The Devil's Workshop (20 page)

D
r Kingsley smiled at Claire Day and then at his daughter, who stood anxiously by the door, wringing her hands. He put the stethoscope back in his bag and took a look around the bedroom. There was a table next to the wall that was being used as a bath, with a basin, towels, a pitcher, and a pail. There was the usual complement of tooth powder and soap and talcum. He set his bag on the table and scooped those small items up and went across the room to the giant wardrobe. The wardrobe was useless for his purposes, and so he opened its doors and tossed the toiletries inside and closed it again. He moved the curtains and took a look out the window. They were on the corner and above the ground floor, and there were no nearby homes with windows that looked out on the
Days’ upper floors. He pulled the sash and opened the curtains and cranked open the window to let in some fresh air. The room was stuffy and dark, and he imagined both Claire and Fiona might appreciate a light breeze.

“I would prefer to take you to a hospital,” he said. He turned from the window and scowled at Claire. Her hair was sweaty and plastered to her neck. She sucked in her breath as a contraction hit, then relaxed a bit as it passed. “You’re moving ahead earlier than I’d like.”

“I didn’t mean to,” Claire said.

“No, of course not. Babies come when they’re ready to come, and we have little say in the matter. You’ll have the child right here and it will be fine.”

“Will it, though? Is everything all right? It hurts and there’s blood and I don’t feel very good.”

“No, you don’t feel very good. You’re having a baby. It’s not meant to be a picnic.”

“But is anything wrong?”

“There is only a small amount of blood, and you mustn’t let it alarm you. It’s perfectly normal and I should have told you to expect it. We doctors call it the ‘bloody show,’ and that’s frankly an apt description of the entire process.”

“Father,” Fiona said, “she’s scared.”

Kingsley sighed. Childbirth was always a risky proposition. His record was good, better than that of any other doctor in London. He had helped in the delivery of nearly a hundred babies and had lost only seven of them. Only three of the women had died. He remembered them all and they haunted him still,
but he knew the numbers were regarded as acceptable. Years ago, after the first young mother’s death, he had learned to keep them all at arm’s length. He did his work and he did it well, but he did not need to be a friend to these women. He was their doctor, and if they died . . . well, people died. He did his best and he hoped they would not die, but he could not control the process as well as he would prefer. There were too many things that could go wrong in an instant.

But Claire Day was already a friend, and there was no way he could maintain his usual formal distance.

“Fiona, would you please go find as many towels and blankets as you can find? And I saw two small occasional tables in the hallway downstairs. Please ask the young man to bring them up here. I need more surfaces.”

Fiona turned to the door. He could see the frustration on her face.

“Wait,” he said. “Take this, will you? It’s ruined. Throw it out.”

He gathered the sticky coverlet from the bed and bundled it up, handed it over to his daughter, and guided her out the door by her elbow. He shut it after her and turned to Claire. She had stood and was pacing restlessly around the room. Her nightgown was spotted with the evidence of her ordeal. Kingsley guided her back to the bed, then dragged a chair over from the corner. He sat next to Claire, where she wouldn’t have to strain to see him, but where he could avert his eyes so as to allow her some modesty at this stage.

“Here are the facts,” he said. “This is advancing weeks earlier than expected. That is not a good sign. But it is not the worst.”

“Have I lost him?”

“The baby, you mean?”

“Yes.”

“No. I don’t know why you call it ‘him.’ There’s no way to know what gender the child will be. But there is a heartbeat, and that means your baby is alive inside you.”

Claire smiled weakly.

“Claire, your baby is alive and it wants to come out here and meet you. It is our job—mostly yours, but I’ll help where I can—it’s our job to allow the baby to do just that. To allow him or her to come out and be your child. And that’s what we’re going to do now, you and I together. You are not alone and, although it will not be an entirely easy process, it’s a process that countless other women have endured. My mother did it, and your mother did it, and everybody’s mother has done it. And you will do it, too.”

“It hurts.”

He nodded. “It does hurt, and it will hurt even more. And then it will all be over and you will forget how much it hurt and you won’t even care about that anymore because you’ll have a new baby.”

“Have you ever seen anybody die doing this?”

He nodded again. He wanted to lie to her, but lying was not a thing he was in the habit of doing and he didn’t know how to start.

“I have, Claire. But not many times. And for the most part those women were older than you are and they were poor and unhealthy. I do not anticipate that you will have the same problems they did. Have you been eating lots of butter and eggs, like I told you to?”

Claire gasped and her fists clenched as she felt another contraction. When it passed, she whispered into her closed fist, “I want Walter to come home. I want him here.”

“He’ll come as soon as he can come. He’s trying to make things safe for your baby. Isn’t that good? I’m sure he’s thinking of you and the baby even now.”

“I just wish he were here.”

“Well.” Kingsley let out a deep breath and stood, pushing down on his knees to help himself up. He went around to the back of the chair and dragged it to the foot of the bed. “Let’s see how this is progressing. Maybe you can surprise him with the new arrival when he does get here. Wouldn’t that be nice?”

He paused, his hands on the back of the chair.

“Claire, I am a very good doctor. Do you believe that?”

She nodded.

“Good. Because it’s true. And you are going to be just fine because I am going to take care of you now. I promise.”

He smiled, and she smiled back.

Then he sent up a silent prayer to a god he did not believe in that he would be able to keep his promise.

