King Arthur's Bones

by The Medieval Murderers

  ‘Some ham of an actor, you are, Joe.’

  The keeper of the door eyed Malinferno with concern.

  ‘Who’s that behind you?’

  ‘That, sir, is my dear wife, whom I will not let out of my sight while Boney is on the loose.’

  At this the servant finally relented and let Joe and Doll into the silent mausoleum of a house. Noticing a large spray of white arum lilies in a vase on the hall table, Malinferno hoped it was not a presage of the state of the master of the house. He needed Casteix alive. But it would seem he was, for the sourpuss of a servant led them upstairs past the large reception room on the first floor, where Malinferno had first been ushered into Casteix’s presence, and on up to the level of the bedrooms. He stopped outside a grand set of double doors and asked them both to wait. First tapping on the doors gently, he opened the left-hand one and slithered in through the gap like a serpent. A muffled conversation followed, which must have had a positive outcome, because the servant returned the same way and said they could enter.

  Once through the grand doors, they found themselves in an ornate bedroom at the centre of which stood an enormous bed with Egyptian motifs picked out in marquetry all over its scroll-shaped head and foot. Almost lost in a snowy expanse of white sheets and pillows lay Casteix, his wan face topped by a tasselled nightcap. He waved a hand at his visitors.

  ‘Come forward. I cannot see you clearly without my eyeglasses.’

  Malinferno and Doll Pocket complied. And Joe noticed the gleam in the Frenchman’s otherwise strained face when he saw Doll’s attributes.

  ‘Ah, you have brought a companion, Signor Malinferno. And a very pretty one too.’

  Doll simpered in a way Malinferno imagined she had perfected at Madam De Trou’s. Old, leering men required an expression of admiration that had to be well simulated in order to feel they got their money’s worth. Casteix was no exception. The Frenchman stirred in his bed, and Malinferno hoped he was not about to get frisky. Hurriedly he explained his mission.

  ‘I wondered if you had yet come to any conclusions about the thigh-bone I left with you, monsieur. You see I need it returned, and am anxious to confirm its provenance.’

  Casteix sighed. ‘Ah, the thigh-bone. That item is the reason why you find me confined to my bed tonight. But let me answer your question first. There is no way of telling the age of the bone. It could be two years old or two thousand. My feeling on handling it was that it was very old, but that is not a very scientific assessment. Yes, very old.’ He shifted under his covers again and slid a hand underneath the crisp sheets. Malinferno was getting alarmed at his behaviour. The Frenchman, however, continued to talk. ‘As for returning it to you, I fear I am rendered unable to do so.’

  ‘Why is that, sir?’ It was Doll’s turn to question his cryptic replies.

  ‘Because it has been stolen.’

  Malinferno groaned and was about to ask how, when Casteix provided the answer.

  ‘After you left, another person came to the door. A man well muffled against the inclement English weather but with swarthy features. He reminded me of a short-arsed Breton peasant. My manservant let him into my presence, and this peasant practically demanded to know everything about you, sir. And what our conversation might have been about. I told him it was none of his business, but he overpowered me and . . . and sawed my leg off, sir.’

  Malinferno heard Doll gasp, and he suddenly felt sick at the thought of the horrible attack on Casteix. Was this why the old man was now bedridden? Yet he should have bled to death, or expired with the shock. How had he survived such a gruesome attack? By way of explanation, the man brought his hand back out from under the bedclothes. In it he held two pieces of a well-turned mahogany table leg that had been sawed up. No, not actually a table leg, Malinferno realized, for it was not symmetrical all round. He saw suddenly why yesterday he thought Casteix had an unusually well-shaped calf. The leg was wooden, and his attacker had rendered Casteix incapable of pursuit by sawing it up.

  ‘I lost my leg to a crocodile in Egypt, you see, many years ago. Mr Chippendale was kind enough to turn me a substitute. Now it is ruined.’

  Malinferno, stifling a laugh at the absurdity of it all, managed to ask about Arthur’s thigh-bone.

  ‘And the bone?’

  ‘Alas, stolen, Signor Malinferno. Though God knows why. Mummies are ten a penny these days.’

