Peter Tremayne - An Ensuing Evil and Others

Charley Collins grimaced. “Nothing unusual in that, Miss Mary,” he pointed out, adopting his father-in-law’s manner of addressing the landlady. In fact, every drinking man along the waterfront knew the landlady of the Grapes simply as Miss Mary. “Dwelling along the waterfront here, you have surely grown used to bodies being washed up?”

It was true that the Thames threw up the dead and dying every day. Suicides were commonplace; there were gentlemen facing ruin in various forms who took a leap from a bridge as a way out and the poor unable to cope with the heavy oppression of penury. Among the latter sort were a high percentage of unfortunate young women, unable to endure the profession that was their only alternative to starvation. Often there were unwanted children. And there were bodies of those who had met their ends by the hands of others for gain, jealousy, and all manner of motives. The flotsam and jetsam of all human misery and degradation floated along the dark, sulky river. Indeed, there were also unsavory stories of watermen, “river finders,” who plied their trade on the river, taking drunks from the riverside taverns to drown them in the Thames, though not before emptying their pockets of anything valuable, or to sell their corpses for medical dissection. Death and the river were not mutually exclusive. In fact, many along the riverbanks were called dredgers, dredging coal or valuables lost overboard from the ships that pushed their way along the river to the London docks.

“I would send for a constable at once, Miss Mary,” advised Dickens, about to be reseated.

Whereupon the lady let out a curious wailing sound that returned him to a standing position with some alacrity. “I would be doing that, but it be young Fred who be fishing out the body, and the peelers is just as like to say ‘e robbed the corpse. Now, if you were there to see fair play… they’d respect a man like you, Mr. Dickens.”

“If I recall a’right, Fred is your nephew?”

“Me own poor departed sisters son, gawdelpus.”

Dickens smiled skeptically. “What makes you think the police would believe that this corpse had been robbed?”

The landlady blinked and then realized what he meant. She looked defensive. “ ‘E only looked to see if there were anything to identify ‘im, Mr. Dickens. The corpse, that is. Fred, I mean,” she ended in confusion.

Dickens raised a cynical eyebrow. “I presume that there was no means of identification… nor any valuables on him?”

“Bert ain’t no dredger, Mr. Dickens. ‘E’s a lighterman. Makes a good living, an’ all.” There was a note of indignation in her voice.

Dredgers found almost all the bodies of persons who had been drowned and would seek to obtain rewards for the recovery of the bodies or make money through the fees obtained by bearing witness at inquests. But no recovered body and no corpse handed to the coroner would ever have anything of value on it. Dredgers would see to that.

“I am curious, Miss Mary,” interrupted Charley Collins, “why do you think that a policeman, seeing this body, might want to accuse anyone of robbing it? Plenty of corpses are washed up without anything on them and often without means of-identification.”

His father-in-law looked approvingly at him. “A good point. Come, Miss Mary, the question is deserving of an answer.”

“The man is well dressed, Mr. Dickens, and Freddie… well, ‘e thinks… that is, Fred thinks that ‘e was done in, begging your pardon.”

“Done in? Murdered?” asked Collins.

“Back of ‘is skull bashed, in, sez Fred.”

“And why would the constabulary think Fred might be involved?

Miss Mary sniffed awkwardly. “Well, ‘e did three months in chokey last year. Po’lis ‘ave long memories.”

Collins frowned. “Chokey?”

“Prison,” explained Dickens. “I believe the derivation is from the Hindustani chauki . Well, Miss Mary, Mr. Collins and I will come and take a look at the corpse. Don’t worry. Fred will have nothing to fear if he is honest with us.”

They followed her from the snug. The tavern building had a dropsical appearance and had long settled down into a state of hale infirmity. In its whole construction it had not a straight floor and hardly a straight line; but it had outlasted, and clearly would yet outlast, many a bettertrimmed building, many a sprucer public house. Externally it was a narrow lopsided wooden jumble of corpulent windows heaped one upon the other as one might heap as many toppling oranges, with a crazy wooden veranda impending over the water, indeed the whole house, inclusive of the complaining flagstaff on the roof, impended over the water, but seemed to have got into the condition of a fainthearted diver who has paused so long on the brink that he will never go in at all.

The snug, which they had originally settled to savor their port wine, was a curious little haven in the tavern: a room like a threecornered hat into which no direct ray of sun, moon, or star ever penetrated but which was regarded as a sanctuary replete with comfort. The name Cozy was painted on its door, and it was always by that name that the snug was referred to.

Miss Mary, the proprietess, pushed her stately way through the taproom and into the dark lane outside. It was a long cobbled lane whose buildings towered on either side, almost restricting the thoroughfare. It was appropriately called Narrow Street, running parallel with the River Thames and separate from it only by such buildings as the Grapes, from which they had emerged. She took a lantern by the door and conducted them round the corner of the building, down a small slipway, which led to the bank of the river.

A young man was there, also with a lantern, waiting for them. At his feet lay a dark shape. “Thank Gawd!” he stuttered as they emerged from the darkness. “Thought I were gonna be stuck ‘ere.”

Dickens and Collins halted above the shape at his feet. Dickens took the lantern from the young man and, bending down, held it over the shape.

The body was that of a man of about thirty. He was well dressed in a suit of dark broadcloth and a white shirt that had obviously been clean at one stage but was now discolored by the dark Thames water and mud with bits of flotsam and jetsam that adhered to it.

“Handsome,” muttered Collins, examining the man’s features.

“And a man who took a pride in his appearance,” added Dickens.

“How so?”

Dickens raised one of the man’s wrists and held the lantern near the wellmanicured fingernails.

“The arms are not yet stiffening with rigor mortis, so he is not long dead.”

He searched for a wound.

“Back of the skull, guv’nor? Head bashed in,” suggested the young man.

“Fred, isn’t it?” asked Dickens.

“That’s me, guv’nor.”

“How did you find this body?”

“Came down ‘ere to empty the… the waste,” he quickly corrected what he was about to say with a frowning glance at Miss Mary. “Saw him half in and half out of the water. Dragged him up and then called Miss Mary.”

“And you searched him? Anything to identify him?”

“Not a blessed thing. Straight out.”

Dickens could not hide his smile. “Nothing on him at all?”

“Said so, didn’t I?”

“Very well, Fred. You cut along to the police at Wapping Steps. That’s the nearest station. Bring the majesty of the law hither as quickly as you can.” He turned to Miss Mary. “You best get back to your customers. There is nothing that you can do here.”

Left alone, Dickens began a thorough search of the man’s pockets.

Collins smiled skeptically. “You don’t expect to find anything, do you?”

“I never expect anything. In that way I am never disappointed. But it is always best to make sure.”