by Tessa Harris
Thomas did not reply. The shock of seeing his old enemy lying dead on his dissecting table caused the bile to rise in his throat.
“Where did you find him?” he asked after a short pause.
The ironmonger clutched his tricorn nervously. “In my shop doorway, sir,” he bleated in a thin voice. For a moment his tongue was hobbled in his mouth; then he lifted his head toward Thomas again. Sticking out his chin, as if he had suddenly found a little courage, he added: “The coroner said you’d see me right, Doctor. I’ve had to close my shop to come here. I’ll lose a day’s takings.”
Thomas gave a weary smile and reached into his pocket. Even the most timid of men, it seemed, would seek to make money from someone else’s misfortune. But he would make this chancer sing for his supper. He took a shilling from his purse.
“Here,” he said, holding the coin up in front of the man’s crossed eyes. “Tell me all you know and this will be yours.”
The ironmonger seemed to accept that this was a fair exchange for his information. He nodded and began to relate how he had come upon Lupton. “Yesterday morning, I found him, sir. He were lying at the door of my shop. Blood everywhere.”
“And where is your shop?”
“Over in Fenchurch Street.” The ironmonger waved his arm toward the east.
“And he was still alive?”
“If you could call it that. White as a sheet, he was. Moaning a lot, too. He kept saying, ‘Silkstone. Silkstone.’” The ironmonger fixed Thomas with one of his disconcerting looks. “That’s you, ain’t it, sir?”
Thomas nodded. “What did you do?”
“I called for help. I’m a widower, you see, sir. And we took him ’round the back. Still bleeding like a stuck pig, he was. We got some rags and gave him some gin, but he died a few minutes later.” The ironmonger dropped his gaze.
“Did he say nothing else, apart from my name?”
The man shrugged. “Mumbling, he was. He did say something. . .”
“Yes?” Thomas leapt on his words a little too eagerly, and the ironmonger saw it in his manner.
“I might need a sixpence to recall it, sir,” he said, touching his forehead.
Thomas dipped into his purse once more. “Here,” he told him, depositing a coin in the man’s grimy hand.
“I remember now,” he responded cheerfully, pocketing the coin. “It were something like ‘gin’ or ‘fin.’ He said ‘I found gin’ or ‘fin’ or—”
“Flynn! Could it have been Flynn?” Thomas pressed him.
The ironmonger’s eyes swiveled in his head. “Flynn,” he cried, nodding. “That was it. ‘I found Flynn,’ he said. Then he went to meet his Maker.”
Thomas allowed his own eyes to return to Lupton’s corpse. “So, he found Flynn,” he muttered to himself.
The ironmonger dipped his head low, as if trying to attract Thomas’s attention once more. “Is that all, Doctor?” he asked, then added with a laugh: “I’ve got a shop to open, you know.”
Thomas turned and looked at the man, who bobbed a bow. “Yes, thank you. You have been most helpful,” he said.
Left alone with his old adversary, Thomas shook his head and slowly pulled down the sheet a little farther. Although Lupton was still dressed, Thomas could see through the blood-caked coat that there were at least two great gashes on the arm and shoulder. His prognosis was easily reached. He did not need to conduct a postmortem to see that Boughton’s former steward had bled to death. The brachial artery had been slashed. The end would have been slow. But whose hand had brandished the murder weapon? Flynn was the most obvious suspect. Lupton might have found him and approached him, and the errant captain might have responded with a blade. But not just any blade. Thomas examined the wounds more closely. He took out his tape measure, then reached for his magnifying glass, and after less than five minutes, he was convinced. The blade responsible for such mortal injuries was curved.
Now Thomas felt the burden of responsibility press down on his shoulders once more. Even though Lupton had volunteered to assist him in his inquiries, he still counted himself partly to blame for his death. He had warned him of the danger, but perhaps he should have accompanied him in his search. Lupton’s endeavors had cost him his life. Now, however, Thomas knew it was up to him to locate Flynn and seek him out.
He felt his heart cringe below his breastbone as he pulled back the winding sheet even farther to inspect Lupton’s body. “You will have to tell me where you found Flynn,” he told the corpse. “The secret lies in you.”