  Malinferno and Doll did manage to get out on to the street before once again collapsing with laughter. Though they had no good reason to. The old man had lost his wooden leg, but they had lost the last part of Arthur’s bones.

  ‘Where to now, Joe?’

  Malinferno, stymied, was ready to give up. But Doll was still eager to pursue matters and had a suggestion. ‘We are forgetting one thing. Someone attacked the Frenchy for the bone, and killed Kitten for certain. If we figure out who it was, not only will we bring justice to Kitten, but we will probably find the bones. What other reason had he to kill Kitten other than to get his hands on the bones for himself ?’

  ‘You’re right, Doll. But how are we going to find out who the murderer is? Augustus was no doubt murdered for Arthur’s bones, before the man realized the box was empty and the bones were elsewhere. The man must then have waited to see who came to see Augustus, assuming any visitor might have possession of the bones. I was duly followed to Creechurch Lane, where Kitten was killed for the same reason. The man had traced the bones to my rooms, and Kitten was found to be in the way. But it still doesn’t tell us who did in Augustus in the first place.’

  Doll pulled a face. ‘No, no, no. Don’t you see the story as you tell it is full of holes. First, we don’t even know if your friend Bromhead is dead. But leave that to one side. I am sure some bloke did keep tabs on the house, and saw you and Dale arriving and leaving. He had to choose one of you to follow, and perhaps it was you, as you said you were aware of someone. And we know he fell off the railing while trying to get an eyeful of me and my friends in our déshabillé. But does that make him the murderer?’

  Malinferno made a mental note to verse Doll in the French language. Her accent was execrable.

  ‘You mean, was he in any fit state after that to get to my rooms and murder Kitten? But who else knew of the existence of the bones?’

  Doll stated the obvious. ‘Only Augustus and the other members of the Avalon Club. But they already had the bones, so they wouldn’t have murdered to get them. Once you had the bones, only Kitten knew about their location. With Augustus dead, the link must be Kitten, even though she didn’t know they was King Arthur’s. So why did she come back, when you had scared her off with talk of the bodysnatchers? She obviously came at a time when you were not going to be there, or her story of being your sister would not have stood up.’

  A thought lit up Malinferno’s brain like one of those gaslamps. ‘Tell me, who would be interested in old bones, whosever they were? And who would Kitten have blabbed to about a nice set of bones just ripe for the picking?’

  ‘You don’t mean . . . ?’

  ‘Yes. The leader of the Borough Gang of bodysnatchers, Ben Crouch.’

  Doll’s face took on a fashionable pallor. ‘Blimey!’

  A trip into the Borough was not something an honest citizen would normally contemplate. A rookery of thieves operated out of the area, and the most feared were the resurrectionists – the men who dug up bodies and supplied them to the medical profession for gruesome anatomizing. Most feared of these bodysnatchers was Ben Crouch, who was the leader mainly due to the fact that he drank to excess less frequently than his comrades. But Malinferno knew that if he was to track down the killer of Kitten and Bromhead – who he was still convinced was dead – and perhaps find the lost bones, the Borough rookery would have to be invaded. However, it did not reduce his sense of terror when, a few hours later, he and Doll found themselves in a low dive somewhere off the Borough Road confronted by a pockmarked man with an evil grin.

  ‘I’ll have to hurry you, pal. It’
s a new moon tonight, and I am not in the mood to waste the hours of darkness when I have an order for five large.’

  Crouch, for that’s who the pockmarked man was, meant he had a request for five adult bodies to be supplied no doubt to Guy’s Hospital down the road that very night. Flanked as he was by four lieutenants, resembling nothing less than Barbary apes from the hairy nature of their faces to their beady, animalistic eyes, Crouch was a fearful character at the best of times. Now he was in one of his bad moods, as today he had learned that Israel Chapman, a Jew to whom he owed money, had started up in the trade Crouch had thought to have monopolized. Israel had had the nerve to supply a corpse or two to St Bartholomew’s. He had already had a drink or two while planning how to deal with the Jew, when these two innocents had had the nerve to fall into his rookery.

