“Well, that’s looking up.”
“Looking up? That’s practically Piccadilly Circus in my waiting room,” she said, dropping into her chair. “Anyone requiring attention at the start of our rounds? Our blast patients?”
“No signs of infection among them, thank goodness. We’ll need to reorder carbolic solution.”
Julia nodded, glancing at the wall clock. “No … no messages for me?”
“Were you expecting—”
“No, nothing,” Julia said, standing. “Let’s begin.”
Richard’s first day back at the Yard. Of course, he’s swamped.
An hour later, a young constable with his helmet tucked under his arm appeared at the door of the men’s ward. “Doctor Lewis? I have a message from Inspector Tennant.”
CHAPTER 5
Tennant arrived at Trig Lane as a low layer of marine fog crept along the Thames.
At the street’s end, the masts of low-slung hay boats sprouted from the water like a winter forest. Before long, the moored flotilla would vanish into the curling mist, leaving creaky rigging and slapping water the only hints they were there. Along the lane, abandoned wharf-side warehouses leaned together, sills and lintels peeling and sagging, their hoisting hooks and chains rusted from disuse.
“The constables are finishing their sweep of the wharf,” O’Malley said. “They’ll not be seeing the tips of their boots in another ten minutes.”
Tennant nodded. “What have they found?”
“Nothing to speak of, but the lads who stumbled across the cab plucked a prize from the trash.” O’Malley handed Tennant a false ginger beard.
“Well, well,” he said, holding it by an ear hook. “Where are the boys now?”
“I’m after sending them with a copper to the potato peddleron the corner. The pair of them could use something hot and filling.”
Two mortuary assistants waited outside the warehouse with a wagon. A driver from the City of London Hackney Company looked downriver and frowned. “Fog’s coming on something fierce, guvnor,” the cabman said.
“We won’t keep you long. All right, Paddy, let’s have a look at our victims. Then we’ll release the cab to this gentleman.”
Tennant followed O’Malley across the warehouse threshold. The sergeant aimed the beam of his bull’s-eye lantern into the gloom. The triangle of light illuminated a horse that had consumed most of the hay bale brought by the company driver. The animal had drained a bucket of water as well.
“Half-starved, the poor creature,” the sergeant said. “With nothing to eat or drink since Tuesday.”
“Point the lantern inside the cab, Paddy.”
O’Malley redirected the beam, lighting the bodies of a crumpled woman in the far corner and a man face down on the cabin floor.
“Looks like bruising on the lass’s neck and blood stains on the cabbie’s throat and collar,” the sergeant said. “I spy nothing on the seat or floor.”
“No handbag? After we remove the bodies, take another look in the daylight.”
“What’s left of it.”
“And check the young woman’s pockets before they take her away for the postmortem.” Tennant signaled the stretcher-bearers.
The bearers transferred the corpses to the mortuary wagon. Rigor had come and gone, and cold weather had delayed death’s cloying stench, so the grim task was relatively easy. The cab-man crossed himself as the bodies passed. He led the horse out of the warehouse, and O’Malley took a final look inside the hackney’s cabin, finding nothing. Then the driver turned thecab around and rattled up Trig Lane’s cobblestones, passing a policeman and two lads munching their last baked potato bites.
O’Malley clapped the taller, dark-haired boy on the shoulder. “Inspector Tennant, this is Bert Hawley and his brother, Sammy.”
“Good work spotting that ginger beard.” Tennant leaned over the boy’s basket. “Anything else we should know about?”
“Sarge had a squint and said no,” Bert said.
