Anatomy of Murder

2

Harriet and Crowther were lucky in the moment and direction they chose. Final preparations for the evening’s performance meant that the stage doors had been propped open to allow the traffic of various servants of the place to fetch and carry from the little yard. It was a pleasingly busy scene. Men and women came and went full of the whistles and calls of their professions. A woman in plain wool with her hands on her hips seemed to be in heated negotiations with a boy carrying a string of unplucked pheasants. Harriet and Crowther had to step back smartly to avoid collision with a man who carried what seemed to be the head of some antique Colossus through the outer gates at breakneck speed, then in the next moment their eyes were caught by a woman so engulfed by the quantity of flowers she was carrying, they seemed to be watching the progress of an ornamental border with legs. They followed her as she ducked into the building itself, scattering rose petals and scraps of foliage as she went, and found themselves in a high, wide corridor that seemed too long and deep to be accommodated behind that ordinary-looking frontage. There were a number of doors open along its length, and their attention was caught by a shout behind the one nearest to them. The voice was deep, angry and powerful.

“No! Not at all! Fool! Have you never seen a tree! Do you never step back from your work and consider? The panel must be done again. I will not be disgraced by you tonight, and if we get wet paint on the costumes, Bartholomew will scream to the heavens. Get a fire in here.”

Crowther pushed the door wide with the flat of his hand, and Harriet moved into the doorway beside him. The room was very large, and light even on such a dull day. The smell of paint was almost overpowering. Crowther’s eyes smarted a little from the fumes as he looked upward.

The room was double the height he expected. The most exacting hostess would have been pleased to hold a ball for fifty people in such a space, but the place was almost bare of furniture, and the walls only rough plaster. It was not empty, however. A number of large painted canvas panels were strung from the high ceiling by a combination of ropes anchored on capstan, pully and cleats. Crowther’s eyes skipped through them, catching at their overlapping edges shreds of various views and interiors. A flower garden, some part of a city street, some gray stonework on canvas that suggested a temple of antiquity, a forest, ruins of some castle. They hung at various heights, and were in various states of repair. It was like looking into the memories of an old and romantic traveler, flashes of time and place and mood, layered and confused.

On the long wall opposite them, Harriet saw panels of sky and sea, and leaned up against them a ship, its prow standing some eight feet above the stone floor. No, not a ship, rather the flat ghost of a ship, rudely, roughly cut off twenty feet along its length; and not wood, but the simulation of wood on a canvas frame. Along its edge were painted wavelets so delicately done, she could almost hear the sounds of the ocean, and thought she could taste the familiar tang of salt on her lips.

In the center of the space available stood a high stool. On it sat, or rather crouched, the figure of an extremely tall man dressed uniformly in deep brown. His hair was the same shade of chestnut as his clothes, and unpowdered. He sat with his black shoes hooked over the bar halfway up the height of his seat. It seemed to almost fold his body in two, like a penknife blade, just open. Poised with his hands on his knees, all his attention was focused on the far end of the room.

Where he looked stood two other men. The elder of them, his coat off and his shirtsleeves rolled up, was towering over a boyish figure in an apron who seemed near to tears. The younger man held a painter’s palette in his left hand. He was biting his lip and looking down at the floor. Behind him was a painted scene of trees. It looked to Harriet extremely well done. Without noticing the new arrivals in the doorway, the older man crossed the room toward the gentleman sitting on the stool, looking sorry and concerned. When he spoke, they recognized the voice they had heard from the corridor, although its volume was now low, and its tone suddenly respectful and apologetic.

“I am sorry, Mr. Johannes. You are quite right. Boyle here has made an error. I am sorry I did not take note of it before, though some might call it only a small thing. .” The man on the stool looked up sharply at this, and Boyle’s tormentor hurried on nervously, “But of course, no error is unimportant, and there is time to correct it before evening.” When the man on the stool did not move, the other realized that more was asked of him. He cleared his throat and carried on. “I am most terribly sorry not to have taken note of it before. It is the last piece, and the. .” he paused, “the ingenious nature of your designs have put us a little behind. My apologies.”

The man on the stool nodded, then with a gesture indicated that the shirtsleeved man should approach him more closely. He did, and the man in brown seemed to whisper something in his ear. Shirtsleeves straightened again and turned his attention back toward the boy with the paint palette.

“Well, there it is, Boyle. You know what must be done.” The man paused, then added, “And Mr. Johannes wishes me to tell you, this lapse aside, he is pleased with your work.”

The boy flushed. “Of course, Mr. Gooch. Thank you. And thank you, Mr. Johannes.”

Mr. Johannes gave no indication Harriet could see of acknowledging these thanks, but instead, as if just becoming aware of observation, turned his head slowly toward the door and looked at her. Harriet blinked. The man’s face was very pale; his eyes seemed unnaturally large and were both a violent green and a little bulbous. His skin looked very fine; it had a thin glow about it that she noticed sometimes on the skin of her little son’s face. It was smooth as rosewood. She was reminded of the blank, but somewhat inhuman, faces of angels she had seen in mosaic on the walls of the churches in Constantinople. The other men, Mr. Gooch and the boy painter, had also now seen them. It was Gooch who spoke, rather gruffly and with a frown.

