King Arthur's Bones (44 page)

Having laid low for a few hours in the Brown Bear public house, Bow Street, better known to the low life of London as the Russian Coffee House, Joe Malinferno and Doll Pocket decided it was safe to return to his house. Joe was a little worse for wear, so Doll, who had imbibed as much but could hold her liquor better, insisted on going up to his bedroom on her own.

‘You’ll only wake the old harridan up, Joe. Whereas I can sneak up without disturbing a floorboard.’

Joe considered her voluptuousness, and would have disagreed about who would make the stairs creak the more. In fact he considered her voluptuousness deeply for so long that by the time he came to object, Doll had left him in the street and had gone. He shrugged his shoulders and leaned against the gaslamp. It was indeed only minutes before he saw Doll scuttling down the front steps of Mrs Stanhope’s house. As she hurried over to him, he was surprised to see that she didn’t have the canvas bag with her.

‘Where are the bones, Doll?’

‘They wasn’t there, was they?’

Doll Pocket’s Essex accent was always more pronounced when she was excited or otherwise disturbed. And now she was very disturbed.

‘Nonsense. Did you look under the bed where I told you to look?’

Doll hissed in annoyance. She was not used to being characterized as being deficient in common sense or guile.

‘Of course I looked under the bed. And I looked inside and behind the chest of drawers, and under the only chair in the room. Gawd, your furnishings are so sparse, Joe, I was ’ardly likely to miss a big bag of bones, was I?’

Malinferno groaned and slid down the gaslamp post until he was sitting on the pavement.

‘It’s all up, then. Thomas Dale and the rest of the Avalon Club will want their money back. Which I have spent mostly on you, may I say. And what are we to do about Bonaparte and his invasion? There’ll be no calling on King Arthur now.’

Doll gave a derisive snort. ‘You don’t believe all that rubbish, do you?’

‘Well, you cannot be sure if he . . .’

Doll cut into Malinferno’s admonishing with a peculiar, sing-song tone:

‘
For when he fell, an elfin queen,

All in secret, and unseen,

O’er the fainting hero threw

Her mantle of ambrosial blue;

And bade her spirits bear him far,

In Merlin’s agate-axled car,

To her green isle’s enamel’d steep,

In the navel of the deep.
’

Malinferno was astonished. ‘How do you know that? That’s a poem by Warton, the old Poet Laureate.’

Doll sniffed. ‘Don’t you think a prostitute has any brains, then? I told you I wanted to be an actress. I learned the poem off by heart. Listen, the bit you would like is near the end.’

She began to rattle off the lines again as though they were some child’s rhyme:

‘
Thence to Britain shall return,

(If right prophetic rolls I learn)

Borne on Victory’s spreading plume,

His ancient scepter to resume.
’

She snorted. ‘What a load of old boll—’

‘Yes, Doll. I think that’s enough, don’t you?’

He was glad she had not pursued her ambitions as an actress. Though she could con an accent and fool a simple policeman, her understanding of the beauty of Warton’s lines was sadly lacking in Malinferno’s opinion. And she somehow made the solemn and prophetic nature of Arthur’s return sound quite foolish. So much so that suddenly he could not hold back, and a great gust of laughter rose up from his belly. This set Doll off, and soon they were both collapsed on the ground hooting at the madness of Thomas Dale’s quest. But despite the hilarity, Malinferno knew he would have to have something to report to Dale. Then it occurred to him. Casteix, the French savant, still had the thigh-bone. He turned to Doll, who was still red-faced from all the hilarity. Solemnly he asked her the question uppermost in his mind.

‘Do you think we can resurrect King Arthur from just his thigh-bone?’

Doll’s face turned purple and crumpled as she tried to hold back another gust of laughter. She failed miserably. When she did manage to control herself, she tried to answer Joe’s question as though it had been asked seriously. ‘Maybe. I suppose he would at least be able to hop it when things get bad.’

It was Joe’s turn to break into fits of laughter. Even so, he still reckoned it was worth retrieving the bone.

