Death in the Peerless Pool (3 page)

One or two mouths opened to argue, but Frederick, arms folded across massive chest, jutted his jaw at them and they closed again. Finally, after a few further moments of muttering, the patrons reluctantly began to shift, those dressed towards the gates, the gentlemen in drawers to the changing rooms.

Mr Kemp turned to his companion and smiled for the first time since he had heard the news of the woman in the lake. ‘Was that explanation sufficient?'

‘Yes. It was well done.' John's eyes swept over the Pond, its calm surface broken only by the occasional ripple of a fish. ‘I wonder how they will bring her up,' he said, almost to himself

William Kemp shuddered, his neat frame shaking from hat to buckled shoes. ‘Lift her on a rope, I suppose.'

The Apothecary nodded. ‘Are any of your waiters exceptional divers? And with strong nerves?'

‘One is. Tobias, known as Toby.'

‘I think you'd better warn him that he may have an unpleasant task ahead.'

‘He's standing just over there.' Mr Kemp made to call out but was interrupted by the sound of a scuffle on the path. Both men looked round to see Samuel, his arms whirling like the sails of a mill, attempting to fight off two waiters simultaneously.

‘They're here,' he was shouting excitedly. ‘The Runners have arrived.'

‘Samuel Swann, the friend I mentioned to you,' John explained.

‘Let the gentleman through,' ordered William Kemp, and calm was restored.

The Goldsmith straightened his coat and attempted nonchalance. ‘I went to the entrance when they asked me to leave the Pond and I've just seen the fast coach pull up and Nicholas Dawkins get out. He's leading them here.'

‘Have the patrons gone?' John asked.

‘Nearly all of them. Just a few stragglers taking their time over getting dressed.'

Mr Kemp pursed his lips. ‘Typical. Terrified of missing something, I dare swear.' He raised his voice. ‘Lads, two Runners from Bow Street will be approaching at any moment. Let them through without demur. Toby, come over here, if you please.'

A short, powerful waiter, built like a veritable bull, approached. ‘Sir?'

The proprietor gestured towards John. ‘Perhaps you would care to explain, Mr Rawlings.'

‘To come directly to the point, Mr Swann and I have discovered a body, weighted down and lying on the bottom of the Fish Pond. The Runners who are on their way are duty bound to bring the poor wretch to the surface and, as Mr Kemp tells me you are an excellent diver, they may well call upon you to assist them. Whether you do so or not, however, is entirely your own choice.'

Toby looked stern of feature. ‘I fought in the war till a few months ago when I was wounded. I've seen worse sights than dead women, Sir.'

The proprietor announced shrilly, ‘I only employ the best, Gentlemen. None but the stoutest hearts.'

‘And here comes another who could be described thus,' John answered as his pale apprentice, russet eyes gleaming with excitement, came hurrying down the path, his limp accentuated by the speed at which he was travelling.

‘They're right behind me,' he called, ‘and they've brought things.'

The Apothecary turned to see approaching the two Beak Runners whom he had met during the previous summer, when he had been investigating a mysterious death on the Romney Marsh. ‘Mr Rawlings,' one shouted cheerfully. ‘Mr Fielding asks me to convey his compliments and to request that you will attend him as soon as is convenient to yourself.'

‘I most certainly will,' John answered, going to meet them and saying in a lower tone, ‘The body is lying in the middle of the lake and we have a volunteer to dive down and fix a rope round her.'

The Runner, whom John recalled as being named George, gulped with relief ‘That's as well. Sir. For Nathaniel here don't swim, and I myself can only paddle like a dog. Diving deep would be a little beyond us.'

‘All you need to do is tell that solid-looking waiter over there what you require and he will do the rest.'

‘Very good, Mr Rawlings.' George exhibited the things, which turned out to be a portable winch and a strong piece of rope. ‘If he can fix this round the corpse's waist we should get her up in no time. Your apprentice said the victim was female. That's right, isn't it, Sir?'

‘Yes, but she's weighted down with heavy chains.'

‘So it's definitely a killing?'

‘Her hands are bound behind her back, practically impossible to do to oneself.'

