What the Devil Knows

by C. S. Harris

  Chapter 58

  Wednesday, 19 October

  Sebastian left St. Giles midway through the afternoon on Tuesday, stopped by Bow Street briefly to see Lovejoy, then went home to wash the stink of beer from his aching body, choke down a few spoonfuls of soup, and collapse into bed to sleep the clock around.

  “I don’t think you’ve broken anything,” said Gibson when he stopped by on Wednesday morning to see him. “But you’re going to hurt for a while.”

  “Hurt? You think I hurt?”

  But Gibson only laughed, put sticking plaster on the worst of the cuts on Sebastian’s face, fashioned a sling for his left arm to take some of the strain off his shoulder, and went away again.

  Downstairs, Sebastian found Hero in the drawing room with the pink-and-gray parrot in its cage. Their big black cat was sitting in the middle of the floor, its bushy tail swishing back and forth as it stared at the bird.

  “Baak,” squawked the galah. “Step lively there, ye bloody bastards. Baak.”

  “As you can see,” said Hero with a soft smile, “the parrot not only talks like a sailor; he also swears like one.”

  Sebastian started to laugh, but broke off to press a hand to his bruised ribs. “Oh, that hurts.” Then his gaze fell to the newspaper lying on a nearby end table, and he lost all desire to laugh. “Jesus,” he whispered. “Nine dead.”

  She came to stand beside him. “And with the exception of Christopher Bishop, all were women and children.”

  “Christopher was only fifteen years old.”

  “It’s hard to think of him as a child, after what he did.”

  “But he was.”

  She was silent for a moment, her gaze still on the newspaper. “Jarvis was here earlier.”

  He heard the strain in her voice. “And?”

  “He says they’ve decided the best way to handle the situation is to blame the magistrates’ murders on the three killers who broke into our house last week. The deaths of Reeves, Ablass, and Vermilloe will be portrayed as typical of the violence that plagues the docks.”

  “And ‘the brewer’? Does Jarvis seriously think I’ll simply walk away and let Buxton-Collins or Meux or whoever it is get away with everything he’s done?”

  She looked up then, an expression he couldn’t quite read in her eyes. “It seems Mr. Buxton-Collins suffered a fatal fall from his horse while out riding yesterday evening. He appears to have struck his head on something, although rather oddly they haven’t found anything in the immediate vicinity that might have caused the rather extensive damage to his skull.”

  Sebastian felt a grim kind of satisfaction wash through him. Short of murdering the man himself, he didn’t see how he could have managed to bring down such a rich, powerful man. But Jarvis had never had any such scruples. “Jarvis found out Buxton-Collins was behind the attack on our house, did he?”

  “He didn’t elaborate, although one assumes. Arrogance can tempt men into dangerous foolishness, and Buxton-Collins was nothing if not arrogant.”

  “And Meux?”

  “Under what I gather was considerable pressure from some of Jarvis’s men, Meux confessed to telling Buxton-Collins about the visit from Vermilloe. But he swears he had no idea Buxton-Collins intended to kill the man, and that he was completely ignorant of the involvement of Buxton-Collins, Pym, and Cockerwell in the Ratcliffe Highway murders.”

  “And Jarvis believes him?”

  “For now. I suspect he will press the man further when he and Victoria return from their honeymoon.”

  Sebastian understood then the unusual tension he could hear in her voice. “They’ve married?”

  She tightened her lips, her nostrils flaring with a deep breath. And everything she couldn’t bring herself to put into words showed in her face. “Last night. By special license.”

  * * *

  That evening, Sir Henry Lovejoy came to sit beside the fire in the library and drink a cup of tea while Sebastian sipped a brandy.

  “Some interesting information has emerged from a preliminary investigation into what happened at the Meux brewhouse,” said Lovejoy. “Seems one of the seven-hundred-pound iron hoops near the bottom of their hundred-thousand-gallon vat was found to have slipped off Monday afternoon. A clerk by the name of Clik reported to Meux at around half past four that the rivets had rusted away, allowing it to fall. Meux says it happens two or three times a year, so he wasn’t overly concerned, especially since there were still twenty-seven other hoops on the vat. He sent the clerk off to write a report, while Meux himself went home to dress for dinner. Then the vat burst.”

