by Alex Grecian
“I’ll begin rounding up every person in the city so we can match those markings against everyone’s fingertips.”
“You’re sarcastic, but I really think we’ll be able to match them up if we find someone we like for these murders.”
“Won’t ever hold up in front of a magistrate.”
“No, but it may help to focus us on the right suspect.”
“Perhaps. I’m willing to budge on that a bit, but I’m still not completely convinced.”
Day shrugged.
“Well, at any rate, it seems Kingsley did a fine job for us,” Blacker said.
“There was one more thing. He found something else when he brushed Pringle’s trousers.”
“He brushed the man’s trousers?”
“He did. And he found long white hairs. A good many of them.”
“We’re looking for an old man?”
“Animal hairs, not human. He thinks a cat.”
“Did Pringle own a cat?”
“No,” Hammersmith said. “He disliked cats.”
“That seems like a far more promising clue than your finger marks.”
“Oh, for pity’s sake,” Oliver Boring said.
His voice carried throughout the squad room. He was standing by the railing, talking over the top of it with a group of constables who seemed quite animated about something. Day looked over at the fat detective and then back at Blacker. Whatever Boring was up to, it was none of their business.
“What?” Blacker said. “Oh, right. So if Pringle disliked cats, then the hairs didn’t come from his own home, and it’s unlikely he stopped to pet a stray.”
“Right.”
“So the cat might have been at the scene of the offense and might have brushed against him after he died.”
“It’s a possibility.”
“Then we’re looking for an acquaintance of both Little and Pringle, someone who owned a white cat. Were cat hairs found on Little’s clothing?”
“The doctor allows for that possibility, but he says Little’s hygiene was such that he might not have noticed animal hair.”
“Well, we can’t rule it out, then. This feels good, doesn’t it? It’s not a sure bet, but it feels right, like we’ve got a chance at catching this blighter.”
“I think there’s reason to hope,” Day said.
“Oh, we will catch him,” Hammersmith said. He was staring across the room at the jackets hanging on the far wall. Day couldn’t see his face. “This one won’t go unsolved.”
“Of course it won’t, old man. Of course.”
Oliver Boring ambled over from the railing and stood in front of the tarts on the desk.
“Have another tart,” Blacker said.
“Thank you,” Boring said. “These men being offed in their water closets—that’s already on one of you lot, ain’t it?”
“The Beard Killer,” Blacker said. “You’re talking about the bloody Beard Killer. That’s my case.”
“You’re welcome to it. I don’t want it nohow.”
“Well, what about it?”
“’Nother one of ’em found. Some doctor from up the East End’s been shaved and left for dead in an empty flat. Thing of it is, they didn’t quite finish the job on him.”
“Where is he?”
“In hospital now. Can’t talk. Throat’s slit wide open and they’re stitching it up. But it seems he can still write if you want to drop round and chat him up about it. Name’s Charles Shaw.”
67
Cinderhouse sat at the edge of the bed and watched the boy sleep. The sun shone through the freshly mortared bars in the window and cast a long grey grid across the bed and up the opposite wall. Finally the boy tried to stir. He opened his eyes when he found he couldn’t move.
Cinderhouse smiled at him. “You’re a deep sleeper,” he said. “I carried you from the closet without waking you.”
Fenn said nothing. He stared at the shadowy bars on his wall.
“I’m afraid I’ve had to tie you down. Tighter this time, so you won’t wiggle free again. When the mortar in the window dries, I might consider letting you sleep without the ropes, but you’ll have to convince me that I can trust you.”
Fenn closed his eyes, but Cinderhouse could tell the boy wasn’t sleeping.
“I’m sure what happened yesterday was difficult for you to witness. I wish you hadn’t made me do that. You realize you’re the one who killed that policeman, don’t you?”
A tear appeared at the corner of Fenn’s eye and rolled down his cheek.
“He would still be alive if you hadn’t involved him in our family affairs, you know? Won’t you answer me? I need to know that you understand the consequences of your actions.”
The boy nodded. His head barely moved, but Cinderhouse saw it.
“If you promise it won’t ever happen again,” he said, “that you’ll always listen to your loving papa, then you’ll be forgiven. And God will forgive you, too. You know His most important rule, don’t you? ‘Honor thy father.’ Can you promise me that you’ll listen and obey me from now on? Can you promise God that you’ll honor His commandment?”
The boy nodded again. More tears made their way down his face and through his hair, pooling in his ears. The tailor smiled. It was good that Fenn was taking this so seriously. Perhaps he really had learned a lesson. Cinderhouse felt his chest swell with love for the boy and thought he might start crying, too.
They sat like that for a long time. Finally the boy opened his eyes.
“What’s that?” he said.
Cinderhouse raised the crop from his lap. He had forgotten he was holding it.
“This? Haven’t you seen a riding crop before?”
“It’s for horses.”
“Yes, it is. And it’s also for naughty boys. My own papa used this very crop on me whenever I was bad. This exact one.”
Fenn began to cry again, and this time a choking sound from deep in his chest accompanied the tears. Cinderhouse barely noticed. He was wrapped in memories thick as a blanket.
