The Mutilated Merchant (The Edrin Loft Mysteries Book 1)

by Jon Evans

  The wardrobes held an impressive array of garments. Mr Perl it seemed was reserved in taste but still had a range of suits, trousers and jackets all made of quality cloth.

  Loft was slightly envious and reminded of the state of his Watch issue leggings, which were second hand and had seen better days, outwardly fine but neither comfortable nor well fitting. Everything in this wardrobe was tailored properly, and even the work clothes were well made of good material.

  He didn't find anything in the pockets though he searched them all, the hatboxes contained hats, and the shoes were empty. Mrs Perl's wardrobe was more impressive than her husband's. It was much wider than Mr Perl's and newer. The contents were more revealing, or more accurately the lack of certain contents.

  There were spaces for more shoe boxes and plenty of space for more dresses. The right-hand end of the rail was empty and all the clothes left were evening or smart wear of some kind. Nothing practical you might expect a housewife to wear during the day. There was no underwear left while Mr Perl had plenty of socks and underpants.

  This was enough to convince Loft that the family had left of their own accord, but they hadn't taken everything of value. Mr Perl's suits would have fetched a good price even second hand as would a lot of the furnishings and houseware. They'd had time to pack but either they planned to return or they didn't have enough time to take everything of value.

  Given the circumstances, Loft didn't think it likely that they'd be coming back, but maybe Perl hadn't told his wife he was in danger and had sent them away on some pretence. They'd probably never know if they couldn't find them. At least it seemed likely they were safe, no kidnapper would have stopped to take all this clothing.

  There was a wide chest of drawers but it just contained old clothes and fresh bedding and towels. He rifled through it thoroughly for hidden items but came up short. The bathroom was similarly useless. He wasn't sure if Mrs Perl had taken much from here, but there was a lot left if she had.

  Loft had no idea what half the pots and jars contained or what they were for, and even some of the more masculine items were a bit alien to him. His shaving routine was simple by financial necessity, but Perl had aftershave, and various jars of creams and ointments Loft didn't recognise. Nothing that looked suspect but he guessed Perl had been quite well turned out when he was alive.

  He spent a couple of minutes looking for any loose floorboards or possible hiding places but found nothing.

  "Sir? Any joy?" Gurnt asked as she entered the room.

  "Not an iota of anything remotely resembling it, Sergeant. Did you find anything?" Loft replied.

  "Not a sausage. I think some clothing was taken, but not all of it, there's plenty of toys left too. The little girl's room is mostly stripped of clothes, and there are no stuffed animals. There are two boys, one I'd guess must be a teenager, presumably the one that worked in the shop, the other is probably about ten. I think you should take a look at his room, Sir," she said, and her tone seemed somehow resigned.

  Loft nodded and followed her into the room, he looked around, opened the wardrobe and looked through it. "I can't tell if anything is missing, it seems pretty full," he said over his shoulder to Gurnt.

  "What if I told you that his brother has a nice, smart suit in his wardrobe and the little girl a pretty little dress," Gurnt prompted.

  Light dawned on Loft. There were plenty of clothes but nothing for playing the role of a child of a well off family. Nothing to dress the child up in to make him look smart. Just school clothes and things he could play or sleep in.

  "Why would she put the middle child in a good suit and not the other two? Why not take any of his other clothes if he happened to be wearing it when they left and they were in a hurry?" Loft asked.

  "If you're not going somewhere special I can only think of one reason to put a child in a smart suit," Gurnt said sadly.

  Loft sighed. He could think of other reasons but none that seemed probable. "You think they buried him in it," he said.

  Gurnt nodded, "I do. I can see toys in here that look well loved. I see a full wardrobe and lots of underwear and his day to day boots. I can't see they've taken anything for him except the suit and his smartest shoes. There's an empty shoe box for them."

  "The bed is made as well. No-one would do that if they were leaving in a hurry and a ten-year-old boy certainly wouldn't do it without his mother standing over him, at least, I never did. We need to know if this happened recently and where they buried him," Loft said.

  "I suppose the room could have been like this for months. I'll get some of the lads to check with the local graveyards and the registrars to see if his death was reported or he buried somewhere official. There wasn't a grave in the back garden that I saw, but I'll check that too," Gurnt said.

  "There wasn't, Sergeant. But there was soil turned over in the herb garden at the shop. A plot big enough to be for a small child, it looked like gardening to me, but I think we need to dig that up," Loft said.

  "Not being funny, Sir, but no we won't," Gurnt said.

  "Explain?" Loft asked in puzzlement.

  "That's what constables are for, Sir," she said with a broad grin, and he found himself laughing at that. It was a welcome feeling, relieving the tension of an otherwise depressing experience.

  "Yes, I suppose it is, and after all, you and I have to catalogue all that evidence in the cellar," he replied.

  "Absolutely, Sir. We have to make sure all that is accounted for while the Constables move it onto the cart and put it in storage. An important job that, not to be trusted to junior watch officers," she said sagely.

