The Trumpet Inside the Warehouse by Dwight Krauss	Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion

“This?” and he sweeps his hands so prettily at the long boxes, “These are for the band.”

And I looks and they are the chains I have already mentioned, sirs, big long chains, naval types, not for anchors or anythin’s like that but for masts and such. “And why would a band need chains?” I ask.

“You are a suspicious one, Beadle,” he laughs and makes it like some kind of joke but he is irritated with me, I can tell, and so can the carters and they start a-mutterin’ among themselves and I heft my staff at them to shut them up. “No need for that, boys,” he says to them and gives me this smile that, I’m telling you sirs, was that of Eden’s Adder. “Some instruments require hanging, Beadle.”

“Hanging?” I ask him because I had never heard such a thing. “Yes, Beadle,” he says, “the larger instruments, the bell cornets, for one, have to be hauled up to drain and tune.”

I am sufficient in this world, sirs, to know there are things I do not know, especially in these astounding times where men read the lives of others through head-bumps and Colt puts out a revolving pistol. So when a gentleman tells me of musical techniques unknown to me, I am one to take him at his word, sirs, his word. That it was a night delivery I considered odd, but I did not question that either, sirs, accustomed by now to Sir Belyard’s strangeness.

The next event was a comment made to me when I was tearing after a gander fleeing down one of the rows. I fairly yanked him off his feet and got his perfume thrown in my face for the trouble, so I stroked him once to keep him quiet while I wiped my eyes.

“Todd,” he gasps at me, holding his bloody mouth, “you’ll be payin’ the Todd!”

And I was dumbstruck, sirs, dumbstruck, because he’s callin’ at me the bogeyman. I almost fell to laughin’ at it, such a boyish, childish thing to say, but something to expect from that ilk. ’Cept the look on his face was not of the soft sorrowful types they are, but a man angry, a man seekin’ to do me violence.

I shook him then and says, “Stupid talk! What am I, then, just a poppet?”

And he grabbed at me and he grinned real evil and he says, “He’s back! And he’s paying back!” So I stroked him then as a damn fool and hauled him off to Newgate. But the words stayed with me, sirs.

These were the settin’s when the first trouble began, sirs, the first with Mr. Otten. A tribute to the beadling, sirs, that one, and a man I most respected, most respected. I knew well his role in the St. Dunstan’s horror those thirty years ago and learned some of the skills of it from his own mouth. And I shoulda connected it, sirs, especially after the gander’s strange sayin’. But I had not the brain for it.

I was on the street talking with some of the church wardens, sirs, when Cardle comes running to me all out of breath. “Beadle!” he calls, “Alarm, sir! Some ruffians have stolen Mr. Otten right out of his home, sir!” I was completely astonied, as were my wardens and we scattered quickly enough in hopes to intercept such godless men, attacking an old and health-broken gentleman like that. The very idea, sirs, made me ill and quite determined to run them down, but we were not lucky in that regard, sirs, as you well know. And I am heartbroken about it.

In that excitement, sirs, the second trouble seemed less important and I did not give it the thorough consideration it demanded. A respectable man like Mr. Otten spirited out of hearth seemed to me much more heinous than the young man, Lord Burton, set upon in his carriage and carried away so roughly. When I first heard of it, we was still in the pursuit of Otten’s malefactors and I dismissed it, I readily admit, as the just desserts young Lords get when they spend too much time in the dives and among the gamblin’ pits. I did not think the two related. I did not see how they could be.

I have read the recent accounts, sirs, where some old Bow Streeters claim they connected poor Mr. Otten and Lord Burton to St. Dunstan’s right away. But I say, here and now, sirs, that those men are shameful. If they truly saw it, my Lords, then why did they not speak up? At the very least, they could have spoken to me. They know me as a man willin’ to hear and learn from others and I hold the Bow Streeters in good regards, sir, even as so many these days don’t the Peelers, which I think wrongheaded. These sudden claims of a greater insight than those of us working at the time is all after the fact and all self-serving, in my opinion, sirs.

As it were, I was most heartsick over the grabbing of Mr. Otten, and I had no rest those four days, scouring the parish seeking out even the slimmest of clues. I know we was somewhat out the bounds, but it seems more than most fruits of most crimes end up in my parts and, if Mr. Otten himself did not appear, there was still a very good chance one of his violators would. It was for that reason I was about the end of Cousen Lane when I saw a crowd gathered and heard a few of the tarts shrieking.