  Sebastian stared at him. “They’re quite certain?”

  “Oh yes, although of course that was only the beginning. The broken staves from the burst twenty-two-foot-tall vat crashed onto the adjoining vats, shattering some and knocking the valves off others. Meux estimates they lost well over three hundred thousand gallons altogether, in addition to the damage to the brewhouse.”

  “Not to mention all the houses that were destroyed on George Street.”

  “Yes, well, he’s pressuring the authorities to declare the accident ‘an act of God.’”

  Sebastian took a slow swallow of his brandy. “God wasn’t the one who neglected to watch for rusting rivets.”

  “Nevertheless, I suspect he’ll get the verdict he desires.” Lovejoy cleared his throat. “Meux reports that the valve on one of the vats at some distance from the site of the explosion was also found to be opened, although the assumption is that flying debris must have knocked it.”

  Sebastian was silent for a moment, his gaze on the flames leaping on the hearth. “So the Bishops had nothing to do with the beer flood at all.”

  “Well, they didn’t cause it, at any rate—although I suppose one could say they did in some small measure add to it.” Lovejoy sipped his tea in silence for a moment, then said, “It seems almost irrelevant at this point, but the Admiralty finally located the crew manifest from the Roxburgh Castle’s 1810–11 voyage.”

  “And?”

  “Hugo Reeves’s name was on it. According to the notations found along with it, he was one of the principal leaders of the mutiny—he, Billy Ablass, and Cornelius Hart.”

  Sebastian took a long drink of his brandy. “And then they got together again to butcher two entire families.”

  “At the behest of two magistrates.” Lovejoy drained his teacup and set it aside, his features troubled. “There’s no denying their deaths were shockingly brutal, and yet it’s difficult not to feel a measure of grim satisfaction in knowing that justice has to a certain extent been served.”

  “To a certain extent,” said Sebastian.

  After Sir Henry left, Sebastian stood for a time with his gaze on the fire, a heaviness in his heart that he recognized as sadness for a deadly but troubled young woman and her brother, and for an innocent man whose body would forever lie in disgrace beneath a Wapping crossroads.

  He heard a soft step behind him, then felt Hero’s hand rest lightly on his back. “They knew the risks they were taking when they decided to avenge their brother’s murder,” she said, somehow understanding where his thoughts lay. “And they succeeded in what they set out to do; everyone responsible for what was done to John Williams has paid.”

  “Except that now they’re dead. Whatever life Christopher and Hannah Bishop might once have gone on to live will now never be. And the only reason any of this happened is because our society is so bloody corrupt. That hasn’t changed, and I’m not sure it ever will—or even could.”

  “That doesn’t mean we don’t keep fighting for it.”

  His gaze met hers, and he found himself reluctantly smiling. Then he drew her into his arms and held her. Simply held her.

  Monday, 14 November

  Early one morning in mid-November, Sebastian was walking down Brook Street when he noticed a
hackney carriage pulling up outside his house, the horse’s hooves clattering on the frosted cobbles. The air was crisp, the sky above heavy with the promise of snow. A woman dressed in a warm red cloak hopped down, then turned to reach back into the carriage and take a sleeping child from the arms of a man who stayed within.

  As Sebastian watched, the woman clutched the child to her for a moment, her eyes squeezing shut. Then she sucked in a quick, shallow breath and turned toward the front steps.

  “May I help you?” said Sebastian.

  Jamie Knox’s Pippa swung to face him. He could see that she was crying, her cheeks wet, her eyes red and swollen. She stared at him for a moment, her throat working as she swallowed.

  Then she said, “Ye told me once that if I needed anythin’—anythin’ at all for the boy, all I had t’ do is ask ye.”

  “Yes,” said Sebastian, not knowing where she was going with this.

  “Jamie—” Her voice broke so that she had to start over. “Jamie always said he thought ye were his half brother.”

  “I think it very likely, yes.”

  She gave a nod. “Then that would make Jamie’s son yer nephew.”

  “Yes.”

  She glanced toward the carriage and the shadowy outline of the man within. “Ian says he don’t want to live in England no more. So we sold the Black Devil and we’re off to America. He . . . he says we need to start over fresh, and he reckons the voyage’ll be hard on the boy, so—” She broke off and sucked in another quick, high breath before saying in a rush, “Will ye take him?”

