City of Light

Chapter FOURTEEN



London



1:10 PM



The doorway to the house at 229 Cleveland Street had been boarded up, all the curtains drawn, and a sign nailed to the porch railing instructed the populace to keep out by order of the Queen and Scotland Yard. Davy stood in the street gazing at the place, which had the same dispirited air that seemed to hang about all uninhabited buildings.

Eatwell may have left him with paperwork stating that Charles Hammond had been officially declared missing and thus his home could be legally searched, but he had been vague about exactly how the forensics team could access the building or what they might be expected to find there. Nothing in Davy’s black leather bag – which in fact was one of Tom’s old medical school cases, pressed into service – contained tools which would allow him to pry loose the boards and enter the front door.

Davy moved around the back. The door coming off the kitchen was also nailed shut, although not quite as thoroughly as the front. Davy opened the bag and peered inside. He could scarcely risk one of Tom’s expensive medical knives on such a mundane task as prying out nails and Trevor’s silver measuring rods were equally valued. He had passed a tailor’s shop on the corner and perhaps there was something there he could borrow, or, more likely, he would have to return to the butcher three streets back to find a tool suited to the task.

Just then his eye fell upon one of the first floor windows. Given the notoriety of the house, one could only assume that all the windows had been bolted from the inside and possibly also nailed shut, but this window was ever so slightly open. Raised perhaps an inch. A strange oversight for the coppers to make, Davy thought, but a bit of good luck for him. He jumped and was easily able to grab the sill with his fingertips and then managed to scramble up the wooden boards and get a stronger grip on the window with his whole hand. He’d been unfortunately forced to abandon his bag in the back yard and he had no clear idea for how he was going to retrieve it once he got into the house but, Davy supposed, he could only take matters one step at a time.

The window opened easily and Davy was able to heave himself inside. Upon standing, he found himself in a small sitting room which was outfitted in a style typical for a working class neighborhood. Hardly the equivalent of Geraldine’s parlor, but certainly comfortable enough. A large divan, a stuffed chair with a footstool, a rocking chair and even a small bookcase. Davy wandered over to take a look – he found an investigation of their reading matter to be a surprisingly effective shortcut into the minds of both victims and suspects – but did not recognize any of the titles. Rather odd in and of itself, for while Davy would hardly claim to be a scholar of literature, his mother loved books and had read to her children throughout their childhoods, largely from the classics.

Davy pulled one of the volumes from its shelf at random and opened it to find, not words, but pictures of a sort that caused him to slam it back closed immediately, his cheeks flaming. Then, ashamed of himself or having been so ashamed, he grabbed another book and then another. With a few quick glances he concluded he was standing before an extensive collection of pornography, in fact the sort of pornography directed toward those with a particular interest in male congress, designed to serve not only as a means of arousal, but also a means of instruction. Judging by the plethora of pictures and the paucity of words, he could furthermore conclude that this instruction book was either intended for an international audience or for people who did not read.

Evidence for Eatwell, I suppose, Davy thought, and he carried a couple of the books over to the window and dropped them out into the yard. They landed on the grass beside his kit – he still had to think of some way to get that cumbersome thing through the window – and just as Davy was turning back from the window he heard a noise from the room above him.

The sound was light, scurrying, but clearly the motion of human feet across floorboards.

Davy called out “Scotland Yard,” two words which could strike either comfort or terror in listeners, depending upon the nature of their most recent activities. The reaction in the owner of these particular feet was evidently terror, for, after a pause, the scurrying commenced again, now faster and louder than before.

“Scotland Yard,” Davy repeated, bounding up the stairs. “There’s no point in running.” But when he reached the top of the stairwell and strode into the bedroom above the parlor he found it empty. The room did not offer many options for a person wishing to hide. A narrow bed, a small bureau….and an open window.

Davy walked to the window, craned his neck out and found a boy of about thirteen crouched on the rooftop.

“Come in, lad,” he said quietly. “You can’t escape Scotland Yard by climbing on a rooftop. And besides, I won’t hurt you.”

With a sniff, the boy scuttled back toward the window. His progress across the shingles was suspiciously swift and, upon closer inspection, Davy saw that a series of ropes had been extended across not only the roof but all the windows of the upper story, criss-crossed and knotted at intervals. The doors and lower windows might be nailed shut, but evidently any number of people had been using this webbing as a means of coming and going at 229 Cleveland Street since the morning of the arrest.

The boy swung through the window with a practiced ease and stood before Davy, wiping his nose and trembling.

“How many of you are living here, lad?” Davy asked.

“Five.”

“All boys who worked for Charles Hammond, fellows you know from the post and telegraph office?”

A nod.

“And none of you with families to go home to?”

A shake of the head.

