Rowley whistled as he tweaked the feathers of the drying pigeon, ensuring the plumes lay correctly. He’d spent an energetic morning paring the wolf skin, and gone over all the drying birds as well, and he was still bursting with energy. He rather wished something large would come in for the pleasure of a big job to do.
Clem, Clem, Clem.
They’d fucked again last night, squirming against each other on Clem’s armchair, once he’d got the man’s clothes off. He could have kicked himself for being so stupid about that. He’d assumed that Clem’s…whatever it was, his way of being, was like Jack’s because of those oddly familiar traits, his manner of doing things or of hiding them. It hadn’t escaped Rowley’s notice that Clem tied his neckcloth as simply as the most casual coster and wore elastic-sided boots rather than ones with laces or buckles. Jack hadn’t been nimble with fastenings either.
Intriguing similarities, but misleading. He’d assumed that all Clem’s reactions would be similar to Jack’s, and been proved entirely wrong, just as he’d assumed that Clem would be inexperienced and in need of guidance. Well, he’d been taught a memorable lesson there.
He’d been absurd. Clem was startlingly lovely with his thick hair, strong features, those eyes. Why would he not have all the experience he could want? If he’d had the confidence to match his looks, every man’s man in London would have been set on him and Rowley wouldn’t have stood a chance of catching his attention.
That was a somewhat lowering thought, because Rowley liked him so much. It was one thing to fuck a fellow who was better-looking than oneself, and indeed Rowley, by simple mathematics, had almost always done so, although rarely twice and nobody who looked like Clem. It was quite another thing if one wanted to repeat the experience as often as possible, and had to face the fact that one was entirely unremarkable in height and looks and person and that, if there was any justice in the world, one’s delightful, funny, warmhearted, and extraordinarily handsome lover would be off with someone who deserved him.
Which was a foolish way to think. For one thing, there wasn’t any justice in the world; for another, Clem had seemed as happy as Rowley with the previous night; for a third, what did Rowley expect from this anyway? A night was as much as a man could ask, and they’d had a lovely night. A whole evening kissing and fucking and talking, so that Rowley had finally and reluctantly dragged himself upstairs at nearly eleven for the sake of appearances, and had his best sleep in months.
In part that was because the ghastly Lugtrout hadn’t come home. His room was divided from Rowley’s by a thin wall, and he mumbled aloud to himself and snored like a bone saw at work, and that plus the faint, pervading scent of gin always made Rowley think of his father, the drink and the rage. Lugtrout’s absence had been extremely welcome. With any luck he’d fallen into the Thames.
Clem wasn’t so sanguine about that prospect when Rowley returned to the house around six o’clock that evening to find him and Polly debating in the kitchen.
“I’m a bit worried, really.” Clem rocked from toe to heel, frowning. “He went out on Friday morning, so it’s a day and a half. I don’t think he’s done that before.”
“Probably drunk in a ditch,” Polly said. “Or dead in one.”
“Yes, but what do I do about that if he is?” Clem demanded.
“At that point there’s not a lot of remedy,” Rowley put in. “Why should you have to do anything? You’re to give him accommodation, not be his keeper, isn’t that right?”
There was a flicker of fellow feeling in Polly’s eye. “Quite right, Mr. Green. Mr. Lugtrout has had all the consideration he deserves and more, if you ask me.”
“Yes, but my brother will be asking me,” Clem said.
“For what?” Rowley asked. “Lugtrout’s probably drunk the clock round last night and is sleeping it round now. Are you obliged to keep an eye on him?”
“My brother’s concerned for his well-being. He was angry about the argument and if he thinks I’m not doing as he wishes…” Clem tailed off, sounding wretched.
“He might have gone for a reason,” Rowley suggested. “Would he tell you if he was going to be away for…” He groped for something Lugtrout might do. “For business?”
“He doesn’t have any business.”
“He must do something. How does he afford the rent, and the gin?”
“He doesn’t pay rent. And I’ve no idea where his money comes from, but he doesn’t work, or receive letters, or anything that I know of.”
“Family?”
