King Arthur's Bones

ACT FIVE

‘Yeeugh!’

The screech woke Joe Malinferno from his disturbed slumbers. He had been dreaming of a horde of Egyptian mummies rising from their stony sarcophagi and pursuing him down the dingy London streets near where he lodged. Just as the greyish bindings unravelled from the skull of the leading mummy, revealing its gaping, dusty jaw, the scream reverberated in his brain. He sat up abruptly, his tangled shirt sticking uncomfortably to his sweaty torso.

‘Wh… aaat?’

His vocal cords were numbed, and he could hardly articulate his own cry of fear. He forced his eyes wide open, half-afraid that his nightmare might manifest itself in the grubby reality of his bedroom. Instead all he could discern in the darkness was a pair of pale, skinny buttocks poking towards him from across the room. He paused to admire them for a few minutes. The girl to whom the buttocks belonged then turned her pallid face towards him.

‘Here. There’s bones in this bag.’

‘Come back to bed… Kitten.’ He recalled her name just at the last minute, though its ridiculousness stuck on his tongue. Picking up a bawd in a gin-shop in Tooley Street was not his normal practice, and it wasn’t conducive to remembering the girl’s name later. Still, she had displayed a pleasing aspect last night, and he was drunk and in need of a romp. But by the cold light of day and in a more sober, if hung-over, mood Malinferno found her attractions less certain. However, the bed was still warm, and so were his passions. He beckoned her over to him, lifting the sheets enticingly.

‘They are just some old bones that Augustus Bromhead left me for safekeeping. They are of no consequence.’

The girl pouted, her pinched face puckering ever narrower until she began to resemble a rat. Malinferno was familiar with the appearance of such rodents. Creechurch Lane was on a convenient axis between Billingsgate Fish Market and Spitalfields, and rats infested the neighbourhood around his lodgings. One morning he had awoken to come face to face with a bold example of Rattus norvegicus sitting on his chest. He had screamed, and the rat had scurried off back behind the wood panelling that clad the bottom half of Malinferno’s bedroom. Kitten now looked less like the creature she was named after and more like a feline’s best enemy. She was bereft only of a rat’s whiskers. Though now that he looked closer, he could discern a fair sprinkling of hair on her upper lip too. He shuddered and let the sheets drop. Suddenly he was no longer in the mood to continue his amorous adventures. At least not with the pinch-faced Kit, who was now picking up one of the bones. A thigh-bone by its length and thickness, Malinferno reckoned. She waved it in the air.

‘Ooooh! Is it from one of them E-gyptian mummies?’

Malinferno smiled condescendingly. The fashion for all things Egyptian had been occasioned by England’s old enemy, Napoleon Bonaparte, and his invasion of that far-off land twenty years ago or more. Now, in 1818, it appeared that even a low bawd was influenced by the obsessions of the fashionable London set.

‘No. These are a mere hundred and fifty years old. Augustus Bromhead is an antiquarian, not an Egyptologist.’

He could see by Kit’s puzzled look that he had lost her already, and sighed. No use explaining to the girl the fine difference between his own interest in all things ancient and Egyptian, and Bromhead’s immersion in the more mundane and recent history of England. Neither man had much time for the other’s obsession, though both were eager to display their own knowledge to each other. It was only the previous day that Bromhead had thrust at Malinferno the bones that Kit was now playing with.

‘Tell me how old you think these bones are, young Giuseppe.’

The elderly man always used the proper version of Malinferno’s first name. Sometimes Joe thought it was done just to annoy him. Giuseppe was indeed the name with which he had been christened in his father’s native town of Padua. But he had been brought to England as a baby by his mother after the unfortunate demise of his father in circumstances his mother never explained. And as he grew up he easily adopted the familiar name of Joe, though his surname remained exotically Italianate. But Bromhead was strictly observant of formalities, so Giuseppe he was to the rotund, little dwarf of a man. The antiquarian had been perched as always on a high stool in his study amid a perfect blizzard of old texts, ancient stones and maps. Without getting down from his seat, he pushed a large canvas sack across the table towards Malinferno. Joe wondered if this was some sort of test of his scientific abilities. He hesitated a moment.

‘Go on. They won’t bite.’

Bromhead waved his strangely delicate hands at the sack and winked grotesquely. As if by way of explanation of his excitement, he described their origins.

‘I had them dug up myself. Witnessed the exhumation, indeed. At the Church of St Materiana in Trevenna in Cornwall.’

A wink once again contorted his wrinkled features, but it still left Malinferno in the dark concerning Bromhead’s interest in the contents of the sack.

‘How old are they, Augustus?’

Bromhead gave out a cackling laugh.

‘That is what I want you to tell me. You are always dabbling in the unrolling fad. You must know truly ancient bones when you see them.’

The antiquarian was referring to a new trend among society figures for holding a soirée at which an Egyptian mummy was the central guest. But the embalmed body was not there to be treated with respect and honour. A grotesque delectation in unravelling the burial bindings and revealing the skeleton within had gripped the smart set. And it was not scientific curiosity but rather a morbid delight in causing feigned horror that was the purpose. Some ladies affected to swoon quite away when the skull was revealed. Much to Bromhead’s annoyance, Malinferno had already taken part in two such unrollings. Joe, however, saw it as the only opportunity he would have to examine genuine mummies outside of the British Museum. So what if he had to play up to the upper-class set who frequented such events? He was already becoming known as ‘Il Professore’, and he quite liked the notoriety. Nor was he above purloining some of the jewels and other items that were sometimes bound within the funerary cerements. He waved aside Bromhead’s scornful remark.

‘So my perverting the true cause of science is acceptable now that it may be of some use to you, Augustus.’

‘Yes, well… we will say no more about that. I suppose you can salvage some knowledge from the depredations of the smart set. Knowledge you can now put to good use by telling me how old these bones are.’

Once again he pushed the canvas sack towards Malinferno. Joe picked it up, and the contents rattled against each other as he hefted the sack over his shoulder.

‘I will give you my considered opinion as to whether they are as old as an Egyptian pharaoh or as recent as something snatched from a grave by the Borough Gang.’

Malinferno’s naming of the best-known gang of bodysnatchers caused Bromhead to glance around nervously. As a man of limited stature, and odd proportions, it was quite possible he was already on some surgeon’s list. There was nothing that such eminent medical men as Astley Cooper liked more than giants and dwarfs to anatomize. And the Borough Gang served their voracious needs. Bromhead’s room, with its dark corners and strange funereal collections of stones and bones, suddenly felt an unpleasant place in which to be. Malinferno laughed at his friend’s frisson of fear, but in truth he too felt a cold finger of horror travel up his spine. The Borough Gang was not one to mess with, especially if you might be on their shopping list. For once, Malinferno gave private thanks for his nondescript appearance. He hurried from the antiquarian’s lodgings and back across the Thames. He deposited the bones in his own rooms, giving them only a cursory glance before resorting once more to the south side of the river Thames. And the gin-shops of Tooley Street, where his meagre funds would stretch further. There he encountered the rat-featured Kitten, and in a rash moment smuggled her into his rooms.

Now he was faced with the task of retrieving the thighbone from her grasp and smuggling her back out of the house without Mrs Stanhope, his landlady, spotting her. He slid from under the bedclothes and, pulling his shirt down to cover his privates, he nervously approached the bawd, who was now giggling and poking at him with the large bone. Malinferno noted, not for the first time, that it was unusually long, and probably had belonged to a man who had stood more than six feet tall when he was alive. And it was all the more capable of braining him if Kitten swung it in the wrong direction.

‘Now, come on, Kit. Don’t be silly. You have to go now.’

‘Not until you have paid me, James.’

‘Joe, the name is Joe. And I have paid you. In advance in the gin-shop where I picked you up.’

The girl poked him even harder in the chest.

‘Yes, but then I didn’t know you was a resurrection man, with bones hidden in your place. You’ll have to pay me to keep my mouth shut now, James.’

Malinferno cringed. Now he was being accused of being a sack-’em-up man himself. And the tart couldn’t even get his name right. He would have to deal with this quickly, or Mrs Stanhope would be woken up by the sound of the altercation. And then he would be out on the street. His landlady did not like women in her gentlemen’s rooms. He turned away from Kitten and began to pull on his long breeches, which had lain on the floor after being cast there the previous night in the heat of passion.

‘Very well, Kit. Whatever you say. But I shall have to pass your name on to Ben Crouch. He doesn’t like people poking their noses into his trade.’

On hearing the name of the legendary leader of the Borough Gang of bodysnatchers, Kitten went limp. She dropped the bone to the floor and scrabbled for her clothes.

‘No, that’s no trouble, sir. I was only joking. You can have this one on me. No need for Mr Crouch to know about it, is there?’

She didn’t wait for Joe to answer but disappeared from his room faster than the rat that had stood on his chest that other morning. The only difference was that Kitten used the door, rather than the hole in the wainscoting. Malinferno breathed a sigh of relief and picked up the long leg-bone.

Once again he wondered how Bromhead could be so uncertain of its origins. Though Joe couldn’t tell a newly buried bone from a pharaoh’s, he wasn’t about to tell Bromhead that. Probably this skeleton was no more than a hundred or so years old. The location of its discovery should have told the antiquarian whose bones they were likely to be. If they had been dug up anywhere on the edge of the Cornish border, then they were probably the remains of some cavalier or roundhead who had met his end at one of the battles of Lostwithiel. By Joe’s reckoning, that put the death in the year 1642 or 1644. There was no possibility that the bones had the age of the few mummified remains from Egypt that Malinferno had had the privilege to examine. But if Bromhead was so deceived as to wish the bones were as old as a mummy’s, who on earth did he think they belonged to?

Malinferno had no more time, however, to ponder the eccentricities of Augustus Bromhead. He had an important meeting with a personage he had long wished to talk to. Someone who had actually been to Egypt and seen first hand treasures of which Malinferno had only heard tell. The problem was the man was French, and England’s recent skirmish with that nation, and Napoleon Bonaparte in particular, had made it well-nigh impossible to speak to Monsieur Jean-Claude Casteix. But now Bonaparte was safely in exile on St Helena, the English mood had changed. Frenchmen were not viewed with such suspicion as before. In fact some members of the establishment had developed almost a fondness for their old enemy, Napoleon. Which suited Malinferno well, because Monsieur Casteix was not only French but a close associate of Bonaparte’s from his Egyptian expedition of 1798. He had been one of the savants who accompanied Bonaparte on his campaign, and he had accumulated a large collection of artefacts. The problem was that, when the French forces had capitulated to the British in 1801, General Hutchinson had cast covetous eyes on the savants’ collection of antiquities. Which had included the Rosetta Stone, reputedly the key to Egyptian hieroglyphics and most Egyptologists’ Holy Grail.

Malinferno had ideas about deciphering the stone, and enhancing his own glory in the field. But first he had to speak to Jean-Claude Casteix, who twenty years ago had refused to be parted from the collection plundered by the British, and who had come to England with it. Today was the day he had finally got himself an interview with the great man, and he didn’t propose to miss it. Despite a sick headache, resulting from his anxious imbibing of too much gin the previous night, he hastened to dress. Though his shirt was a little grubby from the night before, he thought it would suffice if he wore his best double-breasted waistcoat and a clean cravat over it. The problem was his fingers were too shaky to tie his linen in the latest fashion. And when he had managed it, it lay flat and irregular beneath his chin like a soiled napkin.

‘Damn! It will have to do for now. Or I shall miss my chance with Casteix.’

He cast around for his Hessian boots, which had been discarded the previous evening at the height of his passion.

‘Double damn. I shall have to go barefoot if I don’t find them soon.’

He realized it was a clear indication of his anxiety that he was talking to himself in this way, and he resolved to stop up his mutterings. Finally, tight-lipped, he found his boots behind the aged chaise longue beneath the window. For a moment he had an image of Kitten drunkenly yanking his boots off and collapsing behind the chaise longue in a flurry of muslin and bare thighs. His sick headache gave a vigorous twinge, and he closed his eyes on the scene. Sitting down abruptly before his dizzy swoon tipped him over, he took a deep breath and yanked on his boots. At least his tall hat and Garrick overcoat did not require hunting for. They hung in their usual place on the back of the door. He pulled the coat on and slapped the hat rakishly on his head. It was only on an impulse that he then picked up the long bone Kitten had been waving at him and stuffed it in the capacious pocket of his Garrick. No harm in the great savant confirming it as being of no great age. He hurried down the creaky staircase and out into Creechurch Lane.

