by Philip Kerr
“That is interesting,” remarked my master, who, on hearing these facts, left off stroking the office cat, Melchior, to look out of the window.
“Is it?” I remarked. “I am surprised that more people don’t fall in, the moat being surrounded only by a low picket fence that would not deter a goat.”
But Newton’s curiosity was hardly deterred by my remark. “It may have escaped you, Ellis, but people who fall in rarely take the trouble to weight themselves down,” he said scornfully. “No, this interests me. Why would someone dispose of a corpse in the moat when the river Thames is so close at hand? It would surely have been a much simpler matter to have carried the body down to Tower Wharf and then to have let the river’s tides and eddies work their transporting effect.”
“I offer no hypothesis,” said I, railing him with his own philosophy, which he took in good part. And there we might have left it. However, many Mint workers—who were easily provoked to fear—hearing of the discovery of a body, stopped their machines, which obliged my master to put aside his own business with Mister Hall and, accompanied by me, to go and investigate the matter himself.
The body had been taken to an empty cellar in the Tower along Water Lane, which ran parallel to the river and was the only road between the inner and outer rampire that was not occupied by the Mint. Gathered outside the cellar door, the stench of the much putrefied corpse having quite overpowered them, were one of the Constable’s officers, several Tower warders, the carpenter, and the two dredgers who had found the body. The Constable’s man, Mister Osborne, who was a poxy-looking fellow always standing on his office and often drunk, which sometimes prevented him from standing at all, was instructing the carpenter to fashion a cheap coffin; but seeing my master he stopped speaking, and most insolently rolled his eyes and looked mighty vexed.
“Zounds, sir,” he exclaimed, addressing Doctor Newton. “What business have you here? This is a matter for the Ordnance. There’s nothing that need concern the Mint, or you, this man being already dead and quite beyond any hanging.”
Ignoring this insult, Newton bowed gravely. “Mister Osborne, is it not? I own I am quite at a loss. I had thought to offer my assistance with the identification of this unfortunate soul, and how he came by his death, for many of us in the Royal Society have a small acquaintance with anatomical science. But I perceive that you must already know everything there is to know about this poor fellow.”
The others smirked at Osborne upon hearing this, for it was plain that Osborne knew nothing of the kind and would plainly have conducted his inquest in a most indifferent and very likely illegal manner.
“Well, there’s many a man drinks too much and falls in the moat,” he said, with no great certitude. “No great mystery about that, Doctor.”
“Do you say so?” said Newton. “It has been my own observation that wine and beer are enough to trip up a drunken man; so that tying his legs together is usually quite superfluous.”
“You’ve heard about that, then,” he said, sheepishly. Osborne removed his hat and scratched his close-cropped head. “Well, sir, it’s just that he doesn’t half stink, being quite rotten. It’s as much as a man can do to be alongside of the poor wretch, let alone investigate his person.”
“Aye sir,” echoed one of the Tower warders. “He’s quite picquant to the eyes and nose, so he is. We thought to get him boxed up and then to stand him in the chimney to keep the stink out, while the Constable made a few enquiries around the parish.”
“An excellent idea,” said Newton. “Only first let me see what enquiries may be answered from his person. If you will permit it, Mister Osborne?”
Osborne nodded. “My duty suggests that I do permit it,” he grumbled. “And I shall wait upon you.”
“Thank you, Mister Osborne,” Newton said handsomely. “I shall trouble you for some of your rolling tobacco to chaw which will take away the cadaver’s smell from our nostrils. Some candles, for we will need plenty of light to see what we are about; and some camphor, to help take the stink off the room.”
Osborne cut off a chaw for my master and myself and would have put away his knife, but that Newton asked to borrow that, too, and he handed it over willingly enough before going to fetch the candles and the camphor. While he was gone, Newton addressed the two dredgers and, offering each man a new-minted shilling, suffered them to answer a few questions about their occupations.
“How do you dredge?” he asked.
