The Bellingham Bloodbath (5 page)

She faltered slightly, just as I had hoped she would, the solidity of her frame gradually deflating. “Of course. You are right.” She tossed a hard glare back at Colin before looking back at me. “Der are three pugs who dream to be her. Von belongs to de Easterbrooke spinster: a slow, fat little beast called Buster Brown. De Rintons have a bitch named Bertha Omega, who is as mean und dowdy as your Qveen.
Und
Karl Steinmetz shows a young, schtupid pug named Cleavon. De Lady Priscilla has beat dem all.”

“Are they all here in London?” Colin asked.

“Not Karl Steinmetz. He skulks about out in Stratford.”

“Can you provide addresses for each of them?”

“Of course.”

“One last question then. When you went outside after hearing your charge was missing, did you notice anything out of the ordinary?”

“No.” She shook her head adamantly. “De gate vas closed
und
locked. Had it not been I vould have run out in search of her. Now, I vill get de addresses.” She turned abruptly and stalked from the room.

“She seems to have pressed you into a mood,” I cautioned.

“To hell with her.” He waved me off. “I can maintain for the sake of that pup, because it's starting to sound like she truly has been stolen.”

“Which
is
terrible,” I started to say. “But do you really think now—”

His hand flew up to stop me. “You never had a dog. You cannot know how it feels,” he said, settling a stern look on me. “Now isn't it time you got going?”

“Going where?”

“The morgue . . . ? You're going to get me a look at that captain's autopsy report. . . .”

I heaved an exasperated sigh. “Oh . . . that—”

His scowl eased. “You know I wouldn't ask if it weren't important.”

“I know.”

“Go on then. I'll tend to matters here.”

I grimaced and left without a backwards glance, reminding myself that it was better to speak to the oafish Denton Ross, with his manner as coarse as the cobbled streets, than have to interview young Albert Bellingham. Even so, Denton had fouled my path when I was little more than fourteen, and I had never forgotten, nor forgiven.

I
sat on a hard bench in an unnaturally cold, utilitarian room with a knot in my stomach that threatened to throttle the whole of my sternum. Though electricity had been brought to this godforsaken place a year before, enabling the space to be kept ice-cold, it did nothing to stop the stench of death that still permeated everything here. I had been waiting almost half an hour to see Denton Ross, the city's primary purveyor of everything dead relating to
Homo sapiens
. This was his domain, his kingdom, and there was no one fighting him for the right of stewardship over this milieu. He had risen to the position of Chief Examiner based on the indisputable fact that few sought to build a career here. But for Denton Ross, the fit was as natural as tea and milk.

Six feet tall with the wide hips, distended belly, and sagging breasts of an elderly washerwoman, he shuffled along peering out at the world from behind long stringy hair that his clients took no notice of. His propensity toward excess, whether it be cheap wine or purchased companionship, was quietly tolerated, as it is understood that a decent society cannot exist without someone to perform his tasks. It enabled him to disregard how he was perceived.

To appreciate my distaste for Denton Ross you must look back twenty years to when I was in my early teens and he in his young thirties. I was on the brink of failing out of the Easling and Temple Senior Academy for spending more time trolling for opiates to still my troubled mind than concerning myself with the duties of higher learning. On the night I happened upon Master Ross I had suffered the entire day without benefit of a single handout. With the siren's song of opium demanding its due, I decided to go to a West End pub and try my hand at foraging through unsuspecting pockets. It was not a skill I had mastered, so I was forced to wait until the patrons became inebriated enough before attempting to relieve a few of whatever cash I could lay my fingers on.

I had spotted Denton earlier that night. I'd picked him out as looking soft and foolish and convinced myself that with enough ale he would surely prove an easy target. I kept my eye on him until deciding it was time to make my move. Sidling up in a crush of drunken revelers, I carefully slipped my fingers into the left front pocket of his pants, and almost at once he seized my wrist. Rather than yanking my hand out and hollering for help, however, he shoved it deeper inside, pressing it against the bare flesh of his aroused manhood.

“If you're going to play in there,” he sneered in my ear, “you had best get to it.”

I lurched back, struggling to pull my hand free, but Denton held me fast. The throng of laughing, screeching people smashed against us kept me rooted in place, and even if I'd had the temerity to cry out no one would have heard. He pivoted slightly, turning his body so my hand was wedged where he desired it most, and stared at me with a lopsided curl on his thick, rubbery lips. “You're a pretty one, you are”—he leered—“and don't you just have the softest hand.”

