What the Devil Knows

by C. S. Harris

  * * *

  Before leaving the prison, Sebastian stopped at the governor’s comfortable residence and told the pompous little tyrant that if his prisoner suffered any further damage, Sebastian could guarantee he’d regret it.

  “You can’t talk to me like that!” snapped the governor, a small middle-aged man with slicked-back black hair and a thin, pointy nose.

  Sebastian looked the man up and down, then said quietly, “I just did. Be wise and heed my warning.”

  He was coming out of the prison’s looming, sinister front portico when he recognized the woman in a worn brown stuff pelisse walking toward him. She was young and comely, with dark hair and almond-shaped eyes, and she was carrying Knox’s son on one hip.

  He watched her face shrink when she saw him, watched her eyes flare with hatred and raging resentment.

  Then she brushed past him without a word.

  Chapter 52

  The Bull and Bush turned out to be a small, well-kept tavern in Pearl Street, not far from the old Green Man in Rope Walk Lane. Sebastian reined in before the simple brick facade, then sat for a moment with his gaze on the snorting black bull on the pub’s painted wooden sign.

  The outlines of what he was dealing with were coming into sharper focus. It was a tale of ruthless greed and corruption that spanned decades. And now it seemed someone equally as ruthless and bloodthirsty had decided to put a stop to it. The question was, Who?

  The Bull and Bush’s new innkeeper, a young man with sandy hair and a serious face, told Sebastian that Frank Nichols was dead. “Died of grief, they say. His daughter and baby grandson was killed in the Ratcliffe Highway murders, you know.” The innkeeper sucked in a deep breath and shook his head. “Terrible business, that.”

  “Is his widow still alive?” said Sebastian.

  “Well, she was last I heard. I think maybe she’s with one of his surviving daughters, but I couldn’t say for certain. He had five daughters, I hear.”

  “Who do you think would know how I could get in touch with them?”

  The publican thought a minute, then shook his head. “Can’t say, really. You might try asking around.”

  * * *

  Sebastian asked at the button shop next door, at the haberdasher beyond that, then at the chandler on the tavern’s other side. He stopped a costermonger in the street, made inquiries at a ships’ biscuit maker, a butcher’s, and a tailor’s. The day was clouding up again, the wind off the river cold, and his impatience rising. After another half an hour, he gave up and turned toward Stepney.

  * * *

  Sir Edwin Pym’s daughter, Katie Ingram, was down on her knees in her garden, her hands deep in the earth, when the little girl Sebastian had seen before showed him outside to her mother.

  “Oh, my lord!” said Katie, flustered and coloring as she pushed to her feet. “Oh, my goodness. Sally!”

  “Don’t blame her, Mrs. Ingram,” said Sebastian. “I quite overcame her reluctance to show me out here.”

  She wiped her hands on the old apron she wore pinned over her dyed muslin gown. “What must you think of me?”

  Sebastian smiled. “That you enjoy gardening. Please don’t let me interrupt; I only want to ask if you knew a publican named Frank Nichols or his daughter Celia. He used to own the Bull and Bush in Pearl Street.”

  She thought about it a moment, then shook her head. “No, I don’t believe so. Why?”

  “Celia was Timothy Marr’s wife.”

  “Oh.” She twisted her hands in her apron, a haunted, frightened expression creeping into her face. “I heard what happened to that publican from the Pear Tree.” She swallowed. “It’s all tied together, isn’t it? These new deaths and what happened three years ago.”

  “I believe so, yes.”

  The wind blew a loose strand of her pale, fine hair across her face, and she put up a hand to tuck it behind her ear. “I’m so grateful for all you’ve done. I haven’t seen anyone watching the house since you posted the guards.”

  “Good,” said Sebastian, although he wasn’t entirely convinced the guards explained it. “When was the last time you saw him?”

  She took a deep breath and let it out. “The night before Father was killed.”

  Sebastian nodded. “I thought so.”

  * * *

  The two ex-cavalrymen weren’t due to come on guard duty until dusk, but Sebastian found them easily enough at the coffeehouse in Westminster.

