Page 30 of Who Cries for the Lost

“Oh, dear,” said Lovejoy, frowning. “We’ve had constables talking to boatmen and dockworkers up and down the river, but they’ve yet to locate anyone willing to admit having seen anything Saturday night. At this point, it’s anyone’s guess as to where Sedgewick’s body was thrown into the river, and we’ve no idea at all where he was killed.”

“What about the headless man? Any luck identifying him?”

“Not yet. No one has been reported missing.” Lovejoy leaned back in his chair, both forearms resting on the table before him. “It’s strange, don’t you think? Although I suppose he could have come off a ship.”

“It’s possible. Although he looks far too soft, pale skinned, and pampered to have been a seaman or even a ship’s officer.”

“So a passenger, perhaps? Someone newly arrived in the city who was killed shortly after disembarking?”

“Or someone whose friends and family think he left town and don’t yet realize he never made it to his destination.”

“What a disturbing thought,” said Lovejoy.

Sebastian swallowed the last of his coffee and set the empty cup aside. “I’ve been trying to trace Sedgewick’s movements the day he was killed, but so far I’m not having a great deal of luck. Who did you say ran into him that night in Whitehall?”

“A gentleman of letters by name of Tiptoff—Dudley Tiptoff. I’ve met him several times at various lectures given at the Royal Scientific Society. He’s something of an eccentric—lives alone in Bloomsbury and spends most of his time in the British Museum.”

“I thought I’d try talking to him. He might be able to tell me something useful he doesn’t realize he knows. What does he study?”

Lovejoy stared out the window at the torrent of water shooting off a torn, windblown awning. “I believe his specialty is folklore.”

Dudley Tiptoff, Esq., lived in a narrow town house on Bury Street, conveniently located just around the corner from the British Museum. Sebastian’s knock at his door was answered by a housemaid rather than by a footman or butler, for housemaids were considerably cheaper to employ than manservants, and Dudley Tiptoff was obviously not the kind of man who felt the need to ape the ways of the aristocracy. The Tiptoffs were a good old family, but as he was often heard to say, they’d never aspired to anything grander than simple gentility. He had a comfortable income from money judiciously invested by his father in the Funds and saw no need to fritter away on servants’ wages what could be better spent on the books and artifacts that filled his modest Bloomsbury home. He had never married and had been known to confess that he tended to feel awkward around the fair sex, thanks to a birth deformity that had left him with a slight but unmistakable limp. But then wives, like manservants, were an expensive indulgence for a man with so many other interests.

“Sir Henry tells me you’re working with Bow Street to try to solve this dreadful murder,” said the scholar, receiving Sebastian in a bookcase-lined study where everything from corn dollies and a rusty iron cauldron to Stone Age battle-axes and an ancient bronze helmet jostled with a sea of books for space on the crowded shelves. “I don’t know that I can be of much assistance, but I’m more than happy to do what I can to help.”

“Thank you,” said Sebastian as the two men settled into the comfortably worn tapestry-covered chairs drawn up to the room’s crackling fire. “I understand you saw Sedgewick last Saturday night?”

“I did, yes,” said Tiptoff, propping his elbows on the arms of his chair and bringing his fingertips together. He was an untidy man of average height and build, beginning to go soft around the gut as he crept toward middle age. His dark hair was already losing its luster and beginning to gray, and he wore a pair of gold-framed spectacles that caught the firelight as he turned his head. “I was walking up Whitehall when I heard someone hailing me from the other side of the street. I’m afraid I was rather lost in thought—I’ve been reading the Kinder-und-Hausmärchen by the Brothers Grimm, you see, and finding it quite thought-provoking. Are you familiar with the Grimms?”

“No; sorry.”

“They’re two German brothers who are making it their lives’ work to write down the folktales of their people and save them from extinction. Some people mistakenly assume the stories are for children, but they’re not. They’re far too dark and gruesome, full of—” He broke off suddenly, as if realizing he was forgetting himself. “Well, never mind that. But as I was saying, I was rather lost in thought, so it was a moment before I became aware of the fact that someone was hailing me.”

“Sedgewick?”

“Yes. Seems he’d just returned from Austria, and he’d brought something back that he thought I might be interested in seeing.”

“Oh? What was that?”

“A witch’s ladder. You’ve heard of them?”

“I have, yes,” said Sebastian, remembering Hero’s conversation with Eloisa Sedgewick. “But only recently.”

Tiptoff nodded. “According to the old superstitions, they were used by witches to bind spells. To be honest, I’ve always suspected their existence was probably a myth. So needless to say, I was quite eager to see it. I told him I was planning to do some research at the museum in the morning, but I could stop by Mount Street in the afternoon. He laughed and said that would be splendid, that he rarely left his bed before noon anyway. Then he wished me good evening and continued on his way.”

“In which direction was that?”

“Toward the Abbey.”

“Where exactly on Whitehall did you see him?”

“Near the Horse Guards.”

So before Downing Street, thought Sebastian. Aloud, he said, “Did Sedgewick happen to mention where he was going or where he’d been that day?”

“Not that I recall, no. Sorry.”

“And what time was this?”

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