The Emperor's Assassin (3 page)

T
he dead woman lay draped in a sheet, once white, blemished now with faint smears of brown and sickly yellow. Henry Morton stood in the doorway of the dimly lighted surgery, gazing at the familiar shape beneath its blank covering.

As though beneath a fall of snow
, he thought suddenly.

The place unsettled him, a man not unused to death. On a small table the surgeon's instruments lay: a darkly stained tourniquet, several knives of differing sizes, a bone saw with a fringe of pale pink flesh still caught in its teeth. The smell of the slaughterhouse could be detected here—faintly, but still there—and Morton was instinctively repelled by it. He cleared his throat.

“Death by misadventure, Presley told me,” offered Morton. “Perhaps a self-murder.”

The surgeon, Skelton, continued writing at his stand. His beadle had shown the Runner in a moment before, even announcing Morton's name, but the surgeon apparently had not heard.

“Is that what Mr. Presley said?” The man did not look up; the sound of his pen, scratching over the surface of the paper, continued.

Morton rocked back on his heels, trying to calm his impatience. Skelton was an eccentric man, but the Runner had deep respect for his skills and was willing to wait at least a short while to find out why he'd been summoned.

Around Bow Street Skelton had acquired the moniker “Skeleton,” and one look at the ungainly surgeon was all the explanation this required. Morton had never seen a man of apparent good health so bony and angular. The surgeon removed a pair of spectacles, returned the pen to its stand, stared down at the paper on which he'd been writing, and sighed. He looked up at Morton and offered an unhappy smile.

“Let us look at the sad evidence of this act,” he said.

He walked stiffly over the sawdust floor to the table upon which the body lay, and very softly set a hand upon the thigh, as though on familiar, indeed intimate terms with this cadaver. “Presley told you what he found?”

“Only that she was discovered in a little played-out sand pit, dead upon the rocks there, as though she had cast herself from the rim above.”

“Yes, though whether she threw herself upon the rocks is difficult to say.” Skelton put the curve of one spectacle arm between his lips, his gaze losing focus for an instant. “I wonder, in truth, if she cast herself upon those rocks at all. I wonder if she even met her end where she was found.” He looked down at the covered form. “Certainly she might have died as a result of a fall—her injuries would not contradict it. But there is more, Mr. Morton.” He pulled back the covering, revealing
the unclothed corpse. Morton shut his eyes for a second. The skin had lost its plasticity, its life, and was dull, almost grey. The lips had pulled back, exposing the teeth. Upon her forehead was a wound, oddly concave. Only the hair still looked as Morton guessed it once had—honey coloured, fine, lustrous in the dull light.

“You see this contusion upon her skull? 'Twas this did her in. But look here.” He pointed closely at the upper arm. “Do you see the bruising? And here on the other side …” He turned the arm a little, though it resisted stiffly. “Those are the marks of someone's fingers. She was restrained or held by someone—someone stronger than she.”

“Well,” Morton whispered.

“But there is more,” Skelton said. “Upon her left arm you will find identical marks, or nearly so, suggesting that she was held from behind.”

“Or held and then pushed.”

The surgeon nodded.

“But look at this, Mr. Morton.” He turned her hand. A dark welt encircled the narrow wrist.

“Her hand was bound.”

“So I would say, though it was not when she was found.” The surgeon bent down awkwardly and replaced his spectacles. “And look further. Here, upon her thumb.”

Morton crouched down so that he might see. The smell of the cadaver repelled him, but he bent his head near and tried not to breathe. The thumb was dusky blue, as though terribly bruised.

“Did she put out her hands as she fell?” Morton wondered.

“You might expect that, but there is no other sign of
it.” The two men crouched, their faces but a few inches apart. Morton could smell the man's sour breath.

Skelton continued his lecture. “Do you see the way the nail has come away and is deformed? And beneath it the quick is almost pitted?”

“And what caused this, pray?” Morton asked softly.

“I have only seen it once before, Mr. Morton, in the soldiers' hospital at Greenwich. What is particular is the rounded compression marks on the top and bottom of the digit. They are the signatures of the device that caused it. And the device that caused it, upon the testimony of the man who'd endured its ministrations whilst in the hands of our king's continental enemies, was the thumbscrew.”

Morton stood up. “The thumbscrew! Are you certain? Without doubt?”

The surgeon too had straightened himself, and now he nodded solemnly. “I do not think Mr. Presley's verdict of self-murder will stand, unless she self-tortured, too.”

“Tortured,”
Morton said, trying the word to see if it had weight, if it rang false in this room where certain matters were never in doubt—you were among the living or you were among the dead.

“Mr. Presley assured me that there was little or no blood found upon the stones where she was discovered, yet I believe she suffered substantial loss of blood from her nose, which was badly broken, the vessels ruptured.”

Morton waved a hand at the body. “She was not found thus? Where are her clothes?”

Skelton crossed the room and from a shelf of shadowy bottles retrieved a mass of neatly folded clothing wrapped, but not tied, in brown paper. He presented
this to the Runner, who began to go through the bundle carefully.

“Well, she did not live among the poor,” Morton said.

“Nor did she die among them, it would seem. But who she might have been, among the living, is beyond my skills to tell.”

“How old do you think she was?”

