Текст книги "The Thames River Murders"

Автор книги: Ashley Gardner

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Chapter Five

Of course I would speak to him. I very much wanted to know all about him.

I bade Mr. Molodzinski follow me from the reception room to the main drawing room.

We remained on the ground floor—I did not want to upset Barnstable’s sensibilities by taking a stranger to the private rooms in the house. Nor did I want Mr. Molodzinski near my wife before I knew who he was and what he wanted.

It was Bartholomew, my valet, who brought in a bowl of water and cloths and doctored Molodzinski’s wounds as he sat in a straight-backed chair, towels draped over him. The man submitted to the treatment with good grace.

“You may speak in front of Bartholomew,” I said. “He is discreet.”

Bartholomew shot me a grateful glance. He was as curious as I was, I could see.

“I wish to thank you for intervening for me,” Molodzinski began. “It was good of you. And very brave.”

“Futile,” I said. “I didn’t prevent them working you over.”

“Ah.” Molodzinski waved a hand at his battered face. “This is nothing I have not experienced before. My large nose tends to attract men’s fists.”

I had supposed, with his name, that the man would be foreign, but his English was as clear and succinct as mine, and possessed the slight cant of London. No one who hadn’t grown up in this metropolis would speak so.

London, however, attracted men from all walks of life from all over the world. The long war with France had sent many a refugee to England’s shores, and those families settled in and began to produce generations of children. Molodzinski’s father might speak in a thick accent of some distant place on the Continent, but this man had grown up among Londoners.

Barnstable finished his ministrations but took his time with the bandages. He wanted to hear the man’s story.

“I owe Mr. Denis money,” the man confessed. “An ironic situation, as I am usually advising gentlemen about theirs. But I am afraid I owe him many thousands of pounds.”

I wondered if Molodzinski had come to touch me for blunt. Before I could think of a way to politely put him off, the man smiled weakly.

“Mr. Denis knew I would not be able to pay him back such a sum for many years, so he was happy to take my services in lieu. Only, there I have been remiss in paying him. This afternoon, he was showing his … er … impatience.”

“I see,” I said. “You have my sympathy. I am also often remiss in rendering my services to Mr. Denis. He shows similar impatience with me.”

“I thought so,” Molodzinski said. “You were very good to try to stop him.”

Bartholomew shot me a curious glance, wondering what on earth I’d done now. I quelled his look and returned to Molodzinski.

“What can I do for you, Mr. … Molodzinski? Have I got that right?”

Molodzinski looked impressed. “You are one of the few Englishmen who do not tangle my name in their mouths. My family is Polish, though we have lived in London for several generations. I feel quite English myself, though plenty do not consider me to be so.”

I understood why. While England’s shores were a safe haven for those of many countries, at the same time, anything un-English was looked at askance. Also, if I understood aright, he was a Jew.

Grenville had plenty of men of Hebrew origin in the circle of his acquaintance, those who kept to their religion as well as those who had joined the Church of England in order to further their careers.

In this enlightened age, laws were strict with regards to any one not in the C of E. A Jewish man could not stand for Parliament, vote, or practice certain trades. They could, however, attend their own houses of worship—the synagogues—and were not barred from gaining vast amounts of wealth, as had the famous Rothschild family or Moses Montefiore, Rothschild’s brother-in-law and successful businessman in his own right.

Molodzinski looked a man of far more modest means, though his clothes were well made and respectable enough.

“You have not told me why you sought me,” I said.

Molodzinski looked surprised. “No? I beg your pardon, sir. I only wished to thank you for trying to help me. It was kind of you. But also to warn you. Mr. Denis is a hard man. Do not anger him, I beg you. If you were in his house, then you owe him as well. Extricate yourself from him as quickly and completely as possible.”

Sound advice. I gave him a faint smile. “I am afraid your warning comes far too late. Mr. Denis has his hand well around my throat.”

Molodzinski’s expression turned to one of compassion. “Then I am sorry for you, sir. In that case, it was doubly courageous of you to come to my defense. If ever you need a favor, you have only to ask me, Captain. I am in your debt.”

