Down a Dark River by Karen Odden, available November 9, 2021 from your favorite bookseller!
London, April 1878
Most of us Yard men would say that over time we develop an extra sense for danger close at hand. For me, the earliest glimmer of it appeared when I was still new to Lambeth division, wearing a scratchy blue coat with shoulders a few inches wider than my own, and I felt my way for the first time down a shadowed alley, truncheon in hand, braced for whatever skulked around the corner.
After a dozen years of policing, I liked to believe my instinct had been honed to a keen blade. That I’d seen enough London crime not to be surprised by much. That I could sense the approach of something especially vicious by a prickling along my arms or a tightening below my ribs.
But that Tuesday morning, I never saw it coming. A case with a murderer as hell-bent on destruction as the mythical three-headed monster Ellén Trechend roaring out of its cave. All I saw, at half past eight that rainy morning in early April, was young Inspector Stiles. He knocked and poked his head into my hole of an office, as he’d done dozens of times before.
“Inspector Corravan.” His voice was subdued, and his brown eyes lacked their usual spark.
I looked up from some notes I was making about a missing wife. I was two days behind on my diary, and in the wake of last year’s scandal, the new Yard director, Howard Vincent, was a stickler for keeping proper records in case anyone from the Parliamentary Review Commission wanted to see them at a moment’s notice. “What is it?”
“The River Police found a dead woman downstream from Wapping. They just sent word, and Vincent wants us both to go.” The thought of a dead woman was unpleasant, certainly, but it was the other part of Stiles’s remark that surprised me into silence—because River men never asked for help from the Yard if they could avoid it. Not to mention that Blair had been the superintendent for fifteen years and knew more about the Thames than anyone. Why would he need us? And I could imagine the look he’d give when he saw that it was I who’d been dispatched. Besides, what was Director Vincent doing, sending us off to other divisions? Every one of us already had too many cases, including me—one of which was the missing Mrs. Beckford, which I might manage to resolve by the end of the day, so long as I didn’t get sidetracked. And I was keen to find her. Missing people claw at my nerves even worse than dead ones.
I snorted my annoyance, and Stiles looked apologetic. “The chap said there’s something peculiar.”
As I plucked my overcoat off the rack, Stiles took my old black umbrella out of the stand and offered it to me. That was Stiles, doing his best to keep me from catching my death, even when I barked at him. I grasped the handle and grunted my thanks.
We walked toward Whitehall Place, our umbrellas braced against the rain, and I sent a sideways look at Stiles, who was tugging his hat more firmly onto his head. I was his senior by almost a decade, having served in uniform in Lambeth for nearly three years, the River Police for four, and here as a plainclothes detective at the Yard for five. When he came to the Yard eighteen months ago, Stiles had been an above-average policeman, with hands as quick as most boxers I’d fought, a willingness to learn, and an amiable manner that put witnesses at ease. But he’d been uncertain with me at first, a little nervous. And then the trial last autumn had been hell, with crowds outside the Yard every morning screaming how we were frauds and cheats, and we all deserved hanging or worse. I could tell it ate at Stiles, but we kept our heads down and resolved six cases in three months—an outcome I liked to think encouraged the Review Commission to let the Yard remain open for a while longer. So we’d been through enough together that now he was like a sturdy skiff, still bobbing in my wake but, to my secret satisfaction, not about to be easily overturned by anything.
“Mr. Quartermain was in with the director first thing this morning,” Stiles said once we settled into the cab.
Of all the members of the Review Commission, Quartermain was the most critical of the Yard. He believed all policework should be done by men in uniform—partly because the uniform deterred criminals and partly because our plain clothes provided what he called “corrupting opportunities.”
“Hmph.”
“I’ve heard he’s in favor of cutting us back further,” Stiles ventured.
“He’s trying to make a name for himself at our expense,” I said sourly. “The public likes the sound of a clean sweep after a scandal.”
“It feels rotten, though. It isn’t fair to keep tarring us all with the same brush.”
