Razors & Ruin (Rare Horrors #1)

Chapter 33

33

Sweeney

A t the shop, I dismiss Nellie to her day’s baking despite the obvious thrum of energy that has me wound up tight.

I dare not fuck away the tension; I might genuinely be at risk of killing her, all love and tangled devotion be damned.

But fuck me. It worked .

The Beadle is coming, and he will bring his wretched brain, crammed with nasty knowledge and, perhaps, a nugget or two that will close the door behind the past.

I cannot allow something as mundane as a letter to end my hopes of…what? Salvation?

No, I can’t pretend that’s what it’s about anymore.

I need to lay my hands on someone who took Johanna, if only symbolically, and that person needs to be the bastard Beadle. If he’ll admit to being just as involved as Wetherby, I’ll take great pleasure and care over bleeding the filthy cunt.

If he doesn’t admit it? Maybe it doesn’t matter.

The lying fuck stood in court and said I was an apostate from Hell and had murdered both Gerald and Veronica Cope in hot blood.

I had no defense, and no one believed Gerald was a fuckawful person; he had friends to vouch for him, as the Beadle always had, and no smear ever stuck. My sentence was doubled because of him.

I try to summon Veronica’s loving gaze, but I can’t. The expression will not settle in my mind’s eye, and she won’t look at me. The baby, too, with her blonde hair. I only recall it now; flaxen curls behind her tiny pink ears. The little girl I never even held.

Hours pass, and another cold evening draws in. I’m wired, running hot and cold, but still I walk the floor, unable to rest for a second.

Shortly before the shop is due to open, Nellie brings us tea and rock cakes, her face etched with worry.

“Strike a light,” she says, looking me up and down. “You look like crap. Eat something, for crying out loud, or you’ll be flat out before the Beadle comes.”

I bid her to join me; I was hard on her this morning, yet she went to her work without complaint, her small hands diligently mincing and rolling as they do daily.

She puts up with a lot of my shit, but after today, maybe I’ll make it up to her. A trip to the seaside, even, for some fresh air.

Nellie sits and takes a bite of her cake. “Did he say when to expect him?”

I shake my head. “He was difficult, actually. Kept banging on about his ‘official duties’, which needed attending to first. Nothing like as ingratiating as when we last met, so I’ll have to step up my game.”

She laughs. “I thought you were going to kill him regardless. Can’t you decide?”

“Much will depend on him,” I reply, pouring the tea. “If he has anything interesting to say, I will have cause to hold back, but I may not have the will.”

She regards me with a sly smile. “So Jill Bellefonte’s place got shut down, did you hear? Someone grassed her up and the health people came by. Found a whole menagerie in her kitchen; cats, dogs, mangy sheep, even a badger, as well as fucking hundreds of rodents.”

I grimace. “Urgh. I don’t know why that’s so much worse than people, but it is.” A thought occurs, and I throw her a glance. “Nellie. I know you’re competitive, but?—”

“That fat bitch was no match for me.”

She falls silent, and I know. “Tell me you didn’t fucking report her. You idiot, Nellie. One pie shop gets inspected, and they might look at them all.”

Nellie hadn’t thought of this possibility before. As the cogs turn in her mind, her face falls.

“I didn’t—there’s no reason to check up on me!”

“You don’t know what the Bellefonte woman said.”

I get to my feet and stare out the window, scanning for trouble. “If she pointed the finger back at you, they have to check, don’t they? And who do you think will be making the initial foray?”

She looks at me blankly, and I want to shake her. Again, she interfered just as things were going my way.

There’s a loud knock, but not at my parlor. It’s downstairs, an insistent drumming on the door of the pie shop.

“Mrs. Lovett, ma’am,” the Beadle shouts. “I must impose, I’m afraid. Duty calls.”

Nellie freezes, gripped by panic, and I close my eyes.

This is why the Beadle was so cagey earlier on. He knew he had to come to inspect the place off the back of finding all those dead beasts at the Bellefonte place, but he didn’t want to admit that to me, knowing Mrs. L and I were consorting.

The freeloading cunt can’t expect to find Nellie doing anything wrong—he wouldn’t have wanted feeding otherwise—but he’s going to want to get in the bakehouse, one way or the other.

It’s just a question of whether he goes his way or mine.

“Hide,” I say.

“So you can involve yourself?” The tremor in her voice moves me. “No. As of now, this has nothing to do with you.”

Her eyes fill with tears, and I feel a pull deep inside. She’s so beautiful, so afraid, but not for herself.

Humiliation, ruin, a trial, execution; none of it matters to her, but she doesn’t want me caught up in it.

“Treacle, we’re in it together.” I go to her, cupping her face in my hands. “There’s no time. It’s now or never.”

“I can’t get out of here. He’ll see me.”

“I’ll distract him at your door. Give it a minute, then follow me out, run in the back, then down to the bakehouse. Quickly.”

A quick but tender kiss, and she steps aside.

“Be careful.”

The Beadle wheels around at the sound of my voice. “Mr Todd. Is your good lady in?”

“Apologies, sir, but no.” I brush some dandruff from his shoulder. “She is running errands, and I expect she’ll be about half an hour.”

A carefully chosen time. Just enough to be worth waiting around.

“Ah, how disappointing,” he says. “Following a rather horrible discovery at the Bellefonte Inn, all such eateries in the vicinity must be comprehensively inspected, and I’m sorry to say that the task falls to me.”

This bastard can turn down a job like this any day. He’s here to flex his power and make Nellie and I know about it.

