The Medieval Murderers - The First Murder

London, July 1821

Joe Malinferno peered at the lozenge-shaped figure again. The images wobbled in the flickering, yellow light of the single candle set on the surface that doubled as his desk and dining table. His eyes swam and his head ached. What did it mean, this little procession of pictures? He could make out the seated lion, the feather, and the two birds. Even the stylised palm of a hand was discernible. But what were all the other shapes for? And what did they all signify? He wrung out the wet cloth that had been soaking in a bowl of water at his elbow, and applied the cold poultice to his forehead. It eased the fevered ache, but did not bring enlightenment. A warm hand touched his hunched shoulder, and he looked up. It was Doll Pocket, a shawl wrapped around her bare shoulders and partly covering her high-bodiced muslin dress.

‘Time for bed, Joe. You’ll never figure it out, the state you’re in.’

He patted her hand, and sighed deeply. ‘I’ll never figure it out anyway.’

Malinferno had set himself up as an Egyptological expert a number of years ago in the wake of the fashionable fervour for all things to do with that far-off land. Of course, it had been England’s old enemy Napoleon Bonaparte who had started the craze after his expedition to Egypt in 1798. But that mattered not to London society, and soon there was a fashion amongst the wealthy for owning obelisks and statues plundered from the ancient past. Then more recently there grew a vogue for ‘unrolling’ mummies. At aristocratic soirées, Egyptian mummies that had lain untouched by grave-robbers for thousands of years were unceremoniously unravelling from their bindings. Their innermost secrets were exposed to the curious but ignorant stares of English lord and ladies in the name of entertainment. Malinferno had cashed in on the trend by selling his services as an expert ‘unroller’ to the élite. His decision to do so had not been entirely motivated by greed, though he did appropriate for himself some of the gems and scarabs hidden in the bandages wrapped round the mummies. He justified his actions by telling himself that someone less sensitive to the antiquarian value of the unrolling would destroy valuable finds on the altar of gross curiosity. He had recently found, in the process of unrolling three mummies, several small papyrus texts with Egyptian hieroglyphs on them, and salvaged them in the interests of scholarship. These curious symbols were inscribed on papyrus, carved on upright stones, and on walls and tombs all over Egypt. Malinferno, along with many other scholars and savants of the day, was fascinated by their mystery. It had become his fervent wish to be the first to unlock the mystery of these images. But two years of fevered thinking had brought him exactly nowhere.

Doll unwound the cold compress from his head, and stroked his damp and chilly brow.

‘Don’t despair, Joe. You’ll get there.’ She squatted before his hunched figure. ‘Shall we go to Montagu House again, and see the stone?’

Malinferno knew that Doll was referring to the famous stone classified as EA24 – Egyptian Antiquity 24 – that resided in the British Museum. Currently located in Montagu House, the museum had possession of the remarkable stone stolen from the French twenty years earlier. It was otherwise known as the Rosetta Stone. There was a text written in three languages on its broken surface, one of them being Greek, one an unknown language, and one being the mysterious hieroglyphs of the Egyptians. Over the years, many scholars had tried to decipher the pictograms found on Egyptian monuments and papyruses, and the Rosetta Stone was seen as the key. The physician and mathematician Thomas Young was the latest scholar in England to try his luck, but even he was struggling. Now Malinferno was beginning to wonder why he had had the temerity to imagine he could do it.

He looked down at Doll’s remarkable cleavage, and shook his aching head.

‘I think not, Doll. It will do me no good. This is a waste of time.’

He pushed the crackling papyruses on the table to one side. Though the sun was coming up through the dusty bow window of his rented rooms in Creechurch Lane, London, he realised Doll had only just returned home.

‘Let’s go and find a chop-house that’s open and, over breakfast, you can tell me what kept you out all night.’

Doll Pocket looked away guiltily from his gaze.

‘It was business, Joe. Honest.’

Malinferno hoped it was not Doll’s old business that she was referring to. He wouldn’t want that, even if they were stony-broke again. He had first met her in Madame de Trou’s bawdy house in Petticoat Lane. A gold sovereign had been burning a hole in his pocket, and he had a similar heat in his breeches. But having been introduced to Doll, whose blonde tresses had been covered up by a black wig, he had lost track of his carnal desires. She had been fascinated by something more alluring about Joe than his privates, and it had all been his fault. Before getting down to business, he could not resist showing off his erudition concerning Egyptology. The night had flown by as this raven-haired doxy absorbed all he knew about the subject. Doll was what one might call a rabid autodidact, not only absorbing knowledge from whom she could, but interpreting it in the process. That night, she finally pulled off her wig, shook out her natural hair, and revealed her true self. From that moment, Doll’s retirement from the business, and their friendship, was agreed. It was not long before she outstripped Malinferno in her understanding of many subjects, though she herself laughed at his description of her as a savant.

‘An idiot-savant more like,’ she once said, unfortunately mangling the French pronunciation. But he knew she was a natural talent, and indulged her. She refused to expose her erudition to anyone other than Joe, however, preferring to pass for a dumb-headed doxy in a male world that was only too eager to treat her as one.

Now she could see what was on Joe’s mind, and came clean about what she had been doing all night.

‘I was doing as you suggested a while ago, and trying to get a part in The Taming of the Shrew at Drury Lane. I met Kean himself.’

Malinferno gasped at Doll’s audacity. Though he had expressed admiration at her ability to imitate the manners of the nobility in more than one of their escapades, she had had no theatrical training. And here she was approaching the great actor Edmund Kean, currently celebrated for his interpretation of Shylock, to ask for a part in a Shakespearean comedy. Malinferno hesitated before daring to ask Doll what the master’s reply was to her enquiry. She grimaced, an unfamiliar blush appearing on her cheeks.

‘I… er… persuaded the stage doorman to let me backstage after the play finished.’

Malinferno looked at her charming figure, and could easily guess how she had achieved that. His silence urged her to continue.

‘I caught Mr Kean in his dressing room, and offered to clean the slap from his face.’ She paused. ‘That is the word we actors use for make-up, you know. Slap.’ Her blush spread down her neck at this mild exaggeration of her experience to date. ‘He allowed me to do so, and I wiped away the dark colouring of Shylock and teased the false beard from his chin. Of course I had to straddle his… thighs to achieve this, and as he was in a state of déshabillé, I found myself in some intimacy with him.’

By now the roseate blush had spread to Doll’s bosom, and Joe marvelled at the unfamiliar effect. He was also curious as to the result of her Herculean efforts.