by A. Wendeberg
They climbed the stairs to the first floor, and entered a dimly lit room. Sévère counted eight cots. A thin sheet of light fell through the curtains. The air was stuffy.
‘Their boxes are made of wood, not ch…cheap cardboard,’ she explained with a wobbly voice.
He walked up to the window, pulled aside the curtains, and bent over the box closest to him. A child of probably six months of age lay in it, eyes shut, mouth open, pale countenance. He put his ear close to the infant’s face and was relieved to hear a quiet snore. He repeated this with the other seven boxes. All the children were alive and seemed comparatively well. Their faces showed no indications of malnourishment or abuse. The bite of ammonia and faeces in the air was normal, as far as he could tell.
‘They’ve received a sleeping drought?’ he asked.
‘I allow them a spoonful of laudanum each. They are more restful.’
He walked back to the window and gazed out into the backyard. He thought of Miss Mary. ‘May I use your privy?’
Certain that Mrs Fouler was watching from her window, Sévère strolled past the privy and took his time to investigate the garden. The lawn was trimmed and soggy, no obvious signs of digging activities within the past growing season. The flowerbeds, though, had potential. He’d have to return with a shovel.
The practitioner of Woburn Sands rumbled into the backyard as Sévère stepped out of the privy and shut the door.
‘Dr Robert Potton,’ he provided, and shot out his hand. Sévère shook it and introduced himself.
They went back into the house and settled down in the drawing room. Potton extracted his files from his briefcase and handed them to Sévère.
‘Two cases of gastroenteritis, one in 1878 and the other in 1879. A measles outbreak in 1876 that resulted in the deaths of three children in Woburn Sands, two of which were Mrs Fouler’s charges.’
‘What about the remaining two? She said six had died. Can you corroborate this number?’
‘I could not determine the cause of death of the other two children with certainty.’ He leafed through the papers and said, ‘Both died in winter 1878. Twins, it appears.’
‘I remember them well,’ Mrs Fowler said hoarsely. ‘They’d been only a few days old. The mother brought them in. They were very quiet and small. Looked sickly, both of them. I kept thinking that I shouldn’t have taken them in. And sure enough, they didn’t eat as much as they should. Only one week later, they died.’
‘What did you feed them?’
Mrs Fouler tried to hold her head high; her eyes began to water and her chin wobbled. ‘Naturally, all I could give them was white bread soaked in honey water. This is the normal practice for December and January. Goats give milk from February through November. Cow’s milk is not good for children of that age.’
‘Is that so, Dr Potton?’
‘Betsy…I mean Mrs Fouler has done nothing wrong. She is licensed, she feeds her charges according to what is recommended, and she treats them well. I don’t know what unlawful thing you could possibly find under this roof.’
At that, Mrs Fouler burst out sobbing.
‘Now, now,’ said Fenwick, patting her back.
She jerked away from him and stood. ‘I have to attend to the children now. If my presence is not needed any longer, I would be most obliged if you would allow me to go upstairs.’
‘You may go. Thank you for your hospitality, Mrs Fouler,’ Sévère answered. ‘Although I have one last question, if I may. You mentioned you take only infants until the age of three. What happens to your charges once they reach that age and their mothers don’t want them?’
She scrubbed tears from her cheeks. ‘I send them to Northampton Orphanage for Illegitimate Children.’
They watched her leave. Sévère turned his attention back to Dr Potton. ‘Do you see each new child as it arrives, and do you examine her children regularly?’
Potton made big, round eyes. ‘What for?’
Sévère frowned. He was grasping at straws. ‘Let me ask this differently: When a mother gives her child into Mrs Fouler’s care, would you always know it? Do you know which child arrived at what time?’
‘Sooner or later I’ll know.’
‘How so?’
‘We are a small community. People know each other. This isn’t London, where one can do anything and no one knows about it.’ Potton’s ears gradually acquired a healthy shade of purple.
‘Which means that no one would notice the death of a new charge.’
‘Are you insinuating—’ Fenwick jumped from his chair.
