Coombs went silent. He brushed the bone as it lay on the canvas, then turned to me abruptly. “I would like to see the rest of her.”
And so, once more, our lady was laid out upon a table, bare and friendless, pathetic and forgotten. Coombs helped Matthias and Bartholomew place her bones appropriately, his good-natured expression deserting him as he studied the wound on the skull.
“Terrible,” he said, shaking his head. “Diabolical. The blow killed her, did it not?”
“That is what Thompson of the Thames River Police believes.”
Coombs took a step back from the table, chewing on the knuckle of his forefinger. “The River Police? They found her?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Caught under a mooring in Wapping Docks. She might have gone in there, or from a ship, or been carried there by the current. We have no idea.”
More gnawing on his bent finger. Then he removed the digit from his mouth. “I might not be able to help you, gentlemen. The set of the bone looks like my work, but who the young lady is, I cannot tell you. It has been too long … my memory is not …” Coombs’s eyes narrowed, as though his thoughts had taken him another direction, but he shook his head. “My apologies. I cannot recall.”
He was lying. He’d remembered something, but was reluctant to tell us what.
Grenville must have drawn the same conclusion, because he said in a patient tone, “I assure you, Mr. Coombs, what you tell us will go no further. We only wish to discover who this lady was and help Mr. Thompson bring her killer to justice.”
Coombs glanced at me, taking me in from my thick hair that refused to lie flat, to my boots, and the walking stick that so firmly propped me up. After a time, he sighed.
“You are a military man, sir. I have more respect for an army captain than I do for the Runners or thief-takers. I have thought of a young lady I treated perhaps fifteen years ago—I set her left ulna, as this one has been. I remember her, because it is unusual for a wellborn lady to break an arm, unless she is mad for riding. But this lady was not one for horses. I asked her.”
I curbed my impatience. “The lady’s name?”
Coombs chewed on his second finger this time, again taking me in from head to toe. “I hesitate to tell you, Captain, only because the young lady I am thinking of isn’t dead. She is very much alive. Her father keeps a shop in the Strand. But other than her, any broken bone I’ve set has belonged to men young and old, or older women who are becoming brittle. I am very sorry that I cannot help you.”
I frowned. My nameless surgeon had been very certain that Coombs had been the man to treat the injury. I trusted his assessment—I recognized intelligent competence when I met it.
“If you did not help this young woman, can you guess who did?” I asked. “A surgeon who would mend her this cleanly?”
“I am not acquainted with every surgeon in London,” Coombs said. “Perhaps she sustained the break in the country and was attended there. Farriers often set bones when no one else is available. Whoever did it has great skill, I will admit.”
I did not answer. I’d hoped our search would be as quick and simple as Denis’s surgeon had made it sound, but I was back to uncertainty.
Coombs’s apprentice banged his way in just then bearing a large tray with cups and pots. The man, already in his thirties, I’d judge, but with the gracelessness of a youth not grown into his body, jolted so much as he strode in that I feared the tea would slide off the tray and be lost.
The tray tilted precariously, and I saw Grenville poised to catch it. But the apprentice managed to set it down on the table near the bones.
Coombs gave his apprentice a stern look. “I hope you do not mind an indifferent repast, gentlemen. The lad is better at surgery than brewing.”
The apprentice, far from looking offended, grinned, made us a bow, and retreated.
Grenville and I partook in a polite cup of tea—which was weak and bitter. Coombs dosed his with large dollops from his flask.
Coombs had nothing to add about the body that Denis’s surgeon hadn’t already surmised, and we took our leave. Bartholomew and Matthias carried the crate down the stairs, Grenville following. All three looked disappointed with our errand.
As the others climbed into Grenville’s coach, a thought struck me. I told the coachman, Jackson, to wait, while I ascended to Coombs’s chambers again.
When I returned to the carriage, the others had settled in. Coombs’s apprentice cheerfully pushed me up inside and shut the door for me. Jackson started the horses, and we rolled into the mass of conveyances trying to push their way down the busy road.
“What did you ask him?” Grenville inquired. He held on to a strap above him as the carriage lurched, and looked as though he regretted sipping the bad tea. Grenville was prone to motion sickness.
“I asked him the name of the family of the woman he’d treated,” I said. “There may be no connection at all, but I am curious. Odd that Coombs should set the arm of a similar young woman near the same time this woman’s would have been done. How many young ladies of good middle-class families break their left arms and have them set by surgeons of equal skill?”
“I have no idea.” Grenville’s eyes began to sparkle, the carriage’s jolting forgotten. “Did he tell you who she was?”
“Her father’s name is Hartman, and he owns a watch shop in the Strand.”
“Excellent,” Grenville said. “As you speculate, it may lead to nothing, but we have so bloody little to go on.”
“A broken bone and a necklace.” I shrugged. “I believe we have had as much or less before. Shall we repair to the Strand?”
“Indeed.” His motion sickness forgotten, Grenville tapped on the roof and ordered Jackson to head the coach toward the river.
***
Messers Hartman and Schweigler, watchmakers, had a shop at number 86. The building on the Strand Jackson stopped before was unassuming, with a plain door and a small window, a discreet sign announcing that this was indeed a watch shop.
The interior, when we ducked inside out of thin rain that began pattering down, was dim and workmanlike, befitting a craftsman’s place.
Mr. Hartman obviously recognized Grenville on sight. He came from the back himself before the assistant could fetch him, a smile on his face.
“Welcome, sir. How very kind of you to call upon us.”
“Quite.” Grenville flushed.
In his zeal of questioning Mr. Hartman Grenville had forgotten that any time he visited an establishment, it gave said establishment panache. Grenville’s patronage was as prized as a royal one—it could make or break the careers of hat-maker, glove-maker, tailor, watchmaker.
His arrival this morning, unannounced, would be remarked upon, and Mr. Hartman’s reputation made.
Grenville, who was very careful about from whom he purchased his wardrobe and accoutrements, turned an uncomfortable shade of red. He glanced at me, as though wishing for me to help him, but I only rested my hands on my walking stick and enjoyed myself. It wasn’t often I was able to see Grenville discomfited.
“I wish to make a gift,” Grenville began. “Something for my good friend the captain here. He is soon to be a father. Well, for the second time.”
“Ah.” Hartman brightened. “My felicitations, Captain. A large family is a boon to a man.”
I bowed. “Thank you. I am most fortunate.”
“A timepiece is a wonderful gift, Mr. Grenville. Mr. Schweigler is the watchmaker here, and truly a skilled gentleman. He is Swiss, you know.”
I supposed him being Swiss was significant, but I knew little about the watchmaking industry. I had a timepiece that had been my father’s, a heavy silver thing from the last century, with a plain dial and a small key for winding it. It wasn’t very valuable, as watches went—or my father would have sold it—but it ran well, though it easily tarnished, and I’d kept the thing out of habit.
I pulled out the watch in question and held it in my hand. I’d had it since I’d come home from the Peninsula, and my father’s man of business had given it to me. I’d inherited it, the house in Norfolk, and little else.