Chapter 36

The Judge.

That was all Sweeney could think about. His heart, which had swelled in his chest to twice its original seize when he was kissing Nellie Lovett at last, turned cold as he realized that the moment he had been waiting for for so long was there again. The happiness he had felt so intensely was all gone the moment he realized what Toby said.

"Where? WHERE IS HE?!" Mr. Todd yelled as he kicked open the door to the parlor, where the young boy was standing.

"He... he..." Toby was terrorized by the barber's anger and hate, but the man didn't notice.

"I asked you a question!" he shouted so loud that the people from the shop peeked into the living room to see what was happening there.

"In... in the shop, lo... lo... looking for you."

The barber hurried to the pie shop, knowing that the Judge was there now. No matter what he wanted, Turpin was there for a reason and the barber desperately needed to know what it was.

As he entered Mrs. Lovett's shop, Sweeney looked around frantically for the Judge. The customers intuitively backed away for the barber who was clearly crazy with rage, making it easier for him to move through the crowd.

The barber expected every face he saw to be Turpin's, but when he hurried through the shop, none of the customers turned out to be the Judge.

Sweeney raced upstairs to his old barber shop to find out if the Judge had gone there, but he found the door locked and the room as empty as it had been there when he had left it weeks ago.

He turned around, heading back downstairs, to punish Toby for the false alarm he had apparently sounded.

At that moment, he saw a man walking on the other side of the road, about a hundred yards away from the place the barber was currently standing. It took him a second but then Sweeney recognized the man: it was Judge Turpin.

Mr. Todd was confronted with a huge amount of questions and doubt. What should he do now? The Judge was within his reach, the man had come to the pie shop, perhaps to find out about the barber... Turpin hadn't said that he would visit Sweeney's shop again, but the barber desperately needed him to do so in order to take revenge. But was it really necessary? It was relatively quiet in Fleet Street now, he had his beloved 'friend' with him... what if he just followed Turpin, drag him into an isolated alley and cut his throat?

But the Judge was too far away already; as Sweeney was trying to find the best way to handle the situation, the man he hated so much disappeared around the corner.

Sweeney snarled, realizing that he had missed another opportunity to kill the Judge who had taken his family from him. If that damned boy would've called him just half a minute earlier, he would've had the chance to do... something.

Abruptly, the barber turned around and hurried downstairs, back to his landlady's parlor. Toby was still standing at exactly the same place as before. He probably knew what was coming and presumed correctly that there was no way to avoid Sweeney's demonic anger; just the sight of the barber was enough to make him step back.

"You," Mr. Todd addressed the terrified boy, "couldn't you have shared that little bit of information concerning the Judge's presence just a little bit earlier?!"

"I... I did," Toby murmured, so softly that it wasn't audible.

"What? Speak aloud when you're talking to someone," Sweeney yelled, irritated immensely by his landlady's adoptive son.

"I did," the boy replied, closing his eyes in fear. "I called seven, maybe eight times. But Mum didn't react. I knocked on the door, but it remained completely silent on the other side. And then you came from her room and..."

The barber didn't even listen to the boy's rambling anymore as he started to realize that it was no use blaming him. Toby hadn't known, after all, that he was in Mrs. Lovett's room; Mr. Todd had snuck in there while the boy was sleeping in the parlor, after all. He had just been trying to warn his adoptive mother of the unexpected arrival of such a mighty person and instead of his Mum, he had found someone quite different leaving her room.

But Mrs. Lovett... she had been with him the moment he should've been alert. She had distracted him and thus it was her fault that the Judge had escaped his punishment once more.

Sweeney chose to ignore the fact that he had been the one who had started kissing her in the first place as he moved back towards Mrs. Lovett's room, wanting to punish her now.

Impatiently, he pushed Toby aside, not caring whether he hurt the boy or not.

The barber threw open the door to his landlady's bedroom, taking one of his friends from the holster on his belt as he did so, ready to stop the woman for once and for all for keeping him away from his vengeance.

Since she was standing at exactly the same place as where he had left her and he entered the room at high speed, they were immediately almost face to face. Part of him noticed that her eyes were red and her cheeks were wet, indicating that she had been crying, but he couldn't – or rather, didn't want to – care. She looked sadder and more beautiful than ever before, but this was another fact that he refused to admit.

She looked up abruptly as he made his way into her bedroom, her eyes filled with love and adoration. Only as he stood completely still in front of her, his own eyes filled with hate and a razor in his right hand, did she realize that he hadn't come back to continue where they had stopped only minutes before, but wanted something totally different from her now.

