Anne Perry - Bluegate Fields: A Charlotte and Thomas Pitt Novel (Mortalis)

BluegateFields by Anne Perry

Scannedby Aristotle

Inspector Pitt shivered a little and stared unhappilywhile Ser geant Froggatt lifted the manhole cover and exposed the open ingbeneath. Iron rungs led downward into a hollow chasm of stone that echoed the distant slither and drip of water.Did Pitt imagine the scutter of clawed feet?

A breath of damp air drifted up, and immediately hetastec the sourness below. He sensed the labyrinthof tunnels anc steps, the myriad layers, and even moretunnels of slimy bricks that stretched out under the whole of Londonand carried awaj the waste and the unwanted, the lost.

"Down 'ere, sir," Froggatt saiddolefully. "That's where they found 'im. Odd, I calls it-very odd."

"Very," Pitt agreed, pulling his scarf tighteraround his neck. Though it was only early September, hefelt cold. The streets of Bluegate Fields were dank andsmelled of poverty and human filth. It had once been a prosperousarea, with high, ele gant houses, the homes of merchants. Now itwas one of the most dangerous of all the portside slums inEngland, and Pitl was about to descend into its sewers to examine a corpse thai had been washed up against the great sluicegates that closed ofl the Thames' tides.

"Right!" Froggatt stood aside,determined not to go first into the gapinghole with its wet, dark caverns.

Pitt stepped resignedly backward over the edge, grasped hold of the rungs, and began his careful descent. As the gloom closed in on him, the coursing water below sounded louder. He could smell the stale, entombed oldwater.

Froggattwas also climbing down, his feet a rung or two be yond Pitt's hands.

Standing on the wet stones at the bottom, Pitt hunchedhis coat higher onto his shoulders and turned tolook for the sewer cleaner who had reported the discovery; hewas there, part of the shadows-the same colors, the same damp, blurred lines. He was a little sharp-nosed man. His trousers, cobbledtogether from several other pairs, were held up byrope. He carried a long pole with a hook on the end, and aroundhis waist was a large sacking bag. He was used to thedarkness, the incessantly dripping walls, the smell, and the distant scurryingof rats. Per haps he had already seen so many signs ofthe tragic, the primi tive, and the obscene in human life thatnothing shocked him anymore. There was nothing in his face nowbut a natural wariness of the police and a certain sense of his own importancebe cause the sewers were his domain.

"You come for the body, then?" He craned upwardto stare at Pitt's height. "Rum thing, that. Can't 'ave bin 'ere long,or the rats'd 'ave got it. Not bitten, itain't. Now who'd want to do a thinglike that, I ask yer?" Apparently, it was a rhetorical question, because he did not wait for an answerbut turned and scurried along thegreat tunnel. He reminded Pitt of a busy little rodent, his feet clattering along the wet bricks. Froggatt fol lowedbehind them, his bowler hat jammed fiercely on his head, his galoshes squelching noisily.

Around the corner they came quite suddenlyupon the great river sluice gates, shut against the risingtide.

"There!" the sewerman announced proprietarily,pointing to the white body that lay on its side asmodestly as could be man aged. It was completely naked on the darkstones at the side of the channel.

Pitt was startled. No one had told him the body waswithout the ordinary decency of clothes-or that it was so young. The skin was flawless, no more than a fine down on thecheeks. The stomach was lean, the shoulders slight. Pittknelt down, mo mentarily forgetting the slimy bricks.

"Lantern, Froggatt," he demanded. "Bring itover here, man! Hold it still!'' It was unfair to beangry with Froggatt, but

death-especially useless, pathetic death-always affectedhim this way.

Pittturned the body over gently. The boy could not have been more than fifteen or sixteen years old, his features still soft. His hair, though wet and streaked withfilth, must have been fair and wavy,a little longer than most. By twenty he might have been handsome, when his face had had time to ma ture. Now he was pallid, a little swollen withwater, and his pale eyes were open.

But the dirt was only superficial; underneath he waswell-cared for. There was none of the ingrained grayness of those who do not wash, whose clothes stay on from one month toanother. He was slender, but it was only the lissomeness of youth, not the wasting of starvation.

Pitt reached for one of the hands andexamined it. Its softness was not due only tothe flaccidity of death. The skin had no cal luses,no blisters, no lines of grime such as the skin of a'cob bler, a ragpicker, or a crossing sweeper would have. Hisnails were clean and well clipped.

Surely he did not come from the seething, grindingpoverty of Bluegate Fields? But why no clothes?

Pitt looked up at the sewer cleaner.

"Are the currents strong enough down here to rip offa man's clothes?" he asked. "If he werestruggling-drowning?"

"Doubt it." The cleaner shook his head."Mebbe in the winter-lot o' rains. But not now. Any'ow,not boots-never boots. 'E can't 'ave bin down 'ere long, orrats'd 'ave bin at "im. Seen a sweeper's lad eaten to thebone, I 'ave, wot slipped and drowned acouple o' year ago."

"How long?"

He gave it some thought, allowing Pitt to savor the fulldeli cacy of his expertise before he committedhimself.

"Hours," he said at last."Depends where 'e fell in. Not morethan hours, though. Current won't take off boots. Boots stay on."

Pitt should have thought of that.

"Did you find any clothes?" he asked, althoughhe was not sure he could expect an honest reply. Each sewerman had his own stretch of channel, jealously guarded. Itwas not

so much a job as a franchise. The reward lay in the pickings, garnered under the gratings: coins, sometimes agold sovereign or two, the occasional piece of jewelry. Even clothes found agood market. There were women who spent sixteen or eighteen hours a day sittingin sweatshops unpicking and resewingold clothes.

Froggatt hopefully swung the lantern out over the water,but it revealed nothing but the dark, oily, unbroken surface. If the depths held anything, it was sunken out of sight.

"No," the sewerman answeredindignantly. "I ain't found nuffink at all or I would 'ave said. An' Isearches the place reg'lar."

"No boys working for you?" Pittpressed.

"No, this is mine. Nobody else comes'ere-and I ain't found nuffink."

Pitt stared at him, uncertain whether he dared believehim. Would the man's avarice outmatch his natural fear of the po liceif he withheld something? As well-cared-for a body as this might have been dressed in clothes that would fetch a fairprice.

"I swear! God's oath!" thesewerman protested, self- righteousness mixed with the beginnings offear.

"Take his name," Pitt orderedFroggatt tersely. "If we find you've lied, I'll charge you with theft andobstructing the police in the investigation of a death. Understand me?"

"Name?" Froggatt repeated with rising sharpness.

"Ebenezer Chubb."

"Is that with two *b's?" Froggattfished for his pencil and wrote carefully,balancing the lamp on the ledge.

"Yes, it is. But I swears-"

"All right." Pitt was satisfied."Now you'd better help us get this poorcreature up and outside to the mortuary wagon. I supposehe drowned-he certainly looks like it. I don't see any marks of anything else, not even a bruise. But we'dbetter be sure."

"Wonder who 'e was?" Froggatt saiddispassionately. His beat was in Bluegate Fields, and he was usedto death. Every week he came across children dead ofstarvation, piled in alleys or doorways. Or hefound the old, dead of disease, the cold, or

alcoholpoisoning. "Suppose we'll never know now." He wrinkled his face. "But I'm damned if I can think 'ow 'e came to be down 'ere stark as a babe!" He gave thesewerman a sour look. "But I've got your name, my lad-and I'll know whereto find you again-if as I shouldwant to!"