  They had been observed asking about Kathleen Hoddy in a voice loud enough to irritate Crouch, who liked to keep his affairs dark. He had got his men to hustle them out of the gin-shop and into the back room Crouch used to plan his forays into the graveyards of London. So they had ended up in the very presence of the man they were asking awkward questions about. Now Crouch was wondering how to deal with them. He reckoned the man was easy meat, and maybe he could add him to the order for five large corpses by way of compensation for the nuisance he had caused. But the woman was another matter. A little on the plump side for Crouch’s tastes, she would nevertheless be more useful alive than dead. He grinned, exposing his blackened teeth.

  ‘Now, as for your request for information about the girl, I can’t say I’ve ever heard the name. Nor do I know anything about this pile of old bones you are looking for. Though I might be able to help you for a consideration.’

  Malinferno looked glum, knowing he had no money to offer the man as a bribe. Of course, if Crouch was the murderer they sought, no amount of coins would get to the truth. It was more likely that he and Doll would end up on some anatomist’s slab themselves. He shivered, wishing they had never come to Borough to try to get some information from the locals. It was clear from the start that Crouch would learn of their prying. He watched in horror as Crouch stepped close up to Doll and leered at her, peering down her cleavage with clear intent in his mind.

  ‘Of course, you could pay me in kind, if you know what I mean . . . arrgh.’

  His lascivious tones were abruptly cut off, and Malinferno looked on in puzzlement as Crouch’s face turned first bright red, then purple, his eyes bugging out of his head. Doll merely smiled sweetly, and told his nervous lieutenants to stand their ground.

  ‘Or your boss’s jewels will be crushed to powder.’

  Malinferno looked down with curiosity at the front of Crouch’s stained and crumpled pants. Doll had firm hold of a hefty portion of the cloth and, from the look of pain on Crouch’s face, most of the contents too. Malinferno could not believe that such delicate hands, encased in virginal white gloves, could perform such a crushing task. He winced at the thought. Doll, however, was implacable.

  ‘Mr Crouch, I don’t believe that you never heard of Kitten. She spoke to you about the bones, and you sent her to get them, didn’t you?’

  At first Crouch’s eyes shone with defiance, and he shook his head. Then he winced as Doll squeezed harder and lifted him a little by his crotch. His manner changed abruptly. He nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes. I overheard the silly bitch talking about finding a bag of bones. I told her she should go back and fetch them for me, or she was in trouble. The next thing I knew she was dead.’

  ‘Killed by you?’

  ‘No. Why should I do that? She was on an errand for me.’

  Malinferno leaned over Doll’s shoulder and threw in his own question. ‘And my friend, Augustus Bromhead? What of him?’

  ‘Never heard of him.’

  Doll gave a deft twist of her wrist, and Crouch squealed like a pig.

  ‘Orl right, he was on our shopping list, the little dwarf was. But we heard someone else was after him. Someone you didn’t argue with – a little Welshman from out of town. We left him to it.’

  Crouch’s eyes were by now screwed up in pain, and he could manage only a final croak. ‘It’s the truth. Honest.’

  Doll relaxed her grip, and a great sigh came from Crouch. He sank to his knees, clutching his bruised tackle. Doll dusted off her pretty gloves and thought to retaliate in some way for Crouch’s comment about Kitten being a silly bitch. It was not for the likes of Crouch to deride a girl who was now dead and due for a pauper’s grave. Even if she was a silly bitch. Malinferno perceived Doll’s intent from the look in her eyes and, grabbing her shoulders, steered her rapidly from the room. He wanted them both to escape before Crouch was sufficiently recovered to think of setting his faithful terriers on them. He didn’t stop pushing her along ahead of him until they were well down Tooley Street and halfway back to Bromhead’s house.

  Sitting in the gloomy upstairs room that was Bromhead’s study, Malinferno tried to puzzle out the sequence of events that had brought Bromhead’s and Kitten’s deaths about.

  ‘Well, it looks like Crouch didn’t do it either.’