I was panicked and struggling to twist away, but it only seemed to incite him further and not more than a minute later I felt a sticky wetness. “If it's money you're after,” he burbled into my ear, “then I know how you can earn it.” He released my wrist with a snicker and flung me backwards.

All I remember after that is shoving my way through the crowd, all the while holding my hand out as though it had erupted into flames. I threw myself out the back door and immediately heaved the contents of my belly into the alley. But what really caught the attention of the small mob of drunken people milling about was when I plunged my soiled hand into the puddle of horse piss. If I'd had a knife, I am certain I would have lopped my hand off.

The next time I saw him, more than a decade later, I was with Colin. One of our first cases together had precipitated a trip to the morgue and it came as quite a shock when it was
he
who came slithering out from the dissection room. He'd not said anything but had tossed a lecherous wink when Colin's back had been turned, and I knew that in spite of the passage of time he remembered me.

“Well, well . . . , ” I heard his slippery voice anew. “Look who has come to visit a poor, old city worker.”

I set my face and tried to keep my revulsion from showing. “Thank you for seeing me without notice.”

He showed little interest as he flicked his eyes around the waiting room. “Where's your haughty little keeper? So like a laborer, that one.”

“He's working another case.”

“Good,” he said as he headed back toward the inner rooms of his morgue. “And what brings you here?”

I followed him through a set of double doors and was struck anew by the freezing chill of the room. Bodies being kept for more than a few days were stored under gauzy covers atop cold metal tables. The floor raked toward a single drain in the center of the room, siphoning off water, chemicals, and effluvium that slowly leached from the bodies as they were being worked on. Most cadavers were kept no more than forty-eight hours, but there were some, and I knew Captain Bellingham's would be one such exception, that were held far longer.

Denton continued through the examination room to a small office at its far end. Without a door between the office and autopsy space, the tiny cubicle-like area was every bit as cold and dank as the main room and included the ever-present stench of formaldehyde and decay that clung to the walls with a pungency strong enough to sting the nostrils.

He flopped behind his well-used desk as I sat opposite in a sagging cane chair. The only other piece of furniture was a perilously drooping set of wooden filing cabinets inside of which was the file I had been sent to retrieve. “You were saying . . . ?” he muttered, though I had yet to say anything, as I was trying to draw a full breath without gagging.

I concentrated on a benign spot at the center of his forehead and noticed for the first time how haggard he looked in the buzzing electric light. Age had done nothing to improve him.

“I have come about Captain Trevor Bellingham and his wife, Gwendolyn,” I started slowly. “Colin has been hired to solve their murders.” He nodded but said nothing. “He would like to get a look at your autopsy report to see what conclusions you were able to draw.” I hoped my feeble attempt at flattery might tickle his ego, but he only continued to stare at me, his eyes dark and unreadable. When I feared he was on the verge of refusing to engage with me whatsoever, I added, “Is his body still here?”

“Of course,” he scoffed. He kept right on staring at me: measuring me, gauging me, thinking whatever thoughts a mind like his conceived at such a time as this, until I could stand it no more.

“Are you ill?” I blurted incongruously.

“Ill?”

“You don't look well and you have yet to respond to my request.”

“Your request”—he leaned forward, a grim expression settling onto his face—“is not so easy. Inspector Varcoe sent a man around earlier today with explicit instructions
not
to share information with your Mr. Pendragon.”

“Then you shall have done nothing wrong”—I tried to offer a smile but am certain it came off more a grimace—“as you will only be sharing with me.”

“You?!” He chuckled as he leaned back and folded his arms behind his head, revealing great orange stains in his armpits. “You and your Pendragon are one and the same. I don't believe our good inspector meant for me to cooperate with you in lieu of your—”

“You'd be following the letter of his instructions,” I cut him off, uninterested in whatever reference he was about to use. “He asked you not to cooperate with Colin and you won't be.” I leveled my gaze on him and almost cringed as I heard myself utter, “This is between you and me.”

A crooked smile snaked across his face. “And what's in it for me?”

“You would be helping solve this terrible crime,” I answered.

“That's Varcoe's job and he's already
got
a copy of my report.” He smiled gamely. “I'm afraid you have come all this way for nothing.”

“It would mean a great deal to me if you could find some way to help me out. I don't want to compromise you with the inspector, but your help could make a great difference.” I held his gaze with what sincerity I could muster and, to be fair, attempted to infuse it with the slightest hint of something more.

He eyed me for the longest time before abruptly pushing himself to his feet and sloughing over to his filing cabinet. “I keep it in here,” he said with little inflection, yanking open the uppermost drawer and leaving it agape. “You can see it, but I
will not
hand it to you.”

