Part 5 (2/2)
”Yes sir.”
”Hold these.” He gave Matthew a dark blue velvet wallet, bound with a leather cord, that was heavy with coins. Then he handed over a gold pocket.w.a.tch. ”It's got blood on it, be careful.” He seemed to see Matthew's gore-smeared s.h.i.+rt for the first time. ”What happened to you?”
”I was-”
”Here! William, look at these!” Vanderbrocken lifted the lantern and showed the reverend something Matthew was unable to see. ”Ornamentation,” the doctor remarked. ”Someone has a wicked wit to go along with that blade.”
”We have to leave him,” Matthew heard the reverend say. ”You're sure he's dead?”
”Sorry to say, he's already travelled far beyond this world.”
”But who is it?” Matthew asked. He was being pushed and shoved as others formed a crowd around the body. In just a brief span, if Matthew knew the mob mentality as he thought he did, the m.u.f.fin man would pull his wagon up to the spectacle, the higglers would start hollering for attention, the harlots would flirt for late-night customers, and the pickpockets would start sharking for loot.
Reverend Wade and the doctor stood up. It was then that Matthew caught a glimpse of what might have been a light blue nights.h.i.+rt under Dr. Vanderbrocken's gray cloak.
”Here.” Wade returned the lantern to Matthew's hand. ”You look and tell.”
The reverend stepped aside. Matthew moved forward and shone the light down upon the dead.
The face was a red and swollen shockmask. Blood had streamed copiously from mouth and nostrils, but the hideous cutting was across the throat. Yellow cords and glistening dark matter were laid bare in that cavity, which looked like a grotesque and gaping smile under the sag of the chin. What had once been a white linen cravat was now black with matted gore. Big green flies were at work on the wound, as well as crawling about the lips and nostrils, oblivious to the shouts and furors of the human kind. As much as Matthew was distressed by the ugly violence, he also found himself focused on details: the rigid right hand resting on the belly, the fingers and thumb splayed as if signifying surprise and, in a way, acceptance; the touseled, thick iron-gray hair; the obviously expensive and well-tailored pin-striped black suit and waistcoat and the glossy black shoes with silver buckles; the black tricorn lying just a few feet away, which as Matthew looked at it was crushed under the clumsy boots of the onlookers who pushed forward in an excitement nearing frenzy.
The dead man's face was unrecognizable for its swelling and death-convulsions, which seemed to have unseated the jaw and thrust it forward to expose the glint of the lower teeth. The eyes were thin slits in the mottled flesh, and as Matthew leaned closer still-as close as he dared, with all that blood and the whirling flies-he made out what appeared to be distinct cuts just above the eyebrows and below the sockets.
”G.o.d, what a mess!” Felix Sudbury said, standing alongside Matthew. ”Can you tell who it is? Was, I mean?”
”Make way! Make way for a constable!” came a hoa.r.s.e shout, before Matthew could respond. Someone was trying to fight through the crowd, which didn't give a d.a.m.n to part shoulders.
”Murder! Oh Lord, murder!” a woman was screaming. ”My boy Davy's been murdered!” Then, before the constable could get through the madhouse, the two-hundred-forty pounds of Mother Munthunk shoved into view, pus.h.i.+ng people aside like ten-pins. The woman, wife of a sea captain and keeper of the Blue Bee Tavern off Hanover Square, was a fearsome sight in her kindliest disposition, but tonight behind her wild mane of gray-streaked hair, her hatchet-nosed face, and eyes black as London's secrets she was frightening enough to make even the drunk Munthunk brothers bleat.
”Ma! Ma! Davy's alive, Ma!” Darwin shouted, though with all this racket it would've been hard to hear a cannon go off over your right shoulder.
”I'm alive, Ma!” hollered Davy, still on his knees.
”By G.o.d, I'll skin ye raw!” The hulking female reached down and with one huge scabby hand plucked Davy to his feet. ”I'll whip ye 'til your mouth farts and your a.s.s cries 'Mercy'!” She got her fingers locked in his hair and he howled with pain as she pulled him from one storm into another.
”Make way for a constable, d.a.m.n it!” Then the constable pushed through, and Matthew recognized him as the little barrel-chested bully Dippen Nack, who carried a lantern in one hand and brandished a black billyclub in the other. He took one look at the corpse, his beady eyes in the rum-ruddy face grew twice their size, and he squirted away in a blur like any rabbit would run.
