The Devil's Workshop

The package that had come in the post for Inspector Day. The giant key. In all the excitement she had forgotten to rewrap it.

She opened the box again and took out the key. It was worth a shot. She stood and went to the door and, already grimacing in anticipation of disappointment, she tried to put it in the lock. Of course it was much too large to fit, and she let out a big sigh. She hadn’t even realized she was holding her breath.

She looked the key over, not because it was particularly interesting, but it was something to do, a new thing to look at. There was a hole in the end of the key and she put her eye to it, but in the flickering candlelight she couldn’t see down the barrel. It had a small curved protuberance near the intricately looped handle. She held the key this way and that and frowned at it. It actually looked a bit like a pistol. She pointed it at the lock on the pantry door and said “bang” under her breath and pulled on the little trigger-thing below the handle.

The explosion was deafening in the confines of the small room, and the key flipped up and back and hit her in the chin. She dropped it to the floor and screamed.

* * *

Hammersmith heard an explosion somewhere in the house and he struggled to open his eyes. Light streamed over him from somewhere nearby and the backs of his eyelids were red. His chest hurt more than anything had ever hurt before.

“Shh.” The voice was unfamiliar, deep and gentle. “Lie still. It’s not your time to change yet. That stupid buzzing fly. He’s missed your heart completely. But he has nicked one of your lungs.”

“Can’t…”

“I know. You can barely breathe, much less talk. So be quiet and let me finish this. A mutual friend would not like you to leave him just yet.”

Hammersmith felt something piercing him, pulling on him. Whoever was talking to him was also sewing his wound. No, sewing something beyond his wound, something inside him.

“Don’t…”

Hammersmith’s mouth was forced open and salty fingers clamped onto his tongue. “I said to be quiet.” This time the voice was stern and there was something dry beneath it, like metal. “Hush now, or I’ll take this from you. It’s been a very long day and I’m in no mood.”

Hammersmith tried to breathe in, tried to maneuver himself upright, but the effort was too much for him to bear, and he felt the world recede.

“That’s better,” the voice said.

Hammersmith passed out again.

* * *

The pantry was full of smoke. Fiona coughed and waved her hand in front of her face. Then she noticed the door. The entire doorknob plate hung loose, the knob was on the floor, and a crack of light showed between the jamb and the door. She grabbed up the tiny gun and pushed against the door and ran out into the kitchen.

The floor was a swamp of blood and gore, and Constable Rupert Winthrop was directly in front of the pantry, part of the way under the table. Fiona gasped and put her hand up to her mouth. She felt her gorge rise and swallowed hard against it, forcing it back down. She had seen many corpses while assisting her father, but never the body of someone she knew. Always before she had approached bodies as artistic things, tragic forms to capture in charcoal. This one had a name. This one had been sweet and stupid and caring.

When she had recovered, she pulled up the end of her apron and wiped her mouth. She did not look at the mutilated body of poor Rupert Winthrop again. She went to the kitchen door and out, the key gun held straight out from her body, her finger on the mini-trigger.

Far down the hall, just inside the entryway, someone knelt over the body of a man. She raised her strange pistol.

“Get away from him!”

The man kneeling over the body on the floor stood and picked up a black bag and walked to the door. He didn’t turn toward her when he spoke.

“There is still time,” he said. “You may save him yet, if you want to.”

“Stop!” Fiona pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. She pulled it again. Click. She realized too late that the gun was too small to hold more than a single bullet, and she had used that bullet to escape the pantry.

The man with the black bag was already out the door. When he reached Regent’s Park Road, he turned and passed out of sight. Fiona dropped the jailer’s gun at her feet and ran down the hall. She slowed and looked in through the parlor door as she passed that room. What she saw would come back to her in her dreams for the rest of her life, but she looked away and kept moving. Her father was stretched out at the bottom of the stairs. A few feet away from him, blocking the open front door, Sergeant Nevil Hammersmith lay in a pool of blood. He looked dead.