What the Devil Knows Page 2

Stout and gray whiskered, the man was sprawled on his back, his heavy arms flung wide at his sides, his legs splayed. What had once been a white cravat was now soaked dark with the blood that had gushed from the gaping slash across his throat and the shattered, sickening pulp that had been the side of his head. The grimy brick walls of the narrow alley were splattered with gore and what Sebastian realized with a twist of his gut must be brain matter. He’d spent six years at war as a cavalry officer, but the sight of violent death still bothered Sebastian, and he suspected it always would.

  “Ghastly, isn’t it?” said Lovejoy.

  Sebastian studied the dead man’s full-cheeked, gape-mouthed face; the vacant, staring eyes; the open, buttonless greatcoat; the striped waistcoat; the old-fashioned breeches. Below that, the man’s feet were completely bare.

  “Someone’s helped themselves to his shoes and stockings, I see.”

  “And his hat, buttons, purse, and watch,” said Lovejoy. “I can easily imagine footpads bashing in his head. But why would they bother slitting his throat, as well?”

  “It does seem rather excessive.”

  Lovejoy squinted up at the seagulls wheeling noisily overhead. “I’m told that ten days ago, a seaman by the name of Hugo Reeves was killed not far from here in Five Pipes Fields in Shadwell. His head was smashed in just like this, his throat cut so viciously his head was half off. No one thought much of it at the time. The streets near the docks are always dangerous, although the brutality of the attack was seen as unusual even for around here. But after this . . .”

  His voice trailed away, his nostrils flaring as he sucked in a deep breath. “You can imagine what people are now saying.”

  Sebastian met his troubled gaze. “They’re saying it’s like the Ratcliffe Highway murders.”

  Lovejoy pressed his lips together and nodded.

  Less than three years before, in December 1811, the East End of London had been terrorized by two horrific sets of murders. First, on 7 December, four members of a family—a twenty-four-year-old linen draper, his young wife, their three-month-old baby, and a fourteen-year-old apprentice—were found with their heads bashed in and their throats slashed. No explanation for the carnage was ever found. Then, just twelve days later, while the city was still reeling from the first attack, the killer struck again at the King’s Arms on nearby New Gravel Lane, butchering the fifty-six-year-old publican, his wife, and their maidservant.

  Within days of the second murders, a suspect was arrested. But before he could be brought to trial, the man was found hanging in his cell in Coldbath Fields Prison. The authorities immediately declared the case closed. There were whispers, of course: suggestions that the magistrates were too eager to blame the killings on a conveniently dead man. But the ugly, senseless murders ceased. And so with the passage of time, the panic and whispers died down.

  “Do you think it’s possible?” said Sebastian, his gaze on the stiffening dead man before them. “That this could be the work of the same killer, I mean.”

  Lovejoy hunched his shoulders against a cold gust of wind. “It always seemed to me that there were certain . . . anomalies in the official version of events. When the murders ceased, I assumed I must be wrong. But now . . .”

  Sebastian hunkered down beside the blood-drenched corpse. Despite the cold, the coppery-sweet smell of spilled blood and raw flesh was strong—the stench of death. He had to stop himself from cupping his hand over his nose and mouth. “You say he’s a magistrate?”

  Lovejoy nodded. “Sir Edwin Pym, of the public office in Shadwell High Street.”

  Yanking off his glove, Sebastian touched the back of his hand to the dead man’s cheek. “He’s stone cold. But then, the night was cold. Any idea when he was last seen?”

  “According to his housekeeper, he went out last night around ten. She was expecting him back before midnight, but obviously he never returned.”

  “Does she know where he was going?”

  “She claims she does not.”

  Sebastian glanced over at him. “You say that as if you don’t believe her.”

  A quiver of revulsion passed over Lovejoy’s features. “I’m told Pym had a habit of trolling for harlots at night—the younger the better.”

  “Lovely.” Sebastian pushed to his feet, his gaze taking in a nearby pile of smashed hogsheads, a row of overflowing dustbins, the slick gleam of a mound of rotting fish heads. “The alley’s been searched?”

