by Hall, Ian
Tanner’s Close, the small alleyway where Margaret Hare kept her boardinghouse, sat in the shadow of the castle, on its westerly side. The grey rock with its high battlements dominated the area, yet the soldiers manning its walls did little to deter the crime that infested the filth below. “We’ve got no money, I tell ye!” Margaret bawled.
Her husband of two years hushed her, waving his arms theatrically as if trying to push the words into the dirty stone floor. “Will you just be shushed?” he hissed, looking to each wall as if it had the ability to hear. “I’m working on it!”
But the woman would not be silenced, she continued for many moments, even after Hare had walked away, slamming the door, and heading for the safety of The Grey Man, the nearest drinking establishment. But Edgar, the burly man behind the counter shook his head.
“Sure, you know I’m good for it.” Hare complained, his Irish lilt accented more than most times, trying to win favor.
“You’ll ha’e to come into another fortune,” Edgar replied. “Yur gettin’ no credit here.”
Another Fortune… Hare left immediately, wondering just how much the pubs were already talking. He determined to set off and find Burke, ostensibly to warn him, but also to cadge a pint if his friend had money left. Outside it had started to snow, big flakes drifting down from a laden February sky. With the smooth cobbles becoming more treacherous by the minute, he set off up the busy Grass Market.
The White Hart gave no clues, The Copper Whistle, less, but he found Burke sitting on his own in the Potter’s Wheel.
“People are talkin’,” he said, flopping down at Burke’s table. “And are you going to buy one for me?”
Burke, puffing lightly on a thin clay pipe, waved at the serving lass, and she nodded. “People are talking, yes?” Hare nodded fervently. “Then you better stop spending like a drunken sailor when you’re flush.” He snapped. “No wonder you’ve got nowt left, you daft ha’penny.”
Knowing a tankard of ale was on its way, Hare bit his tongue and did not react against the lashing. “Aye, you’re right. But what are we going to do about it?”
“What can we do?” Burke hissed low across the table. Burke was born in Urney, County Tyrone, near Strabane and his Irish accent was stronger, more stringent than his partner’s. “It’s not as though you come across a murder victim every day, is it?”
The beers arrived and they drank in silence for a moment.
Hare wiped the foam from his mustache. “There’s no one else at the boarding house, is there?”
“Oh, sure there is!” Burke chided. “An’ when we’re done there, we could move next door to Missus Pollock’s and grab her and her little ones.”
“Oh, d..m you, William Burke, you’ve got a tongue like a knife sometimes.”
“And you, William Hare, haven’t the brain of a tick!”
One beer turned to two, and then to four. In the early evening when the men left the Potter’s Wheel, they walked home through the dirty brown slush, the skies now black, the market area less crowded.
“Can you spare a fare, I’ve got to get home,” Burke’s ears picked up, and he turned in the direction of an old woman, perhaps sixty years old, begging to the few people walking between bars. “Can you help me…?”
Pushing Hare away, he started off towards her. “What’s the matter, darlin’?”
The woman turned, grateful for his attention. “Oh, thank you, sir,” she said, wringing her bare hands. With no shawl, she shivered in the cold. “I need to get home, sir. I’m stranded.”
“Where are you heading?”
“Gilmerton,” Burke recognized the name as a village three miles or so to the south.
“Why you’re a long way from home, missus.”
“Aye, I got left behind when the farmer’s cart left early.” She said. “We was deliverin’ neeps to the castle.”
Burke gave a start. “Then how on earth did you get down here?”
“I’ve been wanderin’ for a bit.”
He motioned to Hare to approach. “William,” he tossed a coin from his coat, “Go get a bottle of something strong at the White Hart, meet me back at Margaret’s place.”
“Oh, no,” the woman protested immediately. “I only need a fare,”
“Darlin’,” he rubbed his hands on her upper arms, trying to get some warmth into her old bones. “The gates are shut now, so they are. Even with a fare, you’re stuck here tonight.” He began to lead her down the hill. “Margaret Hare will give you a bed for the night, she’s a pleasant soul.”
