Theft of Life

by Imogen Robertson

  ‘Aye. That’s him.’ Sanden sighed. ‘Jacob Trimnell. Married and living across from the Bow Church on Cheapside.’

  ‘How old was he?’ Harriet asked.

  ‘Lord knows. Fifty and a few?’

  ‘He seems much older.’

  ‘Well, he’d been ill, ma’am. That’s why he came home. Sold his estate for not much, which didn’t please Mr Sawbridge, but what was he to do about it? Then he hopped on a boat with his lady wife.’ He looked around them. ‘Found on the street, was he? Died on his way home? Some sort of seizure, I dare say.’

  The verger placed the cloth back over the shrunken face and in as few words as possible told Sanden the circumstances in which Trimnell had been found. Sanden opened his bulging eyes wide.

  ‘What? One of the free blacks got him, did they?’

  Crowther raised an eyebrow. ‘Why do you say that?’

  ‘Clear enough, isn’t it?’ Sanden said, going a little pink. ‘Him weak and alone, they took their chance. Treacherous dogs, the lot of them – and they’ll bear a grudge. What, you think I’m wrong? Not me. I lived among them for too many years.’ He shuddered, then half-lowered his lids. The action seemed to force the globes of his eyes back into his head. ‘Well, that’s Trimnell. And now I must be away. Even with the hours Londoners keep we are all up and doing now, so goodbye to you.’ He turned and left, his shoulders hunched.

  The clericals began to discuss who should go to Mrs Trimnell to give her the news and Harriet, feeling that she was performing an act of charity, offered to accompany one of them. The pink-faced young canon who had thought her an answer to his prayers now looked at her in horror. He murmured his thanks in a polite and halting style and said he would go alone, but his feelings were clear enough. Harriet turned away. Crowther offered her his arm and suggested they walk around the Cathedral until the coroner arrived, then carried her from the room before she was required to say anything further.

  I.5

  THE CLAMOUR OF THE city burst around them as they left the Chapter House. Harriet did not know this part of the capital well and its character was very different to that of the fine houses and obvious elegances of the streets and avenues near Berkeley Square. The city stank of blood and tallow, and the smoke coming from the close-packed chimneys turned the air so thick, the Cathedral itself appeared smudged and indistinct. The pavements were busy; people of every condition in life from beggars to dandies pushed or dawdled past the book- and printsellers that lined the Yard. Satires and squibs plastered the windows of one shop and in others were displayed scenes of heroes from history, exotic animals, botanical prints of great beauty, and adventurers and villains from the late war with America and France. In one, the weight of books seemed to press its ancient bowed windows outwards.

  Porters and chairmen jogged past them, variously laden. One could catch occasional notes of their wares on the sickly breeze – spice, a blast of citrus. The riders and drivers in the road shouted greetings or threats to each other or those passing by. A blind ballad singer leaned against his patch of soot-stained wall, his one-sheet songs laid out around him for sale, and sung an air about England’s green pastures in a high, wavering voice. A pair of lascar sailors were watching him, swaying from side to side in time to his song, their faces mottled with gin and an early-morning sentimentality. A woman with a maid trotting behind her examined them out of the corner of her eye as she passed.

  Harriet looked up at her companion. Gabriel Crowther looked rather younger now than he had when they first met five years ago. While she sometimes felt tired and ancient as the hills, Crowther over those same years had begun to flourish. He had been a recluse, preoccupied with the marks left by violence on the body, and pursuing his interests in isolation, eaten up by old demons. Harriet had dragged him out into the light, and eventually his demons had been forced to loosen their grip. He now had an acknowledged heir to his fortune, a nephew of whom he was beginning to become fond, and he had begun to make his knowledge more available to his peers in a growing correspondence. His world seemed to expand while Harriet’s continued to contract. She had felt it. Then he had announced on the day that Graves left their village for the house in Berkeley Square that he would also be spending some weeks in London as he was on the point of publishing a book about his forensic researches and wished to discuss the printing and illustration with his publisher. It was the first mention he had made of having written a book. Harriet had been surprised and a little hurt, and Crowther seemed to think her surprise odd. He said the weather was warming, making his dissection work more difficult, and so there was no good reason to remain in Hartswood. Harriet could not help resenting it.

