The House of the Wicked

19





Dead Man’s Meat





A tight, angry knot of gulls shrieked belligerently overhead. The speckled brown youngsters were the most confident of all, reckless almost, as they plunged down to peck at the meat of the dead man where their parents were too experienced and fearful to do so. Their fierce, gimlet eyes preferred to watch from a distance.

“Keep those blasted birds away!” shouted the fisherman, slapping the young boy hard on the back of his head. He immediately sprang to his duty and shooed the gulls into flight by running this way and that on the beach, waving a large stick and shouting. They flapped haughtily into the air, screaming their defiance.

Two men approached, their boots sinking into the wet shingle. As they came closer one of them held a handkerchief to his nose, his steps slowing as he approached the corpse.

“Good day, sir,” greeted the fisherman, poking his cap deferentially. “And are you Mr Denning, sir? The artist?”

“He is,” said Reverend Biddle answering for him, as it appeared the sight of the dead man had sucked the words from him. “Is this how you found him?”

“Yes, sir,” said the fisherman. “Exactly as you see him now, give or take a few bites missing, taken by those thieving birds. But you know how gulls are.”

Biddle bent over the dead man whilst Denning hung back, hardly daring to look. The corpse was all but naked, its flesh bloated due to many days exposure to the sea. The face was all but unrecognisable as such, for the skull had been caved in. An eye was missing altogether; the mouth was all but toothless, a gaping, mushy mess. The body was covered in deep gashes, the stomach split open and the innards partially spilled out, at which the gulls had been pecking. One leg was in an unnatural position, broken in many places, and the arms appeared dislocated.

“Seen it a number of times,” explained the fisherman. “That’s what the rocks hereabouts do to a person.”

Biddle turned to Denning. “I am sorry to have to ask you to gaze upon this body, Mr Denning. But is this him? Can you identify him?”

Denning craned his neck but refused to come any nearer. He could smell the foul stench of decay. “The body is so bloated and cut about that I cannot say for definite. It is about his size and shape.” He came round the other side, at a distance. The tide was on the turn and the waves were rolling in about twenty yards from him. “There, on his finger, that signet ring,” he said to the fisherman. “Does it bear any initials?”

The man lifted the dead hand so that it was close to his eye, swiped out at a bluebottle that had chosen to settle on it. “Yes, sir, it does. A letter T and a letter M.”

“Thomas Markham,” said Denning. “Terrance inherited it from his grandfather on his mother’s side. He never took it off.” Denning nodded gravely at Biddle. “You were right. It is the body of Mr Wilkinson. The ring proves it.”

“Sadly, I thought as much,” said Biddle. “A man cannot go missing for no reason and he has been gone nearly a fortnight. He must have lost his footing on the cliff top, fell to his death, or drowned. There can be no other explanation.” He addressed the fisherman: please see to it that he is brought ashore, placed somewhere safe till we can get the usual reports done and notify his family.” He passed the man a few coins. “He does have family?” he asked of Denning.

“He has a father still alive, I believe, though he was ill. He has no wife or children.”

“That, at least, is a blessing,” he said.

“An accident, then, Reverend?” he asked. “You are certain?”

“Most assuredly. It happens.”

“Begging your pardon, Reverend, but will you be wishing to capture his likeness before we have him removed from the beach?” said the fisherman.

Biddle looked at Denning, who nodded his approval. “It can do him no harm,” he said. “He is safe from that.”



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