Theft of Life (7 page)

Francis gave her a slightly weary look. ‘Eliza …’

‘Please, Francis! I hardly ever ask you …’

He lowered his voice. ‘Eliza Smith, you know that is not true. What of that novel of Mrs Bentley’s you gave me? You told
her
you thought it very good, though again more in my line than yours, when you knew very well that it was terrible.’

She blushed again, but her eyes sparkled. ‘Oh, Francis, that was at least a year ago!’

‘And she has only just stopped calling on me every week.’

‘Oh dear, and I can imagine how polite you were to her every time she visited! I know it was a
little
naughty of me, but she is one of my best customers. And such a good charitable lady. I couldn’t risk offending her, poor dear. And this is quite a different matter.’ She became more serious. ‘Quite different. I wasn’t sure whether I could ask you to read it, but God sent you to me today, Francis.’

‘Eliza, we see each other three times a week.’ He spoke even more quietly, looking up quickly to be certain Mrs Service could not hear him. ‘And it was not God, but a pair of rather ill-behaved children.’

‘He moves in mysterious ways!’ She smiled then looked at him with a sort of silent pleading that had never failed in all the years they had known each other.

‘Very well.’

Mrs Smith wrinkled her nose at him, and he waited as she went to her desk and returned with a manuscript gathered together in a dark brown leather portfolio. ‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘Will you come tomorrow after you have seen Mr Hinckley as usual?’

‘You know I shall.’

She shook her head. ‘I wish I could persuade you to come to church instead.’

‘I am in the shop six days a week; the last I divide between Mr Hinckley and yourself. I am certain God approves of my plan.’

She tried not to smile back at him, but patted the sleeve of his coat and he felt his skin glow there with her touch.

Francis tucked the manuscript under his arm, bowed to Mrs Service and returned to the shop. The boy was reading and the girl was playing through various sheets of music on the little clavichord. As far as Francis could judge, she was doing so with taste and accuracy. Walter was making her laugh. Francis put the manuscript on the pile of other such documents in his office and returned to his work.

T
HE BODY WAS REMOVED
to a cramped outhouse before Crowther was allowed to start his examination. The gentlemen of the cloth knew enough of dissection to realise the work would leave unpleasant traces. They formed a little funeral procession for the executed planter. One of the vergers took the lead, a lantern in his hand and clutching a bundle of moulded candles which had been made to light the Cathedral itself, scurrying ahead to fill the shabby little building to the side of the Chapter House with light. The corpse of Mr Trimnell, shrouded in fresh white linen from the household store, rested on a plank, carried by two of the servants. Crowther came behind them carrying a leather case which Harriet knew contained the scalpels and saws, scissors and tweezers, all neatly packed in velvet, which he used for his work. He must have collected it from his own house in Grosvenor Street on the way to St Paul’s. Harriet followed him, walking slowly at the coroner’s side like a mourner.

The body was set down on a long oak dining table too ancient and crooked for the clergy to eat off and now used – it seemed by the tools and wood-shavings around the place – as a work-bench. The candles and lantern were placed at Crowther’s direction and the servants left to fetch water and spare linens. The coroner, a Mr Bartholomew, remained in the doorway, his broad shoulders blocking out half the light, and shifted his weight from side to side. Feeling in the way, he made the decision to leave and turned away, but Crowther called him back.

‘One moment, Mr Bartholomew,’ he said, carefully folding the linen back from the body and setting it aside. Harriet watched as the man was uncovered once more. Someone had folded his hands across his chest, and the ropes William had mentioned around his wrists had been removed. Mr Trimnell looked like a divine who had died peacefully in his bed, dreaming of salvation. The skin showing round the open neck of his shift was livid. Harriet knew enough now about the process of death to know this was probably the result of the blood beginning to settle in his tissues as he lay prone in the churchyard. There was no obvious sign of violence.

Crowther bent over the corpse and sniffed, then looked up at Bartholomew. ‘The body has been washed,’ he said.

Mr Bartholomew looked down at the earth floor. ‘Ah.’

Crowther felt the fabric of the shift between his hands. ‘And I very much doubt this is his shift. It seems to have been plucked from the washing line an hour ago.’ He turned to Mrs Westerman. ‘Madam, if I am unfortunate enough to suffer a violent death, will you kindly make certain the clergy of St Paul’s do not conspire to destroy all the evidence before some competent individual appears to examine it?’

