CHAPTER 8
Wrexford flattened himself against the clammy stone just as the door swung open with a rusty groan. More scuffling and scraping sounded as a wobbly beam of light pierced the darkness.
“Bloody hell, yer tipping yer end—iffen his guts slide out, it ain’t me who’s wiping ’em up.”
“The sodding cove weighs more ’n an ox,” came the grunted reply as a burly man, clad in a bloodstained smock and squashed Regent hat, took a step into the morgue. “Damnation—stop wigglin’ the light, Willy! I can’t see where I’m going.”
The beam steadied somewhat.
Out of the corner of his eye, Wrexford watched Regent Hat stagger forward, his meaty hands clasping the handles of a stretcher bearing a misshapen mound topped with a greasy oilcloth. A beefy leg had escaped from beneath the folds and was dancing a macabre jig through the foul air.
“Which way?” demanded the bear-sized fellow holding up the rear of the stretcher.
“Straight ahead.” The lantern-bearer, a short man with long, ratty hair framing his narrow face, squeezed through the door and hurried to light the way. The scent of cheap gin wafted in to join the fugue of other smells. “There be an empty slab at the end of this row.”
The clack-clack of the hobnails punctuated the bumps and curses as the three made their way deeper into the morgue. Then suddenly the lamp flickered and went out.
“Ye gin-soaked booby! Strike a flame, or your poxy carcass will be joining this one on its slab.”
Wrexford made a split-second decision. Nudging Henning, he whispered, “Follow me!” and darted for the doorway.
The surgeon, though no paragon of manly muscle, showed himself to be surprisingly agile in hurrying down the corridor and making the turn for the back door.
It wasn’t until they were two streets away from the mortuary that Wrexford allowed them to pause for breath.
“Auch, I’ve grown too old for skulduggery,” wheezed Henning, bending over and bracing his hands on his knees. “If my poor, thumping heart gives up the ghost and I shuffle off this mortal coil, it’s your bloody fault.”
“Oh, come—you’re cobbled together from granite and flint, with naught but Highland malt running through your veins,” quipped the earl. “And you’ve said on numerous occasions that you don’t have a heart.” A pause. “You’ll survive.”
Henning’s mouth twitched, but he covered it with a scowl. “Not if I don’t get my breakfast.” Dawn was just beginning to tinge the horizon. “There’s a tavern near Covent Garden that serves a decent meal at this hour.”
Wrexford flagged down a passing hackney. “What about the fragment you found?”
“Unlike me, it isn’t going to expire of hunger if it’s not fed in the next half hour,” retorted Henning as he slouched back against the squabs. “I’ll need to do a careful examination in my surgery, so stubble your nattering. I’ll have an answer for you later today.”
Tamping down his impatience—no mean feat as his temper was frayed and his clothes were reeking of death—Wrexford refrained from further comment. In any case, he needed some time to gather his thoughts and grab a few hours of sleep before facing Charlotte.
God only knew what reaction she would have to these new developments. A barrage of questions, to begin with.
For which he, as yet, had precious few answers.
“What’s your guess as to what the late Lord Chittenden was involved in?”
“I prefer not to guess, laddie. We are, after all, men of science, who ought to adhere to fact and evidence, not conjecture.” Henning closed his eyes. “But whatever it is, I have a suspicion that none of us are going to like it.”
* * *
Charlotte followed the boys up the stairs, unsure whether the clench in her chest was dread or elation. No matter which way it cut, knowledge was better than having her emotions trapped in a netherworld of doubts and suspicions.
Imagination could often be worse than the truth.
Or so she told herself. And yet, with each thud of her steps on the wooden treads, her heart kicked harder against her rib cage. The pain seemed to seep into her bones.
McClellan cracked open her door as they trooped by her bedchamber. “Do you wish for some tea and sustenance?” she asked, unruffled by the ungodly hour.
“No,” answered Charlotte, unable to contemplate any distraction. She quickly softened her curtness with a forced smile. “But thank you.”
To her credit, the maid simply nodded and drew the latch shut.
Raven had already lit the Argand lamp on her work desk. Hawk was beside his brother, both hands jammed in his jacket pockets.
Crackle, crackle. The whispery sound of paper twisting between his fingers sent another spurt of fear bubbling up in her chest.
“Please explain yourselves,” said Charlotte, after expelling a carefully controlled breath. Hoping against hope to hide from them how rattled she was by this crime, she added a light note. “Before I explode from curiosity.”
Raven’s dark lashes dipped to shadow his eyes.
