staircase that led to the shore of the Thames. As we descended away from the stone houses, the wind took on a new chill.
The river lay cold and vast at the bottom of the steps, lapping softly at its banks and smelling of rotting cabbage. Lights roved the middle of the river, barges and small craft strolling upriver or back down to the ships moored at the Isle of Dogs or farther east in Blackwall and Gravesend.
A circle of lanterns huddled about ten yards from the staircase. 'Saw her bobbing there,' a thin voice was saying. 'Told young John to help me fish her out. Dead as a toad and all bloated up.'
As Pomeroy and I crunched over the shingle toward them, a man on the gravel bank turned. 'Pomeroy.'
'Thompson,' Pomeroy boomed. 'This is Captain Lacey, the chap I told you about. Captain, Peter Thompson of the Thames River patrol.'
I shook hands with a tall man who had graying hair and a sunken face, long nose, and thin mouth. He was muffled in a greatcoat that hung on his bony frame, and his gloves were frayed. But though his features were cadaverous, his eyes were strong and clear.
The Thames River patrol skimmed up and down the river from the City to Greenwich, watching over the great merchant ships that docked along the waterway. Their watermen picked up flotsam from the river, either turning it in for reward or selling it. When they found bodies, they sent for the Thames River officers, although I suspected that some of the less scrupulous sold the poor drowned victims to resurrectionists, unsavory gentlemen who collected bodies to sell to surgeons and anatomists for dissection.
Thompson asked me, 'Pomeroy said the woman might be an acquaintance of yours.'
'Perhaps.' I steeled myself for the possibility. 'May I see her?'
'Over here.' Thompson pointed a finger in his shabby glove to the thin gathering of men and lanterns.
I stepped past the waterman who smelled of mud and unwashed clothes into the circle of light. They had laid the woman out on a strip of canvas. Her gown, a light pink muslin, was pasted to her limbs, the sodden cloth outlining her thighs and curve of waist, her round breasts. Her face was gray, bloated with water. A wet fall of golden hair, coated with mud, covered the stones beside her.
She had been small and slim, with a girlish prettiness. Her hands were tiny in shredded gloves, and her feet were still laced into beaded slippers. Although her coloring and build were similar, she was not Marianne Simmons.
I exhaled in some relief. 'I do not know her. She isn’t Miss Simmons.'
'Hmph,' Pomeroy said. 'Thought it was her. Ah well.'
Thompson said nothing, looking neither disappointed nor elated.
I went down on one knee, supporting my weight on my walking stick. 'She had no reticule, or other bag?'
'Not a thing, Captain,' Thompson replied. 'Although a reticule might have been washed down river. No cards, nothing on her clothes. I imagine she was a courtesan.'
I lifted the hem of her skirt and examined the fabric. 'Fine work. This is a lady's dress.'
'Might have stolen it,' Pomeroy suggested.
'It fits her too well.' I dropped the skirt and ran my gaze over the gown. 'It was made for her.'
'Or her lover sent her to a dressmaker,' Thompson said.
I looked at the young woman’s neck and wrists, which were bare. 'No jewels. If she had a protector, she would wear the jewels he bought her.'
'Someone could have taken them,' Pomeroy said.
I touched the woman's throat. 'There is no sign of bruising or force on her neck, nor on her arms. I do not believe she was wearing any jewels before she fell in. She was not robbed.'
Thompson leaned down with me. 'No,' he said. 'But she was murdered.'
He turned the woman's head to one side. I recoiled, my hand tightening on my walking stick.
The entire back of the woman's head and been caved in, rendering her skull and hair a black and bloody mess.
Chapter Two
I looked down at the wound, an ugly gouge on the woman's otherwise pretty head. She'd not been much past five and twenty. A life snuffed out too soon.
'Do you know who did this?' I asked, my voice hard.
'That we don't, Captain,' Thompson said. He looked at me sideways, his own eyes quiet, but in them I saw a spark of anger that matched my own. 'Found the body, nothing else. She can't have been floating there long.' He looked up at the waterman. 'Maybe only thrown in this afternoon?'
The waterman nodded. He must have seen his share of bloaters, and Thompson must have too. They'd know just by looking at the body how long she'd been in the water.
'How much had she drifted, do you think?' I asked. 'Do you know where she went in?'
'She didn't go far,' the waterman said in his reedy voice. 'I found her fetched up under th' bridge.'
He pointed. Blackfriar's Bridge lay just upstream of us. I was night-blinded by the lanterns, but looked that way as though I could see the arches of the dark bridge.
'She'd been wedged there a few hours, I'd say.'
Thompson got to his feet, swung his arms, his coat swinging with him. 'And she's only a few hours dead. That means she could have been pitched in near the Middle or Inner Temple. From the Temple Stairs, perhaps? About half-past four this afternoon? What are the gentlemen of the King's Bench getting up to, I wonder?'
I saw in his eyes that he only half-joked. Why a pupil or barrister of the Temples would kill a young woman and toss her into the Thames I could not fathom, but someone there might have done so. Thompson thought so too.
It would not be Thompson's task to investigate this crime. His jurisdiction lay on the river, and on the wharves and docks where thieves might break into the loaded merchantmen. Pomeroy and his foot patrollers would be the men combing the Temple gardens to find someone who might have witnessed the crime. But I saw a gleam of professional curiosity in Thompson's eyes.
The same curiosity sparked in me, mixed with deep pity for the young woman. I too wanted to discover who had done this to so harmless a creature, perhaps spend a few minutes alone with the man when we found him.
As I made to rise, the woman's torn glove moved under my fingers, and I felt something cool and metal. A ring had been hidden by the gloves, protected from the water. It was loose, even on her bloated finger, and slipped easily into my hand.
Thompson looked my way in curiosity as I rose, and I brushed off the mud and balanced the ring on my palm. Pomeroy crowded close, his heavy breath on my shoulder.
The ring was a thick circlet of silver bedecked with a strip of diamonds. Even muddy, it glinted in the lantern light, smooth and whole and costly. It was the sort of ring a gentleman of fashion would purchase for himself and perhaps bestow on his paramour as a keepsake.
'A gift from her lover?' Thompson asked, echoing my thoughts.
'Must have been,' Pomeroy said. 'Think he did her in?'
'No way of knowing.' Thompson picked up the ring, held it close to his eyes.
Pomeroy went on. 'The lady and her lover quarrel, he hits her or knocks her down. She falls, strikes her head, dies. He panics when he sees he's killed her, drags her down the steps at the Temple Gardens, drops her into the river.'
'Possibly,' I said. 'But if that were the case, why would the paramour not remove his ring and take it home with him?'
'He didn't know she had it on. She's wearing gloves.'
Thompson turned the bright circlet in his fingers. 'If the man were her lover, he'd have known she'd wear it, and look under the glove.'
'Or, she was with a second lover,' Pomeroy speculated. 'A gent jealous of the gent what gave her the ring.
