Paul Lawrence - The Sweet Smell of Decay

‘Aye, woman.’ The sack was thick and heavy. It soaked into my blood quickly and hit my head hard, catching me unawares. The room began to swim.

‘My name is Mary.’ She turned to Dowling and pointed towards the far corner of the dark room. ‘Bring it over this way.’ Picking up a broom as she walked forwards, she set about sweeping the straw off a wooden door, laid flat in the floor. She pointed at a great rusty ring. ‘You pull it open. It is too heavy for me.’

Dowling found a short metal rod with a hook at the end of it. Placing the hook in the ring, he pulled. The door swung slowly open, though Dowling had to exert himself mightily to achieve it. Once open we stood in a ring staring down into the blackness. Wooden steps led down. The old woman grumbled and muttered and shuffled away to fetch a torch.

‘Harry and I will go down. You two stay here.’ Dowling cast the old woman a quick glance, before gently steering Hewitt towards the black hole. I followed, carrying the flaming stick that the old woman had given me.

‘I don’t reckon it’s been opened for a while.’ Dowling looked back over his shoulder. The staircase was short, and led down into a small cellar four yards square. It smelt damp and stale, but I could see no pools of water, nothing growing on the walls.

‘Clean and dry,’ Dowling announced. He pushed Hewitt down against a wall, arms still tied behind his back, and pulled the bag off his head. Still I couldn’t see Hewitt’s eyes. Dowling pulled a piece of rope from his pocket and tied Hewitt’s legs together tight at the ankle and at the knee. I pulled the gag from Hewitt’s mouth. Crouching on my haunches I watched him closely. He opened and closed his mouth a few times, before settling motionless to stare back. We sat like that a little while, Hewitt expressionless, his black eyes promising horrible vengeance, me staring back, my drunken brain wandering painlessly. This was the Devil, and he was in the dungeon where he should be. I felt brave.

‘We will leave you here awhile, Hewitt. A day or so. I fear that you’ll not have light, for there is nowhere for me to put the torch.’ I smiled humourlessly. ‘You’ll not have food for a while, either. That’s by choice. I will leave you here for a day or so and then I’ll be back. When I come back, I’ll ask you again who killed Anne Giles, who killed John Giles, who sent Mottram and Wilson, who killed Mottram and Wilson. I pray that you will give me good answers, Hewitt. If not, then we will leave you here to rot. Lock the door and not come back. Do you understand, Hewitt?’

‘I understand,’ spake the Devil at last. ‘You’re trying to scare me.’

‘Aye,’ I nodded, for he was right. ‘All true. Also true that I will leave you here for good if you don’t tell me what I need to know. Consider it, Hewitt. How may I let you go? You tried to kill me once, methinks. What would I do tomorrow? Release you? Then you would try and kill me again. This is my dilemma. I hope that you have an answer for me tomorrow. Leaving you here to starve doesn’t appear to be so stupid, for none would ever find you.’ I stood slowly, my knees cracking. I had made up the words as they entered my brain, but it was a profound analysis, I decided.

‘I can’t tell you, Lytle,’ he shook his head slowly, ‘even if I wanted to.’

‘I will see you tomorrow, God willing.’ I turned and headed back to the staircase. ‘I will leave the gag out, Hewitt, but if you call out then they will throw water over you until you stop.’ I climbed the stairs, and heaved the trapdoor closed again. It fell with a crash. Dowling secured it with a chain, locked it, and handed the key to me with a solemn face. Unhappy.

‘I like this less than you do,’ I told them all, ‘but remind yourselves what Hewitt is, and of the blackness of his heart. Remember Anne Giles.’

‘Aye, right enough, Harry,’ Dowling muttered. ‘If there be found among you any man who hath wrought wickedness in the sight of the Lord, thou shalt bring him forth and stone him with stones until he dies.’

‘I have to go,’ I wiped my brow. I sensed that I was very close to unravelling this great mystery and was feverish to see it broken. I just needed a quart of sack to lubricate my thinking. ‘Walk me back to Fleet Street.’

Stinking Lane was a narrow passage of small cramped houses that ran north of Newgate Market, east to Christ Church. It was a loud and lively neighbourhood where children ran about your feet and grabbed at your pocket. And it did stink. An open sewer ran almost the width of the lane. Marching fast, we attracted stares and curious looks. A very old and rotten apple missed the back of Dowling’s head by about two inches. A child shrieked with laughter. A man leant against his doorway unshaven and unclean, only half attired, despite the cold, wintry air.

‘Who is this witness?’ I pulled my coat about my neck. I had been settled down for the evening in front of a new fire when Dowling had arrived suddenly. Said he had a witness to the John Giles murder.

‘A slaughterer. Lives close by.’

It was indeed close by, a small cramped house. We were ushered in by a nervous old woman, who laughed constantly with her mouth, if not with her eyes. Trying to both lead and shepherd us to a table where the slaughterer sat, she giggled as she breathed, the giggles interrupted only by a twitch and occasional wild gasping laugh.

An aura surrounded him. His skin was white and clear as if he had been hosed down, but there were patches that had been missed — under his nails, at the roots of his hair. A bit like Dowling — only worse. My knees buckled when the woman pushed a chair at me from behind. The slaughterer sat slumped, exhausted by his day’s efforts. He didn’t look like a slaughterer; he was old, thin and wiry.

‘You saw the killing on the Bridge.’ Dowling’s low pronouncement was more of a statement than a question. The woman collapsed in a bout of particularly violent cackling, but her face gave lie to the apparent mirth. She looked terrified, fit to burst into tears. The slaughterer shot her a veiled look and she almost exploded out of the room into the back.

‘Aye, I saw it.’

‘You were up at that hour of the morning?’ If he was up at that hour of the morning then he could only have been drunk.

‘Aye.’

‘What was it you saw?’

‘Aye, well,’ the old slaughterer sighed deeply. ‘I was walking slowly across the Bridge from the Bear. I was in no hurry, so perhaps my feet were quiet. I saw the man who was killed. He was standing at the palings. I couldn’t see him very well. Then I saw the other man and I stopped, to make sure that there was no villainy.’

‘Villainy?’

‘He looked like he had a knife, so I stood in the shadow like any man would. He was big, built like the tower of St Paul’s. He had broad shoulders and was taller than any man I’ve seen for a long time. I can’t give you a better description because he was clothed from head to toe, I couldn’t see no part of him. He wore a scarf around the bottom of his face, round his mouth, and he had a hat pulled down over his eyes. He had a rope. Not on his person, but at the floor by his feet. One end was tied to a big hook, a hook in the wall of the building. I don’t know why there was a hook there.’

He stopped speaking and looked like he had fallen asleep. I leant over and prodded him, to make him start talking again.

‘Maybe it had been put there special. He had another rope he used to truss him like he was a chicken. He just walked over, took him in one hand and placed him on the floor face down. Then he put one knee on his back and bound him up. It’s no easy thing to bind an animal on your own. Bind him he did, though, fast. He tied his hands first and then his legs. The little man kicked and screamed, but he was too small. The big man put a knee on his neck. That stopped the screaming.’ The slaughterer’s eyes were distant as if he was seeing it all again. Sweat beads formed at his temples, his cheeks were drawn. ‘You might ask me why I did nothing.’ He sighed and shook his head. ‘It wasn’t that I was afeared, though I was. I just couldn’t think what to do. So I stood there watching until it was too late. It’s difficult to fathom.’