  “In a preliminary fashion. I’ll have the lads tear it completely apart once we’ve moved the body, but I’ll be surprised if they find anything.”

  Sebastian brought his gaze back to the bloody, shattered ruin of the dead magistrate’s head. “What would do that, do you think?”

  “An iron bar? A large hammer? I’ve sent for a shell to have him carried to Gibson. Perhaps he can tell us.”

  “If anyone can,” said Sebastian. A former army surgeon who now made his home in Tower Hill, Paul Gibson could read the secrets a dead body had to tell better than anyone Sebastian had ever known. “The Ratcliffe Highway murderer used a maul, didn’t he?”

  “For the first set of killings, yes. A seaman’s maul. Although I believe there was some confusion as to what he used to cut his victims’ throats.”

  Sebastian studied the gaping wound in the dead man’s neck. “This looks like it was done with a sharp razor, but I could be wrong.”

  Lovejoy started to say something, then paused.

  “What?” prompted Sebastian.

  Lovejoy cleared his throat. “It may mean nothing, but Sir Edwin Pym was one of the leading magistrates involved in the investigation of the Ratcliffe Highway murders.”

  Sebastian looked over at him. “And the other victim you mentioned—Reeves? Was he involved in any way?”

  “Not that I’m aware. But then, I was at Queen Square Public Office at the time, so my knowledge of the inquiries is limited to what I read in the papers like everyone else.”

  Sebastian glanced toward the group of men still standing near the mouth of the alley, silently watching them. He recognized the constable who’d been sent to fetch him and a couple of Lovejoy’s other lads, but the rest were undoubtedly local. “There are plenty of magistrates in the East End. Why were you brought into this?”

  Lovejoy looked vaguely uncomfortable. “Lord Sidmouth has asked me to take over the investigation of the murders.” As Home Secretary, Henry Addington, Viscount Sidmouth, was officially in charge of all the stipendiary magistrates of the metropolis’s nine public offices. “I’m to report back to him as soon as I leave here.”

  “An unenviable interview.”

  Lovejoy pushed out a harsh breath. “Indeed. I’m told the Home Office is most anxious to prevent a resurgence of the panic that gripped the entire city in December of 1811.”

  “Bit hard to do, once word of this spreads beyond Wapping—as you know it will, soon enough.” Sebastian found his gaze drifting back to the dead man’s bare feet, now a bluish white. “What do you think? Did the killer strip him of his boots and valuables? Or did someone else come along later and help himself to the easy pickings?”

  “The latter scenario, surely? We’ll be watching all the pawnshops, of course—although even if some of the stolen items turn up, I doubt it’ll tell us much about the murder itself.”

  Sebastian nodded. “You mentioned Pym’s housekeeper. What about his family?”

  “He lived alone. His wife died some years ago, and his only daughter is married and lives in Stepney. I’m told there’s a son, as well, but he’s a sea captain with the East India Company.”

  “You said the man killed last week was a seaman?”

  “A ship’s carpenter, yes.”

  “The man blamed for the Ratcliffe Highway murders was also a seaman, was he not?”

  “He was, yes. But then, most people around here are connected in som
e way to the maritime trade.”

  “Given the three-year gap between these new murders and what happened in 1811, it’s possible we’re dealing with a seafaring man—a killer who sailed away three years ago and is now back.”

  “How perfectly ghastly to think about. But why would such a man go after an unknown sailor and a Shadwell magistrate?”

  “You assume this murderer has a logical reason for what he does.” Sebastian let his gaze drift over the gore-splattered wall beside them and felt a new ripple of disquiet sluice through him. “If I had to guess, I’d say it’s more likely that whoever did this simply enjoys killing.”

  Chapter 4

  Is it true, what folks are sayin’?” asked Tom when Sebastian walked back to the curricle some minutes later. “That the Ratcliffe Highway murderer is alive and that ’e’s at it again?”

