Aren't There Butchers Enough?

iii.

The rumor mill had been turning since before Mr. Todd had arrived, slinking back into town with the autumn leaves and the grim shadows, stiff collar turned up against the pallor of his face. The women in their colorful dresses had tried to warn him, voices hushed behind their delicate gloved hands, that something was "not quite right" about Mrs. Lovett. She was a witch, a devil, a woman with hell in her heart and death on her lips. 

Mr. Todd had known Mrs. Lovett before then, long before then, and he supposed he had known her always (the way one knows the sudden stop of their heart when they miss a stair and are frozen for one terrifying instant, that fleeting beat of sickening surprise before they really fall) - though the people in the town liked to pretend that he did not know her.

She had poisoned her husband, "poor, dear Albert", they said. Poisoned poor, dear Albert right in the cold predawn of her dusty kitchen. Watched him die in the hard rectangles of light that barely-morning brought to sit on her aged floor. Mrs. Lovett had not cried when Albert died. There had been no funeral to speak of, no mourning or public weeping, the man supposedly cremated by strict, solemn orders of his wife. Mrs. Lovett had refused the help of the town, given back their sympathy casseroles, and shut them out behind the wreath of flowers hung on her heavy wooden door.

 It was shortly after that the pungent stink began to puff thickly, steadily from her chimney.