Bloom (Part 4)

“Mr. Bloom?” called out a woman’s voice from the other side of my door later that evening. There was a light knock and then she called again. “Mr. Bloom? Are you there?”

My candle had burned itself down to hardened drips of white wax and the room was now quite dark. I had fallen back to sleep after taking the pennyroyal pills. While the dose I had taken was not enough to kill me along with the baby, it was sure doing a good job of trying. My stomach was in knots for hours, but I held back my vomit so as not to rid myself of the poison that would eventually rid me of the child.

There was another light knock and then the sound of the woman trying to open the door, but I had thankfully engaged the iron latch on my side earlier.

“I don’t hear him moving about, William. He just might be dead in there,” she whispered.

“Another body to sell!” said William Hare.

“Shhh! If he isn’t dead, he’ll hear you!”

I quickly grabbed my late husband’s robe from my portmanteau and covered myself, then cleared my throat, lowered my voice, and unlatched the door.

“Yes?”

“Mr. Bloom, are you alright?” asked Mrs. Hare as she inspected me. I likely looked pale from the pennyroyal, but I kept my demeanor quite well while speaking.

“I am indeed,” I said and began to close the door.

“Ah, well then, lovely.” I could hear the disappointment in her voice.

“Thank you.” I bade them goodnight, then closed and latched the door. I heard the two Hares whispering as they made their way back down the hall.

Another body to sell. So that’s what had been going on in the room next to mine the night before. And from the sound of the struggle, it seemed that the Hares had taken the poor man’s fate into their own hands for profit instead of awaiting his natural death. Murder was far less exhausting then grave robbing these days, apparently. I couldn’t disagree, though I hadn’t yet tried grave robbing.

While this new information was quite piquant, I now had another quandary: Not only was I on the run for murder, but I was now living in a lodging house where the owners themselves were murdering their lodgers for profit. I needed to evade the authorities, yes, but I now had to be even more cautious at every moment of the day and night so as not to be murdered myself.