Read Online The Penny Dreadful Curse by Anna Lord - Free Book Online

over
the window sill. Word had spread like wildfire and the curious
crowd had multiplied into a mob. She watched as a rag-tag group of
boys came barrelling around the corner. They clearly knew the dead
lad twisting in the wind because several of them blasphemed and
others began to weep. The smallest boy vomited into the runnel. The
biggest boy, wearing a cloth cap, demonstrated maturity beyond his
years.
    “I’ll give you
a hand lifting the body down,” he said, addressing himself to Mr
Corbie.
    “No one is to
touch the corpse!” barked Dr Watson, self-appointed guardian of the
dangling grotesquerie. “We must wait for the police. They will need
to examine the body the way it is.”
    “It is
sacrilege to leave the poor mite hanging,” a squinty-eyed biddy
muttered through toothless gums, hugging a frayed and tattered
shawl as if to ward off the cold and guard against the evil eye.
“Reverend Finchley should be called to say a blessing for the poor
mite.”
    “Never mind
Reverend Finchley!” blasted someone else. “Where are the bloody
police?”
    “And what are
they doing about all these murders!”
    “What use is
it to have a police force if they cannot protect god-fearing
citizens while going about their normal business!”
    “Useless lot!
That’s what I say!”
    “The police
are on their way,” proclaimed Dr Watson forcefully to compensate
for the fact he knew it would be a goodly while before a member of
the constabulary showed up. “Inspector Bird will be here any
moment,” he lied brazenly. “Keep back, I say!”
    Desperate to
inspect the dangling corpse, the Countess waved away her maid,
threw a fur cloak over her silky peignoir, swapped her embroidered
slippers for ankle boots, raced down the stairs and onto the street
just in time spot Inspector Bird striding along the Shambles,
preceded by his enormous whiskers. He had been hurrying along
Coppergate, on his way to the river where two barges had collided
in thick fog during the early hours, when word reached him about
the grisly murder of a boy in the Shambles. The Ouse did not have
river police as did the Thames and the policing of the waterway
fell to the regular force. The inspector was a hardened stalwart
yet even he was shocked at the brutality inflicted on a mere boy.
The meat hook had gone into the back of the boy’s head in the place
where the neck met the skull. Whoever hauled the unlucky lad off
his feet must have held him aloft by the scruff of the neck, or
what there was of it, it being so thin and scrawny. There were
bruise marks under each ear where the fingers and thumb of the hand
had gripped tight, cutting off the vocal chords at the same time,
but the bruises were not consistent with strangulation. The boy was
alive when he was lifted off the ground. The thrust of the iron
meat hook into the soft spot at the base of the skull was what
snuffed out his young life.
    “Clear off
everyone!” commanded the inspector. “That’s enough gawping! Go home
before I arrest the lot of you for obstructing a police officer in
the line of his duty!”
    As soon as the
shivering mob retreated to the warmth and safety of their hearths,
the inspector called on Dr Watson to help him lower the body down
and place it on the pavement at the front of the bookshop. Mr
Corbie watched morosely through the bow window as he cleaned his
bloody shoe and Magwitch, not to be left out, cleaned his nether
regions.
    “This boy is
one of the Snickelwayers,” said the inspector. “I don’t know his
name but I recognize the ginger hair. He lived with the group of
boys you just saw; orphans mostly, or runaways, fleeing homes where
the father or mother is gin-soaked and they are sick of getting a
cuff behind the ear just for breathing. But this is a terrible
murder. The most cruel and senseless I have ever witnessed from my
time in the force.”
    “The killer
was right-handed,” observed the Countess, studying the lifeless
body as daylight swelled and made it