The Devil's Workshop (3 page)

He led them through a succession of smaller rooms and down a long corridor that circled the inside of the hub’s outer wall. Above them, a gallery jutted out over the floor where a warder would usually be posted. Griffin wondered again about the dead warder they had encountered. Why had he not been warned?

They passed through another door, and Griffin shut it behind them. They were in a small room with an enclosure in the corner where Griffin remembered changing from his street clothes to the prison uniform. This was where new men were brought into the prison. They were now close to the world outside. Griffin had only been in the prison for two days, yet he was surprised by how much he already missed the outside world. He thought of horses and carriages and buildings with windows. He thought of flowers and trees, he thought of women. He looked at the others with him, and he knew that they were thinking of the same thing. They were all murderers, all sentenced to death for their crimes. There was a single door and a gate between the four of them and freedom. He wondered what they had planned for the days and nights ahead and concentrated on memorizing their faces so that he could identify them if they were separated later. He knew Napper, and the bald man’s name was Cinderhouse. Of the others, one was tall and gaunt, his limbs and neck stretched long, his face lean and
expressionless. He resembled a walking tree. His name, Griffin knew, was Hoffmann. He nodded at Griffin. The other man stayed in the gaunt man’s shadow and scuttled along the wall as if hiding from everyone else in the room. Griffin had seen this smaller prisoner in the exercise yard. Some of the other inmates referred to him as “the Harvest Man,” but Griffin had no idea what his real name might be.

He used the big key to unlock the door ahead of them, and Napper instantly bounded ahead, pushing the others aside in his hurry to get out. Griffin found himself forced against the doorjamb. He scowled at Napper’s back, but held his tongue.

And then they were all outside in the fresh night air. Griffin looked up at a low scud of clouds drifting slowly through the deep dark blue. Beyond the clouds, he could see a scattering of stars and the hazy glow of a full moon. A drop of rain hit his cheek and he let it roll along his skin, savoring the coolness of it. He looked back at the prison, but the damage was out of his line of sight, around the curve of the hub. From here, there was no sign that the wall had come tumbling down.

Napper scampered ahead, staring up at those same stars, that same moon, those same clouds. Griffin’s eyes narrowed and his breath quickened. His hands balled into fists, and he heard a low growl that he only gradually realized was coming from himself.

He felt eyes on him. He turned his gaze from the sky to the killers around him and realized that the tall gaunt man and the bald man were staring at him. Where had the Harvest Man gone? And why didn’t he have a proper name? The gaunt man
held a finger to his lips. The bald man shook his head slowly from side to side. Griffin nodded, annoyed, and motioned them forward across the dirt yard.

They moved over the grounds and to the gate in the high fence as the clouds opened up above them and it began to drizzle. The gate was abandoned, no warder in sight. Napper grabbed the bars of the gate in both hands. He pushed and it swung open, and they all followed him through to freedom.

Griffin stepped through the open gate into a wide brick plaza and squinted into the unseasonal fog. There was nobody outside the prison waiting for him, nobody in sight in any direction he looked, except the three remaining murderers. The night was silent and empty.

He watched the others disappear separately into the low-lying mist, none of them looking back or at one another. They were simply gone, marked here and there by pale afterimages against the dark sky. He felt a brief moment of panic, but squared his shoulders and made a quick decision. He fished inside the waistband of his trousers, found the hidden pocket sewn in the back, and pulled out a small chunk of blue chalk. He knelt and drew the number four on the damp bricks outside the prison gate, then an arrow that pointed away from the prison. He stood and filled his lungs with fresh air, decided to follow in the direction Napper had gone across the empty field to his right, and made himself disappear, too.

D
etective Inspector Walter Day left Regent’s Park Road and picked his way down the steps that led to the towpath bordering the canal. The moon was bright and full and its light gleamed on the water, but did nothing to illuminate the ivy-covered rock wall beside him. The soles of his slippers slapped against the stones underfoot.

Day’s wife, Claire, was under the mistaken impression that she hadn’t been sleeping lately. In fact, she slept fitfully in short bursts that she later couldn’t remember. She tossed and turned and snored and flung her limbs at him, trying to arrange herself comfortably around the mass of her belly. Day often snuck out of bed and went to the parlor, poured himself a brandy, and read until he fell asleep in his big leather chair. Tonight, the moon
had beckoned. He had put on his trousers and slipped quietly out of the house, pulling his jacket on over his nightshirt.

His eyes felt bruised and gummy, improperly fitted into their sockets. He blinked, trying to clear them and bring the path into focus, but a soft fog hovered low above the canal. The night seemed filmy and immaterial. He trudged along, sniffing the wet air, passing slowly beneath bridges and low-hanging branches, heavy with dripping leaves, and watched as a long narrow houseboat passed him, unmoored and rudderless, drifting away in the opposite direction, until it disappeared around a bend.

