The Devil's Workshop

“A little bit. I’m not sure. There were other fluids, too.”

“Well, a certain amount of bleeding is to be expected.” Kingsley snatched his hat from the rack by the door and moved a stack of papers off the floor onto his desk. “Ah, here it is. You know, you should have sent someone to get me, stayed with her.”

“I’m quicker than anyone I might have sent. And a policeman is there helping.”

“That’s good.” He pulled up on the handle of the black medical bag that he always carried when he was outside the hospital. It didn’t move. “But I’m sure she’d rather have you there with her right now.”

“We’d both rather get you there sooner than later.”

He stopped pulling on the bag and squinted at her. Fiona felt sure he could see through her, that he knew how frightened she was, that she had left Claire alone because she didn’t know what else to do and she needed her father. He turned back to the bag and glared at it.

“Oh,” he said. “There’s the problem.” He leaned on the corner of the desk and lifted it an inch and slid one of the handles out from beneath the desk’s leg. He scooted the bag across the floor with the toe of his shoe and set the desk back down. He stepped over to the bag and picked it up, took his daughter by the elbow, and steered her toward the door.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” he said. “We have a baby to deliver.”

26

Eunice Pye moved to a terrace house on Phoenix Street the same year she was married. Her husband, Giles, died in that terrace house the same year the London Underground was opened to the public. Right or wrong, she had always associated Giles’s death with the advent of swift transportation and there was nothing within walking distance that interested her much, so she rarely left her home except for Saturday mornings when she visited the corner market.

She was returning from the market at eight o’clock when she saw a strange man leave the house with the red door. That particular house had been cause for much speculation by Eunice because Mrs Michael, who lived there, had left two weeks previously and had not returned. Giles would have told her to mind her own business, but Eunice couldn’t help speculating. She had decided that there must have been a terrible row and that it was entirely possible Mrs Michael would not be returning. Mr Michael, whose hair had begun to grey (or perhaps he had stopped touching it up when his wife left), had lived there alone for those two weeks, but had not changed his routine. He left each morning for work and returned each evening with a bag of fish and chips from Benny’s on the corner. (Eunice assumed it was fish and chips because she could not imagine sampling any of Benny’s other greasy offerings.)

Eunice had not seen this new strange man enter the house, so she reasoned that he must have arrived while she was at the market or in the wee hours while she slept. But now here he was, a tall man in a nice grey suit that fitted him nearly perfectly (although she thought it seemed a bit scrunched in the shoulders). He closed the red door carefully, as if to make sure it would not latch behind him, and he came through the gate, letting it swing shut again.

He stopped then and stood on the curb, watching the little Anderson girl, who was playing in her tiny front garden. Eunice took a moment to smile at her, but the little girl had always been an absolute beast and she stuck her tongue out at Eunice.

Eunice was carrying two baskets of groceries and her gate was latched. She was trying to determine whether to set a basket down on the path in order to free up a hand to unlatch the gate when the stranger hurried over and opened the gate for her.

“Thank you, young man,” Eunice said. She carried her baskets through the gate and turned back to the man. “Would you mind closing it again?”

The man said nothing. He closed and latched the gate and tipped his hat to her. He turned back to the house with the red door and paused only a moment for another look at the little Anderson girl. He glanced again at Eunice and then went in by his own gate and into the house.

She watched until the red door had shut behind him, then she shuddered. She had never liked bald men. Giles had maintained a full and healthy head of hair for the entirety of their married life. There was something about this particular bald man that interested her, though. Something she couldn’t quite place. Perhaps it was his mouth, which looked swollen and sore. His lips didn’t seem to close completely.

She set her baskets down on the narrow strip of grass that separated her garden from the front walk and found her key in her handbag. She unlocked the front door, picked up the baskets, and carried them through to the kitchen. The instant she reached the counter, she remembered why the bald man seemed so familiar.