“Oh, you’re so kind…”
“Not at all,” he put his arm around her, “Now watch how you go, it’s slippery. What’s your name anyhow?”
“They call me Abigail,” she smiled up at him as he steered her. “Abigail Simpson.”
“Well now, Abigail Simpson, we’ll soon have you in front of a warm fire.”
~ ~ ~
Hare arrived soon after Abigail got installed in front of the fire. Sat in Margaret’s favorite chair, she nursed a whiskey, and under the attentions of Margaret Hare and Helen McDougal, Burke’s girlfriend, she seemed to be relaxing by the moment.
Margaret filled her glass frequently, a fresh scone in her belly, and happy in her new company. Before long, her chin dropped to her chest, fast asleep.
When they struck, the two moved as a well-oiled machine. Burke slipped a pillow round the chair, and held it firmly in place. Hare fell upon Abigail’s front, crushing her chest and pushing with both hands on the pillow.
Although the poor lady screamed, her sound never left the room.
“Go get the cart,” Burke said, and Hare sped off, a malicious smile on his face. His wife had witnessed the whole act, yet she too, smiled, not a flicker of remorse in her expression. With sure fingers she began to strip the poor woman, dropping her clothes near the fire. She hissed at McDougal to help, but the poor woman was so stiff with fright, her assistance was minimal.
Hare returned in seconds. “It’s not there,”
“What do you mean?” Burke asked, his voice rising.
“The cart’s gone!” he snapped back, “Someone’s gone and borrowed it.”
“D..m!” he railed.
Margaret looked up from the near naked woman. “How about a tea chest?” she indicated the body. “She’s wee, she’d fit.”
Folded in the fetal position, the men soon had Abigail in the tea chest.
“Wait here,” Burke said, “I’m off to Robert Knox, I’ll be back in an hour with a cart.”
Outside, the snow had started again, making just walking hazardous, but half an hour later, the determined Irishman found his way inside the the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh, looking for Fraser Hughes, Knox’s assistant. Her looked in room after room, but found no-one. Then, to his surprise, he saw Doctor Knox in one of the dissecting rooms.
Opening the door silently, he stole inside. “I have another one for you,” he said quietly, folding his cap in his hands as he looked around nervously.
The man stood up from the table in shock, scalpel in hand, a section of skin dropping to the arm, pinned on the table. “You don’t come to me.” Knox looked both horrified and disdainful. “You deal with Hughes,”
“I can’t find him, sir, I tried.”
Knox shook his head and walked promptly to a wall, pulling on a cord. A distant bell rang. Seconds later, a young Fraser Hughes popped his head in a small door. “Yes, Professor?”
Knox indicated Burke. “Deal with this, will you?”
“Aye, sir.” He pulled Burke out of the room by the sleeve. “What are you doing?” he gasped.
“I have another body for you?”
“Do you need a hand to bring it inside?”
“No, It’s at the house, I have it in a tea chest.”
Hughes shoulders slumped. “Where will we meet you?”
“At the back of the castle,” Burke nodded. “King’s Stables Road.”
“I know it.” Hughes said. “I�
��ll be there within the hour.”
And there, before poor Abigail Simpson had cooled, her body had been sold. A living woman, worth no more than a few bob standing, was now worth ten pounds in a tea chest.
Sir Walter Scott said it far better than I…
“Our Irish importation have made a great discovery of Oeconomicks, namely, that a wretch who is not worth a farthing while alive, becomes a valuable article when knockd on the head & carried to an anatomist; and acting on this principle, have cleard the streets of some of those miserable offcasts of society, whom nobody missd because nobody wishd to see them again.”
“I cannot live here,” Helen McDougal said later that night as they huddled in bed.
“Whyfornot?” Burke asked, his mind counting his new wealth, adding it to the money he had saved from previous crimes.
“The house is cursed, Will,” she slipped her arms round him. “Truly cursed.”
He lay for a while. “I have a mate, Brogan’s his name, he’s a carter out at the canal. He’s got a boarding house just a few streets away.”
