“First of all, where were you? It’s been near an hour since I put out the call for you.”
“In Covent Garden, sir, showing Clarissa about and introducing her to one and another. She chose the makings of tonight’s dinner.”
“Oh. . well, that’s needful and necessary, I suppose, but dammit, lad, could you not have cut it short-or at least hurried things along just a bit?”
“Well, I-”
“Oh, never mind-but listen, ’twas near an hour ago that a little street urchin came running in, demanding to be heard. He’d been sent by a waterman at Billingsgate Stairs to report that he had pulled from the river the body of a child. A girl it was, of no more than six or seven years of age. I think it may be that one reported stolen by her mother a month ago. You recall, do you?”
“Oh, I recall,” said I. “You pointed out to me that it was the second such disappearance that month. You said you suspected that they were being sold.”
“Yes, but to what purpose? The earlier abduction was of a boy of about the same age. When kids are napped from the rich, they are held for a price. There was no demand for money in either case, nor would the parents be the sort you might hope to extort money from.”
“Too poor?”
“By half.” He sighed. “I recall my brother Henry talking of a series of kidnappings of adolescent children, yet they were shipped off to Jamaica and sold into slavery. But this was years ago, mind you, back in Jonathan Wild’s time.”
“The thief-taker general,” said I.
“So he proclaimed himself.”
“What will you have me do, Sir John?”
“I want you to collect the girl’s corpus and bring it to Mr. Donnelly. You had better notify him before you go all the way to Billingsgate that we’ll require his services as medical examiner this morning. If she died a violent death, I want to know about it-and quickly. Get on it, if you will, Jeremy.”
“I will, sir.” I rose from the chair that I had taken and started for the door.
“Oh, and Jeremy, do forgive my unhappy outburst when you did enter. I’d been awaiting you for a bit and had naught to listen to but Mr. Marsden’s snuffling and coughing, and the woesome cries of drunks arrested the night before. In short, lad, I was impatient for your return. I could not, for the life of me, remember where you had gotten off to.”
“Think nothing of it, sir,” said I. “There can be no more said.”
“Go then,” said he. “Give me a report as soon as ever you can.”
As I left him and started back down the long hall, it occurred to me for the first time ever that perhaps Sir John was, in some sense, growing old.
The Billingsgate Fish Market smelled, if it were possible, even worse than did the Smithfield Market. The offal of hoofed beasts gave off a thick and heavy smell, it’s true. Nevertheless, the innards of sea creatures, most specially fish, stunk far worse. They were insidiously foul in a manner that can only be imagined as one might suppose hell might smell, and in the heat of the summertime could not even be imagined in such an approximation as that.
Billingsgate stands just off lower Thames Street, not far from London Bridge. ’Twas even before I reached the bridge that I smelled what lay ahead. Turning in at Billingsgate Dock, however, I found to my surprise that the deeper I penetrated the effluvium, the less I minded the odor. This may have been an actual, observable phenomenon, or it may have been because my attention was fully devoted to the closer handling required by the horses. (Yes, reader, I had, at last, learned from Mr. Patley, formerly of the King’s Carabineers, the tricks of handling a wagon and team through the streets of London.) I had hardly got the two old nags turned round and properly placed when they began to balk and carry on. I could think of naught but the foul smell of death that would make them carry on so. At last I got them under control and safely hitched.
I made quickly for the stairs down to the river and descended to near water level. There were men grouped upon the platform, talking in low tones, discussing the bundle that lay at their feet. Undoubtedly, the child was wrapped within the blanket. I shouldered my way through them, begging their pardon as I went, until I came to the focus of their attention-a blanket-wrapped parcel of no particular shape and not much more than three feet in length.
“Is this the child found in the river?” I asked, looking round me at the glowering faces of the watermen.
“This be her,” said one of them just opposite me. There came a chorus of “ayes” and affirmative grunts, giving confirmation.
“Who was it pulled her out?”
“’Twas me,” said the man who had answered my first query. He was in midlife, bearded, and wearing quite the most doleful expression that I had ever seen on the face of one in his work.
“Where did you pull her out?”
“Right here,” said he. “I was first one round this morning, and I found her a-floatin’ right here.”
“Right here? I don’t quite understand.”
“Well, it’s simple enough. She’d floated down near the mudbank and bumped into one of the boats-that one there. Her hair got tangled in the lines just enough to hold her till I got there.”
“A right, now-”
“Just a minute,” he interrupted. “Who are you, anyways?”
“Sir John Fielding sent me,” said I. “You sent a boy to report this to the Bow Street Court, didn’t you?”
“I did, right enough.”
“Well, they sent me to pick up the body.”
“You one of those Bow Street Runners I hear so much about?”
“No, I’m Sir John’s assistant.”
“Is that like a helper-outer?”
“That’s close enough,” said I. I noticed the rest of the men had stepped back and seemed to be regarding me with renewed respect. “Now, can we go on?”
“Yes, awright, I just wanted to know is all.”
With that, I resumed my interrogation of the man. His name was Abel Bell, and he had been a waterman for better than fifteen years. He gave his address as one in Cheapside. He said that he reckoned every waterman had pulled at least one deader out of the Thames. This was his third. It had come about as he said: he was simply earliest upon the scene. I asked how long, in his estimation, she had been in the water. When he responded that he thought it was no more than a few hours-five or six at the most-I suggested that it was possible she had fallen off London Bridge.
“She didn’t fall off no place,” said the waterman.
“How can you be so certain?” I asked him.
“Well, one thing, she was nekkid when I found her. She wasn’t walkin’ London Bridge without no clothes on. You can be sure of that.”
“I suppose not. Were there any marks of violence upon her? Wounds or bruises?”
“Nothing I could see.”
“What about the blanket? Is it yours?”
“It’s mine. Like I said, she was just plain nekkid in the water. I threw the bum blanket I had in the boat round her just to make her decent, poor child.”
I sighed. “Well,” I said, “perhaps you could give me a hand taking her up the stairs. I’ve a wagon up there.”
“No, I’ll carry her,” said he. “It’s the least I can do.”
“Well, all right then. I’ll thank you for it.”
He picked her up carefully, keeping the blanket wrapped round her, as the group on the little pier made a path for us to the stairs. We climbed, but it was only when we reached the top that we met the stink of the dead fish, which were ranged in piles all the way to Thames Street. The wagon and team awaited us, the horses still restive but secure at the hitching post.
The waterman lifted the body carefully into the wagon bed and turned to me. “I said there wasn’t no
