The String of Pearls (1850), p. 259

tingencies took place; and, after a few moments, she got more calm. The violent agitation of her nerves gradually subsided. She spoke horrors, but it was in a different tone ; and abandoning, apparently, the intention of going into the shop, she approached a portion of the parlour which had not yet been subjected to the scrutiny of Sir Richard Blunt, although it would not ultimately
have escaped him. The appearance of this part of the room was simply that
there was there a cupboard, but the back of this seeming cupboard formed, in
reality, the door that led down the flight of stairs to the other strong iron door
that effectually shut in the captive cook to his duties among the ovens. This
was just the place that Sir Richard Blunt wanted to find out; and here
we may as well state, that Sir Richard had an erroneous, but very natural idea,
under the circumstances, that the cook or cooks were accomplices of Mrs.
Lovett in her nefarious transactions. Had he been at all aware of the real state of affairs below, our friend, who had become so thoroughly disgusted with the pies, would not have been left for so long in so precarious a situation. Mrs. Lovett paused, after opening the lock of the cupboard, and in a strange, sepulchral sort of voice, she said—
"Has he done it?"
"Done what?" Sir Richard would fain have asked; but, although he had heard
that people, when walking in their sleep, will answer questions put to them under
such circumstances, he was doubtful of the fact, and by no means wished to
break the trance of Mrs. Lovett.
"Has he done it?" she again repeated. "Is he no more ? How many does it make? One—two—three—four—five—six—seven. Yes, seven, it must be the seventh, and I have heard all. Hush! hush! Todd—Todd—Todd, I say. Are you dead? No—no. He would not drink the wine. The devil, his master, whispered to him that it had in it the potent drug that would send his spirits howling to its Maker, and he would not drink. God! he would not drink! No—no—no!"
She pronounced these words in such a tone of agony, that her awakening
from the strange sleep she was in, seemed to be a natural event from such a
strong emotion, but it did not take place. No doubt Mrs. Lovett had been long
habituated to these nocturnal rambles. She now began slowly and carefully
the descent of the stairs leading to the oven ; but she had not got many paces,
when a current of air from below, and which no doubt, came through the small
grating in the iron door, extinguished her light. This circumstance, however,
appeared to be perfectly unnoticed by her, and she proceeded in the profound
darkness with the same ease as though she had had a light. Sir Richard would
have followed her as he was, but in the dark he did not feel sufficient confidence
in her as a guide to do so; and with as noiseless a tread as possible, he went
back, and fetched from the chimney-piece shelf his own little wax light, which
was still burning, and carefully guarding its flame from a similar catastrophe
to what had happened to Mrs. Lovett' s light, he descended the staircase, slowly
and cautiously, after her. She went with great deliberation, and it was not
until being rather surprised at the total absence of sound from her tread, that
upon loking down to her feet, he found that they were bare. After this, he could have no doubt but that, almost immediately upon her lying down in bed, this somnambulistic trance had come over her, and she had risen to creep below, and go through the singular scene we are describing. Step by step they both descended, until Mrs. Lovett came to the iron door. She did not attempt to open it. If she had, Heaven only knows what might have resulted from the desperate risk the captive cook might have made to escape. But even in the
madness of Mrs. Lovett—for a sort of madness the scene she was enacting
might be called—there was a kind of method, and she had no idea of opening the iron door that shut the cook from the upper world. Pausing, then, at the door leading to the ovens, she, with as much facility as though she had had
broad daylight to do it in, unfastened the small square wicket in the top part of