The Thames River Murders Read online

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Author's Note

  Books in the Captain Lacey Series on Kindle

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Chapter One

  June, 1818

  The letter, neatly folded at my plate, looked innocuous enough, but I had a sense of disquiet about it.

  The letter had come through the post, my name and direction carefully printed by hand. Captain Gabriel Lacey, South Audley Street, Mayfair.

  An auspicious address, though not my original. I’d married it. Six months ago, I had been living in straitened circumstances in rooms above a Covent Garden bakeshop. At New Year’s I had married Donata Breckenridge, a young widow, and moved into tasteful splendor.

  The previous master of this house, Lord Breckenridge, had been a brute of a man, and a boor. Did I feel a sense of triumph that I had awakened with the beautiful Donata half an hour ago, while the foul Breckenridge was dead?

  I did, I am very much afraid.

  I breakfasted alone. Donata slept on upstairs, weary from her social engagements of the previous night. Her small son from her first marriage, Peter—the current Viscount Breckenridge—took his breakfast in the nursery, and my daughter had not yet woken. In the family, Peter and I were the early risers.

  I eyed the letter for some time, filled with a sense of foreboding. I’d received two rather nasty missives in the last weeks, unsigned, purporting me to be an imposter—in fact not the Gabriel Lacey who had left my Norfolk country estate more than twenty years ago with a regiment posted to India. I was a blackguard who’d come to cheat Lady Breckenridge out of her money and leave her destitute. If I did not heed the writer’s warning, leave a substantial sum for him in a yet-to-be determined meeting place, and disappear again, he would denounce me.

  I, of course, showed these letters to my wife at once. Donata had great fun with them, and was busy trying to decipher the handwriting. A jealous suitor, she proclaimed, though she had no idea which one. Could be dozens, she’d said, which unnerved me a bit, though I should not have been surprised. Donata had been quite a diamond of the first water in her Season.

  I finished my ham and slice of bread, toasted to near blackness as I liked it, and took a long draught of coffee before I lifted the letter and broke the seal with my knife.

  I make so bold to write to you, Captain, to beg a favor. I have a problem I have been pondering for some time, and would like another opinion. Sir Montague Harris, magistrate at Whitechapel, suggested I put the affair before you and see what you make of it. You would, unfortunately, have to travel to Wapping, but there is no way around that. If you would prefer to discuss the matter first, I am happy to meet you in a place more convenient to explain.

  Yours sincerely,

  Peter Thompson

  Thames River Police

  “Barnstable,” I said to the butler, who hovered nearby, waiting to serve me. “Please send for a hackney. I am off to Wapping this morning.”

  ***

  Barnstable, who was a stickler for appearances, wanted to rouse the coachman to have me driven across London in the Breckenridge landau. I forestalled him, seeing no reason to wake the man, Hagen, who’d been out until four driving my wife from place to place. Nor did I wish to roll into the seamier parts of London in a luxurious coach with the Breckenridge crest on its side.

  A hackney would do. Barnstable made sure one halted at our front door, a plain black coach, shining with rain. I asked Barnstable to convey to Donata where I’d gone, in case she woke before my return, and I was off.

  The coach had only reached the end of South Audley Street when the door was flung open again. The vehicle listed sharply as a large man climbed inside, slammed the door, and fell onto the seat opposite me. He gave me a nod.

  “Mornin’, Captain.”

  “Mr. Brewster.” My hand relaxed on my walking stick, which had a stout sword inside it. “I would have hoped Mr. Denis had ceased sending a minder after me.”

  Brewster folded his thick hands across his belly and returned my look blandly. “Mr. Denis pays me to follow you. When you dart out of your house at nine in the morning and leap into a hackney, I can’t but help wondering where you’re off to. If I didn’t find out, Mr. Denis would not be pleased.”

  James Denis was not forgiving of those who disobeyed his orders. I had to concede Brewster’s dilemma.

  “I am going to visit a man of the River Police,” I said. “Perhaps not an errand you’d wish to take.”

  Brewster made a slight shrug. “I go where you go, Captain.”

  Brewster was a criminal, a thief and possibly a murderer. James Denis, an even greater criminal, ever plotted to have me under his thumb. The association between us, however, had become much more complicated than that. My ideas about Denis had changed, though I had no illusions about exactly what sort of man he was.

  The journey across London was tedious, its streets clogged with vehicles, animals, and humanity living as hard as they could under the cloud of smoke twined with mist from the river.

  We moved along the Strand, then Cheapside, then through the heart of the City’s financial prowess at Cornhill and Leadenhall. We turned southward around Tower Hill and so to the docklands.

  Wapping was in the midst of these, with tall ships lining the wharves, the forest of masts and yardarms stretching down the river. The bare rigging moved as the ships rocked, the vessels straining to be released to the freedom of the sea.

