But the dirt was only superficial; underneath he was well-cared for. There was none of the ingrained grayness of those who do not wash, whose clothes stay on from one month to another. He was slender, but it was only the lissomeness of youth, not the wasting of starvation.
Pitt reached for one of the hands and examined it. Its softness was not due only to the flaccidity of death. The skin had no calluses, no blisters, no lines of grime such as the skin of a'cobbler, a ragpicker, or a crossing sweeper would have. His nails were clean and well clipped.
Surely he did not come from the seething, grinding poverty of Bluegate Fields? But why no clothes?
Pitt looked up at the sewer cleaner.
'Are the currents strong enough down here to rip off a man's clothes?' he asked. 'If he were struggling-drowning?'
'Doubt it.' The cleaner shook his head. 'Mebbe in the winter-lot o' rains. But not now. Any'ow, not boots-never boots. 'E can't 'ave bin down 'ere long, or rats'd 'ave bin at 'im. Seen a sweeper's lad eaten to the bone, I 'ave, wot slipped and drowned a couple o' year ago.'
'How long?'
He gave it some thought, allowing Pitt to savor the full delicacy of his expertise before he committed himself.
'Hours,' he said at last. 'Depends where 'e fell in. Not more than hours, though. Current won't take off boots. Boots stay on.'
Pitt should have thought of that.
'Did you find any clothes?' he asked, although he was not sure he could expect an honest reply. Each sewerman had his own stretch of channel, jealously guarded. It was not
3
so much a job as a franchise. The reward lay in the pickings, garnered under the gratings: coins, sometimes a gold sovereign or two, the occasional piece of jewelry. Even clothes found a good market. There were women who spent sixteen or eighteen hours a day sitting in sweatshops unpicking and resewing old clothes.
Froggatt hopefully swung the lantern out over the water, but it revealed nothing but the dark, oily, unbroken surface. If the depths held anything, it was sunken out of sight.
'No,' the sewerman answered indignantly. 'I ain't found nuffink at all or I would 'ave said. An' I searches the place reg'lar.'
'No boys working for you?' Pitt pressed.
'No, this is mine. Nobody else comes 'ere-and I ain't found nuffink.'
Pitt stared at him, uncertain whether he dared believe him. Would the man's avarice outmatch his natural fear of the police if he withheld something? As well-cared-for a body as this might have been dressed in clothes that would fetch a fair price.
'I swear! God's oath!' the sewerman protested, self-righteousness mixed with the beginnings of fear.
'Take his name,' Pitt ordered Froggatt tersely. 'If we find you've lied, I'll charge you with theft and obstructing the police in the investigation of a death. Understand me?'
'Name?' Froggatt repeated with rising sharpness.
'Ebenezer Chubb.'
'Is that with two *b's?' Froggatt fished for his pencil and wrote carefully, balancing the lamp on the ledge.
'Yes, it is. But I swears-'
'All right.' Pitt was satisfied. 'Now you'd better help us get this poor creature up and outside to the mortuary wagon. I suppose he drowned-he certainly looks like it. I don't see any marks of anything else, not even a bruise. But we'd better be sure.'
'Wonder who 'e was?' Froggatt said dispassionately. His beat was in Bluegate Fields, and he was used to death. Every week he came across children dead of