  Sebastian stared at her. “You mean, keep him? Raise him as my own?”

  Her voice hardened. “Ye did say—”

  “Yes, and I meant it.” He reached out. Her arms spasmed around the child, but after a moment she let Sebastian take him from her. The boy stirred, then sighed and snuggled against Sebastian. He realized she must have drugged the child with laudanum to make him sleep so soundly, and his heart ached for the boy, who would awaken amidst strangers in an unfamiliar house to find his mother gone forever.

  Sebastian looked up, his arms tightening around Jamie’s son, holding him close. “What’s his name?”

  Pippa was already turning away, but she paused with one hand on the hackney door to look back at him. “Patrick. His name is Patrick.”

  Author’s Note

  The Ratcliffe Highway murders of December 1811 terrified Regency London at least as much as Jack the Ripper panicked Victorian London decades later. Whereas the Ripper targeted marginalized women walking the streets at night, the Ratcliffe Highway killer struck “respectable” families, brutally slaughtering them in the supposed safety of their own homes. The killings exposed the unprofessionalism and woeful inadequacy of London’s archaic law enforcement system, which was ridiculously fragmented between the medieval parish vestries and a handful of undermanned and underfunded public offices. There were loud calls to create a centralized, trained police force, and although the idea was resisted for years, it finally led to Robert Peel’s Metropolitan Police Act of 1829.

  I have tried to be faithful to what is known about the original killings, their bungled investigations, and the death of John Williams. The depositions of evidence taken before the magistrates did in fact disappear in early 1812, leaving only the inadequate and often inaccurate reports in the newspapers. Because so many of the people involved were named John or William/Williams/Williamson, I have at times used nicknames in an effort to lessen confusion (“Jake” for John Turner, “Old John” for the publican John Williamson, “Jack” for John Harrison, etc.).

  The Home Secretary at the time, Richard Ryder, did task Bow Street magistrate Aaron Graham with trying to coordinate the investigation; within a year his health had indeed seriously deteriorated. The magistrate of the Thames River Police Office, John Harriott, also played an important part, but he is not mentioned in this story because the last thing we needed was another John. Both Graham and Harriott typically took active roles in their investigations and helped inspire my character Sir Henry Lovejoy.

  So what is complete fiction? If you read surgeon Walt Salter’s testimony at the inquest, Celia Marr’s throat was definitely cut, although most later writers seem to have missed that. However, to my knowledge her father was not a publican, and the Nichols family is my invention. Charles Horton was the Thames River policeman first called to the site of the Marr killings; he investigated the scene, found the bloody maul, etc., but to my knowledge he did not later lose his position or open a slopshop. Timothy Marr did sue his only brother, who was held for a time as a suspect, but the reason for the lawsuit is not recorded, and their father was still alive at the time of the killings. “Long Billy” Ablass and Cornelius Hart were considered prime suspects and continued to be held after the death of John Williams. They were ordered released by the Home Office (which was indeed anxious to quiet public fears), but their ultimate fates are unknown. The story about the sailmaker John Harrison and the French knife is real, but to my knowledge Harrison was not later murdered.

  The proprietors of the Pear Tree, Sarah and Robert Vermilloe, were much as depicted here, but to my knowledge Vermilloe was not murdered. Ian Ryker, Hugo Reeves, Hannah and Christopher Bishop, and the Reverend York are completely fictional. Wendell Flood is a composite; what he tells Sebastian about the night of Williams’s hanging is taken from the testimony of several different men. To my knowledge, the turnkey responsible was not later found murdered.

  Thomas Lawrence did sketch a portrait of John Williams after his death. Some writers have assumed that because the maul and other tools associated with the murders were displayed on the cart with John Williams’s corpse, they must have been thrown into the hole with him. They were not. They were sent to Bow Street but have since been lost.

