The Price of Murder Read Free Page B

that we’ll require his services as medical examiner this morning. If she died a violent death, I want to know about it—and quickly. Get on it, if you will, Jeremy.”
    “I will, sir.” I rose from the chair that I had taken and started for the door.
    “Oh, and Jeremy, do forgive my unhappy outburst when you did enter. I’d been awaiting you for a bit and had naught to listen to but Mr. Marsden’s snuffling and coughing, and the woesome cries of drunks arrested the night before. In short, lad, I was impatient for your return. I could not, for the life of me, remember where you had gotten off to.”
    “Think nothing of it, sir,” said I. “There can be no more said.”
    “Go then,” said he. “Give me a report as soon as ever you can.”
    As I left him and started back down the long hall, it occurred to me for the first time ever that perhaps Sir John was, in some sense, growing old.
     
The Billingsgate Fish Market smelled, if it were possible, even worse than did the Smithfield Market. The offal of hoofed beasts gave off a thick and heavy smell, it’s true. Nevertheless, the innards of sea creatures, most specially fish, stunk far worse. They were insidiously foul in a manner that can only be imagined as one might suppose hell might smell, and in the heat of the summertime could not even be imagined in such an approximation as that.
    Billingsgate stands just off lower Thames Street, not far from London Bridge. ’Twas even before I reached the bridge that I smelled what lay ahead. Turning in at Billingsgate Dock, however, I found to my surprise that the deeper I penetrated the effluvium, the less I minded the odor. This may have been an actual, observable phenomenon, or it may have been because my attention was fully devoted to the closer handling required by the horses. (Yes, reader, I had, at last, learned from Mr. Patley, formerly of the King’s Carabineers, the tricks of handling a wagon and team through the streets of London.) I had hardly got the two old nags turned round and properly placed when they began to balk and carry on. I could think of naught but the foul smell of death that would make them carry on so. At last I got them under control and safely hitched.
    I made quickly for the stairs down to the river and descended to near water level. There were men grouped upon the platform, talking in low tones, discussing the bundle that lay at their feet. Undoubtedly, the child was wrapped within the blanket. I shouldered my way through them, begging their pardon as I went, until I came to the focus of their attention—a blanket-wrapped parcel of no particular shape and not much more than three feet in length.
    “Is this the child found in the river?” I asked, looking round me at the glowering faces of the watermen.
    “This be her,” said one of them just opposite me. There came a chorus of “ayes” and affirmative grunts, giving confirmation.
    “Who was it pulled her out?”
    “’Twas me,” said the man who had answered my first query. He was in midlife, bearded, and wearing quite the most doleful expression that I had ever seen on the face of one in his work.
    “Where did you pull her out?”
    “Right here,” said he. “I was first one round this morning, and I found her a-floatin’ right here.”
    “Right here? I don’t quite understand.”
    “Well, it’s simple enough. She’d floated down near the mudbank and bumped into one of the boats—that one there. Her hair got tangled in the lines just enough to hold her till I got there.”
    “A right, now—”
    “Just a minute,” he interrupted. “Who are you, anyways?”
    “Sir John Fielding sent me,” said I. “You sent a boy to report this to the Bow Street Court, didn’t you?”
    “I did, right enough.”
    “Well, they sent me to pick up the body.”
    “You one of those Bow Street Runners I hear so much about?”
    “No, I’m Sir John’s assistant.”
    “Is that like a helper-outer?”
    “That’s close enough,”