The Sweet Smell of Decay (7 page)

‘It’s not so far.’ I shrugged.

‘You said you are our cousin?’

‘That’s what my father told me in a letter. It comes as a surprise to me, I own. There again he is quite old now and not very sensible. I thought I ought come anyway, just in case.’

She smiled at me like a hungry dog. ‘My father says you are a wicked man without morals. Shrewsbury has devoted himself to your moral development because he owes a debt to your father.’

‘Did he say that?’

‘You have lain with many women.’

I didn’t really know what to say. It was not so many women – but I didn’t think that to be an appropriate response. Still she was looking at me. My lavender oil was mixing with whatever scent it was she was wearing and the brew was heady. I swallowed. I had come here to learn more about the Ormonde family and so far had found out little. Here I was in private audience with the sister – an ideal opportunity to find out all I wanted to know. All I had to do was stay calm and control my emotions. Then she reached over and put her hand on my plums. A strange thing to do to a man who might be your cousin, especially on the day of your sister’s funeral, but the world is a strange place and you can’t spend all your life shaking your head trying to make sense of it. That was about as far as my thoughts had progressed before she lifted her skirts and sat on my lap. Whilst I continued to contemplate, events developed their own momentum. Then, just as we were
getting to the best bit there was a sudden crash. I jumped up, my heart pounding, Mary’s arms still clinging about my neck. Looking around, I saw a cloud of grey ashes drifting slowly through the shadows.

‘A dead bird,’ said she calmly. ‘It must have nested at the top of the chimney. Poor thing.’ She climbed off me, rearranged her skirts and left the room without further ado.

On my way home I reflected that Hill had been wise to commend me to travel to Epsom, though what light it had shone upon the great mystery was not evident to me at the time.

Three chickens strutted amongst the piles of rubbish that layered the tide of thick mud that covered the tiny courtyard in which we stood. A pig waded through the open sewer that disappeared down the tiny alley through which we ourselves had walked, snuffling and sniffing with its dirty wet nose. Big blue flies coasted lazily about the seas of dead rotting vegetation and old bones. I saw the swish of a scaly tail by a hole in the far wall. This was not the part of Bishopsgate where the rich merchants lived, this was the square where John Giles was said to reside. On the near side of the square was the house we were looking for. The front door was split, the top half already open.

I hadn’t shared with Dowling all of my adventures in Epsom, of course, but I did describe the man that looked like a stoat and my theory that he might be John Giles. Rather than bow before my keen observational skills, Dowling asked
me why I hadn’t thought to introduce myself. Such a question did not merit a reply – his wife was being buried – hardly a time for new acquaintances. Today, though, I wanted this man to tell us who killed his wife. I was uneasy that all we had for suspects were a Roundhead with a hole in it and a decrepit old woman, both of whom were in danger unless we unearthed the real murderer. Also I was doing all of this for no payment and needed it finished with, that I might get a job. I was already more than three pounds out of pocket.

I stuck my head through the door and peered in. The room was bare save for two wooden chairs and what looked like another coffin lying on a rickety table. Rush mats covered the dirt floor. There was a doorway at the rear. Through it, as I watched, a short, thin man slid into view. Save for the expression on his face and the greasiness of his skin he was quite handsome, yet he resembled a petty villain with sly, dark eyes that slid about their sockets like beads of black soap. When he saw me he stopped in his tracks, fingers extended like short, sharp claws, before hurrying back to whence he’d come. It was indeed the man I had seen at Epsom, though he showed no sign of recognising me. I looked to Dowling, who shrugged.

‘Good sir, my name is David Dowling and this here is Harry Lytle, appointed by our good Mayor to find the man that killed your wife. If we don’t find him, then God Almighty will,’ Dowling shouted before letting himself into the house.

A voice cried out from behind the thin board partition, ‘Leave me alone.’

‘Sir, painful though it be for you, we would ask some questions, so that we may be hasty.’

‘Begone, and let me be hanged!’

‘Sir, we would talk with you quietly. Your neighbours are
gathering.’ Indeed, I observed, three women and a man had joined the chickens out front and stood watching curiously. The man was old and frail, his back was crooked and his eyes rheumy. His breathing was strained and noisy. Holding out a shaking palm he mouthed unintelligibly. The women were a bit younger, though well past their best. They stood next to each other in a line, one dominant to the fore, and the other two at her flanks. The middle one looked at me suspiciously, her mean eyes and sour mouth topping and tailing an ugly large misshapen nose. She wore a scarf and shawl, long dress and jacket, hat and apron, and lots of padding beneath it all.

Giles ventured out from his retreat, and upon seeing that we spoke truthfully he hurried to the door, slamming it closed. As we watched, the top door slowly opened again and the large-nosed woman’s head poked through, eyes scanning the room beadily.

