Corpse Thief

by Michael Arnold

  Heat returned immediately to Hawke’s cheeks, but his blushes were saved by Brommett, who sucked hard on his own pipe, exhaled a great, fragrant gust, and commanded them to follow him south, down Coleman Street. They went willingly, for it seemed churlish to dampen Brommett’s forthright and jovial mood, and soon they were swinging east, into the confined passage of Great Bell Alley, the corner of which was taken up by a large grocer’s shop, its creaking sign boasting of every essential a person could wish for. Hawke saw bundles of firewood and bottles of paraffin in the windows. There were barrels of tea, flour and sugar, all waiting to be portioned and wrapped for the discerning Londoner, and a multitude of smaller items crammed onto dark-painted shelves. Beyond the grocery were houses on both sides, big and small, new and old. The pale roundness of naked buttocks emerged from an upper window some yards ahead, and, as the owner of the arse yelled a warning, they skirted quickly into the street to avoid the inevitable fall of feaces. Upon clearing the offending house, Hawke realised that they were nearing the end of the row, and the vista opened into a wide space of well-kept lawns and fastidiously manicured greenery.

  Ansell Brommett used his artificial arm to point the way. “Drapers Gardens. The perfect spot!”

  Hawke followed contentedly enough, though he felt utterly incongruous as part of this group. Two women, strikingly different but attractive and vital in their own ways, and Brommett, who, despite his partial lameness, was straight-backed, well-dressed and confident. Hawke’s thin frame and rough clothing made him the poor relation, and he wondered if passers by would take him for some kind of sharper, inveigling himself amongst the gentle folk in order to lighten their pockets, or worse. Behind him, Corissa was complementing Kitty on her straw hat, which was tied at her chin with green ribbon. Kitty declared, “What say you, lass? A Brommett in a bonnet!”

  Corissa’s laugh was polite but genuine, its usual edge blunted. A sound that he had never before heard leave her mouth. It was like dawn birdsong. He did not catch her reply, but it clearly amused Kitty, and the exchange made him smile.

  The final units in the row were shops. One was a tailor of high quality, to judge by the garments on display, while the other was a music shop, selling all manner of instruments, as well as a prodigious selection of printed music, the latter propped on various kinds of stand, from plain square-shaped structures to highly stylised, ostentatious pieces that looked more like the wood carvings of Grinling Gibbons than functional paper holders. Hawke stared at them, and at the gleaming brass, the ornate flutes, and the beautifully crafted string instruments. They were gorgeous things, and he imagined they must, in the right hands, make music to lift the soul. And yet something therein gave him disquiet. Something jarred, but he could not think what.

  The shops left in their wake, they entered the gardens and reached a pair of empty benches positioned at the fringe of a gravel path that surrounded a circular pond, at the centre of which stood an ornamental cherub, wings spread, spitting a jet of water skyward. Brommett sat down, laying the false arm on the stones so that he might plunder the picnic basket. Beckoning his wife to sit at his side, he crammed a hunk of cheese into his mouth, saying to Hawke, “On the matter of the deaths of your,” he hesitated, “associates, I have considered many possibilities. First, a poniard.”

  “Too wide,” Kitty said.

  Brommett nodded. “And the blades are typically triangular or square. Your wounds appeared circular?”

  “So far as I could tell,” Hawke replied.

  “Saddlers and cobblers,” Brommett suggested, “both make use of large needles to punch stitching through leather.”

  “But those kinds of implements,” Hawke said, “cannot explain the strange markings upon the skin.” He scratched his armpit as an unseen creature scurried therein. “I had considered an awl or some kind of rivet.”

  “But?” Brommett prompted.

  “But my thoughts have since wandered down a different path.”

  “Then let us eat in amity while we ruminate,” Brommett said, patting his stomach. “Sit, Mister Hawke, and lead us down this mysterious path.”

  “First,” Hawke answered as he perched awkwardly on the next bench, “might we consider the matter of Betsy Milne?” He could feel the eyes of passers-by on him, scrutinising his appearance, fearing his intentions. He forced himself to ignore them. “I met with Ruthven.”

  Brommett’s brow lifted. “And?”