  I’d sailed plenty myself in such ships, my longest voyage being to India when I’d been young and in the army, to fight in Mysore. I’d dragged my delicate first wife across the ocean with me. That she would not have the eagerness to see an exotic part of the world at my side had never occurred to me.

  A similar ship had taken me to Norway, then to France, and finally to Iberia, to fight battle after battle in the unceasing wars. Since I’d returned to England in 1814, an injury denying me the glory of Waterloo, I’d been land-bound. The sight of the tall ships stirred in me a longing to explore parts unknown.

  For now, I turned my back on the ships and descended from the coach in front of the narrow house that was an office for the Thames River Police.

  Formed by merchants and ship owners tired of cargo being stolen from the holds of moored ships, the Thames River Police patrolled the river, watch over the ships and docks, and apprehend thieves. While the river was their jurisdiction, they did sometimes help the magistrates and Runners throughout London with investigations.

  I entered the house to find a small room filled with desks, maps of the river, and pigeonholes crammed with scraps of paper. A wiry young man scampered into the back when I removed my hat and gave my name.

  Brewster did not enter the house behind me. He r
emained outside next to the hackney, leaning on its wheel and narrowly watching anyone who passed. He had no intention of letting the hired driver leave, he’d said, in case I needed a quick departure, but neither had he any intention of voluntarily walking into a house full of patrollers.

  Peter Thompson came through a door in the rear of the room and held out his hand to me. He was a tall, bony man with lively eyes in a thin face, wearing a frock coat and breeches that hung loosely on his limbs. So he’d looked every time I’d seen him. He was only minus his frayed gloves this morning, clasping my hand with a bare, callused one.

  I’d been in the office to which Thompson ushered me before, long ago, when I’d investigated the affair of the Glass House. I’d met Thompson not long before that, when his men had pulled the body of a young woman out of the water and asked my help identifying it.

  Thompson’s room hadn’t changed. He had a desk and chair for himself, a stool for any visitor. I remained standing, remembering that the stool was less comfortable than leaning on my walking stick.

  “Thank you for coming, Captain.” Thompson also remained standing, a man who disliked to be still. “I hesitated to write to you, but this has been weighing on my mind for some time. Puzzles intrigue you, so I decided to ask your opinion.”

  While I’d gained something of a reputation for ferreting out things that were none of my business, I had to wonder why a man of Thompson’s repute would ask for my help. He had plenty of young, sturdy men at his disposal to assist him in investigations.

  “It is an old mystery, I’m afraid,” Thompson said. “I must not lie to you—my superiors have told me to let it be. If no one has come forward in all this time, we are to make a mark through it and continue with more pressing matters. But I dislike leaving a thing unsolved.”

  “And you recalled that neither did I,” I supplied.

  The corners of Thompson’s lips twitched. “You have a tenacity I admire, Captain. I believe you are the exact man for this little problem.”

  “You’ve piqued my interest,” I said. “As you knew you would with your cryptic letter. Now I cannot leave here without knowing the whole of it.”

  “For that, I must show you.” Thompson took up his hat and gestured for me to follow him out of the office. He led me from the house entirely, and around a narrow path between buildings to a yard in the back.

  Brewster was not having me walk through tiny, dim passages with only a man from the River Police to protect me. He fell into step behind me, his stride even.

  Thompson opened the door to another gray stone house, its bricks crumbling from years of exposure to damp, mist, and rain. A light rain was falling now, fog thickening until we stood in a ghostly atmosphere, the air gray-white around us.

  Inside the door was a set of steps leading into a cellar. Thompson took us down these into clinging chill.

  Candles burned in the darkness to light our way. Crates and boxes were piled in the room below, in front of open cupboards of filled pigeonholes. In spite of the cold, it was somewhat dry down here, no windows to let in the outside air.

  Two young men stood in front of tall desks, making notes in ledgers. When they saw Thompson, they stood upright, at attention.

  “Take some air, lads,” Thompson told them. “Stretch your legs.”

  The two patrollers looked grateful and wasted no time hurrying up the stairs.

  “They catalog things here,” Thompson said, waving his hand at the ledgers. “Things we find in the river, goods seized from smugglers, evidence in cases, that sort of thing.”

  I glanced at Brewster. I wasn’t certain that information about goods taken from smugglers was a wise thing to pass on to a known thief, but Brewster did not comment or even look interested.

  “They catalog things more gruesome as well,” Thompson said. He moved to a heavy, bolted door, and when he opened it, my breath fogged in the air that came out.

  We looked into a chamber with a very low stone ceiling and thick walls, as though it had been carved into the banks of the river. The cold was enough to make my throat raw.

  Shelves held wooden and metal crates and boxes, though not as many as in the outer room. Thompson lifted a crate from only a step inside the door and brought it out.

  He set down the crate to close and lock the door again then carried it to a long table at the back of the main room. Brewster helped him lift the crate to this table, then Thompson used a long piece of metal to pry off its top. Thompson reached inside, lifting out a rolled piece of canvas.