“I don’t know about any family. I don’t suppose he’d mention it if he was going to go away, he’s not at all considerate, but it’s never arisen because he never has, in eight years.”
“I see. But what are you to do? Tell the police that an idle drunkard didn’t come home last night?”
“Do you think I should?” Clem made a face. “He’s not a young man and the nights are cold.”
“Police, on a Saturday night?” Rowley asked. “I think they’ll pack you off with a flea in your ear. Look, if he hasn’t turned up tomorrow, I’ll come to the police station with you and ask what to do.” He saw Clem’s expression and added, regretting the words as he spoke them, “Or if you know where he usually drinks, I’ll come with you to ask now. If you like.”
The brightening of Clem’s eyes was almost reward enough. “Would you?”
Rowley would not have said he enjoyed the next hour, as such. Between them Clem, Polly, and Elsie came up with six public houses they knew Mr. Lugtrout to frequent. Rowley reordered the list into a logical sequence and they went out into the cold dark air, which stank of fires and gas lamps, horses and sweepings and soot, to go between drinking dens.
Rowley did not like public houses. He enjoyed a pint of beer now and again, but not the press of sweaty bodies and the company of belligerent sots and the memories they brought back. Clem was stiff with tension, obviously intensely uncomfortable with the noise and the crowding. Rowley saw no reason at all why either of them should waste his evening in this pointless pursuit for a man neither liked who was probably sleeping it off in some back room, but Clem’s unhappiness at the prospect of his brother’s displeasure had been very clear, and he could spare an hour or two to make him feel better.
So he asked every landlord, landlady, and potboy he came across if they’d seen Mr. Lugtrout, who turned out to be known by the soubriquet “Parson Gin.” None of them had.
“I’m surprised, to be honest, now you mention it,” the landlady of the Blue Posts remarked. “He’s usually to be found in here or the White Lion at some point in the day.”
“We’ve tried there, and the Bird in Hand, and a few more.”
“Hmph. Try the Horse and Carriage, and if he’s not been there, who can say what he’s up to? Evening, gents.”
They did try the Horse and Carriage, with no more luck. Rowley leaned against the damp wall when they emerged, fruitlessly batting the reek of tobacco from his greatcoat. “Well. Mr. Lugtrout does seem to have disappeared from his usual haunts.”
“It’s a bit odd, isn’t it?” Clem said. “What now?”
“To be quite honest, I think we should find some food. You’ve done more than a lodging keeper in a thousand would for a lodger nobody else would bear. The police won’t do anything at this hour, and now you’ll have something to tell them if we go to report him missing tomorrow. And if he fell into the Thames last night there’s no good to be done for him at all, so your brother will have no grounds of complaint. Shall we have something to eat?”
“That’s very logical,” Clem said. “I wish we’d found him, though.”
“Yes, but then we’d have to drag him home swearing and shouting,” Rowley pointed out. “Whereas this way we could have a quiet dinner and perhaps get some use of the evening.”
“If you like.” It didn’t sound terribly enthusiastic, but Rowley was hungry, and Clem looked tired.
They picked a place on St. John Street run by Italians. Rowley had eaten there a couple of times and liked the way they had of doing veal. The proprietor had a thick accent and spoke to his dark-eyed waiters in their own language, which set Rowley’s train of thought off to Clem, with his English name and voice, and his entirely un-English looks.
“Do your parents live here?” he asked idly.
“What, Clerkenwell?”
“Well, England.”
Clem contemplated the tablecloth. “My mother was from Calcutta. She went back.”
“Just your mother? Is your father still here?”
“I don’t want to talk about my family.”
That was startlingly blunt, and Rowley, somewhat taken aback, had to remind himself that Clem was not a man for hints. “Of course. I beg your pardon.”
Clem turned slightly to look around the restaurant, obviously feeling awkward. Rowley searched for another topic and, for the first time in months, couldn’t think of anything to talk about, but was discomfited by the silence. At home—in the lodging house, rather—silence was a chance to stroke the cat and watch the fire. Here the clattering and voices around them merely emphasised the empty air between them. How was it that acts of intimacy could make them strangers again?