Young Malinferno’s talk of bodysnatchers had upset Augustus Bromhead. It had taken the rest of the day, and several glasses of dry sack, before he had settled enough to go back to his studies. He had always done his best work at night, when the sounds of London had dimmed to a tolerable murmur outside his ramshackle house in Bermondsey. He was fond of the unfashionable area south of the river for its antiquarian associations. Somewhere beneath his feet stood the foundations of Bermondsey Abbey, and some said the very fabric of his house incorporated parts of the abbey. He fancied sometimes he could hear the shuffle of monks’ sandals as they made their way to prayer. The sound had always been a comfort to him before. Tonight, however, the extraneous creaks and groans of the house and its environs were making him edgy.

‘Damn you, Joe Malinferno, for your scaremongering. How can I concentrate on my task when all I can think about is sack-’em-up men.’

He leaned over his work table and tipped his eyeglasses at a more acute angle in an attempt to read the poorly printed book lying before him. He opened the cover and scanned the title page anew, his lips silently forming the words printed thereon.

The British History

Translated into the English from the Latin

of Jeffrey of Monmouth

Printed by J. Bowyer at the Rose in Ludgate Street

MDCCXVIII

Augustus licked his lips at the thought of this old book – an edition of a hundred years ago – telling the stories of the kings of Britain.

‘Now, where was I?’

He skipped over the fanciful tale of the island of Albion, inhabited only by giants before Brutus of Troy came to found a nation on its shores. And ignoring the supposed origins of the name of the very city in which he dwelled as referring to a certain Lud who once ruled there, he again dipped into the prophecies of Merlin. He was particularly taken with certain references, which he could quote by heart that he thought referred to the demise of Napoleon.

‘A bridle-bit shall be set in her jaws that shall be forged in the Bay of Armorica… Then shall there be slaughter of the foreigners; then shall the rivers run blood; then shall gush forth the fountains of Armorica.’

He stopped suddenly. His lilting voice had filled the dark chamber in which he sat, but he fancied there had been another sound. Like the creaking of the stairs leading to this room, which was set high in the eaves of the house. He sat in silence, the only sound being that of his own heart thudding in his chest. He essayed a laugh at his fears, but it came out as a nervous squeak. He spoke to himself again to bolster his courage.

‘Hah! I’ll be imagining its old Boney himself come to do for me. Despite his safe imprisonment on St Helena. Just because I can discern his downfall in Merlin’s words, it does not mean he will come to haunt me.’

The ensuing silence convinced Augustus that he was truly imagining things. He turned the pages of Jeffrey’s work and scrutinized the brief sentence that he came back to time and again. Once again it steadfastly refused to give up its secret meaning.

‘The renowned King Arthur himself was wounded deadly, and was borne thence unto the Island of Avalon for the healing of his wounds.’

Behind Augustus’ back the door swung silently open.

Malinferno felt he was in the presence of royalty. Monsieur Jean-Claude Casteix was attired in a sort of antiquated court dress that had gone out of fashion in England with the arrival of Beau Brummell twenty years ago. For a start he wore on his head a powdered wig, no less. His bulky form was clad in a heavily brocaded coat with a long waistcoat under it and satin knee-britches. Below the breeches, his white stockings were suspiciously well filled at the calf, as if faked with padding. His left leg was raised on a small footstool, and he held a silver-topped ebony cane in one hand. The chair he sat rigidly upright in was almost as heavily brocaded as his coat, and he was surrounded by small mementos of his time in Egypt. Malinferno’s gaze was particularly taken by a group of four jars, made of limestone, that sat on the table at Casteix’s elbow. The Frenchman saw Malinferno’s interest.

‘Ah. The canopic jars from the unnamed tomb in the Valley of the Kings.’ Casteix’s speech was still heavily accented, and he gazed fondly at the jars, recalling their discovery, which he had made along with two young engineers, Jollois and de Villiers. ‘They represent the four sons of Horus. Each jar houses parts of the internal organs of a pharaoh.’ He pointed first at the jackal-headed jar. ‘Duamutef contains the stomach. Qebehsenuf, the falcon-headed one, the intestines. Hapi of the baboon head houses the lungs, and-’

Malinferno could no longer resist showing off his own knowledge. ‘And the human-headed jar represents Imseti and contains the liver.’

Casteix tilted his own head, showing evident surprise that the ignorant young Englishman should know so much.

‘I see I must revise my opinion of you, Mister-’

‘Malinferno.’

‘Ah.’ Casteix now understood why he had made the wrong assumption about the youth’s education. ‘Not English, then, but from one of those myriad little states that makes up the Italian peninsula. There is a chance for you after all.’

Malinferno did not choose to correct the French savant. His father had been Italian, it is true, but his mother was English, and he had been educated in England. Still, let the old man think him a fellow foreigner, if it created a bond of sorts between them. Casteix eased the leg that was perched on the footstool and sighed. Malinferno assumed it must trouble him, but good manners prevented him from enquiring of the cause of his malaise. He manoeuvred the savant into reminiscing about his past.

‘The Valley of the Kings, you say. And that was in 1799…?’

‘Yes, two years before the British soldiers came and plundered our finds. The surrender list included several obelisks and statues, sarcophagi and… the Rosetta Stone, of course.’ The old man’s rheumy eyes glazed over once more at the thought of what the French had lost in 1801. ‘If only Napoleon had been there at the time, things might have been different. But we were in the hands of the despicable General Menou. Do you know in what contempt he held us savants? Do you know what he said to the English general when we vowed we would not be separated from our collection?’

Malinferno shook his head.

‘He called us faiseurs de collections – collection makers – as if we were nothing more than gatherers of random odds and ends. He said that, if we chose to travel to England with our collections of birds, butterflies and reptiles, he would not prevent us also being stuffed for the purpose.’

Malinferno suppressed a smile at the outraged general’s comments. He could see that Casteix was scandalized still by Menou’s words, even after almost twenty years. Years that Casteix had spent in exile in England along with the treasures that had found their way to the British Museum.

Casteix reflected on the misfortune that had resulted from him making the larger items in the collection his particular study, for they alone had come to England. The smaller items had in the end been left with the others savants, who to a man had carried them back to France in their personal baggage. Casteix alone had spent bitter years in the land of his enemy, becoming ever more and more irascible. Now, though the hostilities between England and France had ceased, he was still not able to return home. He had found himself something and nothing – a traitor of sorts, and now outside the charmed circle of French Egyptologists. His knowledge of value only to this ill-informed Englishman. Or was he Italian? Somehow it hardly seemed to matter.

Malinferno nervously produced the thigh-bone given to him by Augustus Bromhead, and he held it out for Casteix to examine.

‘Monsieur, can you tell me if you think this bone has any age?’

The savant was at first inclined to dismiss the offered bone with a wave of his imperious hand. Did not this youth know it was impossible to age a bone with any accuracy? But then he decided to take the specimen and delay his observation. Truth to tell, he was an old man whom no one came to consult on scientific matters any more. At least he could coax another visit out of this Malinferno.

‘Hmm. Leave it with me, and I will examine it properly. You can come back tomorrow or the next day, when I have had time to consider. Do you know… where it was exhumed?’

He knew that if the man said Egypt, then he could at least suggest it was old without seeming too ill-informed. But Malinferno was being cagey.

‘I would rather not say just now. Suffice it to say that it has been nowhere near the British Museum. And talking of that institution, I wanted to ask you about the Rosetta Stone…’

His mention of the stone seemed to galvanize the old savant. Suddenly Casteix pushed himself up on his silver-topped cane and hobbled over to the heavy mahogany table in the centre of the room. He brought the ebony cane down with a thwack on the paper that lay on its surface.

‘It was stolen from us, sir. Stolen. But now perhaps some restitution will have to be made.’

There was an edge of triumph in his quavering voice, which confused Malinferno.

‘Why is that, monsieur le professeur?’

A self-satisfied leer distorted the old man’s face.

‘Do you not read your own newspapers, man?’ It seemed for a moment that he had forgotten his assumptions about Malinferno’s nationality, for he grabbed the newspaper from the table and waved it in his guest’s face. Malinferno recognized it as that days’ edition of The Times, which due to his dalliance with the rat-faced Kitten he had so far failed to peruse. He wondered what the Thunderer had reported within its pages that had so excited the old Frenchman. He was not in ignorance for long, as Casteix took delight in informing him. His face turned an unhealthy purple with the emotion of the moment.

‘The Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte has escaped from his prison on St Helena and will soon be threatening these very isles with invasion.’

‘Augustus! Gus… Gus. Are you there?’

Malinferno rushed up the winding staircase to Bromhead’s study, which was sequestered in the loft of the dusty old house. He was winded by the time he got to the top and leaned on the banisters outside the door to regain his breath. The Frenchman’s startling news had shocked him to the core. The last time Napoleon had escaped his island prison on Elba, he had raised an army of 350,000 and terrified Europe for a hundred days. Leaving Casteix’s house and hurrying through the streets of London, Malinferno could see that the rumours of his second escape were causing equal panic. People were scurrying back and forth looking over their shoulders as if Bonaparte were already in pursuit. In one of the new town squares that he crossed, servants were even boarding up their masters’ fashionable windows, as if invasion was imminent. He passed a butcher’s shop inside which chaos reigned as a group of liveried servants, attempting to buy up all the meat on display for their masters, were carrying out a three-way tug of war on a haunch of pork. Fear of blockaded ports, it seemed, was concentrating the minds of the well-to-do.

Malinferno had intended to return to his lodgings, but he knew that Mrs Stanhope would be in a tizzy about Boney’s escape. He did not have the time to waste reassuring her that all would be well. Especially as he was far from certain himself that disaster was not imminent. He wanted to talk to Bromhead, and tax the old man on what it was best to do. Crossing London Bridge, he had the uneasy feeling that someone was dogging his heels, a feeling he had had ever since leaving Casteix’s residence. But every time he turned around to look, he could see no one following him. He put it down to his own mad fears. There were said to be so many sympathizers of Bonaparte’s cause in the capital that Lord Liverpool’s government had spies ferreting them out. Even the Princess of Wales was said to be an admirer. But then she was an exile from England in much the same way as Boney was.

Instead of going to Creechurch Lane, Malinferno had made his way over London Bridge, down Tooley Street and was now at the Court Yard in Bermondsey. The little antiquarian’s house was in a row of tenements squeezed in between St Mary Magdalen Church and the noxious marshes south of the river. Bromhead would no doubt be oblivious to the news that was spreading like wildfire across London, immersed as he was in his studies. Malinferno not only wanted to gauge his reaction, but needed to talk to Augustus about the bag of old bones. He needed more information, if he was to see Casteix again and not appear an ignoramus. On the basis of the savant’s reaction, he also felt less inclined to mock Bromhead’s opinion that the bones were very old. In fact he was now very curious to discover whose bones Bromhead reckoned they were. Hence the headlong rush up the stairs.

His breath back, Malinferno burst into Bromhead’s dark and gloomy study.

‘Gus, have you heard the news…?’

He paused, more than a little perplexed. The room was in utter darkness. There were no lamps burning, and the shutters on the windows must be closed for it to be so Stygian. Yet Bromhead should have been at home. The little dwarf of a man hardly left his house for fear of being mocked by the street urchins who frequented the rundown area. Malinferno often wondered why he continued to live in such a drab part of London, when he knew the antiquarian was of independent means. He could have afforded one of those new-style houses in Bloomsbury Square where the booksellers and cabinetmakers dwelled. But he seemed to prefer his creaky old residence in Grange Walk, and virtually lived on this upper floor surrounded by his collections of books and maps. So where was he?

As Malinferno’s eyes adjusted to the unaccustomed darkness, he could see that the high stool that was Bromhead’s throne was unoccupied. Nor was the man anywhere else in the room. And then he saw out of the corner of his eye that the heavy shadow below one of the high windows had shifted slightly. He gasped involuntarily and turned back towards the door. But before he could reach it, the shadow converged on the same spot and grabbed his outstretched arm. The hand was much more substantial than a shadow had the right to be. And the grip was vice-like. Malinferno felt as faint as one of his well-to-do female clients at the moment of an unrolling. His legs wobbled, and he tottered forward. Suddenly the hand was supporting his slumping body rather than restraining him. And the shadow spoke.

‘Please. I did not mean to startle you. Only your arrival had me scared too, and for a moment I did not know what to do other than hide in the shadows.’

The stranger led Malinferno out on to the landing, where there was more light. Leaning once again on the handrail, Malinferno took a few deep breaths. He also took the time to take a look at the man who stood beside him. He didn’t look much like a murderer. In fact his face was as pale and drawn as Malinferno assumed his was at that moment. He was a tall, thin man with a stoop that suggested he was rather reserved in company, and that he bent over to conceal his height. The top of his head was completely devoid of hair, though it grew long and dark about his ears. His clothes were not of the latest fashion, and when Malinferno gazed furtively at his hands, which twisted nervously around his sturdy cane, he saw they were stained. He guessed the man was a cabinetmaker, and thought it an odd coincidence that he had been thinking of those who lived in Bloomsbury Square only minutes before. The man suddenly thrust out one of the hands Malinferno had been examining.

