The Price of Murder (3 page)

“This be her,” said one of them just opposite me. There came a chorus of “ayes” and affirmative grunts, giving confirmation.

“Who was it pulled her out?”

“’Twas me,” said the man who had answered my first query. He was in midlife, bearded, and wearing quite the most doleful expression that I had ever seen on the face of one in his work.

“Where did you pull her out?”

“Right here,” said he. “I was first one round this morning, and I found her a-floatin’ right here.”

“Right here? I don’t quite understand.”

“Well, it’s simple enough. She’d floated down near the mudbank and bumped into one of the boats—that one there. Her hair got tangled in the lines just enough to hold her till I got there.”

“A right, now—”

“Just a minute,” he interrupted. “Who are you, anyways?”

“Sir John Fielding sent me,” said I. “You sent a boy to report this to the Bow Street Court, didn’t you?”

“I did, right enough.”

“Well, they sent me to pick up the body.”

“You one of those Bow Street Runners I hear so much about?”

“No, I’m Sir John’s assistant.”

“Is that like a helper-outer?”

“That’s close enough,” said I. I noticed the rest of the men had stepped back and seemed to be regarding me with renewed respect. “Now, can we go on?”

“Yes, awright, I just wanted to know is all.”

With that, I resumed my interrogation of the man. His name was Abel Bell, and he had been a waterman for better than fifteen years. He gave his address as one in Cheapside. He said that he reckoned every waterman had pulled at least one deader out of the Thames. This was his third. It had come about as he said: he was simply earliest upon the scene. I asked how long, in his estimation, she had been in the water. When he responded that he thought it was no more than a few hours—five or six at the most—I suggested that it was possible she had fallen off London Bridge.

“She didn’t fall off no place,” said the waterman.

“How can you be so certain?” I asked him.

“Well, one thing, she was nekkid when I found her. She wasn’t walkin’ London Bridge without no clothes on. You can be sure of that.”

“I suppose not. Were there any marks of violence upon her? Wounds or bruises?”

“Nothing I could see.”

“What about the blanket? Is it yours?”

“It’s mine. Like I said, she was just plain nekkid in the water. I threw the bum blanket I had in the boat round her just to make her decent, poor child.”

I sighed. “Well,” I said, “perhaps you could give me a hand taking her up the stairs. I’ve a wagon up there.”

“No, I’ll carry her,” said he. “It’s the least I can do.”

“Well, all right then. I’ll thank you for it.”

He picked her up carefully, keeping the blanket wrapped round her, as the group on the little pier made a path for us to the stairs. We climbed, but it was only when we reached the top that we met the stink of the dead fish, which were ranged in piles all the way to Thames Street. The wagon and team awaited us, the horses still restive but secure at the hitching post.

The waterman lifted the body carefully into the wagon bed and turned to me. “I said there wasn’t no wounds nor nothin’ upon her, but you’ll find there’s some raw places round her . . . well, down there in her privates. Maybe some fish fed upon her or maybe not. That’s why I had her all wrapped up—like. I wanted to hide that.”

“You want your blanket back? I could throw the tarpaulin over her.”

“No, you keep it round her. My bum can go cold this day.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll leave you now.”

With that, he turned and walked away, mumbling to himself. I’m sure that I heard the phrase “poor child” repeated. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that though the waterman and I had discussed the discovery of the body in all its aspects, I had not so much as taken a peek at the corpus itself. For all I knew, there could be a medium-sized dog bundled in the blanket. And so, once Abel Bell had disappeared down the steps, I unwrapped the head and took a look at the face of the dead girl. She was quite beautiful in death—though beautiful in the way of so many of her age: short-nosed, round-cheeked, and blond-haired. If you met her upon the street, you would not think her in any way unusual. Yet her early death conferred upon her a special quality, an air of pathos. Having taken but a brief look, I wrapped her face again and covered her over with the tarpaulin supplied by the livery stable. It bothered me a little that I could not remember the girl’s name.