He floated along beside the water and thought about his wife, thrashing about in their bed, generating heat. He felt powerless to help Claire or even to make her more comfortable. She was carrying all the weight of the pregnancy by herself. His helplessness made him anxious, made him want to run. At least as far as the towpath. A brief escape. Alone in the wee hours with the dark scent of canal water in his nose, he felt maybe a bit more free, a little less vulnerable.

He stopped and squinted up at the wall beside him, reached out and brushed his fingers against the cool black stones. Here beside the canal at two o’clock in the morning, with nothing to distract him from the inevitable, he saw that he had no control over his future, no control over Claire’s life or the life of their coming child.

He looked away from the wall at the towpath ahead. A few yards ahead, he could see the bars of a gate gleaming faintly in the moonlight. There were no horses out this late to pull the
boats through the water, so someone had closed the gates. He would have to turn back.

He stared at the tops of his slippers, watched them twist slowly around under him, and watched them begin the march along the path in the direction he had come, back up the steps, back to the road.

He paid no attention to the footpaths on either side of him and instead wandered up the middle of Regent’s Park Road, thinking about the baby. That new Day on its way.

He stopped walking and took the slipper off his left foot, fished out a rock, and threw it as far as he could. He watched it disappear in the early-morning mist. He leaned against the trunk of a tree beside the path, steadying himself while he put his slipper back on, and looked up at the moon caught in the branches above. The tree had been there before Day was born and would no doubt be there long after he died. Black vines crept up the sides of it and tiny sprouts nudged through the bark, out into the night air. He wondered whether they would grow to be stout branches and nourish the tree. Or perhaps they were only offshoots of the vine, burrowing under and through the tree’s bark, eventually choking it to death.

He balled up his fist and punched the tree trunk. Immediately, he regretted having done it. His knuckles hurt, and when he held his hand up and moved it in the moonlight he saw blood. He turned and rested his back against the unharmed tree and sank down along it to the ground, sat there. He bit his lip and plucked a blade of grass from the dirt between his legs, reached up and stabbed the moon with its tapered end.

Nine months had given him too long to think about things. His work had helped with that. He had buried himself in an overflowing caseload and ignored his nagging doubts about fatherhood. What did he know about being a father? His own father, Lord knows, had not set a wonderful example. Arthur Day had given Walter no clues as to how one went about the process of becoming a father. Everything—the entire life he saw ahead of him—was a complete mystery. If only things could remain unchanged. A happy life, a fulfilling job, a wonderful wife, and a tidy home.

But of course, it was too late for that.

He tore the blade of grass lengthwise. It separated easily along the grain, but it was useless now and dead. He dropped it back to the ground and felt sorry that he had killed it.

He may have slept then. He didn’t know. His mouth tasted terrible. The moon, at least, appeared to be in the same place in the sky, so if he had slept, it hadn’t been long. He pushed himself back up and patted the trunk of the tree and walked away from it, back up the lane.

He turned in at his gate by instinct and so did not immediately notice the young boy standing on his porch. When he did look up, he expected to see the familiar blue door at the top of the steps, but Claire was standing in the open doorway with a lantern held high. She pushed past the boy and came down the steps and set her hand lightly on his arm.

“Where were you?” she said. Her eyes were wide and searching, as if there might be a clue in the blunt planes of his face.

Day opened his mouth to answer and closed it again. He suddenly felt as though he had betrayed her. He had left her alone and had indulged in self-pity at a time when she needed him to be strong and, more than anything, to be there with her. He had acted as a child would act, and he shook his head at her now, unable to speak. He felt his face flushing with shame and was thankful that the lantern light was too weak for Claire to see him clearly.

“Inspector,” the boy said. “Sir?”

Day looked up at him. “What is it, boy?”

“He’s sent for you. Sir Edward has.”

“At this time of night?”

“Sent for ever’body, sir. I mean ever’body there is. I had a time findin’ you, too. They tol’ me you was in Kentish Town, not out here. Posh!”

Day sighed. He didn’t like to advertise the fact that he lived well beyond his means in Primrose Hill. The house was a gift from Claire’s parents. “Tell me what’s happened.”

“They’re out, sir. They’re all out, the bad ’uns are. The whole prison’s disappeared in a puff of smoke, and the bad ’uns are in the streets.”

Day gripped Claire’s arms and ushered her back up the porch steps and into the house, glancing about the whole while at the empty and now ominous lane that ran down along the wide-open park.

“Do you mean to say,” Day said, “that someone has escaped from a prison?”

