The King's Justice

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  “No, thank you.” David rose. “I’m going to have another beer—what can I get you two?”

  “A pint for me, thanks,” Milo said.

  Maggie blew a particularly large O. “Apple cider for me. A whole pint, mind you. Not a half.”

  “Maggie Hope, how very unladylike.”

  She shook her head. “I insist.”

  David ducked his head in a nod as he left the table. “Yes, ma’am.” On the radio, Barry Wood’s robust voice rang out:

  Let’s all back the attack

  Let’s stand by the ones manning the guns

  And pushing the foes on back…

  A young woman at a table of girls looked over and smiled in Milo’s direction. Maggie poked him in the arm. “I think you have an admirer.”

  The woman, tall and blond, wearing a flower-dotted dress and heavy lipstick, made her way over. “I love this song,” she cooed as she reached them. “Don’t you?” she asked Milo.

  Maggie observed the young man tense, his shoulders rising. “It’s all right.” She knew what the interest was about: Why are you, an obviously healthy young man, not in uniform? Especially when my husband, son, brother, friend, lover is? The idea Britain might still require functioning UXB disposal teams, as well as firefighters and a police force—despite the war—seemed not to have occurred to people like her. Even so, Milo recoiled, as if the blonde’s words stung his conscience.

  “I think we should all ‘back the attack,’ ” she pressed, her smile cruel and wide. “So, why aren’t you in the military, handsome?”

  “I’m in the Hundred and Seventh Tunneling Company—bomb disposal, Miss.”

  “He defused his first bomb today,” Maggie added. “A Hermann. Over two thousand pounds of ticking UXB. London’s much safer now, thanks to him.”

  “Old men can do that,” she countered, hand on one hip. “I don’t understand why perfectly capable men like you are hiding out here in London, when you could be dropping bombs on Germany or fighting in the Mediterranean.”

  “Bomb disposal’s plenty dangerous, I assure you. And men like him keep the city safe for girls like you.” Up close, Maggie could see the lipstick covered a cold sore. “And I imagine you’d look quite lovely in uniform as well.”

  “I’m a conscientious objector,” Milo declared.

  The girl looked back to the group of young women at her table, all watching intently, then returned her gaze to Milo. She smirked, showing even, white teeth. “Well, now we know who and what you are—we all want to give you this.”

  She laid a white feather down in front of him. “We”—she looked back to the girls, who were hiding laughter behind their hands—“the Order of the White Feather, sincerely hope you change your mind, and decide to serve your country.” She turned on her heel and began walking back to her group. She called back, “Until then, we think you’re chicken!”

  Maggie’s temper flared, and she found herself standing, hands planted on the table. “Take that back!” she called to the blonde. “How dare you? This man spent the day defusing a live bomb so you and your little friends can walk around London in safety!”

  The blonde and her cohorts only giggled and smiled as they put on their coats and flounced out of the pub.

  “Don’t worry about it, Maggie,” Milo said. “I’m used to it.”

  Reluctantly, she took her seat again. Milo picked up the feather and stuck it behind his ear. The gesture was brave, but Maggie suspected the bravado was forced. “I ’ave a few more at home—at this rate, I’ll have enough to make a nice pillow by the time the war’s over.” He quirked an eyebrow. “If I’m still ’ere, of course.”

  Maggie looked him in the eye. “You’ll make it.”

  “Oh, I wasn’t talking about defusing bombs—more like leaving the country.” Maggie looked confused. “You haven’t heard? Some of the conchies are trying to get to Argentina.”

  “Why?”

  “Afraid of being sent to the camps.”

  David returned and set down the drinks. “What’s this?” he said, noting the feather behind Milo’s ear.

  Maggie was still fuming about the incident. “Some little…twit…gave Milo a white feather.”

  “Ah,” David sighed. “The Order of the White Feather, was it? The gesture comes from the belief that a cockerel sporting a white feather in its tail is likely to be a poor fighter. I’d heard of them being given out during the Great War, but I didn’t realize it was still in fashion.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Why can’t they do something more productive with their time?”

