Philip Kerr - Dark Matter

“That is interesting,” remarked my master, who, on hearing these facts, left off stroking the office cat, Melchior, to look out of the window.

“Is it?” I remarked. “I am surprised that more people don’t fall in, the moat being surrounded only by a low picket fence that would not deter a goat.”

But Newton’s curiosity was hardly deterred by my remark. “It may have escaped you, Ellis, but people who fall in rarely take the trouble to weight themselves down,” he said scornfully. “No, this interests me. Why would someone dispose of a corpse in the moat when the river Thames is so close at hand? It would surely have been a much simpler matter to have carried the body down to Tower Wharf and then to have let the river’s tides and eddies work their transporting effect.”

“I offer no hypothesis,” said I, railing him with his own philosophy, which he took in good part. And there we might have left it. However, many Mint workers — who were easily provoked to fear — hearing of the discovery of a body, stopped their machines, which obliged my master to put aside his own business with Mister Hall and, accompanied by me, to go and investigate the matter himself.

The body had been taken to an empty cellar in the Tower along Water Lane, which ran parallel to the river and was the only road between the inner and outer rampire that was not occupied by the Mint. Gathered outside the cellar door, the stench of the much putrefied corpse having quite overpowered them, were one of the Constable’s officers, several Tower warders, the carpenter, and the two dredgers who had found the body. The Constable’s man, Mister Osborne, who was a poxy-looking fellow always standing on his office and often drunk, which sometimes prevented him from standing at all, was instructing the carpenter to fashion a cheap coffin; but seeing my master he stopped speaking, and most insolently rolled his eyes and looked mighty vexed.

“Zounds, sir,” he exclaimed, addressing Doctor Newton. “What business have you here? This is a matter for the Ordnance. There’s nothing that need concern the Mint, or you, this man being already dead and quite beyond any hanging.”

Ignoring this insult, Newton bowed gravely. “Mister Osborne, is it not? I own I am quite at a loss. I had thought to offer my assistance with the identification of this unfortunate soul, and how he came by his death, for many of us in the Royal Society have a small acquaintance with anatomical science. But I perceive that you must already know everything there is to know about this poor fellow.”

The others smirked at Osborne upon hearing this, for it was plain that Osborne knew nothing of the kind and would plainly have conducted his inquest in a most indifferent and very likely illegal manner.

“Well, there’s many a man drinks too much and falls in the moat,” he said, with no great certitude. “No great mystery about that, Doctor.”

“Do you say so?” said Newton. “It has been my own observation that wine and beer are enough to trip up a drunken man; so that tying his legs together is usually quite superfluous.”

“You’ve heard about that, then,” he said, sheepishly. Osborne removed his hat and scratched his close-cropped head. “Well, sir, it’s just that he doesn’t half stink, being quite rotten. It’s as much as a man can do to be alongside of the poor wretch, let alone investigate his person.”

“Aye sir,” echoed one of the Tower warders. “He’s quite picquant to the eyes and nose, so he is. We thought to get him boxed up and then to stand him in the chimney to keep the stink out, while the Constable made a few enquiries around the parish.”

“An excellent idea,” said Newton. “Only first let me see what enquiries may be answered from his person. If you will permit it, Mister Osborne?”

Osborne nodded. “My duty suggests that I do permit it,” he grumbled. “And I shall wait upon you.”

“Thank you, Mister Osborne,” Newton said handsomely. “I shall trouble you for some of your rolling tobacco to chaw which will take away the cadaver’s smell from our nostrils. Some candles, for we will need plenty of light to see what we are about; and some camphor, to help take the stink off the room.”

Osborne cut off a chaw for my master and myself and would have put away his knife, but that Newton asked to borrow that, too, and he handed it over willingly enough before going to fetch the candles and the camphor. While he was gone, Newton addressed the two dredgers and, offering each man a new-minted shilling, suffered them to answer a few questions about their occupations.

“How do you dredge?” he asked.

“Why, sir, with a drag net which you use while rowing the peter. That being the boat, sir. There’s an iron frame around the mouth of the net which sinks to the bottom and scrapes along as the peter pulls it forward, collecting into the net everything that comes in its way. Mostly we are river finders, sir. There’s more in the river. But sometimes we try our luck in the moat, as is our licensed prerogative so to do. You always know by the weight when you find a body, sir, but that’s the first time we ever found one in the moat.”

“This would be where in the moat, exactly?”

“On the east side of the Tower, sir. Just below the Devereaux Tower.”

“So then, within the bounds of the Ordnance.” Seeing the man frown, Newton added, “I mean that part of the Tower which is not occupied by the Mint.”

“Yes sir.”

“Was the body deep down?”

“Yes sir. Quite deep, but not on the bottom. We dragged it and for a while it did not budge. But then it came up, sudden like, as if it had been weighted, for as you will see for yourself, sir, the ankles are still tied by a piece of rope that has broken off something else, most likely a heavy object.”

“You searched the pockets?”

The dredgermen nodded.

“Find anything?”

Each looked at the other.

“Come, man, you shall keep whatever you found, or be well compensated, my word upon it.”

One of the dredgers dipped a grimy hand into his pocket and came out with a couple of shillings which Newton examined most carefully before returning them to their keeper.

“Do you see many corpses fetched out of the river?”

“A great many, sir. Them as shoot London Bridge, mostly. As the saying goes, it was made for wise men to go over and fools to go under. Take my advice, gentlemen, and always get off your skiff and walk around the bridge rather than try and go under it.”

Mister Osborne returned with the candles and camphor, and took them into the cellar.

“One last question,” said Newton. “Can you tell how long a man has been in the water?”

“Yes, your honour, and notwithstanding the weather, which affects the dignity of a man’s corpse greatly. The summer, being a cool one, has not much altered the pace of decomposing so much as the rats. But by and by, even the rats lose their stomach as the tallow in a man’s body stiffens and swells and sticks to his bones after the skin has become softened and quite rotted away, so that he doth almost resemble a body consumed in a fire, except that he be white instead of black.”

“So then,” prompted Newton, “by your expert reckoning, what is your estimate of this one?”

“Why, your honour, six months, I reckon. No more, no less.”

Newton nodded and handed each man the shilling he had promised, and me my chaw of tobacco.

“Have you chawed before, Mister Ellis?” he enquired.

“No sir,” I replied, although I might well have added that it was about the only bad habit I had not picked up when I was studying for the Law. “Not even for the toothache.”

“Then have a care to spit often, for it’s not well known that tobacco contains an oily liquid called nicotiana which is a deadly poison, and that all men who chaw are merely experimenting with its toxic effect. But it may be that your stomach shall be churned whether you chaw or no.”