coroners,” Thompson explained when Mrs. Clay had closed the door and left us alone. He sipped the tea with rapt concentration, as though he drank ambrosia. “Amputates limbs, stitches up wounds, pulls teeth.”
From somewhere in the back of the house came a howl of anguish, the cry of a full-grown man in agony. Brewster swung around, and I flinched, memories returning of the surgeon who’d poked at my shattered knee and measured it amiably against his saw. I’d managed to banish most of those recollections, but they occasionally haunted me in restless dreams.
Thompson grinned. “Never fear, Captain. If he’s screaming, he’s likely all right. The very badly injured make little noise.”
This hardly made me feel better. More screams followed, which eventually trailed off into muffled groans. Over this, came a deep male voice. “Keep the poultice on it and you’ll be right as rain. Once it heals up, you’ll forget all about it.”
We heard shambling footsteps in the hall then the house’s front door opened and banged shut. A man stumbled past the window, pressing a wadded cloth against his right cheek.
Moments later, Mrs. Clay entered the sitting room, followed by a small, portly man with a beaming face. He wore a white apron, like a butcher’s, which was stained with blood.
“Mr. Thompson,” the man said with gladness, his voice larger than his person. “What a pleasure to see you again. Which body did you want to have a look at?”
Thompson and I both rose to greet the man. Thompson indicated me. “This is Captain Lacey. We’re here to view Mr. Warrilow.”
“Good. His corpse is the less gruesome one in my parlor. The other fellow brought to me last night was nearly cut in half stem to stern, and then the fishes got at him. Not a pretty sight. You are lucky, Captain. Mr. Warrilow died very suddenly and is intact.”
With this cheerful assessment, he turned and waved us to follow. Mrs. Clay smiled and nodded at me as though encouraging a child who had to face an unpleasant task.
“An unfortunate circumstance of gin houses close to the river,” Thompson murmured as we trailed after Mr. Clay. “Sailors come to shore, drink themselves insensible, fight like savages, and dump the losers of the fights into the Thames for me and my lads to find.”
Nothing in this small house, painted a lighthearted white with colorful rugs on the wooden floors, betrayed that corpses were cut up and teeth extracted in the back rooms. That is, not until we entered a small chamber in the rear of the house, in which stood a heavy wooden chair. Leather straps for holding a patient immobile hung from its arms, and a basin full of bloody water rested on the floor next to it.
Clay led us through this unnerving room and out a back door to a small yard behind the house. Here reposed a stone shed, its walls thick—to keep the bodies cool, I surmised.
The atmosphere inside the stone building was damp and proved to be far cooler than the outside air. Four pallets lined a long wall, and on an adjacent wall sat a bench strewn with grim-looking tools—saws, picks, knives, and what appeared to be giant tongs.
Two of the four pallets were occupied, both corpses covered with sheets. The other two pallets were empty, stripped down to the wood, awaiting the next set of unfortunates.
“This is Mr. Warrilow,” Mr. Clay said moving to the first pallet. “Are you a relation?”
“No,” I confessed. “I am interested in discovering who killed him.”
Mr. Clay’s eyes twinkled. “After a reward, are you? Well, I wish you luck. There’s not much to see.” He slid back the sheet to reveal the hapless Mr. Warrilow.
Stripped of clothing, his skin gray, Warrilow was a pathetic sight. He’d been of medium height, neck and forearms burned by the Caribbean sun. His stomach was paunchy from middle age and too much rum, or whatever he’d liked to drink. The face was not handsome but not ugly either, just an ordinary man.
However, I could see why Eden had found him unpleasant. Warrilow’s jaw was hard, set even in death, as though his obstinacy followed him into the afterlife. Though his eyes were closed, a frown puckered his face. Whiskers shadowed his jaw, and long sideburns, much in fashion nowadays, traced thickly down his cheeks. His hair had been dark brown going to gray, much reduced on the top of his head.
“The blow that caused his death is here.” Mr. Clay lifted Warrilow’s