by M. J. Trow
He saw the poster stuck to a crumbling wall along Baker’s Row, the huge block of the workhouse to his left. ‘Have You Seen This Woman?’ it asked below a photograph of a ghoul, hideous, eyeless and open-mouthed. ‘Believed to be in her thirties or forties, 5ft 2ins tall, dark hair.’ He looked at it for a long time, twisting his head to left and right to try to make sense of the ghastly face. How could anyone miss a woman who looked like that? Then he heard the heavy tread of the hob-nailed boots of H Division and made himself scarce.
‘Can I help you, sir?’ Constable Gosling was on gangplank duty that Friday morning. It looked like rain over Limehouse; but then, it always looked like rain over Limehouse.
The ferret-faced man on the quayside squinted up at him. ‘Is this the Royalist?’ he asked.
Since the word was painted in large gilt letters on the boat’s prow only feet from where he stood, Gosling couldn’t really understand the man’s confusion. ‘It is, sir,’ the constable said.
‘The police station?’
‘That’s the one, sir.’ Tom Gosling was the oldest of Daddy Bliss’s Water Babies; he saw himself as more of a Water Toddler, really. And Bliss had long ago instilled the notion in his men that the general public were terminally stupid. That and the notion that politeness was the punctuality of policemen. So Tom Gosling was endlessly patient, understanding and sarcastic, all in one. ‘On account of it says “Thames Police Station” on the side.’
The ferret-faced man bared his teeth, yellow and curved. ‘I don’t think I care for your tone,’ he said. ‘It may have escaped your notice, Constable, but I pay your wages.’
‘Thank you, sir.’ Gosling touched the peak of his cap. ‘Eternally grateful. What can I do for you today, specifically, to earn my crust?’
‘You can tell me how this sort of thing is allowed to happen in this great country of ours, in the beating heart of the greatest city in the world.’ He held out a canvas bag, dripping water from its bottom.
Gosling looked at it. ‘You’ll have to be a little more precise, I’m afraid, sir,’ he said.
‘Look inside, man,’ the ferret said. ‘If you dare.’
Gosling frowned at him, then squared his shoulders. He peered inside. ‘It’s a sheep, sir,’ he said.
‘Don’t be ridiculous!’ the ferret snapped. ‘I read the papers, you know. I know what’s going on. Some maniac is butchering women and dumping parts of them in the river here. I am an angler of some repute and I found this portion not two hours ago.’
‘Where, sir?’ Gosling asked.
‘What does it matter?’ the ferret wanted to know.
‘It might be very germane, if we are to trace who is dumping sheep in the Thames, sir.’
‘Will you stop with this sheep nonsense?’ the angling ferret almost screamed. His voice carried to the canal barges where the women were hanging out their washing, anxiously searching the skies. ‘Who’s in charge here?’
‘Inspector Bliss, sir,’ the constable told him.
‘Take me to him.’
‘What, now, sir?’
‘Of course, now. I don’t have to make an appointment, do I?’
‘I think you’ll find it’s a waste of time, sir.’
The ferret scowled, taking two steps nearer to Gosling. ‘A waste of time to see your superior? Would you like me to tell him that?’
‘You must tell him as you see fit, sir,’ Gosling said. ‘This way.’
He led the ferret, still holding his bag at arm’s length, up the slope of the gangplank and onto the deck of the Royalist. The ferret picked his way around the blocks, tackles and piles of hemp to a little door that led down to the Abode of Bliss.
‘Mind your head, sir,’ Gosling said and smiled just a little as he heard a thud and a whimper as the ferret misjudged the height. A large man in a black patrol jacket, braided in regulation Metropolitan Police pattern, sat at a table poring over charts and maps of the river.
‘This gentleman has bought …’
‘… what was a human being,’ the ferret cut Gosling off, ‘that I caught with my rod and line not two hours ago.’
Bliss peered up at the man over his rimless glasses. ‘Not two hours ago? How long ago was it, then?’
‘Are you trying to be funny?’ the ferret asked. ‘It’s a figure of speech.’
‘What is?’
