The Detective Wore Silk Drawers Read Free Page A

back. Can we have him turned?” The attendant came forward. “Thank you. Not much marking on this side. The grazing here looks as though it was done after death. Body likely struck something in the water.”
    “What’s your theory, then?” inquired Cribb.
    Thackeray bent to the table again and examined the right hand minutely, even sniffing at it for its secrets. He straightened and shook his head.
    “It makes no sense, Sarge.”
    “What d’you mean?”
    “These hands. Not the palms. The knuckle side. There’s a pattern of old scars, and it ain’t from brickmaking, I’m sure. No brickie’s that careless with the backs of his hands.
    He’s a well-built man, and his work’s thickened his wrists, but that don’t account for the size of his fist nor its coarseness. If it made any sense, Sarge, I’d say that hand’s been pickled—soaked in vinegar, though you can’t smell it any more. And scarred from knuckle fighting.”
    It was ridiculous, of course. Prize fighting had been penalized out of existence twelve years before. But Cribb seemed satisfied with the diagnosis.
    “Tidy thinking, Constable. Let’s get outside, now. We’ll walk back to the station.”
    As they strolled, bowler-hatted, in the sunshine down Hatfields towards The Cut, Cribb talked with enthusiasm.
    “He must be a pug. Everything’s consistent. Body-bruising, scars, swollen hands. Even spike marks around the shins. And his trade. Brickmaking and scrapping have always gone together. Our man had a fight with the raw ’uns before he died, Thackeray. I’m sure of it.”
    Thackeray was less convinced. “It don’t seem credible, Sarge. Prize fighting’s dead in England. The magistrates finished it in the sixties. Monstrous fines some of them promoters paid. When the railway excursions were banned, that stopped it. They couldn’t make it pay if no one went.It’s all done with the gloves now. Endurance contests or Queensberry’s Rules.”
    “Possibly it is, out Finchley way,” Cribb retorted, “but you don’t just stop a sport that’s been established a century and a half. It’s always been illegal under Common Law— Unlawful Assembly. But the fights went on, didn’t they? Anyone that wanted could find out the venue—and get taken there in a special train.”
    “I know that,” said Thackeray with a trace of petulance. “And the magistrates would sometimes wait till the fight was over before they broke it up. I’ve stopped a few prize fights myself in Essex when I was quite new to the force. ‘The blues!’ they’d shout and before you got close, the whole bloody scene would change in front of your eyes. All the paraphernalia—stakes, ropes, buckets, four-wheelers—just got moved a few fields away to another area, outside the authority of the local magistrates. Most fights came to a finish at some point even if they got interrupted. But I’m sure it don’t go on now, Sergeant. Bell’s hasn’t reported a prize fight for years, except in France or America, that is.”
    “There’s a rare amount going on that never reaches the press,” commented Cribb. “Prize fighting might not offer the rewards it once did, when a promoter could wing at a magistrate, and pugs like Sayers and Heenan and Mace were known to every cove that opened a newspaper. But there’s still plenty who’ll pay well to see a set-to with bare knuckles. Mittens haven’t the same appeal.”
    It occurred to Thackeray that his sergeant was displaying an unexpected working knowledge of pugilism. Almost, in fact, an affection for it. He decided not to comment.
    “If our corpse does turn out to be a pug, Sarge, how do we find his identity? Who got him out of the river?”
    “No help there. An old fishmonger. Showed me the body near Blackfriars Bridge. I questioned him and believe he really did find it there.”
    Thackeray accepted Cribb’s judgment. Both knew that salvaging suicide victims from the Thames had become a minor industry. Once at safe