The Thames River Murders (6 page)

Donata’s box was lavish, and as usual, full of guests. At the interval, plenty of ladies and gentlemen visited to gossip away. Donata, in one of her extravagant headdresses, sat happily in the middle of it.

I slipped out, seeking a moment away from the chaos. Donata saw me go, and understood. She was in her element here, but knew I was not.

Under the colonnade outside, hopeful ladies of the demimonde smiled at me, but they recognized me and knew I was a devoted husband. That did not prevent them teasing me, however.

“Now then, Captain,” one young lady said, slipping her hand into the crook of my arm. “Walk with me a bit, will you?”

She was several steps above a street girl—the kind Black Nancy had been. She reminded me more of Marianne Simmons, an actress who had taken up with protectors for survival.
 

This young woman had black hair and blue eyes, wore plenty of rouge on cheeks and on her bosom, and dressed in an elegant gown of blue lace and silk worthy of Donata.

“I emerged only to take the air,” I said to her. “Nothing else. I would rather walk alone.”

“No, you would not,” she said, steering me from the piazza with a surprisingly strong hand.

“If you are dragging me off to rob me, I must warn you I have very little,” I said. “My watch fob was given to me by my wife, so I must ask to keep that, though you are welcome to the few coins in my pocket. And to my handkerchief. My valet is quite adamant about keeping me in linens.”

The young woman laughed. “Ain’t you a one? I wish you
weren’t
so interested in your wife, sir. You’d be lively. Perhaps when you grow tired of married life, you’ll seek me?”

“If my wife shows me the door for hurrying away with you now, I will be back in my rooms above a bakeshop and hopelessly poor again,” I said. “Shall you risk it?”

She only pealed in laughter again. She had been determinedly walking me around the corner to James Street, which led south into the large square that was Covent Garden.

This late, the vendors would have closed up and gone, to wait for early morning when their wares came in from the country. At the moment, Covent Garden would be home to the denizens of the night, ready to prey on the unwary.

I managed to detach myself from the lady as we walked down the shadowy street, but she grabbed me again in a firm grip. Another young woman closed on me from the other side, this one a street girl, and together, the pair dragged me on toward the square.

They must have known I would not deliberately hurt a woman. I was pondering making an exception in this case—they might be taking me to men who would relieve me of my watch, its precious fob, coins, and even clothes, which would fetch a good price with secondhand merchants.

I noted the absence of Brewster, who would be handy about now. Of course, he’d choose this instance to grow tired of following me.

The ladies drew me to a halt in the deep shadow of an arch in a corner of Covent Garden market. On the other side of this wall, ironically, was Grimpen Lane, where my rooms above the bakeshop lay.
 

“I promise you,” I tried. “You’d do better to lie in wait for a wealthier gentleman.”

My young lady in finery grinned. “Never you mind that. We’ve not brought you here to rob you. A friend wants to speak to you.”

“Friend?” I could not imagine who they meant. I knew several of the street girls, most notably Felicity, a black-skinned young woman who had a ruthless streak in her. Felicity, however, if she wished to see me, would simply find me herself.

“He’s not much for the opera,” the young woman continued.

“If he wishes to call upon me, he has only to send a card,” I said. “Or a letter. I can arrange to meet him in my rooms if he wishes anonymity.”

She patted my arm. “He never said you were so amusing.”

The street girl who’d come to help her remained silent, unsmiling. Behind the belligerence in her eyes, I read worry. I wondered very much.

“Captain.” A terse voice came out of the darkness. “I had word you wished to speak with me.”

I recognized the accent with its touch of the west of England, the man holding a hardness that was quiet but with an edge. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I saw the balding head and sharp face of the surgeon I’d met a few months ago, the one I’d gone to Denis to seek.

He did not emerge from the shadows, but I gave him a bow. “Well met,” I said. “You are a difficult man to find.”

Chapter Six

The surgeon did not speak as I told him quietly what I wished him to do. The courtesan and the street girl faded from us, disappearing into the gathering mists, as though they’d never been there.

