Murder at the Seven Dials (Bow Street Duchess Mystery #1)

Chapter 1

Chapter

One

London

The boy navigated the dark and narrow alley with a breed of confidence only street urchins possessed.

Stealthy and fearless, he dodged shoulders and carts, moldering crates of rubbish, and took an agile leap over the splayed legs of a vagrant.

A person could adjust to a certain level of comfort with this sordid side of London, where Covent Garden and Long Acre met with the Strand and Temple.

The gilded people of Mayfair and Knightsbridge seemed worlds away instead of just a few miles due west.

Hugh Marsden considered himself one those adjusted sort.

He trailed the scrappy lad, known to him only as Sir, through a sooty warren of streets and alleyways, trusting the boy’s nose for trouble—and reward—without question.

Sir had arrived at number 19 Bedford Street at half past eleven on a Tuesday evening. He’d pounded incessantly upon the front door of Hugh’s modest and narrow, three-story terraced house until the wood had swung away from his fist, to be replaced by an unimpressed valet glaring down at him.

From his chair in the upstairs study, Hugh had already folded the most recent copy of the Hue and Cry gazette. Sir’s particular knock was unmistakable. The late hour, concerning.

“You want to see this one, Mister Hugh,” Sir said, gasping for breath when Hugh met him in the foyer.

As a principal officer at Bow Street, Hugh no longer walked the night streets as a foot patrol, as he once had. In fact, he’d been just about to turn in for the evening, and Basil, his ever reliable valet-turned-mother-hen, reminded him of it.

Hugh ignored him and kept his curious gaze on Sir. “Is it serious?”

Sir’s answer—a dramatic expression of revulsion—was bait enough. Hooked, Hugh told Basil to fetch his coat.

“I’ll signal for a cab—” the valet began, but Hugh interrupted, “No time. We’re on foot, Sir,” and then bounded away, barely one sleeve into his greatcoat.

He chased the lad, ignoring the stitch in his side. The wiry eleven-year-old, however, contained the boundless energy of a foxhound.

“The bloody nob’s still there!” Sir shouted over his bony shoulder.

And with that little nugget of gold, Hugh ran faster.

Wherever there was and whatever crime he’d committed, if it led to a conviction at the magistrate’s court, a fine ten pounds would land in Hugh Marsden’s pocket—so long as he was the one to bring the man in.

Though not part of his pound-a-week salary, Magistrate Poston liked to keep things competitive among the officers and patrolmen. And Sir would be in for a crown, too.

At last, the lad stopped running and let Hugh catch up. He pointed toward a dingy row of terraced housing, where a crowd clustered at the bottom of the entrance steps. Hugh ripped off his hat and raked his fingers through his hair, the roots damp with perspiration.

“How do you know it’s a nob?” Hugh asked. Sir held out his palm, the creases blackened with coal soot and street grime.

“Oh, he be a gent, Mister Hugh. I know me a gent when I see one.”

He ignored the boy’s outstretched palm and pushed through the bedraggled crowd, into the mouth of the building. “Where?”

Sir remained attached to his heels. “Third floor, second room, left. Now where’s me coin?”

Hugh edged through the crowd at the base of the common stairwell. The blockade was made up of prostitutes past their prime and long overdue for a bath.

“Bow Street’s ‘ere, girls,” one of them crooned as Hugh took the steps two at a time.

He wore nothing that would mark him as an officer with the Bow Street force, like the navy coats and red vests the mounted officers wore, but he supposed these ladies knew how to read a fellow by his clothes.

Straight away, they would have noted the cut of his suit, clean and pressed.

That alone marked him as unlike the men of their usual acquaintance.

They would have caught his scent as he passed, which lacked the stale brume of alcohol and cigars.

They likely noticed the flintlock pistol at one hip and the iron wrist cuffs dangling from the opposite.

“Didn’t know Bow Street ‘ad such a fine bum!” The particularly uninventive comment followed him up and around the bend in the stairwell.

Granted, they were not paid for their creativity.

Sir barreled up the stairwell, his palm still out and thrust up in front of Hugh’s chest. The persistent, stunted wretch.

“What’s the man done?” he asked as they climbed the narrow steps to the third floor.

“He’s done murder, that’s what he’s done. Now where’s me coin? I got a sick baby brother and me mum’s got the wheezes real bad, and then me Da, he—”

“Save the sorry tale of your plight for the nuns, Sir. You’ll get your coin when I get my man.”

