Andrew Pepper - Kill-Devil and Water

Tilling rubbed his chin. ‘So what are you suggesting?’

Rolling her on to her back again, Pyke held up one of her hands. ‘In spite of the quicklime, there’s hardly a blemish or a callus. Not the hands of a servant or a seamstress, I’d wager.’ He looked over at Tilling, surprised at how good it felt to be using his mind. ‘My question is: how did she earn a living?’

Pyke could see that Tilling was thinking what he was thinking.

‘Perhaps,’ he added, though Tilling hadn’t said anything, ‘but I don’t think she was a street-walker.’ Pyke glanced down at her fleshy curves and felt his stomach tighten. ‘She’s too exotic, too refined. And that dress would have cost a few pounds, too.’

Tilling nodded, conceding the point. ‘You’re suggesting she had money?’

‘I don’t know.’ Pyke picked up one of the woman’s hands and had another look. ‘Of course, if she had money, why would she be staying at a lodging house on the Ratcliff Highway?’

‘We don’t know that for sure,’ Tilling said. ‘At least not until young Jenks returns with the landlord.’

‘Then we should start with what we do know. Tell me what you found out from the dram-shop owner.’

Tilling explained that the old man had come across the corpse the previous morning while emptying night soil and had reported it to the police at once. According to his testimony, the dram-shop owner had found the body lying on the bank of a stream that trickled under the Ratcliff Highway. He hadn’t touched it and therefore, if he was to be believed, hadn’t seen the woman’s facial mutilations. The bottle of rum and the dress had been found next to the body. The man’s wife hadn’t slept well that night and claimed to have heard voices, and a horse and cart stopping somewhere under their bedroom window, although she hadn’t climbed out of bed to have a look.

Pyke considered what he had just been told and weighed up the likely cause of death — strangulation — against the removal of her eyeballs. He was unable to find a way of reconciling the two acts. In some ways, the murder struck him as cold and clinical. The woman had been strangled and her body tossed away like a piece of rubbish. There was no indication that she’d been beaten and there was no sign of sexual congress. But her eyeballs had been gouged out with a knife; she’d been defaced in the most gruesome manner imaginable, as if the man who’d done it hadn’t merely wanted to kill her but to annihilate her.

‘Why cut out her eyes?’ Tilling said, reading his mind.

‘And why sprinkle her face and body with quicklime but leave a scrap of paper in her dress with the name and address of a lodging house?’

Pyke bent forward and sniffed the body. He’d smelled the odour as soon as he’d stepped into the room but hadn’t been able to place it. Not simply the ripeness of putrefying flesh, but something sweeter, tangier.

‘You said a half-empty bottle of rum was found next to the corpse?’ he said, ignoring Hart.

‘That’s right,’ Tilling replied.

‘Here.’ Pyke stepped aside to let Tilling do what he’d just done. ‘Can you smell it on her?’

‘The rum?’

‘On her body. All over it, in fact.’

Tilling offered Pyke a puzzled stare. ‘What are you suggesting? That she was embalmed with rum?’

‘Perhaps.’ Pyke took another look at the body, particularly the colour of her skin. ‘I wouldn’t describe her as Negro but could we say she was mulatto?’

‘For what it’s worth,’ Hart interrupted, ‘that would be my opinion on the matter.’

‘That she was mulatto?’ Tilling asked.

The coroner shrugged. ‘Well, look at the swarthiness of her skin here and here,’ he said, pointing to her hands and wrists.

‘Yes, I suppose.’

‘Together with the rum,’ Hart said, looking warily at Pyke, ‘it could mean she had some kind of connection to the West Indies.’ He waited for a moment. ‘After all, those people are a law unto themselves, aren’t they?’

Tilling and Pyke looked at one another, frowning.

‘Well, do you honestly believe a godly white man would have done that to her?’ Hart added defensively.

‘Are you saying that someone with darker skin than you or I is naturally predisposed to gouge people’s eyes out?’ Pyke asked.

‘I didn’t say that… I simply meant that the negro race is more predisposed towards savagery. Science has proved this to be so.’

Pyke looked again at the dead woman and tried to work out whether her features were Caucasian or not.

‘I’ve been in touch with the magistrate at Shadwell. The inquest will take place here, in this room, tomorrow at ten. After that, if no one has claimed her, someone will have to make arrangements for her burial.’ Hart put his scalpel back into his bag and snapped the fastener shut. ‘Otherwise the stink will become unbearable.’

Tilling thanked Hart for his work and ushered him to the staircase. ‘You’ll recommend that the jury deliver a verdict of wilful murder, won’t you?’ Pyke overheard Tilling say to the coroner.

Pyke went to cover the body with a sheet. A few moments later Tilling joined him.

‘So you want me to find the man who did this to her?’ Pyke asked eventually.

Tilling nodded. ‘Don’t tell me you’re not interested. I can see it in your eyes.’

Pyke walked across to the window and stared down into the yard below. It felt strange, disconcerting even, to be free all of a sudden. ‘What I am interested to know is why a man in your elevated position, and with your newfound responsibilities, would consider employing the services of a lowly convict.’ He paused. ‘The last time I checked, there were something like three thousand men working for the New Police.’

‘And how many of those men do you think have been trained to run an investigation of this type? Of any type.’ Tilling sighed. ‘You know as well as I do that the emphasis has always been placed on prevention rather than detection. That was Peel’s intention when he first proposed the force ten years ago and it still holds true today.’

This much was true. Contrary to the belief of Pyke’s mentor at Bow Street, Sir Richard Fox, Peel and subsequent Home Secretaries for Melbourne’s Liberal governments had argued that the role of the police was not to investigate crimes after they had taken place but to prevent them from happening by crowding the streets with policemen. For his part, Pyke had always found this reasoning to be obtuse. To prevent crime, you needed to find a way of eradicating poverty — something no politician wanted to do. Until then, all you could hope to do was go after the worst offenders and use every dirty trick and every soiled piece of information to put them behind bars.

‘You’re telling me that the Metropolitan Police doesn’t have any specialist detectives?’ Pyke turned around. ‘I don’t believe that for a minute. What usually happens when someone is murdered?’

Tilling considered this. ‘I suppose you wouldn’t have seen or read the newspapers in Marshalsea.’

‘What do you think?’ In fact he hadn’t read a newspaper for more than nine months.

‘Two days ago Lord William Bedford was murdered in his own bed, while he slept. He was stabbed in the stomach with a letter opener.’

‘Return to sender, eh?’

Tilling stared at him. ‘Do you think for one moment that’s amusing?’

Pyke shrugged.

‘I don’t think you appreciate the pressure we’re under to apprehend the murderer.’ Tilling wiped his forehead and thinning pate with his handkerchief. ‘Bedford is, or was, a well-respected member of the aristocracy. If we don’t find his murderer quickly, we’ll face public ridicule and political censure.’