Murder in St. Giles

by Jennifer Ashley

  Brewster rode inside with me, sitting in the opposite corner and stretching out his big legs.

  “I can find out where your Mr. Lacey is resting,” he offered as we started.

  “Don’t trouble yourself.” I glanced out the window as we turned to Mount Street, heading toward Berkeley Square. “He came to discuss improvements to the estate. It will keep.”

  “That’s what he told you, is it?”

  I became aware of Brewster’s sharp scrutiny. “Yes. Why?”

  Brewster’s look turned pitying. “He didn’t waltz all the way to London to ask you about what walls need shoring up or what fields need plowing. He came because His Nibs sent for him. For a job. Mr. Denis is the one who’s putting him up. Oh, not in Curzon Street, but he’d have found Mr. Lacey some decent digs, mark my words.”

  Chapter 10

  Brewster stopped my hotheaded rush to Denis to demand exactly what he wanted Marcus for. His Nibs’ business, Brewster said, and Mr. Denis wouldn’t thank me for interfering.

  My business when it’s my family, I thought but did not say.

  I kept myself calm as we headed for St. Giles, though I fumed at both Denis and Marcus. Marcus had said he’d come asking forgiveness, but he hadn’t bloody told me the truth about his trip, had he?

  Once in St. Giles Brewster began asking in local lodgings whether Finch had stayed there. Bartholomew would be doing the same when he and Matthias could get away, but we might turn up something.

  “Would he have even stayed in the area?” I asked after we’d had no luck in three houses that had signs reading “Lodgings for Travelers” in their windows. “If he’d wanted to lie low, would he not choose a district where he and his family were unknown?”

  Brewster shrugged. “Finch weren’t the brightest burning candle. He fixed on a purpose and didn’t consider the danger.”

  I didn’t entirely agree. If Finch was indeed a convict, he would try to hide himself. The penalty for a transported man returning before his sentence was up was death.

  We checked more houses but only had shrugs and “mayhaps” from the landlords. Even the liberal sprinkling of coins brought forth no information.

  “He could have put up with a ’cquaintance,” Brewster said as we went along. “A lady, I mean. Or slept at a nunnery. The abbesses will let a man stay regular if they knows him and if he pays.”

  “Even an escaped criminal?”

  “If he pays enough. Most houses have men meaner than Finch to keep gents tame.”

  I scanned the crowded street, the brick houses marching in a long, sagging line.

  After London’s massive fire a hundred and fifty years ago, houses were no longer built in the beautiful old half-timbered style that could still be seen in villages in East Anglia.

  Much of St. Giles had been built up since the fire, but its houses were already falling down, making life inside precarious. The lanes south of Great Russell Street were narrow and filthy, the stench overpowering. St. Giles was where the last Great Plague of London had begun.

  “Which are the nunneries?” I asked Brewster, looking down the lane. “They don’t post signs.”

  “Throw a brick,” Brewster grunted. “The ladies inside won’t peach on their best-paying customers, mind. But Em can ask. She’s mates with many of them still.”

  Before I could comment on this, the door of a house opened to disgorge Lamont Quimby, Runner for Sir Montague Harris.

  He saw me and stopped short, then he smiled and tipped his hat. “Good morning, Captain. I see you have a similar idea. Discover who the dead gent resided with. Any luck?”

  “No,” I had to say.

  Brewster faded a step behind me, grim and silent.

  “Alas, nor I. A Runner is not welcome in these streets. But I have discovered a few things. Shall we find a public house or tavern that will give us coffee—or ale if your man prefers?”

  My “man” said nothing. I acquiesced, and Mr. Quimby and I walked to High Holborn, Brewster lumbering behind.

  I expected Brewster to vanish into the mist, but he was still with us when we entered a public house already doing a lively business. I asked for coffee and was given an indifferent brew, but I drank it, grateful for the bitter taste to jar my senses.

  Quimby asked Brewster to join us at our table, and he did, to my surprise. Quimby took coffee as well, and Brewster had a mug of ale.

  “The coroner examined the body yesterday,” Mr. Quimby said after a fastidious sip. “You might be astonished to learn, as I was, that the cause of death was not the beating.”

