Under the Dragon’s Tail
- Автор: Jennings Maureen
- Серия: The Murdoch Mysteries #2
- Год: 2008
- Язык: английский
- Год: McClelland & Stewart
- ISBN: 9781551992815
- Жанр: Исторические детективы
Электронная книга - «Under the Dragon’s Tail». Краткое содержание книги:
Women rich and poor come to her, desperate and in dire need of help – and discretion. Dolly Merishaw is a midwife and an abortionist in Victorian Toronto, but although she keeps quiet about her clients' condition, her contempt for them and her greed leaves every one of them resentful and angry. So it comes as no surprise to Detective William Murdoch when this malicious woman is murdered. What is a shock, though, is that a week later a young boy is found dead in Dolly's squalid kitchen. Now, Murdoch isn't sure if he's hunting one murderer – or two. From the Paperback edition.
She bent down and splashed water over her face and neck. Hunger had kept her awake at first, but this morning that had gone and she felt nothing except thirst. She cupped her hand and lapped the river water. For two days she had sat by the opening, crouched within the leaves, watchful. The birds were her warning, whether they suddenly took flight or continued their usual coming and going around her. Yesterday she had felt bolder and ventured out looking for wild berries. She tried not to think, but suddenly the memory would lump into her mind. Not just of the big policeman in his helmet whom she’d seen coming up the path of her mother’s house but the other men in uniform from before. Their faces red and angry, shaking their fists at her when she wouldn’t walk down the cold corridor to her cell. She tried frantically to make them understand, she wasn’t being bad, wasn’t defiant, but her sounds only seemed to anger them the more. Her mother had made it clear with gestures and a crude drawing that Lily was going to be hanged. That the gallows was in that room at the end of the corridor. But before she died, Lily would be tortured, hot pokers would be thrust in her eyes and she’d be put on a rack and stretched until all her bones were broken. Her mother had shown her a drawing in an old book. “Just like this,” she thumped the page with her finger.
First women, stiff and forbidding in their dark dresses and aprons, came to take her but she fought so fiercely, they sent for the men. Two big guards roughly subdued her and dragged her into the cell. They didn’t know, because she couldn’t tell them, why she struggled so desperately. Finally, they tied her into a chair and put a cloth tight about her mouth to silence the screaming. After a while the matron sent for Dolly. She was shamed into soothing her daughter, and although she managed to pinch her when the matron wasn’t looking, she did communicate to Lily that she wasn’t going to be tortured and hanged. Yet! That if she was very, very good and did everything she was told she would be let out. And just possibly, her mother, whom she had disgraced, would take her back.
These were the memories that Lily tried to keep away. Now, her mother was dead. It was her fault and if the men came again and the judge with his white hair, she would be forced back to that place and Dolly would not save her this time. She trembled and moaned as she wiped her eyes with her wet hands.
The waiter had knocked two or three times before Henry heard him.
“Your breakfast, sir.”
Henry looked at his watch, which he’d placed on the bedside table. It was almost noon. He had slept a deep, drugged sleep that left him feeling thick-tongued and sluggish. The waiter called again and he forced himself to sit up.
“Leave it outside,” he shouted with a rush of anger.
He wasn’t hungry, rarely was these days, just perpetually thirsty, his throat always burning. He reached over to light the lamp on the bedside table. He kept the curtains closed. He didn’t want the sunlight, didn’t want a reminder that life was going on outside his room, that people with futures to think of were walking on the street, talking, laughing with each other.
He got out of bed slowly and went over to the washstand. He tilted the mirror so he could get a better view, tugged off his blood-spotted nightshirt, and contemplated his naked body. For a long time now, this had become his morning ritual. It was foolish, morbid really, because what he saw was the inexorable progress of his disease. Abruptly he dropped to his knees and clasped his hands together in prayer. He went to church on a regular basis but it was perfunctory, polite behaviour and he knew it. However, this morning he longed to reach a God who had long seemed indifferent.
“Our Father which art in Heaven, forgive me for what I have done. I am a sinner. You have punished me, Lord, and I will try to accept Your punishment as it is just. I repent. You who see into my heart, forgive me I beg, but as it be Your will and not mine. Amen.”
He repeated the Lord’s Prayer over and over until finally his knees ached and he was forced to get to his feet. He had achieved no peace of mind. His prayers were barren.
Chapter Eight
The twelve jurors, together with family and friends eager to witness the proceedings, were jammed into the reception room of Humphrey’s. Only Tim Pritchard was impassive. He sat back, drawing on his pipe, ignoring everybody else and irritating the shirt off all of them by his air of superiority. He had served on a coroner’s jury last January when a prostitute had been found strangled on the frozen lake. He considered himself an old hand at the inquest business.
Murdoch was a bit late and he slipped into the back of the room. There were no more chairs to be had, so he stood and leaned against the wall. Crabtree was serving as constable of the court, and when he entered, like schoolchildren when the teacher comes in, the spectators fell silent immediately.
The constable went over to a lectern provided for the purpose, cleared his throat, and in a booming voice, made his announcement.
“Listen here, everybody. I have a message from the coroner, Mr. Johnson. To wit.” He unfolded a piece of paper and read.
“Gentlemen, the court doth dismiss you for this time but requires you severally to appear here again Friday, on the twenty-sixth day of July instant at the seventh hour of the clock in the evening precisely, upon pain of forty dollars a man on the condition contained in your recognizance entered into.”
There was a silence as the spectators tried to sort their way through the thicket of legal language.
“What’s all that mean, Constable?” called out Dick Meadows.
“It means the inquest is adjourned,” answered Pritchard, who was sitting in the row in front. A murmur of disappointment rippled through the crowd. “And if you don’t come back you have to cough up forty bills,” he added.
“Hey, sod that,” said a man in front who had the muscles and language of a labourer. “I’m off on a frigging run next Friday. I don’t do it, I don’t get no sodding wages.”
“Too bad. Then you’ll have to pay the forfeit.”
“Is that true, Constable?” the man asked.
“Yes, he’s right,” said Crabtree. “You’ll have to change your shift. You’ve been sworn. And you there. You watch your language or you’ll get a charge. There are ladies present.”
The man didn’t take the reprimand well. “Why’s the shicey thing being postponed?”
“Because Mr. Johnson has been taken poorly, that’s why. And you’re in the queen’s court, don’t forget. I don’t want to hear one more word out of your mouth. Of any kind.”
“If he leaves Dolly Shaw much longer she’ll be turning all of our stomachs,” called out another man.
“That’s no concern of yours. You’re here to do your duty no matter what.”
“And who’ll put bread in my kid’s stomach while her pa is adoing his duty? Will you?”
Crabtree bristled. “You’ve had your warning, Charles Piersol. One more word and you’ll be held in contempt. And that surely won’t feed your child.”
Piersol subsided with bad grace. Crabtree picked up a second sheet of paper from the table in front of him.
“Oyez, oyez. All manner of persons who have anything more to do with this court may depart home at this time and give their attendance here again on Friday next being the twenty-sixth day of July instant at the seventh hour of the clock in the evening precisely.”
The assembly began to stir, murmuring among themselves in disappointment.
“Come on then. No loitering. And don’t forget, any one of you not appearing will pay for it. Got that, Piersol?”