Sévère cut him off. ‘Where were the children buried?’
Fenwick jerked his chin toward the window.
‘The backyard?’
‘Where else? Are you suggesting that bastards be buried in sacred soil?’
Sévère leant back, and regarded the inspector. ‘I’ve never thought about it.’
Fenwick shrugged.
‘Inspector Fenwick, Mrs Fouler’s premises are now evidence in an infanticide case.’ He rose, and grabbed his cane. ‘I will return with my assistant to conduct an exhumation. The evidence is not to be disturbed and Mrs Fouler is not to leave Woburn Sands until a surgeon examines the bodies. Furthermore, she is to be present during the exhumation.’
‘Are you jesting?’ Fenwick croaked.
‘It is not in my nature to be funny. I must leave now. I thank you for your help. Inspector Fenwick, Dr Potton.’ Courteously, he lowered his head, and left.
❧
Stripling felt miserable in his waterproof. Rivulets of icy rain ran down the mucky garment and into his boots. He kept wiggling his toes to warm them up a bit, but it didn’t seem to be working all that well. His upper body was warm enough, though. His arms ached. He’d dug five holes already. Not deep. Perhaps ten, twenty inches until his shovel would strike something that didn’t feel like soil. More like soft, rotten wood.
While Stripling had been digging holes into the mucky and half-frozen soil, the coroner had been occupied sketching a map of the premises in his notebook, marking where Mrs Fouler had indicated the location of the graves, and labelling them with numbers. A corresponding number was later clipped to the rag that was wrapped around each corpse, before the bodies were placed into a crate.
Stripling resented this distribution of tasks. He was doing the crude, stupid work: dig until you feel there’s something. Then Sévère, armed with his small shovel and a spoon, would scrape the body free, as carefully as though he were planning to resurrect the dead. Stripling thought of his armchair, a blazing fireplace, a good cigar, and satisfying paperwork.
‘Did you find another?’ Sévère called.
‘Not yet,’ Stripling grumbled, and continued digging.
❧
When six bodies were safely tucked into the crate, Sévère walked along the line of graves. He gazed back at the house, where he could see Mrs Fouler standing behind a window, a swaddled child in her arms. She was bouncing it as if her life depended on it.
‘Stripling, I want you to look at this.’
His officer walked up to him and Sévère pointed at the graves. ‘What do you see?’
‘A lot of work for one day.’
‘And what else?’
Stripling shrugged.
‘Dammit, Stripling. The pattern!’ Sévère caught himself just in time before wiping his face with his dirty hands.
‘There’s a gap between the fifth and the sixth hole,’ Stripling supplied.
‘Precisely. Dig there.’
‘But—’
‘As well as on either side of this row. I want to know if she buried more than these six. Also, check the flower beds at random places.’
As Stripling slammed his shovel into the ground between graves five and six, Sévère looked up at the house. Mrs Fouler was gone.
‘Inspector Fenwick!’ he called. ‘Would you please see to Mrs Fouler?’
Fenwick, who’d waited at the back door, somewhat protected from the
wind and rain, gratefully retreated into the house.
Sévère watched Stripling work, and when the shovel at last struck something, he bade his officer step aside. Sévère bent down and began to move the soil with care. A root. And another.
‘Would you dig here and here, please?’ he asked, and indicated the new sides of the hole. In went the shovel and the hole grew larger.
‘I guess that explains it,’ Sévère muttered after several long moments, and rose to his feet. He brushed the dirt off his hands, and rubbed his cold fingers.
‘Explains what?’ Stripling asked, tapping his shovel against an unearthed stump.
Sévère shrugged. ‘A bush that didn’t fit the scenery.’ He indicated the symmetrical lines running through Mrs Fouler’s garden. Whoever had planted this bush or small tree had violated Mrs Fouler’s desire for orderly aesthetic.
❧
The following day, an exhausted Dr Johnston arrived at the morgue. ‘You are digging up too many bodies for my taste,’ he told Sévère. ‘And you must be the new mortician.’ He nodded at a young, bespectacled man in a black frock coat, whose greased black hair was neatly parted along the middle of his skull.
