The Devil's Workshop

He crept up to the back of number 184 and peered through the small window next to the door. There was a girl in the kitchen whom Cinderhouse took to be the housekeeper. She was filling a basin with water from a big pail. She struggled with the pail because it was heavy and she was quite petite, but she managed to get the water into the basin without spilling much. She added salt to the water and dunked a mass of fabric into the mixture.

Cinderhouse opened his lips and tried to lick them before remembering that his tongue now adorned the mantelpiece in Elizabeth’s home. The girl in the kitchen before him was perhaps a trifle old for his tastes, but she was nearly young enough and she was pretty, and it had been so long for him. She had straw-colored hair and quick little hands, and he imagined sitting by the fire with her after a day at the shop. They wouldn’t talk. He couldn’t talk, not anymore. But she would perhaps mend a sock with her clever little hands and he would read the paper and they would be happy together.

He blinked away a tear and smiled. And, after a moment’s further reflection, he turned the doorknob and entered the kitchen.

57

Fiona looked up when she heard the door open. The coverlet was soaking in a basin, and she hoped salt water would lift most of the worst of the stains. Her mind had already turned to her father and Claire upstairs, thinking about what they would need, and so she assumed that it was Constable Winthrop entering the kitchen with water, even though she knew that he was in the parlor rooting through Claire’s sewing basket for a spool of red-colored thread.

Of course, it was not Rupert Winthrop at the door. The man who entered the kitchen was thin and bald and he was wearing a very nice suit. But his jaw was badly bruised, purple and green, and his lips were puffy, and his eyes were wide and staring. Fiona glanced at the card of sewing needles on the table in front of her, then she saw the scissors and she grabbed them, but the bald man was already moving across the kitchen. He took hold of her arm just above the elbow and snatched the scissors out of her hand. He dragged her to the pantry — only four or five steps, there was no time for her to break free of his grip — and he shoved her inside.

It all happened so quickly that Fiona was still stunned. Later, she thought of several things she might have done: stomped on the stranger’s foot or clawed at his wide, madly rolling eyes, perhaps even slapped his tender bruised jaw or grabbed the scissors back from him. But she did none of these things in the moment.

As the pantry door closed on her, she did manage to scream: “Rupert!”

Then she was alone in the dark.

58

Cinderhouse heard a commotion down the hall, like someone dropping something. He kept the fist that held the scissors tight against the pantry door, holding it shut, and reached with his other hand for a low chair that was just within arm’s reach. It had a basket-weave seat and an embroidered back, all bright yellow and shiny blue, and he tipped it up and shoved it under the pantry’s doorknob.

Footsteps outside in the hallway, someone answering the girl’s scream for help. Cinderhouse opened the scissors, looking over the blades with an experienced eye. They were very much like the scissors he was accustomed to using, nice and sharp, hardly used and never dulled.

A man in a constable’s uniform, presumably Rupert, a policeman in another policeman’s house, lurched through the kitchen door as Cinderhouse swept his right arm through the air in front of him, left to right, a magnificent gleaming arc. One of the scissors’ twin blades sliced through the flesh of Rupert’s throat and a gout of blood erupted across Cinderhouse’s face and chest. It leapt from Rupert to him as if it had been waiting for him, longing for him. He smiled and bared his teeth and felt the warmth of the other man’s blood on his lips.

Rupert clapped a hand against his throat and stopped its joyous rush. The blood bubbled out and over and through his fingers like a rill over its rocky bed. It flowed down the constable’s arm, soaking his cuffs and shirtsleeves and jacket. His other arm hung down at his side, his fist clenched tight around some small thing.

But young Rupert was still able to talk. The scissor blade hadn’t severed his vocal cords and he still had a tongue, lucky devil. And, as he talked, he continued to move forward, pushing Cinderhouse back against the long wooden table in the center of the room.

“Miss Fiona?”