution’?”
“Oh, good Lord!”
“Yes. That’s exactly right. I’m glad you understand.”
Jack barely caught the man again before he screamed, and after that he ensured that Dr Bickford-Buckley made no loud noises during their long visit. He didn’t want to disturb the housekeeper. She seemed like a nice lady.
He left a gift for her on the mantel before he let himself out.
67
Dr Kingsley had made special arrangements at University College Hospital, and a large sitting room had been refashioned into a private convalescence ward for two special patients. Day and Hammersmith lay side by side in clean white beds while nurses bustled about and patients in the nearby public wards cried out. Most of the time, the two policemen slept. When they were awake, they rarely spoke. Day’s legs were heavily wrapped in layers of gauze, and he was sedated for the first two days and nights of his stay. Hammersmith required more attention. One of his lungs was perforated, but the wound had been sewn shut in time to save his life. Dr Kingsley inspected the stitches and declared them to be adequate. It was clearly the work of an amateur, but a talented amateur, and there was no reason to submit Hammersmith to the trauma of reopening that wound. His chest posed a different problem. Fiona had kept him from bleeding to death, but her stitchwork was clumsy. Kingsley had removed the stitches from his chest and sewn him back up. He informed both Hammersmith and Fiona that there would be significant scarring, but that he had every reason to expect a full recovery. This did not comfort Hammersmith, who felt he should not have allowed himself to be stabbed in the first place.