  ‘What are you thinking of, Mrs Westerman?’ he asked now, seeing her expression. ‘Not of that pink-faced crow? You should not take his reaction to heart. He is quite obviously an idiot, and I have tried to persuade you never to listen to idiots.’ This was part of his transformation. He could still absent himself for weeks when he was working, happily snub his neighbours or insult them when he found their conversation dull, but then there were these moments, just as she was becoming angry with him, when he showed an understanding of her feelings and said or did something kind. It was very irritating.

  ‘I am thinking that you look very pleased with yourself this morning, Crowther,’ she said as he led her into the lee of the great Cathedral. ‘Why do I have the impression you have a particular delight in ruffling my nerves before the morning is over?’

  ‘Years of observation, I should imagine,’ he replied, escorting her round to the eastern end of the building and letting the unfairness of her remark wash by them both with the shouts and the smoke of the city reaching its peak of business. ‘I punish you for your habit of talking at the breakfast table. You heard how the body was laid out? The mask?’

  ‘I did,’ she said. ‘Crowther, do not think I am saying this because of that ridiculous priest, but though I understand why you are curious to see the body, I am not sure that I wish to help find who might have killed this man.’

  He looked down at her with surprise. ‘But it is interesting.’

  She only shook her head. ‘William recognised him because he saw this Mr Trimnell murder a slave fifteen years ago in Jamaica.’

  Crowther paused. ‘That, Dido did not tell me.’

  She sighed. ‘Then William told me James bought him, Crowther. James never told me he owned a slave!’ Crowther did not reply. ‘I cannot believe it. We never much spoke of the subject, but I am sure he disapproved of slavery. There must be some mistake.’

  ‘Whatever the truth of it,’ he said at last, ‘William is a slave no longer and he stays in your household out of choice. It cannot come as a revelation to you, Mrs Westerman, that slavery exists and we all profit by it. Sugar brings a great deal of wealth into this country. The planters say they cannot grow it without slaves. It is unfortunate, but it is what they say. And whatever this Trimnell was, surely you do not approve of his being murdered in the streets.’ He stopped and looked down at her. ‘Do you think William may have killed him?’

  She had wondered for a moment, listening to him in her sitting room in Berkeley Square, even if she had not admitted it to herself until now. She stared up at the bright green of the young plane trees planted around them and struggling to grow in the Cathedral’s shade, the London smoke. William had been out all night. Dido had told her he had gone to meet some of his fellow Africans in London and she had imagined him, a little drunk, on his way to his friend’s house seeing a murderer wandering free and taking this chance to punish him, but she shook her head and spoke firmly. ‘No. Even if he were foolish enough to tell Dido of having seen the body and recognised him having had a hand in the killing, his attitude this morning was of disgust, rage … not guilt.’

  He released her arm and leaned on his cane. ‘But when you see a slave-owner murdered, you believe an African might well be guilty.’

  ‘Murdered in such a manner? And wearing a punishment mask? O
f course I do.’

  ‘And you sympathise?’

  Sometimes his coldness, his unfeeling habit of putting her under examination like one of his samples was unbearable. ‘Perhaps, Crowther, it is simply that we find ourselves in London where there are magistrates, constables and thief-takers enough! Our help is not required, and no friend of ours is in danger. Or perhaps I have had enough of death.’

  ‘Perhaps you have, but you have a talent for it.’

  She turned her back on him completely. ‘You are too kind.’