The man nodded, stepped forward, and shook the offered hand. ‘Alf Griggs is the name.’
‘You wouldn’t mind if I used your tools, would you?’ Johnston asked. ‘I left my bag in the hospital, and noticed it only when it was already too late.’
‘It would be an honour,’ said Mr Griggs. He hoisted up a large black leather bag with a white skull and the word “Mortician” in white capital lettering on its front, plopped it onto the table and took a respectful step back.
‘Well, then. Tell me what you know about them,’ Johnston said to Sévère, and began to carefully unwrap the corpses.
‘Those were found in the backyard of a Mrs Betsy Fouler of Woburn Sands, Bedfordshire. She’s been taking in illegitimate infants since spring 1876. These six children were examined by the local practitioner after they died. In four cases he was able to determine the cause of death. This one died of gastroenteritis in 1878 at the age of six months, this in 1879 at five months of age, also of gastroenteritis. These two were aged one and a half and two years, and died during a measles outbreak in 1876. The two smallest bodies are twins who died in 1878 at the age of two weeks. Cause of death is thought to have been malnutrition. Mrs Fouler’s statement can be summed up as…’ Sévère extracted his notepad. ‘When the mother brought them to her, the children were very quiet and small. They appeared sickly and ate very little of a mixture of honey water and white bread. They died one week later.’
At that, Johnston looked up from his work, puzzled. ‘Why did you call me?’
‘Mrs Fouler stated that six out of twenty-four children in her care have died. A quarter. I found that to be a high number.’
‘But from what you’ve told me, it appears that none of these deaths are suspicious. Or did I miss something?’
‘No, you didn’t. I had rather hoped you could tell me if there are any similarities between the two groups of dead children. I need to know whether or not it is likely that the person who buried these children also killed the other nine.’
‘Ah, I see. Well, I can tell you that this one didn’t die of a cut throat.’ Johnston indicated a small, blackened body with bits of flesh and skin still clinging to its bones. ‘That’s the gastroenteritis of 1879. Do you see this?’ He pulled at the decomposed tissues until the windpipe and oesophagus became visible. ‘Intact,’ he said. ‘Until decomposition set in, that is.’
‘Hm,’ Sévère answered.
‘I’ll examine them, but I need an assistant. Would you mind much?’ Johnston pointed his dirty finger at Sévère’s pen and notepad.
‘It would be an honour.’
❧
‘Very foul smell, I must say. Very foul indeed,’ grunted Pouch when he poked a pencil at the corpse and the dirt attached to it. ‘Material essentially comprising sand, gravel, clumps of clay and…’ he bent closer and picked up a crumb of soil, rubbed it between his fingertips, but refrained from sticking it into his mouth. ‘Peat.’
‘You might want to compare that to the soil on the other skeletons,’ Sévère said, pointing to a table in a far corner.
‘No need. This here…’ He pointed at the corpses in front of him, ‘…is very different. The soil over there comprises of types of loam and clay, while this is sand with a small amount of clay. That over there has a low permeability, and this here, a fairly high permeability. One cannot confuse these two.’
‘Hm.’ Sévère scratched his chin. ‘How likely is it, in your opinion, that the bodies discovered in the pots and the ones here were buried in the same area?’
‘What size area?’
‘The size of a small village.’
‘There is no possibility whatsoever.’
‘Dammit,’ Sévère growled.
‘Oh, I meant to tell you. These babies,’ Pouch walked up to the nine skeletons and pulled the cloth aside. ‘I kept thinking about them. And so I visited a friend of mine who’s working for the Mining Record Office. He allowed me to inspect his samples of Fuller’s Earth. I must apologise for my previous lack of attention, but all Fuller’s Earth deposits in Britain differ slightly, meaning one can identify where a sample originates. I should have said as much when I examined these.’
‘I didn’t know there were different types of Fuller’s Earth.’