I agreed; it was unjust. Only three inspectors—Druscovich, Meiklejohn, and Palmer—had been found guilty of helping criminals evade capture in exchange for substantial bribes, but the press was all too willing to blame the entire Yard. I had a feeling this was why Director Vincent had assigned me—one of the two remaining senior inspectors—the task of finding the missing Madeline Beckford. It wasn’t lost on him that Stephen Beckford was a respected gentleman from Mayfair and a partner in a significant shipping concern. Restoring his wife to him might make it into the newspapers, if there was still one willing to publish anything good about us.
The rain had stopped, though the wind gusted, and we hurried from the cab into the River Police station, a brick building that loomed over the warehouses on either side. The clerk told us that Blair was on the dock, so we dropped our umbrellas in a stand and made our way out back. It was nearly nine o’clock in the morning, but the sun was invisible behind the clouds dragging their dark shadows across the Thames. The breeze buffeted us with the smells of fish and brine and spice. Blair stood at the very end of the wooden pier, his back to us, his coat flapping in the wind, his head turned to the left, downstream. As our boots thumped closer on the water-soaked boards, he peered over his shoulder. Catching my eye, he stiffened and turned away, planting his feet across the middle of the dock so neither of us could stand beside him.
There was a time when Blair and I would have stood shoulder to shoulder on a case. A time when I craved Blair’s good opinion more than anyone’s—and for four years he’d given it to me, along with training and advice and introductions to people he thought I should know. But things happen, and when I asked for a transfer to the Yard, Blair took it badly. He sneered at me for my presumptuousness, ripped into me for my arrogance, and cursed me for being disloyal, while I held my tongue. I had my reasons for leaving Wapping, but they were best kept to myself. Once at the Yard, I didn’t have much to do with Blair, but the past few years when we happened to be in the same room, Blair pointedly ignored me. So my insides felt like a reef knot pulled tight as Stiles and I walked the last few steps.
“Superintendent,” I said.
Blair gave a phlegmy sniff in reply, and behind his back, Stiles shot me a questioning glance, which I pretended not to see.
Beside Blair lay the simple canvas-and-poles stretcher we used to remove bodies from the river to the station. His eyes still focused downstream, he said, “They’re towing her in.”
I had a sudden, absurd vision of the dead body being towed through the water behind one of the
River Police boats. “The body?” I asked.
“She was found in a lighter,” Blair replied.
Ah. A lighter.
Now I wondered if Blair had in fact requested me specifically.
Before I was a policeman, I’d been a lighterman for hire, and, as a result, I was uncommonly familiar with the fleets of small boats used for carrying cargo from dock to ship and back.
The three of us stood silently shivering in our coats. At last a gap appeared in the traffic, and the River Police boat emerged, its prow pushing through a web of scrap and refuse. It eased toward the dock, two men navigating against the current. On a towline lurched the lighter, a rough blanket covering what lay in the bottom.
“Who found her?” I asked.
“A riverman,” Blair replied. “About a quarter past six. By Limehouse Basin.”
Just over two miles downstream, near the West India Docks.
The boats drew close. One of the men was new to me, but with a feeling of relief, I recognized the other as Andrews. A good man, fifteen years older than I, smart and trustworthy. I tipped my hat so he could see my face, and his surprise was followed by a warm smile. “Hullo, Mickey,” he said, his eyes darting toward Blair to assess how he was taking my presence.
“Good to see you, Andrews,” I replied.
He maneuvered the boat to within inches. The other man flipped the black fenders over the sides and threw the line to me. I tied up, my hands moving automatically around the cleat while my eyes scanned the boat. It was just your average lighter, low-slung, broad across, more weathered than most, but with no obvious identifying marks.
Then Andrews removed the two rocks weighting the blanket. In the moment before he pulled it away from her face, I wondered if by some coincidence the victim might be Madeline Beckford. But it wasn’t. This woman was a few years younger, no more than twenty years of age. Her chin was dropped to the side, and her dark hair fell in waves across her breast.
