Page 33 of Dead Beside the Thames
“Actually,” Charlie replied, “I would say quite a lot. Staff like Duggan, living constantly with the one they serve in relatively close proximity, are usually very good at gauging their master’s mood. And with a man like Sedbury, Duggan’s health and continued employment very likely depended on his ability to accurately divine Sedbury’s feelings. More, Duggan volunteered the information rather than constructed it in response to a prompt from us. It was him thinking back and remembering the moment when he last saw Sedbury that brought the point to his mind.” Charlie met Claudia’s eyes. “All in all, I would say Duggan’s observation of Sedbury’s anticipation of the meeting is very likely accurate.”
Claudia faced forward. “If that’s so, then we can take it as fact that Sedbury was intending to meet with someone later that night, and he was relishing the prospect of bullying and intimidating that person.”
Charlie nodded. After a moment, he said, “If we put that together with Sedbury having his favorite whip with him, it might well be that he was expecting to use it.”
Claudia glanced at him, but other than her lips grimly tightening, made no response.
As he’d arranged, Barnaby met with a large group of his lads in the churchyard of St. Paul’s. It was an easy place for the ladsto get to and, in this case, reasonably central to their area of operations.
He leaned against the stone wall marking the northern edge of the churchyard, and the lads who were free to attend, all aged between eight and fifteen, gathered around, perching on the stone slabs of graves or leaning against tombstones. Some were street sweepers, some stable lads, and others were errand boys. Some had graduated to being formal messengers or couriers for legal chambers or businesses in the City.
Barnaby had steadily recruited the group over the past few years, although he had only formally founded “the network,” as they all called it, over the past six months. Working out the logistics and putting all the procedures in place had taken some thought and care, but now the group knew each other and could rapidly spread the word whenever he needed their talents.
The agreement was that only those lads who had the time free came to meetings, but others would be kept apprised of what was going on through a web of contacts within the group.
The lads had arrived in twos and threes, but there were no new arrivals in sight. Barnaby counted fifteen gazes fixed expectantly on him. He smiled faintly and pushed away from the wall. “Right, then. So far, we’ve found witnesses enough to verify Mr. Hastings’s movements on Saturday night, when he left White’s and returned to his house.”
The boys nodded.
“That was good, solid work, and so we don’t need any further information on Mr. Hastings.” Barnaby had to call them off, or they would continue to keep an eye on Charlie. “Now, we need to concentrate on Viscount Sedbury. We already have sightings of him walking out of White’s and down to Pall Mall, where he hailed and climbed into a hackney. That was at a little after eleven-thirty, and we know the hackney headed east.”
One of the street sweepers, Tommy, raised his hand. “We—Murray, Joe, and me—think we know who the driver is. Least ways, we know what he looks like, but we haven’t been able to find him again. Not yet. We’ll keep looking.”
“Excellent.” Barnaby nodded his approval. He glanced around the group. “Let’s leave you three—Tommy, Murray, and Joe—looking for the driver. Perhaps the lads who are about Trafalgar Square and the Strand could keep their eyes peeled as well.”
Three other boys nodded and murmured, “We’ll spread the word.”
Tommy leaned forward to look at those boys. “I’ll tell you what he looks like after, but his horse is a chestnut with a white blaze and a white nearside foot.”
“Just so we’re clear,” Barnaby said, “the driver, when you find him, isn’t in any kind of trouble. We only want to know where he took the viscount and what time he left him there. No need to spook the man. Just ask him to report to Inspector Stokes and his team at Scotland Yard.”
The lads grinned, and Phil, one of the older lads, ventured, “Don’t know as telling him that won’t spook him anyways.”
That brought a round of chuckles and even wider grins.
Barnaby chuckled himself, then went on, “There’s also a whip we’re now searching for. It’s a particular type of horse whip with a short handle. As whips go, it’s a special type and valuable because of that. We now believe that the viscount had it with him when he got into the hackney, and he took it with him to wherever he went. Our information is that the viscount was strangled with a whip, so we’re assuming it was his whip that was used.”
“Cor! So the whip’s the murder weapon?” Marty, another of the older lads, exclaimed.
Barnaby looked around the circle of wide eyes. “That’s what the police surgeon thinks, and no, it’s not a common choice of murder weapon. But we think the viscount had his whip with him, so we think it’s the one that was used to strangle him. It might have been dropped where he was killed or tossed into the river. Some of the mud larks are searching the riverbanks in case the latter is the case. However, it’s equally likely the whip is still somewhere in town.”
“If it’s valuable, why wouldn’t the killer take it and sell it?” Phil asked.
Barnaby nodded. “He might have, or he might not have realized it was valuable and simply thrown it away. Regardless, he wouldn’t have kept the whip—the murder weapon—with him.”
“No. ’Course not,” Humphrey, another of the older brigade, said. “Someone would notice, and that would mark him as the murderer.”
“Exactly.” Barnaby looked around the faces. “That’s why I suspect that if it’s not in the river, then it’ll be in a pawnshop somewhere.”
“Oh, aye,” Marty said, and the others all nodded sagely.
Hiding his amusement, Barnaby asked, “So, what are your thoughts on where the whip might be and how we should go about finding it?”
The discussion that ensued was lively and productive. In the end, they agreed that at least to begin with, they would canvass the pawnshops in two areas—around the docks between Limehouse Dock and the Tower and around Long Acre. As Phil, seconded by Humphrey, had pointed out, if whoever took the whip from the murder site had any brains at all, they would take it to the area in which gentlemen looked for whips, not the area where low-at-heel hackney drivers lurked.
Marty observed, “Even if the whip was sold into one of the pawnshops around the docks, likely the owner would be smart enough to sell it on to a shop in Long Acre.”
Barnaby agreed. He and the lads, not counting those delegated to search for the hackney driver, worked out who would search in which area and which other lads they might call on to join each group.
