By Gaslight

by Steven Price

I know what bulbs are, Constable. He leaned in closer, pulled the oilcloth up to her hips, peered at her torso. The mottled skin on her upper arms where she might have been gripped and shaken. Her chiselled rib cage, the soft spill of her breasts, the nipples blue in the cold. Where are the legs?

  We don’t know that yet, sir.

  The head was at the docks? Where was the rest of her?

  That’s the queer part of it. Shore cleared his throat. A constable found the torso tied in a sack under a piece of masonry on a building site out at Edgware Road. That was five o’clock this morning.

  I don’t understand. It wasn’t in the river?

  Shore frowned no. But Mr. Cruikes fit the cut of the neck to the torso. It’s a match.

  William glanced back at her in interest. That head doesn’t look fresh.

  Aye. The river will do that.

  William walked to the other side of the table. Look at these stab wounds, he said. Is there water in the lungs?

  We think she must have been attacked with a knife, sir, the constable said. Then they cut her up. After she died, like.

  You don’t think she did the violence to herself?

  To herself, sir?

  He’s being rough with you, Constable.

  William turned back to Shore. An awful lot of trouble for a drowned woman.

  Aye.

  Why would anyone do this? Revenge?

  I’d guess the head was weighted down in sacking to lose it in the river. To keep her from being identified. Something must have gone wrong, it rolled loose, floated out. Neighbour remembers a man shouting and something heavy being dragged across a floor two weeks back. Says he was walking his dog at the time.

  Two weeks back. How does that help with this?

  Shore looked tired. He plucked his pipe from his lips and rubbed wearily at the stem. Women like that don’t just get murdered for no reason.

  Women like that.

  Aye.

  William said nothing. After a moment he said, There’ll be some evidence somewhere. You can’t cut up a body and clean up the mess perfectly.

  Unless it was done in the river.

  Then someone saw it. There’s a lot of blood in a body, John.

  Aye.

  It just doesn’t make sense.

  You know what these types are like. Maybe an old mark caught up with her. Maybe she tried to sell a job to the wrong customer. Maybe she had something on someone and was going to come to us with it.

  After she climbed out of the river you mean?

  Maybe someone didn’t want her to leave the city. Or maybe it had nothing to do with her, maybe she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time. I don’t know, William. Maybe this isn’t even her.

  You think it isn’t?

  Maybe she was with child, sir, the constable said.

  Shore ran a hand through his thinning hair, looked at the doorway, looked at the girl on the slab. What the devil does that have to do with anything?

  Like the Tabitha case in Brighton last summer, sir. The serving girl who was killed by her mistress.

  William glanced past the chief inspector at the constable standing with his heavy helmet in one hand. Where’s Dr. Breck? he asked. Why don’t you have him take the girl apart, see what he can find. If there’s water in the lungs you have a different sort of offence here.

  Shore scowled. I’ll run my own affairs, thank you.

  Okay.

  Mr. Stone, Shore barked at the young constable. Make certain Dr. Breck has a look at her. He turned back to William. You don’t think she might have been pregnant?

  I don’t.

  If she was pregnant there might be a man involved.

  I’d guess so.

  What did you think of her? Her character, I mean?

  He frowned and turned his glance away. He said, There was nothing wrong with Charlotte Reckitt twenty dollars wouldn’t fix. It just wouldn’t fix it for very long. He stepped forward, brushed her cold wrist. The flesh was spongelike against his own. He murmured, How does a woman jump from a bridge in the middle of the night and end up cut into pieces in different parts of the city by morning?

  Your father would’ve had a theory.

  William ignored this. Where are the legs? he said. What happened to her hair?

  Constable Stone cleared his throat. I’d wager she had it cut for a disguise, sir.

  Why would she bother with something like that?

  The constable frowned.

  Why are there no wounds on her hands and arms? If she was attacked she would have tried to fight the assailant off.

  Maybe she was asleep, sir.

  Wonderful. Where. In her bed?

