In the event it took less than six inches of topsoil and a dozen shovel loads to confirm it.
There was a dull thud as a shovel struck wood. They used the edges of the shovels to scrape the soil away from the top of the coffin. What was immediately apparent was the jagged split in the wood halfway down the thin coffin lid.
“Good God, have you no pity?” The verger made as if to place himself between Hawkwood and the open grave.
“If I’m wrong, Verger Symes,” Hawkwood said, “I’ll buy your church a new roof. Now, stand aside.” He nodded to Hicks. “Open it up.”
Hicks glanced at his partner, who looked equally uncomfortable.
“Give me the bloody shovel,” Hawkwood held out his hand.
Hicks hesitated, then passed it over.
The three men watched as Hawkwood inserted the blade of the shovel under the widest end of the lid and pressed down hard. His effort met with little resistance. Other hands had already rendered the damage. The cheap lid splintered along the existing split with a drawn-out creak. Hawkwood handed the shovel back to its owner, gripped the edges of the shattered lid and lifted.
The verger swallowed nervously.
Hawkwood knelt, reached inside the coffin and lifted out the crumpled fold of cloth.
The burial shroud.
Burial plots were at a premium in London and mass graves were common in many parishes. It was often impossible to dig a fresh grave without disturbing previously buried corpses. The pit at St Giles in the Fields was a prime example where, for years, rows of cheap coffins had been piled one upon the other, all exposed to sight and smell, awaiting more coffins which would then be stacked on top of them. The depths of the pits could vary and coffins weren’t always used. A year or two back, in St Botolph’s, two gravediggers had died as a result of noxious gases emanating from decomposing corpses. Graves were often kept open for weeks until charged almost to the surface with dead bodies. In many instances the top layer of earth was only a few inches deep so that body extremities could sometimes poke through the soil.
Which made it easy for the body stealers.
Hawkwood left the gravediggers to fill in the hole and retraced his steps back to the murder scene. He looked down at the corpse and then at the grubby shroud in his hand.
Strictly speaking, bodies were not considered property. Burial clothing, however, was a different matter. Steal a corpse and you couldn’t be done. Steal clothing or a shroud or a wedding ring and that was a different matter. That carried the punishment of transportation. Whoever had ransacked this grave had been careful.
Which begged the obvious question.
Why leave the dead man’s corpse behind? Why wasn’t this one bound for the anatomist’s table as well? The dead man was relatively young and, other than the obvious fact that he was lifeless, he appeared to be in good physical shape. He should have been a prime candidate for any surgeon’s anatomy class. The corpses of well-built men were always in demand, for, with the skin stripped away, they could be used to display muscles to their best advantage. To any self-respecting body stealer, this wasn’t just a cadaver, this was serious cash-in-hand.
There was the soft pad of footsteps from behind. It was the verger.
“How many?” Hawkwood asked.
The verger bit his lip. “Four in the last two weeks, including the Walker woman. The other three were all male.”
Hawkwood said nothing and reflected on the speed of the corpse’s transformation from Mary Walker to the Walker woman. “What about a night watchman?”
Verger Symes shrugged. “It’s true we have employed them in the past, and it makes a difference for a time. The snatchers go elsewhere: St Luke’s or St Helen’s. But then the watchman becomes complacent and relaxes his vigilance, usually with the aid of a bottle, and the stealings begin again. We are not a wealthy parish, Officer Hawkwood.”
It was not an uncommon story.
The number of graveyards in the capital that had escaped the attention of the sack-’em-up men could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Deterrents had been tried – night watchmen, lamps, dogs, even concealed spring guns – but to little avail.
The wealthy could inter their dead in deeper graves, in family mausoleums and private chapels or beneath heavy, immovable headstones, encasing the remains in substantial coffins, either lead-lined or made entirely of metal. The poor could not afford such luxuries. They did their best, mixing sticks and straw with the grave soil for example, in the vain hope that the resulting fibres would choke the stealers’ wooden shovels. Paupers’ graves were easy targets.
“Can I ask you a question, Officer Hawkwood?” The verger looked pensive. “When I enquired earlier why anyone would do such a terrible thing – murder a man, then cut out his tongue – you said it was obvious. I don’t understand.”
Hawkwood nodded. “Same reason they didn’t take this body away with the other one. It was left here for a purpose.”
“Purpose?”
Hawkwood returned the verger’s gaze.
“It’s meant as a warning.”
“You think that’s why they left the body? As a warning?”
James Read asked the question with his back to the room. He was gazing out of the window, looking down into Bow Street. It was early. The Public Office on the ground floor was not due to open for over an hour. Outside, however, the roads were already busy with morning traffic. The click-clack of hooves and the rattle of carriage wheels could be heard, along with the cries of street vendors as they made their way to and from Covent Garden, barely a stone’s throw away round the corner at the end of Russell Street.
The fire, still crackling in the grate, had raised the room’s temperature considerably since Hawkwood’s last visit. James Read did not like the cold so he was studying the oppressive late November sky with no small degree of despair. He suspected that the weather was about to take a turn for the worse. There was a sullen quality in the air that hinted of yet more precipitation, possibly sleet, and that probably meant the early arrival of winter snow. He sighed, shivered in resigned acceptance, and turned towards the fire’s warming embrace.
“That was my first thought,” Hawkwood said.
Knowing James Read’s propensity for an open fire, Hawkwood had wisely left his coat in the ante-room under the eye of Ezra Twigg. He was glad he had done so. He would be roasting otherwise.
“You base that on the manner of death and the removal of the dead man’s tongue, I presume?”
Hawkwood nodded. “The gravediggers and the verger got a good look. It’ll be all round the parish by midday. If it isn’t already.”
“I would have thought the crucifixion would have sufficed,” James Read said. “The tongue seems rather excessive. Not to mention the teeth. You have thoughts on the teeth?”
“Waste not, want not,” Hawkwood said dispassionately. “The body and the tongue were left as a warning. The teeth were taken for profit.”
A fine profit, too, if one had the stomach for it. Most body stealers had. It was a lucrative sideline. Many resurrection men removed the teeth from corpses before delivering their merchandise to the anatomists. A good set could fetch five guineas if you knew your market.
“As I said: excessive.”
“Not if you really want to put the fear of God into your rivals,” Hawkwood said.
The Chief Magistrate frowned. “Which would indicate a serious escalation in violence.”
“They’re making their mark,” Hawkwood said. “Staking their territory. The Borough Boys will be looking to their laurels.”