“Oh, could we move?” Helen asked. “Missus Hare is so stern, I swear I fear for my own life sometimes. I swear she gives me such looks that I too will be worth ten pounds one day.”
Burke hugged her close. “I’ll see to it.”
~ ~ ~
Next morning over salty porridge, the two men sat at the kitchen table.
“What did you do with Donald’s clothes? His stuff?” Burke asked, seeing Abigail’s clothes still in a heap near the fire.
“I think they’re in the room, why?”
“D..m it man, if we’re to remain alive, we’ve got to be tidier with our loose ends.”
“So what do you suggest?” hare said. “Burn them?”
“No, the smoke would be wrong, and buttons left behind in our ashes. Why not dump them in the canal? It’s just up the road.” he said, “We’ll weigh them down with stones, and if they ever floated to the top, it’d tell the story of a misadventure by drowning.” He nodded, pleased at his own deduction. “It’d take any eyes away from us, so it would. The murders would be in Tollcross, not Grass market.”
On the next evening, 1st March, Burke accompanied Hare to the canal terminus. Hare walked up the canal for a while, as Burke concluded the new digs for he and his girlfriend.
In Edinburgh, the walled city, rumours fly around like as many bees in a hive. Some contain kernels of truth, while some are aimless, without fact or grounding.
Some men, and in this regard we include William Burke, are able to mask their true selves, hiding behind clever lies and a face that sits impassive whatever the occasion.
Some men, like William Hare, have faces like windows. Shakespeare once wrote that the ‘eyes are windows to the soul’, and in Hare this was true.
As William Burke moved those two streets away from his friend’s boarding house, he considered himself to be above the man, above his braggardly ways. But if only he knew that distancing himself from his friend was the worst thing he could have done.
Left unchecked, the Hare’s spent their money quicker than ever.
~ ~ ~
I left early Wednesday morning, and although I knew I would eat Humble Pie for delivering Burke and Hare late, I strode into Lloyd’s office undaunted.
“Don’t worry, old boy,” Lloyd proved far more congenial than I’d even hoped. “It gave the first story time to circulate. It’s not the first time we’ve delayed chapter two because we’re letting number one get a bit of a head start.”
“I’m glad.” I almost could not bring myself to ask the next question. Almost. “How many have we sold?”
He looked at a sheet on his desk. “Three thousand and counting, and I’ve sent a thousand to Manchester already, we’re getting beat by Mysteries of London there too.”
My heart leapt, on my first chapter, I had already neared my advance, and real money beckoned. I left the office with an envelope for Rymer and Prest, walking on air.
I passed young Reggie, sitting on the ground, leaning against the building. I’d almost passed him by. “What are you doing, Reggie?”
He stood up in a flash, ready for flight, then settled himself as he recognized me. “Nothing, sir. Jus’ waiting for my next job, sir.”
It hit me like a slap to the face. “Wait here, don’t move an inch.”
I stalked back inside the printers and sought Lloyd without invite. “I have a favor to ask,”
Lloyd looked up from his desk. “Yes?”
“I need to borrow Reggie for a week,” I quickly searched for a reason, “I have some romantic running to be done.”
Lloyd grinned. “Sure, take him. I have a few. He’s clever, but don’t trust paying him ahead of time.”
“I won’t.”
Reggie was standing, grimy hands in grimy pockets. “I’ve got a job for you.”
“What’s that then?”
“Some detective work, I’ve cleared it with Mister Lloyd inside; he says I can have you for a week or so.”
“Detective work?” he squealed. “I’m on a tanner a day, remember.”
“I’ll give you eightpence,” I said flicking him a thruppeny bit. “Go get yourself a pie, meet me at my house, downstairs, under the step.”
He caught the coin with a quick arc of his hand. “Yessir!” and off he dashed.
And of course, by the time I arrived in Burton Street, he was already sitting at the bottom of the stairs going to the basement apartment where Thackeray lived. I couched close. “Have you eaten?”
“Yessir, jus’ like you said.”
