anything you like.”
Sebastian leaned back in his seat, his arms crossed at his chest, and smiled. “I’m told Ross was expecting a visitor Saturday night. You wouldn’t by any chance know who that was?”
Foley shook his head. “Sorry. No.”
“Do you know if he had any financial difficulties? A mistress? Gambling debts, perhaps?”
“Hardly. We’re pretty careful about that sort of thing.”
“Know of anyone who might have wanted him dead?”
Foley set down his fork with a clatter. “You can’t be serious about all this?”
Sebastian ignored the question. “No enemies?”
Foley held his gaze. “None that I am aware of, no.”
“Any recent quarrels?”
Foley was silent for a moment.
“What?” prompted Sebastian.
The Undersecretary drained the last of his pint and gave a soft laugh.
Sebastian said, “So he did have an argument. With whom?”
Sir Hyde Foley reached for his hat, his chair grating across the old stone-flagged floor as he pushed to his feet. “Good day, my lord.”
Quickly paying off his tab, Sebastian reached the flagway in time to see Foley turn to stride up Pall Mall, away from his offices in Downing Street.
Tom was waiting nearby.
“Get down and follow him,” said Sebastian, leaping into the curricle to take the reins. “I want to know where he goes.”
Published weekly for more than two hundred years now by the parish clerks, the Bills of Mortality recorded the dead in each parish, along with their ages and causes of death. Originally designed to provide a warning against the onset of plagues, the Bills of Mortality were not infallible. But they were fairly reliable. The returns were compiled by old women known as “viewers” or “searchers of the dead,” employed by each parish. Their job was to enter houses where a death had been reported. Since they were paid two pence per body, they tended to be thorough to the point of being aggressive.
Of course, the searchers’ expertise in determining causes of death was limited. Gibson had no doubt that whatever searcher recorded Alexander Ross’s death had simply accepted the diagnosis provided by the renowned Dr. Cooper. But if Jumpin’ Jack had made a mistake—if the body lying on Gibson’s slab belonged not to Mr. Alexander Ross but to some other young gentleman who was known to have encountered a violent death—then his identity would be found in the Bills of Mortality.
Choosing a chair near a dusty window, Gibson quickly ran through the compiled list of deaths by natural causes for the previous week ...
He checked the previous week, just to be certain.
Leaning back in his chair, he scrubbed both hands down over his face. Then he pushed to his feet, returned the Bills of Mortality to the bored-looking clerk, and went in search of Dr. Astley Cooper.
He met the surgeon turning in through the gates of St. Thomas’s Hospital.
An imposing man with dark eyebrows and thick gray hair flowing from a rapidly receding hairline, Dr. Astley Cooper was long accustomed to hearing himself described as London’s preeminent surgeon. In addition to lecturing on anatomy at St. Thomas’s, he was a member of the Royal College of Surgeons and a professor of surgery at Guy’s Hospital. But it was his flourishing private practice that earned him more than twenty-one thousand pounds a year —a level of success he made no attempt to keep secret.
“May I walk with you a moment, Dr. Cooper?” Gibson asked, falling into step beside the famous man.
“As you wish,” said Cooper, cutting across the quadrangle toward the chapel. He cast Gibson a quick, assessing glance. “I hear you are to lecture this afternoon on cerebral circulation. I trust you’ve consulted my own writings on the subject?”
Gibson schooled his features into an expression of solemn respect. “To be sure, Dr. Cooper. You are the expert, are you not?”
Cooper nodded, said, “Good,” and kept walking.
Gibson said, “I wanted to ask you a few questions about Alexander Ross.”
Cooper frowned. “Who?”
“The young gentleman who was found dead in his rooms in St. James’s Street last Sunday. The one you said died of a defective heart.”
“Ah, yes; I remember now. What about him?”
“I was wondering if you were told he had a history of pleurisy? Or perhaps carditis?”
Cooper shrugged. “How would I know? The man was no patient of mine.”
“No one gave you a medical history?”
“I was told simply that he appeared healthy to all who knew him.”
“And you saw no signs of disorder in the room? Nothing out of place?”
“What a preposterous question. The man died peacefully in his sleep. He wasn’t thrashing about in his death throes, if that’s what you’re suggesting.”
“There were no signs of blood on the sheets?
“Why on earth would there be? The man died of
“Not at all. Simply curious.” Gibson drew up. “Thank you; you’ve been most helpful.”
He started to turn away, then swung back around when a thought occurred to him. “Just one more question, Dr. Cooper—”
The surgeon tightened his prominent, bulbous jaw. “Yes? What now?”
“I was wondering who called you to Mr. Ross’s bedside that morning.”
“Who called me? Sir Hyde Foley. Why do you ask?”
Wrapped in a dirty canvas, the unidentified corpse lay halfhidden in a weed-choked ditch on the edge of Bethnal Green. A wretched, insalubrious area on the northeastern fringes of London, the district was a favorite dumping ground for dead cats and dogs, unwanted babies, and victims of murder.
“He ain’t a pretty sight, I’m afraid,” said Constable O?Neal, a stout, middle-aged man with florid jowls and a prominent nose. Slopping noisily through several inches of slimy water, he leaned over with a grunt to draw back a corner of the canvas and reveal a bloated, discolored nightmare of a face.
