“My wife is here. Somewhere in this hellhole. Show me where.”
Arms reached around Kingsley from behind and lifted him into the air. Startled, he let go of Frank Mayhew’s shirt. The ditchdigger rocked back on his heels and the arms released Kingsley. He turned and saw Henry retreating again to the back of the room.
“Sir, all due respect,” Frank said, “you’re a right gentleman and all, but I ain’t s’posed to let you in here. An’ my brother don’t let nobody touch me ’cept hisself.”
“I’m a doctor, you halfwit.”
“Oh, well, ’at’s different then, ain’t it?”
Kingsley straightened his shirt and tie. He ran a hand over his hair, but it was always unruly and his hand did nothing to tame it.
“Catherine Kingsley,” he said. “That’s my wife’s name. There must be some record of her having been brought in?”
He said it as a question, not at all convinced that anything that resembled record keeping went on in this place.
“Henry’s got charge of the papers and such.”
Frank motioned to his brother and Henry came forward with a wad of greasy papers in his fist. Kingsley took them from him and went back to the door to look them over in the sunlight. He realized that he was clenching his pipe so tight that his teeth hurt. He squatted, his back against the jamb, and rubbed his jaw and took another puff, then smoothed the papers out against his knee. There was no organization visible in the notes, no standardized form, just a haphazard recording of whatever had been relayed when the bodies were brought in. Half of the reports were missing the deceased’s names. He shuffled through them quickly and saw nothing about his wife. He stood and turned and thrust the handful of paperwork back at Henry, who took it wordlessly.
Kingsley left both brothers standing at the door and plunged back into the gloom, the bubble of smoke around his head keeping pace.
Kingsley found his wife after some searching. Catherine was on a table halfway down the aisle on the right-hand side. She was nude, lying on her back atop a dirty blanket, her legs dangling like the rest of them. Her eyes were open and unblinking, staring up into the dark. He wondered where she had gone and what she was looking at.
He took her hand and stood there. The pipe fell from his lips and he didn’t notice.
After a time, the silent brother, Henry, appeared at his side and moved the edge of the blanket over her, covering Catherine, giving her back some modesty. He reached out and closed her eyes and then was gone again, swallowed by the shadows. Kingsley hardly noticed.
When Henry returned, he was holding a sprig of ivy, plucked from the wall. He laid it on Catherine’s chest. He nodded at the doctor and backed away. That small gesture was enough to break Kingsley, and his grief poured from him in great choking waves.
When it had passed, he leaned in and kissed his wife on the lips for the last time.
He picked up his pipe, stood, and turned around.
“My name is Bernard Kingsley. I am a surgeon with University College Hospital in the West End. I will send people later today to help you pack up this operation, and you will move it all, every corpse in your care, to my facilities.”
Frank looked alarmed. “All of it?”
“Just the bodies. You may keep these ridiculous tables and this horrible reeking shack.”
“But the bluebottles send boys round here with the bodies. This place’ll fill back up in no time at all.”
“I will notify the police that they may deal with me from now on. This is not the way a civilized society cares for their dead. This is the way of animals and savages.” He shook his head. “No, not even savages. Even they practice ritual and ceremony in order to show respect. This is ruin. This is horror.”
He walked past Frank. Henry was standing in the doorway with his back to them, his face in the sun. Kingsley put a hand on the bigger man’s arm.
“Thank you for your kindness toward my wife.”
Henry looked at him, but said nothing. He turned his head and looked back at the sky. He rocked gently back and forth, as if listening to music only he could hear. Kingsley couldn’t tell if his words had even registered with the former ditchdigger.
“But, mister, what will me an’ my brother do now?” Frank said.
Kingsley didn’t turn around, didn’t address the man directly.
“Go back to the workhouse,” he said. “Go find occupations better suited to your skills.”
“We can’t go back again, sir. Henry won’t last there. Ain’t much left of ’im now.”
Kingsley stepped off the curb and, still keeping his back to that house of death, he let some warmth enter his voice.
“Then find something to do outside in the fresh air and sun. Your brother shouldn’t be cooped up in a place like this, anyway. Nobody should be. Not even the dead.”
He used the sole of his shoe to tap the tobacco out of his pipe, put it back in his pocket, and walked away down the street. He didn’t look back.
75
He woke from his reverie and looked at his handiwork. A lattice of stitches ran pell-mell over the surface of the little girl’s body, linking her arms and legs and head like a hideous human quilt. He raised his head and regarded his laboratory. It was clean and open and the bodies were stretched out full-length on long tables, with adequate drainage. The sunlight through the windows at ceiling level was filtered through bubbling green gasogenes, lending everything a sickly glow, but Kingsley liked that. It meant that work was going on.
And now he remembered where and when he had met the homeless man, the dancing man who had found the shears thrown from a killer’s carriage. He’d somehow known the name, but his connection to the man had been lost until now.
“Henry Mayhew,” he said.
His voice echoed.
Kingsley looked down at the little girl’s body. In a dress with a high collar, nobody would ever see the black stitches that kept her from falling apart at the seams. She was at least presentable.
He put down the forceps and the thread and rubbed the back of his neck with his bloody hand.
There were two more bodies that needed to be sewn together, but Kingsley knew that he had to find Henry Mayhew again before the police returned him to the workhouse or, worse, the asylum.
He owed the former ditchdigger something, and he was ashamed that it had taken him this long to remember and to act.
He rinsed the blood off his hands in the basin on the counter, grabbed his jacket, and left the room. The people on the tables could wait. They had all the time in the world.
76
He had gone out the previous night while the boy slept, but he dared not risk it again. He could lock the boy up again, but he didn’t want to. He felt they’d made real progress in their relationship since Fenn’s escape attempt. To imprison him again, even for the hour or two it would take him to run his errand, might cause the boy to resent him again.
But he had offered to take his catalogues to the police. If he failed to deliver on his promise, Sergeant Kett-or worse, Inspector Day-might begin to wonder about him.
Cinderhouse left Fenn at the dining table with a bowl of soup and went from room to room in the tidy house, gathering what he could find. Most of his catalogues were at the shop, but there were a few that he’d brought home for one reason or another. They were all horribly out of date, but the police wouldn’t know that. In all he found eight catalogues. That ought to do.
He checked on the boy, made sure he was still eating, and stepped out the front door, locking it behind him.
His hansom was out front, the coachman bundled up top, snoozing. Cinderhouse wondered at the fact that the man could sleep while sitting up, but supposed that it came with long practice. The horse whinnied at Cinderhouse as he approached, and he stroked its muzzle.