  The constable nodded.

  You think she leapt from the bridge, swam to shore, went home to cut her hair, then went to bed and was assaulted and that her killer cut her up and spent the night going from Edgware Road to the river with sacks of remains?

  The constable flushed.

  Maybe she never fought back, Shore said. Maybe she knew her attacker.

  Maybe. William gestured to a blue-green mottling along her forearms, just above the wrists. More likely she was tied up. I’d talk to this Malone again. He turned to the constable. You have an address for him?

  Constable Stone blushed and turned the helmet in his hands. Workingmen don’t give up their addresses, sir. Not to us. But I know the sight of him. I could describe him to a hair.

  All right, Shore said. We’ll find him if we need him.

  Sure you will. How many Irishmen named Malone work out at the docks? William dipped his chin, massaged his neck wearily. Are we done here, John?

  Shore nodded.

  William made to turn away but the chief inspector was still studying the girl’s swollen mouth. Very slowly he reached forward and drew the oilcloth over her torso, over the head. He looked up and his pouched eyes were very black. Just so you know, he said. No one kills a girl over here because she’s pregnant. They just disown them or ship them off to relations in the country. Or else leave the nuggets out in the cold when they’re born.

  William met the chief inspector’s eye. Nuggets? he said.

  Aye.

  You English, he muttered.

  FOUR

  English? the turnkey scowled.

  He was the port officer for the dock cells and he frowned up over the small square lenses of an ancient pair of spectacles.

  An Englishman, Foole said again. Just in from Boston, on the Aurania. A big man, black beard, heavy-set. They say he assaulted a man at the saloon-class exit.

  The turnkey scratched at his grizzled chops. Leaned back on his high drafting stool, the backrest creaking under him. Staring aslant at Foole all the while as if at some savage dressed to pass for white and Foole scraped at the dust of the floor, clasped both hands on his walking stick, leaned irritably upon it.

  I believe his head was bleeding, he added.

  An why would ye be wanting this particular someone then?

  Daylight was filtering in through a long row of leaded windows and the chill from the waterside made its way up the walls and Foole withdrew a pair of pale green gloves and tucked his walking stick under his left arm and slowly pulled on each of the gloves. He understood this shed must be a temporary jail although the low ceiling was long stained with smoke from the lamps and the streaks of rust from the corners of the window frames must have taken some years to leak. A small, dingy, narrow place reeking with the offal from the fish houses just off the ramp. All this time he had not taken his eyes from the turnkey and that stare was cold and hooded and it warned that his business was his alone.

  After a moment the turnkey shrugged. Suit yourself then, he grunted. He stood and came around the desk and led Foole down a corridor to a locked cell. He was smaller even than Foole and he walked with a hand in the curve of his back as if he had suffered some injury when young.

  When they reached the far cell he curled one fist around a crossbar. Ye don’t mean this one?

  The
giant sat slumped on a steel bench suspended by chains and he did not lift his head.

  The very man, Foole said.

  Go on. Ye ain’t in his employ now?

  Foole smiled. Hardly. I’m the man he assaulted.

  The turnkey frowned, took off his spectacles, wiped them. I don’t know how things is done where ye come from, he said. But here we works with the law. I can’t just be turnin a blind eye, see. More’s the pity, maybe.

  It took Foole a moment to understand the man’s meaning. I’m not here to do him harm, he said. I’m here because I don’t wish to see him prosecuted.

  You don’t mean to press charges? The turnkey glanced dubiously at the giant’s cell. With due respect. Ye sayin you would have us release him?

  Yes.

  What in the devil for?

  Call me a sentimental soul.

  There are some as might call ye somethin else. Begging your pardon.

  Foole withdrew a shilling and held it softly in his palm. For your trouble, he said.

  It weren’t no trouble, the turnkey replied. Just doin me job. But his hairy fingers closed over the coin all the same. I can’t see what good keepin him here is like to do, he said. If you don’t aim to pursue the matter. There’s the small issue of the fine though.

