Corpse Thief

by Michael Arnold

  “Toads.”

  “I meant the word common,” said Hawke. “Are not all Frenchmen treated ill, a symptom of our recent conflict?”

  “Gentlemen, monsieur, are welcomed with open arms,” said Lamere, “if they bring sophistication to London society. Actors, architects, opera singers.” He spat contemptuously, the spittle stained puce as it spattered the floor. “Not the kind of men who marched beneath the Emperor’s golden eagles, I promise you that.”

  Θ

  “Three days.” George Ruthven, Principal Patrol Officer for Bow Street Magistrate’s Court, dragged the tipstaff slowly along the iron bars. The prisoner seemed to bristle inside the stone alcove, ears pricking at the din, yellow eyes ablaze. “That is how long I have waited on you.”

  Joshua Hawke, taking a cautious step back from the bars, offered a meek nod. “I am sorry, sir.”

  “Dusk, Saturday, was the agreed time,” Ruthven went on, his staff’s slow toll like the ringing of a death knell. “The safe house on Red Lion Square was the agreed location.”

  “I had nothing to tell, Mister Ruthven,” Hawke said. “Nothing to report.”

  Ruthven propped the tipstaff under his arm, the vestige of his final jarring chime echoing off the surrounding stonework, before fading away, replaced by the faint caw of ravens and a perpetual low growl. “Then you attend the appointment, and you inform me of that fact.” He turned away from his contrite subordinate and stared into the cage. “Else I worry, Mister Hawke, d’you see? My mind goes a-wandering.”

  The lion pounced. It had retreated to the rear of the alcove that had been sunk into the foot of the soaring battlements, haunches pressed up against the smooth stone, for all the world a cowed, pathetic creature. But it was waiting for its moment, and it sprung with such explosiveness, covering one end of its cell to the other in a single bound, straw and dust and dung clouding in its wake, that Hawke found himself recoiling in terror, stumbling haphazardly out onto a walkway of stone flags, there to sprawl amongst the sprouting weeds.

  From the tower behind him, up high in the windows, came the laughter of guards. Ruthven laughed too. It was loud, raucous even, but as cold as the clanging of the tipstaff. He had not flinched when the enraged beast had pounced, and cared nothing still, though the lion, albeit a mangy and balding example of its species, snarled and clawed and battered at the rusty iron stanchions. With a sneer, he blew it a kiss, before looking down at Hawke. “When my mind wanders, I begin to sniff betrayal in the air.”

  “There is no betrayal,” Hawke protested, hauling himself to his feet as the other animals in the row joined in a cacophony, agitated by the sudden violence. Three more lions were in the next alcove, and they circled it at a loping run, snapping madly at one another, while, further along, a massive tiger stalked in a blur of orange and black, pacing the same few yards over and over in mindless repetition.

  “I presume, then,” Ruthven suggested, “that you now feel able to make your report, or you would not have taken it upon yourself to interrupt my afternoon constitutional.”

  “I apologise for the nature of my visit,” Hawke lied. When he had remembered Ruthven’s weekly walk around the perimeter of the Tower, he had been thoroughly cheered by the knowledge that the intrusion would be unwelcome, and had duly taken a carriage to this south-easterly corner of the city’s ancient Roman walls.

  “Visit?” Ruthven echoed incredulously. “It is a god-damned liberty, Hawke, you impudent little bastard.”

  “Time, Mister Ruthven, sir. We fast run out of time.” He dipped his head in contrition. “It seemed most expedient.”

  Ruthven sighed, glancing up and behind at the grey fastness within which they were hemmed. “Be quick with you.”

  Hawke peered at the walls too. The Lion Tower on one flank and the castle’s outermost gate on the other, like cliffs of dressed masonry, thick and crenellated. The Tower of London was the symbol of supreme authority, a place that set him ill at ease, but, at least, it was an unlikely choice for the city’s miscreants to loiter, and therefore granted both himself and Ruthven a degree of anonymity. Here they were simply two more sightseers, come to marvel at the forbidding structures and the exotic beasts.

