‘I could tell you what is in there, indeed it might be better for you. Else you may choose to look for yourself.’
‘I choose to look for myself.’ I pushed Dowling out the way and threw open the door. I stopped two paces in, just short of a wide, sticky pool of dark-red blood, smelling rich and foul like the waste bins of any abattoir. The blood formed a thick coagulation that covered most of the floor but congealed mainly around one leg of the kitchen table. On that table were two heads. One head was fat and bald with lots of chins and a thin moustache. Its eyes were rolled up and the mouth formed a small ‘o’. The lower chins were incomplete, ending in the ragged edge that marked where the head had been hacked from its body. The second head stared forward through narrow black eyes, its lips drawn and teeth bared, as if it blamed me for its predicament. This head was younger, hair thick, straight and brown. The lips were white, but from the corner of the mouth there trickled a still and stagnant line of dark blood. The heads had been cut savagely with some thick saw-edged knife, not very sharp.
‘I doubt that you recognise them,’ Dowling walked in quietly, ‘so I feel bound to introduce you to Mr Mottram and Mr Wilson. That is Mottram.’ He pointed to the fat head, ‘and that is Wilson.’ He pointed to the younger head.
‘The men that would have killed me?’ I pulled at the shirt about my neck. I felt hot and the room was stuffy.
‘Aye, Mottram and Wilson. We were looking for them. We didn’t find Mottram, but we found his wife. She gave us the name of the second man. She called him the weasel. That’s the weasel there.’ Dowling pointed at the second head again. ‘Wilson was well known, a thief and a bully. He ventured out with Mottram sometimes. He lived outside the city wall to the east, close to the Tower. We didn’t find him neither. Until now, that is.’
The table was thick with blood, soaked. It would never be clean again. What would Jane say? I would just have to get a new one. Dowling put an arm around my shoulder.
‘No sign of their bodies? Just the heads?’ My stomach contracted and my skin prickled. I turned and walked weakly out the kitchen.
‘Just heads. I think they were killed as punishment for failing to kill you. Their heads I think must be trophies, to scorn our own poor efforts to find them.’ He closed the kitchen door quietly.
‘Matthew Hewitt, then.’ I looked at the walls, and cursed the pervasive malodorous stink that clung to them so tenaciously. ‘I know it is Hewitt.’ Hewitt that invaded my home with the dead, stinking artefacts of life now extinguished. Too many heads today. I shook my own head and walked back out onto the street where the air was clean of the smell of human blood and gore. Cleaner, anyway.
Dowling sighed. ‘I fear that we have come to the end of it. John Giles dead, Joyce dead, now Mottram and Wilson.’
I looked into his big plain face, full of honesty and goodwill. ‘No.’
‘No?’ Dowling’s grin returned, faint.
I told him the idea that was taking form in my mind even as I spoke. My next great plan. Dowling’s grin disappeared and he started to protest. My soul was set, however. I was not going to let Hewitt go free. But first to Shoreditch to talk to Mottram’s wife myself.
Chapter Sixteen
Snakeweed the middle sort
See and consult.
Shoreditch was a little hamlet beyond the city walls to the east. The road that led there was long and winding through tenement after tenement over what had once been lush farmland. The countryside was being ravaged, now covered with house after house after house, a carpet of identical little timber buildings, each with tile roof, each one a small hovel of squalor, damp and pestilence.
I wasn’t a very good rider. My arse was sore and the insides of my thighs worn and raw. The rain began to fall, dripping down my back and soaking into my trousers. The rough road, soggy and wet already, churning up. The roads of little Shoreditch were narrow and uncobbled and the mud was inches thick, stirred and layered with refuse and sewage. Suspicious faces peered out at me from behind small, dark windows. Smoke curled upwards out of the roof holes and downwards into the houses. The government had a tax on chimneys; so poor people blocked them up and choked to death instead of starving.
Heading towards the church I called to a man who walked with a basket of what looked like onions, looking for directions to Mottram’s house. He looked at me blankly – no surprise there – then shot me a furtive glance and hurried on without saying anything useful in reply. I cursed him impatiently, for the wet weather meant that there were few others around to ask. I rode around a while longer before dismounting clumsily and landing awkwardly on my ankle. I limped towards one of the low houses, one with smoke coming out of its roof, and banged my fist on the top half of the split wooden door.
