Person or Persons Unknown (17 page)

Sir John, who had stood aside in silence during the interrogation, then stepped forward and waved his hand to end further questioning.

“Enough, Kate, please. Mr. Bailey was acting in a reasonable way when he held him for my arrival. He knew that I would want to question him myself.”

“But, Jack, Mr. Tolliver is such a good man! He would never…”

“And a wonderful butcher, as well, as I can attest. And of course he would never — but he found the body, and I must ask him about that.”

Somewhat mollified, she waited until Annie had him properly tucked into his coat. Then did Lady Fielding step forward, squared his hat upon his head, and planted a kiss on his cheek.

“I’m sure you’ll do what’s right. Jack.”

With that, we left, going by way of Russell Street — I hoping to catch no glimpse of the evil fellow who had laid that evil proposition before me, and mercifully having my hope fulfilled. As we tramped along Russell, I found myself looking among the imposing structures for the one which housed Mrs. Gould’s notorious bagnio. I had been there once to deliver a letter. I remember thinking it a great joke to be among all the ladies walking about in their shifts. I no longer thought it so funny. What might I have thought then had I heard Mariah’s screams resounding through the place? All that I knew now of her life in London burdened me greatly.

Entering Covent Garden, I urged him to the left that we might walk its perimeter, rather than attempt to traverse it. There was a bit of light from the windows in the surrounding buildings, and the moon was out. Nevertheless, I was glad to have the lantern Mr. Baker had given me. I held it high with one hand, and the other I had fixed round the butt of the pistol on my hip.

Sir John moved with me, step for step, his left hand upon my right shoulder. He had little to say, which surprised me somewhat. I thought perhaps to volunteer my views on the matter of this latest homicide, yet decided against burdening him with them, for he seemed deep in thought. At one point, after we had turned right in the direction of Henrietta Street, I heard the murmur of voices from the stalls. Sir John must have felt me tense in response, for he spoke to ease my apprehension.

“Women and men together,” said he. ”I doubt there’s much to fear from them.”

“As you say, sir.”

“How many will be there when we arrive?”

I named them all, including Mr. Tolliver.

“You’ve neglected one,” said he.

“Oh? Who is that. Sir John?”

“The corpus. Let us hope she has a thing or two to tell us.”

Thus we came to Henrietta Street with the passage now well within sight. There I saw an unmistakably familiar wagon and team.

“There’s a surprise,” said I.

“What do you mean, Jeremy?”

“Just ahead on Henrietta, by the passage — the Raker’s arrived. I see his wagon.”

“No doubt he was called to some house nearby,” said Sir John. “He’s rather an unfortunate creature, is he not?”

I considered that a moment. “I suppose that he is. Yet he seems to like his work, repulsive though it may seem to us. He has his own little kingdom there in that barn of his,” said I, again echoing Mr. Donnelly. “He rules his house of the dead.”

“Would you not call such a one an unfortunate creature?”

“I see your point, sir.”

All except Mr. Cowley were gathered at the entrance to the passage. He, I learned, had been sent up the passage with his lantern to search for the murder weapon. There was a great quarrel in progress between the Raker and Mr. Donnelly as we approached. Remembering their previous meeting, I was not in the least surprised.

“Ah, there you are, Sir John,” called out Mr. Donnelly. “Perhaps you will settle this for us.”

“I will if you gentlemen will let me.”

“Aye, you’re the man to do it, sir. I was tellin’ this gent here, this phy-si-cian, that the way it was always done before was, you’d look at a body, say it was murder or wasn’t, and I’d haul it away. They ain’t no need for him to grab this one, take her away, and go messin’ up her inwards. That’s insultin’ to the body. It don’t show respect.”

“You are correct as to your account of how things were done in the past,” said Sir John. “But you will recall that up to five or six years ago, Sir Thomas Cox would convene his coroner’s inquests and often required you to deliver a corpus to one medico or another that he might give testimony at the inquest.”

“Aye, so it was.”

“Well, we are back once again to that.”

“And who is the new coroner?”

“I am — until a proper one be appointed.”

“So this here phy-si-cian gets the body?”

“I fear that is the case, sir.”