  The events surrounding the detention, death, and burial of John Williams were essentially as described here, although his origins remain completely unknown. He did wear a beard that he shaved off right before his arrest; Mrs. Vermilloe testified that he did not own a razor and had to use a barber. There was speculation at the time that Williams was not his real name, but attempts to paint him as Irish are attributable to the anti-Irish prejudices rife at the time. Do I think he was one of the Ratcliffe Highway killers? I seriously doubt it. Do I think he was framed? The use and deliberate abandonment of a weapon as easily traceable as the maul, plus the anonymous informant and Hart’s inquiries into whether Williams had been arrested “yet,” suggest it. Billy Ablass did harbor a grudge against Williams dating to the mutiny Ablass led on the Roxburgh Castle. Do I think John Williams was murdered in prison? Yes. So did Bow Street magistrate Aaron Graham, who did indeed order a watch kept on Ablass and Hart to prevent them from suffering the same fate while they were in Coldbath Fields Prison. But I have no idea why the Marrs and Williamsons were actually murdered. It seems almost certain that more than one killer was involved, and robbery was obviously not the motive.

  The Ratcliffe Highway murder victims were indeed laid on their beds and left on display so the people of London could traipse through their houses and gawk at the mutilated bodies and blood-splattered walls and floors. The same thing happened decades later with the victims of Jack the Ripper.

  Much of the information on the Ratcliffe Highway killings is available online. There is also a 1971 true crime book The Maul and the Pear Tree by T. A. Critchley and P. D. James (yes, that P. D. James). Thomas De Quincey (of Confessions of an English Opium-Eater fame) wrote a fanciful essay on the Ratcliffe Highway killings, but much of what it contains is either inaccurate or pure fiction. For example, he describes Williams as “wiry” and “muscular,” whereas multiple witnesses at the time described him as slight, nonathletic, and “effeminate”; De Quincey is also the only source for the strange hair color he describes.

  The magistrates Sir Edwin Pym and Nathan Cockerwell are fictional, but inspired by the very real Joseph Merceron, who
was even more corrupt, nasty, and vindictive than they could hope to be (see Julian Woodford’s The Boss of Bethnal Green). The Middlesex magistrates and big brewers did indeed cooperate to bleed and coerce the East End publicans, and yes, they really did cooperate with the Home Office to force publicans to spy on their customers and report any murmurs of unrest. Several publicans did try to rebel and set up their own brewery; the venture failed.

  The history of the Bloomsbury Foundling Hospital is essentially as described here. They did at one time take in fifteen thousand babies in four years. The original building was torn down in the mid-twentieth century, but a smaller building near the site now houses a museum. Their collection of tokens left by mothers forced for financial reasons to give up their babies, and the letters that often accompanied them, are heartbreaking. The Foundling Hospital did have its own art gallery, but one could not see the rope walks from its windows.

  Sampson Buxton-Collins was inspired by the historical Sampson Hanbury, who was a close associate of the nasty Joseph Merceron referenced above but was not killed by Jarvis.

  The Great Beer Flood of October 1814 was much as described here, although there was no sign of any sabotage. The flood occured at half past five, when the factory was closing and most men were just getting off work. The laboring poor of early nineteenth-century England put in long hours in the summer, and domestic servants slaved endlessly. But in the days before gaslight or electricity, much work ceased at sundown, so days ended earlier in autumn and winter. Eight (the number is sometimes given as nine) poor women and children were killed. The body of a woman was found floating amongst the vats, but her name was Ann Saville. The Meux brewery did successfully pressure the courts into declaring the disaster an “act of God” rather than the result of negligence, thus avoiding any monetary responsibility for the deaths, injuries, and massive destruction they’d caused.

  The Pelican public house still stands beside the Pelican Stairs on the banks of the Thames; its name was changed to the Prospect of Whitby early in the nineteenth century. Many of the streets that play a part in this story have been renamed. Ratcliffe Highway became, first, St. George’s Street East, then simply the Highway. New Gravel Lane is now Garnet Street. The parish church of St. George’s-in-the-East was bombed during World War II and the interior destroyed by fire; the walls and towers survived and have been given a new, modern interior. The great warehouses and docklands of nineteenth-century Wapping were abandoned in the late twentieth century and lay derelict for a time; the area is now dominated by luxury condos popular with Russian and Chinese oligarchs. And, in a bizarre footnote, workmen laying pipes at the intersection of Cannon Street Road and Cable Street in the late nineteenth century uncovered the skeleton of a young man with a stake through his heart. For a time the skull was kept on display at the nearby Crown and Dolphin. It has since been lost.