Honor's Kingdom (9 page)

We had drawn up short of the market, amid a welter of carts setting off with their purchases, and the seaweed smell had turned to a fishy cloud. A one-armed man grilled sprats at the mouth of an alley, where urchins pleaded for ha’penny carrying jobs. Inside the market—a great barn-like affair of modern construction—the stink became a miasma, for summer is no friend to a deceased fish. All vigor it was, though, with daylight and boat rigging showing out the back end, while countless hucksters barked their wares and prices. “Fine Yarmouth bloaters, praised by old Mayhew ’imself, and where’s my buyer? Turbot, turbot, all alive! Fresh skate, fresh and good, go on and feel ’im, guv’nor. Prime flounders, a shilling a lot . . .”

Fish of all description were piled and heaped, or strung on lines like prisoners hanged in mass. Mounds of orange and brown shrimp twitched their last, while blue-black lobsters stared at men with hatred. A banty with a great basket strapped to his back come ploughing through, crying, “Give way, give way there . . .” Soaking he was, and faltering under the weight of his silvery cargo. An auctioneer sold off larger lots, formidable in
the incomprehensibility of his language. I had to watch my going, for even with my cane the floor was treacherous. All slimed it was, and shimmering with scales.

Inspector Wilkie led me to the stall where the fishmonger sold his eels, but we found it unattended. The stalls next by were vendorless, too, though ripe with the fisherman’s harvest. The inspector got on a baffled look.

Just then, a fellow tapped him on the shoulder. With the head of a cane, base metal polished up to look like silver.

“And to what do we owe the honor of this second coming?” the stranger asked Inspector Wilkie. He had the straight-backed posture of a constable, a boiled face and neat, but well-worn garments. “Now just ’ow is it we’re graced with yet another visitation amongst us, and only a day after some ’igh and mighty ambassador bugger gets ’imself flushed up scarlet as Charlotte and they call for the Great, Grand Wilkie out of the west? As if we don’t know our business ’ere without ’im? As if we was nothing but fools ’ere in the Mile? As if we don’t know what to make of a dead man’s arse?”

“Inspector Marjorie,” Wilkie said, “may I present Major Abel Jones. American, ’e is, and looking into matters.”

This Marjorie put on a skeptical mug. “Oh, and now ’ave we got Americans come to bother us? What’ll it be next, Inspector Wilkie? Barbary apes and Roosians?”

“We just wanted to ’ave a minute with the eel-man what found the parson, Inspector Marjorie. A matter of a few questions, and no ’arm done.”

Inspector Marjorie smiled. “Well, ’ave as many minutes as you want with ’im. ’E’s just round back, in the piss lane. But I ain’t sure you’ll find ’im quick with ’is answers this morning.”

TWAS A DAMNABLE BUSINESS. The man had stepped out on a private matter, in broad daylight, just where the boats crowd in and young Jews hawk silk scarves to the oystermen for their sweethearts or vend used shoes and guernseys. Down a close between two coffee houses he went, not half a dozen paces,
where the danger was to your shoes and senses, but hardly to your neck. And, in a blink, he lay with his throat pinched in and his eyes wide open in wonder.

“It’s beginning to seem like a dangerous profession, the eel trade,” Inspector Marjorie said.

Inspector Wilkie was speechless.

“Dead as a week-old flounder, God rest ’is soul,” the porter bellowed on. He seemed to like the prospect of an audience.

“Quiet, you,” Inspector Marjorie told him, and the man slunk off.

“Might I take a closer look, sir?” I asked Marjorie.

“Peek up ’is arse, for all I care,” the inspector said. He really was in a poor humor. “Cooper, Lumley,” he called to the men in uniform by the victim. “Let this fellow ’ave a look and a good one.”

I had a good look. And what I saw was like a club, beating upon my fingers, as I struggled to cling to the present. I touched the narrow welt upon his neck, although it was unnecessary. And I marked the differences where the blood had gathered, here a vein bruised blue, there an artery darkening brown. Twas needless, my fingering and staring, for I was already dreadful with my knowledge.

I rose and walked back to the feuding inspectors. I must have had the face of a man gone bankrupt. For if my pockets were sound, my spirit had failed me.

I am a steady man, that is my gift. But now I wavered.

