Prologue
London, 1852
She was dead. There was no question about that. Looking at her, Nathan’s wiry young body became still as stone, and his eyes, lightly gray and ringed in blue, darkened with fear. He paused half in and out of the bedroom and wondered what he should do. He had seen dead people before, but they had mostly been drunks who slept in gutters or crept into a shop stoop huddling for warmth and never woke again. He’d once seen a man’s throat cut in a tavern brawl and two gentlemen mortally wounded in a duel. But he had never seen anything like this.
“What’s wrong?” The urgent, furtive whisper came from the dark alley below Nathan. “Get on with it!”
Nathan swallowed hard and tried to clear his throat. It was no good. His mouth was bone dry. He couldn’t say what was wrong so he did what he had to do. He raised the window he’d been holding a few more inches and shimmied through the opening. Snakelike, he crawled on his belly over the sill and onto the floor.
The candles on the nightstand and the burning coals in the grate were a mixed blessing. Nathan could see what he was doing, but he could also see the blood. It was on the bedding, on the brass headrails, in her honey-colored hair, and, just below where the woman’s left wrist dangled over the thick feather tick, it was pooled on the floor.
The first thing Nathan did was check the door. It was locked from the inside. Satisfied he wasn’t going to be surprised, he returned to the foot of the bed, careful to stay clear of the blood. The last thing he needed was a trail for the peelers to follow. The peelers derived their name from the man who had established the law force, and they were the object of ridicule and scorn, or gratitude and respect, depending on one’s contact with them. Nathan and the company he kept held the former opinion. The peelers had played a game of tag with Nathan for over three years, ever since he’d turned eleven and earned his place as one of the best sneaksmen in all of London. Sometimes they caught him, mostly they didn’t. Nathan didn’t like to think of the celebration on Bow Street if they pinned a murder on him.
Nathan Hunter started out as a lowly puzzler, throwing muck from the street in the eyes of some unfortunate gentleman, then running away while his more experienced partner picked the poor fellow’s pocket. Nathan wasn’t satisfied with his role, for there existed among the impoverished a class system just as stultifying and rigid as the one accepted by more respected society. So Nathan worked his way up in the kingdom of thieves. From star-glazer, where he learned how to cut the panes out of shop windows and take off with whatever was behind the glass, to chiving the froe, where he cut off a woman’s pocket with a razor, Nathan showed an uncanny aptitude for his chosen career.
He was possessed of a pair of the finest rum daddles in London—deft, coordinated hands that could lift a watch, take a purse, or draw out a snowy silk handkerchief without jostling the victim. Still, it wasn’t enough. He practiced the fam lay, a technique for shoplifting where the palm was dabbed with a little hot ale so that it became sticky. Something light, a diamond earbob, a ring, an unset stone, could be palmed easily in such a fashion. Nathan had done it all. At fourteen he’d already been in jail on three separate occasions, not a bad record for a young man eager to prove his mettle and apt to make mistakes marked of inexperience. There were other sneaksmen his age who had already been to jail a dozen times, but Nathan didn’t believe they should be lauded for it. Surely, he thought, it was better not to get caught than to risk transport to Botany Bay. Each time a sneaksman appeared at the assize house to face his charges, his chances of being banished from his homeland grew greater.
That thought raised goose bumps on Nathan’s thin arms. In spite of the fact that his brow was beaded with sweat, he shivered.
“God! Would ye look at that!” Brigham Moore squeezed his body through the opening Nathan had left. At seventeen years and one hundred fifty pounds, Brigham was broader in the shoulders and thicker in the waist than his protégé. He was still light on his feet, but he’d never possessed the catlike quickness and agility that Nathan had. His quick wit and brash daring mostly compensated for what Brigham lacked in manual dexterity. Tonight’s scheme had been his idea.
Nathan spun on his heel and faced the window. “What are ye doin’ ’ere? Ye’re supposed to be me lookout. In or out. C’mon wi’ ye. Quick. Someone’s bound to see ye.” He turned his back on Brigham as the older boy hefted his body through the opening and closed the drapes.
“Did she do ‘erself in?” Brigham asked as he came to stand beside Nathan. He couldn’t take his eyes off the dead woman. Her open, sightless eyes held his and he imagined he saw an accusation in them. It was unnerving. “Well?” he prompted, pulling his cap lower over his sandy hair.