Carefully Thomas stripped Lupton of his upper garments, the topcoat and shirt. There were indeed two great gashes that had slashed through the material and the flesh to stop just short of the bone, one by the ulna and the other just shy of the scapula. This latter wound had severed the brachial artery, causing the fatal bleeding. He would examine the wounds later, in more depth, but for now, it was Lupton’s hands that snagged his attention.
He lifted up the right one first. It was caked in dried blood, but beneath the crimson, he spied something else. He reached for his magnifying glass and squinted through it. A reddish powder was sticking to the blood. With his scalpel he scooped under the fingernails and sniffed the powder as it sat on the blade. “Ginger,” he said to himself.
With renewed energy, he rolled back the rest of the sheet to reveal the lower half of Lupton’s body. He scanned the breeches before his eyes latched onto the stockings. Beneath all the dried blood, he could make out another color. Again he grabbed his magnifying glass and peered at Lupton’s calves. They were smeared with a dark purplish color. Thomas felt his heart lurch in his chest once more. The legs were streaked with indigo.
Chapter 41
“Dear boy, is that you?” Dr. Carruthers’s voice carried from the study as Thomas grabbed his hat from the peg in the hall and made his way to the front door. He stopped in his tracks. He did not want his mentor to know of his mission.
“Yes, sir,” he replied. He was aware that he would have to engage in conversation if he was to avoid attracting unwanted attention.
Thomas put his head around the door to see the old doctor sitting by the hearth, opposite his brother.
“What was all that kerfuffle this morning?” he asked.
“Mistress Finesilver seemed most perturbed,” added the professor with a sympathetic twitch.
Thomas swallowed hard. “I had a delivery, sir.”
“A delivery?” repeated his mentor. “By which you must surely mean a corpse.” Nothing escaped the old man.
Thomas was forced to concede. “I do indeed, sir.”
Dr. Carruthers nodded. “A corpse in August, eh? You’d best work on it quickly in this weather.”
For a moment Thomas remained quiet and shifted uneasily, switching his nervous gaze to the professor, who arched a suspicious brow.
“Surely ’tis not someone you know?” asked the old anatomist.
Thomas knew that the professor could read his reaction. He tried to steady his voice before he replied. “’Twas Nicholas Lupton, sir.”
“God’s wounds!” cried Dr. Carruthers, grasping the arms of his chair. If his joints had allowed it, he would have leapt up at the news.
“The steward at Boughton?” queried the professor.
“The very same,” answered Thomas.
“Murdered?” asked the old doctor.
“Yes, sir.”
“Flynn?”
Thomas hesitated. “Perhaps.”
“So where are you going in such haste now?” His mentor’s tone had turned inquisitorial.
Thomas was forced to concede it made no sense to hide his actions. “I believe I know where I might find the captain,” he replied.
“Oh? So on what do you base this assertion?” Dr. Carruthers tapped his stick aggressively on the floor.
Thomas suddenly felt like a schoolboy again, being quizzed by his old master. “Apparently, just before he died, Lupton said that he had found Flynn.”
“Did he,
by Jove?”
Thomas continued. “Lupton was found in Fenchurch Street. Under his fingernails there was ground ginger, and on his stockings were traces of indigo.”
The old anatomist harrumphed. “Ah, the all-important fingernails!” he said knowingly. “So you will begin your search in warehouses around Fenchurch Street?”
“I will, sir.”
Dr. Carruthers nodded, as if satisfied with Thomas’s logic. “I believe that is a sound premise,” he agreed, but then he added: “However, I must insist on one thing.”
Thomas let a sigh escape from his lips. “What might that be, sir?”
“You must take Oliver here with you,” he said, waving his stick in his brother’s direction.
The professor’s eyebrows lifted simultaneously in surprise.
“Professor Carruthers?” Thomas was taken aback. He had no wish to be accompanied, least of all by a man who constantly challenged his trust.
Dr. Carruthers chuckled but remained firm. “You’re a lamb to the slaughter in those parts. You know you should not go alone, dear boy. I insist you go together.”
