From the Charred Remains (8 page)

The constable stared at her. “How on earth do you know that? Lucy, tell me you haven’t been doing something foolish!”

Quickly, she related her encounter with Miss Rivers.

“Although I don’t believe that’s her real name,” she added. Then she showed him how the acrostic spelled the woman’s name. “Nasrin.”

Duncan gave a low whistle. “I would never have seen that.” He read the poem again. “Persian,” he mused. “That makes sense, actually. Dr. Larimer thought the victim’s features looked like those of a man from the Near East. He thought he might have been Arabic.”

Lucy nodded. “Part of the poem, Miss Rivers said, was also written by a poet they both enjoyed. She thought it was a bit of a message for her. Rumi, I think she said his name was.”

“I’m not familiar with that verse-maker,” Duncan admitted. “Well, truth be told, I only know the Bard and Marlowe. But Miss Rivers didn’t think the second part was from this Rumi fellow?”

“No, she seemed confused by the poem. If there was a message there, she didn’t know what it was.”

“Let’s think about this for a moment.” Duncan paused before rereading the first part. ‘
Come to the garden in spring. There’s wine and sweethearts in the pomegranate blossoms. Remember, if you do not come, these do not matter. If you do come, these do not matter.
’”

“It sounds to me like he’s inviting her to meet him. In a beautiful garden. If she doesn’t come, she won’t see the beauty of the garden, and neither will he, since he will miss her. If she does come—”

“He will revel in her beauty, and hers alone,” Duncan finished. “No mere flowers will be able to compare, when she is beside him. A lucky man that.” Lucy looked at him in surprise. He looked lost in thought, as if thinking of someone far away. Then, he caught himself. “Well then,” he added brusquely, “a shame the poor fool is dead. He had a romantic soul.”

“His name was Darius,” Lucy reminded him.

“So you say.” Duncan sucked in his cheeks. “Well, did you ask her about any of the other things in the bag? Whether they meant anything to her?”

Lucy felt her moment of triumph rapidly deflate. “No,” she said, hating to disappoint him.

“Ah, no matter that. I should, of course, like to be able to inform his family, but no one else has come forward. If they’re all in Persia, ’tis hardly likely we will locate his relations.”

“We could look up the coat of arms on the ring, don’t you think?” Lucy asked. “Darius may have been connected with that family?”

“I doubt it,” Duncan answered. “I’d wager that’s an English family emblem.”

For a moment, Lucy looked out the window, watching the men dump buckets of ashes into the waiting carts. Just then a strong breeze came by, causing the top layer to swirl about the air and choke the men standing nearby. Sometimes she wondered if the ashes would ever be gone, whether the ever-present filmy grime could ever be lifted. When some ashes blew inside, Duncan shuttered the window, making the room seem much darker.

Coughing a bit, Lucy turned back to the constable. “I know we do not know Darius’s last name. However, there cannot be so many scholars at Oxford who study the Persian language. His name could be Rivers, but all we know for sure is that his daughter’s name is Rhonda. Perhaps we could learn who Darius was if we could identify the scholar. I could ask the magistrate?”

But Duncan was not listening, hearing a clamor at the door of the jail. A bellman popped his head around, tipping his cap. He may have been twice Duncan’s age. Once again, Lucy noticed the respect the constable had garnered in his men.

“Begging your pardon, sir,” the bellman said. “There’s a doxy, er, a woman outside, demanding to see you, sir. Says you’ve got something of hers. From the Fire.”

“This is why we need the Fire Courts in place! I can’t look into all these claims!” He half-rose in his chair. “Hey! What do you think you are doing?”

The woman had burst in, pushing past the bellman as he attempted to block her.

“Alright, Hank. It’s all right.” He turned to the woman, taking in her wild red hair. “Woman! What do you want?” Duncan asked. Unlike his bellman, who could not keep his eyes from the woman’s rather ample bosom, the constable directed his gaze toward the woman’s face.

To Lucy’s surprise, the woman pulled out the
London Miscellany
and pointed to the very poem they had just been discussing. “This! This is what I’m here about!”

Duncan’s eyes widened slightly, but he did not otherwise betray his surprise. He did, however, smile at the woman. He had quite a friendly grin, when he wanted. “Sit down.” He pulled a bench toward her. Lucy moved to go, and without looking at her he said, “No, Lucy. Why don’t you stay?” Turning back to the woman he said, “Now first things first, my dear. What is your name and occupation?”