“Of course,” I said quickly. “Would it be all right if I take a few notes?”

“You can copy the bloody thing verbatim for all I care, but if one of Varcoe's men comes by while you're pawing around in there, I will tell him you are doing so without my knowledge or consent.”

“Of course.”

“Of course,” he mimicked snidely. “So agreeable, aren't you, when you think you're getting your way? But I think you know there is a price to pay for everything.” He dug his hand into the cabinet's drawer and extracted a thick, scarred folder and then leaned over my shoulder, pressing himself against my side in a way that steeled my breath. “There it is,” he clucked, tossing it onto his desk. “Do what you will while I prepare his body.” He leaned farther, putting his lips close enough to my ear to assault me with his sour, oily breath. “You do mean to see the body, don't you?”

“Certainly,” I fired back, but it was hardly the truth and I suspect he knew it. Still, it got him out of the room. I sucked in a breath and my nose curled against the foul smell of putrefaction cloying like overused perfume. Everything here, including Denton, was saturated with it.

I leaned forward and flipped open the Bellingham folder. I found myself staring at a grainy black-and-white photograph that showed Gwendolyn Bellingham lying on her left side facing away from the camera, her head held in place by her pillow. Behind her right ear was a single small entry wound from a gun that had clearly been fired at point-blank range. The front of her head, however, was burst like a melon; a hemorrhage of gray matter splattered across the whole of the bed in an uninterrupted pattern that assured me her husband had not been lying beside her at the moment of her death. The killing looked to have been committed quickly . . . thoughtlessly . . . and she had clearly been attacked with great stealth. She had most certainly never even realized that someone was coming up behind her. Her murder looked like a dutiful task completed with minimal fuss.

I paused a moment before pulling the second photograph out, the one of Captain Bellingham. His wrists and ankles were bound to the chair and he was slumped forward, his head having dropped far enough for his chin to be resting on his sternum. His nightshirt had been ripped wide from the neckline to the hem, its jagged edges visible despite much of it having been crudely shoved into the crux of the chair.

Small black dots were widely scattered across his abdomen, some of which oozed tiny black trails of blood, the result of the many spent matches tossed about the floor. The captain's knees were agape and I could see an even greater conflagration of the black marks across the insides of his thighs. Here the wounds appeared deeper than those on his torso, as there were innumerable streaks of coagulated blood crisscrossing his flesh. The number and severity grew exponentially as they got closer to his groin, which, I could now see, had been burned black.

I flipped the photograph over and stared at Denton's desktop for a moment as I struggled to settle my galloping heart. Only after I had managed to slow my breathing and convince my nerves to calm did I reach back out and nudge the photograph back over for one last look. It was important to do this, I told myself, as I was not likely to get a second chance.

Once again I was instantly assaulted by the brutalized sight of the captain's body. Even so, I forced myself to look closely at the wound on the near side of his head. Just like the one administered to his wife, this one had also been fired with the gun's barrel almost touching his skull, as the entry wound was as neat and pristine as what a surgeon might administer. And like his wife, the spectacle on the opposite side was one of utter wreckage. The delivery of such a definitive blow assured me that Trevor Bellingham had been alive when it was administered. He had suffered through the horrors of the burnings only to be murdered once the killer had extracted whatever he had been after. Perhaps Captain Bellingham had finally confessed for the solace of death, for while there was no mercy in his destiny, it had surely brought him peace.

I laid the photograph beside the other one, grateful to be done with them, and started flipping through the papers beneath. Perfunctory descriptions came first: height, weight, age, nationality, hair color, eye color, and so on, followed by the autopsy reports, the last one belonging to Captain Bellingham. With a hand less steady than I wished, I picked up a pencil from a jar on the desk and began scribbling some notes.

There were 371 match burns across the whole of his body. Of these, the greatest concentration were found along the insides of his thighs from his knees to his navel. His sex organs were charred and blistered, having been set afire. Deep lacerations and severe hemorrhaging encircled his wrists and ankles as a result of having been bound to the chair, with one area on the back of his right wrist cut so deeply that it revealed a spot of bone. The captain had endured immeasurable pain.

I let my eyes drift farther down the sheet, stopping when I found the description of the mortal wound to his head. It had been fired, just as I had figured, directly against his cheekbone. The bullet, a forty-four-millimeter arrow-shaped missile, had proceeded through his cranium on an upward trajectory, cleaving his cerebral cortex as it arced through his skull before exiting about an inch above his opposite ear, leaving an exit wound better than six inches in diameter.