  The menagerie itself no longer garnered the repute it had once enjoyed. No longer did gargantuan bears of pristine white chase fish in the Thames, or Elephants roam the outer ward, or apes swing and chatter in the Lion Tower’s upper chambers. Left to moulder, the majority of animals neglected and half-crazed, it could exhibit but a fraction of what once had been a celebrated collection. But a steady stream of onlookers filed past all the same, chattering with nervous excitement as they caught sight of the man-eating beasts in their prisons of stone and iron. The big lawman joined them, determined to continue his regular stroll, and Hawke jogged the first few steps to catch up. The lions flinched at his movement, the tiger did not break from its doleful circuits, and the paying public ignored him entirely. At Ruthven’s right shoulder, he said, “I have made contact with folk who might possess knowledge of the kind of crime that we are dealing with. It smacks of pagan ritual, the like of which have not been seen for centuries.”

  “Wizards and warlocks?” Ruthven answered scathingly. “Superstition. I told you as much when first we discussed the Milne girl. But you think there is something in it?”

  “Or it is one would pay homage to that kind of life, aye.”

  They passed a cage holding a vast cat with a glistening coat that was black as coal. It was licking the end of its huge tail, the thickness of a man’s arm, with a long, pink tongue. Ruthven watched it with interest as he spoke. “Devil worshippers?”

  Hawke made to reply, but they come upon a knot of six or seven women who had paused to stare at another cat, this time one with large black spots upon a coat of pale yellow. He held his peace until they had rounded the group. “The use of fennel and sorghum. We may look to Italy for its origin.”

  “Not Orientals then. Perhaps we’ll forget Limehouse and look at Clerkenwell.” Ruthven clicked his tongue. “Lot of Italians in Clerkenwell. I’ll have the boys round a few up. Make an example or two.”

  Hawke digested the implication with building concern. It was precisely what Marco Totti had warned him would happen. “But the tosher-man, Varney Tapp...”.

  “Discovered with the body of Betsy Milne?”

  “He was found to be clutching a brass button.” That made Ruthven halt. It made him frown, too, so Hawke forged on before the officer could tie together the strands in his mind. “The button came from a French coat. Not the kind of thing a self-respecting Englishman or Italian would don on London’s streets.”

  “They make fine coats in France,” Ruthven replied. “Besides, a warm coat is a warm coat. When you’re cold, dignity holds little import.” The self-satisfied smile crept up his broad face. “Something I’d expect you to appreciate.”

  Hawke did not take the bait, his irritation counterbalanced by Ruthven’s failure to press him on the button’s provenance. “French regimental greatcoat. Infantry. So soon after the war, it is not the kind of thing a man openly wears if he values his limbs. All the same, one cannot deny that it may prove a straightening of our thread.”

  Ruthven considered the summation for a moment, then nodded. “Either we assume it is nothing, a red herring, and we are left with the whole city to suspect...”

  “Or we follow the path that takes us to French emigres who once served in Napoleon’s legions. Moreover, a man who may have taken part in the invasion of Russia.” He saw Ruthven’s puzzlement, and added, “The button comes from the 17th Regiment of the Line, a unit that was part of La Grande Armée.” There was more, of course. A connection to Ireland. But to reveal that Tapp had spoken to Milky Mayhew before he died, contradicting the latter’s original deposition, would risk exposing Mayhew to the full force of a vengeful Bow Street.

  “A French veteran with an interest in Italian witchcraft,” Ruthven was saying.

  “Or an Italian witch who e
nlisted with the French legions.”

  “Or a madman with a penchant for military clothing, or simply a hotchpotch of coincidence.” Ruthven breathed deeply as he digested the routes that might be taken, then strode on. “I will have the Patrol look into it.”

  “I have myself posed questions,” Hawke said, out of breath and struggling to keep up.

  “And?”

  “There might be hundreds of Frenchmen at the Port. In the warehouses and wharves.”

  “Even so, Bow Street shall put out its feelers, as it were.” Ruthven shot the sliver of a glance over his shoulder. “Good work, Mister Hawke. Good work indeed. Admirable, even.”

  “One question set me to thinking,” Hawke went on, finding the notion of Ruthven’s praise to be more stomach-churning than his scorn. “Perhaps it is not that kind of veteran we seek. There are gentlemen in the city too.”