‘I shall, Crowther,’ she said sweetly.

‘I apologise, Mr Crowther,’ Bartholomew said. ‘The ignorance of the population in general has made my work difficult on many occasions. I understand you are to publish a book?’ Crowther nodded. ‘I am glad. It will be of great use to me and men like me. We are mostly lawyers, you know, and the medical evidence offered to us is often imperfect.’

Crowther turned aside and picked up his knife and Bartholomew started but Crowther merely turned the blade and slit the thin material of the shift from neck to hem. He then folded it back to show the naked body below.

There were some bruises around Trimnell’s belly – they looked to Harriet as if they had been delivered with a fist. The body was thin almost to emaciation. It seemed impossible to believe such a fragile-looking creature could have been walking and talking yesterday, taking his coffee with his West Indian cronies.

‘Mr Bartholomew,’ Harriet said, ‘the owner of the coffee house mentioned that this man lived on Cheapside. That is an unusual address for a rich man, is it not?’

The coroner looked surprised. ‘From what I’ve heard, Trimnell was not a particularly rich man, Mrs Westerman. Not everyone who lives in Jamaica makes his fortune. The wars, the exhaustion of the soil … Many of our friends in the West Indies are suffering a great deal.’

She looked into his face for some sign of irony, but there was nothing but well-mannered concern.

‘Do you know anything else of the man?’

Bartholomew ran his hand over his chin. ‘I have heard of him, and met his wife. She was at a gathering at the home of Sir Charles Jennings in Portman Square two evenings ago. A private concert.’

‘Mrs Westerman?’ Crowther had no interest in Mr Bartholomew and his social connections. She approached the body and watched carefully as Crowther turned the wrists and hands. Mr Trimnell had long fingers and hands which showed no sign of injury, nor the calluses of physical labour. His ankles, like his wrists, were unmarked. Strange. Crowther ran his fingers across the man’s scalp, then gently pulled open the jaw and felt inside the mouth for any hidden injury. He caught Harriet’s eye and shook his head.

‘I wish to turn the body. Your assistance please, Mr Bartholomew,’ he said, wiping his fingers on a corner of Mr Trimnell’s shroud.

The coroner stepped forward and between them the two turned the corpse onto its front. Crowther pulled the shift free from Trimnell’s shoulders and threw it into the corner of the room. Harriet felt a hiss on her lips; across Trimnell’s back, from the top of the right shoulder-blade and reaching diagonally down to the spine, was a single raw wound. The skin was not torn away completely, but its path was clear by the areas that were scourged and bloody.

‘A whip-strike,’ she said. ‘But not a nine-tails – a single strap and narrow.’

‘They tied him up like an animal and whipped him,’ Bartholomew said in a whisper.

‘Like a slave,’ Harriet said, her voice neutral. ‘Or a vagrant. How many whippings are ordered every day in this city?’

‘Enough,’ Bartholomew said after a pause. His tone remained polite. ‘But not in a churchyard, not in darkness, and only after due process of law.’ Harriet nodded, conceding the point.

‘I am not certain that is quite what happened, Mr Bartholomew. Mrs Westerman,’ Crowther said, ‘what do you think?’

She considered for a while. She had served long enough with her husband to see men flogged, tied upright to the grating while the drum beat and the company looked on. Part of the theatre of discipline. She remembered too the curate laid out at Crowther’s feet, arms above his head. She imagined Crowther with a whip in his hand rather than the familiar cane.

‘No, I think not.’

‘How can you know?’ Bartholomew asked, and stopped pulling on his buttons for a moment.

‘The angle and placing of the strike.’ And when he continued to look puzzled, she went on: ‘Turn your back to me,’ and warily, he did so. ‘If you were struck now from behind, by someone making use of a whip in their right hand, the blow would catch your shoulder here,’ she placed her hand on his right shoulder and he flinched, ‘then come down on this slope.’ With the side of her hand she pressed against his back showing the angle she meant, the angle that matched the wound on Trimnell’s back. ‘If you were to lie face down on the ground, Mr Bartholomew, I would have to stand on the small of your back to deliver that blow. Wounds struck from the side would be longer, marked more across the body, their focus most likely on the centre of the back. Any higher wound would probably start in the middle of the shoulder-blade rather than across the shoulder.’