  Hawke took off his hat, tapping the rim against his thigh to beat away the dust. “I explained the French army button. Suggested leads that they may follow. They’ll find nothing.” He shifted his rump so that Corissa could sit down. She was close, her thigh scraping his, and he could smell the hint of lavender. It was a moment to savour. A fragment of time that would soon pass, fading into memory, but Hawke would cherish it. He had not felt this alive for years. Not since before that fateful Manchester day. “The search remains too broad.”

  Brommett scratched his beard. “And all the while the clock ticks.” He delved in the basket again, earning a slapped hand for his trouble. “Tomorrow is Wednesday, the first ember day of Advent.”

  “He does not need reminding, Ansell,” Kitty admonished, still attempting to defend the victuals from her husband’s marauding fingers. In the end she moved the entire basket, ignoring Brommett’s faux fury, and began to distribute small buns and brightly polished apples.

  Hawke bit into one of the buns. It had a deliciously sweet glaze, though it hurt his decayed molar. “No matter.” He replaced the hat, acutely aware that a pate of stubble was not a common style in Drapers Gardens. “It is true that the killer may strike at any time, and I have failed.”

  “The Runners have failed,” Corissa corrected him. “This was not your business, Joshua. Not your fight.”

  And yet, he thought, it has become my business. Was it Ruthven’s disinterest that had done it? His concern for a scapegoat rather than justice? Was it Marco Totti’s pleading eyes, so full of fear? Or the raging desperation of Boris Milne, revenge the only matter on his mind? Perhaps it was all of those things. A potent concoction, made all the more intoxicating by Hawke’s own past. By the screamed entreaties of innocents, cowering before a sword held high, poised for the final stroke. In the end, he said simply, “I have made it my fight.”

  “Here,” Brommett interjected, tossing a miniature meat pie to each of them. “Now, what do we have?”

  “Next to nothing,” Hawke said gloomily. “Betsy Milne is killed, but snatches at the fiend’s coat in the throes of her death, seizing a button.”

  Brommett nodded. “The tosher-man...”

  “Varney Tapp,” Kitty prompted.

  “Varney Tapp,” Brommett nodded, “finds this button with her body but is killed, either by her murderer, or in an unrelated attack.”

  Kitty went on, “The button finds its way to Milky Mayhew.”

  “And Mayhew,” Hawke said, “gives it to me.” He held his peace as an elegant couple, arm in arm, strolled past, steps crunching rhythmically on the tiny pebbles. They paid the unlikely foursome no heed, regarding instead an advertisement that had been fastened to some railings near the pond. He waited until they had moved on. “Mayhew adds that Tapp’s killer wore a brooch in the shape of an Irish harp.”

  “But you cannot narrow your search with the Irish connection,” Brommett suggested. “There must be tens of thousands of Irish in London.”

  Kitty gave a bleak chuckle. “They do not call St Giles the Holy Land for nothing.”

  “So I must bend my thought to the smaller groups,” Hawke said. “French and Italian. How can it be further refined?” He looked at the sky for inspiration, finding none in its grey fastness, and at the naked trees and the cherub’s rushing fountain. Then he stared at the advertisement, squinting to read the block type, and realised that it announced an evening of blood sport. Three vicious badgers and a man-eating ape would be pitted against the dogs. It was the event his fellow resurrectionists were due to att
end.

  “If our prey is a native of Northern Italy,” Brommett’s voice scythed across Hawke’s thoughts, “then it is more difficult. Stories of the Benandanti cult may have been passed down. An oral tradition.”

  “But,” Kitty added brightly, perhaps a response to Hawke’s glum countenance, “if our evil-doer is French, we may seek a literate person.”

  “Scholarly, even,” her husband agreed.

  Hawke looked from one to the other. “How so?”

  “If it is a French soldier,” Brommett replied, “they have taken the time to learn of the Benandanti. Of the rituals associated with the cult.”

  “That would fit,” Hawke said, his voice low and slow as he mulled the possibility.

  “Fit?” Corissa echoed.