“Well, then, if that be so, I reckon I’ll just be on my way with the old party I collected up Half Moon Passage — no marks on him, and his landlord said he was at his bedside when he passed.”

“But that is what we argued about!” said Mr. Donnelly. “He said he would wait about only so long as it took you to decide who had claim to the body. He now refuses to wait the few minutes more it will take me to communicate my preliminary findings to you. He has a wagon standing by that is near empty. If he takes it away, we shall have to rent a wagon and team from a stable, or Jeremy and I must carry her body through the streets to my surgery.”

“Now, that does not seem reasonable, does it, sir?” said Sir John to the Raker.

“Well, it’s like I said. Sir John,” said the Raker, sulking. “Cutting them open and poking round inside don’t seem right to me — shows a lack of respect, it does. It’s not the sort of thing I wants to be part of.”

“Come now, sir, have I not heard you say on more than one occasion that the dead don’t care?”

“Well… yes, but that was different times — not the same thing.”

“I’ll not argue the point with you. You and I have worked together satisfactorily in the past. Let it be done as a favor to me.”

“When you puts it so, sir, I can’t hardly say no.”

“Good. Mr. Donnelly and I will conclude our business quickly, and then you may be on your way.”

With that, the group shifted a bit. The Raker went off to grumble to his gray, ghostlike nags. Mr. Donnelly took Sir John to one side that he might discuss with him, and I — in no wise barred from their talk — followed close with Sir John. Mr. Tolliver, who had waited through the wrangle with the Raker, showing signs of growing impatience, was pulled farther away by Mr. Bailey so that he might have no chance of overhearing what was said between surgeon and magistrate.

Mr. Donnelly’s report was brief and concise. He told Sir John that the dead girl seemed to be no more than fifteen or sixteen. She was killed in the same manner as the first victim, Teresa O’Reilly, and apparently with the same weapon. He had examined the butcher’s knives at Mr. Bailey’s urging, but none was of a size to inflict such a small wound. The body had been warm when it had been found, and still warm when first examined by Mr. Bailey. Since Mr. Bailey had checked his timepiece when summoned at half-past seven, that would place the time of death at not much earlier than a quarter past. In his opinion, the girl had been killed where she had been found, though the young constable who had gone off to search the passage at Mr. Bailey’s direction might possibly discover evidence to indicate otherwise.

“That is all you have for me?”

“At the moment, yes. The autopsy may yield something more.”

“Well, that little you have given me is sufficient to shift suspicion from our friend, Yossel — who is, by the bye, our overnight guest at Number 4 Bow Street. He seemed rather glad to accept our hospitality, seeing that there was a mob in hot pursuit of him.”

“That hideous broadsheet?”

“Exactly. As I see it, because of the matter of time.

Yossel could not have murdered this young girl, for at the time of her death he was in our custody and under lock and key. Since the weapon which killed her was almost certainly the one that was used to kill the first victim — the Irishwoman, O’Reilly — that probably eliminates him also as suspect in that homicide. Which leaves us only with the second in the series, the one for which he was brought to our attention — and we may find him alibi for that one. Sir John paused but a moment, then cocked his head curiously. “Tell me, Mr. Donnelly, could this knife with the narrow blade — I believe it was described to me as a ‘stiletto’ — could such a knife have been used to cut the throat of the Tarkin woman?”

The surgeon hesitated. “Well, I would have to consult my notes on her autopsy, but I would say possibly so — but quite unlikely. The mutilation was accomplished with a serrated blade; I’m almost certain the same knife was used on her throat.”

“Well, it seems then that we have a killer who uses two weapons.”

“For two methods of murder. But there is another possibility, of course.”

“I think I know what you are about to suggest.”

“That there are two murderers abroad in Covent Garden.”

“I must reject that for the moment,” said Sir John, “as too dreadful a prospect even to contemplate.” He sighed and offered his hand to Mr. Donnelly, who shook it warmly. “I thank you, sir, for coming, yet I need not ask you to do your work on her this night. I shall hold an inquest at nine tomorrow on the Tarkin woman. We need to know more about this latest victim before convening a jury — her name, at least.”

“I’ll be there in the morning with my notes.”

