Kidney Pie – Chapter Ten
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"You hit me!" Jack's voice, full of surprise, cut through the jangling bells as Mrs. Lovett dragged her two boys into the shop. Nellie shoved him into one of her booths, ignoring him.
"Are you all right, Toby?" The boy sat sullenly in the next booth over, still rubbing his jaw. She hardly glanced at him as she turned to the counter, trying to wipe her tears away while her back was turned.
"Yes, mum." The boy cast a bitter glance at the Ripper. "He didn't get me that hard."
Beside her stove, Mrs. Lovett look at her faint reflection in the side of a cooking pot. She looked like a ghost from some wretched nightmare, but at least her tears had stopped. She rubbed her face pointlessly, the lace of her fingerless gloves harsh on her damp skin, as she turned back to Toby. "I'm sorry, love. And you haven't even had your pies yet." Stooping, she pulled the pie, steaming and bubbling, from the stove. She dropped it onto a clean plate and brought it over to him. "There you are, dear." She stood back as he reached almost shyly for the pie, leaning against the chair opposite her helper. She suddenly felt so tired.
Looking wearily over the boy's head, she met Jack's blank, befuddled stare. "You… You…just…"
Resigned, she turned back to the stove. "Yeah, I know." She supposed it was too late to send the Ripper back to wherever the hell he came from. "Toby, why don't you take your pie and go in the other room? You've had a rough day, haven't you, lad?"
"Yes, mum." Rising, Toby looked sullenly at Jack before taking his plate and shuffling reluctantly off toward the parlor. He seemed to relax only when Nellie slipped a half-full bottle of gin into his hand as he passed. She listened, her eyes fixed on Jack, as Toby's footsteps rounded the corner and faded.
"You hit me!" More accusing now than astonished, Jack stared at her, his blue eyes blazing. Mrs. Lovett looked away, half hoping to go back to work and ignore the Ripper, but she felt her body sag as another wave of exhaustion swept over her, pushing her away from the thought of work. She sighed.
"Yes, Jack. I hit you." Firm but too tired to be argumentative, she gave him a look that dared him to bring it up again. "You're dangerous, you're a walking disaster, and you're drunk as a bloody sailor." She began ladling the rest of the soup into two bowls. "I don't know what you came for, anyway."
"Oh! Almost forgot!" Jack swayed dangerously as he stood, but managed to cross fairly safely to her counter. "I came to give you my heart." Grinning, he pulled from his vest a package wrapped in dirty newspaper. Nellie caught the heavy smell of blood and gin and the streets as Jack fumbled with the wrapping, spilling a heart onto her counter with a sticky slap.
She watched blankly as its congealed blood dropped in sticky gobs to her clean countertop. "That's not yours." She looked up at the Ripper, beaming foolishly back at her. "Probably stole it off some whore."
"Finders keepers, Eleanor."
Nellie smiled in spite of herself. "Go on, then." She handed him one of the bowls, leaving the heart where it lay as she walked around the end of the counter. "See if that sobers you up any." Taking the other bowl, she guided Jack lightly by the shoulder toward the booth. "You and I have one hell of a mess to clean up as soon as you can walk straight."
She collapsed into the seat opposite the Ripper, propping her head up on her black-gloved knuckles, watching Jack. She didn't do much more than toy with her own soup. She kept seeing the creamy broth spattering across Sweeney's vest. Her wry smile faded as she looked down at her bowl.
If she hadn't ruined it before, she must have now. She thought of the barber's white face in the dark of his doorway as…
When she had kissed Jack, it was with a hunger that had more to do with the man watching than with the man whose lips pressed back against hers. . But how would her cold, sullen Sweeney realize that?
She let out a giddy laugh even as tears blurred the shop around her. "You know what I've always wanted, Jack?" She watched her spoon herd the lumps of soft potato around her bowl. "All I wanted was a little place by the sea, just me and my man, and Toby. And a little seaside wedding… I could open a little guest house, and have friends over every Friday…" Her voice trailed off as she felt another rueful laugh welling up in her throat. "Sounds foolish, don't it?"