  Brewster stopped in the act of taking his first drink. He coughed and set down his tankard. “It weren’t?”

  “No, sir.” Quimby met Brewster’s gaze. “Mr. Jack Finch was stabbed to death.”

  Our reactions must have been satisfying. Brewster’s jaw went slack, and I felt my own mouth hanging open. The twinkle in Quimby’s eyes betrayed his enjoyment.

  “S’truth,” Brewster said. He sat back with a thump and wiped a hand over his face.

  “He had been beaten rather thoroughly,” Quimby went on. “A lesser man might have died of those wounds, but this gent was tough enough to survive them.”

  “I saw no stab marks,” I said, blinking. “No concentration of blood.”

  “Not revealed until the coroner did his examination. Had to wash away many layers of dirt to find the wound, and his clothes concealed it well. Upward thrust through the ribs. Very professional. Very little bleeding. A trained man who knew exactly where to strike to kill.” Quimby darted Brewster an amused look. “That lets you out, Mr. Brewster.”

  Brewster’s brows lowered. “How the devil do you figure that?”

  Quimby took another calm sip of coffee. “You are well known to the magistrates, Mr. Brewster. You have, as we say, form. But yours is a reputation for thievery and bare-knuckle fighting and as a bone cracker. Not knifing and assassination. For the last ten years, you’ve been quiet and well behaved, no longer of interest to the Runners. Also very careful. They could never fit you up for anything.”

  “Well.” Brewster let out a heavy breath.

  “Your fists are your usual weapons,” Quimby said. “And by the state of your hands, you’ve been using them.”

  Brewster’s jaw tightened and he slid his hands to his lap. “Course I did. Yesterday. Fought a young bloke what wants to be a pugilist. Laid him out. He’s not a bad lad, but he has more to learn.”

  “Indeed, the streets of St. Giles today are rife with tales of your prowess. You are well respected.”

  “Aye, well.” Brewster lifted his ale with an air of relief.

  I knew Quimby didn’t believe for a moment that the abrasions on Brewster’s knuckles came from the fight with young Mr. Oliver alone. But he said nothing.

  “How did you discover the man’s identity?” I asked, trying to sound offhand.

  Quimby looked wise. “We’re sent reports when prisoners escape. Takes a bit to get to us, but we have descriptions and drawings. One fit our dead man exactly—Mr. Jack Finch, sent down for robbery with violence five years past.”

  “I see,” I made myself say.

  “But you must have known his name,” Quimby responded in his quiet way. “We looked for his family and found one Emily Finch, who is listed in the church of St. Giles-in-the-Fields’ register as having married one Thomas Brewster.”

  Brewster gave him a resigned nod.

  “The mark of fists as large as yours on Mr. Finch were plain,” Quimby went on. “But there were marks of a smaller hand, as you saw. Did you attack him alongside a second man, Mr. Brewster? And who was he?”

  “S’truth,” Brewster whispered again, sweat beading his brow.

  “You do not have to answer,” I said quickly.

  “It don’t matter.” Brewster wrapped his reddened hands around his tankard. “He already knows, and I guess he’ll get the evidence if he wants it. I did fight with the bloke. Finchie gave me a good run, but in the end, I had hi
m on the floor. As I told the captain here, I stashed him in that house and went to fetch money to make him go away. When I returned, he were dead. I never saw a second man, never saw no knife. I didn’t look. I knew Finch were dead, and I locked the door and left him there. That is God’s honest truth.”

  His words rang with sincerity. The fear on his face spoke of it too.

  “Thank you,” Quimby said. “For now, I will take that as the sequence of events. Between the time you left him and your return, a second man turned up and stabbed Mr. Finch to death. Or perhaps two men—one to hold him if he tried to defend himself, and one to kill him. Now, I couldn’t tell by the signs how many men stood in that room—there were far too many boot prints, trampled over each other and smeared. Also the paw prints of a dog outside the door. The place was a mess of mud, and it’s been raining this week.”

  Quimby took another sip of coffee and fell silent.

  “How long did it take you to fetch the money?” I asked Brewster.

  Brewster studied a beam on the ceiling. “Reckon half an hour? Maybe three-quarters? I weren’t looking at any clock.”