Maybe that was it. Maybe Clem’s fretting and discomfort were because he’d realised the mistake he’d made in fucking a lodger, a man from whom he couldn’t simply walk away, and Rowley was forcing unwanted company on him.
He made himself say, “Look, Clem, we don’t have to stay. Or, you don’t have to. If you’d rather not.”
Clem was tracing patterns on the tablecloth with a finger, looking as ill at ease as Rowley felt. “I, uh. I’d rather be at home. I mean, I’m hungry, and this smells delicious. But I’d rather be at home.”
Rowley nodded, for lack of any words. Don’t make a fuss. Be decent. Just accept it.
“I’m sorry,” Clem went on. “If I’d thought, I wouldn’t have dragged you out around a whole lot of gin palaces because I’m afraid of my brother. It wasn’t very enjoyable, was it?”
“I offered to come with you,” Rowley said. “What would you rather do now?”
Clem was still drawing circles with his finger. “About that. I think we need to talk.”
Damnation, hell, and buggery. Rowley nodded into the inevitability. “Go on.”
“I don’t know if—last night—changed anything.” He kept his voice low. Rowley glanced around anyway. There was nobody at the table on either side, but enough customers here that their conversation would not be easily heard. “I don’t want it to change our friendship. Because I’m a little bit afraid we might end up not friends any more, and I’d miss that more than anything. I’d miss you coming for tea with me, and putting up with Cat, and telling me about peculiar-shaped animals.”
“Do I do that? Very much?” Rowley added, with a twinge of guilt.
“Now and then. The thing is, if anything else is going to make it hard to be friends, I’d honestly rather put our friendship first.”
“Would you prefer to do that?” Rowley asked, feeling airless. “To go back to how we were?”
“Well, no, not really.” Clem was apparently concentrating on his finger drawing. “It’s just that I don’t want to stop being friends, but what I’d really prefer is if we could be friends as well.”
“Oh,” Rowley said. “Oh. Really?”
“That would be rather perfect,” Clem said in a rush. “Because the, er, the as well part was wonderful, and I’ve been kicking myself all evening for dragging you out when it would have been much more pleasant to be in. And if you’re not too cold and tired, I’d like it if you came back for a cup of tea after dinner. Um, that was a hint. In case you were wondering.”
“It was a good hint,” Rowley said, feeling the grin spreading over his face. “I’m glad you mentioned it was one, but yes, an excellent hint. Consider it taken.”
They ate veal that seemed, for some reason, to be superlatively delicious, and strolled down St. John Street toward Wilderness Row arm in arm. That was quite unexceptional and nobody would notice or care, but Rowley was absurdly aware of Clem’s elbow crooked around his own biceps, and the prospect of an hour together heated his blood against the icy chill. Just kissing, he thought, unless Clem very much wanted more, just an intimate hour together, just letting the tentative, glorious new reality settle into its right place like feathers on a skin.
They turned left into Wilderness Row. The solitary gas lamp shed its yellow light, catching on the curls of wisping mist, illuminating the plain brickwork of the Baptist chapel, glinting off the curved windows of Rowley’s shop front—
The devil it was, not from this angle. Rowley stopped dead, tugging Clem with him.
“What—?”
“Sssh.”
The door of his shop was shut, but was there slightly too much shadow around the edge? And the glint of light inside was moving, even though Rowley was standing still.
“There’s someone in there,” he said under his breath. “I’m being robbed. Hoi!” He yelled that last, disentangling his arm from Clem’s, and ran to the shop, jerking the door open with sheer fury. “Oi! Get out of there, you bugger!”
The light—evidently a dark lantern—was abruptly extinguished. It was very dark inside the shop, the gaslight from down the street barely penetrating past the window, and Rowley’s eyes weren’t adapted as the burglar’s were. He had just time to realise that before feet scuffed and a bulky form came rearing out of the shop’s gloom, shouldering him brutally out of the way. Rowley went stumbling, slapping a panicky hand to his face as his spectacles slipped. He recovered himself, and turned to see Clem struggling with a thickset man. He charged into the fellow’s back, leading with an elbow to the kidney. The thief grunted but wasn’t stopped. He swung an arm backward that sent Rowley lurching away; Clem gave a harsh gasp of pain, and then the thief was running, fast for such a big man.