  “Shall I tell the young ladies what they can do with their feathers?” David asked as he resumed his seat.

  “David—” Maggie warned as she picked up her glass.

  But he arranged his face in an expression of innocence. “Why, put them in their hats, of course. Whatever else on earth could you be thinking?”

  “Of the profound stupidity and cruelty of the human race. It boggles the imagination.”

  “Agreed,” David and Milo said in unison and raised their pint glasses. Maggie raised her glass as well, ignoring the looks of disapproval coming her way.

  “Well, cheers, then,” David said. “To fewer bombs in London.”

  “Cheers.” Maggie took a large swig of her hard cider, then slumped back in her seat, lips puckered from the sour taste.

  “I heard from our boy in California,” David began. “Friend of ours named John Sterling,” he explained to Milo. “Used to work for the P.M., then joined the RAF. Now he’s working on propaganda in Los Angeles.”

  “Really?” Maggie did her best to sound noncommittal at hearing the name of her ex-fiancé. “How is he? Still palling around with Walt Disney? Drawing—what are they called? Goblins? Gorgons?”

  David rolled his eyes. “Gremlins. He’s, well—” David began. “I’d feel remiss if I didn’t mention it…”

  “He’s engaged,” Maggie guessed as David’s voice trailed off. Her tone was flat. “How wonderful. Is it what’s-her-name? The divorcée with the horse face? Please, give them my congratulations.”

  Milo looked over. “This your beau?”

  “Former beau,” Maggie said, rummaging through her handbag for another cigarette. “Old news. And, anyway, I’m seeing someone myself. A detective,” she told Milo. She plucked one from her case, then glanced back to David, trying for nonchalance. “So who is the lucky girl?”

  “You guessed it—Hollywood Horse Face,” David admitted. “A little racy for my taste.”

  “A Yankee gal, huh?” Maggie took another gulp of cider. “Who would have thought?”

  David looked at her. “It should have been you. Not that I don’t like Durgin. I do. Quite a bit, in fact.”

  “Why do I feel there’s a but coming?” Maggie asked.

  “He’s, well, let’s just say he’s a man who’s clearly haunted by his past. And he seems the type to always put work first.” Maggie knew what he was referring to. It was the ever-present wariness in Durgin’s eyes. The tight press of his lips. “But he’s a wonderful man.”

  “Wait a minute!” Milo choked on his beer as he made the connection. “You’re seeing James Durgin? Detective Chief Inspector James Durgin? The DCI in the papers for the Blackout Beast case?”

  “One and the same,” Maggie replied.

  “Maggie worked with him on the case, too,” David added.

  “A while ago,” Maggie assured Milo.

  David shook his head. “Not so long ago. Coming up on a year now, isn’t it…?”

  “You worked with the police on that case? I remember there was something about a woman who shot the Beast—”

  “Our Mags here is the crack shot,” David told him. “She’s done outstanding work with the Met Police as well as MI-Five, and, well…a few other organi
zations I’m not at liberty to mention.”

  “How did you get to the Hundred and Seventh then, Maggie?” Milo asked.

  “Yes, Maggie, tell us.” David leaned in. “Tell us everything—how first you graduated summa cum laude from Wellesley College, the best girls’ school in our largest colony.”

  Maggie gritted her teeth. “Women’s college. Magna cum laude. Phi Beta Kappa for good measure.”

  “When our Mags first came to Blighty, she worked as a secretary for Winston Churchill,” David informed Milo. “And then—well—I can’t give details, but let’s just say our girl here has performed any number of heroic deeds.”

  “That’s not me anymore,” Maggie said to Milo, almost by way of apology. “And I’m glad. Really and truly glad. Do you know how someone described the old me?”

  “Here we go…” David murmured.

  “Earnest. Earnest.” She pulled a face. “Almost as bad as plucky.” Maggie took another gulp from her pint glass. “I don’t want to be the earnest one anymore. For heaven’s sake, I just want to have fun. At least as long as I can get away with it.” The drink was making everything soft and blurry around the edges.