The ferret blinked. He had only come here to do his public duty, having had the shock of a lifetime and so far, all he had met was stupidity and off-handedness. ‘Who are you?’ he asked.
‘Inspector Harold Bliss, River Police,’ Bliss told him, taking off his glasses and placing them on his charts. He made no attempt to get up. ‘And you?’
‘My name is Allen. Colin Allen.’
‘Delighted, Mr Allen,’ Bliss said, unsmiling. He lapsed into general practitioner mode. ‘What seems to be the trouble?’
Allen slammed his grisly load down on Bliss’s charts. The inspector, unhurried and unruffled, opened the top and peered inside. ‘I’m afraid it’s my turn to ask the question now, sir,’ he said. ‘Are you trying to be funny?’
‘What do you mean?’ Allen frowned.
‘That’s not a figure of speech, Mr Allen, it’s a direct question. That,’ he pointed to the bag, ‘is a portion of ovine anatomy, viz and to wit, a sheep, hind quarters. Very nice with spuds and carrots. Thank you for bringing this to our attention. Can you see yourself out?’
‘A sheep?’ Allen repeated, bewildered. He flicked a glance at Gosling, standing smugly to attention at his elbow. ‘That’s what he said.’
‘Well, two of us can’t be wrong, can we, sir? It takes years of training for a River Policeman to reach our state of high alert and readiness. In future,’ Bliss got up slowly, looming over the ferret, ‘should there be one, when a Constable of the River Police tells you that an object is a sheep, you can assume it is a sheep. Do we understand each other?’
‘I was only doing my duty,’ Allen whined.
‘Very commendable, sir. Now, bugger off before I do you for wasting police time.’
‘I shall take this further.’ Allen stood his ground.
‘You can take it where the …’ but his precise directions were drowned out by the sudden blast of a ship’s horn on the river outside and Allen didn’t catch what he said. It was just as well, because that would have given him something to complain about.
SEVEN
Felix Kempster had a huge practice, but his income didn’t reflect it. Most of his patients hadn’t two ha’pence to bless themselves with, but a sick person was a sick person and he had never been known to turn anyone from his door. The police surgeon post was really all that kept starvation at bay but that wasn’t the only reason he loved it. If he had had his time all over again, he would have worked in a laboratory somewhere, well away from the dropsy and the quinsy and the croup. So when his wife put her head around his consulting room door and told him there were two gentlemen outside with a finger in a napkin, he didn’t hesitate.
‘If anyone comes in, Nancy,’ he said, jumping up, ‘you know what to do.’
The woman sighed and nodded. The rules were simple. Laudanum for dropsy. Ipecac for quinsy. Honey and vinegar for croup. The bottles weren’t labelled with those names, but that was what they contained and if it only worked in nine out of ten cases, well, it was better than none at all.
Kempster bounded out into the hall. He had been up to his armpits in body parts for the last week, but nevertheless, another was always welcome.
‘I know you, don’t I?’ he said to Batchelor. ‘Spinster, isn’t it? The Examiner.’
‘Batchelor,’ said Batchelor. ‘The Telegraph. But close enough. How are you, Dr Kempster?’
‘Bearing up, you know. Bearing up. Now, Nancy tells me you have a finger.’
‘May I introduce my partner, Matthew Grand?’ Batchelor said. ‘We have a business in the Strand. Enquiry Agents.’
Kempster looked impressed. From cub reporter sniffing around in
quests to enquiry agent with his own business sounded quite a step up to him. ‘Hello.’ He shook hands enthusiastically. ‘Pleased to meet you, Mr Grand.’
‘Pleased to meet you, too, doctor.’ Grand laid on the accent as he always did when being introduced. It gave them something to talk about and he was making a small collection of the clichés people came out with. Kempster did not disappoint.
‘You’re not from around here, are you?’ he said, peering.
‘No. I’m from—’
‘No. Don’t tell me, don’t tell me.’ He looked at Batchelor. ‘I make a bit of a study of accents, as you may remember, Batchelor. Now …’ he held up his hand as Grand opened his mouth to put him out of his misery. ‘I have it. Leicester.’