  Foole waited.

  Disorderly conduct, drunk in public. Be another shilling, that one.

  Foole withdrew the last shilling from his pocket and studied it a moment in his gloved fingers and then he handed it across.

  Well, man, he called out over the turnkey’s shoulder. We can see past this misunderstanding, can’t we?

  The giant sat unmoving, buckled forward, his tangled mass of black hair threaded in his hands.

  Course ye’ll be walkin the same streets as the monster, the turnkey said. Wouldn’t ye be needin an escort?

  I’ll be fine.

  Ye don’t aim to just walk out with him now?

  Walk out with him? Foole smiled at the idea, adjusting each glove at the wrist. I should think not, he said. No, I mean to stand the man a drink.

  The giant’s name was Japheth Fludd. Foole walked with him in silence up Water Street and past the Cunard Line offices then turned down Castle to Derby Square and the chaos of Lord Street with its buggies and clerks and sailors swaggering on shore leave with hands in pockets and pipes in teeth. At a narrow alley they turned and slipped down a short flight of steps into a dark flash house still without talking and in the corner took the end of a scarred trestle that served as a table. Two whores perched at the far end saw the giant in his battered state and exchanged a glance and stood and moved to a different table. After a moment a small girl in a boy’s hat and a blue work coat with the stuffing coming through at the seams of the shoulders got up from where she had been sitting under the room’s only window and came over to them with a grin. She was swinging a small suitcase before her.

  Took your sweet time, she said. You two have a nice holiday?

  Foole winked. Hello Molly.

  Damn bugger near stove me head in, Fludd muttered. Look at me face.

  She slid along the bench with a teasing sigh. You think you got it rough? O lord I tell you those skirts is awful complicated to get out of.

  I reckon our Mr. Adam’s took more of them off than you have, kid. An he weren’t the one wearin them at the time.

  Fludd’s cheek was discolouring and there were bruises deepening under his eyes. Foole felt a quiet regret seeing this but knew the big man had taken worse without complaint and that violence to him was a way of being in the world. Fludd’s father had been a minister in the prisons in Australia in his childhood and something of the fury of the transported had settled in his blood. He had been in a federal prison outside New York for six years and three months on an attempted-murder charge for stalking and crushing the skull of a crooked policeman and Foole and Molly had gone to America in part to meet him upon his release and bring him back to London. Those six years had grooved the giant’s face with new scars and Foole looked at his old friend feeling startled by how the man had aged.

  Now he put a hand out on the table. What have you got for us, Molly? he asked.

  Pies. And fried taters.

  He means the poke, birdie.

  Molly’s grin faded from her face and when she looked at Fludd her eyes were flat and hard and old for her years. Go on, she said. Say that again.

  Say what, birdie?

  Japheth, Foole said.

  Molly was sucking at her upper lip in anger. She was a gifted pickpocket and had been both ward and accomplice to Foole while Fludd was in prison and the two had only just met for the first time three weeks ago. That was the ninth of December 1884, the morning Fludd trudged out of the prison gates with a sack of clothes over his shoulder and his boot prints filling quietly with snow. Almost her first words to the giant had been to keep his head and to pay attention, as if she and not the giant were the veteran of the flash life. That, and to warn him in a growl never to call her birdie.

  Now she was turning to Foole with a plaintive look. He knows he ain’t supposed to say that to me, she said. He knows it.

  Aw, I’m just bein rough with her, Fludd grinned. She knows it don’t mean nothin.

  Is that a apology?

  Sure.

  Molly looked disgusted. Say it. Say it or it don’t count.

  Say what?

  That you apologize, you two-penny bollocking bastard.

  All right, that’s enough, Foole said, with a weary look. Both of you. I mean it.

  Just then the barkeep came out to their table with two greasy plates in the crook of one elbow and three pints between his two fists. A pie swimming in some grey grease. Sausages in a gluey lump. Limp slices of what must have been potato. Fludd reached for his pint.