Rowley would have sprinted after him, in the sheer fury of the moment, but Clem was doubled over, and if the thief had carried a knife— “Clem!”
“Fine,” Clem wheezed. “Hit me—stomach.”
“Oh, Lord. I’m sorry.” Rowley helped him straighten, checked his front for blood—he’d heard of people who didn’t feel wounds in the excitement of a scuffle—and then looked around at his violated premises. “I’d better have a look. Damn and blast.”
The lock had been forced, and would need replacing. He lit the gas inside, sending reflections dancing off glass and shadows leaping over walls, and looked around. It was quite hard at first to tell if anything was out of place between the dark and the clutter, but as his eyes accustomed themselves, he relaxed slightly. “Well, he didn’t make a mess.”
“What about the cash drawer?”
Rowley emptied the drawer at night except for the smallest change, but the thief could have caused a lot of damage finding that out. He went behind the counter, frowned, then bent and checked. “How odd. It’s not been touched.”
“Do you suppose he’d only just got in?”
“Must have. I’ll have a look upstairs.” Rowley lit a heavy-based oil lamp he kept for late nights and headed upstairs. Nothing seemed out of place in the showroom either. “What on earth was he after?”
“Is there a particularly valuable mount he might have been trying to steal?” Clem suggested, coming up behind him.
Mount. Clem was using Rowley’s words, and that thought was so pleasing it made his toes curl in his shoes, cutting through the irritation. “Well, the larger ones are worth a fair amount, but you could hardly put a lynx under your coat. I don’t think anything’s gone.”
“We must have disturbed him before he got to work. That was lucky.”
“I suppose we must.” Rowley squinted, then went over to the corner of the room, where a beaver rose on its hind legs. “Good Lord. Look at this.”
Clem looked over his shoulder. “What on earth—? Is that a billy club?”
It was indeed, a short truncheon with a leather strap at one end for better swinging. Rowley picked it up in a cautious fashion, and found it was weighted at the business end, probably with lead. These things could crack a skull, and he felt intensely thankful the robber had misplaced it.
A crude J was burned into the wood, probably with the end of a poker, but it had no other identifying marks. He contemplated the thing, shrugged, and slipped it into his pocket. “So he did come up here. But he hadn’t tried the cash drawer.”
“Mmm.” Clem was squinting at the countertop. “Could you bring the light over a bit more? Yes, look at this. There are drag marks here, in the dust. It looks as if he was moving the mounts around.”
Clem was quite right. Dust always settled thick in preservers’ shops, thanks to the sacks of sawdust, plaster of Paris, hay, fluff, cotton wool, chalk, camphor, arsenic, and the like. Rowley could see clearly in the light of the oil lamp that a number of mounts had been pushed or dragged around. Not dropped on the floor, not damaged so far as he could see, simply moved.
“Well, this is damned odd,” he said. “And inconvenient. Ugh, I’ll need to put a board across the door.”
“Can I help?”
Rowley was a very competent carpenter, with years of experience making his own cases for mounts, and it was cold outside and, indeed, in here. “No need. Perhaps you could put the kettle on? I won’t be long.”
He secured the door without too much trouble, but he was still thoroughly chilled when he came in. Clem had indeed made tea, rather too early because it was slightly stewed and tannic, but at least it was warm. Rowley sipped it gratefully.
“You look frozen stiff,” Clem said.
“Quarter to ten on a November night is no time for carpentry.”
“No. Mr. Lugtrout still hasn’t come back.”
“Has he not.”
Clem prodded the fire. “Do you think it’s a bit odd that he was complaining about being robbed, and then you’ve been robbed?”
“Well, I don’t know if I was robbed,” Rowley said. “I can’t see anything was taken. Which, now you bring up the subject—did he actually lose anything?”
“Not that he mentioned to me.”
“That is a bit peculiar, isn’t it? But my intruder was a big man, and Miss Sweeting said that she heard quiet footsteps.”