D
ay woke to the sound of a man screaming. He opened his eyes, but it made no difference. The world was still black. There was something covering his face, a bag or a hood. It reeked of sweat. There was a slit in the bag near his chin, and he breathed through his mouth. He was shivering and tried to move his arms, but they wouldn’t respond.
I’m paralyzed,
he thought.
I’ve been hit in the head and I can’t move, and I’ll never move again.
Then he heard the faint clink of metal ringing against stone behind him and realized that he was in chains. Now that he concentrated, he could feel shackles on his wrists and ankles. He couldn’t feel the comfortable weight of his gun and his flask and he understood that his jacket had been taken from him. His hat was gone, too. He remembered dropping his
gun, so it wouldn’t have been in his jacket anyway. Perhaps it was still on the tunnel floor. Maybe it was within reach, if he could only move a little.

The man stopped screaming and panted as if out of breath. The sound of him was nearby, yet distant, on the other side of a wall. Day realized he was chained up in one of the three alcoves he had seen and someone else was chained in an alcove next to him.

“March!”

There was no answer. He tried again.

“Adrian! Inspector Adrian March! Can you hear me?”

Something moved. Day felt a change in the air in front of him, but there was no change in the darkness under the hood. Then there was a voice, a low rasp, and it was directly in his ear. Someone was standing with his lips against the rough fabric of the hood, pressing it against Day’s ear. He smelled copper and fish.

“You’ll get your turn,” the voice said. It was deep and muffled. “Be patient.”

“Who is it? Who’s there?”

But there was no answer. Day couldn’t tell whether the man had gone or was still standing right there next to him. He turned his head, but it moved slowly, as if his neck needed to be oiled, and a sharp pain lanced through his skull, radiated outward through his face. Warmth moved down his spine and spread out into his torso, down his limbs to his fingertips and his toes.

He blacked out again.

When he woke up, he sensed he was alone. He could feel his
pulse in his temples, beating at his brain. He heard low murmuring somewhere far away and he concentrated on the sound, dragged his attention away from his throbbing head. The voice he heard was somewhere to his left, the opposite side of him from the screaming man he had heard before. There was another wall. There were walls on either side of him and, he could tell by the movement of air around him, a wall behind him. But the space was empty in front of him. He was in one of the cells and it opened out into the tunnel. There were other men, possibly also shackled, on either side of him. He listened harder to the murmuring voice.

“Say anything,” it said. “Anything at all.”

“Go to hell, you monster.” That was March’s voice. Loud and defiant, but there was pain evident in the way he clipped his consonants.

“Oh, I will,” the voice said. “But you’ll be there with me. I
thought
I knew you. And now I do. By your voice. I heard your voice nearly every day of the past . . . What has it been? Did you keep me here for a year? I should look at a newspaper.”

Day heard March coughing.

“Would you like some water? Here.”

March’s cough turned into sputtering and gasping.

“Leave him be!” Day said.

March continued to cough, but Day heard the sound of footsteps approaching. The stranger came through the tunnel, and Day could hear him breathing, standing not more than two feet away.

“I don’t know your voice,” the man said.

“Which one are you? Hoffmann? You’re not Cinderhouse. I’d know his voice.”

“Oh, we’re both playing a game of place-the-voice,” the man said. “Delightful.”

“This is no game.”

“Everything’s a game. Tell me something . . .”

“What? What is it you want?”

“
Exitus probatur.
What do you say to that?”

“I don’t know,” Day said. “I don’t understand. Tell me what you want.”

“What I want? I haven’t decided yet what I want. What’s your name, bluebottle?”

“Tell me your name first.”

“Your name, I said. Don’t make me hurt you. Better yet, don’t make me hurt your friend next door.”

“My name is Day. Detective Inspector Day.”

He heard the man gasp and then the sound of hands clapping, three loud echoing reports.

“Day? Not Walter Day, by chance?”

Day felt his stomach turn over and he suddenly couldn’t breathe. The man knew his name. Did he know where he lived? Was Claire in danger?

“Oh, my,” the man said. “Have I guessed correctly? Do you know, Walter Day, that we have a friend in common?”

Day shook his head, and the motion sent another spike of pain through the base of his skull. He sucked in a sharp breath. “Who? Who do you mean?”

“It’s really nobody,” the man said. “I thought he was somebody, but I was mistaken. But now I don’t know what to do with you, Walter Day. I think I’ll keep you for a time. Perhaps I’ll feed you to my fly.”

“Listen—”

“Yes?”

“By order of the Queen, I’m placing you under arrest. Surrender now, while you can, and I’ll see that you’re treated well.”

The man took a step back. Day heard his shoes scuffing on the stones. Then he began to laugh. Day felt himself slipping away. When the man stopped laughing, he sniffed and Day heard him blow his nose.

“Thank you for that,” the man said. “I needed a good hearty chuckle. You know, I quite like you, Walter Day.”

The man’s voice had lost its mocking tone. He sounded sincere. And surprised.

“I really really do,” he said. “You’re so marvelously uncomplicated.”

“Let us go free,” Day said.

A hand clamped against the fabric of the hood over his mouth and Day smelled something sharp and acrid, a chemical seeping into the hood.

“Shh,” the voice said. “No more talking. I still have work to do, and I’m suddenly peckish. Why don’t you take a nap?”

As if the man had given him a hypnotic command, Day felt the floor open up under him and he fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.