A Broom at the Masthead (The Drowned Books Book 1)

by M. J. Logue

  "Indeed, sir, but I happen to be using 'em at the moment!"

  "Ah, but Major." The doctor's eyes were bright with longing. "You would be amazed, were I to reveal to you the secrets of the human frame."

  "I should probably be as sick as Thomazine," he said dryly. "But. It is, indeed, of bones - and, possibly, of brains - that I wish to speak to you."

  "Then you're in the right place, sir. Shall I call for some refreshment, if you don't require a professional consultation?"

  The man was stark mad. No, that was untrue, he was enthusiastic. Evangelical, even. Russell's experience of the human body was that it broke, far too easily, but Thomas Willis was determined to demonstrate the beauty of a man's inner workings, thinking he had found a fellow enthusiast. He had not. He had found a man with a slightly stronger stomach than most who was capable of looking on flayed scalps and opened heads without puking up his breakfast, and that by the simple expedient of reciting the Acts of the Apostles from memory.

  "I am an anatomist," he said proudly, and Russell could only think, no, you're a zealot.

  The circle of arteries at the base of the brain was his latest discovery. Delightful. Russell was never going to eat blood pudding again. Or, possibly, drink red wine.

  The clock was almost chiming the noonday hour, when the man finally ran out of specimens. "My dear major," he said happily, "I hope I have been of some help to you?"

  "Surely, sir. This - that -" he pointed at the convict's peeled skull - "what might you tell, from a - a body? A corpus?"

  The doctor blinked at him, frowning. "What do you mean?"

  "Well, if someone were to be killed, unlawfully, and their body put into a fire, how should you know? That they hadn't just died, I mean? By accident?"

  Willis gave him a reassuring smile, and tapped Russell on the side of the head. "By the bone, sir. The secrets of the bones. A man whose neck is broken -" he prodded the cadaver, and the flayed head wobbled rather horribly -"the bone would remain broken, did you bury him, burn him, or hew him in pieces. 'Tis a common misconception, that a fire will hide all. The soft flesh may wither, major, but not the bone. Oh no, sir. No, major, only God's fire will consume whole. Why do you ask?"

  For the first time, he thought of her with sympathy. If she had been alive, when the house burned around her. She'd always been keen on the flames of hellfire, had Fly, especially where other people were concerned. It had a certain black irony, that Fly Coventry might have burned. He shook his head, trying to clear the shadows. "My sister," he said, "she - died. I was away." And thank God for that one bright mercy. "I was abroad," he said, and suddenly his eyes blurred and he had to put his hand on the table to stay himself. "I was not there. There is talk, you see. That she, perhaps, was -"

  And he loathed Fly, he'd hated her when she was alive and he hated her just as much now she was dead, but he could not stop that picture in his head, of her, her hair as pale as his own flaring out in strands of bright fire across the bare boards, her cap spilled, her skirts starting to catch in traceries of flame - "Was murdered," he said, in a strained voice that he did not recognise. "It makes." The muscle in his scarred cheek was starting to twitch again, a thing it had not done since he was married. "Makes my wife. Fearful."

  Willis nodded, understandingly. "Of course."

  Was it Russell's imagination, or was the doctor looking at him oddly? Suspiciously? "I wondered. You know."

  It was not a question. Willis raised an eyebrow. "Do I know what they say of you, sir? I do. And yet you say you were overseas when your sister was burned."

  "I was. I am - in addition to my duties as a soldier, which are light - I am engaged in trade. I was about that business. I did not know I was to be married, you see, I had no idea that she - that I -"

  "You have no need to convince me," Willis said gruffly, and Russell nodded.

  "To convince myself, perhaps. But I had no reason to wish her harm - she and I had led wholly separate lives, for twenty years and more - I had not spoken to her since the year of Naseby, when she asked me - told me - to come back and play the man of the house in her widowhood."

  "To play?” Willis cocked his head, frowning. “You would not, truly, have held the reins?"