  You know, Molly said. Now that I look at your face, I mean now that I really look at it—

  What.

  It do look rotten. Where Adam hit you.

  Fludd reached up and touched the bruises gingerly.

  Like a bit of beef pudding.

  Bugger it all, Adam. You an your bloody stick.

  Foole turned a mouthful of the pie from side to side in his mouth.

  What side he hit you on? Molly asked. The left?

  Fludd looked at her a long moment and then he said, It were the right side of me face. Here.

  She peered in an exaggerated fashion from side to side. An on your nose too?

  You bloody minx, Fludd said. It were me temple.

  But Fludd was grinning and so was the girl.

  You should thank god I only hit you in the head, Foole said. I might have hurt you.

  Molly had pulled out a pack of cards and she split the deck swiftly and dealt two dead man’s hands one to Fludd and one to Foole and then she cut out a card for herself and left it lying face down. It was the cleanest way to distribute the poke. They would play out their hands and absorb the winnings Molly had lifted from the passengers on the Aurania’s gangplank. Fludd shovelled in a forkful of pie then picked out a string of meat and pushed his plate aside and laid down a clean hand and Molly passed him the first cut of his earnings and then Foole did likewise. He knew it had been a foolish dip despite their straitened finances but some part of him did not care and some other part of him understood it was important to keep Fludd and the kid in the poke.

  Fludd laid down a second hand and drained his pint and wiped a hand across his beard. He plucked the sausages one by one from their slime and tossed them onto Foole’s plate.

  Foole shook his head. What’s wrong with them?

  Fludd shrugged.

  Molly started to laugh. He’s still a bloody vegetable eater.

  You two thought maybe I’d quit? You thought I weren’t able to keep at it, like?

  Foole was shaking his head. I thought maybe I’d knocked some sense into you.

  Vegetables ain’t good for you, Molly laughed. They just ain’t healthy. You goin to shrivel right up on us.

  Go on,
give us another slice of the blunt, Fludd said.

  Molly slid a sovereign over to his side. Use that to buy your cabbage.

  They played out the hour and cut the pickings and Foole kept one eye on the door but no one entered that he recognized and the barkeep did not ever lay his towel over his left shoulder. That would have been the sign, Foole knew, to scatter.

  Fludd had grown restless. He had bottomed three pints already and was rolling an empty glass between his big hands. What time do our train leave?

  Half five.

  An what kind of time do that give us?

  Foole reached instinctively for his pocket watch then remembered the phrenologist and stopped himself.

  Molly winked at him.

  Slowly she reached around into her waistcoat pocket and withdrew a silver pocket watch with an inlaid gold eye on its front. She flipped the elegant casing open. It was ringed in copper and bore an inscription engraved within. Let me see now, she murmured to herself. If the big hand’s pointin at the—

  O you beautiful creature, Foole said. You make a fine daughter.

  She laughed and clicked the watch shut. An you make a rotten pa. So you goin to tell us what we come back to England for?

  Foole lifted his wrists, turned them out as if to show his sleeves empty.

  Go on, she said. What’s that supposed to mean?

  It means you don’t be askin, he ain’t like to lie to you, Fludd said. You ain’t gettin no answer out of him, kid. Is there time for a last bumper or what?

  Molly took a deep draw on her bitter and smacked her lips at the giant. Is it to do with that letter? Is that the job?

  Foole did not stop smiling but something darkened between them. Which letter would that be? he said pleasantly.

  She looked all at once uneasy.

  Letter? Fludd asked. He was looking from one to the other in bafflement. Bugger it all. I got time for a pint or not?

  You do not, Foole said without looking at him. To Molly he said, An old friend is in some trouble. She’s written to ask us back. We are to be of assistance.

  Molly had lowered her eyes.

  Who’s that now? Fludd said. I ain’t goin back to the pinch just yet, Mr. Adam.

  Foole was still looking at Molly. You’ll want to get changed again, he said. My manservants are a little more refined in their dress.