The Lion's Courtship: An Anna Kronberg Mystery (17 page)

‘Yes,’ says Garret. ‘That’s what Rose said.’

‘She’s bad for the business. Fat Annie, who is. Squeezes the last bit of sanity from her girls. That woman needs a good spanking, that’s what she needs.’ Nate’s knife hovers over the kinked wood, a grumble from Baylis’ throat makes him lay it flat onto the table. ‘Butcher didn’t protect her. Now look at this mess!’ Nate crosses his arms over his chest. ‘He should be here, too. Butcher, I mean.’

‘Butcher! Wouldn’t let
that
man into my house even in bright daylight!’ shoots from the older Worthing’s mouth.

‘Quiet, now!’ warns Baylis. ‘Hot blood gets us nowhere. Has anyone seen the knife-man, and if so, when and where? Does this man even have a name? And for your information — that he pulled a knife through Poppy’s face doesn’t mean he pulled it through her throat.’

Protests erupt from all mouths, Baylis whacks his hand upon the tabletop again. When Garret says, ‘But it does,’ silence falls.

‘Have you seen him?’

‘No, I haven’t. But about two weeks ago, one of the women living on the workhouse’s stairs — Scotty’s her name — had seen him and Poppy enter the house. That same house the girl lived in. That same house we found her buried in cow shit.’

‘It might be strong evidence, but it’s no proof,’ Baylis points out.

‘He was seen pushing the nurse into one of the houses at Clark’s Buildings,’ mutters Nate.

‘What?!’ barks Garret and jumps up, his chair falling onto its back with a loud clatter.

‘I need that chair, too,’ huffs Baylis, but his protest is ignored by everyone in the room.

‘One of our girls saw it. Didn’t think much of it at first, for he’s known to pay well for a few scratch marks. Took her a while to remember that Anna is no strumpet. She said she saw him pocket his knife when he walked out onto the street. She said that he looked satisfied.’ Nate shakes his head in disbelief at so much stupidity. ‘She isn’t the brightest,’ he says with a shrug.

Baylis’s worried gaze is attached to Garret’s fingers clawing the tabletop’s edge. ‘Has anyone seen him recently?’

All men shake their heads.

‘Ask Butcher.’

‘I’ll talk to him,’ rasps Garret. No one objects.

‘What did the bobbies say? Did the body look as if she had been killed and buried two weeks ago?’ asks Baylis.

The colour drains from Alf’s face. ‘I’ve never before seen a corpse in cow manure. Can’t tell if it had been there for two weeks. But it surely looked…ripe.’

‘When did you clean up last?’

‘Umm.’ Alf scratches his chin and looks up at Baylis. ‘Might have been two or three weeks. My missus was ill and…’ He waves the last words away as though they were blowflies.

‘Her skin was blue and red, marbled, some parts were black,’ whispers Garret. ‘Her stomach was bloated, the cuts across her cheek and her throat were black gashes. Her eyes…I’ll never forget this. Maggots and beetles everywhere. Crawling out of her mouth, eyes, wounds.’

Hands clap over mouths and eyes. Someone burps, followed by an audible swallow of bile. Only Nate just sits there, his jaws working, his expression empty as though he isn’t present.

Baylis exhales a growl. ‘What about the police, Alf?’

‘What do you expect? Two bobbies puked into my basement, then left the house. Stood at the side of the street, waited for an inspector who didn’t come, all the while joking about runaway girls. I asked, “Have you not seen the gash across her throat?” They said they didn’t look that closely, given the state the body was in and all. I asked, “Have you not seen that the girl was murdered?” and they told me to clean up the basement, because it is illegal to keep cows down there.’

Baylis throws up his hands. ‘Goddammit! And what happened to the body?’

‘Men from the morgue came and took her. The inspector arrived two hours later and threw a fit because the body was gone, the manure was gone, and the cows confiscated. My cows gone…’ mutters Alf. ‘I don’t know what I’ll do now without my girls.’

Baylis pushes his hands into his trouser pockets and begins pacing the room. Everyone is waiting for him to open his mouth. He does so more than fifteen minutes later.

‘You all know I worked for the police. What I’ll tell you now is only my opinion. I could pay a visit to the Bow Street Police Station and inquire about the body and any progress made in the case, should there be a case at all. However, all evidence has already been destroyed and the body was in an advanced state of decomposition. I doubt very much my questions will result in helpful answers. I believe the police will never find the girl’s murderer; I doubt they’ll start looking. That the knife-man did this is very likely, but we don’t know for certain.’ He turns to face the group of silent men. ‘If I were to go to the police and show interest in this case, and then — hypothetically speaking —
something
happens to the knife-man and the police hear about it, they’ll know where to look first.’

‘The man must disappear,’ says Garret, who is the first to grasp the meaning of Baylis’ words.

‘I agree. But…’ Baylis holds up his hand. ‘…we did not prove him guilty. Keep this in mind. He can be as innocent as my daughter, or as innocent as yours.’ He points at Nate.

‘What I know is this,’ Garret begins. ‘A very dangerous man who might or might not be a murderer, threatened the life of the only woman who bothers saving our sorry behinds should they ever get infected or injured. The only one with medical skills and no interest in charging money, I should say. If she’s gone…’ The large man swallows, his eyebrows pushing together.

‘What can we do?’ asks the younger Worthing brother, rage in his eyes and a freshly pulled-out knife in his hand.

‘What
you
can do?’ says Baylis, counting a total of four knifes on the table. ‘Use your brains before you use your weapons! Talk to Butcher. We’ll meet again tomorrow night.’