George nodded and beckoned Toby over, and after a few moments of discussion the lifting party set out; John and the waiter in the first boat, the two Beak Runners following just behind. One end of the rope was securely attached to the winch, which was manned by George and Nathaniel; the other Toby wore tied round his middle, joining one craft to the other.

The sun was setting now, and it was no longer possible to see into the Pond's depths, murky and menacing without the light shining into them. The trees that lined the lake were casting their own shadows and John could only get his bearings by reckoning the distance between the boat and Mr Kemp's house.

‘I think this is the spot,' he called finally, shipping his oars.

‘Right, Toby?' asked Runner George.

‘Right as I'll ever be.'

‘Get the rope round her and tie it securely. We'll do the rest.'

‘Very good.'

The waiter stood up, clad only in his drawers, and dived so neatly from the boat that it hardly bobbed. John stared over the side but could see nothing except a dark shape disappearing towards the bottom.

‘I don't envy him that task,' he said.

‘I think he's found her,' George put in. ‘He's just tugged the rope.'

‘Was that the signal?'

‘Yes. When he tugs again we're to start hauling her in.'

They waited in edgy silence but there was no further tug. John pulled his watch from his waistcoat. Toby must have lungs like a bull, he thought, to stay down as long as he had. But just as he was beginning to grow seriously worried, the rope suddenly went taut and then there was a flurry of water as the waiter broke surface and gasped in air. At this, the Runners hauled wildly, and a few moments later the corpse appeared alongside their boat.

To have lifted her aboard would have been hazardous indeed, so small was the craft. So, in one of the most bizarre spectacles John Rawlings had ever witnessed, the drowned woman was towed ashore, her body kept straight by the stoical Toby, who swam alongside. Reaching the bank first, the Apothecary, tottering precariously, stepped ashore, then wheeled round to see the Beak Runners securing their craft before they cut the body loose. Nathaniel, for all the fact he couldn't swim, had jumped into the shallows to hold the dead woman steady, and it was he who carried her to the bank, holding her in his arms like a bride. He looked at John.

‘Where shall I put her, Sir?'

The proprietor answered for him. ‘I've ordered a sheet to be placed over there. Lay her on that.'

Nathaniel raised his brows and the Apothecary nodded. ‘Be careful with her, though. I want to see her much as she was.'

Delicately, the Runner lowered his burden, and John, kneeling beside the body, began the grim business of examining the dead woman, gazing into the shuttered face as if it would give him the answer to all the questions posed by her sudden appearance on the bottom of the Fish Pond.

The hair, a strand of which he picked up and loosely held in his hand, was long and dark, strikingly streaked with grey. Judging by her general appearance, the Apothecary presumed the woman to be about forty-five years of age. However, her face, handsome enough in a strong, masculine way, had been totally marred by the wild array of bruises which marked it.

Shocked, John unbuttoned the top of the dress and found further evidence that the woman had sustained a severe beating. Hating to do what he must next, he delicately raised her skirts and saw that the legs in their torn and pathetic stockings were also covered in marks.

‘Well?' asked Samuel, coming to join him and shuddering slightly.

‘She was battered within an inch of her life before she was thrown in.'

‘How do you know?'

‘By the contusions. She would only bruise like that if she had been alive when they were sustained.'

‘Was she dead when she went into the water?'

John shook his head. ‘No. Look at the marks on her wrists and ankles. Those were made by the chains which weighted her down. If she had been already done for, they would have left no impression.'

Samuel dashed his hand across his eyes. ‘Christ's mercy on us, what a terrible end. Beaten half to death then thrown in to drown.'

The Apothecary looked grim. ‘A ghastly fate certainly.' He leant forward over the face once more, noticing that the open eyes, still a recognisable shade of deep brown, were just starting to go cloudy. He closed them rapidly before anyone else could see.

‘What are those little pink marks?' asked his friend, pointing to where pinprick spots showed amongst the bruises.

‘Shrimps,' John answered shortly.

‘Do you mean …?' The Goldsmith's eyes widened in horror.

‘I'm afraid so. They made a bit of a meal of her during the night.'

‘I shall never eat a shrimp again,' Samuel announced, turning pale.

