Fiction River: Past Crime by Fiction River

Author:Fiction River [River, Fiction]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
Publisher: WMG Publishing, Inc.
Published: 2014-11-18T05:00:00+00:00

***

Every time I went to the morgue, wrapped in the honeycomb of streets and shadowed by tall buildings and coal soot, I felt the Devil at my heels. Today was no different.

The cold bit through my boiled wool coat and burrowed its way through my gloves, but I felt the Devil’s hot breath at my neck, around every angled corner and through every stark January shadow. Felt his distant steps closer as I hurried through the stench of death and throngs of people crammed into London’s dreary, grey corners until I reached the morgue’s dark brick façade.

Cavernous, the silence deafening, I entered the gated door. Bodies were stacked along the walls, draped in muslin shrouds and ready for burial. The low-barreled ceiling made me claustrophobic, the smell of decay thick as I pressed a handkerchief daubed with linseed oil to my nose, wooden box under my arm. I peered around corners and down dark walkways until I found Harold Darling, keeper of the dead.

A sagging, crusty, white-haired man with bristly white whiskers and scraggly hair tied away from his face, Harold lit a lantern in the main room. I handed him the mask. He was missing most of his teeth and lisped when he spoke, but the warmth of his brown eyes and gentle manner set me at ease. With gnarled, rheumy hands, he turned the mask over, fingertips grubby and clubbed.

“We got four of ’em makin’ masks in a room off the back of the morgue,” Harold said, pointing down a long, dark hallway to a green door lit with a lantern. He pointed to a larger wooden crate on the floor. “New masks are all there, numbered like you asked, lad.”

Harold tapped the crate with his foot. “All there. I wrapped them meself for ya.”

“Do you remember the woman in this mask, Harold?” I asked, returning the mask to its muslin sleeve and the safety of the wooden box.

He nodded, brown eyes sad. “Was a young thing,” he said. “Royal’s wife. Not a mark on ’er. Like she was sleepin’ a sweet, sweet dream.”

“Lord Milford claims she was alive when she was pulled from the water,” I said. “He seemed surprised by her passing.”

Harold’s bushy white eyebrows pressed up, deep creases carved into his brow. He shook his head. “She was cold as marble when they took her into the back,” he said with a nod and picked up a ragged broom, scraping it across the grimy brick floor. “Not an hour later, a man and woman came round and fetched her corpse. The woman had similar eyes. A sister maybe? Cousin? She was so young and beautiful. Like the others.”

I raised an eyebrow. “The others?”

Harold nodded, his broom moving dirt from one side of the bricks to the other. “Lord Milford’s fourth wife, they tell me. Has a penchant for young ones. Gets tired of ’em quick.”

A chill fluttered across my spine. “What happened to the others?”

Harold’s voice got low and he stepped close to me. “I seen all of ’em, Fletcher.

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