The Medieval Murderers - King Arthur's Bones

Despite her weight, she was quickly up the fine curved staircase that spoke of more elegant days, when Mr Stanhope had still been alive and the house full of soirée guests. She pushed open the left-hand door on the first landing that opened on to Malinferno’s living room.

‘Now, look here, you little pilferer, I…’

Mrs Stanhope got no further than that initial imprecation. For before her on the threadbare but once-pretty Persian rug lay the battered remains of Kathleen Hoddy, otherwise known as Kitten. Her life’s blood was seeping darkly into the rug, ruining it for ever. Mrs Stanhope screamed. Whether from stark fear or horror at the ruined rug even she did not herself fathom.

‘So, this Rosie…’

‘Rosetta.’

‘This Rose Etta Stone has three different languages on it.’

Malinferno nodded, already a little exhausted. Doll had spent most of the night dragging out of him all he knew about ancient Egypt and swallowing it whole. He had never come across any man who could take so much in at one sitting, let alone an uneducated female. And the way her eyes had sparkled at his recital, he felt sure she was completely absorbed by the subject.

‘And you reckon we could use it to work out the ancient language of the Egyptians and make a fortune?’

‘Well, now…’ He had to draw the line there. The girl had said ‘we’ as though she was going to help him on the gargantuan task that had already bamboozled several polymaths in both France and England. She might be able to swallow whole a mountain of facts, but as for cracking the most complex problem of the age, well, there was a limit. ‘I don’t think you could…’

Doll simply ignored his reservations. Sitting cross-legged on the bed opposite him, he watched her breasts heaving with the excitement of the moment. Malinferno regretted it was not passion that was causing the flush on her cheeks. At least not the sort of passion he had at first imagined, when he had pressed the golden sovereign into the bawdy-house owner’s hand. In fact he now saw that the light of dawn was filtering through the heavy drapes of the boudoir, and he had done no more than remove his jacket and boots. He leaned towards her buxom figure, his ardour returning.

‘Doll, I wonder if…’

‘And to imagine it was old Bonaparte who found it in the first place. Perhaps he’s coming to nick it back. If he manages to reach dry land this time, that is.’

Malinferno sighed, knowing his chance had gone, and the day was calling him to more earnest tasks. The mention of Bonaparte had reminded him of the need to ensure the safety of the bones that lay under his bed. Not that he believed King Arthur would really come back to life. But perhaps they could form a rallying point, at whose centre would be Professor Joe Malinferno. He slid to the edge of the bed he had shared passionlessly with Doll and began to pull on his boots. Doll too made a move, bouncing eagerly off the feather mattress and grabbing her street clothes.

‘Where we going first, then?’

‘What?’

‘You said you’d show me this Rosie Etta Stone. And I should like to go to Piccadilly to see the Egyptian Hall too. It costs a shilling, but you could pay for the both of us, couldn’t you?’

Malinferno reached for his cutaway coat and began to pull it on, checking that the remaining sovereigns still nestled snugly in the pocket hidden in the coat-tail.

‘Doll, I shall be delighted to escort you to the Egyptian Hall, and even the British Museum. But I have other pressing business to attend to right now.’

‘Good. I’m ready.’

In the time it had taken him to pull his coat on and reach for his Garrick and hat, Doll had slipped into a filmy muslin dress, primped her hair and thrown a hooded black-gauze cloak over her shoulders. She was at his side, reticule and gloves in one hand and sliding her other inside his arm.

‘Where are we going first, Prof?’

‘We are not…’

Malinferno saw the determined look in the girl’s eyes and bowed to the inevitability of this new force of nature. He crammed his hat on his head and led the bawd, now demurely attired as any lady, down the stairs and out into the street.

‘Very well, come with me. There is something I have to collect at my lodgings. But you have to wait outside as Mrs Stanhope does not take kindly to young ladies in her gentlemen’s rooms.’

‘Orl right. What is it you have to pick up?’

‘Well… Arthur’s bones, actually.’

Doll squealed and pinched his arm in excitement.

‘Bones? Which Arthur is that, then? Is he a relative of yours?’

Malinferno grimaced. ‘More of an ancestor, shall we say. On my mother’s side.’

Another of Mrs Stanhope’s lodgers, who resided in the downstairs front, had called the Runners. One of the magistrates from the new office in Worship Street, Raleigh Pauncefoot by name, had turned up with one of his six constables in tow. And now the estimable lady was showing them the body. Pauncefoot, who was a starch-dealer by trade and who had got his position due to the patronage of a rich uncle, reeled back in horror. He held a lace-edged handkerchief to his nose and gagged. When he managed to control his stomach, he urged the constable into the room ahead of him.

‘Mayes. Take a look, and tell me what you see.’

The lugubrious Archie Mayes, who had served under the Duke of Wellington and so was well used to messy bodies, slouched into the room and knelt beside the dead girl. He lifted her head, noting how loose it seemed from the rest of the body.

‘’er throat’s been cut from ear to ear. Whoever did it nearly cut the head off completely. Savage, I say. Look ’ere, Mr P.’

He took great delight in showing the gaping wound to the magistrate, knowing the reaction he would get. Pauncefoot did not disappoint him, turning away and heaving into his lacy white linen. Mrs Stanhope took the pasty-faced magistrate by the shoulders.

‘Come downstairs to my parlour, sir. I fancy I might have a bottle of spirits somewhere, left over after the death of my husband.’

She looked back at the constable and winked, divining he might prefer to be left alone to do his work. When his master had gone, Mayes paced the room silently, taking in anything that might prove of interest. The room was furnished sparsely, and the chairs and single table looked shabby. Clearly they were the property of a man who did not earn a regular wage but relied on his status as a gentleman to get by. Mayes had no time for such wastrels. Nevertheless, the man was tidy and, judging by the pile of books on the one table in the room, an educated man. He lifted the top book from the pile, and opened it to the title page. What he saw made him frown. For a start it was in French, that much he knew, though he could not read the language. But one word stood out among all the other jumble of foreign letters. The name – Bonaparte. Mayes had fought in the recent war against the little corporal and was not inclined even after his defeat to admire Boney as some now did. He had seen too many of his mates die around him. For the man in whose rooms the body had been found to also have a book all about Bonaparte was good cause to be very suspicious.

It was then he spotted through the bow window at the front of the house a man approaching with some half-dressed bawd on his arm. The man stopped and held his hand up to suggest the girl go no further. She for her part seemed not to mind, and stood next to one of those newfangled gaslamps on the street. The man, who was wearing a Garrick overcoat and a rakish hat, hurried up the steps of the very house the constable was in. To Mayes this looked ominously like the murderer bringing his next victim home. He pushed the door to the room closed, leaving a small gap he could peer through. He prayed that the magistrate was still preoccupied by the widow who owned the house. Much as he despised Pauncefoot, he didn’t want the bad business of him having his throat cut while his constable skulked upstairs like a coward.