  “Hell’s bells!” David gave her a long look, full of judgment. “Defusing bombs, smoking, drinking too much, and riding on the deathcycle are not ‘fun’ things. They’re dangerous.”

  “Motorbike. And Sarah’s rejoined the ballet.” Like Maggie, Sarah had been an SOE agent. “You’re not giving her a hard time about leaving her former employment.”

  “Sarah’s not courting death the way you seem to be.”

  “Pish posh,” Maggie said, then took another swallow. “I’m tickety-boo, darling. And have no interest in going back to working for the Inter-Services Research Bureau.” That was the official code name for SOE. “As I’m sure you, of all people, understand,” she finished, warning in her voice.

  David knew, more than anyone else, what she’d been through since the war began: finding out the truth about her mother and father, her father’s death, meeting and then losing her sister…Maggie blinked back the images and swallowed yet more of her cider.

  “You don’t have to work for the, er, Bureau, you know—there are any number of other positions—”

  “I’m not interested,” Maggie interrupted. “Besides,” she continued, “defusing bombs is just as important as what I used to do, if not more so. At least for the moment, I’m satisfied.”

  Milo raised his glass. “ ’Ear, ’ear.”

  “Where is Sarah, anyway?” Maggie asked, looking around, then down at her wristwatch. “Isn’t she supposed to be here by now?”

  “She rang the office before I left—rehearsal running over. Says she’ll see you at home. At some point.”

  “Oh!” Maggie said, realizing the time. She raised her pint glass and drained it. When she looked around she felt as if she were in a dream.

  “What’s wrong?” David asked.

  “Nothing! However, Nigel and Chuck are going out for a romantic dinner—and I’m to watch young Master Griffin.” Her face felt closed and hot. She rose unsteadily, and the two men stood as well. As David helped her on with her coat, he asked in a low voice, “Should you really be driving the deathcycle in the blackout after drinking a full pint of cider?”

  “Oh, David,” Maggie said, “I drive even better when I’m drunk. I’ll see you tomorrow, at the party for Nigel, yes?” She walked away, wobbling just the slightest bit before she turned back to wave. She felt happily numb, as if all her stray emotions had been excised from her heart. “See you then!”

  * * *

  —

  Across London, the door of the mortuary banged open. The lime-washed walls were covered in drawings of muscles and nerves. “We really must stop meeting like this,” said Durgin to the coroner, as he let himself into the icy, white-tiled room of the Paddington Mortuary.

  The detective’s thick-soled shoes squeaked slightly as he walked over the concrete floor, which slanted down toward a drain in the center. Fluorescent pendant lights illuminated shelves holding antique phrenology books, jars of various organs in formaldehyde, and containers of swabs and cotton balls. A skeleton lay on a white enamel autopsy table marked with drain grooves.

  The coroner, Alfred Collins, stopped whistling long enough to look up from his work and glare. “That line never gets old, now does it?” Collins was short and round, with a long nose, long ears, and wide, red, drooping eyes, reminiscent of a basset hound.

  “Never.”

  Collins put the last bone—the distal of the left foot’s pinkie toe—in place as Durgin crossed himself before appraising the arrangement. “Yet another skeleton, I see.”

  “The officers said someone found it on the banks of the Thames near the Tower earlier today.” Collins jabbed his thumb to the counter. “I assume you and your men’ll want to poke your nose in eventually. Copper report’s on top.” He turned back to the skeleton. “Removed the dirt from the bones—what you see now is how they would have looked before being dumped in the river.”

  “Obviously human,” Durgin murmured.

  “A regular Sherlock Holmes, you are, Detective Chief Inspector.”

  “Are they all from the same human?”

  “Yes.” Collins finished his work on the foot and took a step back from the table. He crossed short arms over his chest.

  “Sex?”

  “Male.”

  “Age at death?”

  “Maybe late teens, early twenties.”

  Durgin circled the table, as if trying to conjure the body in all its fleshly glory. “Race?”