‘Go away!’ screamed Giles at the head, which slowly withdrew. I stepped over and closed the door softly.

Standing before us wringing his hands, Giles eyed us nervously. ‘I don’t want to talk to you,’ he said in a low pleading whisper.

‘Cursed is he that perverts the judgement of the widow, but the wicked flee even when no man pursueth. Time runneth where no man may follow.’ Dowling removed his hat. Giles frowned, as confused as I. ‘It is our task to find the man who killed your wife, sir.’

‘And my cousin,’ I added.

‘My wife is dead,’ Giles replied, face sullen and angry, ‘and she is not your cousin.’

‘How do you know?’ I demanded, for he seemed very certain.

‘She is not your cousin,’ he repeated, shaking his head with his eyes screwed up like he had a great pain in the head.

‘Who killed her?’

‘I don’t know who killed her or I wouldn’t be here, would I?’ Giles glared. He twisted away, twitching and rubbing his hands constantly.

I wasn’t sure how the one determined the other. While I was thinking, Dowling butted in. ‘Where were you the night she was murdered, Mr Giles?’

‘I was out working.’ Giles waved a hand then sat down. Crouched, ready to spring. ‘I work for important people.’

A bumblebee in a cow turd thinks itself a king. ‘Important, you say? They might be able to help you.’

‘Aye, important people, people can help me if I need it, so I ain’t afraid of you.’ Giles smirked, but beads of sweat filled the cleft between his nose and upper lip.

‘Who do you think killed her, sir?’

‘I told you, I don’t know! Go away and let me alone!’ He spluttered loudly, punching the air with his fists.

‘What be all the screeching?’ I startled as the front door flew open, crashing against the board wall. The voice was strident, piercing and rough. Its owner was the woman with the large nose. ‘You be letting me in, John boy. What’s all the shouting for?’

Giles glared at her a moment before approaching the door more meekly than before. He closed it more gently, but so that she remained inside the room. Stout and in her forties, every pore on her face was blackened. Reaching out she took John Giles’s chin roughly between her thumb and forefinger then pulled his face round and stared into it, eyes scrunched up and lips pursed. ‘What are you shouting about, John boy?’

John Giles wailed in strangled misery before taking her hand in his and throwing it away. Then he put his own hand to his face, shielding it in embarrassment. ‘Go away!’

‘What’s the news?’ The woman turned away from him and came up to me with stooped gait and crooked back. Brown, black and yellow teeth lined up like coloured pegs in her mouth, rooted in shrivelled gums. Reaching to my dark-green jacket she started to finger the cloth. What was this fascination with my clothes that all people with dirty hands seemed to have?

‘We labour at the Mayor’s behest. We seek the killer of Anne Giles,’ Dowling answered her.

She pulled lightly at a bright button on my jacket. With her other hand she fingered the simple lace. Her nails were cracked and broken. ‘My John has fine clothes like yours,’ she said, and indeed he did. It had not occurred to me before, but he was wearing a very fine cloth shirt and silk burgundy jacket even though they were stained and unwashed many weeks. His shoes were cobbled by a master craftsman. Very smart, quite fashionable, and extremely expensive for someone living in a weatherboard house in a slum like this. Where did the money come from?

She simpered at me. It was not pleasant. ‘Lucky for you, John boy, that the Mayor himself has sent these men here to catch the devil that killed poor Anne.’

John Giles hissed quietly, sidling up to the woman that seemed to be his mother. ‘I want to be on my own. I don’t want to be answering questions.’

‘Why was Anne at Bridewell?’ I demanded.

The mother pushed him towards us with both hands. ‘Go on, John boy. Answer them.’

His mouth turned down at the sides and his eyes dropped to the floor. ‘She went out. I wasn’t here.’

‘Who did she meet there?’

Giles shrugged with drooping shoulders, eyes red and unfocussed, lower lip protruding like a naughty schoolboy’s. Frowning, he flicked his eyes up momentarily to meet mine. They slipped away again just as quick. His nose ran, and he wiped his sleeve across it. ‘I didn’t know she was going out.’

‘You’re not telling us much are you, sir?’

‘What does that mean?’ Giles snapped, head jerking up. ‘Do you call me a liar?’

‘Be quiet!’ his mother scolded. ‘You tell them what they would know. Maybe the Mayor will give us some money to help, what do you think?’

‘When hens make holy water is what I think, Mother! Will you stop prating! I just want to be left alone!’ Giles was practically screaming now, his face was red and the veins on his forehead stood out. Strutting about the room with little steps, he put his palms to his eyes and a desperate shrill came out of his mouth. It was a horrible noise. Walking faster and faster, his eyes darted to the door over and over. He started talking to himself, muttering, asking himself questions and answering them, as if he were trying to give himself assurance. He was behaving like a mad fellow, yet his mother seemed oblivious to it. She edged closer to me, eyeing again the cut of my clothes.