‘Nope.’ The American laid it on even thicker.
‘Ooh, perhaps a bit far west. Lincolnshire, then, I would bet my stethoscope on it. Place in Lincolnshire! There. I wager I am correct!’
‘No. Washington. And Boston.’
‘Ah. Close, then. We’ll call that a draw, shall we?’
Grand exchanged a glance with Batchelor. If this was an expert, then he didn’t have high hopes.
‘We have this finger we’d like you to have a look at, Dr Kempster,’ Batchelor said, proffering his napkin.
‘Ah, yes, the finger.’ The doctor held out his hand. ‘Do you think it has a link with the rest of the body?’
Either the agents had missed something or this expert had certainly lost contact with reality altogether.
‘Rest of the body?’ Grand ventured.
‘Yes.’ Kempster was heading for the stairs to the cellar. ‘The one we have been fishing – well, I say “we”, of course, but by that I mean the River Police and various civilians – fishing out of the Thames for the past week.’
‘Um – I don’t think we knew about that,’ Batchelor said. If the finger were connected, then something had gone horribly wrong with this case and from some time before they had been engaged.
‘It’s been in all the papers,’ Kempster pointed out. ‘We’ve been appealing to the general public to come in to try and identify the woman.’
‘So, you know it’s a woman, then?’ Batchelor said, glancing at Grand.
‘Oh, definitely. If for no other reason, the very well-developed breasts would give the game away. We even have a face … but let me show you.’ He lit the gas mantle on the wall and the whole macabre collection sprang into pallid life. Laid out on a table, in the right order but not quite touching, were ten body parts in total, making up almost a complete corpse, minus the hands and feet. The head, if that was what it could be called, stood upright on a table just to one side. ‘I see you are admiring my work on the head,’ Kempster said. ‘I like to think it is groundbreaking.’ He took them over to where the skin mask stood, stretched over its oak block. ‘It is far from perfect, of course, but I like to think that a relative or close friend would recognize her.’
Grand and Batchelor were not sure; but as neither of them had ever seen the skin of a loved one stretched over some wood, they couldn’t really tell. It was certainly painstaking, they could see that much.
‘But, let me see the finger, gentlemen.’ Kempster cleared an area on his workbench and laid the napkin-wrapped bundle carefully on it. He unrolled it using tweezers. The finger lay there, pink and delicate and it didn’t take an expert to see that it had little in common with the body parts lying within arm’s reach.
‘The first thing I would say,’ Kempster told them, ‘is that this is unlikely to come from our dead woman from the river. I doubt it was removed more than a day to a day and a half ago and these body parts began to turn up a week ago; last Friday, in fact. So, that’s our first problem. Next, the age. Although I would grant you that it is as yet beyond science to age a person from a finger alone, I would say that this digit is that of a young woman. The fingernail has been well kept and the ring is expensive. Our river body is not of the same age or class. I would say that twenty years separate the ages of these women; if I were to guess at a connection, the best that I could manage would be that they are mother and daughter; our river body has borne and suckled at least one child.’
‘I don’t want to put words in your mouth, doctor,’ Batchelor said, ‘but I think so far your conclusions about the finger are right. We believe it to be that of a young woman of a leisured class, aged twenty-two.’
‘I see nothing to contradict that,’ Kempster said. ‘Have you examined the ring?’
Neither Grand nor Batchelor wanted to admit to being too squeamish, so shook their heads.
‘Very sensible. Where a crime has been committed, the less interference, the better. I constantly try to teach that to the police of V Division, but usually to no avail. By the time I am called, the body has usually been mauled about dreadfully; the keen constable tries to see if life is extinct and tries to sit them up, even get them walking. The lazy ones just want to tidy up their patch and commandeer the nearest coster’s barrow to bring it round to this house. Either way, I rarely see a crime scene unsullied.’ He sighed. ‘Detection will get nowhere while the police are involved, I fear.’ He brightened up. ‘But you have been as careful as possible, so well done!’ He beamed at them. ‘You have even kept the original wrapping. I assume that this was sent as a warning or similar. We see a lot of that around this neck of the woods – Italians, mostly.’ He prodded the finger thoughtfully. ‘Not usually the finger of a young and genteel lady, though. I can’t think of anyone who would do something so terrible. Daddy would know.’