“Do you know where Mr. Hammond has gone?”

A more emphatic shake of the head.

Alright, so he wasn’t naturally inclined to conversation. Hardly surprising, for who knew what sort of threats Hammond had employed to keep these luckless boys in line. Trevor had taught Davy that the easiest way to get information from children was to offer to feed them, and it seemed that in this case the stratagem might work especially well.

“I’ll tell you what,” Davy said. “I don’t care that you’re living here with your friends. But I want to look around and I want you to come with me and fully answer my questions. If you do, I’ll take you over to the Tinwhistle Pub and we shall have a bowl of stew. Does this sound fair?”

The stew was almost certainly a tempting lure. One glance at the boy’s scrawny frame would tell you that. But still he hesitated, letting his eyes roam over Davy’s face in an attitude of appraisal, as if life had taught him many cruel lessons, not the least of which was that men sometimes promised boys things that the men did not subsequently deliver.

“How old are you?” the boy finally asked.

“Twenty-three,” Davy said. “I look younger, I know, and it’s often been a disadvantage in the pursuit of my profession.”

“I’m fifteen,” the boy said. “Some say I look younger too.” He scarcely need add that this could be advantageous in the pursuit of his own particular profession. “Name’s Mickey Cooper.”

“I’m Davy Mabrey,’ Davy said, holding out a hand. “So shall you take me through the house?”

The brief tour was depressing - thin cots without linens, an ill-supplied cupboard, a fireplace with brambles and broken shingles rather than a proper lay of wood. But Davy supposed that, given what the boys had likely come from, the house served as perfect haven to them, and as much a home as many of them had ever had. His mind sprang back to the childhood fort he’d made with his brothers and a few other lads from the neighborhood, a flimsy treehouse constructed with whatever supplies they could charm from their mothers. They had imagined a world somewhat like this one, a group of boys living in utter freedom, musketeers in a way, striding through the streets and going on grand adventures with no parents or teachers to curtail their activities. Of course, they hadn’t planned on the being whored out to aging members of the aristocracy as part of the plan, and the chief advantage of their fraternity was that it could be abandoned the instant their mothers called them home to warm meals and warm beds.

“You seem to have managed rather well without Charles and the income he provides,” Davy ventured at one point, a bit appalled to find the kitchen held little more than bread and moldy cheese.

“Aye, Sir, we have our wages from the telegraph company,” Mickey said. “And with the master gone, we don’t have to pay no rental, do we?”

“He charged you rent?” For some reason, Davy found this the most despicable fact of all.

“Didn’t exactly call it that,” Mickey admitted, after a moment of consideration. “He said we was to make an ‘investment in our careers,’ was the phrase, Sir. For we had to be certain posh, didn’t we? Have certain clothes and a certain education?”

“Education, yes,” Davy murmured, thinking of the books in the staircase.

“He taught us to dance.”

“Dance?”

“Aye, the waltz. I have a velvet jacket all my own,” Mickey said. “Color of blood, it is, like a proper gent.”

“Indeed,” said Davy. The boy’s pride was heartbreaking.

Next they wandered past a small alcove beneath the stairs, which Mickey proclaimed to be “the master’s study.” Davy paused to consider a leather carrying case which, when opened, reveled a flask of what looked to be brandy nestled within folds of blue velvet.

“Does anyone use this but Hammond?” he asked.

Mickey shook his head.

“You’re quite certain? He doesn’t offer a drink to the men who come calling?”

“Not from there, Sir. ‘Tis his private stash, he says.”

“I see,” Davy said, closing the case and tucking it under his arm. The boy was likely right on this - with its cut crystal, lush velvet, and fine burnished leather, the case was probably the most valuable item in the whole house. “Now, could you show me your clothes? The ones Master Hammond bought for you?”

“All right,” Mickey said with a sigh. “And then the stew?”

“Lamb stew,” Davy promised. “And a pint to wash it down with. Maybe two.”

Thus inspired, Mickey galloped up the stairs with Davy behind him. He went from one bedroom to another wrenching open the bureaus and pulling out any number of garishly-colored, ill-tailored garments that only boys from the lowest classes could take pride in possessing. Nonetheless, Davy nodded somberly at each offering Mickey produced as if he were being shown the finest merchandise on Saville Row.

There seemed to be nothing to report here, except the sad news that the boys were being not merely buggered but bilked, that Charles Hammond had persuaded them to turn over a hefty portion of their hard-earned funds for rent, costuming, and instruction in the unlikely art of ballroom dance. Davy was beginning to regret that he had held Mickey back from his stew for so long when they came to the final room, the final bureau, and the final drawer.

Mickey yanked it open.