‘He says he works with important folk. What is his line of employ?’ Dowling asked her quietly.

Giles stopped his pacing. He walked up to Dowling and looked into his face with rodent eyes. ‘It’s done now, isn’t it? You can’t raise her, can you?’

‘No sir, we can’t do that. All we can do is bring peace to thee, to thine and to all that thou hast.’

‘I don’t hast nothing. And nothing you do can bring peace to me.’ Giles walked out, into the back room. Neither of us tried to stop him.

‘I can tell ye something,’ his mother chirped up. ‘She had a golden necklace that she wore. Never took it off. It was cast in the shape of a cross, with a surface rough to the touch. A strange object; I never did see nothing like it anywhere else. When they laid her down it was missing, gone. John was very upset when he found out.’

‘Valuable, was it?’

‘I reckon.’ She nodded. ‘Her father gave it to her.’

‘William Ormonde?’

‘Aye, Ormonde – lives at Epsom. They have a family house there. I never seen it, never seen him neither. He didn’t want his daughter to marry John, which is why they lived here and not in a big house of their own. Don’t think Anne nor John saw him neither, not since they was married.’

‘What is the casket for?’ I asked.

‘It’s where we were going to lay Anne until a man came round, said that her father wanted to give her a good
proper
burial at his house in Epsom. Said that her father wanted to bring her back to the family plot. John didn’t seem to mind, didn’t say much, anyhows. Good for him, you ask me. John hasn’t the gold to give her much of a fare-thee-well, nor me neither.’

The woman’s lined face was unwashed and weather-beaten, rough and aged, an animal cunning in her eyes. Not a hint of self-pity, just a scavenger’s sharp eye.

‘John went to see her. Couldn’t bear the sight of her face.’
She grimaced. ‘She was a good girl. She would visit me in my house – I live just around the corner.’

‘Where is he gone?’ I poked my head into the back room. There was a bucket, a fire, two poor beds and three chairs. Giles was nowhere to be seen, a small window his only exit. The sly, greasy dog had fled us while his mother kept us talking. I turned back to the woman and glared at her.

She stood up and wiped her hands on her apron. ‘He likely had to go off to work, misters. Didn’t want to disturb you, I expect.’ Then she stood legs apart with her arms folded and her chin sticking out.

‘A considerate son,’ Dowling smiled.

Between them they had frustrated us. The woman’s mouth was reset in the same thin-lipped, sour line we had seen before. There seemed little to be gained by lingering except fleas.

As we made our way back across the courtyard, avoiding as much of the vileness as we could, I wondered aloud what it could be that drove Giles to such distraction.

‘Wickedness, condemned by her own witness, is very timorous,’ Dowling replied. ‘We may not know how Giles puts food on the table, but we can be sure neither gentleman nor soldier he be.’

As we headed out of the slum in which Anne Giles had lived, through the alley, we had to squeeze past two rough-looking fellows pushing forward in haste, one big and stout like a great bear, the other diminutive and thin, like another stoat or ferret. They must be neighbours, I thought at the time, but I was to meet them again shortly. They were not neighbours.

Later that day Dowling tracked Giles down to Anthony’s Pig. Said it was the Mayor’s men that did it, at his request. That still didn’t sit well with me – the notion that a butcher could order about the Mayor’s entourage like he was nobility, but it was a thought that would have to wait for the time being. I knew Anthony’s Pig well, for I had been drunk there with William Hill on many an occasion. It was dark and squalid, with a strange mix of clientele: the disreputable and the affluent. It was located close to the Exchange and its forbidding appearance explained its attraction to the more secretive merchants that plied their trade there.

Dowling had accosted me in the street as I wandered towards Cheapside, grabbing me by the jacket, a habit that I had prepared for by donning a brown linen coat, rougher and stronger than was my usual preference. Full of news about John Giles, which he whispered hoarsely into one of my ears whilst propelling me down the street. I smiled wanly at passers-by that regarded us curiously, while trying to pay attention to what he said at the same time. His wet breath in my ear was very unpleasant and did nothing for my concentration. Finally I could stand it no more and detached myself firmly. He declined my invitation to step into The Mermaid, so instead we cut across Paternoster Row into the quieter grounds of Old Paul’s. There he shared his news.

‘He works at the Exchange. He runs errands mostly, whatever pays. The pages in the City complain that their masters make demands beyond the call of duty. Some bold agents have taken the opportunity to charge for the service.’

He meant buggery. I pulled a face. I had heard of the practice and it sounded painful and messy.

‘He hasn’t been seen for some weeks. There is a story that
he crossed someone, a fellow he would have been wise to leave well alone. That would explain his manner this morning. His hair grows through his head, and ruin is around the corner. He has taken gold from the goldsmith, and the goldsmith wants it back. I doubt he believed we were who we said we were.’