The Devil's Workshop (7 page)

“But there’s something unusual about one of them?”

“No,” Folger said. “I mean, yes. But not one of the four. It’s just that I think there was a fifth man.”

“So you’ve indicated to my commissioner.”

“See here now,” the warden said. “I’ve already explained it to you, Folger. You’ve made a mistake. There’s no reason to go about—”

“Please,” Day said. “Perhaps it’s a mistake, perhaps not, but I’d like to hear what he has to say, if you don’t mind.”

“Well, sir, there’s one empty cell in the next wing that confuses me.”

“How so?”

“There’s evidence of habitation.”

“Perhaps it wasn’t properly cleaned after the last prisoner there left it,” the head warder said. “As I said, we do have shirkers among the men.”

“Quite so,” Day said. “But if there was someone in that cell last night, that prisoner is also missing. In addition to these in here, that would make five men gone, not four.”

“It might appear so,” Munt said. “But my thinking is that the cell was probably always empty.”

“You and Mr Folger seem to disagree on the facts. I’d like to hear more from him.”

The warden threw up his arms and walked several steps away down the corridor toward where the doctor was huddled over the dead warder. But Day noted that he had remained just close enough to be able to hear anything Folger told them.

“Go on, sir,” Day said.

“Right,” Folger said. He glanced at his employer. “Yes. Well. A fifth man. I think there was one, in that cell. But I don’t know who he was. That’s the irregularity, you see?”

“You’ve lost the missing man’s file?”

“No. I never
had
his file.”

Day shook his head, confused, not sure what question to ask next. Behind him, he could hear the low murmur of words as the warden talked to Dr Bickford-Buckley. Short snatches of their conversation drifted to him. “. . . it’s a shame . . . overzealous, is all . . .” Day narrowed his eyes as if that might help him eavesdrop, but Folger mistook his expression for irritation and held up his free hand.

“The fifth man wasn’t a prisoner here,” he said. “Or, rather, we don’t know if he was a . . . We don’t know who he was, that’s all.”

“Are you saying that someone broke in to the prison right before the others broke out of it? And then left again with the escapees?”

“Well, I know that doesn’t make any sense at all, but I can’t think of another explanation.”

“Why are you so sure there was anyone in that empty cell?”

“I have records indicating that meals were taken there. Regular meals over the course of the past two days.”

“Is it possible one of the warders was stealing food?”

“Well, I suppose it’s possible. But I don’t know why he would. The warders are fed much better meals than the prisoners are. It’s not as if they’re starving, you know.”

Day took a moment to consider. An extra meal or two delivered to an empty cell was a curious thing, but it was hardly proof that a mystery man had invaded the prison.

“We know for a certainty that there are four men who escaped,” he said. “That is correct?”

“Yes.”

“Can you tell me anything about them?”

“Oh, a great deal.” Folger seemed relieved to have something definitive and constructive to offer. He cleared his throat and opened the topmost folder in the little stack he was carrying. “Let’s see, over here, we had a man named Hoffmann.” He pointed at one of the empty cells. “Quite deviant. Seems he fell in love with his cousin and murdered her young gentleman friend to get him out of the way.”

“Is that all?” Hammersmith said. “That’s obviously deviant enough, of course, but we’ve seen men—”

“Oh, but he didn’t stop at that. He blinded the poor girl and tried to pose as the fiancé he had murdered, somehow thinking she wouldn’t know the difference.”

“Ah,” Hammersmith said. “Yes, that is strange.”

“I would imagine he’d go back to try to reconcile with the girl now,” Folger said. “He was completely obsessed with her. Talked of nothing else.”

Day and Hammersmith gave each other a look. Hammersmith drew his pad of paper and pen from his jacket pocket and made a note. The clerk had given them a solid lead in finding one of the missing men.

“And here,” Folger went on, pointing to a cell on the other
side of the corridor. “Well, that’s a dead man in there, so we can close his file. But then next to him”—he pointed at the next cell in the row—“next to him we had Napper. Nasty little fellow. Followed a man from the Strand at the end of a workday, entered his home right behind him, and immediately killed him. Then he spent days with the man’s wife, alone in the house, before finally being caught.”

