Anatomy of Murder

6

The outhouse into which Justice Pither showed Crowther and Harriet was low, and too dark for its size to be properly judged. However, it seemed to be made up mostly of unlikely angles. It was as if a once reasonable-sized space had been gradually encroached upon by the surrounding buildings; as if its neighbors had shuffled inward at various times and from various directions, so the space had been forced to fold in on itself, jutting out a limb, or fragment of wall wherever it could find a space in the press. The floor was earth and the air smelled damp and brown. Both Harriet and Crowther had to stoop a little as they stepped down through the doorway. The only light came from an oil lamp hanging from a central beam. Below it, on a trestle table, was a human form shrouded in a white linen sheet. The place bred silence.

The sheet used for a covering had soaked up the damp from the corpse, making it limp and heavy, as if a solid slice of river fog had stolen over the man in his sleep and smothered him. Harriet was reminded of the deepest places in a ship after a long voyage. The air here was a little foul, but she could not say if that was the breath from the body or the river water that clung to it. Either way there was an air of contagion about the place. It was a room for things to rot in, forgotten and brooding.

The atmosphere could not still Justice Pither, however. He had done nothing but apologize since their arrival. He continued to do so now, caught between pride at their coming and embarrassment at the cellar-like outhouse into which he had shown them. He was also disposed to treat both Harriet and Crowther with a deference that the former at least found a little grating.

“I do not wish for miracles, sir, madam,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “But my wife, she is an energetic woman, saw your names in the paper, the Royal Society. . and of course we had read about last summer. . and so when this poor fellow was brought along, she suggested we might call on you for your assistance. . and she was right. We must do what we can, and we would be so glad of your acquaintance.”

Crowther looked down at him. “Have you been a justice long, Mr. Pither?”

“No, no, sir. That is to say, not so long-three months now. My wife suggested I put myself forward for it-she says London has a great need of righteous men. And I have been reading of what other men in the metropolis have managed in their areas, so I made some modest proposals. . The sheriff seemed most willing-then when this. . and I thought, perhaps if you were at liberty. . The manner, the supply of magistrates in this borough is uneven. .”

Harriet looked at his rather pinched and narrow face. She guessed he was a man who, no matter the skills of his tailor, would always look rather swamped by his own clothes, but he seemed to her in many ways a cut above the usual justices in London. The city was not known for the quality of its officers of the law. Only that spring, Mr. Burke had, in the House of Commons itself, called the Middlesex justices who were supposed to administer the law in the city “the scum of the earth.”

In the countryside, a justice was expected to be a gentleman, and a figure of some standing in his community. He had powers, and those powers were traded for influence and respect in the rural body of England, but here, in London, the choking and congested heart of an empire, the justices took another currency. The populace ignored them when they could, and paid them off when they could not. There were exceptions, of course. Since the Fielding brothers had shown what a magistrate might be in London from their house in Bow Street, the situation had improved, but it was said that barely half the magistrates of London could write their own name, and the fragile peace of the city still rested on the ancient and ignored officers of the watch, the constables unable to pay their way out of their obligations to the parish, the prosecutions of thief-takers, the rough justice of the crowds, and the occasional intervention of the troops. It seemed that Mr. Pither was trying to follow more in the footsteps of the Fieldings than suck up his living in the wake of the other sort of justice. Harriet might be a little skeptical about his chances of success, but the little man should be encouraged, surely.

“Sir,” she said, with a graceful nod of her head. The man hurrumphed into his cravat and looked pleased. “You have mentioned the manner in which this body was found, but no specifics. What was unusual?”

A young male voice spoke from the shadows at the back of the little room. “He was tied.”

Harriet, startled, found herself looking for a moment at the corpse itself. Then from the gloom behind the body two men wearing the red jackets of the Thames Watermen came forward into the little ring of light. The shadows of the room went back a long way.

The man who had spoken looked almost a child, lithe and slender with high cheekbones, and smooth-skinned enough for Harriet to wonder if he was yet out of his teens. Shuffling out of the dark beside him was an older man, bearded and a little stooped though his chest was broad and his hands, held clenched at his sides, looked fearsome enough. Justice Pither waved toward them.

“These are the fellows who brought him in. They run a wherry from the Black Lyon Stairs. This is Proctor, and this his nephew Jackson. I thought perhaps you might wish to speak to them.”

The older man grumbled under his breath, “Aye, though it keeps us from our trade half the day and there’s rent to be earned. Regular passengers of ours crossing the river in our rivals’ boats.”

Harriet looked directly at him, her eyes frowning. “I know you, Proctor.”

He smiled and kept looking at his boots, saying, “Why, you’re as good as your husband for a face, Mrs. Westerman. I would not have spoken, but I served with the captain when he was nothing but a scrap of a lad, and he touched his hat to me a few times in Gibraltar when you were there and on his arm, and looking as pretty a thing as ever man got hold of.”

Harriet’s eyes brightened. “Of course! James told me you stood between him and a whipping once.”

Proctor laughed, a great throaty rumble from his belly. “I did, I did. Told you that, did he? He returned the favor in time.” He cleared his throat and examined the earth floor with great concentration. “Sorry to hear he’s gone a bit. .” He touched his hand to his forehead. “We’ve been grieving for you and the little ones up and down the river. Us that know him.”

Harriet found she could not speak, but she nodded.

“So tell us then,” Crowther asked. “How was this man tied?”

The younger man stepped forward and flicked the bottom end of the sheet up the body a little brutally, letting them see a pair of sodden white stockings and the start of the pale breeches above them. The ankles were bound together with rope the thickness of a thumb. Its long end had been neatly curled across the dead man’s shins when he had been laid on the table, rather than cut free or left trailing on the earth floor. Harriet’s mind flickered with images of ropes coiled on the decks of her husband’s commands. She believed a sailor would stop to neaten any piece of loose stuff like that, even if he saw it in a burning house. The stockings dripped onto the floor.

“See for yourself,” Jackson said. “The other end of the rope was tied to something heavy enough to hold him against the tide. Meant to hold him under, I reckon, though if it was meant to hide him too, it did a poor job in the end. We spotted him from the bank just after dawn. You could see wig and coat enough to guess it was a man.”

Proctor put his head on one side and pulled at his beard. “Another three, maybe four yards out toward the middle of the river and we’d never have seen him till the fish were done feasting. Tide is a monster on the Thames. Where he was stuck, he would have been covered by ten feet at high water. Funny rope too.” Crowther lifted his eyebrows and Proctor pulled harder on his beard. “It’s braided. Not laid.” Harriet nodded, and Proctor met her eye, satisfied to see she had understood. “I’ve not seen it used much on the river, that’s all I’m saying.”

“Thank you, Proctor,” Crowther said. “May I ask if you found anything on this man’s body? And how did you know his name?”

The two men in front of him looked rather uncomfortable. It was Proctor who replied.

“His pockets were empty, and there was no fancy stuff on him. As to his name, some woman in the crowd spoke it, but she was gone before she said any more. I don’t know this fella. Can’t have much business across the river, or far along it, or we’d have seen the face, I’d reckon.”

Crowther nodded. “Very well, and thank you.” Then, turning to his host he added, “And thank you, Mr. Pither. You may all leave us with the body.”

The three men shuffled out, but as he passed her, Proctor put his hand out and Harriet felt it close with gentle pressure on her arm. She looked up into his face and saw her own history of foreign waters and winds behind his eyes. It was only a moment, and he was gone, ushered back out into the yard by Mr. Pither, who looked, beside him, like a pilot fish trying to shepherd a whale.