“Give way!” I hollered at the slackers and drunks and was pushin’ them apart with my staff. Their expressions started out eager and curious, but, as I made my way forward, became concern and then fright and revulsion. My progress got harder because the frightened ones was turnin’ straight into me, prompting a couple of strokes to clear ’em off. By that way, I suddenly found myself up front, with the ones there making a concerted effort to get round the ones pressin’ behind.

At first I was not sure what I was seein’. The fog was in thick that night and the gaslamps was not makin’ much against it. There were some torches about but they had a flickerin’ to them so it took me a moment to realize that something was crawling towards me. I thought it was a badly injured dog at first, but it was bigger than that, so I had a wild thought that a pig had been run over, lost its legs and was flopping around on its belly. But then someone brought some lanterns and some light fell as it crawled up to me feet and I sees it was a man. Or what was left of a man.

He was all red, bloody red, that I saw right away, and I wondered at what kind a beatin’ could make a man so pulped. He was leavin’ a trail of himself behind, I could see, and something else that made a clinking sound. And when I looked to see what that was I noted his feet were missin’. Here was a man had been in a right bad accident, and I stooped down to him and saw his hands was missin’ too. He was reachin’ with his stumps at me ankle and wheezin, “Help me, help me.”

“We got you now,” I says to him, “we’ll get you off to the hospital here right quick,” though I figured he was dead and was sayin’ that just for the comfort.

And as I reached down, some stalwart lowered a lamp for better view and I see a sight that made me want to shriek as loud as the doxies were doin’. For the man had no skin, from the top of his head down to his missin’ foot, not a shred, save for one patch ’round his right eye, lookin’ like a fleshy stamp on a red mass of worms, sirs. I do not mean to sound so frightful, sirs, but it was the most horrid sight, most horrid, and I cannot rid my mind of it. It struck me dumb and then the smell of his blood washed over me and I could not help but stand up affright.

“Help me,” the pathetic thing wheezed again and stumped at me boot, but I jumped back, I am ashamed to say. I was filled with a loathin’ and a revulsion, and just stood there starin’ as he begged and begged me. I could not wonder at the pain he felt, his skin off and the nerves all exposed and rubbed on the cobblestone, having crawled as far as he did and no one to see in the fog or lend a hand or, those that did, runnin’ away until he got to our fairly traveled street. I knew there was no doctor on earth could save him, no chance he had of living, but I could not bring myself to lend him a comfortin’ hand or a cool drop of water. I leaned back into the crowd behind me.

It was most un-Christian, and I think the shame of that brought me about and I sees it is my duty to help this man, no matter how horrible the sight. So I bents down to him and his stump lands ’gainst my leg and I am chilled by the bloody touch of his worm-lookin’ flesh but this is a sufferin’ man, I tells myself, and I may be the last he can speak to.

“Lad,” I says, “what has happened to ye?” He starts wheezing at me then, his voice hard to understand, so hoarse and cracked and I realizes it must be from all the screamin’ he did. The mob starts pushin’ hard and agitating to see and I stand up and I roar at them to be still and push them with the staff, and I bend back down, “How did this happen, lad?” I ask him again.

It’s apparent he is dyin’, and even if Dr. Bobbie Todd himself came upon us, he couldna saved him. “Todd,” he croaks at me, “Todd.”

I shake my head ’cause I am thinkin’ he’s thinkin’ of the good doctor as I am. “Lad, he cannot help you now. Tell me what...” and here there’s some strength comes through him and he stumps me hard about the boot and croaks the loudest he can, “Todd! Sweeney Todd!” and his strength goes out and he gurgles and dies there, sirs.

I am struck by that, sirs, struck, and, in that moment, what the gander said to me comes back. Here a ripped man, dyin’ in the worst kind of agony, invokes the devil himself and I am, I am not ashamed to tell you, sirs, frightened to almost my own end. Sweeney Todd hanged, these thirty years now, and I have a man here sayin’ the Demon himself did this! Was I facin’ a vengeful ghost? You would ask yourself the same nonsense, sirs, had you seen the man and heard his terrible raspin’.

At this point the light fell brighter and I looked at where his feet and hands shoulda been and sees half buckles and catch chains clinging to the stumps. It occurs to me the wretch escaped by worrying his limbs off, leaving them behind. And then I realized where I’d seen those buckles before.

