The Devil's Workshop

“The hell with you and your toast,” Tiffany said. “We know where the other fugitives are now. We don’t need your information.”

“Toast!”

Tiffany ignored him. He and Blacker hopped up into the back of the waiting wagon. The boy on the bicycle circled around so he was facing back the way he had come. He jumped on a pedal and rolled away from them down the lane.

“Follow him,” Tiffany said.

The boy up top sighed. He picked up the reins and gave a haw and the old horse out front took a tentative step and then another and the wagon began to move.

“You coming, Sergeant?”

Hammersmith nodded and allowed himself to be pulled up into the back of the wagon with the two inspectors as the horse gained momentum and chuffed along after the waiting bicyclist. Hammersmith stared out at the weeping prisoner clinging to Bridewell’s gates and wondered how Inspector Day was faring.

At least, he thought, the remaining prisoners were hiding in a house on Phoenix Street while Day was safe and sound, far away from it all.

46

Is he gone?”

Day shouted at the rocks around him, not daring to hope for an answer. He knew that there were two men with him, one on either side, both shackled there by Jack. He did not know the man to his right, the one who might be dead, but Adrian March was only a few feet away, to his left. And if March was still alive… How long had it been since he had last heard him? An hour? Two?

“He’s gone.” March’s voice came wavering through the rock. He sounded drugged or addled.

“Adrian?”

“I’ve dropped it, Walter. I dropped the lockpick.”

“Were you able to—”

“No. I couldn’t get the proper angle on the thing. I’m older, I suppose. I used to be able to hold those tiny things, but my fingers…”

“Adrian, you sound… Has he hurt you?”

“Of course. But he won’t kill me for some time, I think. He’ll keep me alive as long as he can. It’s a shame I don’t have my little jailer’s gun with me today.”

“Jailer’s gun?”

“Cunning thing. I sent you one, but you don’t have it here either, do you? Shaped like a key, it is. Holds a single bullet. A single bullet’s all it would take, one way or another, Jack or me.”

“What’s he done to you?”

“He has started with the wounds he gave Annie Chapman. One of his victims. They were the last wounds we inflicted on him before he escaped.”

“What kind of wounds?” He didn’t know what had been done to Annie Chapman. The photographs and drawings of Jack’s victims were horrible things to look at, but he had never read the autopsy reports. When Saucy Jack had committed his gruesome deeds, Day had been a country constable, riding his bicycle down winding lanes, giving warnings to children who stole apples from the market.

“He has cut my cheeks and my stomach,” March said.

“Oh, God!”

“Not as bad as all that, actually. Of course, he’s gone further than we ever did with him. I believe he’s cut something vital in my cheek. I don’t seem to be able to speak properly.”

Which explained the sound of March’s voice, slurred and heavy.

“Will you live?” Day said.

“For a while yet. Until he tires of me and kills me.”

“Adrian, I think I may have lost my leg.”

“You will lose more than that. And I will, too.”

“No. Nevil will come for us. He’s relentless. He’s probably already looking. He’ll find us, I know it.”

“There are miles and miles of tunnels down here. No one will ever find us.”

Day stared at the black inside of the hood and swallowed hard. He could feel icy panic in his chest. But panic didn’t help. He and March needed to stay alive long enough to find some means of escape. Otherwise, Claire would be left to raise their baby with no income, no prospects. He supposed she would go back to her family. They’d take her in. They’d be delighted to. And she was lovely. She would remarry, and some other man, somebody who wasn’t so afraid to be a father, would raise Walter Day’s child as his own. Day could see the future without him and he saw that he would be forgotten.

Unless he could escape.

He began again to grasp at his palm with his fingertips, twisting his elbow around, trying desperately to inch the cuff of his right sleeve up his arm. If he could just reach the cufflink, he might have a chance. All he had to do was find one tiny sliver of metal and slip it into a hole somewhere above him in the dark.

47

She was tall and lanky, with big hands and blunt fingernails. Her hair was stringy and pulled back from her wide forehead, emphasizing her eyes, which were set too far apart. She stood at the corner outside the Whistle and Flute, waiting for a man to come along and give her a coin she could spend on a bed for the night. Or on a pint of gin.