‘My name, sir, is Thomas Dale. I am a co-er-cabinetmaker.’

‘And mine Joe Malinferno. Scientist.’

Malinferno’s hand was taken in the firm and calloused grip of a man who used his hands for his trade, and then shaken vigorously.

‘I am pleased to make your acquaintance Mr… Malinferno. Once more I beg your forgiveness for my skulking ways.’ Dale laughed nervously. ‘I thought you were poor Bromhead’s murderer come back to cover up the deed.’

‘Bromhead’s murderer? Is he dead, then? How do you know?’

Dale’s face fell, and his hands twitched ever more vigorously.

‘Oh, I don’t know for sure. But the evidence is there to see. Come, I will show you.’

Malinferno followed Dale back into the room, still a little fearful that his companion might be the murderer, seeking to lay a false trail. Dale rushed over to the windows and flung the shutters back. As light poured back into the room, and Malinferno squinted around, uncertain of what he should be looking at, Dale strode over to Bromhead’s work table.

‘Look here. There are signs of a struggle – precious books scattered on the floor in a way Mr Bromhead would never have done himself.’ He bent down to pick one up. ‘This is a rare copy of Geoffrey of Monmouth’s history of the kings of England. He would never have left it so.’

Dale folded back a creased page lovingly and, closing the book, laid it back on the table. Then he pointed at something far more alarming on the edge of the table.

‘And look here. There are bloodstains.’

Malinferno’s stomach lurched, and for once he was glad he had missed his breakfast. He gritted his teeth and looked more closely at where Dale was pointing. It was true. There was a large area of darkened wood, and evidence that something resembling blood had dripped off the edge of the table and on to the floor. He shrugged his shoulders.

‘Perhaps Augustus cut himself and swept the books away from it before it stained them.’

Grimly Thomas Dale shook his head.

‘No. I smell death here, and I know it well, believe me. I have some experience in these matters.’

Malinferno wondered why a cabinetmaker should know the scent of death. But before he could question the man, Dale was striding around the room clearly looking for something that he could not find.

‘And where are the bones?’

Malinferno held his breath for a moment, wondering if Dale meant the same bones he now possessed. Did the man know Bromhead had passed the bones on to him, and were they valuable? He tried to inject his next question with an air of sincerity.

‘Bones? What bones are these?’

Dale stopped his search, and a look of confusion came over his face. Malinferno could see that Dale had made an error in talking so openly, and was now deciding whether to confide in him. Finally he spoke in low tones that suggested he did not want anyone else to hear.

‘Why, King Arthur’s bones, of course.’

A dark figure passed under one of the newfangled street gaslamps outside Augustus Bromhead’s residence and hovered for a moment. His coachman’s overcoat had the collar pulled up so that, along with the wide-brimmed hat he wore, little could be seen of the man’s face. To be certain of his anonymity, he moved a step or two away from the fizzing lamp and looked up to the windows at the top of the house.

It had been several hours since he had followed Malinferno from the Frenchman’s residence to here, and he was unaware if anyone else was inside the house. He had seen some signs of movement at the upper window, but the angle was too steep from where he stood in the street to be sure. Darkness had fallen, and a lamp had been lit in the house, but no further activity had taken place. Nor had Malinferno exited the building. But the secretive stranger was addicted to his task and had a great deal of patience. Malinferno had greatly interested him now that he had revealed a connection with the Frenchman, Casteix. The lurker drew a notebook from the pocket of his voluminous overcoat and began to make notes.

Malinferno was seated on Bromhead’s stool, pondering on the story he had just been told. The tale had been so long that darkness had fallen outside, and Dale had lit one of Bromhead’s lamps. He had even revealed the ancient and battered wooden chest that sat almost hidden under Bromhead’s large table. It was a squarish box, blackened with age and smooth to the touch as though it had been coated with some sort of resin. Crude metal hasps and hinges completed the sense of its being very old. Dale insisted that the bones had been found inside this very chest, though to Joe it looked so fragile that he couldn’t imagine it holding anything at all. Having told his story, he now paced around the floor of the upstairs rooms, while Joe perched himself on the high stool by the table. He queried again the name of the group of men who met in the antiquarian’s chambers.

‘You call yourselves the Avalon Club?’

A deep flush came over Dale’s face, and he looked down at his boots. It sounded foolish now, but the six who had met every month for the last two years had not thought so. They had been in deadly earnest.

‘Yes. There are a number of us, all interested in the truth about King Arthur. About his life and death. If he truly did die, that is. There are some who say he never died but lies hidden near Snowdon. I am not of that school of thought, and neither is Mr Bromhead. We are both of a practical turn of mind, which is why he has been seeking the king’s bones.’

Malinferno wriggled uncomfortably on Augustus’s high seat. The thought of the bag of bones back in his rooms being those of the legendary Arthur made him uneasy. He had simply stuffed them under his bed to keep them from Mrs Stanhope’s prying eyes as if they were no more than animal bones. Had Bromhead really discovered Arthur’s bones? Is that why he had been so anxious for Joe to agree they were of ancient origin? He decided to return to his lodgings as soon as possible to retrieve them. He slid off the stool, carelessly placing his hand to steady himself on the edge of the table. It was only when he felt the slickness of the surface that he remembered Bromhead’s supposed fate. He looked nervously down at his hand but could discern no stain on it. Was the mark on the table really the antiquarian’s life’s blood as Dale surmised?

The leading light of the Avalon Club suddenly grabbed his arm.

‘If there is anything you know or can find out concerning Mr Bromhead’s whereabouts, or of the bones, I and my colleagues will pay you well.’

Malinferno perked up at the mention of money.

‘I may be able to help you, then. For a price. I should only expect my expenses to be covered, mind you. Though they may well be considerable…’

Dale dug in the pocket of his old jacket and came up with a handful of gold coins. He pressed them eagerly into Malinferno’s palm.

‘I am not without means, having established a steady line of business in these uncertain times. Here are a few sovereigns in advance of full payment. I hope you will help us. Never have Arthur’s bones been as needed as they are now.’

Malinferno frowned.

‘Why now?’

‘Why, because of Bonaparte’s invasion. The prophecy is that Arthur is not dead, but in hiding, only waiting to be called back to life when the nation is in dire need. What crisis can be more extreme than now, with our oldest enemy on the loose again?’

The stranger hiding in the dark watched Malinferno leave the house, carefully put his notebook inside the pocket of his big overcoat and followed him. He noticed that his quarry had a hand in the right pocket of his cutaway coat and appeared to be jingling coins. Malinferno looked extremely cheerful and was almost skipping as he hurried along Tooley Street towards London Bridge. For a moment Malinferno hesitated in front of one of the flash houses that his tail knew was a gin-shop and notorious rookery of thieves. The man surmised that if he went in there he would soon be parted from his money. And in not too pleasant a way either. But it seemed that Malinferno had second thoughts, because he shook his head and walked on. Having crossed the bridge over the Thames, Malinferno passed Billingsgate Market, and Custom House, then turned north. His follower assumed then that he was returning to his lodgings. But Malinferno did not turn west, instead carrying on up Aldgate until he came to Petticoat Lane. Though the street drew its name from the clothing trade that had located itself there a century or more ago, the garment referred to provided a connection with other more colourful establishments in the lane.

Malinferno cast a glance over his shoulder before approaching an anonymous black door set at the top of a small flight of steps between two sweatshops. The stranger hopped back into the shadows to make sure that his quarry did not see him. The door was opened immediately in response to Malinferno’s rap on the knocker, and he disappeared inside. The stranger hurried up the lane and clambered on the railings that guarded one side of the door. From a precarious perch on top of the spikes, he could just see into the ground-floor window. The ladies who adorned the front drawing room were ill clad to be receiving gentlemen, but that did not seem to put Malinferno off. On the contrary, he was already pressing a coin into an older lady’s hand. The madam of the bawdy house smiled greedily.

Madam De Trou bit down on to the gold coin. It had been a while since Joe Malinferno had visited her establishment, and last time he had left owing money. Still, the sovereign fully paid off his debt and left enough for some fresh credit.

‘I have a new girl you might enjoy. As I seem to recall, you like the fuller figure.’

Malinferno, despite the pressing need to check on the bag of old bones under his bed, had not been able to resist the pull of Madam De Trou’s bawdy house. The money from Dale was burning a hole in his pocket, and the skinny Kitten had been an altogether unsatisfactory encounter. He suddenly realized the madam had asked him a question.

‘What? Oh, yes, I like them more voluptuous, certainly.’

The madam grinned, revealing a set of blackened teeth. Her latest recruit was a lass from Essex who went by the name of Dolly. She was a bit lippy, but keen enough for work to take on a poor payer like the Professor.

‘Then I shall introduce you to Dolores from Spain. Come with me.’

Just as she led Malinferno from the room, there was a clatter outside the front of the house, followed by a distinct groan. Madam waved her bony hands insouciantly.

‘Pay that no mind. We are always getting peeping Toms trying to peer in the window. My doorman will call the charley, and get him seen off.’

The thought of a local watchman, popularly known as a charley, being called alarmed Malinferno. He did not want an encounter with the law until he had retrieved Bromhead’s bag of bones. And discovered what had happened to the little man. He grinned nervously, wondering if anyone might have followed him to the bawdy house. Then he put it out of his mind. Who would be interested in the seedy goings-on of a mere meddler in all things ancient?

‘Lead on, Madam De Trou.’

The scrawny madam led him upstairs to the bedchambers. So it was that Joe Malinferno came face to face with his fate – his nemesis you might say – in the form of a well-rounded and rudely confident Essex girl called Doll Pocket.

The encounter did not exactly start auspiciously. Having been ushered through a door, which had been abruptly closed behind him, Malinferno found himself in a gloomy room, lit only by a couple of candles. He hoped the dimness of the lights was not to conceal the imperfections in the bawd he had just paid handsomely for. Due to the dark, Malinferno was obliged to grope his way forward towards a big, high bed he had managed to discern across the room. He could just make out a pale figure sprawled on the bed. It was female, but it would be an exaggeration to say she was clothed, as she wore only tight short stays and a thin chemise. Thus, hardly anything of the delicious form was truly covered, and the stays held the figure’s ample breasts high. Malinferno moved keenly towards the dark-haired beauty. And tripped over the rumpled rug, measuring his length on the floor.

‘Ouch!’

The figure on the bed giggled and spoke in an accent that had never approached anywhere nearer the shores of Spain than Wapping Old Steps.

‘Blimey! That must have hurt.’

Malinferno sat up, rubbing his nose that had cushioned his tumble on to the bare wooden floor. He examined his fingers and was glad to see they weren’t covered in gore. He didn’t have a nosebleed, at least, but then he realized his left knee hurt like hell.

‘Hurt? I think my knee is broken.’

The giggle turned into a burst of out-and-out laughter. It was a gusty, uninhibited froth of good humour. A pale, languid hand reached out from the bed.

‘Come here, you big baby. It’s just a knock. It probably feels worse than it is.’

Malinferno staggered to his feet, his dignity now hurting more than his knee, though he did manage to feign a limp to gain some more sympathy. Sitting down on the edge of the bed, he stared at the round, plump breasts again. Until the bawd’s hand firmly took hold of his chin and lifted his gaze to her face. In truth the woman was a pleasant sight, with long black tresses framing pale freckled skin. Malinferno put her age as no more than five-and-twenty. Her eyes were brown and oval, and her nose straight and shapely. He fancied he could see the Spaniard in her looks. Knowing how in awe the average bawd was of a man of letters, he opened with his usual gambit.

‘I am a professor of Egyptology and of ancient bones. But I can see how young and fine your bones are, Dolores…’

His use of her name started another fit of giggles, and she held her well-formed hand to her mouth in an attempt to stifle it.

‘Dolores! Is that what the old madam says my name is now?’

‘Yes, Dolores. It’s a beautiful Spanish name.’

This revelation started another fit of laughter that Malinferno was not displeased to see caused her bare breasts to wobble in a most appealing way. The bawd snorted again.

‘Dolores! Leave it out. Look, my name is Doll… Doll Pocket, and I’m from Essex. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Prof…’

She stuck her hand out as though they were meeting at a genteel soirée. Malinferno was quick to take it.

‘Joe Malinferno. Just call me Joe for now, Doll.’

The girl leaned back on the bed at a rakish angle, her breasts oozing out over the tightness of her short stays.

‘Good, I’m glad that’s settled. And now you know who I really am, would you mind if I took this wig off. It’s bleedin’ ’ot.’

Malinferno was at least glad to see that Doll was not bald under the false black tresses. In fact her golden hair, free of the Spanish fakery, was luxuriant and glowing. She dragged her fingers through it, and shook out the curls.

‘So, Prof, tell me about these old bones.’

