by S K Rizzolo
“We must find her, Mr. Chase. Her guilt and her grief may have driven her to take her own life.”
“I’ve questioned the servants about the letter delivered to Mrs. Leach, and you’d think they would have observed something to the purpose. But they can tell me very little. Perhaps she ran away to avoid any questions about her husband’s death.”
“We were followed here tonight, so I doubt the watchers could have observed anything of Mary’s movements. Unless you think there were others?”
“The local watch might know, but I doubt it. Mrs. Leach is the wife of a loyal ministry supporter. Why should anyone suspect her? Regardless, we can but look for her and put out inquiries in the morning. Since Rex and the footmen have failed to turn up anything in the surrounding area, the watchman has suggested we search the Dark Arches.”
“Dark Arches?”
“A maze of underground passages supporting these buildings. They lead to a wharf by the river where the products that are stored there can be shipped. Beggars and homeless children use these subterranean streets as a dossing ground. Thieves take refuge there too. Bow Street has long wanted to have the area cleared. ”
“The river?” She heard the tremor in her voice but was unable to control it, and she couldn’t seem to stop echoing Chase. “You must go at once.”
“First, one thing must be settled at long last. Stay here.”
He went swiftly out of the room, and Penelope heard him stepping over the shattered door to enter Dryden Leach’s chamber. Exhausted, she sat in the wing chair by the cold hearth, leaning her head back. An interval elapsed before his return.
Penelope opened her eyes to find Chase watching her. “Mr. Leach?”
He reached down to help her to her feet. “The corpse has two wounds to the chest. One was the mortal blow, the other less serious. As to cause of death, it was exactly as we thought, Mrs. Wolfe. He was murdered.”
Chapter XIII
Daybreak would not arrive for some hours yet. The searchers, including servants from neighboring households, fanned out from the Adelphi Terrace with Chase leading several of the men down Durham Street toward the entrance to the Arches. Going under a heavy stone arch and continuing down a road that descended toward the river, they soon found themselves in a gloomy warren of passages.
After a brief consultation, the men separated, but at Chase’s heels came the watchman emitting a stream of bright chatter. “You from Bow Street, sir? I am honored to make your acquaintance,” cried the watchman, whose name, he proudly announced, was Abraham Deeds. “I warrant your work takes you high and low, dear sir. Human nature in all its glory—big as life! As soon as I heard the lady was not to be found, I said you ought to be called in. Indeed I did. We’ll find her now, sharp-like. All will be well, you mark my words.”
“Hold your tongue.” Swinging his lantern into one of the recesses, Chase illumined the frightened face of a girl huddled with her back against the blackened brick vaulting. Wrapped in newspapers against the cold, she had been asleep, for she jerked when he shined light over her form. “Wha—, what do you want?” she stammered, and, bending over her, Chase smelled the spirits on her breath. This was a very young girl, perhaps fifteen or so, and her face glowed white and sickly.
“You seen a lady tonight?”
She gaped at him. “Lady?”
Chase repeated the description Rex had given him. “A lady, someone who doesn’t belong here. Dressed finely in a black cloak and bonnet. Dark brown hair and blue eyes.”
The girl’s gaze slipped past him. “I ain’t seen no one.”
He left her to regain her slumber and went on through the darkness, the watchman still dogging his heels.
“Do you make your rounds down here, Deeds?”
“I do, sir. But it’s taking my life in my hands to put my head down some of these passages. I takes a peek, though, so as to say I did my duty. I don’t linger here, no, I don’t.”
“You’ve seen nothing out of the ordinary tonight?”
“No, I haven’t. Only one of me, you know. I can’t be everywhere at once.”
A mild defensiveness had crept into the watchman’s tone, but he went on, irrepressibly cheerful. “I expect the lady will have returned home. Perhaps we ought to go see for ourselves.”
“You go, Deeds.”