  He laughed, for it still made him bitter. "An excellent metaphor, sir, though I think an unwitting one. When a man mounts a horse, who holds charge - the beast, though he may be the stronger, or the man with the bridle? No, sir, I would have been in charge of nothing. I should have been her puppet, her mouthpiece. I am not ashamed to own that, either. Death was the only thing that could have broken a habit of twenty years' standing, whether it be hers or mine. No - 'tis not her death I seek answers to."

  Willis' eyebrows raised. "You make a habit of it?"

  "Someone would have it so. A watchman at the docks - strangled, and someone tried to set the dock alight. A few ships were damaged, but the crew of my own - the ship in which I have an interest, then - were, uh, celebrating their safe return, and saw the fire, and raised the alarm."

  "And you were?"

  "In bed, quite blamelessly, and sick of a recurrent fever."

  "Alone, I assume."

  "But for my wife and the widow who keeps our lodgings, indeed. I am not accustomed to make my illness a social occasion. So. Both times I have been elsewhere, and both times the only people who can vouch for my innocence are people whose word is not - wholly - unbiased. How, then, would I prove for sure that I had not strangled Thomas Jephcott?"

  It was not one of his better mornings, strangling the life out of a corpse that was already dead, and leaking fluid to prove it. In Russell's feeble, squalmish opinion, Willis could simply have told him, and not sought to demonstrate -

  " Nullius in verba," Willis said happily, and applied his own strong fingers to the livid bruises on the poor body's abused throat. "D'you see?"

  "What am I looking for?"

  "Put your hands next to mine."

  "I thank you, no!"

  "The pattern of bruising, sir. Your hands are bigger than mine, and you have a greater reach - being, as you see, taller. On the other hand, I flatter myself that I am the stronger - experience of lifting dead weights, you might say - and so the marks my fingers leave are deeper."

  "That's revolting," Russell said, quite involuntarily.

  "And anyway, you didn’t do it."

  "Your confidence heartens me, sir. On what evidence? The honesty of my countenance?"

  "Have you ever been strangled, or throttled, or hanged, major?"

  "I am pleased to say, not being a felon, I have not!"

  Willis nodded, and then, quite without warning, lunged with his hands outstretched, and grabbed Russell about the throat - quite gently, as it happened, but sufficient to startle him. He broke a number of glasses and pieces of surgical paraphernalia, he almost overturned the table, corpus and all, and he came embarrassingly close to breaking Willis's nose.

  And when his heart had started beating again, and when the good doctor had finished stanching his nose on a square of linen that had been used for God knows what fell purpose, Russell yelped, "What the hell d'you do that for?"

  Willis looked smug. "What did you do?"

  "I damn' near pissed myself, sir!"

  "You went for my hands, major. As any man would." The doctor put his square, workworn surgeon's hands up against Russell’s throat again. "You sought to break my hold. And that, sir, that will leave a mark. If you throttle a man, he will fight you. He will fight for his very life. It would have left marks on your fingers, Major Russell. Bruises, at the least - the desperate clawings of a man's fingers as he fights for breath. It is not a gentle death, sir, and I would judge that your preferred mode of execution would be a little kinder. But that I could not prove. No, major, I can give you your evidence, for what good it will do you. Your hands are quite clean."

  58

  She raised her head as he came out of the room with Dr Willis on a waft of cold and corruption.

  He looke
d as if he may have regretted his breakfast, but he was radiant, bloodstains and brain matter notwithstanding, and she found herself grinning at him quite helplessly. And he wriggled back at her, almost imperceptibly, that lovely happy-puppy twist of the shoulders that was his expression of joy.

  Willis was speaking to her, and she was nodding intelligently, and saying polite and meaningless things, and all the time she wanted to say - what is it? What do you know?

  And then they were out in the street, and she put her arm through his, and said, at last, "Well?"

  "I did not do it," he said smugly.

  "I know that, Thankful!"

  "So does the doctor."

  "What?" She pulled her arm free and whirled to face him, much to the consternation of a portly gentleman with a beribboned cane who was edging his way past. "What do you - how did he - how can he tell?"

  And he held his hands up for her bemused inspection.