It was early evening but quite dark when they reached the home of Monsieur Casteix, and all the high, fashionable windows looking out on to the street showed no lights in them – save for one high on the second floor, where the bedrooms were likely to be located. Undeterred, Malinferno hastily mounted the steps leading to the front door, on which he hammered with his fist. Hearing the echo of his assault in the long hallway behind the door, he was not optimistic of gaining entry. But he felt tomorrow would be too late. A second attack with his fist brought a result. He heard the sound of bolts being drawn back, and eventually the door creaked open and a sour face peered out.

‘The master is abed and may not be disturbed.’

As the door swung closed again, Malinferno inserted his sturdy Hessian boot in the gap.

‘This is a matter of urgency. And a scientific one that Monsieur Casteix will want to know about.’

The sour face screwed up even further. ‘Damn you scientists! And I would wager that it all has something to do with old Boney being on the loose again.’ The servant stared at Malinferno suspiciously. ‘You’re not a Frenchy, are you?’

Malinferno wondered how a servant who despised both scientists and Frenchmen should have come to be working for the embodiment of both in one carcass. He reassured the man of his own antecedents, drawing on his maternal side and choosing not to mention his Paduan father.

‘God bless you, my man. I am an Englishman through and through. But what we seek does have a bearing on the escape of Bonaparte from St Helena. The safety of the realm is in question.’

Malinferno felt a nudge from behind and heard the noise of a stifled giggle from Doll Pocket. He even heard her whispered comment on his stout rendering of a blue-blooded Englishman.

‘Some ham of an actor, you are, Joe.’

The keeper of the door eyed Malinferno with concern.

‘Who’s that behind you?’

‘That, sir, is my dear wife, whom I will not let out of my sight while Boney is on the loose.’

At this the servant finally relented and let Joe and Doll into the silent mausoleum of a house. Noticing a large spray of white arum lilies in a vase on the hall table, Malinferno hoped it was not a presage of the state of the master of the house. He needed Casteix alive. But it would seem he was, for the sourpuss of a servant led them upstairs past the large reception room on the first floor, where Malinferno had first been ushered into Casteix’s presence, and on up to the level of the bedrooms. He stopped outside a grand set of double doors and asked them both to wait. First tapping on the doors gently, he opened the left-hand one and slithered in through the gap like a serpent. A muffled conversation followed, which must have had a positive outcome, because the servant returned the same way and said they could enter.

Once through the grand doors, they found themselves in an ornate bedroom at the centre of which stood an enormous bed with Egyptian motifs picked out in marquetry all over its scroll-shaped head and foot. Almost lost in a snowy expanse of white sheets and pillows lay Casteix, his wan face topped by a tasselled nightcap. He waved a hand at his visitors.

‘Come forward. I cannot see you clearly without my eyeglasses.’

Malinferno and Doll Pocket complied. And Joe noticed the gleam in the Frenchman’s otherwise strained face when he saw Doll’s attributes.

‘Ah, you have brought a companion, Signor Malinferno. And a very pretty one too.’

Doll simpered in a way Malinferno imagined she had perfected at Madam De Trou’s. Old, leering men required an expression of admiration that had to be well simulated in order to feel they got their money’s worth. Casteix was no exception. The Frenchman stirred in his bed, and Malinferno hoped he was not about to get frisky. Hurriedly he explained his mission.

‘I wondered if you had yet come to any conclusions about the thigh-bone I left with you, monsieur. You see I need it returned, and am anxious to confirm its provenance.’

Casteix sighed. ‘Ah, the thigh-bone. That item is the reason why you find me confined to my bed tonight. But let me answer your question first. There is no way of telling the age of the bone. It could be two years old or two thousand. My feeling on handling it was that it was very old, but that is not a very scientific assessment. Yes, very old.’ He shifted under his covers again and slid a hand underneath the crisp sheets. Malinferno was getting alarmed at his behaviour. The Frenchman, however, continued to talk. ‘As for returning it to you, I fear I am rendered unable to do so.’

‘Why is that, sir?’ It was Doll’s turn to question his cryptic replies.

‘Because it has been stolen.’

Malinferno groaned and was about to ask how, when Casteix provided the answer.

‘After you left, another person came to the door. A man well muffled against the inclement English weather but with swarthy features. He reminded me of a short-arsed Breton peasant. My manservant let him into my presence, and this peasant practically demanded to know everything about you, sir. And what our conversation might have been about. I told him it was none of his business, but he overpowered me and . . . and sawed my leg off, sir.’

