Resurrectionist by James McGee

Author:James McGee [McGee, James]
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Tags: General, Fiction, Historical, Historical fiction, Mystery & Detective, Mystery, London (England), Hawkwood; Matthew (fictitious character)
ISBN: 9780007212705
Publisher: Harpercollins
Published: 2007-02-05T00:00:00+00:00

12

“Very well, Hawkwood. You’ve convinced me.”

The Chief Magistrate pushed himself away from his desk and moved to the window, hands clasped behind his back. “Even though you saw him fall. You and a hundred others.”

“No,” Hawkwood said. “We didn’t see him fall. We saw him jump. He didn’t trip. He didn’t overbalance. He bloody jumped. It was deliberate. He knew what he was doing and he fooled us all. That’s why we heard the bell toll. He used the rope to lower himself to the ground. Then he climbed down into the crypt, closed the trap after him and made his way through the tunnel. Came up inside the dead house and made his escape. It would have been a close-run thing. It would have taken exceptional timing, but he did it. It was bloody clever.”

“And he is not a young man,” Read said.

“No, he’s not, but Apothecary Locke told me he’s an athletic man who kept himself in good physical shape by performing regular exercises.”

“In other words,” Read said flatly, “he was preparing himself.”

Hawkwood nodded. “He planned everything, even down to the theft of the scalpel and the laudanum. The apothecary said that Tombs was a regular visitor to the colonel’s cell. Hyde used the visits to bleed Tombs for information. He’d have found out about the church, the charnel house and the tunnel, even the spare bloody key. Tombs probably made him laugh with a story of some poor bugger getting locked in, which was why they had another key made. The sexton checked the house. The second key was missing. I’ll wager the bastard even got the parson talking about recent burials during each of his visits and timed his escape to coincide with the burial of someone close to his own age and size. He knew if he could fake his own death and make us all believe he’d done away with himself, we’d give up the chase. So he waited until the right corpse came along and then made his move. Dug the poor sod up, maybe even dressed him in some of the parson’s spare clothes – he’d have found them in the house – and placed the body in the church, then he lit his funeral pyre. It wouldn’t surprise me if he’d been wearing Foley’s burial suit when he made his escape. Probably stowed it in the crypt in preparation. The shine I saw on his clothing before he jumped would have been water. He’d doused himself as a precaution. That’s why the jacket and breeches I found felt damp. They hadn’t had time to dry.”

“And the sexton’s wife got in his way,” Read said heavily.

“She probably disturbed him at the house, or maybe she saw him moving the body. Either way, he had to kill her; she was a witness. By God, the man was thorough, I’ll grant him that; all that quoting from the scriptures and the Book of Titus. And he’s an arrogant bastard. He couldn’t resist that final joke, leaving the parson’s face in the woman’s coffin.

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