 
Once upon the table in Gabriel Donnelly’s surgery, she had once again become no more than a thing—a dead thing, a body. As we did unwrap the bundle, I passed on to Mr. Donnelly the waterman’s hesitant comments upon her condition.

“Where did he say?” asked the medico.

My embarrassed employment of euphemism had evidently communicated nothing to him. “I shall quote him exact,” said I. “‘There were raw places,’ he called them, ‘down there in her privates.’”

“Hmm, well, all right, let’s have a look, shall we?”

That he proceeded to do—probing, inspecting, shaking his head, and, finally, letting forth a great groan of dismay.

“How old did you say this child was?”

“Six or seven seems to be the general consensus. Until her mother comes and claims the body, let that stand.”

“From the look of her, she could be younger. But never mind that. Whether she’s five, six, or seven, she’d had intercourse with a full-grown man—and probably far more often than once. That’s hideous. The cause of death I’d give as an infection of the kidneys caused by the piercing of the walls of the vagina and the womb.”

“Could you write that down, sir, so that I might present it to Sir John?”

“I certainly can and will,” said he. “And you may tell him for me that I have never seen the like of it. Raw places indeed! The whole area was a mass of scabs. The water cleaned it off a bit and reveals it for the horror that it most certainly is.”

He went straightaway to the wash stand and cleansed his hands well. Then did he sit down at the writing table and write his report to Sir John. I took it and ran down to the street. I jumped into the wagon, which I had hitched just outside Mr. Donnelly’s surgery. In no more than a few minutes’ time I was at Number 4 Bow Street.

There was this to say of Gabriel Donnelly’s reports. He wrote them in plain, clear language. There was no mistaking the brutality which had been practiced upon the little girl. Poor child indeed! I had never known the magistrate to respond so violently or so immediately to any report that I had brought him. As soon as I had finished reading it to him, he jumped to his feet, stamped loud upon the floor, and shouted, full-voice: “But this is
monstrous
!”

Sir John raged on for minutes more—or so it seemed to me. I have found, as you may have also, reader, that it is difficult to judge time when the air about you is, all of a sudden, filled with invective and fury. I could do little to persuade him to quieten his anger, for I felt also as he did. Still, I knew that we must get on with it now that it was to be a proper investigation. Perhaps, I thought, I might offer a suggestion. And so did I await the first gap in his tirading, cursing, and venting; and, finding it at last, I did jump in quickly to fill it.

“Sir John,” said I, “would it not be opportune to search out the mother of the girl that you may question her further upon the details of her daughter’s disappearance?”

He, now quite panting from his expense of anger, stood silent for a spell, red-faced and spent. Then, at last recovered, he turned toward me and nodded in the affirmative.

“Yes,” said he, “that would be a good place to start. I quite agree, Jeremy. She must also identify the body. Get from Mr. Marsden her name and location, and bring her here to me. Do you recall who it was took the initial report?”

Though not entirely certain, I put forward the name of Mr. Patley, for I recalled discussing the matter with him. He had, as I remembered, certain doubts about the woman.

So it proved to be. Mr. Marsden took me to the small desk file of active cases that he kept, thumbed through it till he found the proper one, then pulled it from the drawer. He spread it out before us upon the desk.

“Here it is, as you see, Jeremy. Now, what was it you wished to know?”

“What her name might be, where she lives, that sort of thing. Sir John wants me to bring her in to ask some questions of her. The little girl died. They pulled her out of the river this morning.”

“What a shame for the mother.”

“What a shame for the little girl.”

I copied down the necessary facts (Alice Plummer and daughter Margaret of Cucumber Alley), read quickly through the report, and noted that, indeed, it had been written by Mr. Patley. Then, with a stop at the livery stable that I might return the wagon and team, I made my way to the notorious Seven Dials area, just above Covent Garden. There she lived, somewhere in a rookery that faced onto the square—in Cucumber Alley, which was known to one and all as a place of ill fame.

It is well known and often said that Seven Dials is one of those parts of London that never close. Day or night are all the same to its denizens. Probably because most of them are so blindly drunk that they cannot tell the difference between sunshine and moonshine.