The coroner turned to look at her, intrigued but slightly repulsed. She smiled tightly at him.

Crowther was moving the lamp up and down the body again. He examined the scalp and the base of the neck, the inner thighs – then stepped back and set the lamp down with a sigh. ‘Well, I can give you my thoughts at this stage, Bartholomew. If Mrs Westerman disagrees, she may contradict me. Trimnell was hit by a fist several times in the belly. The bruises developed. Then he was hit with a whip once, when standing. His assailant began to stake him out as if for a more concerted attack, but abandoned the attempt and did not use the whip again.’

The coroner cleared his throat. ‘What is your conclusion?’

‘That it seems a rather curious way to behave,’ Crowther said, looking up at him blankly.

‘But a whip-strike is not fatal. How did he die?’

‘I cannot say as yet.’

Mr Bartholomew looked frustrated. There was a sound and they turned to see the pink-faced canon hovering in the doorway. He was trying not to stare at the naked corpse. ‘Mr Bartholomew, a word.’

Bartholomew bowed and followed him out into the daylight.

The mask had been left for them in a neat linen parcel by the corpse’s feet, like the grave goods of a warrior. Harriet unwrapped it and held it in her gloved hands, looking into the empty eyes. The metal reflected the lamplight. It was the lack of a mouth, she thought, that made it so unnerving. Such a complete silence was implied.
You shall be voiceless
. Whoever put this on another man did so because he could rip out another man’s vocal cords without killing him. The mask had held the cold of the night and she felt it suck away the heat of her fingers as she turned it over. The shadows pooled and flowed from it like water. The piece under the chin was rather jagged, unfinished. Was that part of its purpose? To struggle in it would push the soft parts of the throat against those sharp edges. She felt disgust sweep through her bones like a spring tide.

While Crowther continued his examination of the body, she placed the mask over her own face, felt it push her mouth closed with the uncomfortable pressure of the plate under her chin. The world narrowed, she could see only what was directly in front of her – the candles, Crowther and the body. She felt her heart beginning to kick and her breathing deepen. Crowther paused in his examination of the body for a moment to look at her, and she lifted the mask away from her face and set it down again, feeling shamed.

His expression changed. He walked up to her and with one hand lifted her chin while he raised the lantern in the other. She felt his dry fingers push her head back a little way. ‘Don’t move, my dear,’ he said, then set the lantern down and pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and with it wiped the place at the top of her throat where the mask had pressed. He released her and put the handkerchief into her hand. She looked down at it. A rusty red stain was worked into the fabric. She felt a lurch of shock, turned the fabric to a clean space and rubbed hard at her throat while Crowther picked up the mask.

‘Certainly blood, I think, and in some quantity,’ he said, ‘though the skin on Mr Trimnell’s neck is unbroken. Interesting.’ He ran his finger high under the corpse’s throat. ‘Perhaps whoever attached it to him was unaware it had that extra bite to it and injured themselves. There is something here though, but the lividity makes it difficult to see.’ He looked up at her to ensure that she followed and sighed. ‘The blood is quite gone, Mrs Westerman. Do stop that or you will bruise yourself, and all and sundry will start to believe I have been throttling you.’ He put his hand out and reluctantly she returned his handkerchief to him. ‘The cut must have been quite deep to have bled so much. Whoever the mask bit, we should be able to see the wound.’

She swallowed and tried to speak again. ‘Might he have been throttled, Crowther?’

He opened one of the corpse’s eyes. Harriet could not help noticing it had the same greenish tint as her own, but this one was as dead as glass. ‘The eyes are clear. In cases of suffocation or strangulation, one normally expects to see the blood vessels damaged.’ He stepped back slightly. ‘Now, Mrs Westerman, what of the mystery of his hands and wrists?’

She took one of Trimnell’s hands in her own and turned it as much as the slow stiffening of the body would allow. ‘They
are
a mystery. Clean and unmarked. He did not bruise his knuckles while fighting back; did not pull against the ties around his wrists and ankles. Crowther, are you quite
sure
there is no serious head wound?’ He did not reply, but she felt the weight of his look. ‘My apologies. If he were held, perhaps?’ She thought of the bodies she had seen. ‘Might he have been drugged?’