“If she heard them at all, and Mr. Lugtrout didn’t simply wreck his own room and forget he did it. Oh, I don’t know.”
Rowley wrapped his hands round his mug, enjoying the heat. “Nor I. Goodness knows, Clem. We’ll go to the police tomorrow to ask what’s best to do.”
That seemed like an excellent plan, and so did a very comfortable half hour kissing in front of the fire. Nothing more; it was too late to stay long, and Clem was evidently keeping one ear out for noises in the hall until he could lock up the house. Rowley couldn’t blame him. He didn’t imagine the two intruders (or one intruder and one case of imagination) meant anything more than the usual troubles of London, but petty thieves were persistent brutes. They’d all do well to keep doors and windows locked, and Rowley would need to get a locksmith to work on his shop tomorrow.
He went to sleep to hazy but contented thoughts of kissing Clem, and woke up to screaming.
He sat up in bed, dizzy with the abrupt waking, and wondered for a fraction of a second if he had dreamed the noise, before it came again. A woman’s wordless shrieks, long and loud and piercing, signalling danger, and right below his window, which looked over Wilderness Row toward the Charterhouse Gardens. Rowley swung himself out of bed, grabbing his spectacles from the nightstand and hustling on his dressing gown and slippers. Mr. Rillington was emerging from his room as he hurried past, and on the next landing Mr. Hirsch had come out too.
“What the devil is it, a fire?”
As if in answer, the woman—could it be Polly?—let out one more hoarse cry.
“Murder!”
“Hell’s teeth,” Rowley said, and ran downstairs with Mr. Hirsch at his heels.
The street door stood open. It was indeed Polly screaming, standing in the street in her coat and hat, posture stiff and awful, like nothing so much as a poor-quality mount. On the step Clem was frozen, his face a peculiar sallow shade with the blood gone from his cheeks, staring down at something. Rowley weaselled past him to see, and had to swallow an oath.
It was far from his first dead body. It wasn’t even his first human body; he’d been in morgues, seen a few men and women dragged from the gutter or the Thames, watched his father die. He’d never seen a body like this.
Mr. Lugtrout’s mouth was fixed open in a scream, revealing two pits in his gum that hadn’t been there when Rowley last saw him, both blackened with dried blood as though the teeth had been extracted carelessly. His face was sallow where it wasn’t livid with bruises, his dirty white hair a wild mess. His body lay at the steps as if dumped there, one arm outstretched to the door. Its wrist was rubbed raw, and two of the fingers of its hand had their tips missing. Flat incisions, leaving bone bare and beginning to dry back.
“Mother of God,” Rowley said, and stooped for a closer look.
Polly made a hiccupping noise. Clem blinked, then took hold of her. “You have to sit down. Sit down, Polly. It’s all right.”
“It’s not all right!”
“What’s not all right?” enquired Miss Sweeting from the stairs.
“Laura, don’t look,” Mr. Hirsch said urgently.
“Both of you, can you take care of Polly?” Clem asked. “Get a physician if she needs one. She’s had a, a bad shock.”
He didn’t sound any too steady himself. “Mr. Talleyfer, shall I go for a constable?” Rowley asked, and waited till Clem nodded. “Right. Don’t let anyone disturb the, uh, the body.”
“Shouldn’t we do something for him?”
Rowley refrained from asking what he thought might help. “I think the best thing we can do is get the police, quick. The back of his head—well, it looks to me as if he was coshed.”
“On our doorstep!” Polly said shrilly.
If he’d been killed on their doorstep there would have been a lot more blood, judging by the shattered mess of the skull. Someone had killed their errant lodger and brought his corpse home, a fact that Rowley decided to keep to himself for the moment.
He hurried straight to the police station, which was on Old Street across the Goswell Road. The wind flapped at his pyjama trousers and chilled his bare ankles; he ignored the shocked looks and catcalls he received. The policeman on duty looked appalled too, but Rowley forestalled that with a curt “There’s been murder done.”