Thomas knew what his mentor said was right. The dock area was the haunt of thieves, cutpurses, and, of course, murderers at any time of the day. He did not wish to put the professor in harm’s way, but at the same time he knew there was safety in numbers.
“Very well, sir,” he replied, shooting a glance at the professor. “We shall search for Flynn together.”
The coach soon left the pleasant environs of west London and journeyed into Cheapside, where the landscape—and the smell—of the city changed. The elegant houses and shops had long given way to meat markets and butchers’ shambles, and the summer stink of entrails, so familiar to Thomas, caught on the back of his throat.
He did not find the professor easy company. And, of course, because he was a reluctant passenger, their conversation was naturally stilted. But Thomas decided to make the most of the opportunity to venture a little further into his territory.
As they rattled along the narrow streets of the Square Mile, Thomas decided to find out what Carruthers knew about the mysterious Bibby Motte. “My dinner with Mrs. Hastings and her friends last night proved interesting,” he said, gazing out of the window.
The professor, taciturn for most of the journey, now seemed prepared to engage.
“I trust she was in good health.”
“Yes, she appears very well,” said Thomas. “She enjoys much company.”
“And her companion?”
Thomas arched a brow as the professor looked him in the eye. “Mrs. Motte?”
“Yes. How fares she?”
Thomas thought of her enigmatic expression and the faraway look in her eyes that he had noticed at the dinner table. “She seems a little subdued, perhaps,” he observed, eager to see how the professor might react.
“Subdued, eh?” The professor’s left eye suddenly started to twitch again.
Thomas switched ’round, puzzled. “Do you have a notion why might that be?” he asked.
“You do not know?” asked Carruthers, turning to face Thomas, his brows dipping into a frown.
“Know what, pray?”
“Thomas Motte was a minor official.”
“Was?” Thomas picked up on the professor’s use of the past tense.
“He was declared bankrupt. He is in jail in Calcutta,” came the wholly unexpected reply.
“Jail? For debt?”
The professor pursed his lips. “He owes several thousand pounds.”
“Does he indeed?”
Thomas’s mind suddenly flashed to his chance encounter with Bibby Motte at East India House. “Might Patrick Flynn be one of his own debtors?”
The professor sniffed and twitched again. “It would not surprise me.”
Thomas nodded. That might explain Mrs. Motte’s anxious efforts to find Flynn and the diamond, he told himself. The proceeds from the sale of the stone would surely be enough to secure her husband’s release. Professor Carruthers might just have furnished him with a missing piece of the puzzle.
A moment later the carriage drew into Fenchurch Street and stopped, as directed, outside the ironmonger’s. It was a district that was already familiar to Thomas, yet it still filled him with a sense of impending danger. Close to the quayside, yet set back a little from the river, it was an area where every street corner was home to a downtrodden doxy and every alley concealed cutpurses and, worse still, cutthroats. Gentlemen venturing along the lanes lined with warehouses would, no doubt, attract the attention of the wrong sort, but it was a risk that Thomas would have to take. He suddenly found himself glad that he was not alone.
“What is your plan, Silkstone?” asked the professor, his voice raised over the street noise. Both men stepped out of the carriage onto the cobbles.
Thomas pointed ahead of him. “This, I believe, is where Lupton was found yesterday morning.” He strode a few paces to his left, keeping his eyes to the ground that was already littered with detritus, namely horse dung and sawdust. There had been no rain for the last few hours, and sure enough, there was blood on the stones. Keeping his eyes firmly on the uneven ground, Thomas was able to follow the intermittent trail of crimson. It stopped outside the entrance to the ironmonger’s.
“Lupton was badly injured,” he told the professor, pointing to the dark brown stain on the stone porch. “He could not have traveled far.” He looked up toward the row of warehouses on the opposite side of the street.
The professor nodded, still looking about him warily. “Ginger and indigo, eh?” he said, recalling that Thomas had found traces of both on Lupton. “An East Indies warehouse, for sure.”
The two men set off down the street, looking from side to side. Now and again Thomas returned his gaze to the ground, looking for any sign of blood, but there were several feral dogs in the district and he guessed that by now they would have licked most of it up.
