The Devil's Workshop

The girl was banging on the pantry door, but the chair held. Rupert began to turn toward the noise, but his free arm was still held out at an angle, forcing Cinderhouse down and back, his spine bending at an uncomfortable angle against the table’s edge. He fumbled for the scissors, but his hands were wet with blood, and he felt the blade, possibly the same blade that had snicker-snacked through Rupert’s throat, slice into his right index finger. He couldn’t see how deep the cut was, but he dropped the scissors on the table. He fumbled with them in the sticky pool already growing there and found the loop at the end of one blade. He stuck his first two fingers through the loop, ratcheted the blades apart, and drove one of them into Rupert’s thigh.

Rupert didn’t seem to notice. He continued through his turn and staggered toward the pantry. One arm still hung down at his side, the other bent up, his hand loose at his throat, his blood pumping sluggishly now, as if it had lost interest in the whole affair and was preparing for sleep. Rupert put one leg forward…

“Fiona?”

As if he had forgotten who Fiona was or why he should care.

He put out the other leg, that side of his trousers sopping with whatever blood had been left over for the lower half of his body, the cheap fabric there puckering and clammy. His foot hit the floor without the force of his body behind it and he stumbled and caught himself, one hand, the fist still bunched, against the pantry door.

The banging against the other side of the door stopped.

“Constable?” Her voice was muffled and distant.

“I’m… Fiona… I’ll do that.”

And Rupert fell forward toward the door and bounced off of it, reeled away into the kitchen. Cinderhouse, free from the table, leapt upon the constable’s back and drove him to the floor and stabbed him in the back. And stabbed him again and again, and his teeth gnashed and ground against one another, and he brought the scissors down again and through the thin fabric of the constable’s uniform.

And again.

Rupert stopped moving, stopped trying to crawl across the slimy red kitchen floor with Cinderhouse on his back. His hands scrabbled one last time in the syrupy blood, and then he let go of his last breath. Cinderhouse felt it go, felt himself sink down against Rupert’s rib cage. Rupert’s fist opened up and a spool of red thread rolled away from him, red against red, leaving a lopsided trail until it bumped up against a table leg and stopped.

The banging on the other side of the pantry door started up again, but Cinderhouse ignored the noise. He stood and set the blood-slick scissors on the tabletop. He listened for any other sound in the house, for anyone else who might be coming to see what had happened. He heard a woman scream, once, and felt a moment of blind panic, thinking that Jack had somehow followed him here, but the scream had sounded far off, and no one was approaching down the hall beyond the kitchen. He and the girl and the body of the policeman seemed to be alone.

He examined his finger where it was cut. The two edges of skin and flesh gaped apart, smooth and even down the middle of the finger, all the way to the first knuckle. He could see blood welling up and out, but couldn’t tell how bad it was. The finger was already covered with blood, dripping with it, some his, some Rupert’s.

He pulled the sopping white coverlet out of the basin of water on the table and wrapped it around his hand and gasped. He had forgotten that the little bitch was soaking the thing in salt water! He sat heavily on the chair against the pantry door and felt it creak beneath him. Salt water in the basin. A trap for him. She was a crafty girl, and comely. A valuable prize to be had. After he had finished his business.

“What did you do?” Her voice soft and frightened behind the door. “Where’s Constable Winthrop?”

Cinderhouse pursed his lips and looked around the kitchen. Perhaps there was notepaper and a pencil somewhere in a drawer or a cabinet. But even if he found it, even if he wrote a note to the little girl and pushed it under the door to her, she wouldn’t be able to read it in the dark. Still, he stood and paced about, twisting the balls of his feet so as not to slip when he walked through the smeared and pooling blood. There was no notepaper, but he did find a key on a shelf in the cupboard closest to the kitchen window. It was tucked up against the side and he took it out and looked it over. He walked back to the pantry door and tried the key in the keyhole under the knob. It was a perfect fit.

“Rupert! Rupert!”

I should be very surprised if he answered you, Cinderhouse thought. He chuckled, a rasping sound in the back of his throat, and wished he could share this joke with his new girl.

“You’ve made a mistake, sir! This is the house of Detective Inspector Walter Day. Whatever you’re doing here, this is the wrong house. He will find you and arrest you.”