began to funnel down from the north.
“You heard about the girl who was murdered the other night?”
Polly’s expression saddened.
“Show me someone who doesn’t know about that by now, poor bloody cow. It’s been all over the place since yesterday morning. What’s so special about her, then?”
“She was our maid once, a long time ago.”
He saw the initial disbelief in her eyes and kept staring at her until her expression softened again.
“Pamela, wasn’t it?” she said, and he nodded. “I used to see her. Quiet girl, you’d hardly know she was there. You’ve got to put yourself forward in this game if you’re going to make any money.”
“Do you know where she lived?”
She shook her head. “I’m sorry, luv, I don’t.” She shrugged. “No reason, you see. Do you want me to ask around?”
“Please, yes.” He brought a penny from his breeches pocket. “If you find out, send a boy to find me.” He was about to walk off when her voice stopped him.
“Mr Nottingham? I didn’t know her, but I’m sure your Pamela were a good lass.”
He smiled sadly.
“She was, Polly. She was that.”
He talked to several contacts, whores, touts and con men, before walking back to the jail. He’d have the information soon, he knew. Pamela might have had very few friends, but people knew her face, and someone would know where she lived. All he needed was a little patience.
Back at his desk he wrote a note to Rawlinson, releasing Morton’s body, and arranged for an undertaker to prepare Pamela’s corpse and carry it to the church.
More than twenty four hours had gone by since the murder and he was no further along than when he’d first seen the bodies. By his calculations he had another day before the Mayor would demand results. He needed some bloody answers.
11
It took two full hours before a boy ran breathlessly into the jail to give him Pamela’s address, longer than he’d expected in a city of seven thousand people. He threw the lad a farthing before striding out up Kirkgate and crossing Briggate in the shadow of the Moot Hall.
The place was a step up from Queen Charlotte’s Court, but only a small one. Unpaved, it stank of night soil the residents had thrown out. Long ago, Nottingham mused, this would have been part of the garden of a grand house. Now the only thing it grew was people, bunched together like weeds in a neglected, overgrown lot. He’d spent half his childhood living in places like this.
If anyone had ever cared for these buildings, that time had been far in the past. A couple seemed to be collapsing in on themselves, propped up by scavenged pieces of wood. The others seemed little better, held together by a mixture of faith and despair.
The boy had told him the front door of the house he wanted was white, but that was a generous term. What remained was a grimy, tired grey, and the wood was so warped that opening it became a battle.
Downstairs in the cellar, he’d been told, the third door, and he went, the smell of unwashed bodies, illness and hopelessness around him. He knew places like this all too well. You could leave them but they never left you, sticking inside the body and the mind forever, like an itching burr, and squeezing out hope. Nothing good could ever happen in this kind of place.
He tried the handle of the third door, surprised when it opened; most residents of places like this had precious little but locked up what they had. Anything Pamela had owned would be the property of others by now.
He came face to face with a burly man nearly as tall as himself. His blue eyes were filled with wildness, and a bushy, uncombed beard cascaded on to his chest.
“Who are you, eh?” It wasn’t so much a question as an accusation, the words delivered in a long slur as his alcohol breath filled the room. A nearly-empty jug of gin sat on the floor next to a straw-filled pallet, the room’s only furniture. Nails had been hammered into the walls, and an old coat, worn through at the elbows, hung on one.
The man came closer.
“I said, who the fuck are you?”
Nottingham raised his palms in conciliation and smiled cautiously.
“I think I have the wrong room.”
In the face of an apology the man seemed to deflate.
“Unless the bastard’s let it to you, too.”
“How long have you been here?” the Constable asked, suddenly suspicious.
“Since last night.” He gestured expansively, legs wobbling. “All mine, until next week when I can’t pay his rent.”
“And where’s the man who runs the house?”
“Upstairs.” The man paused, scrambling down to his knees to drink greedily from the gin as if it were nectar. “Top two floors.” He paused again. “The king’s palace,” he added enigmatically.
Nottingham backed out of the room and climbed the stairs quickly, past the fractious squall of hungry babies and silences as deep as death. Where they ended the solid door looked no cleaner or brighter than the rest of the place. He knocked loudly, hearing shuffling steps on the other side. A moment later the haunted eyes of a very young maid looked at him.
Her dress had been exquisite once, the stitching small, even and fine, but over the years all the colour had been washed from it. Far too big, it hung loosely on her tiny body, trailing dangerously on the ground and covering thin, childlike wrists. The neckline was high, but not high enough to cover the fading bruises.
“I’d like to see your master,” he said.
She curtseyed briefly, then led him into a small, spare parlour where she lit a candle on the mantelpiece. The floor was polished wood, with two uncomfortable chairs on either side of an empty grate which was blackleaded to a shine. No pictures hung on the walls, and there were no windows to let in the day. It was a strange, disquieting room, so different from the life below.
He didn’t have long to wait there. Within two minutes a short man bustled in, an ingratiating smile on his face. Like the maid’s dress, his wig had been quality some twenty years earlier. Now its style, draping down on to his shoulders, looked ridiculous and old-fashioned. The linen shirt had been mended many times, and a bony elbow protruded awkwardly from a fresh rent. His dark breeches flapped against a pair of skinny thighs, and the white stockings had discoloured to ivory.
“Welcome, sir, welcome.” The man gestured at a chair, but Nottingham didn’t move. He stared impassively down at the man, trying to judge his age. Fifty? Sixty? Older? It was impossible to be certain. There were lines on his face, but it was as if he defied time. The flesh around his eyes was puffy, as if he’d just been woken.
“Do you know who I am?”
“Of course I do, sir.” The man smiled, showing a mouth almost empty of teeth. Seventy, Nottingham finally decided. “It’d be a poor man who didn’t recognise the city’s Constable.”
“And you are?” the Constable asked.
“Mr King, sir.” He gestured expansively and gave a hearty, toneless laugh. “Welcome to the king’s palace.”
That explained it, Nottingham thought. An old, poor joke. He was surprised he’d never heard of the man before, although the city had many landlords like this.
“You had a whore living in a cellar room, I believe. A girl named Pamela?”
King nodded tentatively. “There was a girl of that name,” he admitted warily, “but I don’t know what she did. As long as they pay the rent, that’s all I care about.”
“You know she was murdered, of course.” Nottingham said.
“How couldn’t I know?” King tried to shrug, but the gesture looked like a tic. “It’s been the talk of the