  "My hands are too big, tibber. Or too small, or something." He caught one of her hands, and pressed his palm up against hers. "See? 'Tis a different shape to yours."

  "Obviously, dear, but -"

  "Then it would leave different marks on a man. Would it not?"

  "But -"

  "I know, my tibber, I know, the man was done to death with a ribbon. My bloody ribbon, damn it all, I was attached to that ribbon -" He was still cross about it, too, and that tickled her, though she thought it should not, under the circumstances - "but Thomazine, think on. Even those marks would be linked to a man's shape and size, and as he assuredly was not me, they would equally assuredly not correspond to my form. And besides." He was looking smug again, and she shook her head, feeling very stupid. "A man would not die so without a struggle. This is not a fitting conversation to have with my wife, dear."

  "I don't understand?"

  "Zee, if I were to show you in the manner requested by Lady Talbot, I imagine people would stare. If I were to put my hands about your throat - or a ribbon, or any other instrument - you would struggle, and you would hurt me. Presumably, in poor Master Jephcott's case, not sufficient to make the culprit desist in his activity, but there it is. You would endeavour to break my hold, in order to preserve your life."

  "Yes?"

  "And my hands - my shins, in all probability," he said dryly, "would bear the marks of it. A desperate man does not pull his blows, love."

  She remembered his pride, at setting in that row of nails the day the glazier had mended the street window in their lodgings. He had been quite unreasonably proud of the most uncharacteristic wholeness of his skin after a job of work, and that was why she remembered it. A day - two days - after they said he'd choked the life out of a man. Her heart jumped singing like a lark.

  "Dear," he said gently, "I have not seen that poor man's body, and nor is it fitting that I should do so. But Doctor Willis can. And will. He believes me as innocent as you do, Thomazine. And I imagine that by the end of this week, he will have absolute, irrefutable evidence that I did not harm a hair on that man's head, and he will be more than willing to make free of it. And then let us see what the gossips make of that."

  "You are exonerated?"

  "I am absolutely exonerated, my tibber. And by the end of this week it will be public knowledge. As will be the information that some ne'er-do-well is slandering my - our - good name, for reasons of their own." He kissed her, absently, with the result that he almost missed her mouth and kissed the tip of her nose instead. (Or perhaps he meant to, though it would be a most uncharacteristically explicit public display of tenderness, in the street, to the shock and dismay of those respectable passers-by who frequented this part of Aldgate. Perhaps he was, truly, so happy that he did not mind.)

  "What do you mean to do?"

  "What I should have done a month ago. I am going to lay the whole matter in the hands of the authorities, love."

  "But -"

  "Thomazine." He kissed her again, with more intent, this time. "We have done enough. I will put you in no further harm's way. I will call at the Justice's house on my way - um - about my business, and I would like it above all things were you to go home. And bar the door, I think. I think I should prefer it, if neither you nor the Widow should be abroad without - without me, or without another."

  "You are afraid?" And suddenly she was, because he had that purposeful look about him, and she did not know what he had sighted on, only that he feared a thing that she could not see.

  "I am." And that was an admission she had never heard before, from her indefatigable darling. "For Zee - what if this is deliberate, my love? We have thought that this was no more than some clapper-tongued rogue seeking to attach my name to a murder, for their own nefarious ends." He gave her a faint, unconvincing smile. "What if the rogue and the murderer are one and the same?"

  And on that unreassuringly note, he left her standing at their front door.

  59

  He was over-reacting.

  He was furious. He was terrified.

  He was as jumpy as a mouse in a room full of cats.

  He had made the local Justice aware, and the local Justice had smiled at him and all but patted his head and sent him about his business, for Russell had only told him the half of it. Had not mentioned that he was an intelligencer, he didn't think that would be helpful.

  He thought, though, that of all people Prince Rupert might be interested. He had detected a glimmer of sympathy in that ragged ageing raven that surprised him: like himself, a man with a past of blood and fire, chained to a perch of respectability by circumstance.

  Although he had something of a wait before Rupert was in any fit state to receive company.