  “Bonaparte’s officers,” Ruthven replied as they approached a pair of Yeoman Warders standing sentinel at a carved arch, resplendent in black and red cloaks, fearsome halberds in hand, “are not likely to be swanning about Mayfair in a plodder’s greatcoat.”

  “Unless it is artifice,” Hawke said. He lifted his topper to the guards, who ignored him. “A disguise.”

  “Strange disguise.” Ruthven slowed, touching the rim of his own hat with the gleaming top of his tipstaff. The Warders stood deferentially aside.

  “Precisely my thinking,” Hawke went on, having offered sour stares to the sentries that were not so much as acknowledged, let alone returned. “Thus, I find myself considering another group. Not officers during the war, but not the kind to shoulder a musket or dig a latrine.”

  They were out of the walkway now, coming up to the final gate that would lead them onto Tower Hill. Ruthven spoke to more guards, who waved them through, then addressed Hawke. “Go on.”

  “What about an actor or dancer?” Hawke suggested, reflecting upon the rancorous words of Serle Lamere, whose time in London had been blighted by prejudice, and whose bitterness was only intensified by the knowledge that those Frenchmen bringing with them a certain sense of refinement were afforded both welcome and advancement. “Or a regimental cook, employed now by a high class club out at St James.”

  Ruthven grunted scornfully. “You’d have me deploy officers to Boodle’s or Brooks’s? Batter down the doors and arrest the staff?”

  Hawke shook his head, not so naive as to think Bow Street would dare bring scandal to the thresholds of those venerated bastions of the political class. “But handled with a certain finesse, they strike me as worthy lines upon which to enquire.”

  “Lines you are no longer free to cross,” Ruthven jibed. All the same, the point had sunk in, for he added. “Very well. It is something to be considered.”

  Hawke licked lips that were suddenly dry. “To continue my work, I will require more funds.”

  Ruthven eyed him coolly. “Your work is concluded for now, says I. Besides, I advanced you plenty. If you chose to invest it in drink and opium, that is your own business. Back to the rookery with you, Mister Hawke. If you need money, rob some more graves. But keep your eyes peeled for a certain butcher, eh?”

  “I told you, it was not Boris Milne who killed our men.”

  “Then?”

  “I have a theory pertaining to the matter.”

  The corner of Ruthven’s wide mouth lifted sardonically. “Oh? Indulge me, do.”

  “Goodbye, Mister Ruthven,” Hawke said, bowing, and left.

  Θ

  The dramatic curvature of the crossing sweeper’s spine was embossed upon the dirty fabric of his long coat. He loped awkwardly into the road as soon as a coin was forthcoming, tipping up his cap with the butt-end of his broom to reveal an African’s dark face, creased deeply by the years and the work. He bent to the task, clearing a half-dozen steaming mounds of horse dung with an efficiency belying his crooked frame. The waiting gentleman, resplendent in burgundy tailcoat and ostentatiously tall hat, stepped smartly out once the road had been swept to his liking, adjusting a neckcloth of pristine white with one hand as he clacked a cane on the cobbles with the other.

  “Took me an age to get here,” Corissa Lott said, crossing the freshly spruced road behind the man who had paid. That man, oblivious to her presence, hooked a sharp right when he reached the far side, and quickly vanished, leaving her at the crossroads of Fore Street and Coleman Street with her companion, a slim fellow of average height and gaunt aspect, with brown, kindly eyes, thick brows and a closely shaven scalp beneath a topper that had seen better days. She gazed at streets teeming with traffic. “What’s he about?”

  “This is where he said,” Joshua Hawke answered. “You’ll recall he was to visit a cripple at the workhouse, then meet us directly.” He looked up and down the street. To his right, at the far end of the road, the steeple of St Giles Cripplegate dominated the scene, while a couple of hundred paces to his left, the empty shell of Bethlem Royal Hospital loomed above the patchy remains of the original London Wall. Bedlam was empty now, for its inmates had long since been moved to a new incarnation of the infamous asylum down at St George’s Fields in Southwark, but still those high, tiny windows, blocked by thick bars, seemed to leer at the road below with a sinister malice that made Hawke shudder. He quickly looked back at Corissa. “Besides, here is as good a place as any. Away from prying eyes.”