“For God’s sake,” I muttered. “She looks asleep.”
Andrews drew away the blanket to reveal the rest of her. Her wrists were bound with rope, and a good amount of blood stained the upper half of her skirts, which appeared torn.
Something inside me hardened with the force of a slammed door, like it always did.
“Ach,” Stiles said softly.
But it didn’t look to me as though the amount of blood she’d lost would be enough to kill her. So how had she died? A blow to her head? There was no sign of blood amid the hair. Perhaps she’d been killed elsewhere and laid in the boat. But why would someone bother doing that?
Her being in a lighter was peculiar, as Stiles said. But more than that, she was not the sort of person we usually pulled out of the Thames. Her dress was of dark blue brocade, which I recognized because my Belinda had one of a similar fabric. The bodice was embroidered with silvery threads, and the ripped skirt revealed the shimmering undergarments that probably cost a small fortune. In short, she was no female mud lark who’d been scrounging along the riverbanks for bits of coal or scrap. And she was no prostitute either. That type wouldn’t have a dress like this unless it was stolen—and one look at the snug fit of the bodice told me it likely belonged to the wearer. Though her hair was mussed, it had been done in an elaborate style, formed into thick brown coils that fell over her shoulder, the way Belinda sometimes wore hers.
“Look at her hands,” Stiles murmured to me.
Her skin was pale and soft, the fingernails clean. No doubt about it. She was the wife or daughter of someone of means, which meant they’d be looking for her and holding the police accountable. I looked again, closely: no rings. No necklace, no earrings.
I said to Stiles, “Where’s the jewelry?”
He looked startled, and then chagrined. “Of course. I didn’t think of that.”
Blair spoke up: “There’s a few splats on her dress, but she was never in the water.”
Yes, the hem of her dress was clean. Someone had put her in this boat—carried her to it—possibly even placed her in alive.
I bent over the stretcher and unfurled the canvas, so it lay flat between the two poles. God knows how many times I’d done that.
“Get her out of there,” Blair said.
Andrews scooped up the body, and Stiles took her from his arms. “She’s stiffish,” he said and laid her on the stretcher before picking up the ends of two poles as Andrews took the others.
“You look over the boat,” Blair said to me and strode up the pier in their wake.
Well, it was no more than I’d expected.
I stepped in, taking care where I put my feet.
The sweeps used for steering were absent, but the boat seemed intact. Some pinkish petals and twigs floated in an inch of water, but that was probably rainwater, not a leak. I bent over the bow to look for numbers, letters, or any of the symbols I’d recognize, burned into the sides below the gunwales, but I found none. There were no clusters of interior scratches, meaning it probably wasn’t a company boat, which handled one or two sizes of packages repeatedly.
Shifting my weight, I stepped over the center thwart toward the stern and bent to check the exterior and the transom for nicks or markings. Still nothing. The four thwarts—all present and intact—met the sides, and their grooves hadn’t been reinforced to accommodate heavier-than-usual loads. The metal cleats were solid, but if they’d borne manufacturers’ marks, these had been effaced. Finally, I bent over and sniffed. A tea or tobacco manufacturer’s wares will taint the wood, but I smelled only moldering planks. A few hard drops of rain pelted my back. With nothing more to be discovered here, I headed into the station. As I hurried up the pier, I scanned the quay and felt a flash of relief that I saw no one. Even a novice newspaperman would have sensed a story here.
As I entered, a young sergeant gave a respectful bob of his head and gestured down the hall. “Second door, Inspector.”
The young woman’s body lay prone on a worn wooden table. My eyes were drawn to a white sliver of skin amid her skirts. The cloth had been sliced crudely all the way to the waist.
Stiles was standing at some distance, trying to keep a wretched look off his face. I could read his thoughts as if they’d been printed on his forehead: Had the murderer raped her before he killed her?