  The rest of the house told them very little. They found some papers in the study and collected them, but it all seemed personal, and Loft doubted any of it would help. Still, they had to read through it all properly, and that could be done back at the Watch House. Twenty minutes of searching didn't turn up a hidden cellar, so Perl's side business wasn't conducted at the house as far as they could tell.

  Chapter Ten

  They returned to Perl's shop after a brief stop at the Watch House to drop off the paperwork they'd found and get the constables and the cart. Gurnt and Loft inspected the garden while the constables brought the spades through, got their armour and jerkins off and rolled up their sleeves.

  Constable Miller started to take off his boots, and Gurnt stopped him, "Why are you taking your boots off, Constable?"

  "So they don't get muddy while I'm digging, Sergeant. Easier to clean feet," he said.

  "True, true, but do you think Dr Gardener will find it easier to sew your toes back on if you slip with the spade? Or sew up the bottom of your foot if you gash it open trying to push that into the dirt, hmm?" she asked in an icy tone.

  "Ummm. No? I mean, no, Sergeant," came the sheepish response.

  "Damn right, no, Sergeant. Now lace those books back up, Constable Miller and crack on. Libult, Knave you help him. Try not to injure each other while you do it. Take turns too. I don't need you all exhausted if he's buried deep. Oh, one more thing, if there's no coffin, you're going to find him with the spade, so the deeper you get, the more gently you dig unless you fancy putting your shovel through the head of a little boy, " she said. Loft felt just as green as the Constables looked at that thought.

  She turned to the remaining members of the Thieftakers they're brought with them, "Corporal Amuel, Constables Swint and Pelunt, you can help with the Captain and me with the stuff we found in the basement."

  "Hey, why do all the ladies get to go and do the easy work while we're stuck digging graves?" Libult shouted after them. Gurnt turned back to him, and Knave and Miller suddenly found their fingernails were in desperate need of attention.

  "What else are men good for, if not digging holes and lifting things?" Gurnt said with a smile.

  They left them to it and went down into the cellar. They'd remembered to bring plenty of paper and pencils to take notes, thankfully.

  He and Gurnt chatted for a bit, working ou
t which items they should deal with first and they settled on the potentially lethal poisons and chemicals. Best to get that out of the way and safely stored before they started moving the weapons mounted to the wall above the workbenches.

  Gurnt assigned the others to check the crates and carting things upstairs. Some of the sacks of spice still had weapons hidden in them, daggers and swords mostly.

  Perl had kept a thick leather apron, and gloves hung on the wall, and Loft donned both before touching anything. Fortunately, Perl also had some sturdy crates that were ideal for the bottles, and plenty of packing straw to pad it out.

  Working together with Gurnt keeping records, Loft boxing up the potential poisons and the corporal and constables, taking all the crates upstairs. It still took over an hour to sort it all out to Loft's satisfaction.

  There was still a lot in the basement, but as far as they could tell, they'd found everything that might be lethal. Loft looked at this team and ordered them all to take a rest. They trooped upstairs and joined the men in the garden.

  The constables were making good progress with the digging and were already down several feet, "The soils still loose, Sir, it's not too bad," Miller said.

  Loft ordered them to take a break too and get some water. It looked like hot and sweaty work, but then he looked down at his own shirt and realised how much insulation the leather apron had given him.

  He pulled it off and rolled it up with the gloves. "Corporal Amuel, make sure the crates marked with chalk may have the poison of some kind in them. I don't want anyone to touch them, yet, we'll put them on the cart last. I want Dr Gardener to examine the contents when we get them back to Old Gate," he ordered.

  Gurnt inspected the hole they'd dug, it was already quite deep, but she stuck a spade in it experimentally, and it still felt quite loose even at that depth. Too loose to have been here years. "Right, maybe a foot or two more, three if he was ambitious or had help. Proceed carefully, lads; you're getting close" she ordered once they'd finished their break.

  They dealt with the swords, crossbows and other weapons on the wall racks next. Then they opened every remaining crate and inspecting each in case it contained anything they needed to know about immediately, like chemicals or something highly flammable.

  After that, there was still a startling array of things to pack up and cataloguing things as they went slowed them down. He didn't want any of this going missing and was hoping having numbers would help them decipher the log book they'd found as well.

  He knew the watch had enough petty criminals in it who would be happy to sell off confiscated goods to make some easy money. Hopefully, he didn't have any like that in the Thieftakers, but they weren't all here for their spotless records and easy to work with nature.

  Perl's records seemed meticulous so even though they were unintelligible, maybe they could work backwards and work out what each line referred to.

  Presumably, some of the columns were amounts the goods were bought and sold for. The credit and debit columns were in the same colours as his readable ledger from the shop, but the numbers were also in a script he didn't recognise. It was a slim hope but not completely impossible that they could work it out with some lucky guesses and a lot of work.