“I’m sure you will. The Raker should give you no more difficulty. Let me know if he does.”

I hoped Sir John would prove correct. Mr. Donnelly left us to find him.

Then did Mr. Bailey bring Mr. Tolliver to the magistrate and introduce him as “the one who found the body and hailed us as we was passing by.”

“Well, Mr. Tolliver,” said Sir John, “you come with a very fine character from Lady Fielding. Jeremy, too, has spoken highly of you, and I myself have supped on your meats with great pleasure. In the light of all this, I can only offer my apologies to you for having detained you so long. You may have heard my efforts to play Solomon in the dispute between the medico and the corpus collector — the Raker, they call him; I know not his proper name.”

“I did hear, yes,” said Mr. Tolliver. He sounded a bit grudging, a bit hurt.

“It delayed me, took time that I no doubt owed to you as the first upon the scene of this lamentable crime. This one is, by the bye, the third such homicide in a short period of time. We are quite concerned, as you may suppose.”

“I heard of the earlier two, of course. A butcher in Cov-ent Garden hears it all.”

“I’m sure you do, sir. Perhaps you had heard, too, that the manner in which this unfortunate met her death was quite like that of the first.”

“That I had not until Jeremy here asked the constable to look for the wound especial. I had always thought the boy showed good sense.”

He threw a glance at me. I lowered my eyes modestly.

“Indeed,” said Sir John. “But, please, sir, tell me your story — how you happened upon the corpus, what you may have seen or heard at the time, et cetera. Leave out no details, please, for it is by the details that villains identify themselves and are apprehended. I will no doubt have some questions when you have concluded.”

Then did Sir John take a step back and bow his head in an attitude of listening; he leaned lightly upon his stick and touched his chin, massaging the day’s growth of whiskers there.

The tale told by Mr. Tolliver was the same one he had told earlier to Mr. Bailey, and the words he used to tell it were virtually identical. I forgave him this, instructing myself to remember that a man may make an excellent butcher, yet be altogether deficient in imagination and have no skill at all in the verbal arts. But given thus, it was given swift; and given twice, there was no reason to doubt it.

Sir John remained silent during a long moment afterwards. Then, hearing nothing more, he launched into his interrogation.

“Mr. Tolliver, you have made it clear that you neither saw nor heard anything in the passage at the time you stepped inside to investigate the condition of the body you had spied there. But tell me, what was the condition of the street?”

“Sir?” It was clear he had no idea of what was meant.

“I mean, just before you left it to look at the body — were there many people there? Were there hackneys? Wagons?”

The butcher seemed no little nonplussed by the question. He screwed up his face as he made a painful effort to remember. “I would say, sir, that there were very few people walking on the street, which is not unusual at such an hour. It may well be that all who were there with me on Henrietta were the constable and Jeremy here, and they would have been farther down and across the street. I may have gotten a glimpse of them under a streetlamp, though, for I was not surprised when they come walking along. I heard their footsteps.”

“And vehicles? Riders?”

“Well, none passed by, but I saw one behind me, which surprised me, as I had seen none before when I passed that way.”

”Behind you? What caused you to look?”

“It was the footsteps before I came to the passage. I turned round and looked, for after dark on these streets you should always keep an eye out. But I saw nothing, no one, except the wagon, and I saw it but part — halted in the Garden.”

“Could you have failed to notice it before?”

He thought. “Yes, I s’pose I could. After all, a wagon — how many does a man see in a day?”

“Hmmm, well… yes. But, sir, you might very well have heard the fleeing footsteps of the murderer. Has that not occurred to you?”

“No, sir, I can’t say that it did.”

“What about the wagon? Was there anything unusual about it — what you saw of it, that is?”

“No, sir, it was just a wagon. I didn’t see it well, just the shape of it. The light is none too good there” — he pointed — “as you can see yourself.” Then, realizing his embarrassing error: “Oh, but you can’t see, can you? Sorry, sir. I forgot.”

“Many do,” said Sir John, with perhaps a modicum of irony. “But tell me, sir, how long did it take you from the time you ducked into the passage to realize the girl was dead and call for help from Constable Bailey and Jeremy?”