  He rooted aimlessly through the impedimenta on Augustus’s desk, not sure what would be of relevance. Sturdy modern leather-bound books lay side by side with ancient curled-up scrolls, and various items served as anchors for the latter, preventing the wind that whistled through the ill-fitting windows from carrying such papers away. One of the paperweights was a large skull, and Malinferno quietly set it aside as a possible substitute for Arthur’s missing one. There would have to be some judicious hammering of its surface, as he was sure Augustus had once told him that Arthur’s skull was damaged with a sword blow. But it would be a start. After all, they had the empty box already. He looked across at Doll, who was occupying her time by scanning through a small and battered tome that Malinferno remembered Thomas Dale picking up off the floor at their first meeting. It was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and its position on the floor had been the reason why Dale reckoned the antiquarian had been killed. He said Augustus would not have thrown down such a precious book. The recollection gave him another idea – maybe the last chance of finding the bones.

  ‘Doll, put the book down. We have to go.’

  Before she could ask where they were going, Malinferno was down the stairs and out into the street. Only then, as they hurried along, did Doll manage to get her question out. ‘Where are we going?’

  ‘To talk to someone who might know who else is interested in Arthur’s bones. Perhaps this Welshman of Crouch’s knew about them from the start. Perhaps it’s him who has been following me.’

  Doll clutched Malinferno’s arm and hung on tight. ‘Well, I may be mistaken, but someone is following us right now. No, don’t look around!’ She pinched Malinferno’s arm hard to stop him giving the game away. ‘Ever since we left the Frenchy’s place and in the Borough there’s been a large cove with a big hat on right behind us.’

  ‘Probably the same one as tried to peer in at the window of Madam De Trou’s before he fell off the railings.’

  ‘Well, that may explain why this one has a stick, and is walking with a limp.’

  After a description like that, Malinferno could not resist it. He turned to look behind him. Suddenly Doll grabbed his face in both hands and planted a kiss full on his mouth. Her lips were wet, and she tasted of strawberries. Malinferno felt quite hot, and his hand sneaked up to Doll’s bosom. She stopped his groping fist with one firm hand.

  ‘Don’t get the wrong idea, Joe Malinferno,’ she hissed into his ear. ‘That was just to stop you giving the game away. Though I must say it wasn’t all that bad. Now, just look out the corner of your eye. It’s the big man in the black coachman’s coat and hat. You can’t miss him.’

  Indeed, Malinferno couldn’t miss him. Not only was their pursuer supporting himself on a heavy wooden stick, but a bandage circumnavigated his skull underneath the hat. It seemed he had more than twisted his ankle when he fell from
outside the window of Madam De Trou’s house.

  ‘Don’t linger on him too long. And give me another of them kisses. I suppose I owe you from last night.’ Malinferno needed no further invitation from Doll Pocket, and he tasted the sweet strawberry lips again. After a while they resumed their stroll, sure that the man was following again.

  ‘Where are we going, Joe?’

  ‘Why, to Thomas Dale, of course. We may not yet have the bones, but he may give us some idea of who might be interested in them besides us.’

  Bloomsbury Square, once called Southampton Square because the fashionable area had been developed by the earl of that name, was lined with noble residences of the well-to-do. Malinferno guessed that Thomas Dale must have made a lot of money out of cabinetmaking. It boded well for his pockets if they could string him along until they found Arthur’s bones. Or any bones, when it came down to it. The evil thought of substitution had more than once crossed Malinferno’s mind, only for it to be put aside. If Arthur could be resurrected from his bones, then the bones of some utter nobody yanked summarily from his grave by the sack-’em-up men would give the game away. Of course, if Doll Pocket were to be believed, the whole idea was nonsense. But Malinferno, for all his love of science and engineering, could not discard the rags of a belief in the once and future king. After all, his English mother had told him all the tales. And like a foreigner who eagerly adopts the customs and ways of another country, Malinferno had become more English than a full-blooded Englishman. He realized Doll was saying something to him, and came out of his reverie.

  ‘What did you say, Doll?’

  ‘Here we are, Joe. Are you all right?’

  Malinferno nodded and stared up at the fine brass plate on the grand house before which they stood. He mounted the steps, Doll on his arm. Pulling on the ivory handle of the bell-pull, he hissed in her ear. ‘Put on that posh accent of yours. We don’t want our employer thinking I consort with . . . with . . .’

  Doll smiled sweetly. ‘With bawds and grubbers?’