“Okay. Your job is this; every time a man comes out of this house, you follow them to where they’re going, then come back here. You don’t wait for them, you just scoot back here.” Reggie nodded, his face serious. “Your main job is to remain unseen. And you remember everything. I’ll try and get to you sometime every day to catch up. I’ll also make sure you get a bit of food from our housekeeper. Clear?”
“Clear as glass,” Reggie said, pointing over the street. “There’s an alley I can hide in over there.”
I cleared it with Thackeray that a boy might be calling at odd hours, and to keep him fed. “I’m using him as a runner, saving carriage fees.” I lied a little, although saving the carriage fees at sixpence per ride would easily cover Reggie’s wages.
On Wednesday, Reynold’s manuscript arrived, and as the messenger trotted off, I looked for Reggie. Sure enough, he stood in the shadows of the alleyway opposite.
I motioned him over.
“Is everything okay?”
“Yessir,” he beamed.
A coach slowed to a halt at the door, and I recognized my partners inside. “Crap. That coach contains the men I want watched…” To my surprise, Reggie acted far quicker than I. He made like he’d just delivered the package under my arm, doffed his cap and ran off. The alighting men paid him not one iota of attention.
“Alexander!” my uncle roared. “Thackeray told me you had risen,” he waved me away from the door. “Inside, inside!”
Once I’d handed over the fortnight’s earnings, and been toasted a dozen times, I felt I should do the decent thing, and admit to my other dealings. “I have two admissions to make,”
Rymer and Prest looked up from the pile of cash on Rymer’s desk. “This does not bode well,” my uncle said.
“I feel my heart is burdened, and I must come clean with my dealings with Lloyd.”
“Out with it lad,” Prest’s serious tone surfaced. “No secrets here.”
“I have a writing deal with Edward Lloyd in my own capacity,” I paused fishing a copy of Burke and Hare from my briefcase. “I sold this, and am getting paid.”
Uncle James laughed. “Is that all?” he looked at the story, “So our talent runs in the family!” Dash it all if the pair didn’t toast my success.
Prest also looked up from the pamphlet. “So this venture has bought the desk in the dining room?”
“Ah
, that is my second admission,” forced into it, I questioned the way forward. “I met Kitty’s Aunt, Lady Clara, in an auction, just north of town. She bid and paid for the desk, but I never got a chance to pay her back.”
Uncle James patted my shoulder, then held it to make his point. “Alexander, if she bought it, just accept it, the woman could buy and sell us many times over.” He slapped five guineas in my hand. “Your wages, but if your stories ever outsell Varney, you start to pay for your keep!”
“Agreed!” and we caroused in our drunkenness of money, for indeed there appeared to be a lot of it on the desktop.
Five minutes later they were on their way out, monies in pockets, heading south.
The next morning, I asked Thackeray if Uncle James had returned.
“He has not,” she replied, first setting a plate of oatmeal in front of me, then taking one outside for Reggie. “Boy looks like he’s been starving most of his life.” Seemingly Reggie’s appearance had awakened a maternal side to our rough housekeeper. Lifting my plate I followed her route, finding myself in the area under the outside stair. Reggie was crouched in a corner, already having cleared half his bowl.
If Dickens himself had not already penned the character of the Artful Dodger, I swear Reggie would have been my own facsimile of it. With a winning smile, yet an invisible countenance, he was the perfect investigator.
“The two men last night?” I questioned, once Thackeray had closed the door.
“Fleet Street,” he said, wiping his mouth on his dirty sleeve. “They went into a club opposite the Punch Tavern. They didn’t come out for hours.”
“I nodded. Good, next time you follow them there, nip round the back, see if they use it as a false door.”
“Okay, Guv’,” he said precociously, handing me the empty bowl. “What do I do now?”
“Watch for the men, follow them, find out where they go. Why don’t you start in the alley behind the club?”
To my surprise when I opened Reynold’s envelope, I found I had to wade through a whopping 7000 words.
New characters to me, lost loves, it took me three times just reading it to make any sense. I edited it lightly, then hit it with a harder pen. The mess that I leave below was the best I could make under the circumstances. If you do not wish to read this particular chapter, or get swallowed in its meanderings, I would not be a bit surprised.