“Why, sir, with a drag net which you use while rowing the peter. That being the boat, sir. There’s an iron frame around the mouth of the net which sinks to the bottom and scrapes along as the peter pulls it forward, collecting into the net everything that comes in its way. Mostly we are river finders, sir. There’s more in the river. But sometimes we try our luck in the moat, as is our licensed prerogative so to do. You always know by the weight when you find a body, sir, but that’s the first time we ever found one in the moat.”
“This would be where in the moat, exactly?”
“On the east side of the Tower, sir. Just below the Devereaux Tower.”
“So then, within the bounds of the Ordnance.” Seeing the man frown, Newton added, “I mean that part of the Tower which is not occupied by the Mint.”
“Yes sir.”
“Was the body deep down?”
“Yes sir. Quite deep, but not on the bottom. We dragged it and for a while it did not budge. But then it came up, sudden like, as if it had been weighted, for as you will see for yourself, sir, the ankles are still tied by a piece of rope that has broken off something else, most likely a heavy object.”
“You searched the pockets?”
The dredgermen nodded.
“Find anything?”
Each looked at the other.
“Come, man, you shall keep whatever you found, or be well compensated, my word upon it.”
One of the dredgers dipped a grimy hand into his pocket and came out with a couple of shillings which Newton examined most carefully before returning them to their keeper.
“Do you see many corpses fetched out of the river?”
“A great many, sir. Them as shoot London Bridge, mostly. As the saying goes, it was made for wise men to go over and fools to go under. Take my advice, gentlemen, and always get off your skiff and walk around the bridge rather than try and go under it.”
Mister Osborne returned with the candles and camphor, and took them into the cellar.
“One last question,” said Newton. “Can you tell how long a man has been in the water?”
“Yes, your honour, and notwithstanding the weather, which affects the dignity of a man’s corpse greatly. The summer, being a cool one, has not much altered the pace of decomposing so much as the rats. But by and by, even the rats lose their stomach as the tallow in a man’s body stiffens and swells and sticks to his bones after the skin has become softened and quite rotted away, so that he doth almost resemble a body consumed in a fire, except that he be white instead of black.”
“So then,” prompted Newton, “by your expert reckoning, what is your estimate of this one?”
“Why, your honour, six months, I reckon. No more, no less.”
Newton nodded and handed each man the shilling he had promised, and me my chaw of tobacco.
“Have you chawed before, Mister Ellis?” he enquired.
“No sir,” I replied, although I might well have added that it was about the only bad habit I had not picked up when I was studying for the Law. “Not even for the toothache.”
“Then have a care to spit often, for it’s not well known that tobacco contains an oily liquid called nicotiana which is a deadly poison, and that all men who chaw are merely experimenting with its toxic effect. But it may be that your stomach shall be churned whether you chaw or no.”
So saying, Newton went into the cellar and I followed him to find Osborne lighting the candles to illuminate the scene.
“Thank you, Mister Osborne, that will be all for the present.”
But for the stench, the corpse seemed hardly human at all, more like some ancient Greek or Roman marble statue, in a poor condition of repair, that now lay on its side upon an oak table. The face was quite unidentifiable, except for the expression of pain that still clung to what remained of the features. That it was a man was clear enough, but in all else I could have said nothing about him.
“What can you observe about that knot?” asked Newton, looking at the rope which bound the corpse’s feet together.
“Very little,” said I. “It looks common enough.”
Newton grunted and took off his coat, which he handed to me; then he rolled up his sleeves, so that I saw how his forearms were much scarred; but also how he was fascinated by this cadaver, and what it seemed to represent, for while he cut away what remained of the dead man’s clothing with Mister Osborne’s knife, he told me what he was doing.