Matthew saw that with no control over this crowd the scene of the crime was being stomped to ruins. Now some people-perhaps those who'd been roused from their last round at the taverns-were daring to come in and look closer at the face, and in so doing they were stepping on the body as those behind them pushed forward to get a gander. Suddenly beside Matthew appeared Effrem Owles, wearing a coat over a long white nights.h.i.+rt and his eyes huge behind his gla.s.ses. ”You'd best move back!” he warned. ”Come on!”
Just as Matthew was about to retreat he saw the boot of a staggering lout step right down upon the corpse's head, and then the lout himself stumbled and fell across the body. ”Get up from there!” Matthew shouted, anger flaming his cheeks. ”Get back, everyone! It's not a d.a.m.ned circus!”
A bell began to be rung steadily and deliberately, its high metallic sound piercing the uproar. Matthew saw someone pus.h.i.+ng through the human shoals. The ringing of the bell caused people to come to their senses and make way. Then High Constable Lillehorne appeared, holding a small bra.s.s bell in one hand and a lantern in the other. He kept up the bell-ringing until the noise quietened to a dull murmur. ”Step back!” he commanded. ”Everyone step back now or you'll spend the night behind bars!”
”We just wanted to see who it was got murdered, that's all!” protested a woman in the crowd, and others shouted agreement.
”If you want to see so much, I'll volunteer you to carry the body to the cold room! Anyone wish to make that trip?”
That shut everyone's trap up good and proper. The cold room, in the bas.e.m.e.nt of City Hall, was Ashton McCaggers' territory and not a place citizens wished to go unless they required his services, at which point they would be beyond caring.
”Go on about your business!” Lillehorne said. ”You're making fools of yourselves!” He looked down at the corpse and then directly at Matthew. His eyes widened as he saw the b.l.o.o.d.y s.h.i.+rt. ”What have you done, Corbett?”
”Nothing! Phillip Covey found the body. He ran into me and...got this all over me.”
”Did he also loot the corpse, or is that your own doing?”
Matthew realized he was still holding both the watch and the wallet together in one hand. ”No, sir. Reverend Wade took this from the coat.”
”Reverend Wade? Where is the reverend, then?”
”He's-” Matthew searched the faces around him for Wade and Dr. Vanderbrocken, but neither of them were anywhere in sight. ”He was just here. Both he and-”
”Stop your yammering. Who is this?” Lillehorne aimed the light down. To his credit, his expression remained composed and emotionless.
”I don't know, sir, but-” Matthew opened the watch's case with his thumb. There was no scrollwork monogram inside, as he'd hoped. The time had stopped at seventeen minutes after ten, which might be an indication of when the spring had wound out or when the trauma of a falling body had broken the mechanism. Still, the watch was an indicator of lavish wealth. Matthew turned to Effrem. ”Is your father here?”
”He's right over there. Father!” Effrem called, and the elder Owles-who also wore round spectacles and had the silver hair that Effrem was soon to possess-came through the crowd.
”Are you giving the orders here, Corbett?” Lillehorne asked. ”I might have a spot for you in the gaol tonight, too.”
Matthew chose to ignore him. ”Sir?” he said to Benjamin Owles. ”Would you examine the suit and tell us who made it?”
”The suit?” Owles distastefully regarded the b.l.o.o.d.y corpse for a moment, but then he hoisted his courage and nodded. ”All right. If I can.”
A suit would bear the maker's mark in its weave and structure, Matthew surmised. In New York there were two other professional tailors and a number of amateurs who did clothes work, but unless this suit had made the voyage from England, Owles ought to be able to identify the workmans.h.i.+p.
Owles had just bent down and examined the coat's lining when he said, ”I recognize this. It's a new lightweight suit, made at the first of the summer. I know, because I made it. In fact, I made two of the same material.”
”Made them for whom?”
”Pennford and Robert Deverick. This has a pocket for a watch.” He stood up. ”It's Mr. Deverick's suit.”
”It's Penn Deverick!” someone called into the dark.
And on along the street went the news, more swift than any article of brutal murder in the Gazette might be pa.s.sed: ”Penn Deverick's dead!”
”It's Pennford Deverick been murdered!”
”Old Deverick's a-layin' there, G.o.d rest him!”
”G.o.d rest him, but the Devil's got him!” some heartless scoundrel said, but not many might disagree.
Matthew kept quiet and decided to let the high constable find for himself what Matthew had already seen: the cuttings around Deverick's eyes.
They were the same wounds Marmaduke Grigsby had remarked upon in his article on the murder of Dr. Julius G.o.dwin in the Bedbug.
Dr. G.o.dwin unfortunately also suffered cuttings around the eyes that Master Ashton McCaggers has mentioned in his professional opinion appeared to form the shape of a mask.
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