  Sebastian leapt up to the carriage’s high seat to take the reins. “It’s either him or a copyist who wants us to think the murders are all the work of the same killer.”

  Tom scrambled back to his perch. “Why would somebody want that?”

  “To frighten people, perhaps.”

  “Well, I’d say folks around here is mighty scared, no doubt about that. Didn’t hear nobody talkin’ about nothin’ else.”

  “Can’t say I blame them,” said Sebastian, giving his horses the office to start.

  * * *

  He went first to Sir Edwin Pym’s impressive eighteenth-century brick house on Wellclose Square, one of the few affluent areas in Wapping. The dead magistrate’s housekeeper was a dour-faced older woman with iron gray hair, a sparse bosom, and a steely demeanor that gave no quarter. Mrs. Tyndale was her name, and she insisted once again that she had no idea where her master had gone the previous night or why. Nor had she any idea who might have wanted to kill him.

  “A God-fearing man, he was,” she said, staring at Sebastian as if daring him to contradict her. “God-fearing and righteous.”

  A God-fearing, righteous man with a taste for abusing very young prostitutes, thought Sebastian. But there was no point in saying it.

  Leaving Lovejoy’s constables to search the dead man’s house, Sebastian turned his horses toward the home of Pym’s daughter. But first he made a stop at the ancient Roman road now known as Ratcliffe Highway.

  Stretching east from the old City of London, the highway ran parallel to the river Thames to form the unofficial northern boundary of Wapping. Shadwell lay to the east and Tower Hill to the west, with Whitechapel to the north. It was a dangerous area of seedy lodging houses, looming warehouses, and rough men.

  With the mist blowing cold against his face, he drew up opposite Number Twenty-nine Ratcliffe Highway. The building’s narrow, ordinary-looking ground floor was now a chandler’s shop. But three years ago it had been the premises of linen draper Timothy Marr and his young wife, Celia.

  Sebastian studied the shop’s neatly painted green door and wide bay window. They said Marr and his young family had lived in the house only eight months before dying there so hideously. The man had sailed on the East Indiaman the Dover Castle before marrying and settling down with his new wife and child to become a respectable shopkeeper. He’d taken on two apprentices, a fourteen-year-old shop boy named James Gowan and a thirteen-year-old servant girl, Margaret Jewell.

  Did you know you were in danger? Sebastian wondered, staring across the cart- and wagon-choked street at the simple brick building. Did you know someone was watching you, waiting for the chance to strike?

  According to all reports, the answer was no.

  It had been a Saturday in early December. Timothy Marr had his shop open late that night, for this was a working-class neighborhood, and workingmen and -women could do their shopping only after a long day of labor. Tradesmen around Wapping and Shadwell tended to stay open up to midnight on Saturdays, the day working folk received their wages. In fact, Marr kept his linen draper’s open so late that he decided to send little Margaret out for oysters.

  But the child found it difficult to fulfill her errand, so that it was past twelve by the time she made it back to Number Twenty-nine. She was probably afraid she’d be in trouble for taking so long. Instead, her tardiness saved her life.

  Arriving back at the linen draper’s, she tried the front door, only to find it locked. Puzzled, she rang the bell and banged the knocker and then, with growing consternation, called to a passing watchman for help. The racket attracted the attention of the pawnbroker next door, who volunteered to climb over the fence between the two shops’ rear yards and investigate.

  What he found would no doubt haunt him forever.

  The young apprentice, James Gowan, lay just inside the open back door to the shop, his face smashed, his brains spilling out of his shattered skull. Beyond him sprawled the broken, bloody remains of Celia Marr and her husband, Timothy Marr. In the kitchen below, their infant son still lay in his cradle, his skull crushed and his throat cut so savagely that the tiny body was nearly decapitated.

  The killings were both brutal and senseless. Nothing of such hideous ferocity had happened in London in anyone’s memory. A paralyzing terror gripped the city as residents rushed to buy guns, knives, sickles, hammers—anything with which they might defend themselves against such a dangerous killer.