“Make sure you observe nature’s obvious laws and processes,” he said. “Nothing, Mister Ellis, can be changed from what it is without putrefaction. Observe how nature’s operations exist between things of different dispositions. Her first action is to blend and confound elements into a putrefied chaos. Then are they fitted for new generation or nourishment. All things are generable. Any body can be transformed into another, of whatever kind, and all the intermediate degrees of quality can be induced in it. These principles are fundamental to alchemy.”
It was as well he told me what it was to which he referred, as I had possessed not the remotest idea. “You are an alchemist, sir?” I said, holding the candle closer to the body.
“I am,” he said, removing the last shred of clothing from the corpse. “The scars on my arms that you noticed when I rolled up my sleeves are burns from more than twenty years of using a furnace and a crucible for my chemical experiments.”
This surprised me, for the law against multipliers—as were called those alchemists who tried to make gold and silver—had not been revoked until 1689, but seven years before, until when, multiplying had been a felony and therefore, a capital offence. I was somewhat troubled that such a man as he should have admitted his former felony with so much ease; but even more so that he appeared to believe such arrant quackery.
Newton began to examine the cadaver’s teeth, like a man who intended to buy a horse. “You seem a little disconcerted, Ellis,” said he. “If you intend to vomit, then please do it outside. The room smells quite bad enough as it is.”
“No sir, I am quite well,” I said, although my chaw was beginning to lighten my head a little. “But are not many alchemists in league with the devil?”
Newton spat a stream of tobacco juice onto the cellar floor as if he hoped my opinion might be lying there.
“It is true,” he said, “that there have been many who have tried tocorrupt the noble wisdom of the magi. But that is not to say that there be no true magicians.” He paused and, averting his face from close proximity to the corpse for a moment, drew a deep breath before coming close to the open mouth of the skull; then stepping back he breathed out again, and said, “This man lacks the molars in his upper left jaw.”
“What is a molar?” I enquired.
“Why, the back grinding teeth, of course. From the Latin molaris, meaning a millstone. I have also observed that the second and third fingers of his left hand are missing.”
“There’s a great deal that is missing from this poor fellow,” I offered. “Ears, nose, eyes … ”
“Your powers of observation commend you, Mister Ellis, however, both amputations have occurred in precisely the same location, that being the tip of each finger. It is very singular to this individual. As is the modus mortis. For the condition of the chest is most extraordinary. The ribcage has been quite crushed, as if he was broken by some great compression. And do you see the strange position of the legs? The lower legs pressed onto the thighs, and the thighs up toward the belly?”
“Indeed it is curious,” I admitted. “Almost as if he had been rolled up into a ball.”
“Just so,” Newton murmured grimly.
“Do you think it is possible — No, it will only vex you, Doctor.”
“Speak, man,” he exhorted me.
“It was merely an hypothesis,” said I.
“You will allow me to be the judge of that. It may be that you will have confused it with an observation. Either way, I should like to hear what you have to say.”
“I wondered if this be not another poor victim of the Mighty Giant. Indeed, I heard one of the warders utter the same thought.”
This Mighty Giant was a most notorious and as yet undiscovered murderer who was much feared, having killed several men by crushing their bodies horribly.
“That remains to be demonstrated,” said Newton. “But from what I have read of his previous victims, the Mighty Giant—if there be such a man, which I doubt—has never thought before to dispose of a body, nor indeed to bind the feet with rope.”
“Why do you doubt he exists?” I asked.
“For the simple reason that giants are so few and far between,” said Newton, continuing to inspect the body. “By their very definition they stand out from the crowd. A man who has killed as often as the Mighty Giant must then be rather more anonymous. Mark my words, Mister Ellis, when that particular murderer is apprehended, he will be no more a giant than you or I.
“But what is here undeniable is that this man was killed with great cruelty. It is as plain as the truth of alchemy here demonstrated.”
“I do not understand,” I admitted. “How is that truth of alchemy to be demonstrated from a corpse, master?”
“To be explicit, the living body is a microcosmos. Having lived out its span of life, permeated by heat and air, it comes back through water to final dissolution in earth, in the never-ending cycle of life and death.”