Mrs Stanhope was worried. The girl had turned up in the early hours saying she was Mr Malinferno’s sister just up from the country. That she had no accommodation yet, and had to see her brother so she could borrow some money from him. Mrs Stanhope had refrained from saying that if Mr Malinferno had any cash at all, then she wanted it in lieu of rent owing before this slip of a girl had any. The poorly dressed little girl looked as though she needed help, however, and sounded most anxious to see her brother. Malinferno’s landlady doubted if she would get the assistance she needed from him, but in the end she had relented. She had let the little rat-faced girl into Mr M’s drawing room with an injunction not to touch anything. The girl had nodded eagerly, and Mrs Stanhope had left her to it. It was only later that she sat down to thinking with a generous glass of Holland gin in her hand. She could not recall Mr M ever mentioning having a sister. Leaning back in her comfortable chair, she took a sip of her favourite tipple. And then another.

She did not know how long she had been dozing, but suddenly she was awoken by a loud thump from upstairs. It sounded like something or somebody landing heavily on the floor in Mr Malinferno’s rooms. It had to be the girl, as no one else had gone upstairs, of that she was certain. Even though she could see the Holland gin glass was now empty, she was convinced its contents must have been tipped out by accident. She could have hardly closed her eyes for a second or two. No, it could only be the girl. She knew that child was trouble the first time she had set eyes on her. His sister, indeed. She was probably some bawd he owed money to, or even a Thames mudlark or scuffle-hunter on the scrounge. And she was up there right now, helping herself to his goods, which by rights were Mrs Stanhope’s to seize if he failed to pay his rent. She had had her eyes for months on that little green stone shaped like an insect that he called a scare-bob, or something like. That rat-faced thief wasn’t going to help herself to that, oh no. Mrs Stanhope heaved her not inconsiderable bulk out of her comfy chair and waddled over to the stairs.

Despite her weight, she was quickly up the fine curved staircase that spoke of more elegant days, when Mr Stanhope had still been alive and the house full of soirée guests. She pushed open the left-hand door on the first landing that opened on to Malinferno’s living room.

‘Now, look here, you little pilferer, I…’

Mrs Stanhope got no further than that initial imprecation. For before her on the threadbare but once-pretty Persian rug lay the battered remains of Kathleen Hoddy, otherwise known as Kitten. Her life’s blood was seeping darkly into the rug, ruining it for ever. Mrs Stanhope screamed. Whether from stark fear or horror at the ruined rug even she did not herself fathom.

‘So, this Rosie…’

‘Rosetta.’

‘This Rose Etta Stone has three different languages on it.’

Malinferno nodded, already a little exhausted. Doll had spent most of the night dragging out of him all he knew about ancient Egypt and swallowing it whole. He had never come across any man who could take so much in at one sitting, let alone an uneducated female. And the way her eyes had sparkled at his recital, he felt sure she was completely absorbed by the subject.

‘And you reckon we could use it to work out the ancient language of the Egyptians and make a fortune?’

‘Well, now…’ He had to draw the line there. The girl had said ‘we’ as though she was going to help him on the gargantuan task that had already bamboozled several polymaths in both France and England. She might be able to swallow whole a mountain of facts, but as for cracking the most complex problem of the age, well, there was a limit. ‘I don’t think you could…’

Doll simply ignored his reservations. Sitting cross-legged on the bed opposite him, he watched her breasts heaving with the excitement of the moment. Malinferno regretted it was not passion that was causing the flush on her cheeks. At least not the sort of passion he had at first imagined, when he had pressed the golden sovereign into the bawdy-house owner’s hand. In fact he now saw that the light of dawn was filtering through the heavy drapes of the boudoir, and he had done no more than remove his jacket and boots. He leaned towards her buxom figure, his ardour returning.

‘Doll, I wonder if…’

‘And to imagine it was old Bonaparte who found it in the first place. Perhaps he’s coming to nick it back. If he manages to reach dry land this time, that is.’

Malinferno sighed, knowing his chance had gone, and the day was calling him to more earnest tasks. The mention of Bonaparte had reminded him of the need to ensure the safety of the bones that lay under his bed. Not that he believed King Arthur would really come back to life. But perhaps they could form a rallying point, at whose centre would be Professor Joe Malinferno. He slid to the edge of the bed he had shared passionlessly with Doll and began to pull on his boots. Doll too made a move, bouncing eagerly off the feather mattress and grabbing her street clothes.

‘Where we going first, then?’

‘What?’

‘You said you’d show me this Rosie Etta Stone. And I should like to go to Piccadilly to see the Egyptian Hall too. It costs a shilling, but you could pay for the both of us, couldn’t you?’

Malinferno reached for his cutaway coat and began to pull it on, checking that the remaining sovereigns still nestled snugly in the pocket hidden in the coat-tail.

‘Doll, I shall be delighted to escort you to the Egyptian Hall, and even the British Museum. But I have other pressing business to attend to right now.’

‘Good. I’m ready.’

In the time it had taken him to pull his coat on and reach for his Garrick and hat, Doll had slipped into a filmy muslin dress, primped her hair and thrown a hooded black-gauze cloak over her shoulders. She was at his side, reticule and gloves in one hand and sliding her other inside his arm.

‘Where are we going first, Prof?’

‘We are not…’

Malinferno saw the determined look in the girl’s eyes and bowed to the inevitability of this new force of nature. He crammed his hat on his head and led the bawd, now demurely attired as any lady, down the stairs and out into the street.

‘Very well, come with me. There is something I have to collect at my lodgings. But you have to wait outside as Mrs Stanhope does not take kindly to young ladies in her gentlemen’s rooms.’

‘Orl right. What is it you have to pick up?’

‘Well… Arthur’s bones, actually.’

Doll squealed and pinched his arm in excitement.

‘Bones? Which Arthur is that, then? Is he a relative of yours?’

Malinferno grimaced. ‘More of an ancestor, shall we say. On my mother’s side.’

Another of Mrs Stanhope’s lodgers, who resided in the downstairs front, had called the Runners. One of the magistrates from the new office in Worship Street, Raleigh Pauncefoot by name, had turned up with one of his six constables in tow. And now the estimable lady was showing them the body. Pauncefoot, who was a starch-dealer by trade and who had got his position due to the patronage of a rich uncle, reeled back in horror. He held a lace-edged handkerchief to his nose and gagged. When he managed to control his stomach, he urged the constable into the room ahead of him.

‘Mayes. Take a look, and tell me what you see.’

The lugubrious Archie Mayes, who had served under the Duke of Wellington and so was well used to messy bodies, slouched into the room and knelt beside the dead girl. He lifted her head, noting how loose it seemed from the rest of the body.

‘’er throat’s been cut from ear to ear. Whoever did it nearly cut the head off completely. Savage, I say. Look ’ere, Mr P.’

He took great delight in showing the gaping wound to the magistrate, knowing the reaction he would get. Pauncefoot did not disappoint him, turning away and heaving into his lacy white linen. Mrs Stanhope took the pasty-faced magistrate by the shoulders.

‘Come downstairs to my parlour, sir. I fancy I might have a bottle of spirits somewhere, left over after the death of my husband.’

She looked back at the constable and winked, divining he might prefer to be left alone to do his work. When his master had gone, Mayes paced the room silently, taking in anything that might prove of interest. The room was furnished sparsely, and the chairs and single table looked shabby. Clearly they were the property of a man who did not earn a regular wage but relied on his status as a gentleman to get by. Mayes had no time for such wastrels. Nevertheless, the man was tidy and, judging by the pile of books on the one table in the room, an educated man. He lifted the top book from the pile, and opened it to the title page. What he saw made him frown. For a start it was in French, that much he knew, though he could not read the language. But one word stood out among all the other jumble of foreign letters. The name – Bonaparte. Mayes had fought in the recent war against the little corporal and was not inclined even after his defeat to admire Boney as some now did. He had seen too many of his mates die around him. For the man in whose rooms the body had been found to also have a book all about Bonaparte was good cause to be very suspicious.

It was then he spotted through the bow window at the front of the house a man approaching with some half-dressed bawd on his arm. The man stopped and held his hand up to suggest the girl go no further. She for her part seemed not to mind, and stood next to one of those newfangled gaslamps on the street. The man, who was wearing a Garrick overcoat and a rakish hat, hurried up the steps of the very house the constable was in. To Mayes this looked ominously like the murderer bringing his next victim home. He pushed the door to the room closed, leaving a small gap he could peer through. He prayed that the magistrate was still preoccupied by the widow who owned the house. Much as he despised Pauncefoot, he didn’t want the bad business of him having his throat cut while his constable skulked upstairs like a coward.

He need not have worried. The man – presumably this Malinferno character who rented the rooms – was making his way quietly up the stairs. Yet another reason for the constable to suspect him. Why creep up the stairs like a criminal in your own house? He tensed up, ready to leap at the presumed killer, watching as the man reached the head of the staircase. But instead of walking towards the door behind which the constable stood, the man turned the other way and opened the door to the room across the landing. Before Mayes could react, he disappeared inside the room, leaving the door open. Mayes crossed the landing quietly and pushed the door wide open. Malinferno, if it was he, was bending down under the bed that filled the small, dark room. A little embarrassed by what the man might be doing, Mayes coughed to announce his presence. Malinferno jumped up, knocking his hat against the side of the bed. It rolled across the floor and stopped at the feet of the constable.

‘What the… Oh, constable. Is there a problem?’

Malinferno had been shocked by the sudden appearance of the Bow Street Runner. Did he know about Bromhead’s death already? If so, how had he managed to track him down? And had he linked him to the murder? Malinferno thought back to that uneasy feeling he had had since leaving Bermondsey. A feeling that he was being followed. Put together with the incident of the peeping Tom at Madam De Trou’s bawdy house, it added up to a worrying business. But a Runner in his uniform following him would have stuck out like a sore thumb, wouldn’t he? And, furthermore, what did he know, if anything, about King Arthur’s bones languishing under Malinferno’s bed? He decided to brazen it out about Augustus, but keep quiet about the bones until he knew for sure what the Runner knew.

‘The death is a very unfortunate matter, I am sure. Have you found the body yet?’

Mayes’s eyes narrowed, assessing the brass neck of this man, who was practically admitting he did away with the girl.

‘Oh, yes, we’ve found the body, sir. Did you think it was going to be difficult?’

‘Well, where was it, then?’

Malinferno was deeply puzzled. The Runner seemed to think he knew where Bromhead’s body was going to be. Did he suspect him of the murder? He hoped not. Mayes hooked a thumb over his shoulder.

‘Where was it? Where you might have expected it to be, sir. In your drawing room.’

Malinferno gasped, the stuffing knocked out of him. ‘In my…? Show me.’

The constable stood aside and ushered Malinferno across the landing, a superior smirk on his face. He couldn’t see how the gent was going to talk his way out of this one. He followed Malinferno through the door and into the room opposite. Malinferno stood as if transfixed, his mouth moving though no words came out.

‘Bit of a mess, isn’t it, sir?’

‘But this isn’t Augustus. It’s… it’s…’

He almost didn’t recognize her at first because now her face was pale and slack. But in life she had not been all that animated, and despite the grisly wound and the splashes of blood, he could make out the pinched features of the rat-faced girl. But he couldn’t for the life of him reason how she came to be a bloodied corpse in his own drawing room.

‘Augustus, sir? Who’s he?’

The constable’s ominous tones woke Malinferno from his stupor. It seemed as though the man was mentally totting up the possible murders that Malinferno was guilty of perpetrating.

‘Augustus? No, you misunderstand. He’s a friend… who is sort of missing. When you mentioned a death, I thought…’

‘I think it was you who brought up the matter of a death first, sir. You had better explain where you have been all night.’

‘He was with me, constable. And a merry time he gave me too. Though I would prefer it if my husband didn’t get to learn about it.’

The voice was that of a lady, and the tone peremptory. Mayes turned to face the speaker, a blush already growing on his cheeks. It was the woman he had seen in the street returning with Malinferno. He had put her down as a common bawd, and close up her dress wasn’t the most modest, with a hint of exposed bosoms beneath the muslin gown. But that was what he had come to expect of the upper classes now. When the Prince Regent himself chased mistresses all over the place, and the Princess, his wife, carried on with Italians abroad, you had to expect the rest of the nobs to be just as ill behaved. He turned his prudish gaze away from the lady’s heaving bosom, and looked down at his own boots in embarrassment. Doll Pocket cast a glance at the astonished Malinferno and winked raffishly.

‘Now, if you will allow this gentleman to accompany me home, we will be on our way. The streets of London are not a safe place for a lady, you know, even in daylight. Full of rogues, bawds, swindlers and grubbers, if you ask me.’

Mayes was thoroughly cowed, and for once wished Pauncefoot was in evidence. The constable felt awkward when having to deal with someone from a higher station in life than he was. And a female at that too.