  ‘Mrs Westerman,’ his voice showed traces of irritation now too. ‘You are here, and on the external evidence to be found on a murder victim, you are as expert as I am. The coroner must have roused himself out of bed now. Stay an hour.’ She said nothing. ‘We have been recognised. If you run away, perhaps the coroner will, quite reasonably, ask why you do so. Perhaps their enquiries will lead them to William. How could you forgive yourself if suspicion alighted on his head because of your actions? Given your husband’s history with that young man and his importance in your household, surely you owe him that?’

  She turned back towards him, feeling the blood rush into her face. ‘You were doing better when you were praising my talents, Crowther, rather than taking the chance to insult my husband and my intelligence. I told you, as a friend, what William said about my husband. Please do not use it to try and play on me like a cheap fiddle!’

  He must have realised he had gone too far. He said awkwardly, ‘I apologise, Mrs Westerman. And I ask your assistance, in so far as you feel able to give it.’

  She let the frustration rise and fall away again within her before she spoke. However unfeelingly he had put it, there was some truth in what he had said. ‘Shall we see if we can find exactly where Mr Trimnell was found?’

  Much of the grass in the churchyard had been flattened by the crowd which had gathered around the body, so it was difficult at first to find exactly the spot. Still, the minutes of silence as they searched gave them both a chance to let their tempers cool a little.

  Harriet found herself speaking before she remembered she was angry with him. ‘There is another reason I believe William to be blameless. The body was staked out, and wearing the mask. Do you think William carries such things with him on the off-chance of meeting a murderer? This was planned.’

  Crowther looked up, and she was almost surprised by the ice blue of his eyes.

  ‘True. Yes, I suppose it probably was – though there are many men in London who have made their wealth through the slave trade. No doubt you could expect one to cross your path if you waited here in the shadows and were willing to be patient. So an attack was planned, but we do not know if Mr Trimnell was the specific target of the attack, or just one of many who might have sufficed.’

  Crowther continued turning the grass at his feet with the tip of his cane and testing the ground to see if he could find the places where a stake might have been driven in. Perhaps he had found something – there seemed to be a hole in the turf that would fit a peg. Harriet came to his side, and borrowed his cane to feel the depth of the hole herself. It seemed very shallow and they could find no others, yet this was certainly the area in which he was found.

  ‘Why here?’ Harriet said, looking up at the towering white walls of the church. ‘Could it have been for practical reasons? Mr Trimnell was known at the Jamaica Coffee House, and he lived in Cheapside. Is this the nearest open ground where a man might be staked out? But the Coffee House and Trimnell’s rooms are both further to the east. He would not pass this way going between the two.’

  Crowther crouched down and felt the turf. The hole did seem to be the right size and shape for a stake driven partway into the ground, but where were the other three? ‘If you are right and this is the work of a former slave out for revenge, perhaps he means to insult the Church as well as Mr Trimnell.’

  ‘I do not understand you.’

  ‘The Church of England, Mrs Westerman. The Church has holdings in Barbados, and the West Indies are under the authority of the Bishop of London: this is the Bishop’s church.’ He looked up at the buildings on the other side of the railings and the roadway. They were quite high enough to peer down on the place, but the trees would obscure the view, and of course in darkness … ‘Or it might be that this was the nearest place to stake a man out. Overlooked to a degree, but not directly under the noses of the neighbours as most things are in London.’

  He walked away from her to the edge of the churchyard with a vague idea of looking through the borders, where there were still long patches of grass, for some remnant of the attack on Mr Trimnell. He was not sure what he was looking for and swiped his cane almost at random, bending back the stalks and letting them spring back. On feeling that uncanny sensation of being watched, he stopped and looked up: a small boy was peering at him through the railings. He looked rather healthier than many of the specimens Crowther saw roaming the streets. Someone had got him to wash his face within the last few days at any rate, and he did not have the pinched, starving look Crowther associated with unaccompanied children in the capital.

  ‘Lost something, guv? Funny what people drop when they’re staring up at the Cathedral.’

  ‘Do you know about the man who was killed here last night?’

  The boy clambered up onto the stone wall and hung onto the railings so he could look Crowther in the eye.