“The old man next door had trees then, when I was a boy. There’s nothing there now. The trees didn’t survive. I’ve outlived them by years and years. But back then there were still trees, and a great many of them. Plum trees. Damsons, I think. And one morning, very early, I got myself over the wall between our houses and I stole three ripe plums from that old man’s trees.”
The tailor smiled at the memory: the smooth feel of the plums, the rubbery flesh between his teeth, the purple juice spilling from his lips.
“We didn’t have money for fruit then. My papa did his best, but plums were dear and I had never tasted one. He beat me, of course. Beat me with this crop. Took me to the carriage house and made me fetch it to him, which in a way was worse than the beating. Because of the fear, you understand? The fear grew and grew until I couldn’t stand it, and the beating came as a release from that band of terror that had tightened around me.”
He looked over at Fenn, sharing the experience of being a boy with him. Fenn had quieted, but tears still spilled onto the pillow under his head.
“He beat me, my papa did, until I couldn’t lie down to sleep. And then that old man came round with the police. They took me off to the boy’s detention house and they put me in a hole that was so dark I couldn’t see my hand when it was this close to my face.” He held his hand an inch from Fenn’s nose, but the boy didn’t open his eyes to see. That was all right, the tailor thought; that was the darkness he meant to convey.
“I was there for a month. At first I couldn’t sit or lie down on the rocks and dirt in that cell because the scabs on my back would break and bleed. But after a week or more, I lay down and I slept. I slept for days and days, and when I finally woke I felt stronger and I knew that I had learned the lesson that my father had set out to teach me and that I would be a good father myself when I grew up.
“And I was a good father. My son, my boy, he was a good boy. He was a good boy. I didn’t get to be his
papa for very long. He was taken away from me because I must have done something wrong. I must not have been a good papa to him because God took him away and I don’t know where he is.”
Cinderhouse swallowed hard. He felt his own tears gathering behind his eyes. He cleared his throat and stared at the bars over Fenn’s window.
“But that came much later. I remember when I was still a boy myself and I left that cell after a month, the light stung my eyes and the air burned my skin, but I grew used to it. It was easier then. Children can grow accustomed to anything over time.”
He nodded at the boy, hoping he understood. A boy will adapt and forget what came before. Children were made to do that.
“I never stole again. And I obeyed my father. I learned his trade from him and I became a tailor and took over his business and made it so much more successful than he ever did. And when he was dying, dying at my feet, he reached out to me and he told me that I was a good boy. He knew that a boy takes his father’s place. He knew that what I had to do to him was the right thing.”
Cinderhouse thought that perhaps he ought not to have told the boy this last part of his story. Perhaps this wasn’t a lesson he wanted the boy to learn yet.
“I’m going to untie you so you can eat. If I do that, will you try to run again?”
Fenn shook his head.
“Say it,” Cinderhouse said.
“No, sir. I won’t run.”
“Good. Good lad. We can’t have you starving to death. And we can afford fruit. I have fruit downstairs for you. No plums, but a fresh ripe apple for you. Things are different now.”
The tailor realized he had muddled his own childhood with that of the boy in the bed. Fenn hadn’t stolen the plums. He frowned and reached out to ruffle the boy’s damp hair.
“Anyhow, you’ll need to eat.”
“Please don’t hit me.”
“What, you mean this?” Cinderhouse chuckled and lifted the crop from his lap. He sat back and regarded his son. “I was only telling you a story about this. I wouldn’t hit you. I’m not like my father. I’m completely unlike him.”
He leaned forward again so that his son would see the intent in his eyes and understand that the time for play had passed.
“But if you run from me again, I will use this, and the skin will fall from your back in sheets and you will stand until your feet swell and throb with pain, and you will try to sit and there will be nothing to lean against without your back feeling as if it’s aflame, and you will try to lie down and scream in agony and leap to your feet again and the torture will be unbearable.”
Fenn’s eyes were huge with fear.
“Do you understand me, son?”
The boy nodded.
“We’ll have no more of this foolishness, then, will we?”
Fenn shook his head.
“We’ll have no more running away from your dear papa, will we?”
Fenn shook his head again and swallowed hard. “No,” he said.
“No, what?”
“No, Papa.”
“That’s good. That’s a good boy.”
Cinderhouse felt his chest ache with sudden pride and love for this boy who had come back to live with him again.
“I forgive you, son,” he said.
And he began to untie the ropes so that he could embrace the boy at last.
68
University College Hospital squatted at the corner of Gower Street and Euston Road in Bloomsbury. It was an unexceptional brick and stone building surrounded by an iron fence. The hospital had been built in 1834 and had expanded twice since then, but it was still too cramped to accommodate the hundreds of patients who passed through its doors every day.
Inside it was a madhouse, with great open wards, each holding the maximum number of beds possible in long starched rows along each wall. Nurses, doctors, and white-clad assistants glided from bed to bed over the blanched and bloodstained floor.
Penelope Shaw was stationed at the open door to one of the wards when Blacker, Day, and Hammersmith arrived. She had clearly been crying, her eyes and mouth blotched and puffy, but her hair was up in a perfect swirl, her posture straight and elegant in a bright red dress. A rose standing tall among thistledown.
