Andrew Pepper - Bloody Winter

Knox stared down at his muddy boots and listened to the rain outside.

‘What you’re doing, what you’re proposing to do, is right. I’m not denying that. It’s just we have other things, other people, to think about.’

After breakfast, Knox walked the mile and a half into town. It took him along a narrow track flanked by hedges as tall as he was, past the ruins of Hore Abbey on one side and the Rock of Cashel on the other. He entered the town and turned on to Main Street near the fountain. The barracks was a squat two-storey building that sat at a ninety-degree angle to the courthouse. He was instructed to report immediately to the sub-inspector.

‘Constable Knox,’ Hastings said, after he’d presented himself at the sub-inspector’s door.

‘Sir.’

Hastings was a dour Protestant, forty-one years old, married with three children, and as fair-minded as it was possible to be in the post he occupied. His moustache was trimmed and flecked with grey, and he made a point of donning the same uniform as the rest of them: a blue swallow-tailed coat and a pair of matching woollen trousers. His one remarkable feature was a glass eye: he had lost the real one in a brawl some time before Knox had joined the constabulary.

‘Constable Knox, I wanted to ask about your plans for the disposal of the corpse lying in the cellar.’

‘I intend to take it to the cemetery this morning.’

Hastings gave him a perfunctory nod. ‘I’m afraid it won’t be possible to bury the body there. They’ve dug a pit at the back of the workhouse. You’re to take it there.’

Knox knew better than to question the man. ‘Of course. Will that be all, sir?’

Hastings looked up from a document he’d been browsing. ‘I believe the inquest is due to take place today.’ Not waiting for an answer, he said, ‘A verdict of murder will be returned. Since Lord Cornwallis asked you to attend to this matter, I see no reason to make alternative arrangements. It’s Thursday today. You can have until Monday.’

Knox moistened his parched lips. ‘You do know I’ve never conducted a murder inquiry before.’

Hastings had picked up a quill but he put it down on his desk and then sighed. ‘Just do what you think is best, Constable.’

Knox nodded. The implication was clear: he was not expected to find out who’d killed the man or even who the victim was. He had been given the case because it was deemed not to be important.

‘Good. That will be all.’ Hastings turned his attention to the piece of paper in front of him but Knox didn’t move. ‘Is there something else, Constable?’

‘There was one thing, actually, sir. There’s a man in town called James Sullivan, owns a draper’s shop. In his spare time, he has developed an interest in daguerreotyping. I thought I might ask him to capture an image of the dead man in case we need someone to identify him at some future point.’ Knox waited. ‘I imagine we would have to pay the man a small fee…’

Hastings sat back in his chair and folded his arms. ‘Have you been listening to me at all, Constable?’

‘Sir?’ Knox felt a trickle of sweat snake its way down the side of his body.

‘I want you to take that corpse to the pit at the back of the workhouse and dispose of it forthwith. Is there any part of that statement you still don’t understand?’

Knox stiffened his back. ‘No, sir. I’ll attend to it right away.’

‘See that you do it,’ Hastings said, dismissing him with a wave of the hand.

The horse and cart were unavailable so he had to make do with a borrowed hand-barrow. The dead body had started to smell so Knox had to cover his mouth with a clean handkerchief before dragging it up the stairs to the rear of the barracks.

The route to the workhouse didn’t take him past Sullivan’s shop so he had to make a slight diversion. Knox passed a hatter, a brogue-maker, a stone-cutter and a tailor before he stopped outside the draper’s window. There he covered the barrow with an old piece of cloth and entered the shop.

Inside, out of the cold wind, he told Sullivan — whom he knew quite well — what he had in mind and asked whether he would be interested in helping.

‘Well, that’s a mighty unusual request, sir, but I fancy I see your point.’ The draper hesitated. ‘We’d have to close the shop for a while. That would incur some cost. Then there’s the matter of the copperplates, the iodine, the mercury.’

Knox tried to swallow. ‘How much would two good plates cost?’

‘Two?’ Sullivan wiped his hands on his apron and did a quick calculation in his head. ‘Shall we say a guinea, since it’s coming out of the public purse?’

Knox had already decided to foot the bill himself but this was more than he had been expecting. He had saved three pounds, which was buried in the yard at home, but in light of the current difficulties, the idea of frittering away a third of this sum on two daguerreotypes seemed reckless to the point of stupidity.

‘I was told not to go above twenty shillings.’

Sullivan eyed him suspiciously. Perhaps he thought that Knox had been given a budget and was trying to barter him down in order to keep some of the money for himself. ‘I’ll do it for twenty-three, not a shilling less.’

‘You’re not to mention this business to another soul. I mean it, James. Not even to your wife.’ Knox folded his arms. He could feel his heart thumping against his chest.

‘I can hold my tongue,’ Sullivan said. ‘Twenty-three shillings?’ He spat on his hand and offered it to Knox.

‘Agreed.’

After laying down the corpse in the back of the shop, Knox waited outside as Sullivan set to work.

The workhouse gates were locked but after he’d rattled them, Bill McDonagh appeared from around the side of the building, sleeves rolled up to his elbows. ‘No more room,’ he said, before he’d realised who it was and why Knox was there.

Knox looked up at the workhouse, which had been raised five years earlier on ground a few hundred yards south of the town. It was a building intended to deter rather than welcome: its austerity a reminder of the strict regime that awaited the men and women who had nowhere else to go. It had been full for a number of weeks but in defiance of the commissioners’ strict instruction to cease all outdoor relief, hundreds of non-inmates were still being fed there.

‘Yellow Bill’ McDonagh was a gravedigger hired by the Board of Guardians to collect and bury stray bodies. Knox didn’t know where the name ‘Yellow Bill’ had come from but it was how everyone in the town referred to him.

‘That for me?’ Bill asked, gesturing at the hand-barrow Knox had set down next to the gate. He spoke in Irish, even though Knox knew that he understood English quite well.

‘I was told there was a pit here,’ Knox said, making a point of answering in English.

Bill glanced down at the body covered by the piece of cloth. ‘I’ve just come from it.’ This time he had spoken in English.

‘This one needs to go in the ground as a matter of urgency.’

Bill sniffed the air. ‘Been a while, has it?’

Knox shrugged. ‘I’ll push the barrow, you lead the way.’

Bill wiped his nose on his sleeve. Like most Catholics, he distrusted the army more than he did the police, and seemed happy to take men like Knox at their word. ‘I should warn you, Constable. It isn’t pleasant in there.’

‘I’m sure I’ve seen as bad.’

Knox let Bill walk ahead of him along a mud path that skirted the left side of the workhouse. It terminated at the edge of a giant pit which had been dug into the ground. On Bill’s advice, Knox had already tied a handkerchief around his nose. Despite this, the stench of putrefying flesh was appalling. He stared into the pit and felt his legs buckle. There were, quite literally, dozens of bodies, limbs tangled together, flesh covered by quicklime. Rats crawled among the corpses. Nauseous, Knox had to look away. He took a couple of breaths and watched as Bill pulled back the cloth covering the body in the barrow.