The two Runners approached. ‘Should we take her away, Mr Rawlings?'

‘Let me just quickly sketch her. She'll start to swell in half an hour or so and then the details of her injuries will be more difficult to see.'

‘I'll get a pad and pencil,' announced Mr Kemp. who had been gazing out over the stretch of water, studiously avoiding having to look at the body.

‘Thank you.'

‘No trouble, I assure you.'

The proprietor turned to go towards the house, and in so doing his gaze fell willy-nilly on the thing lying stretched out on the sheet, the Apothecary still kneeling beside it. Staggering very slightly, Mr Kemp let out a piercing cry.

John looked up. ‘Are you all right, Sir?'

‘The clothes she's wearing … those stripes …' the proprietor answered incoherently.

The Apothecary got to his feet. ‘Are you saying that you recognise the victim?'

‘Not her as such, no. But she's wearing the uniform of one of the warders at St Luke's Hospital.'

John stared at him. ‘Do you mean the asylum for the insane?'

William Kemp stared back, eyes wide, ‘Yes, I do. The place that opened some seven years ago to relieve the overcrowding at Bedlam. It's not far from here, at Upper Moor Fields in fact.'

Samuel interjected. ‘I've heard tell there are some violent inmates there. John, you don't suppose …'

The Apothecary shook his head. ‘I don't suppose anything at this stage.'

‘But the savagery of the attack! Might that not point to an unbalanced mind?'

‘Yes,' said Mr Kemp, eagerly warming to the theme. ‘Surely this murder must be the work of a madman?'

‘It could, and there again it could be the doing of someone perfectly sane. Someone with a grudge against the poor woman, so strong that it led them to beat her to a pulp before they killed her.'

‘I wonder what conclusion Mr Fielding will draw,' Samuel replied somewhat peevishly.

John smiled. ‘Well, we shan't have to wait long to find out, for here he comes.'

And all three of them turned to watch the rare sight of the blind Principal Magistrate coming down the path towards them, one arm firmly held by his clerk, Joe Jago, the other by his wife, Elizabeth.

‘My dear Sir, how are you?' enquired Mr Kemp, sweeping a bow.

‘Never better, never better,' answered the Beak, and made a salutation in return.

Darkness had finally fallen on that long summer's day. The waters of the Peerless Pool and the Fish Pond lay still and tranquil, reflecting on their glassy surfaces the rise of a glittering crescent moon. Similarly, the beautifully kept grounds, the bowling green, the cold-water bath-house, stood in shadow, quiet and deserted, the only sign of life in the entire pleasure resort the blaze of candles coming from William Kemp's manor house. The light from these spilled out over the walled garden and orchard on the one side, and on the other the terrace and banks of the Fish Pond, so still and blameless in the moonshine, as if no one could recently have breathed their last in its emerald depths.

Within the house itself there was an almost jovial atmosphere, for Mr Kemp, in company with his wife, a small, elegant lady of uncertain years, was entertaining. Much to the Apothecary's surprise, it had emerged early in the conversation that the proprietor and the Blind Beak were friends of long standing, John Fielding going to the Peerless Pool both to swim and fish at times when it was closed to the general public.

‘Mr Rawlings,' William Kemp had said to the Apothecary in a confidential aside, ‘I have observed that man, when I have placed him beside the Fish Pond with rod and line, catch perch of a pound weight as fast as Joe Jago could bait his hook. As for swimming, he is like a fish itself, and that with only a servant to attend him.'

‘It is sometimes hard to believe that he cannot see.'

‘Impossible,' Samuel had added loudly, afraid that he was being left out of the conversation.

John had grinned, and at that moment Mr Fielding himself started to speak.

‘How congenial it is to be here again, William. If only the circumstances were a little happier.'

Mr Kemp sighed gustily. ‘I fear this macabre incident will do the reputation of the Peerless Pool no good at all.'

The Magistrate had permitted himself a hollow chuckle. ‘On the contrary, you will probably find the place packed when you reopen. The voyeuristic capacity of the public at large is well known.'

Samuel commented, ‘Dirty devils,' and the two ladies present, Elizabeth Fielding and Jemima Kemp, both laughed.