“More than one.” The boy was excited, his small pale face lit up from inside. “A daring escape from Bridewell. A legion, a host, at least twelve or a hundred bloody murderers are on the loose.”

“Twelve or a hundred? You’ve left yourself a wide margin.”

The boy nodded. “It’s all hands tonight. Sir Edward wants ever’body.”

“Get in here, boy.”

Day waited while the boy scampered past him into the house. He took one more look up and down the street, closed the blue door, and bolted it. On his way to the stairs, he pointed at a chair in the receiving room.

“Sit there,” he said. “I won’t be a moment. Got to put on some shoes.”

“I can find my own way back to the Yard, sir.”

“Not if what you say is true. You just wait for me and I’ll make sure you arrive back there safely.”

Without waiting for an answer, Day hurried up the stairs with his wife. As he ran, he let the slippers fall from his feet and clatter down the stairs behind him.

C
laire wasted no time, pulling out a suit from the wardrobe for him and hurrying to the dresser where he kept his cuffs and collars, studs and buttons in the top drawer. Her nightgown swirled around her as she moved, and he took a moment to appreciate her natural grace, even as uncomfortable as he knew she was.

“This isn’t . . . Most of your collars are at the laundry,” she said. “They won’t be delivered until later today. This is the only one left, and you haven’t worn it in ages. It’s limp.”

“I’m sure it’ll be fine.” Day quickly stripped to his underwear and began to dress himself.

“I’m setting out your special cufflinks. The ones Mr March gave you last Christmas.”

“Those things? They’re ridiculous. Like something from a penny novel, toys hidden here and there, completely defeating the regular purpose of a thing. And they’re enormous! I’m sure the ordinary cufflinks will be fine.”

Claire sat heavily on the edge of the bed and watched him button his shirt. She pulled her dressing gown tighter around her and retied the sash.

“Where did you go, Walter?”

“Nowhere. It was hot in here. I needed to get out of the house for a bit.”

“To get away from me, you mean.”

Day stopped looking for cufflinks. He picked up the box she had set out for him and went to the bed. He wanted to put an arm around his wife, to comfort her, but he felt suddenly awkward and so he busied himself fastening his shirtsleeves.

“I’m anxious, that’s all it is.”

“I know this isn’t what you married.” Claire looked down at her belly, swelling into her lap. “But Walter, I miss you when you’re gone.”

He smiled at her. “I was taking a walk. That’s all it was. Couldn’t sleep.”

He straightened his cuffs and put an arm around her, and she settled against him. Then she straightened up and grabbed his hand.

“What’s happened?”

“Oh, I skinned my knuckles on a tree. It’s nothing.”

“Walter?”

“Really. It’s nothing. Don’t be silly.”

“I’ll be as silly as I please.” She kissed his hand. “Let’s put an ointment on these scratches before they fester.”

“I’ll be fine.”

“Put ointment on them anyway. Indulge me.”

“I always indulge you. You are the smartest and prettiest and silliest person I know, and I have to keep you happy or you’ll remember you might have married old Sam Whatsisname instead of me.”

“That’s true. Let’s never forget good old Sam Whatsisname. So you didn’t meet any prettier girls on the towpath tonight? Girls without giant bellies?”

“I prefer giant bellies. How did you know I walked along the towpath?”

“I’m sorry, Walter, but you smell like horse manure.”

“That was a choice. I thought you might appreciate a new perfume.”

“If only it
were
new. Horse manure has become your regular scent, you know.”

“I’ll step in different kinds of manure and get your opinion. We’ll see what you prefer.”

“Please do.” She pulled back and looked at him, serious. “Oh, Walter, you are happy, aren’t you? Or, at least, not too unhappy?”

“I am very happy every waking moment I spend with you.”

“Me, too.”

“I hate to leave you again, but I’ll be back as soon as I possibly can.” He rose and went to the bedroom door, paused with his hand on the knob. “You’ll be all right?”

“We have at least two weeks before the baby’s due, and I have
Fiona here if I need anything. Don’t worry. Just be careful and come back to me today. I refuse to raise this baby by myself.”

“Of course.”

“And, Walter?”

“Yes.”

“You might think about putting on your trousers before you leave.”

Day looked down. He was bare-legged, in just his long woolen underpants and socks and garters.

“I thought I might give the other boys at the Yard a show.”

“Let’s save that for another day.”

“Oh, very well.”

Day rushed to put on his trousers, and Claire fetched braces for him. He gave her a quick kiss and dashed out of the bedroom to the stairs. He was reasonably certain he would have remembered his trousers on his own, but his thoughts were completely muddled. He only hoped that Claire hadn’t seen the fear he was hiding from her.