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Authors: James McCreet
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intend to inform the local constables what goes on here. All I want is that swan. Then I will bid you good day and never return
to bother you again.’
The two criminals looked at each other and then at this gentleman who so affably threatened them with violence.
‘What is it worth to you?’ asked the proprietor.
Noah sighed and shook his head. His right arm flashed out in a blur and the edge of his hand struck the throat of the ‘one-armed’ man, who fell loudly to the dusty wooden floor. He
writhed there, groaning, with his hands about his neck.
‘That is the end of my patience,’ said Noah to the proprietor. ‘The swan, if you please, or I will similarly disable you, search this place and take it.’
The shopkeeper peered over the counter at his fellow on the floor. Then he opened a drawer to his right, rummaged briefly among its contents and placed the swan on the counter with a defiant
glare.
‘That would have fetched me a pretty price,’ he said with a clenched jaw.
Noah examined the brooch and saw that the stones were real, as well they might be for a lady resident of Mivart’s Hotel. ‘Well, now you may go home to supper with a throat that
works. Good day to you, gentlemen.’
And to expedite the conclusion of Noah Dyson’s day, he did indeed make his way to that hotel, where he handed the brooch to an effusively grateful Miss Roberts and
received the five guinea reward. If it looked like chivalry to her, it had been merely an afternoon’s entertainment for him: a diversion from the tedium of which he had grown so tired.
Indeed, he did not even keep the money. Within minutes of collecting it, he had dropped the coins into the basket of a pale and sickly girl selling watercresses on an Oxford-street corner. It
was, after all, an insignificant sum to him, but one that, to her, would be the certain difference between life and death.
Such ennui was soon to end, however, for his next call was south across Waterloo-bridge towards Lambeth, where the door he knocked upon was opened by a gentleman of our recent
acquaintance: one George Williamson.
SIX
‘What can you tell me about this body I found yesterday, doctor?’
Inspector Newsome looked at the naked form on the examination table in the surgery of the Thames Police station house at Wapping. It was a man of about thirty years, moderately built, with
little bodily hair and with a number of obvious wounds about the torso and limbs. Now washed clean of the river’s filth, the pale body appeared less horrifying than when found, though it had
been opened and sewn closed again in the meantime.
‘I can tell you, Mr Newsome, that this is no place for me to be doing work of such a variety,’ said the surgeon, an earnest gentleman more accustomed to reviving half-drowned
would-be suicides or dockworkers. ‘This is neither a dissection room nor a morgue.’
‘Your help is most gratefully received, doctor. I need to know everything: the provenance of every wound, and the cause of death.’
‘Is this not a matter for an inquest? I really do not see the need for me to have examined the body here in the station.’
‘No doubt there will be an inquest, doctor, but justice occasionally does not appreciate waiting – particularly if there is a murderer on the loose.’
‘Do you suspect as much?’
‘I suspect only what I have cause to – which is why we are in this room.’
‘Well, he did not drown – I can tell you that. There was no water in his lungs. The chain about his ankles may have been to weigh him down in the water, but he was already dead when
thrown in.’
‘Not enough chain, evidently. What of the cut on his left cheek there?’
‘Difficult to say. It seems to have been caused by a significant impact rather than by a sharp instrument. The skin has been torn from the bone in an irregular shape: a rip rather than a
cut.’
‘Have you any idea as to the cause of that impact?’
‘It could be anything really. If he
to bother you again.’
The two criminals looked at each other and then at this gentleman who so affably threatened them with violence.
‘What is it worth to you?’ asked the proprietor.
Noah sighed and shook his head. His right arm flashed out in a blur and the edge of his hand struck the throat of the ‘one-armed’ man, who fell loudly to the dusty wooden floor. He
writhed there, groaning, with his hands about his neck.
‘That is the end of my patience,’ said Noah to the proprietor. ‘The swan, if you please, or I will similarly disable you, search this place and take it.’
The shopkeeper peered over the counter at his fellow on the floor. Then he opened a drawer to his right, rummaged briefly among its contents and placed the swan on the counter with a defiant
glare.
‘That would have fetched me a pretty price,’ he said with a clenched jaw.
Noah examined the brooch and saw that the stones were real, as well they might be for a lady resident of Mivart’s Hotel. ‘Well, now you may go home to supper with a throat that
works. Good day to you, gentlemen.’
And to expedite the conclusion of Noah Dyson’s day, he did indeed make his way to that hotel, where he handed the brooch to an effusively grateful Miss Roberts and
received the five guinea reward. If it looked like chivalry to her, it had been merely an afternoon’s entertainment for him: a diversion from the tedium of which he had grown so tired.
Indeed, he did not even keep the money. Within minutes of collecting it, he had dropped the coins into the basket of a pale and sickly girl selling watercresses on an Oxford-street corner. It
was, after all, an insignificant sum to him, but one that, to her, would be the certain difference between life and death.
Such ennui was soon to end, however, for his next call was south across Waterloo-bridge towards Lambeth, where the door he knocked upon was opened by a gentleman of our recent
acquaintance: one George Williamson.
SIX
‘What can you tell me about this body I found yesterday, doctor?’
Inspector Newsome looked at the naked form on the examination table in the surgery of the Thames Police station house at Wapping. It was a man of about thirty years, moderately built, with
little bodily hair and with a number of obvious wounds about the torso and limbs. Now washed clean of the river’s filth, the pale body appeared less horrifying than when found, though it had
been opened and sewn closed again in the meantime.
‘I can tell you, Mr Newsome, that this is no place for me to be doing work of such a variety,’ said the surgeon, an earnest gentleman more accustomed to reviving half-drowned
would-be suicides or dockworkers. ‘This is neither a dissection room nor a morgue.’
‘Your help is most gratefully received, doctor. I need to know everything: the provenance of every wound, and the cause of death.’
‘Is this not a matter for an inquest? I really do not see the need for me to have examined the body here in the station.’
‘No doubt there will be an inquest, doctor, but justice occasionally does not appreciate waiting – particularly if there is a murderer on the loose.’
‘Do you suspect as much?’
‘I suspect only what I have cause to – which is why we are in this room.’
‘Well, he did not drown – I can tell you that. There was no water in his lungs. The chain about his ankles may have been to weigh him down in the water, but he was already dead when
thrown in.’
‘Not enough chain, evidently. What of the cut on his left cheek there?’
‘Difficult to say. It seems to have been caused by a significant impact rather than by a sharp instrument. The skin has been torn from the bone in an irregular shape: a rip rather than a
cut.’
‘Have you any idea as to the cause of that impact?’
‘It could be anything really. If he
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