“May we be of assistance, sir, madam?”

Crowther smiled at him benignly and replied, “We are looking for the manager-a Mr. Harwood, I understand?”

“He’ll be in his office at present,” Gooch said with a snap, and turned back toward the canvases around him. “Now set to, Boyle, and I’ll call up the boys. Every other panel will need to be placed yet, and if that piece isn’t perfect by the time the doors open, I’ll cut you up and stuff the bits into sandbags myself.”

Johannes continued to look steadily at Harriet and Crowther, and lifted one hand to point upward, indicating, Harriet supposed, where those offices might be. His limbs seemed unnaturally long and his fingers were as thin and as pale as his face. The pose made her think of those attending angels again, pointing the attention of the penitent to their Judge and Savior above. Harriet nodded her thanks and, with Crowther, retreated into the corridor, not sure whether to feel comforted by the picture the strange figure presented, or uneasy.

In the space of the corridor, Crowther looked down at her, saying, “I think we are in the right place, Mrs. Westerman.”

“Why do you say that, Crowther?”

“Did you not notice the ropes in that room? I would call them the twin of that wrapped round Fitzraven’s ankles.”

Jocasta was whistling between her teeth as she walked down St. Martin’s Lane. There was a vigor in her step that would make any of the pedestrians negotiating the mud think twice about demanding she give right of way. Jocasta Bligh would move off the pavement for a sedan chair-since no one who wanted to keep body and soul together would do otherwise-but for the rest she yielded no ground. Within three streets of her house in any direction of the compass, it would never be in question. The women nodded to her, the men lifted their hands to their foreheads, a little wary perhaps, for everyone was aware that she had all their secrets under her fingertips and knew their minds and business better than they, for the most part. Twenty years had proved she knew how to keep her knowledge to herself, however. Unless something moved her to drop a harsh word in the ear of some man who was too free with his fists, or a girl too free with her favors.

She came to a firm halt outside the chophouse on the corner of St. Martin’s Lane and Turner’s Court, just where respectable roads crumbled into the hodgepodge hell of the rookeries. There were pockets of such places all over the city-houses with a dozen doors in and out of them, areas of squalor and desperation where no lawman would go without a company of redcoats at his back. Jocasta looked in at the tobacco clouds, steam and clatter within the shop for a second, and whistled. A lad helping with the serving turned away from his customer and, catching her eye, jogged up to her side while the gentleman in yellow wig and stained coat was still halfway through ordering his beer and pie.

“Afternoon, Mrs. Bligh. Something for you from the kitchen? Does Boyo here like a scrap?”

Jocasta looked down at her dog. He widened his eyes, and she narrowed hers.

“No. He’s getting me into trouble again. He’ll have to wait.”

Boyo got down on the floor and put his front paw over his nose.

“What I need from you, Ripley, is a place. You know the Mitchells? Young ones. He’s a clerk, she sells perfumes somewhere. Married. Room with the mother. I need to know where they stay.”

The boy rubbed his nose for a second.

“Yeah. I know the old woman. And he comes in here for his dinner three days a week. Clerks for the Admiralty, doesn’t he? They’ve got a place in Salisbury Street. He’s all right. His mother’s a sharp-faced old bitch though. Works their girl into the ground and lives like they’ve nothing to eat but sawdust, though if she’s got enough blunt to front a coffeehouse, they can’t be hurting that much. Mind you, a month ago he was whining that the landlord’s putting up her rent and they might lose it. Guess that’s why they still send the girl out to the shop to sell Mr. Broodigan’s perfumes.” The boy looked a little startled at having said so much. “She ain’t a friend of yours, is she, Mrs. Bligh?”

Jocasta winked and pulled her cards from the pocket of her skirt. “Pick a card, Ripley,” she said, fanning them out.

The boy bit his lip, then with sudden decision, yanked one free from the middle of the pack and passed it to her. From the back of the room, a man, his apron held together by grease and bad memories, his belly so wide he could hardly waddle between his tables, shouted out.

“Oi, Ripley! Why ain’t you serving, you whelp?” Jocasta flicked up her eyes from the card Ripley had chosen. The fat man coughed. “Er, sorry, Mrs. Bligh. Didn’t see you there for a second. You look after her, boy.” Ripley didn’t even bother looking round.

“Well? Anything for me, Mrs. Bligh?”

Jocasta scratched her nose. On the floor, Boyo growled. “Watch yon weasel-faced fellow, middle table, blue coat with a mourning band. He’s going to try and pass you false coin for his dinner.”

Ripley turned slowly with his eyes narrowed and spotted the man. He gave a little hiss between his teeth, then swung back to Jocasta, blinking.

“You got all that from one card?”

“No. He’s been going through his coin under the table all the time we’ve been talking and trying it with his thumbnail to find the bad stuff. He’ll mix it in. Don’t break his arm though. He got took, now he’s trying to take. Card just says ‘watch your back,’ though if any one of us stopped doing that, we wouldn’t be stupid for long.”

“Thanks, Mrs. Bligh.”

“Much obliged to you too, youngling.” And with a nod to the fat man, Jocasta turned to go. Boyo sat up, and having given the room his own commentary in the form of a short sharp bark, trotted out on her heel.