‘Yes, madam. I could not agree more. Rogues and itinerants. Though we Runners do our best, you know.’

Doll waved a ladylike hand, dismissing the constable from her consideration.

‘I am sure you do. Now, Mr Malinferno has had a shock and will need to rest. Please arrange to remove the body and have his room cleaned up. Come, Joseph.’

Like a little poodle, Malinferno followed after Doll’s imperious and very petite heels. When they had gone, Mayes hurried downstairs to find Pauncefoot and to arrange for the disposal of the gory mess in Malinferno’s drawing room. Neither Malinferno or Doll Pocket, nor the constable and the magistrate noticed the shadowy figure lurking at the end of Creechurch Lane, waiting for matters to quieten down before he made his move.

‘And where did that accent come from, Miss Pocket? I almost didn’t recognize you.’

Doll giggled and hugged Malinferno’s arm. On escaping the clutches of the Runners they had walked along the Embankment and into the heart of London. They had found themselves in Piccadilly, and Doll had dragged Malinferno to the Egyptian Hall at number 22. They were now standing outside, gazing at the ornate frontage, which was designed in the form of temple pylons with statues representing Isis and Osiris. Doll was not to be distracted by Malinferno’s question though.

‘Get yer ’and into yer pocket, Joe. It’s only a shilling a head.’

Malinferno sighed and paid up. Soon they were lost in the obscurity of the crowds who thronged the aisles of William Bullock’s exhibition. In the natural history section they marvelled at the central panorama of stuffed animals, including an elephant, a rhinoceros, a zebra and two ostriches. A realistic copy of a palm tree with a serpent climbing up it hung its fronds over the creatures. But Doll was interested in other curiosities.

‘They say they have Napoleon’s carriage taken at Waterloo on show, Joe. Can we see it?’

Malinferno allowed himself to be dragged to the room where the carriage stood. Doll was like a child absorbing all the wonderful sights and drinking them in. The Napoleonic relics only served to remind Malinferno of Bromhead’s disappearance, and the bones he had promised to locate for Thomas Dale. If anyone was to call King Arthur to arms to save England from old Boney, then the bones under his bed were needed. He had come within an ace of collecting them before the Runner had interrupted.

‘I learn accents quick. When I was young I wanted to be an actress.’

Malinferno realized Doll was answering his earlier question about her impersonation of a lady.

‘You seem to learn lots of things quickly, Miss Pocket.’

Doll snorted. ‘I don’t know about that. But I was a lady’s maid for six months and got to know how my lady spoke. Then I was sacked when she learned that her husband was paying me too much attention. A girl without work has to learn how to fend for herself quick enough, and that’s the truth.’

It was the first time Malinferno had seen Doll looking anything less than ebullient. He suddenly saw in her hunted expression what a hard life she must have led. He took her arm gently as if she truly was a lady of quality.

‘Come. I think we are both in need of some refreshment. We will find a coffee house.’

Doll grinned mischievously. ‘I know one. It’s called the Russian Coffee House.’

The man lurking in the shadows watched as a canvas sack was carried out of the lodging house in Creechurch Lane. At first he was confused as to what it might be, but then he saw the shape and obvious weight. It had to be a body. Especially as it made a soft thud as the two men carrying the sack tossed it casually into the back of the shabby black carriage that waited in the street. The horse in the shafts tossed its head but stood still, unperturbed by the load it was now going to pull. He eagerly opened his notebook and scribbled in it. One man went back inside and came back with a rolled-up rug that also went into the back of the conveyance. Then the two men mounted the driving seat, the horse was whipped up and the carriage slowly rumbled away with the mortal remains of Kitten in the back.

A large woman, with a mob cap on her head and dressed in an unfashionably heavy white gown, stood for a while at the door of the house. She watched the carriage with a sharp gaze until it had disappeared around the corner into Leadenhall Street. Satisfied that the messy problem had been cleared up, she turned and went back inside. A few minutes later a Bow Street Runner and a fancily dressed gentleman who had to be the magistrate also emerged. The magistrate, a little worse for drink apparently, almost fell down the steps. He was supported by the constable, and they both went off in the same direction as the hearse. The fat old woman closed the street door on the unedifying scene. The man decided he had done well to linger a while at Malinferno’s residence. Besides, his fall off the railings outside the bawdy house had damaged his ankle and severely bruised his head. He had been in no mood to be dashing around London. He now had useful news to relate to his masters, and their goal may be in sight. But now the time had come to hunt Malinferno down. He decided to pick up his trail at the Frenchman’s residence.

Having laid low for a few hours in the Brown Bear public house, Bow Street, better known to the low life of London as the Russian Coffee House, Joe Malinferno and Doll Pocket decided it was safe to return to his house. Joe was a little worse for wear, so Doll, who had imbibed as much but could hold her liquor better, insisted on going up to his bedroom on her own.

‘You’ll only wake the old harridan up, Joe. Whereas I can sneak up without disturbing a floorboard.’

Joe considered her voluptuousness, and would have disagreed about who would make the stairs creak the more. In fact he considered her voluptuousness deeply for so long that by the time he came to object, Doll had left him in the street and had gone. He shrugged his shoulders and leaned against the gaslamp. It was indeed only minutes before he saw Doll scuttling down the front steps of Mrs Stanhope’s house. As she hurried over to him, he was surprised to see that she didn’t have the canvas bag with her.

‘Where are the bones, Doll?’

‘They wasn’t there, was they?’

Doll Pocket’s Essex accent was always more pronounced when she was excited or otherwise disturbed. And now she was very disturbed.

‘Nonsense. Did you look under the bed where I told you to look?’

Doll hissed in annoyance. She was not used to being characterized as being deficient in common sense or guile.

‘Of course I looked under the bed. And I looked inside and behind the chest of drawers, and under the only chair in the room. Gawd, your furnishings are so sparse, Joe, I was ’ardly likely to miss a big bag of bones, was I?’

Malinferno groaned and slid down the gaslamp post until he was sitting on the pavement.

‘It’s all up, then. Thomas Dale and the rest of the Avalon Club will want their money back. Which I have spent mostly on you, may I say. And what are we to do about Bonaparte and his invasion? There’ll be no calling on King Arthur now.’

Doll gave a derisive snort. ‘You don’t believe all that rubbish, do you?’

‘Well, you cannot be sure if he…’

Doll cut into Malinferno’s admonishing with a peculiar, sing-song tone:

‘For when he fell, an elfin queen,

All in secret, and unseen,

O’er the fainting hero threw

Her mantle of ambrosial blue;

And bade her spirits bear him far,

In Merlin’s agate-axled car,

To her green isle’s enamel’d steep,

In the navel of the deep.’

Malinferno was astonished. ‘How do you know that? That’s a poem by Warton, the old Poet Laureate.’

Doll sniffed. ‘Don’t you think a prostitute has any brains, then? I told you I wanted to be an actress. I learned the poem off by heart. Listen, the bit you would like is near the end.’

She began to rattle off the lines again as though they were some child’s rhyme:

‘Thence to Britain shall return,

(If right prophetic rolls I learn)

Borne on Victory’s spreading plume,

His ancient scepter to resume.’

She snorted. ‘What a load of old boll-’

‘Yes, Doll. I think that’s enough, don’t you?’

He was glad she had not pursued her ambitions as an actress. Though she could con an accent and fool a simple policeman, her understanding of the beauty of Warton’s lines was sadly lacking in Malinferno’s opinion. And she somehow made the solemn and prophetic nature of Arthur’s return sound quite foolish. So much so that suddenly he could not hold back, and a great gust of laughter rose up from his belly. This set Doll off, and soon they were both collapsed on the ground hooting at the madness of Thomas Dale’s quest. But despite the hilarity, Malinferno knew he would have to have something to report to Dale. Then it occurred to him. Casteix, the French savant, still had the thigh-bone. He turned to Doll, who was still red-faced from all the hilarity. Solemnly he asked her the question uppermost in his mind.

‘Do you think we can resurrect King Arthur from just his thigh-bone?’

Doll’s face turned purple and crumpled as she tried to hold back another gust of laughter. She failed miserably. When she did manage to control herself, she tried to answer Joe’s question as though it had been asked seriously. ‘Maybe. I suppose he would at least be able to hop it when things get bad.’

It was Joe’s turn to break into fits of laughter. Even so, he still reckoned it was worth retrieving the bone.

It was early evening but quite dark when they reached the home of Monsieur Casteix, and all the high, fashionable windows looking out on to the street showed no lights in them – save for one high on the second floor, where the bedrooms were likely to be located. Undeterred, Malinferno hastily mounted the steps leading to the front door, on which he hammered with his fist. Hearing the echo of his assault in the long hallway behind the door, he was not optimistic of gaining entry. But he felt tomorrow would be too late. A second attack with his fist brought a result. He heard the sound of bolts being drawn back, and eventually the door creaked open and a sour face peered out.

‘The master is abed and may not be disturbed.’

As the door swung closed again, Malinferno inserted his sturdy Hessian boot in the gap.

‘This is a matter of urgency. And a scientific one that Monsieur Casteix will want to know about.’

The sour face screwed up even further. ‘Damn you scientists! And I would wager that it all has something to do with old Boney being on the loose again.’ The servant stared at Malinferno suspiciously. ‘You’re not a Frenchy, are you?’

Malinferno wondered how a servant who despised both scientists and Frenchmen should have come to be working for the embodiment of both in one carcass. He reassured the man of his own antecedents, drawing on his maternal side and choosing not to mention his Paduan father.

‘God bless you, my man. I am an Englishman through and through. But what we seek does have a bearing on the escape of Bonaparte from St Helena. The safety of the realm is in question.’

Malinferno felt a nudge from behind and heard the noise of a stifled giggle from Doll Pocket. He even heard her whispered comment on his stout rendering of a blue-blooded Englishman.

‘Some ham of an actor, you are, Joe.’

The keeper of the door eyed Malinferno with concern.

‘Who’s that behind you?’

‘That, sir, is my dear wife, whom I will not let out of my sight while Boney is on the loose.’

At this the servant finally relented and let Joe and Doll into the silent mausoleum of a house. Noticing a large spray of white arum lilies in a vase on the hall table, Malinferno hoped it was not a presage of the state of the master of the house. He needed Casteix alive. But it would seem he was, for the sourpuss of a servant led them upstairs past the large reception room on the first floor, where Malinferno had first been ushered into Casteix’s presence, and on up to the level of the bedrooms. He stopped outside a grand set of double doors and asked them both to wait. First tapping on the doors gently, he opened the left-hand one and slithered in through the gap like a serpent. A muffled conversation followed, which must have had a positive outcome, because the servant returned the same way and said they could enter.

Once through the grand doors, they found themselves in an ornate bedroom at the centre of which stood an enormous bed with Egyptian motifs picked out in marquetry all over its scroll-shaped head and foot. Almost lost in a snowy expanse of white sheets and pillows lay Casteix, his wan face topped by a tasselled nightcap. He waved a hand at his visitors.

‘Come forward. I cannot see you clearly without my eyeglasses.’

Malinferno and Doll Pocket complied. And Joe noticed the gleam in the Frenchman’s otherwise strained face when he saw Doll’s attributes.

‘Ah, you have brought a companion, Signor Malinferno. And a very pretty one too.’

Doll simpered in a way Malinferno imagined she had perfected at Madam De Trou’s. Old, leering men required an expression of admiration that had to be well simulated in order to feel they got their money’s worth. Casteix was no exception. The Frenchman stirred in his bed, and Malinferno hoped he was not about to get frisky. Hurriedly he explained his mission.

‘I wondered if you had yet come to any conclusions about the thigh-bone I left with you, monsieur. You see I need it returned, and am anxious to confirm its provenance.’

Casteix sighed. ‘Ah, the thigh-bone. That item is the reason why you find me confined to my bed tonight. But let me answer your question first. There is no way of telling the age of the bone. It could be two years old or two thousand. My feeling on handling it was that it was very old, but that is not a very scientific assessment. Yes, very old.’ He shifted under his covers again and slid a hand underneath the crisp sheets. Malinferno was getting alarmed at his behaviour. The Frenchman, however, continued to talk. ‘As for returning it to you, I fear I am rendered unable to do so.’

‘Why is that, sir?’ It was Doll’s turn to question his cryptic replies.

‘Because it has been stolen.’

Malinferno groaned and was about to ask how, when Casteix provided the answer.

‘After you left, another person came to the door. A man well muffled against the inclement English weather but with swarthy features. He reminded me of a short-arsed Breton peasant. My manservant let him into my presence, and this peasant practically demanded to know everything about you, sir. And what our conversation might have been about. I told him it was none of his business, but he overpowered me and… and sawed my leg off, sir.’