“There’s a merry thought,” I said. “I wonder who he was.”
“Oh, there’s no wonder about it,” said Newton, and grinning at me now, he did add, “This is your predecessor. This is George Macey.”
Before leaving the cellar, Newton bade me say nothing of this to anyone for fear that the information should further delay the recoinage in the Mint.
“There is enough silly superstition among the moneyers already,” he declared. “This would only confound them further and put them in greater fear, for they are the most damnably credulous men I ever saw. If the identity of this poor fellow were generally known, all reason would cease at once. And this place should grind to a halt.”
I agreed to say nothing of what he had told me; nevertheless I was somewhat disturbed by the alacrity with which my master lied to Mister Osborne and the other Tower warders, when we were outside the cellar again.
“I owe you an apology, Mister Osborne. Alas, the fellow is much too decomposed to say anything about him, except that it was not the Mighty Giant who killed him.”
“But how can you tell, Doctor?”
“I have paid some attention to the reported details of these particular murders. In all cases, the victim’s arms were broken. But it was not so with our anonymous friend from the moat. This man’s injuries were exclusively to the torso. If he had been held in the embrace of this Mighty Giant, as is already rumoured, I should have expected broken arms as well as ribs. You may box him now, if you wish.”
“Thank you Doctor.”
“I think, Ellis,” said Newton, spitting the remains of his chaw on the ground, “that you and I need a drink, to take away the taste of this damned tobacco and, perhaps, to settle our stomachs.”
It was only as we started back along Water Lane toward the Stone Kitchen, which was the name of the tavern in the Tower, that the implications of Newton’s lying began to impinge upon my Christian conscience.
“Sir, you are quite sure it was George Macey?” said I, as we started back along Water Lane. “I could barely determine that it was a human male, let alone have identified the poor fellow.”
“There can be no doubt about it. I me
t him but once or twice; however, it did not elude my notice that Mister Macey lacked several teeth on his upper jaw. But, more importantly, the upper joints of his second and third fingers were missing from his left hand. It is an injury most peculiar to this Tower, and more precisely this Mint.”
“It is?”
“Perhaps, when you have become better acquainted with the practice of coining, you will recognise that the moneyer who feeds the coining press with blanks must be mighty nimble-fingered. There can be hardly one of them who has not lost one or more finger joints. Prior to his clerkship, Macey was himself a moneyer. These observations, added to the dredger’s expert opinion as to how long the body had been in the water, and the finding of two new-minted shillings on the victim’s person, such as the ones I myself gave the two dredgers, must equal the conclusion I have described. Even though the coins had been a long time in the water, the milled edges were quite unmistakable.”
“Why, then, sir, if it is George Macey—.”
“You may rest assured of it.”
“Then what of his eternal rest in Christ? Does he not deserve a good Christian burial? What of his family? Perhaps they would wish a stone to remember him by? To say nothing of this matter would surely be wrong.”
“I can’t see that it matters very much to him, can you?” He smiled, as if vaguely amused by my outburst. “I believe there was a whore in Lambeth Marsh he liked to visit. But I shouldn’t think she would want to pay for a funeral. And as for his rest in Christ, well, that would all depend on whether or not Macey was a Christian, would it not?”
“Surely there can be no doubt of that,” said I. “Did he not, as I did, lay his hand upon the Bible and swear the oath of secrecy?”
“Oh, he may have done. Not that that proves anything, mind. After all, most of the Bible was written by men who had no knowledge of Jesus Christ. No, the plain fact of the matter is that Macey was no more a Christian than was the prophet Noah. I told you that I only met Macey once or twice. But on each occasion I discoursed with him long enough to learn the true nature of his religious views. He was of the Arian persuasion, which is to say that he believed that Jesus Christ and our Lord God are not of one substance, and that there was no human soul in our Saviour. Therefore he would hardly have wanted a Christian burial, with all its attendant idiosyncrasies.”