“What did he do to her?” Day said.

“Why, he ate her,” Folger said. He moved on to the next empty cell and so failed to see the expression on Day’s face. “And on the other side again, these two cells side by side, we had a bit of a John Doe.”

“You don’t have a name for him?”

“No. Never did. But he’s been in and out of institutions like this nearly his entire life. Family all killed when he was a child, and the boy was found living with their bodies, completely unaware that they were dead. Isn’t that odd?”

“Um, yes,” Day said.

“After that he started sneaking into people’s attics and hiding until they were asleep. He’d creep out at night, kill them. The whole family, I mean, kill them all and live in the house. He was found serving food to a family of rotting corpses the last time and eventually brought here.”

“But you don’t know his name?”

“He’s never spoken. Completely mute.”

“You must have called him something.”

“Well, some of the warders and the other inmates called him by a buggy sort of name. Some insect. Let me see here.” Folger
looked through his file, then looked up at Day and smiled. “Oh, yes. Well, it makes perfect sense. They called him the Harvest Man after the species of spider. You know, it lives in attics. Quite an appropriate moniker, I suppose.”

“Yes,” Day said. “And what about this cell?” He indicated the last empty cell in the row.

“That one was . . . let me see. Ah, his name is Cinderhouse.” Folger looked up from his stack of files at Day. “Oh, it seems you’re familiar with his history.”

“We’ve met.”

“You arrested him.”

“After he went to my home and threatened my wife.”

“And after he abducted a child,” Hammersmith said.

“And after he killed several other children and two good policemen,” Day said.

“Well, it looks like you’ll have to arrest him all over again,” Folger said. “I remember interviewing him. I didn’t think he seemed particularly dangerous.”

“He was dangerous enough,” Hammersmith said. “He just wasn’t very smart.”

J
ack heard footsteps coming in the dark, wet shoes slapping the ground, someone moving quickly. It wasn’t the doctor; the doctor hadn’t visited him in days. And it wasn’t the policeman. This was someone new, a gait he didn’t recognize. Whoever it was, he was alone. Jack kept his muscles loose, his breath hot and steady under the canvas hood, and he listened. The footsteps slowed and then stopped as the stranger neared the opening of Jack’s cell.

“Isn’t this exciting?” Jack raised his voice so that the stranger would hear him. “I haven’t had a new visitor in quite some time.”

“What . . .” The stranger stopped, then started again, nervous. “What is this? Who are you?”

Oh, the stranger didn’t know! He had stumbled upon Jack by
accident. Under the hood, Jack smiled. His cracked lips broke and he tasted copper.

“Come closer, little fly,” he said.

“I need to . . . There’s no time.”

“Someone is following you,” Jack said.

“I don’t know. I mean, yes, they’re looking for me.”

“And where will you hide?”

“Here. Down here.”

“But this is my home. You may only hide here if I allow it.”

“Why are you chained like that?”

“Come closer.”

He heard the stranger shuffle in place, undecided.

“It’s all right,” Jack said. “I can’t hurt you, can I? You can see that. So where’s the harm?” Every word scorched his dry throat. He savored the pain. “Come and take this off my head so that we might see each other and converse like the gentlemen we surely are.”

The stranger didn’t move.

“What’s your name, little fly?”

“Cinder . . . My name is Cinderhouse, but I fail to see how that matters.” The stranger, Cinderhouse, feeling brave now after his initial confusion, feeling like Jack couldn’t hurt him, chained and hooded in the dark as he was. Jack smiled again. Such a perfect little fly, a tender morsel already caught in Jack’s web, but still unaware of the danger.

“Oh, it matters to me, Mr Cinderhouse. Do you mind if I call you Peter?”

“But that’s not my name.”

“It’s not meant to be a name. It’s a title.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Tell me, do you understand this:
Exitus probatur
?”