Malinferno heard Doll gasp, and he suddenly felt sick at the thought of the horrible attack on Casteix. Was this why the old man was now bedridden? Yet he should have bled to death, or expired with the shock. How had he survived such a gruesome attack? By way of explanation, the man brought his hand back out from under the bedclothes. In it he held two pieces of a well-turned mahogany table leg that had been sawed up. No, not actually a table leg, Malinferno realized, for it was not symmetrical all round. He saw suddenly why yesterday he thought Casteix had an unusually well-shaped calf. The leg was wooden, and his attacker had rendered Casteix incapable of pursuit by sawing it up.

‘I lost my leg to a crocodile in Egypt, you see, many years ago. Mr Chippendale was kind enough to turn me a substitute. Now it is ruined.’

Malinferno, stifling a laugh at the absurdity of it all, managed to ask about Arthur’s thigh-bone.

‘And the bone?’

‘Alas, stolen, Signor Malinferno. Though God knows why. Mummies are ten a penny these days.’

Malinferno and Doll did manage to get out on to the street before once again collapsing with laughter. Though they had no good reason to. The old man had lost his wooden leg, but they had lost the last part of Arthur’s bones.

‘Where to now, Joe?’

Malinferno, stymied, was ready to give up. But Doll was still eager to pursue matters and had a suggestion. ‘We are forgetting one thing. Someone attacked the Frenchy for the bone, and killed Kitten for certain. If we figure out who it was, not only will we bring justice to Kitten, but we will probably find the bones. What other reason had he to kill Kitten other than to get his hands on the bones for himself?’

‘You’re right, Doll. But how are we going to find out who the murderer is? Augustus was no doubt murdered for Arthur’s bones, before the man realized the box was empty and the bones were elsewhere. The man must then have waited to see who came to see Augustus, assuming any visitor might have possession of the bones. I was duly followed to Creechurch Lane, where Kitten was killed for the same reason. The man had traced the bones to my rooms, and Kitten was found to be in the way. But it still doesn’t tell us who did in Augustus in the first place.’

Doll pulled a face. ‘No, no, no. Don’t you see the story as you tell it is full of holes. First, we don’t even know if your friend Bromhead is dead. But leave that to one side. I am sure some bloke did keep tabs on the house, and saw you and Dale arriving and leaving. He had to choose one of you to follow, and perhaps it was you, as you said you were aware of someone. And we know he fell off the railing while trying to get an eyeful of me and my friends in our déshabillé. But does that make him the murderer?’

Malinferno made a mental note to verse Doll in the French language. Her accent was execrable.

‘You mean, was he in any fit state after that to get to my rooms and murder Kitten? But who else knew of the existence of the bones?’

Doll stated the obvious. ‘Only Augustus and the other members of the Avalon Club. But they already had the bones, so they wouldn’t have murdered to get them. Once you had the bones, only Kitten knew about their location. With Augustus dead, the link must be Kitten, even though she didn’t know they was King Arthur’s. So why did she come back, when you had scared her off with talk of the bodysnatchers? She obviously came at a time when you were not going to be there, or her story of being your sister would not have stood up.’

A thought lit up Malinferno’s brain like one of those gaslamps. ‘Tell me, who would be interested in old bones, whosever they were? And who would Kitten have blabbed to about a nice set of bones just ripe for the picking?’

‘You don’t mean…?’

‘Yes. The leader of the Borough Gang of bodysnatchers, Ben Crouch.’

Doll’s face took on a fashionable pallor. ‘Blimey!’

A trip into the Borough was not something an honest citizen would normally contemplate. A rookery of thieves operated out of the area, and the most feared were the resurrectionists – the men who dug up bodies and supplied them to the medical profession for gruesome anatomizing. Most feared of these bodysnatchers was Ben Crouch, who was the leader mainly due to the fact that he drank to excess less frequently than his comrades. But Malinferno knew that if he was to track down the killer of Kitten and Bromhead – who he was still convinced was dead – and perhaps find the lost bones, the Borough rookery would have to be invaded. However, it did not reduce his sense of terror when, a few hours later, he and Doll found themselves in a low dive somewhere off the Borough Road confronted by a pockmarked man with an evil grin.

‘I’ll have to hurry you, pal. It’s a new moon tonight, and I am not in the mood to waste the hours of darkness when I have an order for five large.’

Crouch, for that’s who the pockmarked man was, meant he had a request for five adult bodies to be supplied no doubt to Guy’s Hospital down the road that very night. Flanked as he was by four lieutenants, resembling nothing less than Barbary apes from the hairy nature of their faces to their beady, animalistic eyes, Crouch was a fearful character at the best of times. Now he was in one of his bad moods, as today he had learned that Israel Chapman, a Jew to whom he owed money, had started up in the trade Crouch had thought to have monopolized. Israel had had the nerve to supply a corpse or two to St Bartholomew’s. He had already had a drink or two while planning how to deal with the Jew, when these two innocents had had the nerve to fall into his rookery.

They had been observed asking about Kathleen Hoddy in a voice loud enough to irritate Crouch, who liked to keep his affairs dark. He had got his men to hustle them out of the gin-shop and into the back room Crouch used to plan his forays into the graveyards of London. So they had ended up in the very presence of the man they were asking awkward questions about. Now Crouch was wondering how to deal with them. He reckoned the man was easy meat, and maybe he could add him to the order for five large corpses by way of compensation for the nuisance he had caused. But the woman was another matter. A little on the plump side for Crouch’s tastes, she would nevertheless be more useful alive than dead. He grinned, exposing his blackened teeth.

‘Now, as for your request for information about the girl, I can’t say I’ve ever heard the name. Nor do I know anything about this pile of old bones you are looking for. Though I might be able to help you for a consideration.’

Malinferno looked glum, knowing he had no money to offer the man as a bribe. Of course, if Crouch was the murderer they sought, no amount of coins would get to the truth. It was more likely that he and Doll would end up on some anatomist’s slab themselves. He shivered, wishing they had never come to Borough to try to get some information from the locals. It was clear from the start that Crouch would learn of their prying. He watched in horror as Crouch stepped close up to Doll and leered at her, peering down her cleavage with clear intent in his mind.

‘Of course, you could pay me in kind, if you know what I mean… arrgh.’

His lascivious tones were abruptly cut off, and Malinferno looked on in puzzlement as Crouch’s face turned first bright red, then purple, his eyes bugging out of his head. Doll merely smiled sweetly, and told his nervous lieutenants to stand their ground.

‘Or your boss’s jewels will be crushed to powder.’

Malinferno looked down with curiosity at the front of Crouch’s stained and crumpled pants. Doll had firm hold of a hefty portion of the cloth and, from the look of pain on Crouch’s face, most of the contents too. Malinferno could not believe that such delicate hands, encased in virginal white gloves, could perform such a crushing task. He winced at the thought. Doll, however, was implacable.

‘Mr Crouch, I don’t believe that you never heard of Kitten. She spoke to you about the bones, and you sent her to get them, didn’t you?’

At first Crouch’s eyes shone with defiance, and he shook his head. Then he winced as Doll squeezed harder and lifted him a little by his crotch. His manner changed abruptly. He nodded vigorously. ‘Yes, yes. I overheard the silly bitch talking about finding a bag of bones. I told her she should go back and fetch them for me, or she was in trouble. The next thing I knew she was dead.’

‘Killed by you?’

‘No. Why should I do that? She was on an errand for me.’

Malinferno leaned over Doll’s shoulder and threw in his own question. ‘And my friend, Augustus Bromhead? What of him?’

‘Never heard of him.’

Doll gave a deft twist of her wrist, and Crouch squealed like a pig.

‘Orl right, he was on our shopping list, the little dwarf was. But we heard someone else was after him. Someone you didn’t argue with – a little Welshman from out of town. We left him to it.’

Crouch’s eyes were by now screwed up in pain, and he could manage only a final croak. ‘It’s the truth. Honest.’

Doll relaxed her grip, and a great sigh came from Crouch. He sank to his knees, clutching his bruised tackle. Doll dusted off her pretty gloves and thought to retaliate in some way for Crouch’s comment about Kitten being a silly bitch. It was not for the likes of Crouch to deride a girl who was now dead and due for a pauper’s grave. Even if she was a silly bitch. Malinferno perceived Doll’s intent from the look in her eyes and, grabbing her shoulders, steered her rapidly from the room. He wanted them both to escape before Crouch was sufficiently recovered to think of setting his faithful terriers on them. He didn’t stop pushing her along ahead of him until they were well down Tooley Street and halfway back to Bromhead’s house.

Sitting in the gloomy upstairs room that was Bromhead’s study, Malinferno tried to puzzle out the sequence of events that had brought Bromhead’s and Kitten’s deaths about.

‘Well, it looks like Crouch didn’t do it either.’

He rooted aimlessly through the impedimenta on Augustus’s desk, not sure what would be of relevance. Sturdy modern leather-bound books lay side by side with ancient curled-up scrolls, and various items served as anchors for the latter, preventing the wind that whistled through the ill-fitting windows from carrying such papers away. One of the paperweights was a large skull, and Malinferno quietly set it aside as a possible substitute for Arthur’s missing one. There would have to be some judicious hammering of its surface, as he was sure Augustus had once told him that Arthur’s skull was damaged with a sword blow. But it would be a start. After all, they had the empty box already. He looked across at Doll, who was occupying her time by scanning through a small and battered tome that Malinferno remembered Thomas Dale picking up off the floor at their first meeting. It was Geoffrey of Monmouth’s History of the Kings of Britain, and its position on the floor had been the reason why Dale reckoned the antiquarian had been killed. He said Augustus would not have thrown down such a precious book. The recollection gave him another idea – maybe the last chance of finding the bones.

‘Doll, put the book down. We have to go.’

Before she could ask where they were going, Malinferno was down the stairs and out into the street. Only then, as they hurried along, did Doll manage to get her question out. ‘Where are we going?’

‘To talk to someone who might know who else is interested in Arthur’s bones. Perhaps this Welshman of Crouch’s knew about them from the start. Perhaps it’s him who has been following me.’

Doll clutched Malinferno’s arm and hung on tight. ‘Well, I may be mistaken, but someone is following us right now. No, don’t look around!’ She pinched Malinferno’s arm hard to stop him giving the game away. ‘Ever since we left the Frenchy’s place and in the Borough there’s been a large cove with a big hat on right behind us.’

‘Probably the same one as tried to peer in at the window of Madam De Trou’s before he fell off the railings.’

‘Well, that may explain why this one has a stick, and is walking with a limp.’

After a description like that, Malinferno could not resist it. He turned to look behind him. Suddenly Doll grabbed his face in both hands and planted a kiss full on his mouth. Her lips were wet, and she tasted of strawberries. Malinferno felt quite hot, and his hand sneaked up to Doll’s bosom. She stopped his groping fist with one firm hand.

‘Don’t get the wrong idea, Joe Malinferno,’ she hissed into his ear. ‘That was just to stop you giving the game away. Though I must say it wasn’t all that bad. Now, just look out the corner of your eye. It’s the big man in the black coachman’s coat and hat. You can’t miss him.’

Indeed, Malinferno couldn’t miss him. Not only was their pursuer supporting himself on a heavy wooden stick, but a bandage circumnavigated his skull underneath the hat. It seemed he had more than twisted his ankle when he fell from outside the window of Madam De Trou’s house.

‘Don’t linger on him too long. And give me another of them kisses. I suppose I owe you from last night.’ Malinferno needed no further invitation from Doll Pocket, and he tasted the sweet strawberry lips again. After a while they resumed their stroll, sure that the man was following again.

‘Where are we going, Joe?’

‘Why, to Thomas Dale, of course. We may not yet have the bones, but he may give us some idea of who might be interested in them besides us.’

Bloomsbury Square, once called Southampton Square because the fashionable area had been developed by the earl of that name, was lined with noble residences of the well-to-do. Malinferno guessed that Thomas Dale must have made a lot of money out of cabinetmaking. It boded well for his pockets if they could string him along until they found Arthur’s bones. Or any bones, when it came down to it. The evil thought of substitution had more than once crossed Malinferno’s mind, only for it to be put aside. If Arthur could be resurrected from his bones, then the bones of some utter nobody yanked summarily from his grave by the sack-’em-up men would give the game away. Of course, if Doll Pocket were to be believed, the whole idea was nonsense. But Malinferno, for all his love of science and engineering, could not discard the rags of a belief in the once and future king. After all, his English mother had told him all the tales. And like a foreigner who eagerly adopts the customs and ways of another country, Malinferno had become more English than a full-blooded Englishman. He realized Doll was saying something to him, and came out of his reverie.

‘What did you say, Doll?’

‘Here we are, Joe. Are you all right?’

Malinferno nodded and stared up at the fine brass plate on the grand house before which they stood. He mounted the steps, Doll on his arm. Pulling on the ivory handle of the bell-pull, he hissed in her ear. ‘Put on that posh accent of yours. We don’t want our employer thinking I consort with… with…’

Doll smiled sweetly. ‘With bawds and grubbers?’

