The Devil's Workshop

Day stood in the doorway and held on to the wall. Claire smiled at him from the bed. She looked sleepy, but relaxed. In her arms, she held two tiny babies.

“Walter,” she said, “would you like to come say hello to your daughters?”

Day smiled and let go of the wall. He took a step forward.

And fainted.

66

Jack stopped outside and knelt by the curb. He took Griffin’s blue chalk from his pocket and drew a large zero on the footpath. Above it, he drew an arrow pointing toward the house. He stood and put the chalk back in his pocket and went to the door, pulled the bell.

He had been busy in the two days since saving Sergeant Hammersmith’s life. He had a lot of time to make up. When the housekeeper came to the door, he handed her Inspector Day’s card, lifted from the occasional table in Day’s hall, and was ushered into a reception room. He sat in a chair next to the door so that he wouldn’t be immediately noticed by anyone entering the room, and he waited. There was a large portrait above the fireplace of a jowly man with thinning hair. Jack stared at the portrait and folded his hands in his lap and felt utterly at peace.

Some fifteen minutes later, a man was preceded into the room by his voice: “So, Day, you’ve decided to join us, have you?”

A stout man stopped just inside the door and looked around, confused. He didn’t see Jack until it was too late. Jack rose and stepped into the doorway and grabbed the man about the throat from behind. With his free hand, he closed the reception room door, pushing it gently until the latch clicked.

The stout man resembled the jowly man above the fire. Jack wondered how they were related.

“Dr Martin Bickford-Buckley?”

“I’m Dr Bickford-Buckley. Who are you?” His voice was strangled and hoarse.

Jack let go of the man’s throat and allowed him to turn. As soon as the doctor saw him, he gasped.

“It’s you,” he said.

“You weren’t expecting me?”

“How did you…”

“I thought I’d take the time to return your bag,” Jack said. He held up the black medical bag with the initials MBB stamped into the side. “And now that I have, perhaps there is a thing or two we might discuss.”

“I’ll discuss nothing with you.”

There was a knock at the door.

Jack whispered, “If you say a word that I don’t like, I’ll kill her, too. You have a last opportunity to be a noble man. Do you understand?”

Bickford-Buckley nodded, and Jack opened the door. The housekeeper entered with a silver tray. She set it on the table, curtsied, and left again without ever looking up at them. Jack closed the door behind her and latched it.

He smiled at the doctor. “How do you take your tea?”

“You’ve come to kill me. I regret nothing, so get on with it.”