Which, by the looks of the crush of people up ahead, might not happen after all. If another foot patrol had arrived, he’d have jurisdiction, and Hugh might as well go home.

He forced his way through the spectators.

But wasn’t prepared for what met him.

Blood, he had seen before. However, in his near eight-year service to the magistrate, he’d not seen blood like this.

It painted the walls in frenzied streaks, spattered lines, and bursts of mist. The gore had rained upward upon the ceiling and had soaked what had once been a snowy white counterpane on an elegant, mahogany tester bed.

He noticed her legs first; the vulgar, suggestive splay of them, as if she’d been mid-coitus when killed. The victim wore black stockings, and though ripped, they were still clasped to lace garters around her thighs. Hugh stepped inside the room and met the glare of the night watchman.

The old man’s weathered face told a story of salt and wind and open sea.

When he walked toward Hugh, a limp in his step layered in a past injury that likely prevented the man from finding work.

Every parish in London had a revolving circuit of night watchmen, most of them impoverished old men without any other way of earning wages.

“You a Runner?” the night watchman asked.

“Officer Marsden.” He refused to call himself a Runner.

The term made him out to be little more than a messenger running orders for the chief magistrate.

He was an officer now, ranking above regular foot patrol and conductors, and despite the building commotion outside, it appeared he was the first to arrive.

“Well, I can’t get ‘im up,” the watchman said. He gestured toward the floor, to the space behind two grey velvet chairs sitting arm to arm. Hugh took his hands out of his pockets at the sight of the second man, this one the ‘nob’ Sir must have been referring to.

He sat upon the floor, his legs drawn up and his head tucked down, arms wrapped around his knees. Blood soaked his shirt and trousers. His hands, too. A gold band encircled the left ring finger, though the gleam was smothered by gore.

Hugh averted his eyes from the man and took stock of the rest of the furnishings: more heavy mahogany tables, fine Turkish rugs, the pair of plush velvet chairs, a japanned six-fold screen set beside the bed, and several deep green, striped silk bolster pillows scattered about the floor, covered in sprays of blood.

Fine paintings hung on the walls, but there were no trinkets, and the cupboards near the cook stove were currently in use as bookshelves.

“See Mister Hugh? I says he’s done murder. Cor, look at that mess!”

Hugh spun toward the open doorway. Sir’s eyes were full-moon wide as they gazed upon the dead woman’s body.

Hugh crossed into Sir’s line of sight and reached into his waistcoat’s breast pocket.

He withdrew the promised five shillings.

Hearing the coins sing, Sir tore his eyes from the gruesome display and whisked the coins away the moment they clattered into his palm.

“Run off, now,” Hugh said. “Before you give yourself nightmares.”

Sir made a spitting sound with his lips. “Seen plenty of cold meat, I ‘ave.”

Hugh had no doubt. Most people would be casting up their dinner, but Sir hadn’t so much as blinked. He took another shilling from his pocket and held it up. “Fetch a hackney and have the jarvey wait outside.”

Sir swiped the shilling and took off. Hugh then turned back to the night watchman and the blood-soaked man, huddled on the floor.

He was indeed wealthy. The furnishings gave it away, as did the tailored cut of his clothes.

Even spattered with blood, Hugh could tell they were expensive. Likely bespoke on Savile Row.

Though furnished well, this was not the man’s permanent residence.

More likely the place where he met his mistress.

The man rocked forward and back, clutching his knees.

He wasn’t about to run, but Hugh wasn’t ready to approach the man just yet, either.

He stepped toward the tester bed, bracing himself for the necessary inspection.

He’d already observed the splay of her legs, so his eyes went to her face.

Damn.

Like Sir, Hugh had seen plenty of dead bodies in the five years he’d been with Bow Street.

He’d yet to become immune to the initial cramping a dead body brought to his gut, or the hollowing sensation that came when he looked into a pair of wide, unseeing eyes.

But there was something especially miserable when he came across the body of a child, or as in this case, a young woman.

He cocked his head for a better look. She’d had her throat cut. It hadn’t been done cleanly. The flayed skin appeared ripped and jagged, as if her killer had started and stopped a handful of times, cutting clumsily into the same section of throat more than once.

The woman had been butchered. Hugh lifted her left hand. The nails hung back loosely, torn and bloodied. She’d fought for her life, and she’d bled heavily for it.