  “No, we ain’t seen nobody hanging around, Cap’n,” said Adam Campbell when Sebastian asked. “Nobody at all. But we been talkin’ t’ folks in the neighborhood like ye suggested—them and others we see comin’ through regular-like.”

  “And?”

  “There’s a few say they noticed a shabby-lookin’ cove watching the house a week or so ago, but they ain’t seen him lately.”

  “Anyone see him well enough to describe him?”

  “Seems he pretty much kept to the shadows. But there’s a few say they think he was a big man—tall, with wide shoulders and maybe a beard.”

  Sebastian felt his interest quicken. “A beard?”

  “Well, that’s what the lamplighter’s boy said, although the lamplighter himself says he don’t remember seein’ no beard, and neither does the ostler at the stables down the street.”

  “How old is the ostler?”

  “Fifty-five, maybe more.”

  “And the lamplighter?”

  “A few years older.”

  “Then I think I trust the lad’s eyes. Did the boy notice anything else?”

  “Well, he claims the man had a long nose. But how could he see that in the dark?”

  * * *

  Sebastian went back to Wapping. Ignoring the cold drizzle that started up, he spent a lot of time talking to publicans and the neighbors of various publicans; he went to see the Reverend York again, then Charlie Horton, asking both men what they knew about Frank Nichols and carefully watching their faces as they replied. He drove through the rain to the Middlesex Sessions House and spoke to an old magistrate named Thompson who also served on the licensing committee. Then he drove home, stoked the library fire, poured himself a brandy, and sat down to think.

  He was at his desk, rolling a pen back and forth between his fingers, a piece of paper on the desktop before him, when Hero came to stand in the doorway, her elbows cradled in her palms, and watched him.

  “Figure it out yet?” she said softly.

  Looking up, he set the pen aside and spun the paper around to face her. “Not entirely. But I’m definitely seeing a pattern. Look.”

  She came to pick up the page and run through the column of dates and names he’d listed. “Good heavens. That’s a lot of deaths.”

  He nodded. “The Ratcliffe Highway murders and these new killings were brutal enough to stand out and attract attention. But people have been dying in the East End for years. The area has a bad reputation for a reason, although I’m beginning to suspect it’s not for the reason most people think.”

  She read through the list again more slowly.

  1805: Daniel Faddy, publican of the Turk’s Head. Stabbed in the back.

  7 December 1811: Timothy Marr, linen draper, and family. Beaten to death, two with throats cut. (Note: Celia Marr and baby Timothy were the daughter and grandson of Frank Nichols, publican of the Bull and Bush.)

  19 December: Old John, publican of the King’s Arms, his wife, and servant. Beaten to death and throats cut.

  26 December: John Williams, seaman and suspect in Ratcliffe Highway murders. Found hanged in cell.

  January 1812: Joseph Beckett, Coldbath Fields Prison turnkey. Stabbed in back.

  Spring 1812: Alice, alibi of seaman and suspect Long Billy Ablass. Strangled.

  June 1814: Ian Ryker, publican of the Green Man. Broken skull.

  Early Augus
t 1814: Cornelius Hart, ship’s carpenter and suspect in Ratcliffe Highway murders. Stabbed.

  Late August 1814: Jack Harrison, sailmaker and John Williams’s roommate. Stabbed.

  September 1814: Hugo Reeves, seaman. Beaten to death, throat cut.

  8 October 1814: Sir Edwin Pym, magistrate. Beaten to death, throat cut.

  9 October 1814: Nathan Cockerwell, magistrate. Beaten to death, throat cut.

  15 October 1814: Robert Vermilloe, John Williams’s landlord at the Pear Tree. Stabbed.

  At the bottom of the page was an asterisk, followed by: MP for Devon, drowned. Date and place of death uncertain.

  She looked up. “There are an extraordinary number of publicans—or relatives of publicans—on this list.”