Nathan shrugged. He wished he could find it in himself to cover the woman’s naked body. The tangled, bloody sheet left most of her exposed. There was no dignity in it, he thought. She was dead, and the first thing he had noticed after the blood were her breasts. He didn’t especially like himself for that.
“Did ye do it?” Brigham asked. “Ye ’ave a way with a razor.”
“Don’t be daft. O’ course I didn’t do it. I found ’er like this.”
“So ye weren’t losing yer nerve. I wondered when I saw ye ’esitate in the window.”
Nathan didn’t make a reply. The shock of finding the room occupied, and occupied by a body, was finally wearing off. Nathan realized he’d already spent too much time doing nothing. “I could use yer ’elp,” he said, dragging his eyes away from the same vision that held Brigham captive. With an effort he hardened his heart. “Quit starin’ at ’er and ’elp me get’er trinkets.” Taking a cotton drawstring bag from beneath his jacket sleeve, Nathan went to the vanity and quickly surveyed the available booty. He passed over the perfumes and creams, knowing he couldn’t get much for them, and settled instead on helping himself to a pair of pearl drop earrings, a cameo brooch, three gold sovereigns, and a few farthings. He held up a locket to the candlelight, examined it, and made out the fine engraving on the golden face: BAO. A feeling of sadness washed over him, though he couldn’t have said whether it was pity for the woman whose life had been so brutally ended, or if he pitied himself for not being able to take the locket.
“Don’t ye want it?” Brigham asked.
“It’s engraved. Wouldn’t take the peelers long to trace it back ta ’er and then ta us.”
“Take the chain then. It’s worth somethin’.”
Nathan found himself strangely reluctant to do that. He glanced over his shoulder at the woman. She wasn’t looking at him any longer. Her eyes were closed now. He picked up the locket, tore the chain free, and dropped it in his bag. “Did ye touch ’er?” he demanded.
“I shut ’er lids,” said Brigham. “I didn’t like the way she was lookin’ at me.”
“Don’t touch ’er again.” He looked down at Brigham’s feet. “Look! There’s blood on yer stockings.” There was a trace of disgust in his sigh as he turned his attention back to the vanity and rifled the dead woman’s jewelry box. “See what’s in ’er wardrobe. ’Ave a care not to take anything too personal.” Nathan wondered what was wrong with his mentor. Usually Brigham confronted danger with clear-headed calm. Nathan had noticed that Brigham was peculiarly excited about what he’d seen, his green eyes feverishly bright. Nathan’s stomach was churning with equal parts disgust and horror. Brigham seemed more fascinated than frightened.
“What do ye suppose ’appened?” asked Brigham. He picked through the gowns in the wardrobe, looking for something that might be valued in the thieves’ market.
Nathan didn’t want to speculate, at least not out loud. He was certain of several things, and none of them were particularly comforting. The woman hadn’t killed herself, although he was fairly certain it had been meant to appear that way. After all, her wrists were slashed. But there wasn’t a razor blade, a knife, or broken glass in sight. It was hardly likely that she had cut her own wrists then taken the time to put away the object she’d used. Nathan had already seen that the blood was largely confined to the area of the bed. She’d never made it farther than the edge of the feather tick.
Above the deep slashes on her wrists were faint markings that looked as if they had been made by a rope or shackles. Nathan recognized them because he’d known the feel of rope and irons each time he visited prison. She’d been bound, probably gagged, and then brutally cut. He wondered if her murderer had watched her bleed to death. It was a certainty the murderer had used the window to exit since the door was locked from the inside, and just as certain that he hadn’t left long before Nathan arrived. The candles hadn’t been gutted, the coals glowed, the blood was still dark crimson, not black, and when Nathan had been close to the bed he could feel the dead woman’s body heat.
Nathan thought back to what he’d been doing a half hour ago. While he’d been waiting for Brigham to meet him in the alley behind King Street, this woman was being murdered. If Brigham hadn’t been late Nathan might have very well surprised the murderer. He didn’t have any illusions that he could have saved the woman. He wasn’t particularly strong or menacing. It was far more likely that he would have been easy prey himself.
Brigham closed the wardrobe and handed Nathan some lace trimming and handkerchiefs that he’d pilfered. “She’s kind o’ pretty, don’t ye think?” he said, keeping his voice low.
“She’s dead.”