The surgeon studied me with cold dark eyes as I described the bones and related how I’d taken them from the house in Wapping to store at Grenville’s. I saw no flicker of interest, nothing.

“I’d be most grateful for your opinion,” I finished.

The man watched me for a few more heartbeats, before he said. “We’ll go now.”

I recalled Donata’s insistence than when I examined the bones again she come with me. However, I knew that if I asked the surgeon to wait while I dashed back into the opera house to fetch her, he would fade as quickly as the young women had done. I’d never see him again.

I gave him a nod. “I will find a hackney.”

“I have a conveyance.” He turned abruptly and strode into the mist.

I hobbled after him, my stick making too much noise on the cobbles. Fog magnified sound in the square which, while it still had plenty of people wandering about it, was eerily quiet tonight.

I reached Russel Street to find the surgeon waiting by a dark carriage pulled by two bay horses. A coachman hunkered on his box, head bent against the fog. He looked nothing more than a bundle of clothes with a whip poking from them.

The surgeon opened the small coach’s door. I put my foot on the step, preparing to haul myself inside when his hand on my elbow assisted me up efficiently. His grip was strong, his guidance sure. I sat down without my usual difficulty.

The surgeon climbed quietly in as I planted my walking stick on the floor. He glanced once at the stick, no doubt remembering I kept a stout sword inside it.

He said not a word to me as we trundled through foggy London from Covent Garden to Mayfair. We went by way of Long Acre, then to Leicester Square and Coventry Street to Piccadilly. North through Berkeley Square and so to Grosvenor Street, the coach halting precisely at Grenville’s front door.

During this journey, the surgeon had not spoken. He’d not gazed out the window or at me, only fixed his eyes on some point behind me and remained silent.

When the coach stopped, the surgeon looked at me directly. “Go inside. Keep the servants away, then return and fetch me.”

I nodded my understanding and opened the coach’s door before the footman in Grenville’s vestibule could do it for me. I got myself down as the lad reached me, and shut the carriage door before he could look inside.

Grenville was at home, the footman informed me, but dressing to go out. I knew just how long this process could take, and I knew that if I made the surgeon wait, or if Grenville commanded a servant to bring him inside, he’d simply leave. I had this chance and no other.

I handed the footman a coin. Servants expected gratuity from guests they assisted, though Grenville’s had long ago forgiven me that obligation. The lad looked startled and stared at the penny in his hand.

“No need, sir,” he began to say, but I shook my head.

“Send Matthias to me, if he is here. And go downstairs and have some … coffee.”

I tapped the side of my nose. The footman looked enlightened—I was asking for discretion, though he wasn’t certain what for.
 

He darted off for the back stairs, and I waited in the cool staircase hall, hoping Matthias wouldn’t be too long. I could give the order to Matthias to clear the ground floor and path to the cellar and be certain he’d carry it out without question—at least, he’d save his questions for later.

However, it was not Matthias who came down the stairs on light feet but Grenville himself.

“Lacey?” he called as he skimmed down the steps. “What the devil? You dash in here and leave a
corpse
in my cellar without so much as a note for explanation. I send word to South Audley Street demanding to know what you mean by it, and I’m told you’re at the opera of all places. Damn it, man, what is it all about?”

Grenville’s eyes were alight, but with curiosity, not anger. He’d once told me he’d befriended me because he could never be certain what I would do, and today I had only confirmed this conviction.

I decided to let his curiosity burn a little longer. “Come and see. May we enter your cellars? Or did you move the poor woman?”

“Woman, is it?”

Grenville reached the foot of the stairs. He was dressed to go out, in black pantaloons with buttons at his ankles, fine shoes, a pristine linen shirt and perfectly knotted cravat. Only his coat was wrong—a frock coat meant to be worn in the afternoon rather than a formal evening one.
 

He must have snatched up the first garment he’d laid hands on in his charge downstairs, which conveyed his agitation more than words ever could. The fact that he readily skimmed toward the backstairs without even thinking to change his clothes also betrayed his eagerness.