  "You have news?" he said, and scratched under his wig, squinting a little in the sunlight that gleamed on his fantastic brocade dressing-gown, and on the fresh pad of brown and yellow-stained linen that poked from under his curls.

  "I have," Russell said smugly, smoothing his own - very much his own - hair behind his ears. "Dr Willis is presently investigating the murder of a night-watchman at the Wapping docks."

  Rupert scowled as if his head hurt - which, given the smell of stale brandy that hung about him, as well as the rancid linen pad, it probably did. "'S he want to do a daft thing like that for?"

  "I posited it as a matter of some - interest."

  "Oh? He has an interest in murders? Thought such matters were best left to the Justices, m'self." He stifled a yawn. "Major Russell, is there a point to this? Given what they say of you, sir, I’d have thought you’d care to give the subject a wide berth."

  "It does not trouble you?"

  "If I were to bar access to my company for every man with the whiff of blood on his hands, I'd be damnable lonely. The idea of a murder -" he shrugged, "aye, well. Add another notch to the tally, major. How many men did you kill in the wars?"

  "Too many for my tastes," Russell said. "Nor do I duel."

  "Aye? Not what I hear. Heard you were very hot to engage, at a recent supper, till Wilmot stopped you. Pity, for it would have been a pretty sight, you taking on my lord Talbot. You'd have whipped him, of course, and he'd have cried like a puppy for weeks over it. And then he'd have probably paid someone to cut your throat a month later. No, sir, ‘tis not the deaths that intrigue me. Life’s cheap, sir, you know that as well as I. You could have murdered half the whores in the City, for aught I would care, so long as you left the clean ones – “ he grinned ruefully, “imagine the outcry, an you did not?" He took his wig off and dropped it on the little table beside him with a grimace. "Ah, damme but that thing makes my head ache. To the Devil with fashion, I say. For now. You're too much the old Roundhead to turn up your nose at a man for his not keeping fashion, in his own chambers."

  "Indeed," Russell said dryly.

  "No, major, if you did put an end to the man, I'd be sure you'd a reason for it. Damme, he was only a bloody watchman, what’s the fuss? No. What interests me, sir, is why you set light to the dockside?"

  "Didn't," he said. "But
someone wants to make it look like I did."

  And then he had Rupert's attention, and he had it hard enough to make the Prince forget his hurts and sit forward in his chair, interrupting occasionally to ask questions, or merely to whistle long and low.

  "D'ye say so?"

  "I do. And so does Willis."

  "For why, though?"

  He set his shoulders. (Hated this, hated saying it, hated that step out into the dark -) "Because I have been an intelligencer against the Dutch for the last - what - five years, my lord. It is not widely known."

  Rupert laughed, and suddenly looked young again. "Be a damn' poor intelligencer if every man knew you were at it, major."

  "Indeed. Well. It is now considerably more widely known than it was, sir, due to the public scrutiny of these incidents. Which was, I fear, the intent."

  "And you reckon, what? Your man came across persons unknown up to no good in the warehouses and strangled him to stop him raising the alarm?"

  Russell paused. "No, sir. I think that is how he wishes it to seem. The watchman was strangled with my hair ribbon - a distinctive thing, a wedding favour of my wife's, that she had taken pains to embroider with sprigs of rosemary, and I begin to wonder that someone chose the weapon because it was mine, rather than for expediency. And as an aside, my lord, I should like it back, if such a thing were possible?"

  "Even though it were a murder weapon, major? 'Odsblood, but you're a cold fish!"

  "Love is stronger than death," he said fiercely, and since he did not expect Rupert to understand, was not disappointed. "I lost it, I can tell you the very night I lost it, it was at a supper party where half the Court was there and any one of them could have picked it up and marked it as mine, if they were so minded. So yes – I begin to believe that it is a man in your nephew’s service who moves against me, which – it troubles me, sir, for I can only think I am marked for a thing I am not. What I am, my lord, is a retired supply officer, a husband, and a -a- I pray God, a father, soon. I am not an intriguer. Not any more.”