Ahead of them a wagon was partially blocking the street, so passersby had to squeeze through a narrow gap in the road. A winch on the second floor of one of the warehouses was lowering large bales of what appeared to be silk into the waiting trailer. Farther along men were rolling barrels down a plank and onto a waiting dray cart. There were shouts and whistles, punctuated now and again by the loud neighing of a nervous horse. There was, however, one saving grace in this scene of mayhem. The aromas of countless spices hung in the air, and their pungency blocked out the usual stink of piss in the open gutters.
Thomas stopped outside one of the buildings where a piquant perfume was wafting underneath high double doors. Set inside the large doors, designed to take wagons, there was a smaller door. He dropped his gaze to the threshold. There was no blood. His hopes faded. Nevertheless he pulled at the padlock.
“What d’you think you’re about?” came a gruff voice from behind.
Thomas turned to see a docker behind him, scowling. Theft from warehouses was rife, and Thomas had to admit he was acting suspiciously. He bowed graciously to the man.
“My mistake. The wrong door,” he said meekly and backed away.
Moving on a few more paces, they came to another warehouse with similar doors. Thomas stopped and sniffed. It smelled promising. The professor agreed.
“Ginger and turmeric,” he said with a nod. The ability to determine the source of smells was obviously a family trait, thought Thomas as he tried the lock. Making sure he was not seen, he shouldered it and it budged slightly.
“Stand here,” he told the professor, keeping his back to the door. “I think I can open it.”
Carruthers obliged, shielding Thomas as he took out a lancet he had pocketed should such an eventuality arise. Within a minute he had managed to pick the lock. “We’re in,” he said in a loud whisper, and he stepped over the threshold, swiftly followed by Carruthers.
Inside, the heady smell of spice was overwhelming, but it took a while for both men’s eyes to adjust to the gloom. Fingers of daylight managed to penetrate thro
ugh the odd broken plank in the large doors, and within a few seconds their partial sight was restored. But what they could now see disturbed them both greatly.
As Thomas stepped forward, he could feel something sticky under his shoes. He looked down to find he had trodden in syrupy blood. The men swapped anxious looks and sidestepped the pool to continue in silence. A few paces away, to the left, they saw a sack had been slashed and its contents spilled out over the floor. Thomas scooped up a little of the reddish powder in his fingers.
“Ginger,” he said.
Ahead of them barrels and crates lay piled high, eight to ten feet tall. They walked on through the man-made gorge in the semidarkness.
Suddenly the professor grunted. “Indigo,” he whispered.
Thomas turned to see him poised over a bale that had been broken open, exposing its inky blue contents.
“This has to be the place,” he said, his eyes darting from left to right. “Flynn has been here. I’m sure of it.”
They walked on in the gloom until suddenly Carruthers stumbled on something beneath his feet. It clattered as he kicked it. He looked down.
“A pistol,” said Thomas, bending low to pick up the weapon. He smelled the barrel. “It hasn’t been discharged recently,” he whispered. He inspected it more closely. “But it’s cocked.”
“Do you think ’tis Flynn’s?” asked the professor.
“Or Lupton’s,” he ventured. He gripped it by its handle and pointed it in front of him. He only hoped he wouldn’t have to fire it.
They ventured farther into the ravine of hogsheads and sacks. Thomas glanced up. Overhead, across the ceiling, stretched long beams, and from them hung a variety of hooks. There were ropes and pulleys, too, that festooned the rafters. Through a hole in the roof, a shaft of daylight lanced its way, casting a pool of light into the middle of the warehouse. Thomas stopped suddenly. He could see more clearly now. They were coming to a crossroads. To their left there were more crates; to their right more sacks, and something else. A brazier, half filled with coals, sat in the middle of the aisle. He’d say the heat had long been allowed to dwindle. The embers no longer glowed. Nervously he leaned into a corner crate and peered around it. Everything appeared in order. He could see no further signs of an intrusion. It was only when he turned back to signal to the professor that all was clear that something caught his eye. A strange shadow was being cast onto the bank of sacks. He glanced back, compelled to look up to the rafters to see what might be making it. A large sack at the end of a pulley, perhaps? But no. He edged closer, not daring to breathe, until shock forced the air out of his lungs in a horrified gasp.
