“Sir Henry Lovejoy, Queen Square,” snapped Henry. He brushed past the constable, his footsteps echoing on the wooden planking of the docks.
He could see a knot of men clustered near an old warehouse up ahead. Henry paused, aware of a hollowness yawning deep inside and trying to swallow the thickness that had come to his throat. The sight of violent death was never easy for Henry. He had to steel himself for the sight of yet another human being butchered like a side of beef.
At Henry’s approach, one of the men near the warehouse straightened and came toward him. A fleshy man with protruding watery gray eyes and loose wet lips, Sir James Read was one of Bow Street’s three serving magistrates, a small-minded man Henry knew to be both ambitious and fiercely jealous of his dignity.
“Sir Henry,” said the magistrate with a show of bluff good humor, “no need for you to have braved the cold on such a foul morning. This one had the courtesy to get himself offed well away from Queen Square.”
The Thames-side docks in the city fell under the authority of Bow Street, and Sir James’s words were carefully chosen to let Henry know his presence here was both unnecessary and unwelcome. Henry looked beyond the magistrate, to the shadows of the warehouse. “I heard the victim has a mandrake root stuffed in his mouth.”
Sir James’s show of bluff good humor slipped away. “Well, yes. But what has that to say to anything?”
“I believe this gentleman’s death may be linked to the recent murders of Mr. Barclay Carmichael and young Dominic Stanton.”
“You mean the Butcher of the West End?” Sir James gave a harsh laugh. “Hardly. No one’s been carving up this gentleman.”
Henry knew a moment’s confusion. “The body wasn’t mutilated?”
“No. Just a neat knife wound through the side…and that bloody mandrake root in his mouth, of course.”
Henry let his gaze drift around the docks. In the growing light, he could now make out the dark hulls of the ships lying at anchor out on the river. He had to force himself to bring his gaze back to the sprawled figure beside the warehouse.
The man lay on his back, one leg buckled awkwardly to the side, as if he’d simply been left where he had collapsed. No butchering of the body. No careful display of the remains. The cause of death was different, as well: a knife wound to the side rather than a quick slitting of the throat from behind. Yet the presence of the mandrake root in the man’s mouth surely tied this man’s death to the murders of Thornton, Carmichael, and Stanton. So why the differences?
Henry’s footsteps echoed dully as he approached the body. No one had covered the man up. He lay with his eyes staring vacantly, the features of his face relaxed in death.
He was young, as Henry had known he would be—probably somewhere in his early twenties. A handsome young man, with light brown hair and even features and the sun-darkened skin of a man who lives his life on the sea. He wore the uniform of a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy, the brass of his buttons and buckles neatly polished.
“He’s a naval lieutenant?” said Henry.
“That’s right. Lieutenant Adrian Bellamy, from the HMS
It was said with a faint sneer that Henry ignored. “How long has the
“Put in Monday night, I believe. They were meant to sail again at the end of the week.”
Lovejoy frowned. It had been less than a week since Mr. Stanton’s murder, which meant that after leaving a lapse of two or more months between his other killings, their murderer had struck again within days. Why?
“You’ve spoken to the captain of the
“Of course. According to the captain, the lad came ashore last night after receiving a message.”
“From whom?”
“From his family, it would seem. At least, he told the captain he was going to visit them in Greenwich.” Sir James stared down at the body at their feet. For a moment the cloak of bluff insensitivity slipped, and a muscle ticked along the man’s fleshy jawline. “He didn’t make it far, did he?”
“No,” said Henry. “No, he didn’t.”
Sebastian found Sir Henry seated behind his desk in Queen Square. The magistrate had his head bowed, his forehead furrowed by a frown as he scribbled furiously on a notepad.
“I heard about Lieutenant Bellamy,” said Sebastian as soon as the clerk Collins had bowed himself out.
Sir Henry removed the small set of spectacles he wore perched on the end of his nose and rubbed the bridge. “It’s puzzling. Most puzzling. There was no mutilation of the body, and the young man was killed by a knife wound to the side. Yet the presence of that mandrake root surely links his murder to the other three.”
“I would have said so.”
Sir Henry picked up a volume from his desktop and rose from his chair. “When I saw him on the docks, Sir James was dismissive of my conclusions. I then spoke to his colleagues Aaron Graham and Sir William and presented them with my notes on the case. Both agreed the evidence suggests the death of Mr. Nicholas Thornton may well be linked to the murders of Mr. Carmichael and Mr. Stanton. However, they remain skeptical of the relevance of the poem by John Donne. They therefore agree with Sir James that the docks killing is unrelated to the other three.”
Sebastian watched the magistrate lock the volume away in a glass-fronted case beside the door. “And they’ve taken over the investigation.”
“Yes. It was inevitable, given the breadth of the case.”
Sebastian nodded. Bow Street was the first public office formed in London, back in 1750. The original Bow Street magistrate had been Henry Fielding, followed by his brother John. Together the brothers had been so successful at stemming the rampant spread of crime in the growing metropolitan area that another half dozen public offices were established in 1792, including the one at Queen Square. But of them all, only the magistrates of Bow Street exercised authority over the entire metropolitan area and beyond. Bow Street’s famous Runners operated the length of England.
“My jurisdiction is limited,” Sir Henry was saying. “Technically I should have contacted Bow Street after our discoveries in Kent.”
Sebastian watched Sir Henry resume his seat behind the desk. “So what can you tell me about Adrian Bellamy?”
“Little you won’t be able to read in the papers, I’m afraid. The young man was from Greenwich. His father is one Captain Edward Bellamy.”
“Also a Navy man?”
“No. Retired merchant captain.” Sir Henry hesitated, then said, “The differences in the murders are considerable. Not simply in the manner of killing and the lack of mutilation, but in other ways, as well. Bellamy was left where he fell, in the shadow of one of the warehouses beside the docks. There was no public display of the remains, no flaunting of what had been done.”
“Perhaps the killer was pressed for time,” Sebastian suggested.
Lovejoy carefully fitted his spectacles back on his face. “You may be right. You were certainly correct about the mandrake root. It’s as if the killer deliberately skipped that line of the poem, fully intending to return to it later. But why?”
“Because Bellamy’s ship was out of port. The designated victim was beyond his reach.”
Sir Henry looked at Sebastian over the top of the spectacles. “You think he’s putting his victims in some sort of order?”
“So it would appear.”
“‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing,’” whispered Sir Henry.
“What?”
“It’s the next line of the poem. ‘Teach me to hear mermaids singing.’ If he’s putting his victims in order, he
