Page 4 of Razors & Ruin

Otherwise, the shop is nothing special, but it’s not exactly a high-end establishment. I lift a muslin to reveal freshly baked pies and inspect one as Nellie walks back in.

“Here,” she says, thrusting a tumbler into my hand. “I know gin isn’t as popular as it was, but I like it. Gets me through the day. And if I have enough, I don’t have to worry about what goes in these.” She gestures at the pies. “They aren’t exactly fit for a king.”

“I’m not a king, though, am I?”

I shrug and take a bite. The problem is immediately apparent, and even then, she understates the extent of it. There isn’t enough gin to wash that taste away in the bloody world.

“Now, I did warn you, Mr. Brook,” Nellie says as I knock back the alcohol. “I was married to a butcher. I know what good meat looks like, and I ain’t seen it in years.”

“This,” she turns a spoon in a bowl of greenish-gray matter, “is ground-up dead stuff scraped off carriage wheels, a bit of bread, and maybe some beef, although you’d have to use your imagination to taste it. I sometimes take a turn sweeping the decks of the ships from India; that way, I get to keep what’s in the pan, and there are spices in between the mouse shit.”

“You said you were married. Past tense.” I point to the painting. “Is that your husband?”

“Poor Harry,” she says, sipping her drink. “When he got sick with the gout, I agreed to care for him, but only if he’d marry me. The dirty old bugger was thrilled until I said I’d be sleeping on the couch. Three years since the angels took him.”

“I hope Heaven showed him mercy.”

She rolls her eyes. “It’d have taken every saint and seraphim to carry him up there. He was as wide as he was tall by the end.”

“Nellie.” I lean closer, and she goes still. “Who has the room upstairs?”

“No one’s lived there since it was yours, Mr. Brook.”

I take her hand, drawing circles on the back with my fingertip. Her arms are covered in fine scars, barely the width of a hair, criss-crossing up toward her shoulders.

I turn her wrist gently and squint at a particular arrangement of lines on her inner arm. The marks are faded, but I make out a word: Currer.

I tap the DIY tattoo. “That’s not my name anymore, treacle. You can call me Sweeney. Sweeney Todd.”

Nellie licks her lips. “I like it.”

A decade and a marriage later, this needy little slut is as desperate for me as she was the day she visited me in prison and took my load on her face. What a fantastic stroke of luck.

If I play her right, she could make my life far more straightforward than anticipated.

“So you don’t have a lodger,” I murmur. “As it happens, I require a room. Would you be so kind as to show me around?”

2

Nellie

Currer—no, Sweeney—follows me up the outside stairs to the attic room. I wonder whether I should have put him off while I tidied up, but it’s too late now.

I know what he’s looking for.

After he was deported, the bailiffs came and took everything he had down to his mirror and barber’s chair. I sneaked in that evening and sat on the floor, trying to feel his presence, with only the moonlight for company.

A bright shimmer near the window caught my eye; something bright was hidden inside the windowsill. I kicked it until it came loose, and when I finally got it open, I was astonished.

Sweeney pushes past me and pulls the windowsill loose. He looks inside and frowns, whipping his head to face me.

“Where are my fucking razors?” he asks.

I suppress an absurd hiccup of laughter. What an apt thing to call them!

“I found them,” I say. “I thought you’d?—”

He moves too quickly for me to react. His hand is cold and tight on my throat, and he walks me backward toward the wall, my feet skittering on the wooden floorboards as I try to keep my footing.

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