‘What do you want?’ shouted a deep, gruff voice from within.
‘I’m looking for Mrs Mottram, recently widowed. She lives around here.’ I pushed at the door, but it was bolted.
‘Aye, well if you knows that, then you should know where she lives.’
‘If I knew where she lived I wouldn’t be asking, would I?’ It was like playing guessing games with a monkey.
There was a silence. I took off my hat and shook it. From every window about me eyes watched. Like flies, they disappeared as I turned towards them, only to resettle once my attention was fixed elsewhere. I could feel them like lice on my body.
‘What do you be wanting with Mrs Mottram?’ the voice from inside shouted from behind a window across which was stretched a layer of paper soaked in oil. I tapped my finger on the tight paper.
‘If you open the door we can talk. Otherwise I’m going to have to cut a hole in your window.’
The top half of the door swung slowly inwards. A long, narrow face poked out, topped with an unruly tangle of rough, wiry, brown-grey hair, bottomed with a thin, unkempt small beard designed to mask a fiercely receding chin. The face stared at me with squinty eyes, both looking inwards, wrinkled nose and raised upper lip. Although it was pouring with rain he looked as if he was struggling with the glare from a tropical sun.
‘Who are you?’
‘Harry Lytle, and I want to help Mrs Mottram.’ I stood back, not wanting to alarm him.
‘Be a bit late to try and help her like, Harry Lytle. Her husband’s dead and she ain’t got no one to look out for her. Unless you intend to provide for her, which I doubt, looking at those fine clothes you got.’ I had changed out of the butcher’s clothes as quick as I could, so ruining another expensive outfit.
‘I want to find out who killed her husband.’
‘Not sure how that’s going to help her, Harry Lytle. He’s dead now and she ain’t got no provider. Could help her find his head, though, that’d be helpful. Mighty put out she is, not having his head.’
‘How did she find the rest of his body?’
‘Weren’t hard. It were sitting outside her front door yesterday mornin’. Back up against the wall, legs out straight. Looked very comfortable, by all account.’ The man leant forward and wrinkled his nose, smelling the air. ‘So what you be wanting with Mrs Mottram, then?’
‘Like I told you before, I want to find out who killed her husband.’
‘Why you care who killed her husband? He was a fat, ugly old dog. No one liked him, not even Mrs Mottram. Sure he wasn’t no friend of yours.’
‘Because the same man tried to kill me and is still likely trying to kill me.’
‘Ah,’ the cross-eyed man leered. ‘Self-preservation, isn’t it? That I can believe. Keen to find Mrs Mottram, then. Well, I’ll tell you. There’s no one round here who don’t know where she lives, but few will talk to you. So you give me six pennies and I’ll tell you now, save you time.’ He smiled disconcertingly.
I reached into my pockets without hesitation and gave the man his money. I had had enough of people like this. I waited expectantly, daring him to withhold the information.
‘Follow your nose down the road, Harry Lytle. Follow it left down the hill, pass four
houses, you want the fifth. May God bless you and watch over you.’ The man leered again before closing the door in my face. I turned and looked in the direction that he had given me, into the grey wall of rain, at the pools of thick, stinking mud. Despite the short distance I decided to remount. Each one of the four houses I passed looked sodden and fragile, ready to sink into the soggy quagmire. I dismounted and sunk up to my ankles.
‘Mrs Mottram!’ I knocked on the door.
‘Good morning, sir.’ The door opened, and a small, thin shadow of a woman stood there, shoulders drooped, chin dropped and head bowed.
‘Good morning, Mrs Mottram.’ I took off my hat, baring my head to the heavens. ‘I’m sorry to disturb you at this time.’
‘Oh, I’m always up at this hour,’ she answered in a little voice, eyes glazed.
‘No, that’s not what I meant.’ I looked at her carefully. It had sounded like it might have been a joke. ‘I know your husband was killed. It’s what I’ve come to talk to you about.’ I held my hat in both hands and edged forward into the dry.