  ‘Do I ever! I was one of the first here.’ He nodded over his shoulder. ‘Me and my ma live in Queen’s Head Alley. I was out fetching breakfast and saw him laid out while Jo was hammering for the priest to come along.’

  Crowther fished a shilling from his pocket and turned it between his fingers so it caught the sun. He heard a step behind him and realised Mrs Westerman had come to join them. The boy watched the coin and licked his lips.

  ‘Tell me what you saw. All of it,’ Crowther said slowly.

  ‘Bloke laid out there.’ He thrust his arm through the railings to point at the patch of ground. ‘Simon crouched down next to him.’

  ‘What else?’

  The boy shrugged. ‘There was a mallet on the ground by his foot. I fought Fred Moore for it, but he’s bigger than me and got off with it before the constable turned up.’

  ‘What sort of mallet was it?’

  ‘Ordinary. He got sixpence for it from Mother Brown. He’d have got more from Old Beattie, but Mother don’t ask questions or tell tales. There were a couple of short sticks too, like the one his ankle was tied to. People took ’em as keepsakes.’

  ‘Did you see his clothes?’ Harriet asked.

  The boy thought hard, then shook his head decisively. ‘No. Nothing like that. He just had his shift on, and that was torn at the back.’ Crowther flipped the coin and it sailed over the railings. The boy reached out and caught it with such grace that Crowther smiled.

  ‘Thank you, young man.’ The boy nodded then sprang off into the crowd, disappearing as neatly as the coin had done. ‘Well, Mrs Westerman?’

  ‘I am thinking of ordering a man to strip, Crowther, though I would not confess it to anyone other than yourself. Coat, waistcoat, breeches, shoes and hat. They must have bundled them away while Trimnell was still alive, or something would have been left behind with the mallet. I wonder how many pawnshops there are in London?’

  He looked up at the broad flank of the Cathedral, the weight of its stone, the tumbling heights of it frowsting in the London smoke. A movement caught his attention and he saw the verger who had played the corpse for him bustling towards them. ‘I suspect the coroner has finally arrived, Mrs Westerman.’

  I.6

  FRANCIS GLASS WAS TYING a parcel for one of their provincial customers when the young people dashed into the shop. He was trying to ignore the conversation passing between Cutter the clerk and Francis’s friend, the engraver, Walter Sharp. Walter was a fine artist and Francis valued his friendship, but wished he would spend a little more time at his work rather than guessing at the identities of the aristoc
rats and notables whose scandals were hinted at in the latest Town and Country Magazine. Still, the shop was relatively thin of customers, it being early in the day, so he swallowed his irritation and tried to focus on his knots.

  The two small figures darted into the shadows on the far side of the main staircase. Francis finished tying up the parcel and addressed the label in his perfect copperplate handwriting; then, as the children did not leave, he came round the edge of the counter and crossed to the corner whence the suppressed giggles were coming. His arms were folded and he was prepared to be stern, but the children surprised him. He had expected to see some of the pinch-faced and dirty specimens that travelled singly or in packs through the streets, rummaging through the waste piles or holding out their hands with tears trembling in their eyes while their friends dipped in your pockets for your valuables, but these two, it was obvious from their dress, were gentry. The girl could not even be properly called a child – being, he guessed, some fourteen years or so of age. The boy was perhaps a few years younger, nearer ten, and though he was rather slender and thin about the face, there was no mistaking these children for vagrants.

  ‘Oh, sir, do not give us away!’ the girl said in an urgent whisper. There was no fear in her voice, only mischief. ‘We have only just slipped the leash.’

  Francis narrowed his eyes. Even though there were more Africans in London since the end of the war with America, he found that white children still tended to fear him. They saw him frown, thought of the stories of cannibals they had heard, and became quiet and willing in case he ate them. This young girl showed no sign of fright, however. She continued to look up at him with a confident, trusting smile. He found he had to speak.

  ‘Miss, you cannot dash about the place like this. Even with your brother.’