  “I have been considering the connection to Napoleon’s army,” Hawke explained, “given the coat button. It seems unlikely that a common infantryman would wear his old coat in this city. Not without first replacing the military buttons. And an officer would not own such a coat. Which leaves who? The non-commissioned officers, the surgeons, the cooks. All valued members of English society now. Mixing with the kind of folk who would not take a second glance at a man’s buttons to determine his worth.”

  Kitty nodded enthusiastically. “And all learned, literate types.”

  “A useful seam to mine,” Brommett said thoughtfully. “We must identify men of that ilk.”

  “It is not the locating that will prove difficult,” Hawke said, “for I have already asked much the same of Ruthven. The task is in gaining access to them.”

  “Will not Mister Ruthven attend to that issue also?” Kitty Brommett asked.

  “Perhaps,” Hawke said. “At least he claims he will. But he is just as likely to send a mob into Clerkenwell to purge it of Italians, then claim justice is served.”

  “That would be simpler,” Brommett agreed bleakly. He stooped to collect the prosthesis, then used it to tap Hawke’s topper. “Then we must double our efforts. And do enlighten us as to your notion regarding these strange wounds that have us so vexed.” He twisted to kiss his wife on the cheek. “But only on full stomachs, my love! Come come, do not be shy with the pie!”

  Kitty punched him, he yowled and Corissa guffawed. Hawke, silently, thought of the music shop at the end of Great Bell Alley.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WEDNESDAY

  Hawke returned to his tiny lodgings after the impromptu meal at Drapers Gardens. It was the first time he had set foot in the decrepit tenement for several days, and it felt strange being back in the mouldering attic that was his home. A feeling made more profound by the room’s newfound spaciousness, Lucas’s mattress and personal effects having been sold or incinerated. At the end of it all, Hawke thought, they were all mere vassals, possessing nothing that was not, ultimately, Szekely’s to dispose of at a whim. Only an expansive black circle was left of his friend. A tide mark of blood that tainted the uneven floorboards.

  Hawke took a pipe during the evening, lying on his bed and staring at the smoke that roiled about the decaying and stained ceiling beams, trying in vain to unravel the tangled strands of Betsy Milne’s bizarre death. Then he had slept away the first part of the night, dreaming fitfully of massed crowds, painted banners and slashing sabres. He had woken with a throbbing skull, a beating drum that kept time with his heartbeat. Hardly a surprise, he supposed, given his rare abstention from laudanum. Gin alone, he had promised himself, and then only enough to steady his nerve and his hand. He felt sick, but at least he could see and think with some measure of clarity.

  Now it was the first few minutes of a new day. One of the final three Ember Days of the year. He lit a pair of candles and went to piss in a steaming metal pail in the corner of the room, then padded across to the single little window that looked down onto Buckbridge Street and the rest of the rookery, wondering if, at this moment, an innocent child was being hunted through the streets. Maybe the pursuit was already over, the fennel and sorghum meticulously prepared, each stalk laid out for the wrapping. He breathed deep, warding off the gut-knotting sense of failure. His breath clouded the glass and he wiped it with a sleeve, revealing the silhouettes of chimney pots and spires, gilt-edged by moonlight. Revealing, too, the movement of figures down on the street. He leaned into the glass, squinting to improve the detail. That familiar shiver again, creeping down his neck.

  A knock at the door. Hawke turned, boards creaking under his bare heels. He glanced at his hat, coat and boots, piled together at the foot of the bed, but decided breeches and shirt would suffice. Would bring a note of authenticity.

  He leaned into the door, pressing his cheek up against a slat so splintered that it offered a range of viable spy-holes.

  On the far side, a woman’s voice said, “My apologies for the hour.”

  “Miss Clementine?” Hawke answered. Her tall, stocky frame might have belonged to a man in the anonymity of the dark passage, but he recognised her wide face with its flattened nose, lit as it was in the watery light from a window somewhere along the landing. He stepped back and slid free the bolt.

  “The same.” Clementine glanced furtively over both shoulders as she stepped into the room. She carried a basket, much akin to the one from which Kitty Brommett had produced so many delicacies the day before. She wore layers against the cold; woollen gloves, and a heavy, hooded travel cloak over her dress. Her bonnet sat at a slight angle so that a patch of silver-flecked brown curls sprouted at one side of her head. “I bring a message from Doctor Vine.”