Frilly things. Lacy stockings, a high necked blouse, kid gloves. Some sort of undergarment that Davy dimly recalled having a French name. Clothing of a much higher quality than the other items Mickey had shown him. The sort of things a lady might possess.

Davy frowned. “A woman lives here? Hammond employed girls as well as boys?”

Mickey shook his head. “Was Tommy’s drawer, and he’s gone too, Sir, left the same day the master took off. Just as you’d expect, wouldn’t you?” When he looked up and took note of Davy’s bewildered stare, Mickey tried again. “Thought he was better than us, didn’t he? Tommy wouldn’t stay behind to scratch out a living with the rest of the chickens. And the master would take him wherever he went, wouldn’t he? Seeing as how Tommy was his pet.”

“Take him where? You do know where Hammond is, don’t you?”

Mickey hesitated.

“Stew,” Davy reminded him, none too gently.

“They say he took Tommy to France,” Mickey blurted. “Up and run they did, when the news came back the coppers had grabbed up poor Charlie and pulled him to the bloody jail. The rest of us didn’t know what we was to do, but Tommy was the only one he cared about, the only one he took with him. Always the golden boy, Tommy was, the one that made him the posh money, only one the master cared for.”

Davy picked up one of the gloves. It was small, spun from silk. He lifted it to his cheek. It smelled of lemon verbena.

We’ve been very stupid, he thought. We’ve been very slow to see.

“And why was Tommy the favorite?” he asked, even thought he was quite sure he knew the answer.

“Because he was one of the boy-girls, wasn’t he, Sir?”

“The boy-girls?”

“Yes, Sir. They knew they was better than the rest of us and wasn’t going to let us forget the fact. See what I mean?”

Paris



1:20 PM



Bodies talk.

This was something Tom Bainbridge believed with all his soul and it was the primary reason he was prepared to assume the role of coroner of the forensics unit the minute his schooling was complete. The silence of the morgue subdued and perhaps even frightened some of his school mates and he knew that they saw cadavers as proof of the limitations of their calling. The sort of limitations doctors were loathe to admit. For if medicine was an imperfect science, then they must be, by implication, imperfect scientists, priests in service to a minor god. The nearly oceanic arrogance of doctors, professors, and even the students of medicine would make them bristle and mutter at such accusations - and nothing was as accusatory as a corpse.

His friends called them mute. One of the more poetic chaps back at Cambridge had referred to their precious collection of cadavers as “the mute choir.” But Tom never saw them as such. To him, the dead were bursting with stories and quite willing to share them, at least to a man who was patient and respectful, who understood that death could be as complex as life.

With a mention that they had wished to view Graham’s body, Rubois had vigorously nodded and sent for a young translator named Carle who could escort them to the morgue and answer any questions. But when Trevor had asked if there was another body which had also been taken from the Seine, this simple question had caused an abrupt change of plans and Rubois had suddenly opted to come with them as well. Their silent party had stomped across town, stopping to buy ham and cheese rolls from a vendor as they walked, and entered the palatial doors of the Paris morgue. Tom had always assumed that Rayley’s letters exaggerated the opulence of the building, but they had not. He and Trevor had exchanged a look of sheer disbelief as they had crossed the marble lobby. The bodies brought here greeted death in far grander accommodations than they had likely ever known in life.

But this was an irony to be contemplated later, in leisure, with a glass of fine port. For now, as the four men made their way down hall after hall, turning so frequently that Tom would have been unable to find his way out on a bet, he focused on settling his mind. Releasing the innumerable impressions and changes of the last seventy-two hours and bringing his thoughts fully into the present. Tom’s faltering French had allowed him to understand more of Rubois and Carle’s conversation than they probably intended, and he knew that Rubois was not entirely convinced that Tom and Trevor deserved to view both bodies. The British still had something to prove. If he could manage to deduce something that their own coroner did not, perhaps Rubois would open even more to them, be willing to share his own research and theories.

Tom wished his French was more fluid but he knew the true test of his powers of translation would come when he stood before the corpses. In death, he considered, we all pass over into some countryless land. We begin to speak a new language that only a handful of the living can decipher. Tom noted that Trevor was clinching his jaw as he walked. His discomfort with the dead, so odd in light of his chosen profession, was well known but rarely commented upon by his underlings.

Rubois was unsure they should be here. Trevor didn’t wish to be. It would fall to Tom and Tom alone to ask and answer the question: What are these particular bodies trying to tell us?

1:35 PM



Davy sat and watched Mickey Cooper shovel in two bowls of stew, several slices of bread, and gulp the beer like water. During this luncheon – which, in the boy’s hungry haste, had lasted no more than ten minutes – Davy had been able to gather a few more particulars. It seemed that Charles Hammond had regularly gone back and forth between England and France, during the six months Mickey had been in his employ. Mickey claimed not to know the reason for the travel beyond the vague explanation of “business” and Davy believed him.