“Tilly Baker, since the day I was born and until the day I marry,” Tilly simpered, warming under Duncan’s attentions. “Although I’m still quite young, so that day’s likely some time off. Not that I don’t have my fair share of suitors, don’t I?” She looked at Lucy then, as if daring to be contradicted. Since Tilly was well into her thirties, a spinster now, Lucy doubted this statement. “You can call me ‘Tilly,’” she said, fluttering her eyelashes.

“Thank you,” Duncan said. He took out some paper, and began to sharpen his quill, with careful deliberate strokes of his knife. “Tilly, you must have them dancing on a stick. Tell me, my dear, where do you live and work?”

“The Fox and Duck. Over in Smithfield. Before that wretched man set fire to London, I was tavern maid at the Cheshire Cheese, wasn’t I?” Tilly had a funny way of ending her statements with questions. “I had a room there, just above the tavern. Didn’t I just?”

Lucy found herself leaning forward. That’s where the body had been found.

Tilly’s face darkened. “Now I’ve nary a coin to speak of, my fortune and dowry all burned up.” Having arrived at the heart of the matter, her fawning manner ceased. “That’s why I’ve come. To get what’s mine.”

Duncan’s smile remained friendly, but his eyes narrowed. “What, pray tell, Tilly, would that be?”

“A small leather bag, full of belongings valuable only to myself, I can assure you. I know that you have it. I heard her”—she bobbed her head at Lucy—“say so. And I can see my poem has been printed too. I aim to get my fair share for that, don’t I?”

“
You
wrote the poem?” Lucy asked, trying to hide the disbelief that threatened to creep into her voice.

“Nah, I didn’t say I wrote it now, did I? ‘Dear heart,’ it says, right? That’s from one of my suitors. I put it in a bit of oilskin and silk for safekeeping. And my brooch in the wool. And my coins. And my ring.” Reading their exchange of glances correctly, Tilly added, “You didn’t think I’d know what was in the bag, did you?”

Duncan was silent a moment. He appeared to be thinking. Lucy waited for him to tell Tilly that knowing the contents of the bag did not mean she was the bag’s owner. Instead, his reply was mild. “Yes, of course. It sounds like it must be your bag.” Duncan said. “Perhaps you’d care to explain first how your bag came to be found with the body of a murdered man?” Tilly opened her mouth, and then promptly shut it. Duncan continued. “Because I can’t think of many good honest reasons why the belongings of one person might be found on the corpse of another? I’m sure my bellman can’t. I wonder how the magistrate would look up such evidence. It doesn’t look good, hey, Lucy?”

Lucy solemnly shook her head.

Tilly began to look afraid. “Whatcher mean? I ain’t have nothing to do with no murder! I don’t know nothing about no dead man, do I?”

“Well, let us start from the beginning, shall we?” Duncan soothed her. “Tell me what you know about this bag and the contents.”

Somewhat mollified, Tilly sniffed. “I saw the bag during the card game. Someone read the poem out loud. That’s when I heard it. That’s all I know.” She stood up. “I’ll be off now.”

“Hold on a moment, Tilly.” The constable’s voice was mild, but firm. “I need to understand this. So, there was a game of cards being played at the Cheshire Cheese?”

Tilly rolled her eyes. “Yeah. The night of the Fire. A few hours before the bells.”

“September first,” Duncan said, scratching something down on the paper. “So you were serving ale, I take it? Not playing? And a few people, what—three, four, five?—were playing cards at the table?”

“’Twas four or five, though I’m not sure if they were all playing. A few others just drinking their pints, weren’t they?”

“The items that were in the bag were—what?—the winnings?” Duncan asked. He furrowed his brow. “Someone wagered a poem? That doesn’t make sense.”

“They were playing for what was in their pockets. The poem was wrapped up. Later, one of them opened it up and read it.” Tilly explained as if to a dullard.

“Can you tell us anything about these men?” he asked. “Did you know them?”

Tilly considered for a moment. “One didn’t speak English right. He was a foreigner.” Tilly hesitated. “Probably a bloody papist, wasn’t he?”

“Foreigner?” Lucy glanced at the constable. “Did he have darker skin, and black curling hair?” At Tilly’s muttered assent, she went on. “Could he have been Persian, do you think?”

“From Perton?” Tilly shrugged her shoulders. “I dunno about that. Staffordshire’s a while away, isn’t it? I got a niece who works at the manor there.”

“No, she meant
Persian
,” Duncan clarified. Seeing Tilly’s uncomprehending look, he tried again. “From the East?”

Tilly yawned. “Now how would I be knowing that? He looked Italian-like, but not too, you know what I mean. I just heard him say that where he came from, the game was an-
nas.
Nasty, I say.” She chuckled at her own joke. “Bloody foreigners. Not taking to our English ways. What do they expect? No wonder he got himself killed.”