“No, sir, I’ll stick with you if you’ve a mind to keep looking.” Chase heard a yelp as Deeds kicked a stray cur out of his way.
From somewhere nearby, the voices of the other searchers called Mary Leach’s name, and other men would be traversing the open-air streets above. But she had been gone for over three hours and might be miles away. It was possible she had decided to flee, believing her role in her husband’s death could not remain hidden, but Chase didn’t think so. She would have left word and would have packed at least a small valise. Besides, he felt an all-too-familiar, uncomfortable sensation of dread that he tried to ignore, concentrating instead on the business at hand. Soon they came upon another flight of stairs and descended to yet another level where stone vaults towered above them in tiers.
Here he found the wine cellars, tucked under a series of low archways and all heavily padlocked against the depredations of thieves. As he went, Chase shined his lantern on the locks, though nothing seemed to have been disturbed. But after the passage suddenly turned in a new direction, Chase and Deeds nearly stumbled over a huddle of boys sleeping on a straw bed in one of the niches.
“Hey you,” shouted Deeds, brandishing his club and prodding one of them with his boot in much same way he had kicked the dog. “You’ve no business there. Get up; get up, I say!”
The boys stumbled to their feet, and the tallest one, the leader, addressed them. “We ain’t doing no harm, just sleeping. What’s it to you?’
“Damned street scum,” said Deeds fiercely. “You seen a lady around here? Not that you’d know one if you saw her, you filthy gutter rats!” Then he addressed Chase with his usual fawning good cheer, “This lot won’t be any help to us, you can bet your last groat on that, sir. Let me drive ’em out.”
“Wait.” Chase looked at the taller boy. “How long have you been here?”
“Dunno. A while.”
“You see anyone else?”
“A few whores and some little ’uns. The usual.”
Without taking his eyes from the boy’s face, Chase reached in his pocket for a coin. He held it up, and it caught the light of his lantern.
“He’ll just lie to you, sir,” warned Deeds. “He don’t have a truthful bone in his body. I seen that one around, all right. Every night I pokes him with my stick and sends him about his business.”
“Be quiet.” Chase addressed the boy: “What’s your name?”
“Simon, sir.”
“I’ll ask you again, Simon. Did you see anything out of the usual tonight? Anything at all you can tell me?”
“I was heading over to the Fox-under-the-Hill for some grub. The pub down by the river, sir.” He gestured vaguely. “I saw a man. It were dark, so I didn’t see him plain. He went down the tunnel and out to the street.”
“You didn’t follow him?”
“No, sir. He’d a thought I was out to draw ’im—pick his pockets—and I wasn’t having any trouble. I just wanted my grub. I had a penny earned on the square, and I knows the landlord would give me a pie or summat. Besides, there was that about ’im as told me to stay clear in case he were up to no good.”
“What time was this?”
Simon shrugged. “After midnight, I reckon.”
“You never saw him again?”
“No, sir.”
“Would you recognize him?”
“Don’t expect I would. I didn’t see his face.”
“Big man? Tall man? Can you tell me anything else about him?”
“Not so big you’d notice. Not so
small neither. He’d his scarf pulled up over his nose. He walked bravely like a gentleman what owned the night.”
Chase put the coin in Simon’s palm. “Come, you show me exactly where you saw him, and I’ll give you another one.”
With alacrity, he set off down the passage, the other boys flanking him like an honor guard. Chase had offered his lantern, but Simon moved assuredly through the darkness, making several turns and descending and ascending several flights of stairs with scarcely a check. Listening to Deeds mutter at his back as he struggled to keep up, Chase realized he would not be in much better shape come morning, for his knee was bound to be stiff and painful after this adventure. On they went as they moved deeper into the massive, stone, fortress-like structure, and the air became close, turning rank as if to repel their intrusion. Then a new smell hit Chase’s nostrils.
Simon halted. “He came from there, sir.”