Let’s see how powerful he feels in a few minutes.

I move forward enough to make the man accommodate me and, crucially, get him out of sight of the stairwell.

“A most pedestrian chore for a man of your station, I must say.” I frown. “Almost an insult . I shan’t have you waiting out in the cold. Wouldn’t it be better to come upstairs and enjoy my attention until Mrs. Lovett returns?”

The Beadle seems irritated at both the suggestion and my tone. “Frankly, Todd, it would. But I pride myself on attending to my duties in a timely fashion.”

“That you will.” I point up the stairs. “Why go only to come back? A bracing shave and a discreet trim, sir, just here where your hair is curling on your collar. Let me restore your noble silhouette with some good, clean edges.”

Yes, you fat cunt. I’ll clean you up, alright. When I’m finished, you’ll have never looked better .

I step back and glance to see Nellie vanishing behind the shop. I hold out a hand like a coachman and gesture at the parlor above.

“It’s my pleasure,” I say. “Anything for my friend.”

The Beadle rewards my toadying with a toothy grin and walks past me, ascending to his doom.

My rattling tension abates the second the Beadle is in the chair. Everything is suddenly and sublimely clear.

I have to kill the Beadle now .

Nellie cannot hide or destroy the evidence in time, so she’s done me a favor in her vindictive stupidity. I have no reason to hold back; the consequences will be what they are. The Fates are at work again.

“So,” I begin, lathering his chin. “Dreadful about Wetherby. Well, about them both , I suppose.”

“Beatrix Wetherby was known to be a slut,” he replies. “Maybe she turned down the wrong person, maybe it was something else, but her dying that way at the party was inexcusable. I’m glad for your sake that you were long gone by then, or the police may have fancied you for the crime, what with your lower background.”

You contemptible fuckwit .

“They did speak to me, in point of fact.”

“Regrettable.”

The Beadle pauses as I pass the brush over his lips. “Lord Wetherby was a terrible person, so I don’t particularly care that he’s dead by his own hand, but such a mess these things leave behind. Estates, children—it’s a shambles.”

“Do you remember our chat before?” I ask, swiping the razor up against the grain of his throat. “I’m still making inquiries about the child I knew. I received a letter saying I should not ask questions and that the girl was dead. I wondered if you sent it.”

He throws me a glance. “I did not. Who is this child to you anyway, and why do you persist in vexing me on the subject?”

The ire in his voice is obvious, but I no longer care to placate him, and I wonder if he’s lying to me. He seems keen for me to drop the subject.

“I’m curious about Wetherby and his proclivities. I heard something else, too, about a priest, and I wondered whether he might?—”

“Todd, this is none of your business, but no one will believe you, so allow me to elucidate,” the Beadle snaps.

“The priest Sommers used to take the workhouse children in for a spell under the guise of religious instruction, but that isn’t what the filthy old bastard was into. Where they went from there, only he and maybe Wetherby knew, but there was always money in return. I did my part and got paid, but that’s all I know about it.”

I keep shaving him, aware of a twisting feeling in my gut.

Sommers . Jesus, that was his church today, and there was a child attending him. A boy with haunted, shadowed eyes.

“So if Sommers isn’t taking the children now, who is?”

The Beadle shrugs, and I almost cut him as a result. “I’m not deeply involved with logistics. But the priest lost his nerve and was never the same after Johanna.”

The air rushes from me as the room swims, my vision graying.

Johanna. This fucking piece of excrement said my child’s name.

I grab the Beadle’s collar and headbutt him, smashing his nose in an explosion of blood. He screams, and I press the razor between the rolls of his neck, allowing it to cut him.

“Johanna?” I yell. “Who is Johanna?”

He stares at me with terrified eyes. “I don’t have anything to do with this. Please?—”

I press my face up close to his. “Tell me!”

“She went to the priest as a baby,” the Beadle bleats. “There was quite the demand for girl children at the time. I remember the infant; she was the offspring of some murdered barber and his wife.”

He stares at my face and begins to shake, his voice rising to a shrill wail. “Murdered both by the man’s apprentice.”

I dig the razor deeper, feeling the skin give as blood begins to flow in earnest. “And tell me, dear Beadle,” I ask, leaning my weight onto him, “what was the name of that fellow about whom you lied, condemning him to years in exile?”

“It can’t be,” he gurgles. “Not you. Currer Brook.”

“Currer fucking Brook!”

I step back and raise my arm, swinging it down with all my strength. The razor slams deep into the Beadle’s neck, sending blood spraying everywhere, and I let it go, leaving it stuck there.

The dying man clutches at his throat, trying to pull the blade free, and I let him do it before snatching it from his hand and stabbing him again and again.

He flounders and grasps but cannot get out of the chair, and it’s only when his pathetic efforts begin to slow that I grab his hair and hold him aloft, unsheathing a clean blade with my other hand.

“Lower background?” I hiss. “Fuck yourself, you cynical, conniving son of a whore. I will go to Sommers and find out what really happened to my girl, and as for you—men you wouldn’t wipe your feet on will shit you out before this day is through.”

He struggles to focus. “You won’t,” he mumbles. “She’s not?—”

I slit his throat slowly from ear to ear, a big ol’ smile a mile wide. There’s another explosion of blood, but it’s the last few good pumps he has, and I drop him back in the chair, exhilarated.

I will make that decrepit cleric tell me the truth about my daughter’s fate, even if it’s terrible.

And then I will take him apart.