The young woman was perhaps five foot three or four. Slender, but not underfed. Seven and a half or eight stone. Her face was pale, with a patrician nose, fine dark brows, and a well-formed chin; but her mouth was raw at the corners, as if she’d been gagged, and it wore the rictus I associated with death. I examined the bodice and saw pearls among the silver threads. This dress probably cost more than I made in five years.
Someone had removed the ropes that bound her wrists and positioned her arms to reveal several fairly deep cuts, crusted with blood, across the skin on her forearms. I bent closer. These cuts were clean, probably made by a blade, and likely the source of the blood on the skirts.
Blair drew back her curls and pointed to the throat, with purplish-brown marks. I put my hands close; the murderer’s hands were about the size of mine. Doubtless a large man.
“Can’t tell if he choked her first, or if he cut her when she was still alive,” Blair said.
“Why wouldn’t he have just dumped her body in the river?” Andrews asked.
“Mebbe he meant to, but she landed in the boat,” Jenkins said behind me.
“She was laid out too nicely for that.” I turned. “Unless you moved her.”
Jenkins put up a hand in denial. “Didn’t touch her. Just put the blanket over her to be decent.”
“He might’ve killed her in the boat,” Blair said. “But why float her down the river?”
Andrews shrugged. “P’rhaps didn’t want to be bothered with moving her.”
“It looks like she’s wearing her own clothes,” Stiles interjected.
He was thinking of a case from last month, with a man who made a shopgirl change her clothes before he killed her. It was one of the reasons we hadn’t initially identified the body. We’d been looking for a girl in a green dress, and she was wearing black mourning, two sizes too large.
I nodded. “The dress fits her. She’s wealthy.”
Blair’s mouth twitched irritably. “Did you find anything on the boat?”
I shook my head. “Nothing above the waterline.”
He coughed to clear his throat. “Well, the Yard’ll hear about this sort of missing woman quicker than anyone else.”
Only then, with a flash of annoyance, did I realize that this might have been another reason he’d wanted me here—to serve as a messenger boy back to the Yard—because public opinion notwithstanding, people still came to us to find missing friends and relatives.
Blair turned to Jenkins. “Ask Charlie Dower to come in for a sketch. Then he can make copies to take round to the other divisions while Corravan takes her to the morgue.”
I wasn’t Blair’s to command, but I didn’t balk, partly because I’d have chosen to go to the morgue anyway. If I went alone, so much the better.
Jenkins returned with Dower, a short, sturdy man of about forty. He was one of the desk clerks and a good hand with a pencil. He had a habit of humming as he drew, off-key measures of music hall songs. Tilting his head back, he flashed a smile up at me.
“Hullo, Inspector. A pleasure.”
“Hullo, Charlie.”
He studied the woman for a moment before nudging her chin. I was standing on the opposite side of the table, and the movement revealed a flicker of silver in the hair at the back of her neck.
“Wait.” I pointed. “Look there.”
Blair came to my side, bent down, and squinted. “I see.” His thick fingers took a moment to untangle it.
“What is it?” Stiles asked.
Blair laid it on the table. As if in answer to our prayers, on a thin chain hung a heart-shaped locket bearing a scrolled monogram: “R A E,” with the “A” larger, for her surname. I pushed the tiny button at the side. The locket sprang open to reveal a picture of a young man. Light hair, a close-mouthed smile. Smug, I thought. But handsome. Perhaps a brother, but probably a sweetheart.
We could have Charlie Dower not only depict the woman but also reproduce an enlarged image of the small, delicate photograph. With the initials from the locket and some luck, we’d discover who she was within a day or so.
“This bloke’ll know who she is,” Blair said.
Stiles winced, his sympathy evident on his face. He was thinking that if this man loved her, her brutal death would all but kill him.
Into my mind unbidden came a vision of Belinda’s beautiful hazel eyes, her dark hair, and her hand on my left cheek drawing me close for a kiss.
I turned abruptly and made my way back out to the pier for some air.
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