After that, it got busy. Constables arrived, and a photographer, and a surgeon, and a divisional inspector. Rowley found himself sitting with Clem in the study, he in the very chair on which he and Clem had frotted and spent, being questioned by one Inspector Ellis, a thin and weary-looking man. He kept his eyes on the inspector and his attention, as far as was possible, on the murder, and prayed Clem was doing the same.
They recounted the events of the last few days under questioning, from the possible burglary to the morning’s ghastly discovery.
“And you were sure at once it was murder, Mr. Talleyfer?” the inspector asked.
“Rowley—Mr. Green—was.”
“I’m a preserver. I have the shop next door,” Rowley added.
“And that tells you about murder, does it?”
“Well, I’m used to flesh and bones, so I wasn’t afraid to look. And it means I can tell the difference between fingers crushed by a cart and cut by a blade.”
“Can you, now.”
“The bone was smoothly severed,” Rowley said. “I’d guess a cleaver.”
“Would you, now.”
“And the back of the head was stove in, and at this point, Inspector, I should tell you that my own shop was broken into last night.” Rowley summarised the events. “It may have nothing at all to do with the dead man on the doorstep, but we found this.” He held out the cosh. The inspector took it, face tightening as he turned the little weapon over.
“Well.”
“I didn’t want to leave it lying around, and I was intending to report the break-in this morning, so it was in my pocket all last night,” Rowley added. “It may be entirely irrelevant, of course.”
“Might be. Any idea what your thief was after, in your shop?”
“None. I didn’t notice anything gone last night.”
“And what about Mr. Lugtrout?” the inspector asked. “What would someone have been after from him? Any idea?”
“After?” Clem asked. “How do you mean?”
The inspector sighed. “Well, a bash on the head is one thing, Mr. Talleyfer, but when I see a corpse with a couple of teeth pulled, and bits cut off, and rope marks on his wrists and ankles, that’s a man who had an enemy. And it makes me wonder what he did to deserve what he got. Or, maybe, if he had something someone wanted, and that someone had a very persuasive way about him.”
Clem seemed entirely nonplussed. “How do you mean?”
The inspector gave him a look. Rowley set his jaw. “I think Inspector Ellis is suggesting Lugtrout was tortured. For something.”
Clem blenched. “Oh no. Surely not. No.”
He looked sick. Rowley sympathised. He wasn’t a particularly imaginative man, but he had an unnecessarily vivid mental image now of Mr. Lugtrout tied to a chair, and of men with pliers and a cleaver. He shuddered.
“Any idea what Mr. Lugtrout had that anyone would have wanted? Any odd connections? Anything you think I ought to know?” The inspector looked between them. “Because we’ll all be safer when whoever did this bit of work swings for it, believe me.”
“Absolutely nothing,” Rowley said, hearing the flatness of his own voice, unable to change it. “He just lived here.” Just lived here on the strict instructions of Clem’s brother. He carefully didn’t look round.
“I don’t know either,” Clem said, muffled by the hands he had pressed to his face. “He was an old drunken clergyman. He didn’t have anything, he didn’t do anything. I don’t know why anyone would hurt him.”
“Are you quite sure of that?” The inspector looked keenly at Rowley. “Mr. Green?”
“I’m quite sure I don’t know anything. I’m not sure why you’d think I would.”
The inspector slapped the cosh absentmindedly into the palm of his hand. “Well, sir, you must admit it’s a strange business. Burglary here, burglary there, torture and murder here, back and forth between you. What’s next?”
“I’ve no idea,” Clem said, raising his head. “I keep a lodging house and Mr. Green preserves birds. We don’t have anything to do with murder and torture and burglary. We live here, that’s all.”
“There is nothing in my shop that a criminal would want unless they have a fancy for mounts,” Rowley said. “You’re welcome to take a look. I’d be grateful if you would.”
“Very generous of you, sir. I shall, after I’ve had a look at the deceased gent’s room, if I may.” The inspector rose and stood, looking down, from one to the other of them. “I’ll leave my card, in case anything should have slipped your memory, gentlemen, or if you should think of something. It would be a good idea to tell me if you do, before anything else happens, you see. Good morning to you.”