“Was?”
Enys lifted his hands, palms up. “What else can I think?”
Dodd nudged Carey’s foot with his boot. “D’ye think…?”
Carey sighed. “We can but try.”
***
The men were very happy to stop off at Westminster steps and have ale and bread and cheese bought for them for their labours. Carey, Dodd, and Enys hurried to the crypt of the little chapel by the court.
The undertakers had been and the smell was less appalling since the entrails had been taken out and the cavity packed with salt and saltpetre. Now the corpse was wrapped in a cerecloth. Carey lit the candles with a spill from the watchlight.
Enys swallowed hard, took a deep breath. He had his hands clasped together at his waist as he went forward and Dodd peeled the waxed cloth from the dead man’s face. He looked intently for a few moments and then let his breath puff out in a sigh of relief.
“This is not my brother, sir,” said Enys. “Poor soul.” His gaze travelled down the body and he made a jerky movement with his right hand, then looked down.
Dodd grunted and put the waxed cloth back as carefully as he could. There was a sound behind him and he saw a small, fragile, very pregnant girl coming down the steps being carefully helped by a large man wearing a buff coat. With them was one of Hunsdon’s liverymen.
“Yerss,” said the large man to the liveryman, “it’s Briscoe, Timothy Briscoe. And this is my wife, Ellie.”
Carey stepped back from the corpse and so did Dodd. Enys was already in the shadows.
“Only she ‘eard about a corpse being found wiv a bit of ‘is finger missing,” Briscoe continued, “and she was scared it was ‘er big bruvver who she ‘asn’t seen for years and so I brung ‘er so she wouldn’t worry ‘erself and upset the baby.”
Dodd thought that if anything was likely to bring the baby on, it was the sight and smell of a corpse that had been in water for a while. The girl was shaking like a leaf and gripping tight to Briscoe’s arm. He looked a dangerous bruiser but his square face was full of concern and the girl crept close to the corpse and peered at the man’s left hand. There was a gasp and a gulp.
“Ellie, my love,” Briscoe rumbled. “You mustn’t…
“I’ve got to know,” trembled Ellie. Carey stepped forward and lifted the cerecloth from the man’s face. He was watching the girl carefully. She stood on tiptoe and stared, gulped again and again, and the tears started flowing down her face.
She turned her face to her husband’s shoulder quite quietly. “I’m not sure,” she whispered, “‘is face is different, but it might be Harry. It could be.”
Carey was good with distressed women, Dodd thought. He beckoned Briscoe and his wife up the steps and into the sunlight, gestured for them to sit down on a bench. He sat next to her and offered Mrs. Briscoe a sip from his silver flask of aqua vitae which she took gratefully.
“Mrs. Briscoe,” he said gently to her, “if you haven’t seen your brother Harry…What was his surname?”
“Dowling,” Briscoe said and his wife sniffled, fumbled out a hankerchief and blew her nose. “Harold Dowling was his name.”
“If you haven’t seen him for so long, why did you think it might be him?”
She gulped again with her hand resting on her proud belly. Thank God it didn’t look as if the babe had been brought on by shock yet. “I thought I saw ‘im in the street a few weeks ago, only he wouldn’t talk to me. I was so sure it was him and I was so pleased but he wouldn’t stop and he wouldn’t speak.”
“Where did you see him?”
“Seething Lane, near Sir Francis Walsingham’s old house.”
“How was he dressed?”
“He looked like a gentleman which is what he always wanted to be, you see. He went off to Germany after he had a big fight wiv my dad and went for a miner, but we never heard nuffing more from him and my dad said he’d probably died in a mine and good riddance.” She sniffled. “He was always in trouble, Harry, so maybe he was soldiering as well. It’s a good thing my mam never saw what he come to after she spent all that money to put him to school.”
Carey nodded. “But you’re not sure it’s him?”
She shook her head. “It might be because of the finger, that’s why I came. When I heard the crier say that about the body. He lost the tip of it when he was a boy and he caught it in a gate and the barber cut it off cos it went bad.”
She stopped, frowned and blinked at him. “Who are you, sir?”
“I’m Sir Robert Carey. My father asked me to try and find out why this man ended in the Thames with a knife wound in him.”
She gasped again. “I don’t know about that. He was a lovely bruvver,” she said, “’e took to me to Bartalmew’s Fair when I was little and every year after and he was such fun, always laughing and full of ideas for making money. He was certain he’d end as a gentleman.”
“I believe the inquest will be tomorrow…” said Carey, looking for confirmation at Hunsdon’s man who nodded, “in front of the Board of Greencloth. Afterwards you’ll be able to claim the body to bury.”
The girl nodded again and blew her nose again. “Thank you, sir.”
“May we help you to your home. I have a boat waiting for me.” Carey was watching the girl with concern.
Briscoe coughed. “Thank you kindly, sir, but we don’t live far from here and my wife prefers to walk, don’t you, Ellie?” The girl nodded as she heaved herself off the bench. “I’ve been walking a lot today, haven’t I, Tim?” she said with a watery smile. “It’s easier than sitting, to be honest, sir. And I don’t know if I could get in a boat at the moment, I’m so clumsy.”
“I see,” said Carey and smiled at her. “Well, God’s blessing on your time, mistress, I hope all goes well for you.” Ellie Briscoe went pink and dropped him a clumsy curtsey as she waddled off with her husband’s arm around her into the molten light that the sun was pouring into the Thames like a beekeeper measuring honey. Enys headed with his shoulders bowed towards the boatlanding.
“Will you not take a quart of ale, sir?” said Carey.
“If we do not presently round up the witnesses to Mr. Heneage’s assault on Sergeant Dodd, be very sure we will never find them,” said Enys in an oddly strangled voice. “Since he himself has given us the slip, I’m sure the lesser fry can and will.”
“Ay but surely they’ll be feared for their kin,” said Dodd who deeply doubted there was any point in finding the witnesses at all. Unpaid ones, anyway. “They’ll no’ testify, naebody would.” He’d thought that their only chance of persuading anyone to do it was being able to say “and Mr. Heneage is locked up now, what do you say to that?” while persuasively bouncing heads off walls. He’d assumed that was what they were about.
“You have a point,” said Carey regretfully as he followed the lawyer, gestured to the oarsmen and bailiffs who were sitting in the sun by the red lattices of the alehouse, and headed to the boat again.
Enys had a list of witnesses that Dodd had drawn up. Most of them were in Heneage’s pay. And Dodd had been looking forward to wetting his whistle which was starting to go dry, which was his own fault.
Scowling he got back in the damned boat again and sat there watching as Enys fumbled and wobbled his way to the seat. Carey stepped across and sat down at the prow, trailing his finger in the water and looking thoughtful.
“It’s a pity Mrs. Grenville’s a woman so she can’t testify,” he said. “All the rest are Heneage’s men, apart from Mr. Cheke.”
Enys frowned. “Nobody else?”
“The Gaoler and the gaol servants.”
“Hmm. Sergeant, you were marked in the register as Sir Robert.”
“Ay, but I writ me own name in the book, clear as ye like,” said Dodd proudly, “not me mark but me name and office as well.” It was almost worth the missed football games and beatings from the Reverend Gilpin to be able to say that to the hoity toity London lawyer.
Surprisingly, Enys didn’t seem impressed by Dodd’s clerkly ability but he did look pleased.