  “There are indeed. And everyone else on there is linked in some way to the 1811 Ratcliffe Highway killings, with the exception, as far as I can tell, of Hugo Reeves—and, I suppose, the MP from Devon.”

  “Daniel Faddy died way back in 1805. Why is he on here?”

  “Because he’s Seamus’s father and because he’s another murdered publican. It’s the same reason Ian Ryker’s father is there. I spent a lot of time today asking questions around Wapping and Shadwell, and with the exception of the men on this list, no other publican in the area has died violently for thirty years.”

  “And there are four here,” said Hero, going through the list. “Five if you count Celia Marr’s father.”

  Sebastian nodded. “According to the surgeon Walt Salter, only two of the four victims in the first Ratcliffe Highway killings had their throats slit: Celia and her son, Timothy.”

  Hero sank into a nearby chair, her gaze on the paper, her features crimped with the horror of it all. “I see the pattern, but I don’t have the slightest idea what it means.”

  Sebastian pushed up from his desk and went to stand before the fire. “According to everything I’m hearing, Frank Nichols and Old John were highly respected publicans. Their houses were quiet and well run, and they were strong-minded, honorable, stubborn men. Both were fed up with the power of the big brewers and the corruption of Pym and Cockerwell, and they were organizing something of a revolt against them. There was even talk of the publicans banding together to start their own brewery. After the Ratcliffe Highway killings, that all went away.”

  Hero’s eyes widened. “You think that’s why the Marrs and Old John were killed? To stop the East End publicans from standing up against the magistrates and the brewers?”

  “It fits, doesn’t it? The elder Ian Ryker tried to fight them this year and he died. And while Seamus Faddy didn’t come right out and say it, he suggested the same thing about his father. At first I couldn’t figure out why the magistrates and brewers would go after Celia Marr rather than her father. But when I asked around more, I discovered he was a tall, burly man with a reputation for knocking heads together if he had to. I suspect Celia was simply an easier target.”

  “He doesn’t sound like the kind of man who would let someone murder his daughter and grandson and get away with it.”

  “He might if his four other daughters and nine surviving grandchildren were threatened.”

  “Good Lord. Perhaps he’s the new killer. You’re certain he’s dead?”

  “I wondered about that, too. But he sold the Bull and Bush right after Celia and the baby were killed and died just a few months later. The Reverend York says he remembers burying him. But even after his friend gave up, Old John was still determined to get the other publicans to commit to starting their own brewery and fighting the magistrates.”

  “So they killed him, too,” Hero said softly.

  Sebastian drained the last of his brandy. “I talked to an elderly magistrate who’s been on the Middlesex licensing committee for decades. He says Cockerwell and Pym ran it the way they wanted to, and everyone else basically went along with them. A few years ago a new magistrate was appointed who tried to stand up to them.”

  “Let me guess; he died?”

  Sebastian nodded. “No one tried that again. I don’t know exactly which of the two men—Pym or Cockerwell—ordered the Ratcliffe Highway murders, but I suspect both knew what was going on. And I wouldn’t be surprised if Meux and Buxton-Collins did, as well.”

  “So who committed the actual murders?”

  “My money’s on Long Billy Ablass, along with one or more of his friends—probably Cornelius Hart, but possibly someone else, too. They deliberately set up John Williams by leaving that maul and crowbar, and then they strangled him in his prison cell so the government would close the investigation.”

  “And then killed the turnkey who let them do it,” said Hero.

  Sebastian nodded and went to pour himself another drink. “And because she knew he was out on the nights of the murders, Ablass also killed the woman he was living with who gave him an alibi.”

  Hero looked at the list again. “But that all happened almost three years ago. Why did the killings start up again now?”

  He splashed more brandy into his glass, then set aside the carafe with a soft thump. “I suspect the elder Ryker was killed for the same reason as so many before him: because he was threatening to cause trouble for the magistrates and brewers. From what I was hearing today, he wasn’t planning to go away quietly.”

  “And the others? The seamen like Hart and Harrison?”