  “Plenty of time,” Quimby said cheerfully. “Now, Mr. Brewster, tell me who could have wanted to kill Mr. Finch.”

  “Any cove what met him.”

  “I am gathering that. But what about his family? His enemies?”

  Brewster shook his head and repeated what he’d told me—that Mrs. Brewster hadn’t seen him in years and that she and her sister had been happy to see the back of him.

  “And where is her sister?”

  “In St. Giles,” Brewster said. “Not far from our rooms. Em looks after her.”

  “Hmm,” Quimby said. “Finch might have gone to see your wife’s sister first.”

  “Mayhap,” Brewster said. “But Em was head of the family, like. Everyone went to her.”

  “Even so. I would like to speak to her sister, when it is convenient.”

  Brewster sent him a dark glance. “She’s not a well woman.”

  “I will not have to worry her long,” Quimby said. “We can call upon your wife along the way. I have no intention of browbeating her, only asking a question or two.”

  Brewster scowled but nodded.

  Quimby continued to enjoy his coffee, in no hurry to leave. “I am trying to discover not only Mr. Finch’s history but to follow his path after he was condemned. He spent time in the hulks in Sheppey before being shipped to the penal colony in Van Diemen’s Land. Sending for information from the Antipodes will take some time, but the guards at the hulks might be worth speaking to. There’s a merchant captain who docks near there that we suspect makes arrangements to help prisoners leave their captivity in New South Wales when they’re tired of it. I’ll be heading to Sheppey in the morning.”

  Quimby spoke optimistically about what might be a damp and joyless journey, but I saw why Sir Montague had given him this case. He was nothing if not dogged.

  “Now then, Mr. Brewster.” Mr. Quimby drained the last drops from his cup. “Shall we pay a visit to your sister-in-law?”

  Mrs. Brewster, as expected, was less than happy to see her husband bring home a Runner, and certainly did not want to lead him to her sister.

  Quimby spoke quietly to Mrs. Brewster, at his most reassuring. “I wish only to ask a question or two. You may attend, as well as your husband and the captain.”

  Mrs. Brewster was not put at her ease, but seemed thankful that I was coming along. I suppose she believed I could keep Mr. Quimby curbed.

  Martha Cowper, nee Finch, lived a few streets from the Brewsters, in a tiny room above a muddy courtyard. She received us in a room with comfortable if not elegant furnishings—I saw that Brewster’s income must fund her as well.

  Mrs. Cowper was as thin as her sister, but her slenderness was frail rather than wiry. She did not rise from her chair near the fire as Mrs. Brewster led us in, having first come up to warn the lady.

  “He come here,” Mrs. Cowper said to Quimby. Her eyes held defiance. “Jack were after money, as usual. He took all I had.” She gestured to a box on the mantel. I moved to it and opened it, finding in it nothing but dust.

  “I’m sorry for that,” Quimby told her, his voice gentle. “Did you see anyone following him? Did he tell you he was worried about any particular person?”

  Mrs. Cowper shook her head. Her hair was the same shade of brown as Emily Brewster’s, but it was lank, pulled into a sloppy knot under her cap. “I can’t rise from this chair to be looking much out the window,” she said with a frown. “And he didn’t say nothing to me. Only grabbed the money and was gone. Worth it to be rid of him.”

  She sank back and closed her eyes.

  Mrs. Brewster shooed us out. She remained with her sister while we three gentlemen descended to the street.

  “I doubt very much she skulked after Mr. Finch and stuck a knife into him,” I told Quimby. “She is obviously ill.”

  Quimby nodded. “Yes, poor thing. I was not so much in search of a suspect, Captain, but interested in learning more about Finch. She did confirm that he was enough of a bully to rob from his ailing sister. Such a man will not endear himself to many.”

  “True enough,” Brewster grunted.

  “Well.” Quimby adjusted his hat against the rain that had begun to come down again. “I’ll do one more canvass of the area, then return home to prepare for my journey. If you discover Mr. Finch’s lodgings or a person who saw him, you will send word to Sir Montague, will you not?”

  I assured him I would. Not much point in refusing.