  Hawke watched her as she walked further. “For me?”

  Clementine reached the middle of the chamber before turning back to regard him, those little black eyes glinting in the candlelight. “For your employer,” she corrected herself. “Only, Mister Szekely’s lodgings are not known to us.”

  “But mine are?”

  “Aye.” Her broad face and broken nose took on something of a gargoyle’s glower in the shifting shadows. “You might recall that you informed Doctor Vine some weeks ago.”

  “No, Miss Clementine,” Hawke said, turning to close the door, “I do not.”

  “It is of a most urgent nature,” she blustered irritably, moving to the side so that her back was flush against a mildewed wall. She set down the basket. “I apologise for the disturbance at such an hour, but I will be only moments.” She touched fingers to her lips. “Gracious, sir, but my haste gives me a terrible thirst. Might I trouble you for something to drink?”

  Hawke offered an embarrassed smile, indicating a small table near his bed, upon which a glass bottle stood, three-quarters full. “I have gin, madam, and nothing more.”

  “Then gin will suffice, with thanks.”

  Hawke crossed the room. Clementine, as anticipated, followed. He could sense her working around to the rear. Instead of grasping the bottle, he grasped his knife. When he twisted on his heels she was right behind him, looming over him, a matter of a yard away, having covered the open space with shocking speed. Clementine’s club-like fist was aloft, poised beside her right ear, and in it, like a flash of quicksilver in the tremulous flame-glow, he saw the slender blade. It was long and sharp, like a huge needle. Hawke wrenched himself violently away, performing a ragged pirouette, driving his left forearm up to block her strike and slashing at Clementine with the blade as he went. There was no aim in it, only wildness borne out of desperation, but he felt his knife jolt against something rigid, then snag and grind - clothing, flesh, bone? - and he was on the floor, tumbling, scrabbling for purchase, scrambling to his feet, and thanking God for the resolve to stay free of opium’s warm embrace. Just for tonight.

  When he set himself, gasping for breath like a drowning man, he could feel moisture just above his left wrist and knew, though the moment’s panic suppressed any pain, that the great needle had pierced his flesh. But he did not care, not yet, for it was enough that he was alive. Clementine was bleeding too, the upper side of her left hand gaping red as if a huge ruby had been attached
to her glove. It was no more fatal a wound than the one she had inflicted upon Hawke, but it aggrieved her all the same, for her lips were paired back in a rictus grin of anguish as she cradled the injured flesh. Still, he noticed, she clutched the long needle, still she would be able to wield it, and in that moment she seemed to register him beyond her own pain, and her face tightened into a stony mask. She let the damaged hand dangle at her side and raised the weapon anew. Hawke followed suit, bending his knees, licking dry lips, and trying desperately to anticipate her next move. They circled one another, like the giant cats he had seen at the Tower Menagerie. There were drops of blood on the floor, glimmering burgundy patches in the candlelight, macabre chain-links connecting attacker and victim.

  Clementine was bigger than Hawke. Probably stronger too. She eyed him with bellicose intensity, panting audibly, then shrank into herself, coiling, ready to pounce. Hawke gritted his teeth, braced for whatever might come. It was with disbelief, then, that he saw her reel back, skittering away from him to dive for the edge of the room. For a heartbeat he was frozen by sheer surprise, but then he saw that she was making for the basket she had carefully positioned beside the wall, and he knew instantly what it contained. He gave chase, but she turned before he could close with her, snarling, black eyes reflecting the candle flames like red-hot coals, and the slender blade had vanished from her grip, replaced by a heavy cleaver, the kind used in the butchery trade, its edge gleaming silver, bragging of a whetstone’s recent caress. Hawke saw Butcher Milne in his mind’s eye, the threats he had made at The Bell in Smithfield, and he saw Lucas and Harlowe too. Saw their yawning wounds. Knew that such a fate would be his own.

  Clementine growled, a low, visceral sound, and took a step towards him.

  It was then that Blackbird said, “Stay there, bitch, or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

  Clementine froze on the spot.