“How did you know he was the one who had been killed? This foreigner?” Duncan countered. “I thought you didn’t know about ‘no dead man.’”

Tilly shrugged again. “I just guessed. That’s all.” She rushed on. “I don’t know who killed him now, do I?”

“Tilly, this is important,” Lucy looked sideways toward the constable. He shrugged slightly, which she took to mean he didn’t mind her asking the woman questions. “You must know something; you just don’t realize what you know. Who called him a ‘bloody papist’?”

“Don’t remember,” Tilly said sullenly. Lucy wasn’t sure if she believed her.

“Well, you were right about which man was killed. How did you know that?” Lucy pressed. “Did you hear something?”

Tilly shook her head. “No, I figured it out. He was the only gent I didn’t see later. You know, when we were all mad to get out when the church bells started ringing fire.” For a moment her face took on that same dull glazed look common to those who’d suffered through the blaze. “Dreadful that was. I lost everything, except for a few meager belongings I could carry on my back.”

“Did you know any of the other men at the table?” Lucy persisted. She had the feeling that Tilly knew more than she was saying, although she could not tell if the barmaid was withholding information on purpose or not. “Were they all strangers?”

“Just Jack. I know him a bit.” Seeing Duncan’s waiting expression, she went on reluctantly. “He’s just an old card sharp. He’s the one who set up the game. The barkeep, Fisher, he wasn’t there. I had to do all the fetching and serving, didn’t I just? All for a meager bit of shillings. How fair is that, I ask you?” She looked under her eyelashes up at the constable.

“Where is Fisher, do you know?” the constable asked.

“Nah. Last I heard, he beat if off to a dock and jumped a ship there. Haven’t heard nothing more. Headed to the New World, for all I know. Would be like him, wouldn’t it just?”

“What about the others?” Lucy asked, refusing to let Tilly lead them off their line of questioning.

“The others, I didn’t know. We used to get all sorts at the Cheese.”

Tilly pursed her lips, a coy look on her face. Duncan raised an eyebrow. “Is there anything else you can tell us, Tilly? About Jack?”

“For a few coins?” the barmaid asked, looking hopeful. “Help get me back on my feet?”

Duncan gave her a stern look. “Maybe I won’t have my bellman lock you up. Or shall I let you rot alongside all the other murderers and cutthroats?”

“Hey!” Tilly cried, her shrill tone grating on Lucy’s ears. “Hey now. I’m willing to cooperate, ain’t I?”

Duncan leaned in toward her. “I’d be ever so grateful for your help, Tilly,” he said, smoothly changing his tack. He moved his hand near Tilly’s where it rested on the wooden table.

Under the constable’s attention, Tilly’s tongue loosened. “The other gent was beside himself when Jack won the poem, and read it out loud. Said it was not meant for public ears. That leather pouch was the last thing he had to his name, he said. Especially since none of them would let him put in his shirt or coat.” She touched Duncan’s sleeve. “Jack said we could all use a bit of love in our souls, and that’s why he read it as payment. The foreign gent was quite upset, I tell you.”

“Do you think this man, Jack, killed him?” Duncan asked, edging ever so slightly away. Tilly did not seem to notice.

“Oh no! Jack is a cad, and a bit of rogue, but is not the likes to kill! Plus, why would he? He was the one winning everything!”

“Then how did the bag end up with the dead body? He must have been the last to see the man alive!” Lucy pointed out.

“No, no! It wasn’t Jack!” Tilly exclaimed again.

Lucy and the constable exchanged a glance, hearing the real feeling in her voice. “Sounds like you know Jack pretty well after all,” he commented blandly. “Do you, perchance, know his surname?”

“His last name?” Tilly frowned, scratching at the inside of her bodice. “Durand.”

Lucy leaned forward. “What about the other men? What did they look like?”

“I don’t know,” Tilly said, shifting her weight from side to side. “Truly. I don’t remember anymore. My ma taught me a long time ago not to look too much at faces. ‘The devil don’t like to be looked at, Tilly,’ she used to say, and I reckon she was right.” She knocked her knuckles on the wood table impatiently. “Good Lord, there’s little else I can tell you. The game went on for some time. A few hands passed. The stakes got higher. The men were digging through their pockets, for anything they had. All desperate to win.” A funny look crossed the barmaid’s face. Fear? Anger? Lucy couldn’t tell. Tilly looked at the constable. “Looky here. I made a mistake, all right? No harm done. Why don’t you just forget I came by? The leather bag wasn’t mine, was it now? And I don’t know who killed that fool. You can’t hold me, I’ve done my duty.”