  Once we parted from Quimby, Brewster said, “Let the Robin keep poking around St. Giles and get his beak broke. I’m off to find old Shaddock.”

  I agreed we could probably do no more here. Matthias and Bartholomew might have more luck.

  A hackney took us from St. Giles to the river and east along this to Wapping. Nearby, at the office of the Thames River Police, my friend Peter Thompson looked into thefts and other crimes involving the huge merchantmen that docked along the Thames.

  Bare masts rose black against the white-gray sky, gulls calling as they circled, looking for food among the flotsam.

  Several streets from the river, Brewster bade our driver stop before a small house sandwiched between others exactly like it. He pounded on the door, which was opened by a stout woman with allover gray hair and a hard expression.

  That expression turned to amazement. “Good Lord, it’s Tommy Brewster. What you want, after all these years?”

  Brewster gave the woman a nod. “He in?”

  Her hazel eyes widened. “That all you have to say? After all this time? Yes, he’s in, all right. In the back, staring morosely at his garden. I’m Mrs. Shaddock, dear,” she said, shifting her gaze to me. “Are you a fighter? That how you injured yourself?”

  I removed my hat. “Captain Gabriel Lacey, at your service. The injury is from the Peninsular War.”

  Mrs. Shaddock’s face softened. “Poor lamb. It’s cruel the young men who came back without an arm or leg, or too sick to work. And the price of grain going up so high a body can’t afford a piece of bread to feed himself. No wonder there’s so many riots.”

  “Indeed,” was all I could think of to say. The hardship of those who had little turned to frustration, which was eking out in unrest, stirred by men like Henry Hunt and others.

  “Well, as I said, he’s in the back,” Mrs. Shaddock said. “Willing the Lord to slow down the rain so he can go out and get his hands all mucky. Stick with fighting, love, I tell him. You’re a much better pugilist than you are a gardener. But a man must have his hobby.”

  She took my hat and greatcoat, shaking them off before she hung them beside the fire to dry.

  I followed Brewster through a narrow passage to a room at the back that ran the width of the house.

  Large windows gave onto a tiny walled garden softened with ivy and rows of green. A large patch of wet loam gathered rain in the middle. A number of birds from sparrows t
o wrens to robins were hopping about this patch, pecking the upturned earth.

  “They’re stealing all me seed,” a small, elderly man spluttered, glaring out the window. He rapped on the glass. “Go on. Get out of it!”

  A few of the birds fluttered away but returned to probing the dirt, the rain not bothering them one whit.

  “Greedy little buggers.” The man growled and turned from the window. “Oh, it’s you, is it, Tommy?” His eyes held trepidation, though he attempted to hide it. “Mrs. Shaddock, bring in ale for our guests. Don’t dawdle, my girl.”

  “I’m already bringing it.” Mrs. Shaddock rustled in, bearing a tray, an earthen jug, and four tankards. “Keep your britches on, Mr. S. There now, Captain. You’ll find it cool and refreshing.”

  She set down the tray and poured out ale for each of us and one for herself.

  “It’s a reunion,” she said raising her glass. “With new friends. Here’s to you, Tommy, and to Captain Lacey. What do you think, Mr. S? The captain here fought Boney the Bastard.”

  “Not personally,” I said.

  “Course not.” Mrs. Shaddock flashed me a grin, letting a pretty young woman peek out from behind the gray hair and faded skin.

  “Eh?” Shaddock peered at me.

  What struck me was how small Mr. Shaddock was. His body was bent with age—I put him about seventy—but he had never been large.

  I’d been picturing a giant of a man like Brewster himself, or powerful and sinewy like Jackson. But Shaddock was tiny. His wife topped him by a foot and was twice his girth.

  Shaddock’s hands bore scars that showed they’d been broken and healed, I guessed several times in his life. I found myself wanting to compare the small prints on Finch’s neck to Shaddock’s fists.

  But Shaddock was elderly, and I doubted he would have had the strength to go against a big man like Finch. Even already half broken by Brewster, Finch could have fought back. And if Finch had been unconscious when Shaddock found him, why bother punching him with such great force?

  I could imagine Shaddock getting under Finch’s reach and stabbing him. Shaddock’s movements were quick and sure, not the slow shuffle of many men his age.