‘Oh, I see. Come in.’ She turned and walked into the house and sat on a chair behind a wooden bucket. The bucket sat under a hole in the roof through which the rain fell straight without touching the sides. There were two other chairs, and I sat on the one closest to her. She sat with her hands clasped on her lap.
‘Mrs Mottram, I’m sorry about your husband. You must be upset.’
‘Aye, upset is the word alright,’ she said very quietly, head still bowed like a little mouse.
‘You must miss him.’
‘No, I don’t miss him. He was a useless lump of lard. He was always getting himself into trouble. Whatever money he made, he spent it. Then he came home and snored like a fat pig. God, I hated that man.’ She looked up, pale and expressionless. ‘Hated him with passion. Glad to be rid of him, delighted to be rid of him. Sometimes felt like cutting his head off me self.’
I didn’t know what to say.
‘But he was the one what put food on the table. Now I will have to see how I’m to feed myself.’ She smiled faintly.
‘Well that’s good, I suppose.’
‘Oh aye.’
I leant forward, playing with my hat. ‘Mrs Mottram, I would find out who killed your husband. Not because I especially care that he’s dead, but because the same man tried to kill me, and killed others besides.’
She didn’t reply, just sat still with her head cocked, waiting for me to say more.
‘Your husband and friend Wilson attacked me in my own home. They took me to a butcher’s shop for the afternoon, and then when night fell they took me onto the river. Lucky for me I woke up and managed to escape.’
‘Aye, lucky for you. Not so lucky for old Mottram.’
‘No. Listen, Mrs Mottram, I know that your husband wasn’t a murderer, he was a cutpurse, a thief.’
‘How do you know that, then?’ she asked.
‘Because a man called Davy Dowling told me. He’s the man who came to see you before. You told him about Wilson, the weasel.’
‘Another silly, stupid man. Thought he was so clever.’
‘Who were they working for, Mrs Mottram? Who told them what to do, paid their wages?’ I leant forward a little too eagerly. She noticed, and her eyes narrowed. She licked her lips like a fox outside a henhouse.
‘I don’t know who they worked for. They didn’t tell me their business.’
‘He must have talked about the people he worked for, when he was drunk, perhaps. Names …’
‘Maybe.’ She nodded brightly. She looked at the hole in the roof. It was the size of a man’s fist.
‘Would sixpence help?’ I reached into my pocket.
‘Five pounds.’
I fell backwards against the seat of the chair and stared at this strange little woman. Another five pounds? I was already more than fifteen pounds out of pocket. Had word spread as far as Shoreditch that I was such an easy touch? Anyway, I didn’t have five pounds with me. I should refuse her.
‘I can write you a promissory note.’
‘I’ll wait. You go and come back.’
Godamercy. ‘Mrs Mottram, I don’t have time. The men who cut off your husband’s head are still after me, and I don’t have time to be running to and fro from London this morning. I’ll give you the note but only if you give me names now.’
She wrinkled her nose and put her finger to her cheek. ‘Very well,’ she nodded. She put her hand out.
‘Names first.’ I closed my jacket decisively. I wasn’t paying five pounds without knowing what I was paying for.
‘Very well, mister. Old Mottram didn’t use to work for nobody, you see. He was well known amongst the weasels of this world. They used to ask him to come on their jobs. Just stand there like a big bear. He used to scare the customers. “Customers” is what he called them. He wasn’t very bright, old Mottram, not that you could tell him so, but the others didn’t pay him full share. They’d give him some money, take him for a drink, get him drunk, and by next day he’d forgotten. He wouldn’t be told. He’d just threaten to take his belt to me if I even mentioned it. So I left the stupid brute to the mercy of his friends and sat here while the rain poured in through the roof. You understand?’ She pulled her big skirts straight and pulled down her apron tidy.
‘Yes, I do understand. That’s more or less what Dowling told me,’ I replied impatiently.