“What I don’t understand,” Inspector Marjorie was saying in a tone almost of blame, “is ’ow the business come off right ’ere in the daylight. Nobody sees a thing, to ’ear them tell it. Yet, the sorts ’ereabouts sees more than they should the rest of the time. Always on the look-out, they are, and some of them with good reason.” He folded his arms over his chest. A tall man he was. “But I suppose you’ve got a ‘scientific’ explanation for the matter, Inspector Wilkie?”

Wilkie gave a sort of growl and looked off through the masts that spiked the river.

“Aren’t you going to tell us ’ow he was done for?” Marjorie needled.

“With a
Thuggee
cord,” I said.

They both looked round.

“The welt,” I continued. “I’ll recognize it until my dying day. A
Thuggee
cord was the instrument. Who did the choking, I cannot say.”

“Thuggee
, now,” Marjorie said, with the old policeman’s suspicion in his eyes. “And ain’t that to do with India?
Thugs
and
dacoits
and bandits and such? And what’s India got to do with Billingsgate, if I may ask?”

I shook my head. “I cannot say,” I admitted.

“Major Jones is something of an expert on India,” Wilkie put in. “Out there during the Mutiny, ’e was.”

“I thought ’e was an American? Though ’e sounds cod Welsh to me.”

“Well,” Inspector Wilkie said, as if I were not present, “it seems ’e was a bit of this and that aforetimes.”

Marjorie eyed me skeptically. “And ’e says I’ve got black ’Indoos running around strangling people, does ’e?”

“I did not say any such thing, Inspector,” I told him. “I only said a
Thuggee
cord was used. Perhaps by someone who learned the trick in India. Though queer it is. For the
Thugs
are more than bandits, see. It is all a ritual and a devilish worship to them, a sacrifice to their idols. It would be odd for a white man to learn the knack of it. And survive.”

“And so we’re back to niggers running loose?”

I began to speak, but found I had nothing to say. Which is burdensome to a Welshman. For words are our cakes and ale. The truth is I was rattled. And confused.

For flashes of an instant, I was not even certain where I stood. Had I closed my eyes, the boats and the boys in their canvas jackets and all the dockside tumult would have fled, and I would have smelled sandalwood and attar. Or the dreadful sweetness of the pyres along the
ghats.
The ripe perfume of a woman, tawny and loving, God forgive me, and the stink of a
house struck by cholera. The smell of powder and blood. And the boundless reek of Man. When you have been young in India, see, you may leave it later on. But it will not leave you.

“I believe we’ll be going along,” Inspector Wilkie said to his counterpart. “It seems the major ain’t used to the smell of fish.”

BUT WE DID NOT GO FAR. Wilkie guided me along the quay, past a scrawny artist who was sketching boats and whistling, to an establishment mere yards away. Rodway’s Coffee House consisted of a large and crowded room, surprisingly clean and orderly, where an honest man could breakfast for a penny, and fill his belly properly for two. We sat down among the slurps and smacks and the clatter of tin and china. Now, my mind was mightily upset, and my spirits unruly, but my stomach was in perfect working order and, due to the day’s irregular beginning, I had not had my breakfast. So I ordered the two-penny “tightener,” although I am reserved in most expenditures.

Inspector Wilkie settled for the penny’s-worth of buttered bread and coffee. Now, I will tell you: Once you have become accustomed to the coffee of America, the tepid, brown water they serve in Britain will not do. Twas as thin as English beef was tough. But I drank mine down, as not to waste. So let that bide.

We were finishing our victuals and chewing the day’s events in a random manner, for there is a certain tiredness that comes upon the troubled heart when it pauses. And Providence descended. Fascinated, I was, by the serving gentleman behind the counter. He sliced and buttered bread with a smooth and ceaseless rapidity worthy of a modern industrial machine, and I wondered if we might not find ourselves remade as living engines in this day of infernal boilers and reckless speed. The age of steam is a frightful time for Man. Twas then the queer fellow sidled up and sat down without a greeting. An instant later, he leapt back up and asked, with extravagant politeness, if he
might
sit down. Then he plopped into the chair again without waiting for our answer.