  “Will you move the crate for me, sir?” Thompson asked Brewster. Brewster lifted it down, clearing the table, now as intrigued as I was.

  Thompson laid the canvas bundle on the table and carefully unrolled it.

  “’Struth,” Brewster breathed.

  On the dark, stained canvas was a collection of bones. Human bones, clean and preserved.

  Thompson started laying them out, one by one, until we gazed down at a near-perfect skeleton of a human being lying before us. The skull, which was mostly intact, bore a large gouge from the top of the head down to the right eye socket.

  Someone had smashed a cudgel into this poor creature long ago and left him to die.

  “Here we are, Captain,” Thompson said. “I want you to help me discover who she is and what villain out there killed her.”

  Chapter Two

  “Her,” I repeated.

  “That’s what the coroner said at the time.” Thompson straightened one of the hand bones, as though a whole, living woman lay there. “She was fished out of the river ten years ago, caught up on pilings, but no one ever turned up looking for her, and we were never able to find out who she was. We put out a report when we found her, but no one came forward. It’s weighed on me for a long time. And then the other day, I thought—this is something that the captain might be interested in.”

  Thompson read me well. I was unfortunately drawn to intrigue, especially when it involved a poor individual who couldn’t fight back, or who had lost against a stronger opponent.

  On the other hand, Thompson was optimistic about my abilities. A woman who’d been killed long ago, who was an unidentified collection of bones, and whom apparently no one had missed, would be a bit too cryptic a puzzle, I thought.

  “That she was brutally killed is not in question,” I said, touching the gouge on the skull. The bone was smooth under my fingers. “Though how do you know she did not receive these injuries from a fall? An accident?”

  “I don’t, not for certain,” Thompson admitted. He fished from the box what looked like nothing more than scraps of cloth. “Her clothes had mostly rotted away, except for a few trapped pieces I managed to clean up.”

  I lifted a pale tatter of fabric that held a hint of blue. “Her dress?” I asked.

  “I believe so, or undergarments. Also this.” Thompson dug one more item from the box, a gold chain with a locket.

  It was an ordinary locket, a small oval on a chain, the gold still bright even after years underwater. Whatever had been engraved on the outside, however, had been worn away, only faint scratches remaining.

  I slid my thumbnail into the locket’s crease and pried it open, but found nothing inside. If she’d kept a sketch, silhouette, lock of hair, or painting within, the river had long since destroyed it.

  “That was fused around her neck,” Thompson said. “No clasp. I had to cut it from her.”

  Interesting. “May I take these with me?” I asked, holding up the fabric and necklace. “If I can determine what sort of cloth it is, how common or how fine, we can at least conclude how wealthy was her family, which could narrow her to certain parts of town.”

  “She was a tart, most likely,” Brewster said. “Killed and tossed into the river, no one coming forward to look for her. A lot of them don’t use their own names, and no one knows who they truly are.”

  He spoke matter-of-factly, not condemning. In Brewster’s world, a person made a living any way he or she could—he’d met
his wife while she was a courtesan in a bawdy house.

  Brewster might or might not agree that a tart deserved justice against her killer, but he wouldn’t admonish me for taking on the task. As long as I didn’t endanger myself, that is. If I were hurt or killed while Brewster was looking after me, Denis might be unforgiving.

  “This locket is of very fine gold,” I pointed out. “There’s not a bit of tarnish on it. Grenville and his man will no doubt know exactly where it came from, or at least who made things like this.”

  The last time I’d helped Thompson identify a corpse from the river, Grenville’s valet had recognized the jeweler’s mark on the man’s ring she wore, and we’d had the woman’s identity within the night.

  This time might be a little more difficult. She’d been lost for a long while, and if no one had come looking for her, Brewster might be correct after all. An anonymous woman, dying as she eked out her living.

  “Also,” I began. A thought had formed in my head, a way we might learn more about this body than her gender—I assumed the coroner had known she was a woman from the shape of the hips and other bones—and the fact that she’d been bashed on the head. “I know of a surgeon, a very good one,” I said. “I’d like him to have a look at her. I’d value his opinion.”

  Thompson shrugged, as though indifferent. “By all means. This corpse is no secret. Forgotten, rather.”

  Brewster had a sharp gaze on me, guessing which surgeon I meant.

  In March of this year, when my friend Leland Derwent had been badly hurt, James Denis had sent a highly competent surgeon to look after him. The man had saved Leland’s life when all others had despaired of it.

  I never learned the surgeon’s name. I did not particularly want to. He had been transported for a crime and had returned to England, for reasons I also did not want to know. If he were to be caught, he’d be hanged. I doubted I’d convince him to come near a magistrate’s house, but I could not think of a better man to view the bones.

  I cleared my throat. “Would it be possible for me to take her away with me?”

  Thompson’s brows climbed high in his face. He rarely looked surprised about anything, but he stared at me in perplexity now.