The Medieval Murderers - King Arthur's Bones

‘You don’t mean…?’

‘Yes. The leader of the Borough Gang of bodysnatchers, Ben Crouch.’

Doll’s face took on a fashionable pallor. ‘Blimey!’

A trip into the Borough was not something an honest citizen would normally contemplate. A rookery of thieves operated out of the area, and the most feared were the resurrectionists – the men who dug up bodies and supplied them to the medical profession for gruesome anatomizing. Most feared of these bodysnatchers was Ben Crouch, who was the leader mainly due to the fact that he drank to excess less frequently than his comrades. But Malinferno knew that if he was to track down the killer of Kitten and Bromhead – who he was still convinced was dead – and perhaps find the lost bones, the Borough rookery would have to be invaded. However, it did not reduce his sense of terror when, a few hours later, he and Doll found themselves in a low dive somewhere off the Borough Road confronted by a pockmarked man with an evil grin.

‘I’ll have to hurry you, pal. It’s a new moon tonight, and I am not in the mood to waste the hours of darkness when I have an order for five large.’

Crouch, for that’s who the pockmarked man was, meant he had a request for five adult bodies to be supplied no doubt to Guy’s Hospital down the road that very night. Flanked as he was by four lieutenants, resembling nothing less than Barbary apes from the hairy nature of their faces to their beady, animalistic eyes, Crouch was a fearful character at the best of times. Now he was in one of his bad moods, as today he had learned that Israel Chapman, a Jew to whom he owed money, had started up in the trade Crouch had thought to have monopolized. Israel had had the nerve to supply a corpse or two to St Bartholomew’s. He had already had a drink or two while planning how to deal with the Jew, when these two innocents had had the nerve to fall into his rookery.

They had been observed asking about Kathleen Hoddy in a voice loud enough to irritate Crouch, who liked to keep his affairs dark. He had got his men to hustle them out of the gin-shop and into the back room Crouch used to plan his forays into the graveyards of London. So they had ended up in the very presence of the man they were asking awkward questions about. Now Crouch was wondering how to deal with them. He reckoned the man was easy meat, and maybe he could add him to the order for five large corpses by way of compensation for the nuisance he had caused. But the woman was another matter. A little on the plump side for Crouch’s tastes, she would nevertheless be more useful alive than dead. He grinned, exposing his blackened teeth.

‘Now, as for your request for information about the girl, I can’t say I’ve ever heard the name. Nor do I know anything about this pile of old bones you are looking for. Though I might be able to help you for a consideration.’

Malinferno looked glum, knowing he had no money to offer the man as a bribe. Of course, if Crouch was the murderer they sought, no amount of coins would get to the truth. It was more likely that he and Doll would end up on some anatomist’s slab themselves. He shivered, wishing they had never come to Borough to try to get some information from the locals. It was clear from the start that Crouch would learn of their prying. He watched in horror as Crouch stepped close up to Doll and leered at her, peering down her cleavage with clear intent in his mind.

‘Of course, you could pay me in kind, if you know what I mean… arrgh.’

His lascivious tones were abruptly cut off, and Malinferno looked on in puzzlement as Crouch’s face turned first bright red, then purple, his eyes bugging out of his head. Doll merely smiled sweetly, and told his nervous lieutenants to stand their ground.

‘Or your boss’s jewels will be crushed to powder.’

Malinferno looked down with curiosity at the front of Crouch’s stained and crumpled pants. Doll had firm hold of a hefty portion of the cloth and, from the look of pain on Crouch’s face, most of the contents too. Malinferno could not believe that such delicate hands, encased in virginal white gloves, could perform such a crushing task. He winced at the thought. Doll, however, was implacable.

‘Mr Crouch, I don’t believe that you never heard of Kitten. She spoke to you about the bones, and you sent her to get them, didn’t you?’

At first Crouch’s eyes shone with defiance, and he shook his head. Then he winced as Doll squeezed harder and lifted him a little by his crotch. His manner changed abruptly. He nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes. I overheard the silly bitch talking about finding a bag of bones. I told her she should go back and fetch them for me, or she was in trouble. The next thing I knew she was dead.’

‘Killed by you?’

‘No. Why should I do that? She was on an errand for me.’

Malinferno leaned over Doll’s shoulder and threw in his own question. ‘And my friend, Augustus Bromhead? What of him?’

‘Never heard of him.’

Doll gave a deft twist of her wrist, and Crouch squealed like a pig.

‘Orl right, he was on our shopping list, the little dwarf was. But we heard someone else was after him. Someone you didn’t argue with – a little Welshman from out of town. We left him to it.’

Crouch’s eyes were by now screwed up in pain, and he could manage only a final croak. ‘It’s the truth. Honest.’

Doll relaxed her grip, and a great sigh came from Crouch. He sank to his knees, clutching his bruised tackle. Doll dusted off her pretty gloves and thought to retaliate in some way for Crouch’s comment about Kitten being a silly bitch. It was not for the likes of Crouch to deride a girl who was now dead and due for a pauper’s grave. Even if she was a silly bitch. Malinferno perceived Doll’s intent from the look in her eyes and, grabbing her shoulders, steered her rapidly from the room. He wanted them both to escape before Crouch was sufficiently recovered to think of setting his faithful terriers on them. He didn’t stop pushing her along ahead of him until they were well down Tooley Street and halfway back to Bromhead’s house.

Sitting in the gloomy upstairs room that was Bromhead’s study, Malinferno tried to puzzle out the sequence of events that had brought Bromhead’s and Kitten’s deaths about.

‘Well, it looks like Crouch didn’t do it either.’

He rooted aimlessly through the impedimenta on Augustus’s desk, not sure what would be of relevance. Sturdy modern leather-bound books lay side by side with ancient curled-up scrolls, and various items served as anchors for the latter, preventing the wind that whistled through the ill-fitting windows from carrying such papers away. One of the paperweights was a large skull, and Malinferno quietly set it aside as a possible substitute for Arthur’s missing one. There would have to be some judicious hammering of its surface, as he was sure Augustus had once told him that Arthur’s skull was damaged with a sword blow. But it would be a start. After all, they had the empty box already. He looked across at Doll, who was occupying her time by scanning through a small and battered tome that Malinferno remembered Thomas Dale picking up off the floor at their first meeting. It was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain , and its position on the floor had been the reason why Dale reckoned the antiquarian had been killed. He said Augustus would not have thrown down such a precious book. The recollection gave him another idea – maybe the last chance of finding the bones.

‘Doll, put the book down. We have to go.’

Before she could ask where they were going, Malinferno was down the stairs and out into the street. Only then, as they hurried along, did Doll manage to get her question out. ‘Where are we going?’