He stood and held out his hand. I took it, looking into eyes that were ingenuous and sincere.

Bartholomew had managed to put a bandage on his face, which looked awkward against his flesh, but Molodzinski’s pride was undiminished.

I took his hand, felt his firm clasp, then the man nodded at me and took his leave.

Barnstable had unbent somewhat by the time we emerged, seeing that I’d received Molodzinski without concern, and he sent a footman running for a hackney. Bartholomew and I bundled Molodzinski into it. Molodzinski touched his hat, lifted his hand in a wave, then fell against the seat as the hackney jerked forward.

I was left wondering what on earth such a good-natured man had done to earn the wrath of James Denis.

***

My daughter, Gabriella, returned home from Lady Aline’s soon after that, her eyes alight with excitement.

“I am learning quite a lot on the pianoforte,” she said to me as I met her in the private parlor where the family usually gathered, though she and I were alone at the moment.

I watched Gabriella as she wandered about the room, too energetic to sit still. Her hair was glossy brown, a shade lighter than mine, but she had the Lacey brown eyes. Fortunately for her, she resembled her mother about the face, and had been spared my large, square jaw.

“This pleases you, does it?” I asked.

Gabriella turned to me and gave me a rueful smile. “I beg your pardon, sir. Lady Aline gives me so many attentions, as does Lady Donata, that it will quite turn my head.”

“You deserve their attentions. You are a lovely young woman.”

She was, I observed with a pang. I’d lost Gabriella when she’d been only two years old, a chatty, adorable girl who ran fearlessly about army camps or our tiny backstreet house in Paris.

I’d not seen her from the day her mother took her and fled until Gabriella had returned to London last year, a young lady of seventeen. She was grown now, and beautiful, but I still saw in her restlessness the quick mind and curiosity of that baby girl.

Gabriella blushed under my praise, made herself cease fluttering, and came to sit beside me.

“Father, I know that the attentions to me—the dancing instructions, the music masters, the endless lessons on how to address everyone from a scullery maid to a duchess—are to make me presentable enough to gain the favor of a gentleman once I am out. I am to marry whoever that gentleman is.” Gabriella lost her delight. “Only, I am not certain I wish to marry. Not yet. I am very young.”

Ladies in Donata’s and Aline’s circles wed at Gabriella’s age and younger. I knew both women worried that if Gabriella did not “take” this Season, she might be left on the shelf.

The ladies and gentlemen not in the aristocratic circle, however, such as Gabriella and myself, might wait a bit longer for matrimony. A prudent father in the country gentry would seek the very best match for his daughter, even if it took some years.

I tried to sound comforting. “Do not let my wife and Lady Aline goad you into a marriage you do not want. Marriage is for life. Be careful whom you choose.”

My words brought back her eagerness. “Oh, I shall, sir. I have no wish to run headlong into wedlock with a spindly gentleman with no chin, a hawk nose, and a sour disposition simply because he is the Baron of Nonesuch.”

I could hear Lady Aline’s decided opinions ringing in her words. Gabriella admired Lady Aline—a determined spinster—very much.

“There,” I said. “You see? You have a sensible regard for these things.”

Her face fell again, her moods as changeable as the wind. “But I hate to disappoint Lady Donata. She has been so kind to me.”

Donata had devoted herself to Gabriella’s come-out with the zeal of a Methodist trying to convert the masses of London from a street corner. I did not know whether Donata was enjoying herself because she might never have a daughter of her own to indulge, or because her first marriage had been so unhappy that she wished to guide Gabriella down a different path.

Whatever the reason, Donata had certainly thrown herself into the task.

“Donata only wants to see you content,” I said. “She would be the last person to wish you married to the Baron of Nonesuch, unless he made you very happy indeed.”

The smile returned. “Well, that would be a relief. She does give me reams of information every day on this gentleman or that, who his family is, why he’d make a good husband. No one too lofty, mind. Apparently, I am quite the nobody.”

I raised my brows. “Donata said that?”

“She does not have to. Pedigree is all important in this endeavor, I believe. While I am a gentleman’s daughter, I have neither title nor vast wealth to make me much of a catch.”

