C Harris: Where Shadows Dance

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 ... aged, 24; ague, 2; bloody flux, 1; childbed, 3; fever, 235; French pox, 1; measles, 5 . . . . Sighing, he skipped down to the “unnatural deaths”: bites, mad dog, 1; burnt, 2; choked, none; drowned, 3; shot, none; smothered, 1; stabbed, none .

He checked the previous week, just to be certain. Shot, one. Stabbed, none .

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 morbus cordis .” The surgeon’s eyes narrowed. “Are you questioning my diagnosis?”

“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?”

S ir Henry Lovejoy, once the chief magistrate at Queen Square, now the newest of Bow Street’s three stipendiary magistrates, drew a handkerchief from his pocket and pressed its snowy folds against his damp upper lip. The day had grown uncomfortably warm, the insects in the surrounding dank grass setting up a loud, maddening hum that seemed somehow to accentuate the foul stench of death and decay rising from the body before him.

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 OʹNeal, 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.

“Good God.” Lovejoy bunched the handkerchief against his nostrils. “Cover it up again. Quickly, before the children see it.”

The constable threw a skeptical glance at the knot of ragged, half-grown urchins who’d gathered nearby to gawk at them, and dropped the canvas. “Yes, sir.”

Normally, the discovery of another body in one of the poorest districts of London was of no concern to Bow Street. But there were circumstances surrounding this man’s death that Lovejoy found troubling. He said, “So what exactly have you discovered, Constable?”

“Not much, I’m afraid. You did notice his clothes, sir? They’re uncommon fine. The local magistrate reckons the body musta been brought from someplace else and dumped here. Ain’t no gentlemen missing from around these parts, sir.”

Lovejoy sighed. “No identification on him?”

“None, sir.”

Lovejoy turned to stare thoughtfully across the green, toward the dark, grim walls of the madhouse and, beyond that, Jews Walk. This was an area of marshy fields and tumbledown cottages, of Catholics and Jews and impoverished French weavers.

The constable cleared his throat. “And then there’s the lad I was telling you about—Jamie Durban, sir.”

Lovejoy brought his gaze back to the constable’s jowly face. “Where is he?”

“Here, sir.” The constable motioned to one of the ragged boys. “Well, come on, then, lad. Say your piece.”

Jamie Durban—a scrawny, carrot-topped lad of ten or twelve—wiped the back of one hand across his nose and reluctantly stepped forward.

Lovejoy looked the boy up and down. He was barefoot, the flesh of his arms and legs liberally streaked with dirt, his ragged shirt and breeches two sizes too big for his slight frame. “So what have you to say for yourself, Jamie Durban?”

The lad threw a frightened glance at the constable.

“Go on. Tell him,” urged the constable.

Jamie swallowed hard enough to bob his Adam’s apple up and down in his skinny throat. “It were Saturday night o’ last week, sir—or rather, I suppose you could say early Sunday mornin’.”

Lovejoy fixed the boy with a hard stare. “Go on.”

“I were ’eadin’ ’ome along the east side o’ the green, when I seen a swell carriage drawn up just ’ere—beside the ditch.”

“What makes you think it was a gentleman’s carriage and not a hackney?” asked Lovejoy. “It was rather dark last Saturday, was it not?”