Despite Grenville’s swift pace, Matthias appeared and reached the door to the backstairs before him—Grenville rarely touched a door handle in his own house.

“Wait,” I commanded. I surged forward and gave Matthias the orders I’d meant to give before Grenville appeared—to clear the way so that none would see who entered.
 

Matthias obviously wanted to ask why, but he only nodded and slipped down the stairs to obey.

Not long later, Matthias led me, Grenville, and the surgeon through the eerily deserted passages that led past the servants’ hall, the kitchen where Anton had accosted me earlier, and the scullery. Candles burned in holders and in sconces, lighting no one.

The wine cellar was illuminated by a few lanterns hung on the walls in anticipation of our arrival. The crate was where I’d left it, between tall racks that were half full of bottles. Some of the finest port and small casks of brandy reposed here, and I’d shoved a box of old bones among them.

Matthias, on my order, dragged it out. Grenville gestured to a table on the other side of the room, and Matthias lugged the crate to it.

“You can imagine what transpired when I had Matthias open this not an hour ago so I could look inside,” Grenville said as Matthias maneuvered the crate to the top of the table. “He pried loose the lid, and a grinning skull looked up at us. I believe our collective shout reached the top of the house.”

“You weren’t that loud, sir,” Matthias said. He took up an iron bar for opening crates of wine. “I imagine your voice only reached the kitchen.” He busily loosened the lid and set it aside.

The surgeon had said nothing at all as Grenville and Matthias had chattered nervously. He’d remained in the shadows, several paces behind us. Now he came forward and reached into the box himself.

As Thompson had in the rooms under the magistrate’s house, the surgeon competently laid out the skeleton. He did so more quickly than Thompson, never having to pause to decide what went where.

In less than ten minutes, he’d reconstructed the body of the woman, stretched out across Grenville’s table, the brown bones small and pitiable.

The surgeon remained silent as he bent to study the body. When he needed more light, he snapped his fingers at Matthias and pointed to a lantern, which Matthias brought without question.

The surgeon took the candle out of the lantern, and leaned with it over the bones, cupping his hand to keep the wax from dripping.

The three of us watching didn’t speak at all. I couldn’t take my eyes from the surgeon as he nearly pressed his nose to the body, examining every single bone, every joint, every dried bit of skin that clung here and there.

“Female,” he said at long last. “As you said. Young. Never bore a child. From a middle-class family, possibly a wealthy one. A healthy young woman, robust. This …” He pointed to the crack in her skull “… no doubt killed her. No other signs of injury. She was struck hard, once, with a thin, blunt object. Poker, maybe. Or maybe an iron bar of some kind. Died almost instantly. Whoever struck the blow either was very lucky or knew precisely how to do it.”

“The injury could not have been from a fall?” I asked. “Or something falling on
her
? An accident?”

The surgeon shook his head. “Her face would have been more crushed, with more splintering of bones. She was struck.” He leaned closer to her. “I put her age about nineteen, certainly no more than early twenties. Where did you say she was found?”

“Wapping docks,” I said. “Caught under a piling. Found ten years ago.”

“Mm.” The surgeon touched the woman’s arm bone, rubbing his finger along it. “If she was in the water from her time of death, I’d guess she’d been there no less than a few years. Flesh deteriorates quickly and fish consume it in a surprisingly short time. She is nothing but bones—five years might be the outside mark, if she were thrown into the water right away. I can be no more accurate.”

Grenville blinked. “Good God—it’s accurate enough. How on earth can you know all that?”

The surgeon met his gaze, his eyes cold and remote. “That she was healthy, her bones strong, her body straight, suggest to me she was not of the working class. She has a family wealthy enough to feed her and care for her, and she did not have to do manual labor. State of her teeth tell me how old she was. I speculate she is not an aristocrat or gentry, because a great to-do would have been made of her disappearance. This suggests her family is not significant enough to have every detail about them printed in the papers.”

I removed the necklace and strip of cloth Thompson had given me from my pocket. Donata had pronounced the cloth fine and the necklace delicately wrought gold, which supported the surgeon’s theory that her family had had money.