Malinferno blushed and was about to apologize when the door was opened and a liveried manservant stood before them.

‘Yes, sir?’

‘Is Mr Dale at home? He is not expecting us, but he will see us. My name is Malinferno.’

The servant sneered, though whether it was because of his name or Doll’s presence on his master’s pristine doorstep, Malinferno was not quite sure. But he did offer some information.

‘Master is not at home.’ He sniffed haughtily. ‘He is still at his place of business.’

‘And where might this place of… business… be?’

The servant named a street in a run-down area on the other side of the Euston Road and abruptly closed the door.

‘Gawd, I didn’t need my posh accent after all,’ muttered Doll.

The place where Dale carried out his business was the very opposite of his residence. At first they couldn’t find the address the snooty manservant had given them. But finally they located it down a narrow alley whence came a strange metallic stench. Three sets of sliding doors gave on to the alley, and one of them was open. Doll peered into the darkness, while Malinferno walked on to the last door behind which there was the sound of activity. She could only just make out the shape of strange cabinets piled high one on the other. Or that is what she thought they were at first, based on knowing Dale had introduced himself to Joe as a cabinetmaker. It was an easy mistake to make, until her eyes adjusted to the dark.

‘Arrrgh, Joe!’

‘What is it?’

Malinferno came scurrying back up the alley, worried by Doll’s cry of alarm. She pointed into the warehouse.

‘Look! It’s coffins. Hundreds of them.’

Malinferno smiled knowingly.

‘So it is. No wonder Dale stumbled on the word “cabinet” when he introduced himself. He was just about to say coffin-maker. A very lucrative business too, judging by the house in Bloomsbury Square.’

Just then, the end door in the alley slid open, revealing an unearthly red glow. A tall, lanky figure emerged from the smoke that billowed out of the open door. Doll clutched Joe’s arm in fear. She hated anything to do with death, and this looked like the very devil himself come to fetch her to his lair. The voice of the apparition, however, was mild and well modulated.

‘Who’s that? Oh, Mr Malinferno, it’s you. Have you any news for me?’

Thomas Dale came over to where Joe and Doll stood, and he took Malinferno by the hand. His face looked a little flushed, but that could be explained by the heat emanating from the end door of the narrow lane. He leaned across and slid the door closed next to where they stood, hiding the wooden coffins from view. He coughed nervously.

‘I like to keep my business private, as it is not to everyone’s taste in good society. However, that is all to change soon.’ He rubbed his hands together with evident pleasure. ‘I have just finished drafting an advertisement that will soon appear in all the best newspapers.’

He pulled a sheet of paper from his pocket with a flourish and gave it to Malinferno. ‘Go on, read it.’

Malinferno did so. ‘The violation of the grave is said to be needful for the instruction of medical pupils, but ask that of one who has interred a mother, husband, child or friend. Shall he devote this object of his affection to such a foul purpose? If not, THE ONLY SAFE COFFIN IS A DALE’S PATENT WROUGHT-IRON ONE. Thomas Dale performs funerals in any part of the kingdom, and those undertakers who have IRON COFFINS must divide the profits with THOMAS DALE.’

Dale positively beamed as Malinferno’s inflection naturally highlighted those words written in bold uppercase letters by Dale’s own hand. He indicated the red, glowing factory behind him.

‘That is what we are embarked on now. And God help the bodysnatcher who encounters a Dale Patent Coffin.’

From behind Malinferno, Doll was heard to gasp. ‘Gawd help us. What is the world come to, when we must lock our nearest and dearest away in a safe when they die?’

Dale nodded sagely. ‘True, miss. But it is a business opportunity not to be passed up. Now, Malinferno, have you found the bones?’

Malinferno put on the most convincing tones he could muster, the sort of confident manner he used when unrolling a mummy for the edification and amusement of some duke or countess. ‘We are getting very close, Mr Dale. What I wanted to ask you was if you knew of anyone beside yourself and Augustus who has shown interest in the bones?’

‘What, recently? Or down through the ages?’

Silently Malinferno groaned, imagining from what Dale was saying that the coffin-maker proposed to expostulate on the whole history of Arthur and his errant bones. But in fact, what he did say proved very interesting.

‘You see, there is a murky tale that very few know or have chosen to record of a family whose duty it has been to protect the legend and the bones of King Arthur. Augustus had passed it off as another of the unsubstantiated myths surrounding the bones. But only a few days before he… disappeared, he asked me if I had heard tell of a family called Merrick in connection with the guardianship of the bones. When I laughed at the stories, he remained strangely quiet. In fact his face looked terribly pale, which I put down to the poor light of those candles he insisted on using. I have thought no more of it until recently. Do you think he was visited by someone from this family?’

Malinferno looked uneasily around him, aware more than ever of the hellish glow that shone through the factory doors and down the narrow alley. The walls seemed to be closing in on them as the sky above darkened. He was thinking of the Welshman mentioned by Crouch, and the man who had been following him for days. He noticed a shadow moving at the far end of the alley, and the click of a stick on the cobblestones. Could it be this Merrick fellow, hoping to hunt down Arthur’s bones by following him? On an impulse he ran full pelt down the alley, bringing a cry of alarm from Thomas Dale. The shadowy figure made to skulk off into the growing gloom, but Malinferno was young and sound in heart and limb. The other man had taken a fall and could only limp away from his pursuer. Seeing that he was not going to escape, he turned to face Malinferno and waved his stick in the air. He swung it like a Turcopole’s scimitar, slashing the air in front of his assailant’s face, and for a few minutes there was stalemate. Then Malinferno stepped inside one particularly ferocious swing and took a blow on his shoulder. It almost numbed his left arm, but he was inside the man’s defence.

‘Got you, you devil.’

He swung a fist at the man’s face and felt the satisfying crunch of a squashing nose. The man fell to ground, moaning and clutching a face that spurted red gore down the front of his capacious overcoat and down on to the cobbles. Malinferno might have thought he had captured a murderer at last, but he was to have his conviction shaken. The man who now lay at his feet was unrepentant and snarled his defiance.

‘You are the devil, sir. And will find yourself in very great trouble soon enough.’

But Malinferno was in no mind to listen, and he grabbed the man’s arm, dragging him along the cobbles towards the astonished Doll and Thomas Dale.

‘Dale. Is your coffin store secure?’

‘Why, yes it is.’ He tapped the heavy, wooden sliding door, and slid it back a little. ‘This is the only way in and out, save for a high window in the back that has bars over it.’

‘Then it will serve as a prison cell for our captive until such time as we can call the Bow Street Runners.’ He pushed the protesting man into the gloomy warehouse and slid the door closed. ‘Besides, he will have plenty of choice for accommodation, provided he is not fearful of sleeping in a coffin.’

Dale produced a bunch of keys from his coat pocket and locked the bulky padlock that hung from the door hasp.

‘There. It is done. Now let us have a little celebratory drink in my office, while I send one of my men for the magistrate. We may even discover where the bones are from this malefactor.’

Then all three left the ‘malefactor’ hammering in vain on the sturdy warehouse door. Unfortunately their celebrations were short-lived. Dale’s workman had been sent to Worship Street to fetch the Runners who had attended at Kitten’s death, and it was not long before Raleigh Pauncefoot and Constable Mayes were on the scene. Triumphantly Malinferno undid the padlock and let them into the coffin warehouse. The prisoner had given up his repeated hammering on the door, and for a long while after Pauncefoot and Mayes entered the store silence continued to reign. All three men eventually emerged, the prisoner leading the way. Malinferno was pleased to note that his nose had swollen to a size that meant it occupied most of the centre of his face, and that it was red and pulpy. Perhaps he would think twice about murdering innocent girls in future. Well, not so innocent in Kitten’s case, but the principle was the same. However, Malinferno’s smile was wiped from his face by the grim look on Pauncefoot’s. Even Mayes looked shifty, as he scuffed his heavy boots on the cobbles.

‘What’s wrong? You have before you the man who so foully murdered Kit… Kathleen Hoddy. And perhaps did for my friend Augustus Bromhead. Ask him if his name is not Merrick.’

The man’s face had a look that resembled thunder. He turned to the magistrate. ‘Tell him, Pauncefoot.’

The magistrate twirled his fashionable ebony cane with the Egyptian motif on the top, then cut Malinferno down with his words. ‘I have seen this man’s papers, and he is not called Merrick.’

‘Then who is he? And why has he been dogging my footsteps for days?’

The man stepped forward and brandished his fist in Malinferno’s face. ‘Sir, I am a government official, charged with winkling out radicals and French sympathizers in this great state of ours. You have shown yourself through your choice of friends to be a most untrustworthy character.’

Though this outburst brought Doll closer to Malinferno’s side, its effect on Thomas Dale was the very opposite. He gasped and took a step back.

‘Is this true, Malinferno? And with Bonaparte at our doorstep too.’

The government spy laughed harshly. ‘Napoleon is as safe as he ever was on St Helena. In fact the last I heard he has stated that he would rather be there than suffer the discomforts of flight. The rumour of his escape was planted in the newspapers by us to winkle out the likes of Monsieur Casteix, and his contacts such as Malinferno here. We wanted to see who would rush to his cause, so that we could deal with them in the future.’

Dale groaned. ‘Then Arthur is not needed after all.’

‘Arthur? Who is he?’ The spy looked puzzled.

‘Oh, it is nothing. It hardly matters any more.’

Raleigh Pauncefoot stepped forward and tapped Malinferno on the chest with the head of his cane. His question, however, was for the spy.

‘What do you wish me to do with this chap, sir? He has after all assaulted you and accused you of the most heinous of crimes.’

‘Though it displeases me greatly to say it, sir, I suggest we forget the matter of my assault. I do have to keep a low profile in my line of business, and a court case will not be conducive to the prosecution of my trade.’

Malinferno knew that the man, whatever his name was, would also be reluctant to reveal to his fellow spies and his employer that he had been bested by a mere dilettante in the field of investigation. He grinned insolently at the man, who added a chilling rider to his statement, however.

‘I will, on the other hand, pass his name on to my superiors as a dangerous radical and Bonaparte sympathizer. Mayes, here, found a book in his rooms dedicated to Napoleon, so he cannot deny it.’

With his revenge on Malinferno complete, the spy turned to leave, his dramatic exit spoiled somewhat by the limp occasioned by his tumble from the railings at Madam De Trou’s. Raleigh Pauncefoot and Constable Mayes followed on his heels, leaving Malinferno to deal with the now-wary Thomas Dale. He laughed unconvincingly.

‘The book he referred to is probably my copy of the work by Baron Denon on the discoveries made in Egypt during Bonaparte’s campaigns. I am an Egyptologist, you know.’

‘Indeed, sir.’ Dale’s brow was clouded, and it looked like he now viewed his erstwhile employee as someone it was dangerous to be associated with. Especially if he was to be promoting his new wrought-iron coffin with the well-to-do. ‘I am sure you are right. A book by a French nobleman, you say? In French? Hmm. Well, now, as the matter I had paid you for appears to be no longer of any urgency, I think we can terminate our relationship forthwith. Please do not bother to return any balance of accounts to me. Accept any money left as a just reward for your efforts.’

Malinferno breathed a sigh of relief. It was just as well Dale did not want any money back, as most of it had gone anyway in expenses incurred in the company of Doll Pocket. They took their leave of Dale, who disappeared back into his fiery furnace, and began retracing their steps to the beginning of this sorry saga – Malinferno’s rooms, the place where the bones had been first lost. As they walked up Leadenhall Street, Malinferno was so deep in thought he began to drag Doll along at an ever-increasing pace. Outside the door to Mrs Stanhope’s, she stopped him.

‘’ere! Pack it in… my slipper’s coming off.’

Holding on to Joe, she bent down to pull on her leather slipper, the back of which had worked off her heel. It was late at night now, and she was glad of the yellowish light cast by the streetlamp to see by. Hopping on one foot, and clutching Joe’s Garrick coat, she suddenly felt him pull away.

‘Look out, or you’ll have me over on my arse.’

‘Doll, look at the upstairs window. What do you see?’

‘What the ’ell you goin’ on about?’

‘Just look.’

She straightened up and looked at where he was pointing. A flickering light shone in one of the upper windows of the house. Malinferno looked scared, their previous encounter with Crouch having drained away all his courage. Doll snorted in disgust, though in truth she was not feeling all that brave herself.

‘There’s someone in your rooms. Well, come on, then. Let’s take a look. It can’t be a ghost – I don’t believe in them.’

What they saw in Malinferno’s rooms challenged her assertion for a while.