‘Aye. Well, last week he came home all excited. Said the weasel had put them onto more money than we’d ever seen. Must have been taking you out onto the river.’ Rubbing her eyes, she stretched her arms and yawned. ‘Friday night he went off into London, went to meet Wilson. Old Mottram came back before nightfall, sober as a magistrate. Said he had been told to stay sober, not to drink. Never took no notice when I told him not to drink. Stupid sod.’
‘Told by who?’
‘Told by this gentleman they went to meet Friday afternoon. Met him at Cornhill.’
‘Where on Cornhill?’
‘I don’t know where. I just know it wasn’t a tavern or an inn, which is where they usually did their business. The gentleman didn’t want to be seen with them in public.’
It made sense given what it was he asked them to do. ‘What was the man’s name?’
‘Pargetter,’ Mrs Mottram smiled brightly. ‘Least that’s what old Mottram called him. Referred to him several times in fact. Called him Pargetter.’
‘Any other names, descriptions, address?’
‘No, mister. I don’t know what he looked like, and old Mottram never said. Took great delight in not telling me any of the details. His big secret, it was; excited, he was. But he called him by name. Pargetter.’
‘Thank you, Mrs Mottram.’ I could think of nothing else to ask, and I was only too aware of the time slipping away. I stood up, had a final look around at the bare wooden hovel, and the poor furniture that was in it. There was a small table by one wall covered in vegetable peelings. Mrs Mottram watched me from her chair in the middle of the room, her hands still on her knees, as I made a space to write out the promissory note. She took it from my outstretched hand and hid it somewhere inside her clothing. Then she smiled, slightly, and I left.
Now. Who the boggins was Pargetter?
Chapter Seventeen
Dwarfe Mallow
In waste places.
Hill would know who Pargetter was – Hill knew everybody – but he wouldn’t tell me. Ne’ertheless, I determined to track him down before putting the great plan into effect. There were elements of the great plan that worried me now and I secretly hoped that Hill might have a better great plan. I sent message for him to meet me at the menagerie.
The menagerie is located close to the Bulwark Gate inside the grounds of the Tower. Hill arrived in the company of a short, squat and very determined beefeater, who was nagging him for money, trying to charge him for escorting him to our meeting place. I cuffed him about the head and bade him leave, ignoring his slurred obscenities. I k
new him well – he hung about the Bulwark Gate everyday looking for marks.
‘Why did you invite me here?’ Hill demanded, irritated. He looked tired and uneasy.
I felt safe here, behind the guards that manned the Bulwark. ‘It’s a quiet place.’
I led him up the short winding staircase to the viewing gallery. It was made of wood and curled off to the left alongside the lions’ cages. Light shone from a thin grille set into the wall above, and from the wider grilles of the cages below.
‘The smell is foul, it stinks of cat piss,’ Hill moaned.
‘These are big cats – they piss bucketfuls.’
‘Why did you ask me here, Harry?’ he asked me again, leaning out over the den of a young lioness. A low growling rumbled forth. Turning, he rested his back against the top of the gallery wall. The lioness suddenly sprang up, roaring, the tips of her unsheathed claws scything past one of Hill’s elbows. Hill threw himself forward and fell onto his arse. The lioness stood on her hindquarters for a moment before dropping back to the ground and turning away in a sulk, shoulders stiff and back prickly. It was very funny, I thought, though I didn’t smile.
‘God’s mercy, Lytle!’ Hill gasped, climbing to his feet, ashen-faced and shaking. ‘That was your doing.’ He took off his camelotte coat, shook it hard, then picked at imaginary fragments of lion shit with his thumbnail.
Shouting loudly at the top of his voice the keeper of the menagerie strode in, carrying two buckets full of raw meat dripping blood along the floor. ‘Make way! I expect you would like to see them fed, gentlemen. Six lions, two leopards and an eagle. Also there is a dog that lives with one of the lions, but he is famous and you already know that. Now you may look and listen for five minutes while they roar at the smell of the blood. I will be back!’ He leered and winked at me before disappearing, leaving the meat standing on the gallery. Oftentimes I brought ladies here. The lions began to growl and whine. Though the meat was old, it was covered with fat black flies.
The Sweet Smell of Decay Page 18