Chase looked around. They stood at the intersection of several streets wide enough for the drays and carts that would wind through here in the daytime, carrying goods to the river. Simon’s raised arm pointed toward the opening for a smaller passage. Chase gave him his payment, dismissed the boys, and set off in the direction indicated.
“There ain’t nothing hereabouts but horses and cows.” Deeds had lumbered up, breathing heavily. “Cripes, what a stench.”
Ignoring him, Chase began to inspect the doors of the cowsheds. Like the wine cellars, they were secured for the night, but the wooden doors were battered and rickety, and the locks looked flimsy. He went on in this way for a quarter-hour or more and was beginning to think he was wasting his time when he came upon a stable with the door slightly ajar. Chase pushed open the door and entered.
He heard the snuffling sounds of cow breath along with an occasional soft lowing and a rustling in the straw. Chase picked out a line of stalls behind which he dimly perceived the dark, heavy shapes of the beasts. Several milking stools were stacked in one corner next to bins of feed and several shovels. A trough stood in the middle of a wooden floor. As Deeds started to blunder in behind him, Chase held up a hand to stop him, for he could see markings that looked like footprints in the dust at his feet. This meant nothing, of course. The cows would have attendants responsible for milking and feeding them, and Chase doubted that cleanliness was much of a virtue down here.
But then his beam fell on an overturned wooden crate, and he picked his way across the stable to bend over it. Someone had left a candle stub in a rough iron holder atop this crate. Kneeling down, Chase prodded the blobs of wax dripped around the candle: they were dry and hard. He reached lower to grope around on the dirty floorboards and grimaced in distaste as he encountered spider webs.
“What is it?” Deeds took a step into the cowshed.
“Stay back, you imbecile,” Chase snapped. There was a strange prickling at the back of his skull, and the watchman’s presence was a distraction not to be borne. He felt…something, and he needed perfect silence and concentration in order to identify the source of the feeling. His eyes went back to the water trough. What was it doing there? It had been placed deliberately in the center of the room to serve some purpose, like a prop on a stage that needed to be seen clearly by the spectators. And indeed when he moved closer, careful to step lightly with his feet, he saw drag marks in the dust. He stooped to feel with his hands around the base of the trough, and after a moment his fingers pinched up a tiny metal object. It was sharp, pointed at the end, less than an inch long—a pin. He found another and still another until he had a row of pins in his hand. When he held up his palm to the lantern, he saw that several of them were japanned: black mourning pins in token of Mrs. Leach’s bereavement.
Though a confirmed bachelor, Chase nonetheless had no difficulty in understanding the significance of these pins. Ladies used them, endlessly and religiously. They carried them in their reticules. They pinned their veils with them and secured their flounces and fichus. They kept them on their dressing tables and regularly purchased papers of them. When Chase, as a boy, had embraced his mother and sisters, he recalled laughing with them when one of their pins had jabbed him. Bristles, he’d called one sister who had peppered her person with the things.
“Sure as sure, you’d best come out,” said Deeds, sounding uneasy. “What’s there to see?”
Chase hardly heard him. He was staring fixedly at his hand, and now he perceived it was faintly sticky with a jelly-like substance that had adhered to his fingertips while he was picking up the pins. And when he put his lantern down next to the trough, he saw a shiny patch half the size of a saucer and knew it to be blood. He put his hand in the water trough to cleanse his fingers and fished up a sopping bonnet with veil still attached. He plunged his hand in the water again and groped until he found another object, which he managed to grasp between his fingertips. Shaking the water from his hand, Chase held the object next to the lantern. It was a button covered in dark broadcloth, from a coat or a cloak.
He looked up. “Spring your rattle, Deeds.” Then the loud vibrations mingled with the watchman’s hoarse shouts, spilling into the night. In response, the cows began to bellow.
Chase found Mary Leach immediately. He had not seen her before, abandoned as she was on some sacking in a corner that had shunned the beam of his light. He knelt at her side, putting his ear to her mouth, seeking a pulse at her throat, and pressing his hand against her chest to find a heartbeat. She was dead.