But first Malinferno had to sneak Doll past the beady eye and sharp ear of Mrs Stanhope. However, as soon as Malinferno opened the front door, he realized it was to be an easy task. He had not seen that recently his landlady’s days had been full of horror and terrible encounters, what with dead bodies, blood ruining decent rugs, and Bow Street Runners everywhere. She had blanked out these irregular events with a strong dosage of Holland gin. She was deep in the arms of Lethe, and snoring like a pig. The reverberations carried from her quarters to Joe’s and Doll’s ears as they entered cautiously. Malinferno breathed a sigh of relief, and led Doll up the elegant but rather shabby curved staircase towards his rooms. He stopped her at the top of the stairs and peered across the landing. The door to his drawing room was slightly ajar, and a pale light shone through the crack. Someone had lighted one of his oil-lamps. It was a strange thing for a burglar to do. Or a murderer lying in wait.

Doll obviously thought the same. She edged past him and crossed the landing on her slippered feet before Malinferno could stop her. She pushed the door quietly open. Malinferno was at her back, both hands on her shoulders. What he saw made him gasp.

‘It’s Augustus!’

The body of the dwarfish little man lay sprawled in his comfortable armchair by the bow window, his large head lolling unnaturally over the side. Malinferno was wondering how he was going to explain a second body in his rooms when Augustus gave a great sigh and shifted in the chair.

‘Augustus, damn you. You’re alive.’

Malinferno’s loud cry of relief woke the slumbering Bromhead, who started up and flung himself towards the window. Then he saw the person who had awakened him and stopped his headlong flight. He held his hand to his heart.

‘Oh, it’s only you, Giuseppe. Thank God for that.’

‘Augustus, where have you been? We thought you were dead.’

‘Dead? I would have been, if I had stayed in my house much longer. As to where I have been, I have been walking the streets of London and sleeping under archways with the beggars.’

For the first time Malinferno noticed how shabby Bromhead’s clothes were. His cutaway coat was torn at the lapel, and mud stained its tails. His breeches were wrinkled and grubby, his stockings torn. Malinferno turned to Doll and slipped the remaining money from Dale’s fee into her hand.

‘Go down to Leadenhall Market. There are chophouses there open all night for the meat porters. Get poor Gus some food and a jug of ale if you can manage it. I don’t think he has eaten for a while.’

Doll nodded and wound her cloak around her bosom. It was getting quite cold outside. When she had gone, Malinferno guided the antiquarian to the armchair again. Bromhead fell back into it with a sigh.

‘Why did you think me dead?’

‘Oh, it was Thomas Dale who thought that at first, because of the red stains on your table.’

‘You have spoken to Dale, then. Red stains? Oh, I spilled some ink when I… Perhaps I should tell you why I have been in hiding since you last saw me.’

‘Yes, perhaps you should. But let us wait until Doll returns, or I will not hear the end of it. Anyway, you should eat first, and tell us your tale afterwards.’

Bromhead’s hunger was manifest in the way he demolished the potatoes, chop and gravy that Doll brought. Along with most of the jug of ale. Malinferno was itching to know what had happened to cause his friend to run and hide. But he held back his curiosity until the little man’s belly was full. Then they all sat in the circle of light cast by the oil-lamp, and Bromhead told a story concerning strange noises in the night and dark men standing under flickering streetlamps.

‘At first I thought it was the Borough Gang come to murder me and provide my body for some medical student’s autopsy exercise. I am told they look out for men of – shall we say? – unusual stature.’

The antiquarian squared his shoulders in the chair where he sat, as if trying to stretch his body to a normal height. But there was nothing he could do about his large dome of a head which, set on his small frame, had earned him the nickname of Tadpole from the street urchins. Finally he shrugged the selfsame shoulders and continued his tale.

‘Such a thought was bad enough. But when the lurker finally confronted me, it turned out I was as far away from the truth as I could be. It was in the evening after I entrusted Arthur’s bones to you, Giuseppe. And lucky that I did so, because that is what the man wanted, and he was prepared to kill to get them. He slid into my chamber out of the darkness like some dark-skinned, slippery eel out of the Fleet. The first I knew was the vice-like grip I felt on my neck. I was terrified, I can tell you, and I waved my arms about trying to escape. That must have been when I knocked the inkwell over and sent my precious books flying. But I could not escape his grip, and he hissed a warning into my ear. “Keep still, you little worm, or I will snap your neck right now,” he said. I stopped my struggle, and he released me. He demanded to know where the bones were, and I prevaricated – until he drew a sharp knife from under his coachman’s coat. I’m afraid I told him you had them, Giuseppe. But even then I kept my presence of mind. I pointed at the old wooden box in the corner, which I had dug up at Trevenna. “The coffin is there,” I cried. And when he bent over to lift the lid, I ran for my life. And have been running until this very night, when I could stand the cold and degradation no more. So I came in secret to my old friend’s door.’

Malinferno leaned forward into the light and patted the old man’s hand.

‘I am glad you did, Augustus. But if only you had told me where you found the bones, I might have known earlier what this was all about. Trevenna meant nothing to me.’

Augustus gurgled with delight.

‘I had to put you off the track. If I had told you straight away the church was half a mile from Tintagel Castle, you would have guessed the connection immediately.’

Malinferno smiled ruefully.

‘And I might not have got into so much trouble. Never mind. We shall have a resolution to your dilemma very soon.’

Malinferno had a good reason to draw the evening out, as he was now expecting a visitor. That is, if his guesswork was correct. If it wasn’t, the bones would be lost and Kitten’s murderer would remain undiscovered. Though Bromhead was unaware of his friend’s intense look, deep in his cups as he was, Malinferno noticed that Doll was eyeing him closely.

‘Something on your mind, Miss Pocket?’

Doll narrowed her eyes and frowned. ‘It’s not me, Signor Malinferno, who looks like they got something to hide. Want to tell us what you’re up to?’

Malinferno laughed. ‘You are very perspicacious, Doll. I am hoping matters will resolve themselves pretty soon, actually. However, it will involve a little play-acting from you. But seeing as how you told me recently that such a profession was an aspiration of yours, you will not mind, I am sure.’

‘I don’t know who this Percy Caysius feller is, but tell me what you want, and I will oblige.’

‘I am expecting a caller, but he will not come if you are still here. I suggest that, now Augustus has finished his meal and told us his story, you appear to take the remains of the repast back to the chophouse. Leaving me on my own.’

Bromhead belched gently and asked the obvious question. ‘What of me, Giuseppe? Do I leave too?’

Malinferno put a restraining arm on Bromhead’s. ‘That will not be necessary, Gus. Our caller does not know you are here, I think. And I could do with your assistance when he arrives. All I suggest is that you place yourself behind the door here when I turn out this lamp, and retire to my bedroom.’

Bromhead shuddered at the possibility of a physical encounter, but he nodded his head in acquiescence.

‘And what am I to do, Joe?’ This retort was from Doll. ‘Run away like some weak female?’

‘You can run, Doll Pocket, but I suggest that when you have returned the dirty crockery, you run in the direction of the nearest magistrate, and bring him here forthwith.’

Doll gave him an angry look full of storm clouds and thunder. But she collected the empty plates and ale-jug and made her way down the stairs. When Malinferno heard the front door close, he took the oil-lamp and turned the wick low. Crossing the landing, he went into his bedroom, making sure that the lamp stood in the window there. Then he turned the lamp out. Anyone observing from the street would assume that Malinferno had retired for the night and that he was now alone.

Almost half an hour passed, and Malinferno began to doubt his own convictions. After the fiasco of incarcerating the government spy and then discovering he was not the man seeking the bones, he had been in a quandary. Then he remembered something Doll had said earlier on. When he tried to put the evidence together, she had said his story was full of holes. In fact it had been Doll who had said there was no proof Augustus was dead. She had been correct about that. It had set him to finding other holes, and he had seen it as they had been walking back to Creechurch Lane. Casteix had said it first. The man who sawed his leg in half had resembled a Breton peasant. Swarthy, he had said, and no doubt stocky. Dale had suggested the family interested in guarding Arthur’s bones was Welsh, and Crouch had said the same. Bromhead had virtually confirmed that with his reference to a dark-skinned eel of a man. That he had not exactly said he was short was not surprising, taking into account Bromhead’s own lack of stature. The only conclusion Malinferno could come to was that two men had been following him all this time. And the one who had killed Kitten was still on the streets of London searching for the bones.

Suddenly he heard a scuffling sound on the stairs, and the slightest of creaks. He knew exactly where the man now mounting the stairs had stepped. He had trodden there himself once when he had been sneaking a willing young girl to his room. It had alerted Mrs Stanhope, and he had never made the same mistake again. The intruder, unfamiliar with the stairs, had stepped on the middle step on the half-landing. Malinferno poked his nose out of his door, but could not see the pale face of Augustus staring back at him across the landing. He was afraid the old man had perhaps fallen asleep and that he was on his own. His heart raced, and he tucked himself in behind his bedroom door. After a few more seconds the door began to swing silently open.

How he then came to be disposing of a dead body was something of a mystery to Joe Malinferno. When he sat down with Augustus and Doll later, he reasoned that the man, who was clearly Merrick, had been a step ahead of him. He had felt the prick of a blade through the crack in the door on the side where the hinges were. Merrick had guessed he was hiding behind the door somehow, and attacked. He had stumbled forward, blood pulsing from the wound in his back. A wound that Doll had now expertly bound with a torn section of her muslin dress, so that she now revealed a satisfying expanse of white thigh to Malinferno’s hungry gaze. Matters had from the point of being stabbed got quite confused for him. When Merrick fell on him, he had feared for his life. But a saviour had arrived in the form of Doll Pocket. It seemed she had spurned the idea of calling out the Runners on the grounds that they would not take too kindly to the requests of a common bawd. Besides, Malinferno hadn’t expected them to come. He had only asked it of her to get her out of danger. But Doll had other ideas than being typecast as the weak and fainting female.

‘I left the dirty dishes at the door of St Mary Axe church and sneaked back,’ she explained. ‘The man wasn’t all that hard to spot, once you knew where he was hiding. I’ve hung around in plenty of doorways myself, making sure the charleys or the Runners don’t notice me. When he entered the house, I followed him. And just as well for you it was, Joe Malinferno. For I pulled him off your back just in time.’

The man in question nodded sagely and glanced across at where Augustus Bromhead sat. The little antiquarian was ashen-faced and deep in thought, and Malinferno was unsure how to break into his reverie. It was Doll who spoke up boldly.

‘And we must both thank Gus for his bravery. That sly little bastard Merrick was as slippery as Gus said, and he would have done for us both if he hadn’t come in when he did.’

Bromhead gave a despairing cry. ‘But I killed him.’

Doll walked swiftly over to him and buried his head in her ample bosom. Malinferno looked on with envy. ‘No. It was an accident. You tried to wrest the knife off him, and his arm got twisted around. He fell on his own blade, if you ask me.’

Bromhead’s sobs subsided, but he kept his head between Doll’s breasts longer than Joe thought necessary.

The disposal of the body had been relatively easy. It had merely required calling on the services of Ben Crouch, who with a free ‘large one’ on offer ended up bearing them no more ill will. He even made light of Doll’s assault on his jewels.

‘I do like a good tussle before the main event. It perks up the spirit, don’t it?’

But he was quick to exit with his body, when Doll offered to reacquaint him with the force of her grip. Merrick, the killer of Kitten, was soon fated to decorate the autopsy slab at St Bartholomew’s, where he would be drawn and quartered in the most modern of ways. Justice of a sharp and rough kind, but justice all the same.

‘But we still don’t know what happened to Arthur’s bones apart from this one,’ moaned Bromhead, swinging the thigh-bone they had retrieved from Merrick’s coat pocket. ‘If Merrick didn’t have them, then where have they gone?’

It was Mrs Stanhope who solved the mystery, by entering the room at that very moment with a familiar canvas sack over her shoulder.

‘Mr M, if you don’t want these old bones I hid away for you before the Runners came round, I will throw them on the local tip.’

Malinferno strode across the room and gave his startled landlady a long and lingering kiss.

The final act of the three conspirators was to agree to hide King Arthur’s bones away securely so that a future generation may call on them in a time of real need. It was Bromhead who had voiced all their fears about the bones.

‘They have been nothing but a curse since I uncovered them. We should put them somewhere secure where they will not be found for a very long time.’

They had called on the services of Thomas Dale, who provided them with a newfangled wrought-iron coffin, inside of which was placed the bones, along with the battered and scarred remains of the ancient wooden chest that had once housed them. From Bromhead’s house at dead of night, they had solemnly processed to the rundown building across the yard that was ironically called Pope’s Mansion. The cellars beneath it were the original undercroft area of medieval Bermondsey Abbey, and it seemed a fitting place for Arthur to rest a while longer. With the aid of four of Dale’s men, sworn to secrecy with a plentiful supply of ale, they secreted the heavy coffin behind an old, crumbling wall, which they patched up after them. Malinferno silently prayed it would be a considerable time before the bones saw the light of day again.