She absently wiped away the tears that had begun to roll again from her stinging eyes before looking up. Jack's daft blue eyes were fixed on hers, but wide and vacant. Just like Mr. T.
Taking Jack's empty bowl, she brought their dishes to the sink and dropped them into the sudsy water. It doesn't matter anyway. She tried to imagine anything – the right words, the perfect action – to that would blot that one moment from Sweeney's memory. But there was none, and she knew it. She tried to imagine a future with Jack instead: a top hat left absentmindedly on their porch overlooking the beach; the occasional female body left bleeding in the tide, so badly mangled that the locals mistook her killer for a shark; keeping a constant watch to keep her kitchen knives out of the retired Ripper's idle hands. It didn't feel right. Not that he cares anyway.
"Do you think there are many whores by the sea?" Startled, Mrs. Lovett turned to see Jack standing hesitantly at the end of her counter.
She half smiled. "I doubt it, love." Her smile widened. No, Jack would never do to replace her own Mr. Todd, not for the long run. But tonight… Why bloody not? He was better, at least, than a night alone to remember her sound rejection from Sweeney.
Smiling, she moved toward the Ripper, reaching out to take his hands in hers. A grin unrolled across his face as he stepped clumsily closer, understanding sparking in his mad eyes. "You kissed me." Silently, Nellie leaned in and kissed him again.
Jack smiled under her kiss as she released his hands to drape her arms over his shoulders. Fuzzy images danced around his gin-drowned mind – he was being kissed, he was being slapped, he was in an alley with a woman, his knife had blood on it. So many kisses haunted the foggy edges of his memory. Promising ones in the fog and rain and the greenish cast of gas lights. Hungry ones in shadowed courts and back alleys. He couldn't help smiling wider even as he returned her kiss, his right hand climbing carefully up her back to rest at the nape of her neck, trapping her head, her beautiful throat, close to him.
Mrs. Lovett's eyes snapped open when she felt something hard against her throat. The knife! She threw herself back against his restraining hand, twisting her head away just as the blade nipped at her skin. Jack jumped, too, startling himself so badly that he nearly dropped the knife, letting her escape as he snatched at the spinning, falling blade. She scrambled back, clutching the shallow cut, until her back was against the wall. "Jack!"
"Sorry!" He set the knife down clattering on the counter. "Sorry, sweetheart." He stepped toward her, almost falling, his hands spread and empty. "I forgot…" He reached into his pockets and drew out a red handkerchief, rolling it clumsily into a makeshift scarf. "There." He held it out as he ambled closer, reaching out to wrap it carefully around her bleeding throat and tie it at the side. "It's all right now. I forgot you're the one I'm not supposed to kill yet." He smiled at her. "That looks pretty on you, don't it, love?"
She stared at him, trying to steady her breathing. Grinning like a madman, Jack lurched to the side, nearly stumbling. Nellie took the opportunity to grab him by the collar and shove him face first into the sink.
Pinning her flailing guest in the cold suds, Mrs. Lovett took a deep breath and tried to steady her nerves. Only when she felt her heart stop pounding did the release the Ripper, who staggered backward as he stood, gasping. Soap bubbles blinked and burst in his unruly hair as he started at her, wide-eyed and blinking. "Feel any better, love?" He blinked again, stunned. "That's alright. Come on. We've got a bakehouse to clean."
-"A Paragon of Integrity"-
Beadle Bamford looked up as the doorbell rang distantly through the spaces of his home, but snapped his attention back to his book. It wouldn't do to seem too eager. A gentleman always has better things to do, although the beadle, being a noble figure, would always spare a moment for his friends and neighbors. Casing another glance toward the door, he shifted his bulky body in his finest armchair, trying –and failing –to find a position that was both casual and elegant.