Deeds was standing over them, wordless for once, and in the increased illumination, Chase saw Mary. She was lying on her back in a pool of blood draining from her broken skull. All too clearly the light revealed her ruined face. All too clearly he saw that one lock of her dark hair curled delicately around her split cheek, as if molded there by an artist’s hand. When he ran his hands over her, he discovered that her entire upper body was sodden, not just with blood, and his gaze went back to the water trough in sudden, grim understanding. Gently, he closed her staring eyes and straightened her limbs, wishing he could shut out the din of the animals, thoroughly disturbed and crying in distress. Perhaps they had some glimmer of understanding of what had happened here tonight. These cows lived out their lives in the dark, never feeling a fresh breeze or seeing the sky. Tonight they had been witnesses to a murder.
Chase heard footsteps and raised voices. Men clustered in the doorway with their bobbing lanterns, which seemed too bright, almost indecent in their ability to expose this hideousness. “Stay back,” he called. “Do not disturb the area.”
One man ignored this command, rushing straight toward them—Mary’s father Horatio Rex. Dropping to his knees, he extended a hand and turned his daughter’s face toward the light. “Mariam?” he said.
PART TWO
Say, where am I? Can you tell?
Is my heart within my breast?
Am I bound in magic spell,
Or by fiends of hell possest?
Say, what horror sways this brain?
Do I sleep, or do I wake?
If I sleep—oh, dream of pain!
From my lids thy fetters take.
—Charlotte Dacre, “The Musing Maniac”
Chapter XIV
“May I join you?” said Chase. Horatio Rex stood on the terrace that overlooked the river, his coattails stirring in the breeze, his head lifted toward a sky in which dawn’s rosy streaks had faded. Now that the light had increased, a banquet of beauty lay revealed before them on this unusually clear morning. Immediately to their left stretched the expanse of Somerset House and the incomplete arches of the new Strand Bridge. Beyond, the dome of St. Paul’s floated amid the spires of City churches. To their right, Westminster Bridge sparkled like a fairy road in the sunshine, while the Abbey seemed as if it would last forever.
Turning from his study of the horizon, Rex sent Chase a veiled look, the old hostility still lurking. The man looked years older than he had in his drawing room just four days before, h
is urbane polish dulled, his eyes furtive and haunted.
Chase leaned his elbows on the parapet. “I need you to answer some questions.”
“Ask them.” Rex looked back at the river, where skiffs and lighters and coal brigs had already begun to crowd the waterway as London went calmly about its business.
Chase watched them too. They all had somewhere to go, but when he thought of the ugly futility of Mary Leach’s death, he couldn’t see why they bothered. What the devil was the point? There was no answer to this question. What he mostly felt now was guilt—guilt that he had not been quick enough and smart enough to save her. He would much preferred to have arrested her and let her take her chances in court defending herself against the charge of stabbing her husband. She might have pled insanity perhaps. Then he decided there was an answer to his unanswerable question. There was a point, and he would find it. He would find out who had murdered Mary Leach and why. Completing this task would not assuage the guilt, but it would allow him to lay it aside, one more loss, one more disappointment, an old letter hidden away in a drawer.
Chase spoke into the silence. “We’ve brought Mrs. Leach home, sir. The surgeon has examined her, and the housekeeper sits with her.”
“Good. She should not be alone. They must keep candles burning by her side.”
“If it can be any comfort to you, she was not violated.”
Rex let his eyelids drop and opened them slowly, as if even so small a movement was an effort. He kept his face turned resolutely forward. “Thank God for that small mercy.”
“I’ve inspected the stable, sir, and the Coroner has been summoned.” Chase paused. “There’s more. A pistol Leach kept in a desk drawer in the library has gone missing. Mrs. Leach must have taken it to defend herself, but there was no sign of it where she was found. We must assume she never had a chance to fire and her murderer removed the weapon.”