  Corissa, well-wrapped in bonnet, gloves and pelisse, studied the traffic that swept before them in a ceaseless current of man, horse and vehicle. “More eyes here than you could count in a bloody lifetime.”

  Hawke smiled. “Too many to notice us.” Seeing she was about to complain again, he went on, “We agreed to meet at four o’clock, and it is not quite the hour.”

  “I hope we are not wasting our time,” she muttered.

  “As do I,” Hawke agreed. “Either way, it provides opportunity to give the sewer murders some consideration.” He did not confide in her that, technically speaking, he did not need to consider anything about those heinous crimes. He was off the case, not that he had ever been on it in any official capacity. But now Ruthven had verbally cut him loose, he could creep back into the dark recesses of the rookery and never give Betsy Milne or Varney Tapp a second thought. Except that he had once been a thief-taker. Had once learnt his trade from that wily and irascible strongman, Joseph Nadin, and those instincts, so painstakingly acquired and honed, did not simply fail a man, regardless of how much he might blunt them with gin and shame.

  Corissa’s eyes fixed on a point to the west. “There.”

  Hawke followed her look, concerned that, despite the obscure choice of location, she had spied a face from the criminal world. He scanned the people at each shop front, perusing clothing, spices, wallflowers and lace, before his eyes came to rest, with abundant relief, upon a couple, approaching at a decorous pace, arm in arm. The gentleman, tall and bearded, seemed to stride in an ungainly manner, hobbling under his own weight. He flourished a wave with an arm that appeared to be double its normal length. “Before they arrive,” Hawke said to Corissa. “Something Goaty mentioned.”

  She frowned. “Goaty?”

  “He said you did not trust me. That I am not normal.” Hawke could see consternation turn to anger on her features, but he ploughed on. “That kind of talk gets a man killed, Corissa, as well you know.”

  “I did doubt you,” Corissa said. “Your loyalty. Your background.”

  The frank honesty disarmed Hawke, and for a second he just gaped. “But...”

  “But that was before we spoke,” she cut in, sparing him the garbled response. “That night at High Holborn. And I was right, wasn’t I?” She jabbed his ribs with a finger. “You did have secrets. But I’ve kept them hid, as I said I would.”

  Hawke studied her face for treachery, but there was no guile in the brown eyes. He let his gaze sweep over her raven-black hair and bronze skin, feeling the pang of desire that was so strong and so dangerous, and in that moment, on the corner of this bustl
ing road, Joshua Hawke felt a great urge to take her in his arms. He wanted, too, to confess all. To unload his other, deeper secrets. For the burden to be shared. He felt his face grow hot with embarrassment, and said instead, “Do you attend the play this evening?”

  She frowned. “Shakespeare? Aye, of course, with Colan.”

  “At the Theatre Royal, I understand,” he said stiffly, unable to stifle his jealousy. “Very nice.”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “There they are!” Ansell Brommett exclaimed beside his wife, Kitty. The pair, untangling their elbows, were wreathed in their own pipe smoke and both beamed. “Our unlikely comrades in arms!” To emphasise the appreciation of his own wit, the apothecary held up the limb that had looked so bizarre from a distance. In his hand he held another arm, human to every last detail, except that it was apparently hewn from wood. “Didn’t fit the patient, damn it all. Muddled my measurements again.” He shook his head in frustration. “Still, the poor fellow was not too distraught.” He winked. “Armless enough.” He received a thump in the side from his wife, at which he laughed, propping the prosthesis on his shoulder like the Yeomen Warders and their halberds, and indicating the large wicker basket, covered with a cloth, that swung in Kitty’s hand. “A modest repast for us all to share. Mrs Brommett’s idea. I hope you do not mind.”

  Kitty, snug against the cold in a long coat and shawl, let go of his hand and took the small clay pipe from between her teeth. “Of course they don’t mind, Ansell, you daft brush.”

  Corissa turned away from Hawke and gave a little curtsy in acknowledgement. “And what a generous thought it is too.”

  “I like this girl!” Kitty declared. She winked at Hawke. “Keep a tight hold, Mister Hawke!”