I knew I was getting closer to Cucumber Alley when I began to descry bottles in the gutter. Soon I spied the fellows who had dropped them there; slack-faced types they were, but sharp-eyed in spite of all. They looked to be the sort who, at night, would follow you into the alley or the rookery and knock you down for any valuables you might happen to have upon your person. My respect for Mr. Patley, who moved through these dark precincts quite fearlessly, grew greater with each step I took.

As I turned into the rookery, I held back before ever I stepped into the courtyard, lest I become the victim of some fellow awaiting me at the other end with a club in his hand. I stood for well over a minute in the short tunnel, listening for sounds of breathing, or the shifting of feet. There was nothing, and so I moved ahead. Coming out in the courtyard, I took a moment to count the doors behind which I must seek Alice Plummer who had, less than a month before, reported her daughter missing. A dozen, there was. There were neither names nor numbers upon the doors. It was evident that if I were to find the woman, it might be necessary to knock on each one.

’Twas a bootless task. Of the first half dozen I knocked upon, only two were answered. I wondered, would there be any point in knocking upon the rest? Well, putting my doubts behind me, I stepped up to door number seven and beat a harsh tattoo upon it. At first, I heard nothing at all, but then there were faint sounds stirring beyond the door, and a moment later, footsteps and a challenging shout.

“What do you want?”

It was a woman’s voice, gruff and harsh, but, nonetheless, it was unmistakably that of a woman.

“I am come from the Bow Street Court in search of Alice Plummer,” I shouted in return.

“Well, I ain’t her.”

“All right,” said I, “but perhaps you could point out her door to me.”

“Maybe I could do that.”

“Well?”

There was a long moment’s hesitation as the woman behind the door considered my proposal. Then did I hear her begin to throw off locks. Yet before she threw the last, she shouted at me once again.

“Now, you hear me now,” said she, “before I throws this last lock, I want you to know I’ve a pistol here in my right hand. And if you’re come to rob me, I’ll shoot you down. I swear to God I will.”

I knew not quite how to respond to that, and so I offered her the most pacific response I could imagine.

“If I misrepresented myself, you have my permission to shoot me.”

At that the woman laughed—or rather, cackled—quite merrily. She pulled the last bolt, then opened the door a crack—just wide enough so that she might shove the barrel of the pistol through. Though I could not spy it, her eye must have been there, too; for, continuing to laugh, she threw the door open wide and we looked each the other up and down. She was plump and shy of forty, though not by much. Her hair was dyed a deep red, though what substance had been used to dye it I’ve no idea; it was, in any case, no natural color.

“Well,” said she, “you look like a likely lad. Like to have your ashes hauled?”

I had no idea of what, exactly, was meant by that. Nevertheless, the look on her face made her general meaning clear.

“Uh, no,” said I. “I am searching for Alice Plummer, as I said. She is the mother of the child who vanished near a month ago, a girl named Margaret, as I understand.”

“She lived right next door of me, she and little Maggie. Alice ain’t there anymore, though. She moved away just after Maggie disappeared, like.”

That struck me as odd. “Moved away, you say? How would we know to make contact with her if the girl were found?”

“That ain’t my problem, is it?”

“No, I suppose not.”

This was most odd. Perhaps she had told Constable Patley of her intention to move and of her new location—and he had simply neglected to pass it on to Mr. Marsden. Yes, perhaps—but all the same, it was odd. I stood, pondering the matter there on the woman’s doorstep, until I happened to note that she had become a bit restless: she wanted me gone.

“Just a question or two more,” said I, hoping to hold her.

“Well, make it fast. I’ve not got all day.”

“Fair enough. Who’s living in her place now?”

“That’s the peculiarest part,” said she. “Ain’t nobody living there, as near as I can judge. I’ve had my ear to the wall for near a month now, but I’ve not heard nothin’ from next door. I saw her leave and gave her a wave goodbye. Last thing she said to me was, ‘Katy, I’m goin’ on a holiday, and I just might not ever come back.’”

“But then again, she might,” I suggested.