  It didn't feel like they'd been back in the cellar for all that long before they heard the constables calling for them. Libult put his head around the door at the top of the stairs and called out, "Captain, we've found him."

  He took the stairs two at a time, Gurnt following closed behind and they spilt into the garden. Miller was shoulder deep in the pit they'd dug, Knave was leaning heavily against a tree and looking like he was about to throw up.

  Loft looked over the edge of the hole. They'd exposed a thickly woven rug which had been rolled back to reveal white bed sheets wrapped around a human figure that couldn't have been four feet tall. "Is the sheet stitched together Constable?" he asked as he crouched to get a better look.

  "No, Sir," Constable Miller said.

  "Peel it back please, around the head so we can see what we're dealing with," Loft said quietly.

  Miller swallowed, nodded, took a deep breath and bent over, tugging gently at the material wrapped around the corpse's head until it came free. He peeled it back, revealing the pale white face of a boy not more than nine or ten, as the material exposed his neck, Constable Miller exclaimed, "Fucking bastard."

  The boy's throat had livid bruise across it, flecked with blood. Even in the pallor of death, it was easily visible. Loft had seen enough. He was sure the same man was responsible for the death of father and son. The boy had been killed, they'd buried him here and were getting ready to flee when the murderer caught the father and killed him, even more brutally than he had the boy.

  "Cover him up, and let's get him out of that hole. I want Dr Gardener to examine him, and he doesn't deserve an unmarked grave in a back garden," Loft ordered.

  "Poor little sod. It looks like it was quick," Gurnt said.

  "Not quick enough, Sergeant. He'll hang for this when I catch him," Loft said.

  "Maybe not, maybe he won't come quietly, and we can save the hangman the bother, Sir," Gurnt said.

  "I hope not, I want the bastard to have time to anticipate his end not get a swift exit," Loft said.

  "Right enough, Sir. Sometimes the hangmen don't get their measures right, and they just dangle there until they strangle. Horrible way to go. I'll speak to them when we catch him and make sure they know the justice he deserves," Gurnt said darkly. Loft didn't say anything against what she was implying. The murderer wouldn't be getting anything he didn't deserve.

  "Let's get him into the house, and then we'll get the gear up from the cellar and take it all back together," Loft said.

  They worked together, carefully lifting the sad bundle out of the dank hole, the smell wasn't as ripe as his father had been but still stomach churning. It was worse, knowing that it was a child, an innocent without a hope of protecting himself from his attacker and too young to be blamed for any wrongdoing.

  They laid him gently on the kitchen table, and Gurnt lit some candles, sprinkling herbs in them to mask the smell. They filled buckets of water and cleaned themselves off in the garden. It would have seemed disrespectful somehow to wash in the kitchen, where the boy lay.

  "Sir?" came the call from the pit where Constable Miller was retrieving the tools.

  "Yes, what is it constable?" Loft replied

  "I think I've found something buried under the boy, looks like a small chest," came the reply.

  Loft walked over to the grave and peered down at the find. The constable had peeled back some cloth and exposed the lid of a small, heavily carved, box. "Fish it out, and we'll have a look at it," Loft said.

  Miller grabbed the linen wrapped around the box and pulled. It came free easily, and he wiped it down before passing it up to Loft. It wasn't particularly heavy or large, but you could tell there was something inside. Although burying it under a body wouldn't make much sense if there weren't. Unfortunately, the keys they had didn't fit the lock.

  That turned out to be less of a problem than Loft imagined. Corporal Amuel had the box open in a jiffy after producing a set of picks from her jerkin. Did his entire watch house know how to pick locks, Loft thought, raising an eyebrow at Gurnt.

  She returned his gaze, "Who do you think taught me?"

  Loft shrugged. Not a normal skill for the watch but a handy skill to know people had. Maybe he should get Amuel to show him how to do it too.

  There were several jars in the box, split evenly between larger green bottles and smaller blue ones. Identical to the ones that Verre had shown them. "Look familiar, Sergeant?"

  "Yeah. I'm betting we just found some of the final product," she replied.

  "Looks like it," Loft said, closing the box, "Let's get the rest sorted out."

  With everyone helping Gurnt and Loft the work to catalogue and box up the weapons and gear in the cellar went much more quickly. They had the cart loaded
within the hour, and they were able to find a long thin crate large enough for the boy.

  He was placed, rug and all, inside his temporary coffin and covered him over with another white bedsheet. Constable Swint found some perfumed toilet water in the bathroom, and they sprinkled it liberally over the makeshift sarcophagus.

  There wasn't room for anyone but Constable Pelunt who was driving the cart, so they tidied themselves up and marched behind. They formed an honour guard until they reached the watch house.

  Loft headed upstairs to warn Dr Gardener what was coming, lest he says something inappropriate before he realised what was in the crate. "Doctor? Are you there?" he called as he climbed the stairs.

  "Yes, just tidying up. Don't worry; you missed the worst of it," Gardener said.