The surgeon looked thoughtfully over at the body of the dead woman. “Perhaps five and twenty. She had never borne children, I should guess.”

“Is there anything more that you might tell me?”

“She stood five foot five inches, weighed eight and one half stone or thereabouts… and was very beautiful when she was alive.” He said this last wistfully.

Morton glanced first at the surgeon and then at the body. How the man would guess that, he did not know. Perhaps he had spent too much time among the dead.

“I will take these,” Morton said, holding up the articles of clothing.

Skelton nodded. He crossed the few paces and covered the body, so again it looked like a sleeper adrift in snow.

Morton began to wrap the clothes in paper.

“You'll send your conclusions to Sir Nathaniel?”

“I will, yes,” the surgeon answered.

Morton offered a perfunctory bow, but as he turned toward the door, the surgeon spoke.

“Mr. Morton? When, exactly, did the criminals of London begin torturing ladies of quality?”

Morton turned back to the man, who stood by the draped body, the light haloing his thinning hair.

“It is, Mr. Skelton, the strangest thing I have seen in my years as a Runner. I don't know what is worse: to think that someone might commit such a horror for…
pleasure; or that another wanted something of this woman so desperately that they would buy it from her with agony. And if the latter is true—what was it that she knew or possessed, a woman so young and lovely as you imagine?”

The surgeon shook his head, his bony shoulders dropping.

“No, Mr. Skelton, we do not know,” Morton agreed quietly. “But I assure you we will find it out.”

It was but a short walk from the surgeon's rooms in Hart Street to the Drury Lane Theatre, where Arabella Malibrant was rehearsing her new play. Morton's man, Wilkes, had brought him an affectionate note from the actress that very morning saying she had returned from delivering her charge to Plymouth and was most anxious for a visit. His own note in answer had suggested they meet that evening, but he was about to look far more ardent than his note had suggested.

He was let into the back of the theatre and found his way through the flats and other props leaned here and there against the wall. Men were at work painting a backdrop, and actors lounged around gossiping, awaiting their scene.

Arabella he found in her rightful place—centre stage. She was there without makeup, of course, and the dim lamps made her fair complexion seem darker, almost exotic. She was dressing down a player in commanding style, and it took a moment for Morton to realise that she was not actually acting. Whatever this poor unfortunate had done, he looked as though he regretted it more than a little. Other actors stood about the stage, some embarrassed, others not hiding their great amusement.
The man whom Morton took to be the director stood ineffectually at the foot of the stage, attempting occasionally to interrupt the eloquent flow of Arabella's invective.

When she had finished—with a flourish, Morton thought—she swept up her skirts and exited the stage, as haughty as any queen.

“Morton!” she said as she came upon the Runner, and her manner changed of an instant. A light kiss she left on his cheek, and then she took his hand, leading him off to her dressing cabinet. And there, among her costumes and indifferently arranged powders and creams, she gave him a kiss that was more passionate and more joyful. She pulled back, a little breathless, her arms still about his neck.

“If you had come but a moment sooner, Henry, you could have challenged one of the company to a duel to defend my honour.”

“I cannot believe you would need me to deal with such a matter,” Morton said, as delighted to see her as she him.

“No, I suppose not. He will be gone when I return, anyway. The manager will not keep anyone who displeases me so.”

“What did this poor cully do, pray?”

“Only was too free with his hands as we rehearsed our love scene.” She sniffed, then wrinkled up her nose. “What is that dreadful odour, Morton?”

They disengaged.

“I have been visiting a poor woman who was no longer of this world. Her clothes, which I have with me, have retained a bit of the odour of—”

“And just what were you planning to do with a dead woman's clothes, if I dare ask?”

“Show them to you,” Morton said, unwrapping the bundle.

Arabella made a face. “Well, I have seen them. Now take them away.”

“I was hoping you might look a little more closely. These clothes are the only indication we have of who this poor woman might have been.”

This piqued Arabella's interest, Morton could see. She brushed back an errant strand of luxurious red hair and took a step nearer.

“Are these not of some foreign fashion?” Morton asked.

“French,” Arabella pronounced. She took up the pelisse and held it to the light. “And very finely made.”

“And where would one purchase such clothing, I wonder?”

“Not from any woman's clothier. These were tailored for whomever wore them. I will find out,” Arabella said confidently, and wrapped the clothes up tightly, tying the bundle with a bit of string. She turned back to Morton. “I might even be able to tell you something this evening. Arthur hopes that you will come by. And if you are terribly attentive and kind to me this evening, you might escort me home.”

“I shall do all within my power to win your favour,” Morton said seriously.

Arabella frowned. “But all men do that,” she said. “You must do better than they.”

T
humbscrews!”

Henry Morton nodded. He sat opposite Sir Nathaniel Conant, the Bow Street Chief Magistrate, in his book-lined office. He had really come here looking for Jimmy Presley, to ask him some questions about the nameless woman who now lay in Skelton's surgery, but he had been asked to attend the “Beak.”

“Mr. Skelton is certain? Beyond doubt?”

“I believe he is, Sir Nathaniel.”

The Magistrate gave a visible little shiver. Morton's respect for his superior had grown in last month's business about the corrupt Runner George Vaughan. Sir Nathaniel's moral compass was certain.