Malinferno heard Doll gasp, and he suddenly felt sick at the thought of the horrible attack on Casteix. Was this why the old man was now bedridden? Yet he should have bled to death, or expired with the shock. How had he survived such a gruesome attack? By way of explanation, the man brought his hand back out from under the bedclothes. In it he held two pieces of a well-turned mahogany table leg that had been sawed up. No, not actually a table leg, Malinferno realized, for it was not symmetrical all round. He saw suddenly why yesterday he thought Casteix had an unusually well-shaped calf. The leg was wooden, and his attacker had rendered Casteix incapable of pursuit by sawing it up.

‘I lost my leg to a crocodile in Egypt, you see, many years ago. Mr Chippendale was kind enough to turn me a substitute. Now it is ruined.’

Malinferno, stifling a laugh at the absurdity of it all, managed to ask about Arthur’s thigh-bone.

‘And the bone?’

‘Alas, stolen, Signor Malinferno. Though God knows why. Mummies are ten a penny these days.’

Malinferno and Doll did manage to get out on to the street before once again collapsing with laughter. Though they had no good reason to. The old man had lost his wooden leg, but they had lost the last part of Arthur’s bones.

‘Where to now, Joe?’

Malinferno, stymied, was ready to give up. But Doll was still eager to pursue matters and had a suggestion. ‘We are forgetting one thing. Someone attacked the Frenchy for the bone, and killed Kitten for certain. If we figure out who it was, not only will we bring justice to Kitten, but we will probably find the bones. What other reason had he to kill Kitten other than to get his hands on the bones for himself ?’

‘You’re right, Doll. But how are we going to find out who the murderer is? Augustus was no doubt murdered for Arthur’s bones, before the man realized the box was empty and the bones were elsewhere. The man must then have waited to see who came to see Augustus, assuming any visitor might have possession of the bones. I was duly followed to Creechurch Lane, where Kitten was killed for the same reason. The man had traced the bones to my rooms, and Kitten was found to be in the way. But it still doesn’t tell us who did in Augustus in the first place.’

Doll pulled a face. ‘No, no, no. Don’t you see the story as you tell it is full of holes. First, we don’t even know if your friend Bromhead is dead. But leave that to one side. I am sure some bloke did keep tabs on the house, and saw you and Dale arriving and leaving. He had to choose one of you to follow, and perhaps it was you, as you said you were aware of someone. And we know he fell off the railing while trying to get an eyeful of me and my friends in our déshabillé. But does that make him the murderer?’

Malinferno made a mental note to verse Doll in the French language. Her accent was execrable.

‘You mean, was he in any fit state after that to get to my rooms and murder Kitten? But who else knew of the existence of the bones?’

Doll stated the obvious. ‘Only Augustus and the other members of the Avalon Club. But they already had the bones, so they wouldn’t have murdered to get them. Once you had the bones, only Kitten knew about their location. With Augustus dead, the link must be Kitten, even though she didn’t know they was King Arthur’s. So why did she come back, when you had scared her off with talk of the bodysnatchers? She obviously came at a time when you were not going to be there, or her story of being your sister would not have stood up.’

A thought lit up Malinferno’s brain like one of those gaslamps. ‘Tell me, who would be interested in old bones, whosever they were? And who would Kitten have blabbed to about a nice set of bones just ripe for the picking?’

‘You don’t mean . . . ?’

‘Yes. The leader of the Borough Gang of bodysnatchers, Ben Crouch.’

Doll’s face took on a fashionable pallor. ‘Blimey!’

A trip into the Borough was not something an honest citizen would normally contemplate. A rookery of thieves operated out of the area, and the most feared were the resurrectionists – the men who dug up bodies and supplied them to the medical profession for gruesome anatomizing. Most feared of these bodysnatchers was Ben Crouch, who was the leader mainly due to the fact that he drank to excess less frequently than his comrades. But Malinferno knew that if he was to track down the killer of Kitten and Bromhead – who he was still convinced was dead – and perhaps find the lost bones, the Borough rookery would have to be invaded. However, it did not reduce his sense of terror when, a few hours later, he and Doll found themselves in a low dive somewhere off the Borough Road confronted by a pockmarked man with an evil grin.