Thin to a hurting, he put me in mind of the recruits out of the English slums who signed to serve in India, all spindly limbs and chests slight as Popery wafers. I could not determine his years for the filth of him, but he stank of decades of fish. His eyes flipped back and forth about the room, in imitation of the death-throes of a mackerel.

Leaning in across the table, he swamped myself and the inspector with the oceanic tide of his breath. His teeth were green and coated.

“I wun’t talk to that Marjorie for the world,” he said, “for ’e got no respect for an honest, working man.” Closer still he come, displaying the myriad anthracite pores and emerald pustules on his face, and punishing our nostrils. “I noted as to ’ow you gents took an interest in poor Billy. ‘Poor Billy Bounds,’ says I to meself, ‘strangled and dead all over.’ And just last night, ’im standing tops of reeb to all the boys in the Lion and Lamb. ‘Poor Billy,’ says I, ‘but that’s what comes of chasing after flash girls and lording it over your mates, when everybody knows you’ve been doing dab for months and must of come by them show-fulls of money dishonest like.’ Oh, I knew when I seen that tall gent this morning that Billy was up to ’is ears in it. I says to meself when I seen ’im, ‘There’s trouble a-day.’ But I never thought they’d choke ’im dead in Piss Row.”

“What tall gent?” Inspector Wilkie asked.

Another wave of Neptune’s breath broke over us. “Why, the one that come in this morning and didn’t buy nothing, but only ’ad at Billy for all to see.”

“What did he say? What did he look like?” the inspector demanded.

“Oh, I only said as we all could see, not that we could ’ear. But going ’ard at it, they was, all nasty and hissing. As for ’ow the gent looked, ’e was tall and big through every living part of ’im.” The fellow rubbed his cuff across his nose. “Looked like ’e could porter a double basket, ’e did, and keep an arm free to shove you. But then they all run big and bad, your Scotchmen.”

“A Scotsman?” I asked quickly. For I had not forgotten the dead agent in Glasgow.

The little fellow twisted and turned. “Well, I couldn’t say yes or no, not all and for certain, but ’e
looked
like a Scotchman, all red in the face and the ’air. And for all the size of them, there’s a pinch to the way they does things.”

“Did he go outside with the victim?” Inspector Wilkie asked. “With Billy Bounds?”

“Oh, no such thing, guv’nor, no such thing. There’s the queer of it. No, off he goes, the Scotchman, like a peeler after a pickpocket, out of the market and headed to the other end of Thames Street.”

Wilkie and I looked at each other.

“Oh, I told ’im, I did,” said our informer. “I says to ’im right there, right on the spot, last night, I says, ‘Billy, she ain’t for the likes of us, and even if she was, Dutch courage won’t ’elp you, no more than buying rounds you can’t well pay for.’ And ‘Can’t pay?’ says ’e, bold as brass and all flaring upon me, and ’e pulls out a mountain of banknotes and says to me, ’e says, ‘There’s more where that come from,’ says ’e, ‘for me fortune’s turned, just like I told Mrs. ’Epburn.’ ”

“Who,” Inspector Wilkie put in, “did you mean when you said ‘she ain’t for the likes of us?’ This Mrs. ’Epburn, would that be?”

The fellow shook his head as if we were great fools. And perhaps we were.

“Mrs. ’Epburn and Polly? That’s a good one,” he said, with a laugh so foul I feared it would coat us and follow us with stink throughout the day. “I was referring to Miss Polly Perkins, what sings in a penny gaff along in Eastcheap. Polly Perkins, the White Lily of Kent. Billy was deathly sweet on ’er, but the likes of ’er won’t have nothing to do with an eel-man. The likes of ’er won’t even stoop to a shrimpmonger or an oysterman with ’is own boat, not a flash bit like ’er. ’Er and Mrs. ’Epburn, that’s rich. No, Polly paid Billy no mind, though she sings like a bird.”

“Then who,” I tried to clarify the matter, “is this Mrs. Hepburn?”

“Oh, she’s the pawn-mother Billy was fond of trading with. For ’e didn’t like to go pawning where familiar folk could see ’im. The sin of pride was all over ’im, and I pities ’im where ’e is now. Took whatever turned up to Mrs. ’Epburn, ’e did. She got ’erself a back-of-the-close shop over in the Dials, where I wouldn’t go meself if you paid me a sovereign.”

“The watch,”
I said, grasping my cane.