It seemed that Hammond normally kept somewhere between five and eight boys in his employ at any given time, all recruited by the aforementioned Henry Newlove from the post and telegraph offices. Henry not only served as Hammond’s procurer of new talent, but had also been an instructor in the sort of skills Hammond had declared the boys must know if they were to succeed in their new profession. He had tutored them in diction – Davy suspected Mickey had been somewhat of a disappointment to Newlove in this particular arena – as well as dancing, proper table manners, and undoubtedly other, darker arts as well, the specifics of which Davy did not inquire and Mickey did not offer. Newlove obviously served as Hammond’s second in command and normally ran the brothel during the man’s frequent absences. But no one had seen Henry in weeks.

Thus, with Newlove missing and Hammond on the run, the boys had been left on their own. No clients had appeared since the dark day of Charlie Swinscow’s arrest, a boarded up door and warnings from Scotland Yard hardly serving as invitation to an evening of forbidden frolic. So the boys had constructed their climbing web of ropes and continued to come and go via the back of the house, living off the message delivery wages and, Davy suspected, a fair bit of theft.

But here was the surprising part. If you discounted this last bit of trouble which began with Charlie’s arrest, Mickey claimed the boys had been quite content with their lot at 229 Cleveland Street. Most of them had come to London from mill towns and farms, where grueling physical labor was the norm and the requirements of the postal service, which demanded long hours in exchange for paltry pay, had not been a great improvement. A profession which required only an hour a two of effort each day was a welcome novelty and even their living conditions were a decided improvement from what they’d left.

In fact, Mickey’s main complaint seemed to be not what Hammond - whom he continued to refer to as “the master,” with it grating more on Davy’s nerves each time he said the word - had expected them to do with the gentlemen who came calling, but rather the preferential treatment afforded the boy-girls. Apparently they received not only better clothes and more exacting training, but they progressed on to more glamorous settings where they made the acquaintance of even wealthier men.

When Davy tried, as best he could, to ascertain if there was anything unusual about the physiology of the boy-girls, his questions were greeted with a frown and more shakes of the head. Through Mickey’s rambling attempts at explanation, made all the more difficult to follow because of the mouthfuls of lamb stew, Davy could only gather that the boy-girls tended to be younger than the others, twelve or thirteen, still with smooth faces and slender frames.

“Pretty, I guess you’d say,” Mickey concluded thoughtfully, and took another deep drag of his beer. “Though Tommy’d sure try to punch me if he heard it put out there like that.”

Davy sat back to mull this over. So most of the boy-girls were young enough to retain a genderless quality, not yet in puberty and semi-starved besides. Mickey casually but pointedly, tilted his empty mug in all directions and Davy signaled the barmaid for a fresh ale. The gesture earned him a grateful, gap-toothed smile from the lad, and Davy decided to try a new tack.

“The clothes in that drawer were expensive. How could Tommy afford them?”

“But the master bought them for him, didn’t he, Sir?”

Having Mickey constantly refer to him as “Sir” was also disconcerting for Davy, almost as distressing as hearing Hammond deemed “the master.” “Sir” was the proper form of address for a detective, or even a copper, especially from a boy the age of Mickey, but the word still made a dull clink each time it hit his ear. Davy was almost always in the presence of Trevor, almost always the one saying “Sir” rather than responding to it. Now each time Mickey addressed him as such, it only served as a reminder that Trevor was far away.

“Why did Hammond use his own money to supply clothes for the boy-girls and not the rest of you?”

Mickey looked at him archly, a grown man’s expression settling across a boy’s freckled face. “The rest of us just wore our clothes at home, of course, for socials in the parlor. But the boy-girls would go out, wouldn’t they, to places where people would know.”

“Know that they were boy-girls?”

A full stomach had restored Mickey’s confidence and he gave Davy a look of open exasperation. “Course not, Sir, that’s the point. The posh people thought they was girls, of course, so when Tommy was at the playhouse or the proper pubs he had to look like a girl and he had to have the right things, didn’t he, else the posh people would know him for a poser. The master used to say our costumes had to be good enough for the dark but Tommy’s had to be good enough for the light.”

Speaking of light, it was finally beginning to dawn for Davy. “My God,” he said. “You mean these men would take twelve year old boys out to the theater or to restaurants and pass them off as women? Is that why Hammond taught you to dance?”

Mickey nodded.

“And this happened more than once? With more than one boy?”

Another nod.

“For the love of God, why would they do such a thing?”

Mickey wiped his bowl with a crust of bread and considered the question. “Spose it’s cause they could, Sir.”