From the corner of his eye he could see a pool of blood expanding across the floor and realized that it was his own. Somehow the thought of all that blood rushing out of his body was worse than the nearly absent pain of the wounds themselves, and Pringle turned his head just in time to avoid soiling his clothing as he vomited on Cinderhouse’s shoes.
Cinderhouse stopped stabbing him and Pringle tried to rise, but his body wouldn’t obey.
A moment later the tailor returned, holding a spool of black thread and the largest needle Pringle had ever seen. He felt a distant pressure in his lower lip, and then Cinderhouse drew the thread up past his eyes and down, and there was more pressure in his upper lip as the tailor went on sewing Pringle’s lips shut. He tried again to move and felt Cinderhouse’s hand on his chest, holding him down. The breath went out of him, but it sounded far away, like wind in the trees. He wanted to tell the tailor to stop pushing on him, that it didn’t matter, that he couldn’t move anyway, but the only sound he made was a low gurgle, and the thread came back up through his lips, drawing them tightly shut.
The tailor leaned in and whispered in Pringle’s ear. “I’m terribly sorry about this, Mr Pringle. You were always one of my better customers, and I hate to lose your business. But I can’t let you take my son away from me again. And I can’t let you tell anyone about him. You shouldn’t have seen him. You shouldn’t have come here and put your eyes on him.”
The deadly scissors snicker-snacked and the needle came back past Pringle’s eyes with the short thread dangling loose. The tailor pulled it out and expertly rethreaded the needle. Pringle ran his tongue over the insides of his lips. They were sealed shut. The needle dug into his eyelid and the tailor was back at work, closing Pringle’s right eye. Pringle rolled his eyes to the other side so that he wouldn’t have to watch, and saw the fluffy white cat padding around the pools of blood on the floor. The cat rubbed against Pringle’s ear.
Pringle wondered how much of his murder had been witnessed by the boy. A child shouldn’t have to see such a thing. He hoped Fenn had turned away before the worst of it.
The needle began its work on his left eye and, as darkness closed in, Pringle’s last sight was of a small drop of bright red blood nested deep in the white cat’s fur.
He sighed. The air dribbled out of him and he didn’t draw another breath.
35
Hammersmith found himself once more in the East End and once more across the street from the Shaws’ brownstone. He hadn’t set out for the East End, hadn’t given Charles Shaw or his wife any conscious thought, but here he was. The brownstone looked different in the daylight than it had the previous night. Golden bricks shimmered in the sun, and the tree-lined street spoke of generations, of children playing on sidewalks and of families supping in quiet splendor.
Never mind the brothels and the seedy saloons just steps away.
He watched the house for long minutes before crossing the street and pulling the bell. He had no idea what he might say to Charles Shaw, but at the last minute he decided he would apologize for his behavior. He recognized that he had overplayed his hand with Shaw and had consequently embarrassed both himself and Sir Edward.
When Penelope Shaw opened the door, she said, “I was just thinking about you.”
She took a step back and raised a hand to her mouth.
“You’ve been hurt,” she said. “What’s happened.”
Hammersmith removed his hat.
“I’m just fine, ma’am. Small accident, is all. Is your husband home?”
“Please come in.”
She walked away from him through the foyer and he had no choice but to follow. Her hair was done up in a loose ball on her head, and she wore a long green gown that swayed against the floor with each shift of her hips. She turned to him in the archway that led to the great room. A wisp of hair, escaped from the chignon, curled down over her throat. She took his hat from him and hung it on a hook. When her hand brushed against his, Hammersmith noticed that his own fingernails were filthy. He put his hands in his pockets.
“Would you like something?”
“I’m fine, thank you. I’ll just wait for your husband, if that’s all right.”
“You may have to wait for some time.”
“I’m sorry?”
“He isn’t here today.”
“But you said…”
He realized that she hadn’t told him her husband was at home, only asked him to come in.
“I’ve made a mistake,” he said. “I should be going. Please tell Dr Shaw when he arrives home that I-”
“Please sit,” Penelope said. “I’ll bring you something to drink.”
“I don’t need anything, thank you. I came to apologize for the way I acted last night.”
“I don’t recall being offended by you at all.”
“You’re too kind.”
“No one is too kind, Mr Hammersmith. Everyone wants something. When we get it, we’re kind; when we don’t … well, when we don’t, we’re simply surviving.”
“I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
“You want to apologize to Charles. I know Charles would want you to stay. And I would like some company. You could make us all happy at once by accepting a cup of tea.”
“You don’t mind if I wait?”
“I insist upon it.”
“A cup of tea would be lovely, then. Thank you.”
“No, Mr Hammersmith, thank you.”
She lowered her eyes and walked slowly out of the room. Hammersmith pulled out a chair and sat and watched her go. He was not a patient man, but he was resolute.
36
The corpse on the table grinned at the ceiling. His expression changed to a grimace, then a smile, then a grimace again as Kingsley manipulated his features. The incision under the corpse’s chin ran from ear to ear, and Kingsley worked his hands up under the skin and along the skull, loosening connective tissue as he went. The corpse had once been named Thomas, and Kingsley spoke to him quietly as he worked, as if reassuring a nervous patient.
“There we go now, nothing to it, old boy.”
But he didn’t look at Thomas’s eyes.
He kept Fiona out of the room for this stage of the autopsy, and for this stage of every autopsy he performed. Although she seemed to handle everything with the same quiet concentration, the dead were so very vulnerable, and Kingsley felt they deserved privacy and respect. In this room they were as naked as anyone would ever be.
Thomas’s jawbone was now fully visible, streaked pink with blood.
Kingsley pushed his fingers farther up, tearing thin dense layers of muscle away from Thomas’s cheekbones. A little pressure from beneath and the top of Thomas’s nose broke, the narrow peninsula of cartilage snapping away from the skull, an arrowhead cavern exposed in the middle of the corpse’s face.
“I’m sorry about this, Thomas,” he said.
His voice was barely audible, trace echoes beating back at him from the close walls of the laboratory.
Thomas’s ears shifted and the flesh tore loose around his eye sockets. Kingsley removed his hands from under the corpse’s face and grasped the ragged whiskered skin that had once sagged under Thomas’s jaw but was now stretched across the middle of his head. He flipped the skin over onto itself and pulled toward the top of the corpse’s skull, and Thomas’s face turned inside out. Now it lay like a hood at the back of the corpse’s head, its expression hidden from view.
Someday, Kingsley knew, it would be him on the table, maybe this same table. He hoped he would be treated with respect.