Mr. Todd himself, too, felt that the peace of mind he seemed to have been finding the last few days was gone and he felt once again the tendencies to kill everything that was between him and the Judge before he could murder Turpin too.

The baker recognized the look in his eyes and intuitively she moved away from him. It was no use since he, too, stepped forward, not trying to suppress the waves of anger that ran through his system. Because of this woman, he had once again been unable to do something against Turpin. If she hadn't been there...

"We all deserve to die, Mrs. Lovett," he whispered dangerously. "And now, it's your turn."

She stepped away from the barber again, but after a few seconds her back hit the wall of her room and she was cornered between her bed, the wall and the demon barber. The edges of her nightstand were pressing against the back of her legs and her new dress was horribly close to the still burning candle, but those were the least of her problems. She couldn't escape now and she knew it.

As he stared at her, she could feel the accusations radiating from him, even though he didn't say one word. She realized that he was waiting, waiting for her to say something before he would kill her, as if he was offering her one last futile attempt to save herself.

"I know you're mad at me," she finally said, her voice trembling in spite of her efforts to sound assured. "I know it's my fault that you didn't notice the Judge's presence, but I can assure you that..."

"Shut up," he yelled in such a way that it was clear to her that he had just been waiting for her to say something like that, to plead for her life, so he could only enjoy killing her more. "Don't waste my time with your pathetic excuses. You prevented me from having vengeance again, the Judge escaped again and it's YOUR fault."

"Please Mr. T, it wasn't my intention to..."

"SHUT UP!"

He closed the last distance between them and, for the shortest moment, Mrs. Lovett had the strangest idea that he was leaning in for a kiss as he had done so many weeks ago; but when she felt the cold silver of the razor lightly cutting the skin of her neck, it was clear that she probably wouldn't get away this time.

This realization made the entire situation even more threatening and Mrs. Lovett knew that she was looking straight into the eyes of death, but there was one thing that she wouldn't do: she wouldn't give Mr. Todd the pleasure of killing her like she was just one of his ignorant customers, who had their throat cuts without even realizing it and thus were slaughtered without one bit of resistance.

"I will make sure you will never make that mistake again," he hissed as he moved the blade over her skin, causing droplets of blood to drip down her neck.

"Yes, kill me," she muttered darkly. "Just kill the one who could make you feel human again."

She looked up at him and as she saw the slightest hint of hesitation in his eyes, she felt confident enough to push his hand that was holding the razor away from her throat and set a small step in his direction.

"Just kill the woman who had looked after you and helped you all this time," she continued, her voice growing stronger with each word as she felt that she was overwhelming the barber.

"Shut up," he hissed again, but he wasn't as sure anymore of what he had been intending to do only seconds ago. "My wife is gone because of the Judge... my life is destroyed because of what he did, my daughter has to live like a caged animal because of him... and you think I can just walk away and let him continue doing that?!"

"I know," she shouted, having lost her fear because of the barber's hesitation and unable to keep her patience any longer. "But what would you've done? Even if you would've been there when he was, he still... What would you have done, you crazy man? Stabbed him in my shop? Then there's one thing you could've been sure of, and that is that you would've been hanged before the week was out. You could've lured him to your barber shop perhaps?"

Though it sounded like it, it wasn't a real question of course; Mrs. Lovett herself was consumed by rage now and couldn't stop herself from firing the one sarcastic remark after another at the man in front of her.

"Did you forget that you demolished the entire damn place a few weeks ago and that it is still completely empty? Perhaps the Judge would grow a little bit suspicious because of that."

The woman was unable to stop now that she finally had the chance of throwing her pent up frustrations in his face, and she laughed hysterically as she saw the defeated look in his eyes.

"What else could you've done? Bring him back all the way to your barber shop in the market and kill him there in public? Oh, yes, Mr. T, that's just a bloody fantastic thought. You stupid man, I thought you got some of your common sense back, but apparently not."

Mr. Todd was completely overwhelmed by this outburst. Never before he had seen his kind landlady like this, and the worst part was that she was right. Even if he had managed to talk to the Judge and had been able to persuade him to go somewhere... there was just nothing that he could've done without being caught since he still didn't have a place to kill Turpin without anyone noticing.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of the door that was slammed closed violently as Mrs. Lovett fled from the room.

Feeling as if all power had vanished from his body along with the baker, he collapsed on her bed, while one question kept echoing in his head. For once, it was not about Turpin but about his landlady, as he realized that he had been on the verge of murdering her.

What have I done?