  “If my theory is right—and if they were feeling threatened for some reason—then I can see one or more of the men who originally ordered the Ratcliffe Highway murders setting Long Billy to eliminate anyone and everyone who knew what they’d done back in 1811.”

  “And the sailmaker Jack Harrison? You think he was the third Ratcliffe Highway killer?”

  “He could have been. Or he could have been killed to cover up the fact that the ‘discovery’ of that bloody knife was simply a bid for more of the reward money—and to deepen the perception of Williams’s guilt.”

  She was silent for a time, thinking. “I can see quietly eliminating Harrison and Hart. But why butcher Pym and Cockerwell in a way that immediately reminded everyone of the Ratcliffe Highway murders? And what about Hugo Reeves?”

  “Reeves could have been one of the original Ratcliffe Highway killers—or at least, someone thinks he was.” Sebastian came to sink into the other chair beside the fire and sit with his gaze on the flames, one hand slowly rolling the heavy amber liquid in his glass. “The only explanation I can come up with that makes sense is that these new deaths are the work of a different killer—a copyist who wants us to remember the Ratcliffe Highway murders. Someone who knows what Cockerwell and Pym—and maybe Reeves—got away with.”

  “But who?”

  He shook his head. “Charlie Horton? Seamus Faddy? Ian Ryker? You could make an argument for any one of them doing it. Even Reverend York.”

  “So why kill Robert Vermilloe?”

  Sebastian took a deep drink that burned all the way down. “I could be wrong, but I suspect Vermilloe fell victim to his own greed. I think he knew more about the conversation he overhead between Ablass and Pym than he was willing to admit, and made the mistake of trying to use it to get money out of Meux.”

  “That implies Meux was also involved in the Ratcliffe Highway murders. And had Vermilloe killed.”

  “Either Meux or Buxton-Collins. Buxton-Collins was up at the Horse Shoe Brewery visiting Meux right before Vermilloe was killed. He could have been the one to actually order it.”

  “It makes a horrible kind of sense, but it’s all still just a theory. You can’t prove any of it.”

  He turned his head to look at her. “Not yet.”

  Chapter 53

  That night, the fog rolled in again from the Thames, smothering the city. In Wapping and Shadwell it brought with it the stink of the tanneries on the far side of the river, their pungent odors mixing with the ever-present stench of manure
and urine and rot.

  Sebastian stood in the shadows cast by the recessed doorway of a cooperage, his gaze on the mist-swirled facade of the inn across the lane. He watched a stream of men come and go, laborers and shopkeepers, tradesmen and apprentices, seamen and watermen, their numbers lessening as the fog thickened and awareness of the dangers of the night increased. He was waiting for one person in particular, and he’d about decided he wasn’t coming when a tall bearded man with a rolling sailor’s gait strolled up from the direction of the docks.

  Billy Ablass was about to push open the door to the Three Moons’ taproom when the sound of Sebastian’s footsteps crossing the dew-slicked cobbled lane made him pause and glance around.

  “Good evening,” said Sebastian, one hand lingering significantly in the pocket of his greatcoat as he stepped into the feeble light cast by the oil lamps flickering on either side of the inn’s door.

  Billy Ablass swung to face him. “You? Wot ye want wit me again?”

  “I’m wondering if you’re nervous.”

  Something flickered in the man’s hard eyes. “Me? Why would I be nervous?”

  “Perhaps because everyone else who was associated in any way with the Ratcliffe Highway murders has died in the last five months. Hart. Harrison. Pym. Cockerwell. Even Vermilloe. That tells me we’re looking at one of two possibilities. Either you’re liable to be next and you’ve a good reason to be nervous. Or . . .” He paused.

  “Or what?” growled Ablass.

  “Or you’re the killer.”

  Ablass snorted and started to turn away. “Yer daft. Why would I be doin’ any o’ this?”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think you killed Pym or Cockerwell—or Hugo Reeves, for whatever reason he figures into this. But the rest of them? I can see how the original Ratcliffe Highway murderer might think he had good reason to quietly eliminate them all. And—”