Garret pushes away from the table. He stares at Nate, Alf, the Worthing twins, and Baylis. A silent agreement settles, making the air in the room heavy and the hearts of the men rumble.

Alf

H
e stands in his basement, taking in the emptiness of the room and the lack of farm odour. He misses the soft breathing, the swishing of tails, and gentle mooing of his two girls.

The emptiness occupies the corner of his vision, while its centre is too crowded — crowded with a memory he cannot blink away.
 

‘Alf?’ issues from the corridor above. ‘Where are you, you useless piece of crap? Get your hindquarters up here. The dustmen are coming any minute now. You want me to carry this all by myself? Alf!’

The man turns to climb the stairs. His posture is slightly more crooked than it was just a moment ago. ‘I’m coming, Beth, my dear.’

‘You have that look upon your face again,’ she says while both drag out a large bucket full of ashes, a pile of potato peels now rotten, a tattered sack of unknown origin, and a shovel full of faeces from the cat. ‘I’ll be damned, Alf. That little whore got your head messed up.’

‘I don’t like it when you call her that.’

‘But she was a whore, wasn’t she? I’m glad she’s good and done with. Might have lured you into her bed one fine day. God knows what—’ She catches herself and throws a sharp glance at her husband. ‘If she hadn’t already.’

‘No one lures me into bed but you, Beth,’ Alf says softly. But he doesn’t look at her, which goes unnoticed by his wife, for she’s busy searching the street for the dustmen. And there they come, one tired old donkey followed by a decrepit cart upon which sit two men wearing the dirtiest clothes in the whole of the British Empire.

‘Them extra ones,’ she mutters, meaning that this pair is not the government-appointed, but the fake version. It doesn’t make too big of a difference to her, but it does so to the rest of the city — these two men will pick up the refuse and charge a fee, just like proper dustmen do. However, their load will never arrive in the central dust-yards; instead, it will be dumped on some unlucky street far away from here.

Once the coin is exchanged for refuse and wheels clatter across cobbled streets, Alf takes care to be more attentive. He opens the door for his wife and asks when lunch will be ready. As soon as he hears her bang pots about in the kitchen, he creeps up the stairs, higher and higher, until he reaches the attic.

The door creaks open and pigeons flutter through a hatch. Dust swirls though milky daylight. In a far corner, a lonely pile of straw and a blanket indicate the one missing inhabitant who hadn’t had a chance to pack her belongings. The other boarders left the day Poppy’s body was found.

Alf steps forward, feeling as though something or somebody pulls him toward the bedding. He remembers the last time he felt this pull. It had come from a friendly young woman, whose mouth had no harsh words for him. His knees had hurt a little when he knelt down next to her, here on these floorboards, when everyone else was out and about to attend to whatever daily businesses they had to attend to. His scrubby cheeks and chin must have hurt her wound a little, for she flinched when he kissed her. All he longed for was a little affection. After all, it was her trade.

‘Alf, get your wrinkled behind into the kitchen! Your stew is getting cold and I’m certainly not warming it up a fourth time!’

Alf sighs, tips his fingers at the two brown specks on the floor. ‘Odd,’ he whispers. He spits on a corner of his sleeve and wipes them off the kinked wood.

Nate

H
e’s haggling with a costermonger, pointing at cabbages, cucumbers, carrots, and a basket of eggs when a familiar face shows in the crowd.

‘Anna!’ he calls, waves his arm and holds up an index finger, then turns to pack his purchases onto a small cart. Once everything is secured, he turns to find her in the mass of people, but she’s already at his side and offers to pull his load. Although forthcoming, the gesture insults him. He shakes her off with a gruff, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, girl!’

When he begins to walk, the four wooden cart wheels jiggle across the coarse cobblestones, threatening to jump off their pivots. His stick, however, always finds the very top of each stone, never slipping into the cracks to get stuck, never making him stumble.

‘Is your leg hurting?’ she asks.

‘No, this’s not what I want to tell you. Say, are you still looking for Poppy?’ He tries to give his voice the naive undertone of an old man with little brainpower.

She almost jumps in surprise. ‘Do you know where she is?’

‘No, but I heard from…someone that you’ve met the fella in question. The one with the knife.’

‘I did,’ she says.

From the corner of his vision, he sees her pressing a fist against the pit of her stomach, and he feels a sudden urge to grab her by her shoulders, shake her, and shout, ‘Do you know how lucky you are?’ But he does no such thing.

‘When I was a young man, I was a soldier and saw more death than anyone should ever see in his life. And I took lives. I saw men with very dark souls. Very dark. Can’t tell if they even had one.’

He blinks and his gaze grows distant, flitting over people, their wares and faces, and farther up to houses, windows, roofs, and finally, the cloud-covered sky. But his mind doesn’t see what his eyes see. His mind races across battlefields, over corpses of hundreds of men, failing to understand why people believe war is a heroic thing.

Gradually, the clanking of sabres and cracking of shots is replaced by rattling of wheels. He recalls he has an audience. Gazing at her, he says, ‘I can see it in a man’s eyes if he’s a murderer — if he enjoys it. You know what I mean?’

She nods at her shoes. ‘I think so.’

‘The man you are looking for is such a man. That’s why I never let him into our boarding house. Once, he offered ten times the usual fee. I showed him my service revolver, pressed it against his unblemished upper-class nose. Haven’t seen him since.’

‘How can a well-to-do man enter St Giles without getting mugged?’

‘Cabs drop ‘em off at Clark’s Buildings; everyone knows they bring business. No one will steal from a man who comes to bring in money.’

‘Does that happen often?’ she asks, wondering why she hadn’t noticed the import of wealthy customers to filthy establishments.