‘There are four in Britain alone.’ Pouch wiped his hands on a hanky, picked up a skull and examined it closely, and then another. ‘Ah, wonderful. My memory and judgement have not failed me. This is Fuller’s Earth from Redhill. No doubt.’
—Strengths & Weaknesses—
Gavriel Sévère hurried along Leman Street. He was late for his appointment with the magistrate. He carried a list of issues he would insist on resolving. He would not step back. If the magistrate continued refusing to pay his fees, he would personally visit Home Office for every single invoice that was rejected until this problem was solved once and for all. In the past three months, his travel costs, fees for more than thirty postmortem examinations, and fees for jury and witnesses had been disallowed on no specific grounds. The situation had become highly unacceptable.
As he neared the top of the stairs to Division H Headquarters, the large front door burst open and nearly hit him in the face. Two policemen came flying through and knocked him over.
It was as if time stopped. Sévère felt a whoosh of air before the man collided with him. He felt his cane slipping over the thin layer of ice that had formed during the previous night. His left leg gave way. He heard a popping noise issuing from his knee and felt a pain unlike any he’d ever experienced. He almost cried out in agony as the side of his ribcage hit the stone steps. All he could do was hunch his shoulders and tuck in his head to prevent his skull from being cracked open like a raw egg.
‘Blazes!’ one of the men cried, and Sévère wanted to kick his balls like he’d never wanted anything in his whole life.
‘Coroner! Are you hurt?’
Sévère pushed himself up. The cold bit through his gloves and trousers. He swallowed bile. Hands grabbed him under his shoulders, attempting to hoist him upright.
‘Stop it, you blithering idiots!’
‘Just trying to be helpful, Coroner. The steps are frozen over, and it’s easy to slip.’
‘Constables,’ Sévère growled. ‘One more word, and I’ll lose my temper. You two brutes broke my leg.’
‘Blimey, ’ one man muttered.
The other didn’t move. His knees trembled. ‘Chief will kick me out. He will.’
‘Goddammit! I will personally decapitate both of you if you don’t summon a cab within the next two seconds.’
One constable was still frozen to the spot, staring at Sévère, the other constable took the remaining steps in three slithering hops, thrust his arm into the air and hollered, ‘Cabbie! Cabbie!’
It did take longer than two
seconds for an available hansom to arrive at Headquarters, and an eternity for Sévère — aided by the two policemen — to climb into the carriage and sit down. His left limb was painfully crammed into the limited legroom. ‘Guy’s Hospital,’ he called to the driver.
He didn’t know how to hold his leg so that it wouldn’t scream with pain at every turn and every pothole. He clenched his teeth until his ears rang as they rode over cobblestones and wove in and out of the busy traffic. When they finally arrived, he was trembling and bathed in sweat.
‘Would you please call for help? I believe I can’t walk.’ He said it loud and clear to pretend the feeling of helplessness was in no way humiliating.
Two men with a stretcher between them arrived and helped him onto it with surprising gentleness. ‘If Dr Johnston is not too busy, perhaps you could bring me to him.’
‘Leg doesn’t look like it needs to be taken off,’ one of the men muttered.
‘Right now, I wouldn’t mind too much,’ Sévère answered, wiping his damp brow.
And so they marched off toward Johnston’s ward. He’d have to wait, they told him when they placed him on a cot. He squeezed his eyes shut and tried to think of nothing, tried not to count the minutes.
Johnston touched Sévère’s shoulder. ‘Are you paying me a courtesy visit?’
‘You smell of blood.’
‘I usually do. How can I help you?’
‘I believe my knee is fractured. The left.’
Johnston ran his fingertips softly down both sides of Sévère’s left leg. ‘What happened?’
‘I fell down the stairs.’
‘Why?’
A chuckle forced itself out. ‘Well, mainly because of two factors. One: ice-coated stone steps to Division H Headquarters. Two: A police officer who is as blind as a mole and as large as an ox. At the moment, an appropriate comparison for his clumsiness isn’t forthcoming.’