  And then it happened again less than two weeks later. At a tavern called the King’s Arms just a short distance away in New Gravel Lane, the publican, his wife, and their maidservant were all slashed and beaten to death.

  Sebastian lifted his gaze to the sashed windows of the living quarters above the shop and found his thoughts drifting to his own wife and baby son. Hero and Simon were his world, and the fear of somehow losing them haunted his days and nights. He thought about setting up a business and living in a house that had witnessed such a horrible tragedy, and knew he couldn’t do it.

  He supposed it was possible that the similarities between the two recent killings and the three-year-old murders were entirely coincidental. It was also possible that the new murders were the work of a copyist, someone deliberately modeling his acts on the sensational murders of the past. Or the man responsible for the Ratcliffe Highway killings might not have been the poor sod who’d hanged himself in his cell at Clerkenwell gaol three years ago, but someone else entirely. Someone who was once again active.

  As he watched a young apprentice of fifteen or sixteen open the chandler’s front door to peer apprehensively about, Sebastian realized he didn’t find any of those three possibilities reassuring.

  * * *

  Sir Edwin Pym’s daughter lived in a respectable but modest-sized terrace house on a quiet street in Stepney.

  Her name was Katie Ingram, and unlike her father, she was petite and very fair-haired, with a small pointed chin, a shy demeanor, and large sad eyes. But if she’d been crying, it didn’t show.

  She received Sebastian in a modest-sized, simply furnished parlor and was obviously embarrassed to be found wearing a gaily sprigged muslin gown. “I haven’t had a chance to assemble proper mourning clothes yet,” she said, her hands coming up to slide self-consciously over the upper arms of her long pintucked sleeves.

  “Thank you for agreeing to see me at such a time,” he said, taking the seat she indicated near the fire. “I know this must be difficult for you.”

  She settled in the chair opposite him. “Bow Street sent word that you were wanting to ask me some questions, but I don’t know how much help I can be. My father and I . . . we haven’t spoken to each other in a long time.”

  “When did you last see him?”

  “Well, I saw him in Wapping High Street a few months ago. But I haven’t actually spoken to him in years.” She paused, her gaze on his face. “Does that shock you?”

  “No.”

  She didn’t look as if she believed him. “My father didn’t approve of my choice of husband, you see. When I turned twenty-one
and married Andrew against Papa’s express wishes, he said I was dead to him and swore he’d never speak to me again. And he never did.”

  Sebastian tried to imagine himself cutting off all contact with Simon for such a reason, and couldn’t. “I understand you have a brother.”

  “Yes, Steven. He’s the captain of an East Indiaman.”

  “Did your father speak to him?”

  “When Steven was in London, yes. But he’s not here at the moment. They sailed six—no, seven months ago now.”

  “Do you mind telling me the name of his ship?”

  “It’s the Lady Perry. Why?”

  “I was wondering if there might be some connection between your family and a seaman who was killed last week. Reeves was his name, Hugo Reeves.”

  “If there is, I’m not aware of it.” She shifted her gaze to the fire, her lips parting as she drew a shaky breath. “They’re saying his throat was slit and his head bashed in, like those people killed three years ago on Ratcliffe Highway.”

  “Yes. I’m sorry.”

  “I don’t understand. The man responsible for those killings is dead.”

  “So the authorities believe, yes.”

  A boy’s shout, followed by a chorus of children’s laughter, drew Sebastian’s attention to the windows overlooking the rear gardens, although from this angle he couldn’t see anyone on the terrace below. He said, “You’ve children?”

  She smiled. “Yes. Two boys and a girl.”

  “Did Sir Edwin keep in touch with them?”

  She shook her head, her smile fading. “You didn’t know my father, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “He was . . . an unpleasant man. Angry and unforgiving when crossed, endlessly vindictive, scornful of anyone weaker than he, and governed always—always—by avarice and greed.”

  “Do you know of anyone who might have wanted to kill him?”

  “Specifically? No. But I suspect the number of those who will truly mourn him is small.”