Damnation—he didn’t look in the least fooled.
Hawk responded by brandishing a smudged piece of folded paper. “It’s all about the—”
His brother caught his hand and forced it down to the desktop. “Oiy, put a cork in it for now—we need to start from the beginning.”
The boy bit his lip in frustration, but remained silent.
“Don’t look so Friday-faced. You’ll soon get your chance to show how clever you are,” counseled Raven before turning to Charlotte. “We followed the order of the murders you wrote down for us and started in Seven Dials.”
Charlotte nodded. The first of the Bloody Butcher’s victims had been a shiftless vagrant known as Greybeard, who begged for coins at the monument—a stone pillar adorned with the circle of sundials—which had given the now-infamous slum area its name.
“Greybeard didn’t have a regular lair. He slept in whatever hidey-hole he could find at night, which is likely why nobody witnessed the crime,” continued Raven. “But on that night, some of the locals did recall seeing a few fancy coves pass through the alleyways near where the body was found.”
“Gentlemen who are cup-shot or feeling daring occasionally pass through the slums on their way home from the gaming hells,” mused Charlotte. “It doesn’t necessarily mean anything.” And yet she felt a prickling of gooseflesh rise at the nape of her neck.
“Aye, m’lady, I know that. Still, it seemed a useful bit of information to report back to you. But it turns out I had it argle-bargled.” Raven allowed a bemused grimace. “Much as I hate to admit it, Hawk’s fiddling around with all those disgusting bugs and bits of rock isn’t as daft as I thought.”
His brother grinned.
“It’s him who remembered to look for the little details, and . . .” Raven lifted his shoulders. “You go ahead and tell her.”
“It’s you and your drawings I learned from, m’lady,” said Hawk in a rush. “Y’know, look for the little details—you’re always saying it’s the small bits and bobs that help piece together the truth.”
Charlotte sucked in a breath. She had used the aphorism to explain to the boys why gathering so much seemingly meaningless information was important for her work. Apparently, Hawk had taken her words to heart.
She stared down at the grubby piece of paper, which was still clutched in his hand. “And you’ve found one of those bits and bobs?”
Hawk tugged at the front of his jacket—she didn’t care to identify what foul-looking substance was streaked over the notched collar—and cleared his throat.
“Mebbe,” came the tentative answer. “I arsked—asked—each person we questioned to think hard and describe what the coves were wearing. The first few didn’t remember nuffink—nothing—save for a dark coat and hat.”
When Hawk became excited, his English tended to lapse back into the patter of the stews.
“But then, Fat Mary said she recalled that one of the gentlemen wuz wearing a hat with the brim curled up at the sides, and that there seemed to be a flash of something bright, like a bit of metal, on the band.”
“So Hawk thought to draw a sketch,” interjected Raven. “And Mary gabbled ‘nay’ and ‘yea’ until he got the shape right.”
“We talked to another cully,” went on Hawk, “who remembered something about a hat—”
“Said he noticed what looked to be a silver ornament in the ribbon band because he was thinking of following the gentleman and pinching it,” cut in Raven. “But then decided against it because the fellow looked too alert.”
“Oiy,” agreed Hawk. “And when we showed him the finished sketch, he said it was bang on the mark.”
Charlotte realized her heart had started to thump against her ribs. “May I see it?”
Hawk solemnly unfolded the paper and slid it across the desktop.
Though smudged and rife with creases that trapped a flickering of tiny shadows, it seemed unnaturally light against the dark-grained wood.
Unclenching her fingers, she drew it closer and took a long moment to study the penciled image.
The boy had a real knack for drawing. The lines were quick and simple, yet he had captured the curl of the sides and the jaunty dip of the brim at the back and front.
Charlotte recognized the style—it had a name, though she couldn’t recall it—as being popular, but not at the pinnacle of fashion with the Tulips of the ton.
Distinctive, but not too distinctive.
“We planned on going to Bermondsey tonight, and then on to the Puddle Dock,” said Raven, mentioning the two other murder locations. “If anyone mentions a hat, we’ll show them the drawing.”
“You think it might help?” asked Hawk.
“Yes,” replied Charlotte, still staring at the image. “I think it might help a great deal.” She took a sheet of drawing paper from her desk drawer and quickly copied the sketch.
Dare I hope the villain is a gentleman? The answer was still tauntingly unclear. Finding a madman among the vast multitudes of the city seemed an impossible task, especially as the morning papers had hinted that the authorities planned to move quickly in bringing Nicholas to trial.
Horrific crimes called for swift retribution.