Grand and Batchelor were surprised to hear Kempster refer to his father in such a way; he seemed so professional otherwise.
He read their faces. ‘No, no, goodness me, not my father. He’s a retired rural dean in Wiltshire. No, I mean Inspector Bliss of the River Police. Everyone calls him “Daddy” – we’ve all forgotten why. You should see him later. It seems too much of a coincidence that you have a severed body part while we have such a substantial collection.’ While he was talking, he had removed the ring, again using tweezers. He held it under a magnifying glass held above the bench in a caliper attached to a wooden rod screwed to the desk. Dr Kempster was the mother of invention.
Grand leaned in. ‘Yes,’ he said, straightening up. ‘The entwined “E”. It’s Emilia Byng’s ring all right. And presumably, her finger. Say, Dr Kempster, can you tell us if it was taken off before or after death?’
‘That’s a really good question,’ Kempster said, turning back to the finger. ‘It does appear to have bled freely – see how pale the nail is – and the edge is a little inflamed. If I were to be asked to answer on oath, I would have to say I couldn’t tell, but between you and me, I would say that the woman was alive when this finger was removed.’
‘That’s good,’ Batchelor said.
‘Really? It would have been exquisitely painful.’
‘We believe this to be the finger of a missing woman – her husband is a client of ours. So, we would rather she were alive than otherwise.’
‘She would need medical attention for this wound,’ Kempster pointed out. ‘Even though it is neatly done, she would need stitches at the very least. But tell me, you say “husband”; of long-standing?’
‘Over a year.’
‘I would have expected more of a groove under the ring. I don’t believe the finger has been immersed in water, otherwise there would be what we call “washerwoman’s skin” on the fingertips. And yet, the ring has left hardly a mark.’
‘That does prove something we have wondered,’ Batchelor said. ‘We think that the two had been estranged, but by all accounts, they were excited to be back together when she set off to come home last week. So perhaps she had taken the ring off.’
‘That would make sense,’ Grand agreed. ‘The husband had certainly behaved like an asshole.’
Kempster bridled. Even for Lincolnshire, that was rather ripe language.
‘I think you should bring him in to see the body I have here,’
Kempster said. ‘Though the odds are very much against there being any link, we really should leave no stone unturned.’ Almost suiting the action to the words, he slipped the paper from under the finger. ‘Oh, now that is disappointing! I was hoping for an address. I make something of a study of handwriting, but the paper is blank.’
‘We know it was delivered by hand,’ Grand said.
‘Even so, most people, even when delivering a finger, add some kind of salutation. Still, there is no second-guessing a criminal mind, I suppose.’
The three men stood there, staring down at the finger, mute as only a disarticulated digit can be. The door at the top of the stairs opened and the silhouette of Nancy Kempster appeared.
‘Felix, have you finished down there?’ she called. ‘Mrs Farthing is in labour.’ A high-pitched voice behind her added something. ‘Giving birth right now, her husband says.’
‘I’ll be right up,’ Kempster called. Then, to Grand and Batchelor, ‘I must go. Amy Farthing has had seven children, two of them twins, but to hear her husband on the subject you would think she was a complete novice. May I keep the finger for a while? I may be able to find out more.’
‘Be our guest,’ Batchelor said. He and Grand would be glad to be out of this charnel house and back into the air of Battersea – it may not be the freshest in the world, but at least it didn’t smell of formaldehyde and decay.
It took a sustained walk in the stiffish breeze from the river until either of them felt fit to mix with anyone. The smell of the corpse clung to their coats as if they had hugged her. Finding themselves along the river bank, it seemed a good time to visit the warehouses – tea and timber – which loomed so large in the case they found themselves back in. They had other cases, to be sure, but none had presented them, that day or ever, with a finger. Deceived spouses could get very nasty, but thus far had never resorted to lopping off bits of each other; and if they did, it was not likely to be a digit.