  “Human.”

  “Collins…”

  “Caucasian.”

  “Height?”

  “Just under six feet.”

  “Any identifiable injuries?”

  “He fractured his arm at age ten or so. Broke his leg around fifteen.” Collins approached the head of the table and opened the skull’s mouth, exposing gold-filled teeth. “Had five cavities filled. European dentistry, not English.”

  Durgin joined him, pulling a magnifying glass from the breast pocket of his suit to examine the fillings. “Any injury to the bones explaining cause of death?”

  Collins shook his head, long earlobes wobbling. “Unclear.” As Durgin continued to pace, the coroner snapped, “Would you stop? It’s bloody annoying!”

  The detective halted, drawing himself up to his full height. “It’s just—you never say you don’t know something. It’s always ‘unclear.’ ”

  “Well, it is unclear,” Collins replied, sounding testy. “If it was clear, I’d know, and I’d tell you—now, wouldn’t I?”

  Durgin looked back to the bones. “Time since death?”

  “There’s no soft tissue—so unclear. But the bones look fresh. Smell fresh.”

  “Could the cause of death be poisoning?”

  “We’ll send a femur to the lab to test for traces of toxins.” But both he and Durgin knew some poisons were undetectable, even by the lab.

  The DCI resumed pacing. “What was the manner of bone separation?”

  “A saw of some kind. Then I believe the young man’s body was, er, boiled, sir. Would explain the clean white color. Same as the others.” The skeleton on the table was one of four found in suitcases on the shore of the Thames in the last ten weeks. “It’s obviously the work of the same killer.”

  “Like something out of the Brothers Grimm.” Durgin nodded. “Thank you, Collins. Well done. We’ll need to get fingerprints from the suitcase and bones—if there are any left behind.”

  “Have the boys at the lab found any prints on the others?”

  “No, the killer’s been clean and conscientious in his work.” The DCI grasped his hands behind his back, coat trailing behind him. “By removing the flesh and leaving only the bones,
he’s taken away our soft tissue—and our crime scene—everything we use. What would Dr. Bond make of this, do you think?”

  Dr. Thomas Bond was a surgeon associated with the Metropolitan Police and the Jack the Ripper killings, considered the first criminal profiler. One of Bond’s first rules was to examine the victim’s wounds to find out the killer’s hand preference. Durgin had studied the surgeon’s theories but liked to go further, to get inside the perpetrators’ heads, to try to think like them. And he often relied on his instinct, or “gut,” as he called it. It had never steered him wrong.

  “Not much to go on—even for Dr. Bond.”

  Durgin chewed his lip. “Well, since the flesh’s been boiled away, we can’t tell if the killer is right- or left-handed…”

  “Still, what sort of profession, do you think? Must know his way around corpses.”

  “Butcher? Surgeon? Farmer? Worker in a meat processing plant?”

  “And where’s he likely to live?” Collins prodded.

  “All the suitcases of bones have been found on the banks of the Thames near Tower Bridge. So he lives near the Tower—or else has chosen the location for a particular reason.”

  “Might have thrown the suitcase off the bridge. Or from a boat.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Why bones, not bodies?”

  “Lighter? Easier to carry, maybe.” Durgin turned abruptly, as if glimpsing the shadow of the murderer from the corner of his eye. “So our killer may not be very large or strong.”

  “Or bloody lazy,” Collins rejoined. “Or did he have help? Our Dr. Bond would ask—would people who worked alongside him have any suspicion? Noises? Smells? Evidence left?”

  “Boiling a body would certainly emit a foul odor. I’ll alert the bobbies to check any stenches—without saying why, of course. We’ve got to keep it quiet—don’t want that getting out in the papers…”

  “Lots of terrible cooks in London, sir.”

  “Too true, myself included. We can only hope for a break.”

  The coroner nodded. “I’ll have the ‘sticks and stones’ packed, sealed, and labeled for Scotland Yard, so they can try to identify the poor bugger. His family must be worried sick.”