Death and the Jubilee Read Online Free

for men. This is only the beginning. More decapitated males
were to be expected, dumped in the docks or carried upstream towards Westminster. Beware the Ripper!
    The man charged, for now, with the responsibility of finding out the truth about the headless and handless corpse was sitting in his tiny office at Cannon Street police
station. He was suffering, he knew, from his normal feelings of irritation and anger as he looked at his younger colleague.
    Inspector William Burroughs was in his late forties. He was a stocky man with a small rather straggly moustache and tired brown eyes. Earlier in his career he had been involved in a successful
murder investigation, and the reputation of being good with cases involving sudden death had stuck with him. But Burroughs knew that had been a fluke. An unexpected confession had solved the crime,
not his detective skills. He had told his wife this many times, and as many times she had instructed him not to tell his superiors.
    There are men who look good in uniform, men who carry it off well, men who can appear like peacocks on parade. Burroughs was not one of those. There always seemed to be a button undone, trousers
not sitting properly, a tie adrift at the neck. His sergeant, on the other hand, always looked immaculate, like his bloody mother had washed and ironed him five minutes before, as Burroughs liked
to tell himself. Sergeant Cork was still gleaming in his pristine state at half-past twelve on the morning when the body was found.
    A couple of sailors had propelled the corpse gently towards the riverbank with a boathook. Inspector Burroughs had supervised the landing, blankets at the ready to cover the dead man. He had
ridden with it to the morgue at St Bartholomew’s Hospital and delivered it into the care of the doctors. They had promised him a preliminary report by the end of the day.
    ‘We should be able to tell you how long he had been in the water, maybe how long ago he was killed,’ the young doctor had assured him. ‘Please don’t expect us to be able
to help you with any clues as to who he might have been.’
    ‘Right, Sergeant Cork,’ said Burroughs, ‘we may as well start somewhere. I want you to go round or telephone all the police stations in the area and see if they have any
missing persons on file.
    ‘And there’s one very unfortunate thing about this case, I can tell you. Very unfortunate. Just think what the newspapers are going to make of it. Headless man floating by London
Bridge. Not just no head, no hands either. They’ll be all over it for weeks. And if the poor bloody police can’t find out who the man was, then we’ll be for it too. Look at those
incompetent detectives, the journalists will say, they can’t even solve a murder right in the heart of the City. The newspapers will be out for our blood.’
    ‘Are we sure it was a murder, sir?’ Sergeant Cork had never been involved in such a prestigious inquiry before.
    ‘You don’t suppose he cut his head off when he had no hands left, do you? Or do you think he cut off his head first and then sawed his wrists off himself?’
    ‘I’m sure you’re right sir.’ Cork hastened to the telephone room. ‘I’ll get started on these inquiries.’
    And please, please, the Inspector thought to himself, just once, get yourself a bit untidy.

 
2
    Lord Francis Powerscourt had turned into a horse. He was trotting slowly along his hall in Markham Square in Chelsea, making clip-clop noises with his tongue and his back
teeth. He had practised these in his bath and tested them out to his own satisfaction on his wife Lady Lucy.
    ‘Clip-clop, Clip-clop,’ said Powerscourt, negotiating his way past a Regency table outside the dining room. Now, he knew, was the time for a strategic decision. Should he go into the
dining room and make a round of the chairs, pausing possibly to look at the grass outside the window? Or should he essay the more dangerous, but possibly more entertaining journey