Why Mermaids Sing

Chapter 25

WEDNESDAY, 18 SEPTEMBER 1811

Early the next morning, Sir Henry Lovejoy was just leaving his bed when one of his constables banged at his door.

“What is it, Bernard?” Henry asked when the constable came stomping in, bringing with him the cold damp of the morning.

“You know that case you was telling us about yesterday? The one you think might be linked to some poem about mermaids and mandrake roots?”

Henry felt a twist of anxiety deep within his being. “Yes.”

Bernard ran a hand across his beard-roughened face. “I think there’s somethin’ down near the docks you need to see.”

In the dim light of dawn, the forest of masts out on the river were mere ghostly things without form or function. Sir Henry Lovejoy thrust his hands into the pockets of his greatcoat and suppressed a shiver. The mist coming off the water swirled around him, cold and damp and smelling strongly of hemp and tar and dead fish.

“Oye. You there.” The bulky form of a constable appeared out of the gloom. “T’ain’t nobody allowed any farther ’ere. Orders of Bow Street.”

“Sir Henry Lovejoy, Queen Square,” snapped Henry. He brushed past the constable, his footsteps echoing on the wooden planking of the docks.

He could see a knot of men clustered near an old warehouse up ahead. Henry paused, aware of a hollowness yawning deep inside and trying to swallow the thickness that had come to his throat. The sight of violent death was never easy for Henry. He had to steel himself for the sight of yet another human being butchered like a side of beef.

At Henry’s approach, one of the men near the warehouse straightened and came toward him. A fleshy man with protruding watery gray eyes and loose wet lips, Sir James Read was one of Bow Street’s three serving magistrates, a small-minded man Henry knew to be both ambitious and fiercely jealous of his dignity.

“Sir Henry,” said the magistrate with a show of bluff good humor, “no need for you to have braved the cold on such a foul morning. This one had the courtesy to get himself offed well away from Queen Square.”

The Thames-side docks in the city fell under the authority of Bow Street, and Sir James’s words were carefully chosen to let Henry know his presence here was both unnecessary and unwelcome. Henry looked beyond the magistrate, to the shadows of the warehouse. “I heard the victim has a mandrake root stuffed in his mouth.”

Sir James’s show of bluff good humor slipped away. “Well, yes. But what has that to say to anything?”

“I believe this gentleman’s death may be linked to the recent murders of Mr. Barclay Carmichael and young Dominic Stanton.”

“You mean the Butcher of the West End?” Sir James gave a harsh laugh. “Hardly. No one’s been carving up this gentleman.”

Henry knew a moment’s confusion. “The body wasn’t mutilated?”

“No. Just a neat knife wound through the side…and that bloody mandrake root in his mouth, of course.”

Henry let his gaze drift around the docks. In the growing light, he could now make out the dark hulls of the ships lying at anchor out on the river. He had to force himself to bring his gaze back to the sprawled figure beside the warehouse.

The man lay on his back, one leg buckled awkwardly to the side, as if he’d simply been left where he had collapsed. No butchering of the body. No careful display of the remains. The cause of death was different, as well: a knife wound to the side rather than a quick slitting of the throat from behind. Yet the presence of the mandrake root in the man’s mouth surely tied this man’s death to the murders of Thornton, Carmichael, and Stanton. So why the differences?

Henry’s footsteps echoed dully as he approached the body. No one had covered the man up. He lay with his eyes staring vacantly, the features of his face relaxed in death.

He was young, as Henry had known he would be—probably somewhere in his early twenties. A handsome young man, with light brown hair and even features and the sun-darkened skin of a man who lives his life on the sea. He wore the uniform of a lieutenant in His Majesty’s Navy, the brass of his buttons and buckles neatly polished.

“He’s a naval lieutenant?” said Henry.

“That’s right. Lieutenant Adrian Bellamy, from the HMS Cornwall. A far cry from the likes of your banker’s son and future peer.”

It was said with a faint sneer that Henry ignored. “How long has the Cornwall been in port?”

“Put in Monday night, I believe. They were meant to sail again at the end of the week.”

Lovejoy frowned. It had been less than a week since Mr. Stanton’s murder, which meant that after leaving a lapse of two or more months between his other killings, their murderer had struck again within days. Why?

“You’ve spoken to the captain of the Cornwall?” Henry asked.

“Of course. According to the captain, the lad came ashore last night after receiving a message.”

“From whom?”

“From his family, it would seem. At least, he told the captain he was going to visit them in Greenwich.” Sir James stared down at the body at their feet. For a moment the cloak of bluff insensitivity slipped, and a muscle ticked along the man’s fleshy jawline. “He didn’t make it far, did he?”

“No,” said Henry. “No, he didn’t.”