“What?”

“Never mind. They’re not close. The men following you. They’re far away, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know where they are. I think I killed one.”

“We have time before they follow you here. You’re quite safe with me, Peter. I can protect you.”

“Don’t call me that.”

“But why not? I should think you’d be honored.”

Cinderhouse shuffled closer, the soles of his shoes dragging grit from the floor.

“Take the hood from my head and face me,” Jack said.

There was a long moment of silence, and then Jack could feel the presence of the other man, hovering close, and suddenly the canvas was lifted and dull orange light sliced through Jack’s eyes and stabbed into his brain. He hadn’t even known that his eyes were open; there was no difference in the darkness either way and he had long ago lost track. Now his eyelids slammed shut and he gradually lifted them again, a fraction of an inch, letting them grow used to the idea of something besides their accustomed blackness. He let his eyes deal with the light, droplets of color filtering through his lashes, and concentrated on listening to Cinderhouse. The other man had stepped back from him, was loitering at the mouth of the cell, no doubt planning to run.

Frightened little fly.

“If you leave, you will never fulfill your destiny.” Jack’s voice was
little more than a whisper, filling the space, echoing from stone to stone. “If you leave now, you will always be lost and afraid, running here and there like a rabbit until you are caught.”

“Who did that to you?”

“I did.”

“I meant the chains. Who chained you here?”

“I told you. I did.”

“You didn’t chain yourself.”

“Of course I did.”

“How?”

Such a stupid little fly.

“You’ve heard of a man, lived centuries ago, who worked miracles? A man who walked on the surface of the sea, laid his healing hands on the sick, and turned water into blood?”

“It was wine. You’re talking about . . . He turned water into wine.”

“Did he? Perhaps we read different accounts.”

“What does that have to do with . . . ?”

“Oh, it has everything to do. The man I speak of, when he had done what he needed to do to establish his power, he allowed lesser beings to take him, to tear his flesh and spill his blood on the thirsty ground.”

“He died.”

“Do you think so? I don’t. No, he had gone too far to die, taken too much power into himself. He allowed them to think he was gone and then he showed them that power. But only when he was ready and only after he had prepared his disciples.”

The light didn’t hurt so badly anymore and Jack’s eyes were fully
open, drinking in the sight of the cell, really a cave, the tall gaunt man in prison dress standing at the edge of the darkness beyond. Cinderhouse was holding a lantern and the light from it reflected on his bald scalp, pink and vulnerable. Jack took a deep breath of cool, fresh-smelling air. He glanced down and saw that his own blood and sweat and shit and piss had turned the ground at his feet black, had soaked into the earth so deeply that it would never wash away, even if these tunnels flooded. He closed his eyes and smiled again.

“How many have you killed?” he said. “Aside from the man who followed you. Anyone might have done that. How many did you put your hands on simply because you could?”

“How did you know?”

“More than one, am I right?”

With his eyes still closed, he heard a rustle of fabric as the bald man moved, and he guessed that Cinderhouse had nodded.

“You are an infernal machine,” Jack said. “I knew that you were. But you were simply reacting, not following any sort of plan, am I right?” Jack said. Another nod from the bald man. “Wouldn’t you like to finally understand the importance of what you do?”

“Importance?”

“There is a plan, you know.”

“I don’t understand.”

“I know. But you will.”

Jack licked the blood from his lips. It was time. He had performed his miracles, had allowed himself to be tortured, and had taken root in the soil. London grew up through him now, and he had spread out into the city, into the world, completely. He had achieved immortality. He was deathless.

He was death.

He was London.

“There is still work to do,” he said. “Come, Peter, come closer and let me whisper in your ear. You are no longer alone. You are mine now, and I call you my rock.”

Cinderhouse’s left foot moved as if he weren’t in control, as if he had become a puppet. He took a step toward Jack, and then his shoulders set and he raised his lantern and he moved fully into the little cell.

“Tell me what to do,” the bald man said.

Silly little fly.