The Price of Murder Read Online Free

said I. I noticed the rest of the men had stepped back and seemed to be regarding me with renewed respect. “Now, can we go on?”
    “Yes, awright, I just wanted to know is all.”
    With that, I resumed my interrogation of the man. His name was Abel Bell, and he had been a waterman for better than fifteen years. He gave his address as one in Cheapside. He said that he reckoned every waterman had pulled at least one deader out of the Thames. This was his third. It had come about as he said: he was simply earliest upon the scene. I asked how long, in his estimation, she had been in the water. When he responded that he thought it was no more than a few hours—five or six at the most—I suggested that it was possible she had fallen off London Bridge.
    “She didn’t fall off no place,” said the waterman.
    “How can you be so certain?” I asked him.
    “Well, one thing, she was nekkid when I found her. She wasn’t walkin’ London Bridge without no clothes on. You can be sure of that.”
    “I suppose not. Were there any marks of violence upon her? Wounds or bruises?”
    “Nothing I could see.”
    “What about the blanket? Is it yours?”
    “It’s mine. Like I said, she was just plain nekkid in the water. I threw the bum blanket I had in the boat round her just to make her decent, poor child.”
    I sighed. “Well,” I said, “perhaps you could give me a hand taking her up the stairs. I’ve a wagon up there.”
    “No, I’ll carry her,” said he. “It’s the least I can do.”
    “Well, all right then. I’ll thank you for it.”
    He picked her up carefully, keeping the blanket wrapped round her, as the group on the little pier made a path for us to the stairs. We climbed, but it was only when we reached the top that we met the stink of the dead fish, which were ranged in piles all the way to Thames Street. The wagon and team awaited us, the horses still restive but secure at the hitching post.
    The waterman lifted the body carefully into the wagon bed and turned to me. “I said there wasn’t no wounds nor nothin’ upon her, but you’ll find there’s some raw places round her . . . well, down there in her privates. Maybe some fish fed upon her or maybe not. That’s why I had her all wrapped up—like. I wanted to hide that.”
    “You want your blanket back? I could throw the tarpaulin over her.”
    “No, you keep it round her. My bum can go cold this day.” He cleared his throat. “I’ll leave you now.”
    With that, he turned and walked away, mumbling to himself. I’m sure that I heard the phrase “poor child” repeated. Nevertheless, it occurred to me that though the waterman and I had discussed the discovery of the body in all its aspects, I had not so much as taken a peek at the corpus itself. For all I knew, there could be a medium-sized dog bundled in the blanket. And so, once Abel Bell had disappeared down the steps, I unwrapped the head and took a look at the face of the dead girl. She was quite beautiful in death—though beautiful in the way of so many of her age: short-nosed, round-cheeked, and blond-haired. If you met her upon the street, you would not think her in any way unusual. Yet her early death conferred upon her a special quality, an air of pathos. Having taken but a brief look, I wrapped her face again and covered her over with the tarpaulin supplied by the livery stable. It bothered me a little that I could not remember the girl’s name.
     
Once upon the table in Gabriel Donnelly’s surgery, she had once again become no more than a thing—a dead thing, a body. As we did unwrap the bundle, I passed on to Mr. Donnelly the waterman’s hesitant comments upon her condition.
    “Where did he say?” asked the medico.
    My embarrassed employment of euphemism had evidently communicated nothing to him. “I shall quote him exact,” said I. “‘There were raw places,’ he called them, ‘down there in her privates.’”
    “Hmm, well, all right, let’s have a look, shall