He paused, listening for footsteps outside his sitting room door. None came. Quickly, he double checked the cover of the book he had borrowed from Judge Turpin for a title to give it away. It was all unmarked leather, looking every inch a gentleman's well-worn book. Holding it carefully so that his visitor wouldn't be able to glimpse the pages, he pretended once again to be absorbed in his reading.
Finally, he heard footsteps in the thickly carpeted hall and his maid's voice indistinct behind the thick oak door. He forced himself not to look up until he heard the door swing open.
"A Robert to see you, Mr. Bamford." He feigned surprise as Annie led in his visitor, the ragged boy the post office sometimes sent on errands. He made sure his disappointment didn't show.
"Ah, yes." He snapped the book shut and laid it down with a carelessness he had spent hours perfecting and rose to meet the little urchin. Remember, William: friends and neighbors. "What brings you here, lad?"
"Well, sir…" The boy glanced nervously around the room, looking suspiciously as if he were planning an escape route. "You was saying and all how you was going to be in on the Ripper case down in Fleet Street, and we all thought you ought to know right away what this came through the post today." Beadle Bamford stepped almost reluctantly forward as the boy pulled from the pocket of his patched coat a crumpled envelope.
The beadle took it gingerly, suddenly rethinking his involvement in the investigation as he read his own name and address in scrawling red script. If he was going to be receiving notes like the officials in Whitechapel, he should have at least gotten a little show of appreciation from the ladies of the area. In hindsight, he supposed he should have paid a visit to the pie shop. With the murder all but on her doorstep and… Well, no wonder if the Ripper ever mistook her for a whore herself, perhaps Mrs. Lovett would have given him a bit of gratitude. With a growing sense of dread, he opened the letter, releasing the scent of fog and cheap gin, and read the letter inside.
From Hell,
Beadle Bamford,
Sir,
I've seen you poking your fat greasy mug into my work and I don't like it. Don't you tell yourself that you're the one to catch me 'cos you ain't. The whole Whitechapel force can't bring me in. Fleet Street is just the same – easy pickings! If I find you nosing after me again, I'll have your guts stung on the streetlights by morning.
I am not joking, boss. I will cut you!!!
Try if you like, Mishter Bamford.
Jack the Ripper
PS – Don't think I'm finished, here or in Whitechapel. You will never be rid of me! Ha ha ha.
PPS – Don't expect any tidbits from me, either. I'm not sharing my supper with a porker like you.
Robert glanced around the room as Bamford lowered the shaking page to look at him. The rumors about his host and his possible uses for small boys ran through his head.
The beadle, however had other concerns, such as having the boy escorted out before he could notice the stain spreading across the front of the unfortunate official's trousers.
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Sweeney stood with his foot on the lever of his mechanical chair and a silver razor, open and glowing in the icy moonlight, in each hand, listening to the sounds that echoed up through the shaft to the bakehouse.
The faint splashing of a mop and bucket, the dragging and hacking as the day's customers were butchered to feed tomorrow's, even Nellie's voice floating up in indistinct snatches, were familiar sounds. He heard them every night, reminding him that down below, Nellie was working. But behind them came the sound of another, lower voice humming tunelessly, drunkenly. It wouldn't let him forget who else was in the cellar, made him wonder whether each new sound was made by the baker or her new friend.
A muffled splash sounded out on the bricks below. "Watch where you're mopping, love," Mrs. Lovett's voice said. "Them boots are new." Sweeney scowled at the faint chuckle that followed. Gripping his razors tighter, he let the trap door swing back into line with the floor as he turned to pace the shop. Damn her!
The barber was no stranger to hatred and rage; he spent every day seething in them. He could never recall, though, feeling such jealousy as he had that night. His jaws clenched as he tried to push away the memory of Nellie – his Nellie – dragging Jack the Ripper into a kiss. His pace grew faster and faster, trying to fill the dark with the thunder of his footsteps and drive away the thought, but his fury grew the more he tried to ignore its cause.
The next day would be a bad one for a shave.
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Not that there's really a good day for a shave...
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