“Quick!” I turns to the stalwart with the lamp, “fetch the Peelers, Cardle if you can find ’em, and have them come to the 3rd Alley Warehouse!” and he nods and heads off and I hope you sirs will reward him for his quick mind and quick feet because, by the time I got to the warehouse door, Cardle and two of his bully boys were with me. We pounds and pounds and shouts, but there is no answer so we takes ourselfs into rammin’ the door and, between the three of us, make a dent enough I can force apart with the staff. Cardle reaches in and finds the latches and we run in.

The first thing I notices is the smell, like slow drippin’ of blood over some days, sirs, like at the butcheries. The second I notice is the sound, sirs, a low moanin’, the cryin’s of someone in great pain and great loss. It makes the hair on all our heads stands and we looks at each other and Cardle points and I can see a light up where the big room was.

I lead that way and there we see the most horrible sight. Another skinned man is hanging from the ceilin’, his feet buckled and chained and him stretched out. His skin is lyin’ at his feet. He’s got one patch of skin over his left eye, and it occurs to me the skinner did that so the man could watch what was happenin’. There’s another set of bloody chains on the ground with a foot still in one buckle. And there stood Pennington, with a great knife in his hand, a working at the man’s belly to silence him before the escapee raised the alarm.

“Whoreson!” I yell, which startles Penny into droppin’ the knife. He did not hear us enter, which was the warehouse’s disadvantage, sirs. He rushes off to the rear but I am as fast as Hermes’ Feet when aroused, sirs, and I reach him and stroke him hard across the top of his head, fellin’ him. I stroke him some more as he lays there, layin his skull open and spilling some brain, breakin’ ribs in, too, sirs. I hope you can understand my rage, sirs, because I recognized the hanging man that Pennington was skewering as Mr. Otten himself, and seein’ such a revered old beadle so handled brought it on me.

I turned to watch Cardle tryin’ to get the now dead Mr. Otten down from that ghastly suspension, when I hears Pennington cough and laugh, actually laugh. I turns, then, sirs, to his bloody heap on the floor, angry I hadn’t done him and I reaches down and I shakes him, sirs, shakes him as hard as I can to end his worthless life. “What for, Penny? What for?” I yells.

“Paid,” he coughs blood at me.

“What’s paid, Penny, what?”

“Blood debt,” he coughs more at me.

“Whose blood debt?”

And he looks at me and the lights in his eyes are going out and he smiles, sirs, and with his last breath, says, “Todd’s.”

There are better witnesses, sirs, on the hunt for Sir Belyard and they can tell you how completely he disappeared, save for that one set of white clothes that we now know he murdered a gentleman in the south for. As to where he came from and where he has gone, I cannot offer anything more than what you already know. I can, though, offer an opinion as to what Pennington said.

Sirs, I do not for one moment believe that Sir Belyard was the risen Demon, bent on a vengeance past the grave. I believe, sirs, that he is something worse. He is the vanguard of somethin’ evil, sirs, somethin’s you all fear, as the decent men you are. We have all been seein’ and commentin’ on these changin’ times, when it seems the sense of common decency is fleeing us. We are all seeing these new philosophies, the levelin’, the disrespect.

It is from these modern thoughts that Sir Belyard arises, sirs. Imagine a man who rejects all of decency, who holds all that is good in the greatest of contempts, who sneers at his betters and is consumed with the jealousy and anarchy that seems to be seizin’ the lowest classes these days.

A man like that could take a Demon like Todd and swear an allegiance to him, could take to thinkin’ that the Todd was unjustly done, sir, that he was a hero. And a man like that could plan a revenge in the Todd’s name, calling himself after the Bell Yard, where his idols served up the human meat pies, strippin’ down to nerve Lord Burton, the son of the man who prosecuted Todd, and Mr. Otten, the very beadle who discovered the remains of Todd’s victims beneath St. Dunstan’s. A monstrous and evil deed to us, sirs, but an honorable deed to him.

I see that I have shocked you with this and you are wont to tell me that such is preposterous, that Belyard was just a madman. But, sirs, he was not. From my years of seein’ the great evils that men can do, I can tell you that only a man driven by the greatest of hates could have planned and executed something so ghastly. That man was burnin’ in his soul for many years, sirs, bent on revengin’ an ill-usage he fancied, and only a man with clear thinkin’ ’bout him could’a done so. A smart one, sirs, one that could have used his considerable gifts of brain and brawn to better himself but no, he uses it for this.

And I fears, sirs, he is just the beginnin’.

Copyright © 2008 by Dwight Krauss

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