“Oh, Mr Hammersmith. Thank God you came. I was hoping it would be you.”
“Mrs Shaw,” Hammersmith said.
Blacker gave Hammersmith a suspicious glare, but Day grabbed Blacker by the elbow and steered him past Penelope Shaw before he could speak. Hammersmith held up a finger, asking Day for one moment alone with the victim’s wife. Day nodded and disappeared into the chaos of the ward with Blacker in tow.
“It wasn’t my choice,” Penelope said. “I mean, what I did to you. He made me do it. You do believe me, don’t you?”
“It hardly matters now, does it?”
“Will you arrest him?”
“From what I’ve heard, I doubt he’s healthy enough for me to bother.”
“What about me? Will you arrest me?”
“I haven’t made up my mind. I have more important things to worry about.”
“I’ll understand if you have to arrest me.”
“What is it that you want, Mrs Shaw?”
“I want…”
“Go on.”
“I want to be free of him.”
“Did you do this? Is he here because of something you did to him?”
Her eyes widened and she put a hand to her mouth. “Oh, no. No. How could you even ask me that? You haven’t seen him, haven’t seen what was done to him. I could never. Not even to him.”
“You have reason to want him injured or dead. You’ve just told me as much.”
“Not like that. I only hoped … I hoped that you might act against him.”
“You’ve made a mess of things, Mrs Shaw. I’ve only met your husband once. Almost everything I know about him has come from you. Right now, I have more reason to act against you than against him.”
“I know. And I don’t blame you for feeling that way. But he’s … He planned to follow you. He may even have been following you when this happened to him. He meant to do you harm.”
“What kind of harm?”
“I don’t know. He wanted to be able to stop you. You wouldn’t go away, even after he visited your commissioner.”
She looked down at her hands. Hammersmith took a step back from her and watched the nurses bustling to and fro at the end of the hall.
“I still don’t understand why he didn’t simply report the dead child. I wouldn’t even know who he was if he’d done the right thing in the first place.”
“He didn’t want it to reflect upon his reputation. Why is that so hard to understand? You threatened to cause a scandal that would have ruined his practice.”
“I never cared about him. It’s the chimney sweep I want. He’s the one who left the boy’s body there. I want to see justice done. I don’t care about scandals and reputations and all this ridiculous social claptrap.”
“Do you care about me?”
Hammersmith took a step back. He looked away toward the open door of the critical ward.
“I … I need to see your husband now,” he said. “Wait here.”
He started to pass her, then stopped and spoke without turning around, without looking at her.
“Maybe you’ll get lucky and he’ll die.”
69
Dr Charles Shaw lay on his back with pillows under his shoulders and neck. Between this arrangement of pillows there was a plank that held a shallow metal tray, there to catch the blood and pus that drained from his throat. Heavy black stitches spiderwebbed across his neck, but fluid seeped through and ran down both sides under his ears, dripping into the pan. A copper tube snaked out through a small gap in the stitches, and Day could hear air being drawn through it as Shaw’s chest rose and fell.
As Day and Blacker approached Shaw’s bed, a nurse quickly slid the full tray of gore from under his head and replaced it with a fresh tray. The movem
ent jostled the pillows. Shaw made no sound, but his hands clawed at the sheets, and Day knew that no matter how efficiently the nurse acted, the procedure must be painful for Shaw.
The two detectives stood side by side at the edge of the bed and looked down at the doctor’s swollen purple face. The elaborate curly beard was gone and Shaw’s naked chin was weak and pale. The wound across his throat nearly separated his head from the body below and Day wondered that Shaw was still alive.
“Can you hear us, Dr Shaw?”
Shaw’s eyelids rolled up and his bloodshot eyes worked to focus on Day.
“Can you say who did this to you?”
“He can’t talk,” the nurse said. “His voice box is just … well, it’s just gone.”
“We’ll need to ask him some questions. Will he improve?”
She shook her head. The pan under Shaw’s head was already filling up again with brown and yellow waste.
“He needs to rest,” she said. “There’s nothing anyone can do now but let him rest.”
Day sighed and began to turn away, but Shaw reached out and grabbed his wrist. Shaw’s grip was so weak that Day almost didn’t notice. He looked down at the doctor’s wide and pleading eyes.
“Get me paper,” Day said. “Any kind. Something to write with.”
The nurse glared at him.
“Sir, I shouldn’t say this in front of the patient.”
“Say what?”
“I shouldn’t say.”
Day took her elbow and moved her away from Shaw. They stood at the end of another bed where a man with no arms was crying for a drink of water. Day tried not to look at the man.
“What don’t you want to say?”
“He won’t live through today.”
“Then you must allow us to talk to him.”
Hammersmith entered the ward and saw Day. Day nodded to him across the room and Hammersmith joined them. The nurse glared at Hammersmith, too, clearly resenting police intrusion on her premises. Day decided that she was the kind of petty bureaucrat who reveled in whatever small amount of power they had and she clearly ruled the critical care ward. Her attitude toward the police had no doubt been colored by the Ripper murders. So many people who might once have been glad to see the police were now immediately scornful.