Donata had already explained this to me, somewhat apologetically; Aline with her brisk no-nonsense approach to life.

“They wish to marry you off, because that is what ladies of their acquaintance do,” I said. “A woman either marries and becomes a grand hostess or does not marry at all and lives quietly in a back room. But neither path must be for you. I am surprised at Lady Aline—she is quite proud of avoiding the married state herself.”

“But she is the sister of a marquis, has much wealth, and many connections,” Gabriella said. “I asked her, point blank, why she wishes me to marry, when she so adamantly did not. Things are different for her, she said. She has the leisure to never marry if she does not want to. Her father saw to that by settling a large amount of money on her.”

Something I could never do. “Even so,” I said. “Do not marry to please Donata and Lady Aline. It is a step to be considered carefully.”

Gabriella leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. “You are a wise man, sir. I will heed your words.”

Again restless, she leapt up, ready to run from the room. Gabriella seemed to remember, at the last moment, that a young lady should not dash away from her elders until she had leave, and she hovered at the door.

I had risen from my seat when she hopped up, and I gave her a nod. “Go on, then.”

Another sunny smile, a hurried curtsey, and Gabriella whirled from the room, her footsteps rapid on the stairs.

She left me with a lighter heart. I loved her so.

***

I did not hear from Grenville all day. Presumably he had not returned home—I felt certain he’d have sent a rapidly penned note, or turned up on the doorstep himself, when he learned of the corpse in his wine cellar.

I did journey to the cavalrymen’s club in St. James’s after I had told Donata of my failed quest to find the surgeon, to inquire about surgeons there. The elderly colonels I’d found only looked at me blankly, and I left disappointed.

That evening, I would attend the opera at Covent Garden with my wife and Lady Aline. As Gabriella was not officially “out” yet, she would remain home, which I thought ridiculous, but Donata was firm. Last year, when Gabriella had visited, we’d taken her about, but at the time, she’d been considered more of a tourist and a child than a young lady being readied to be presented to the ton.

I would be glad when Gabriella’s come-out ball, planned for next week, was done with, and we could all breathe out again.

We traveled to Covent Garden in Lady Aline’s coach, that tall, white-haired lady saying she felt honored to have such a handsome gentleman escorting her. She thoroughly approved of me, she said, since I was not tiresome and actually knew how to be polite to a woman of her advanced years. Donata only looked on, pleased that Aline, one of her mother’s closest friends, and I got along so well.

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.

Grenville took the necklace with interest. “A fine piece. Thompson is certain it belongs with the young woman?”

“It was around her neck,” I replied. “Fused as one piece, he said. He had to cut it from her. Could Gautier help us with that, do you think?”

“I will ask him,” Grenville said. He looked ready to dash away and find the man on the instant, but he steadied himself. “Anything else you can tell us about this poor girl?” he asked the surgeon. “Not that you haven’t related a veritable stream of information already.”

“She had a broken arm at one point.” The surgeon pointed to a bone in her forearm that looked perfectly fine to me. “Possibly shortly before her death, though not immediately before. It was set well, mended cleanly.”

Grenville let out a breath. “I suppose we could question every surgeon in the country to determine which one set the arm of a girl, say fifteen years ago? A bit daunting.”

“No need,” the surgeon said. “Only one in London helps breaks heal this cleanly. He must be an old man now, but if he is still alive, he might remember. Jonas Coombs. Tottenham Court Road.”

I pursed my lips, impressed. “If Thompson had been able to consult you years ago, he might have found the woman’s identity and solved her murder immediately.”

For the first time since I’d met him, I saw something like humor flicker over the surgeon’s face. “I was detained.”

“Never mind—it’s a help now,” Grenville said. “I will inquire as to the whereabouts of Jonas Coombs of Tottenham Court Road. And put Gautier on the trail of this necklace. Mr. Thompson will have his mystery solved in no time.”

I was not so optimistic, but then again, I’d had no hope we would come by so much knowledge so quickly.

“Thank you,” I said to the surgeon. “I’ll see you are compensated for your time.”

“No need.” The surgeon’s amusement had swiftly faded. “My price is silence, Captain. See that you keep it.”