A Daring Liaison(89)

The door closed again and Charles turned back to Hathaway’s room. He tried the lock with no luck. Odd, how no one had seen Hathaway for several days. If Wycliffe’s men hadn’t found him, no one could.

He was halfway down the stairs when he realized the odor was stronger upstairs. He spun around and went back, removing a pick from his pocket. The lock was easily forced and Charles stepped through with a glance over his shoulder to be certain he hadn’t been seen.

The smell was overwhelming now and recognizable. Decaying flesh. He threw the only window open and breathed deeply before turning back to the inside.

In a darkened corner, he saw the crumpled form. Hathaway by the length and breadth of him and by his fastidiously polished shoes. No wonder no one had seen him. Charles held a handkerchief over his nose and mouth as he inspected the bloated body. He’d been dead for several days judging by the number of flies, the state of the body and the fact that death rigor had come and gone. Probably killed after his visit to the Home Office.

A knife had made a single slice across his throat. Dried blood had stiffened the man’s dark coat. A knife. Altogether too many coincidences. Dick Gibbons, then. But why? For Georgiana’s sake? In retaliation for reporting her to the Home Office? Just because he felt like it? Or had they been in collusion and argued?

He searched Hathaway and found only a crumpled scrap of paper in one corner of his waistcoat pocket. No coins, no banknotes, nothing of value whatsoever. Gibbons, if it had been Gibbons, had taken everything. He smoothed the wad of paper and read an address in Whitechapel. An address within the area Wycliffe’s men had narrowed to Gibbons’s crib.

He quickly searched the rest of the room, but found nothing useful. It appeared that Gibbons had come to see Hathaway, killed him for some as yet unknown reason, had taken anything of value, and left him to rot. He must have missed the little slip of paper with directions to his room.

A grim smile found its way to his lips. No time to waste if he was to catch Gibbons this time.

He closed Hathaway’s door behind him and hurried back down the stairs and across the street. He handed the man the paper he’d taken from Hathaway’s pocket and turned toward Whitechapel. “Hathaway is dead. Give that to Wycliffe at once. Tell him to meet me there.”

* * *

Charles knew it had been too much to hope for to find Dick Gibbons at home. He kept his disappointment in check and decided that this could be his only opportunity to search for any proof of the Gibbons brothers’ complicity in a myriad of crimes. He stepped inside.

Whether it was the oppressive atmosphere of the room or something more, a warning tingle spiraled up his spine. Something felt wrong. Something that nagged at the back of his mind. He would wait for Wycliffe, but there was no time to waste. A candle stub waited on a shelf just inside the door and he found the tinderbox to light it.

The single room in the back stables of a squalid public house gave testament to the Gibbons tolerance for filth. Despite the lock he’d had to pick to gain entrance, there looked to be nothing worth stealing. As he stood in the open doorway, Charles wished he had a shovel. Still, knowing that Gibbons could come back at any minute, he decided not to wait for Wycliffe’s arrival.

The room was small and airless. No windows offered light or ventilation. Cobwebs and rat droppings were everywhere. He’d have likened it to a fortress, but there was no watchtower. Not even a peephole. A searching glance around the room gave him no clue where he might start his hunt.

He moved the torn blankets covering a single pallet and found only more blankets. He lifted the lot with the toe of his boot to find that there was no bed beneath, just a pile of discarded blankets too worn to be mended. He’d have felt sorry for anyone else, but he knew full well that the Gibbons brothers had extorted fortunes and charged exorbitant rates for their services, be they assassinations or pickpocketing. Where that money had gone was a subject of endless speculation by the Home Office.

A pile of objects in one corner offered a place to start his search. Old playbills and torn posters had been smoothed and stacked, but for what purpose? Charles could not imagine. Buttons of the sort that might have been lost on the cobbles filled an old glass jar. Scraps of ribbon, empty bobbins and brushes missing half their bristles were in a single pile, as if kicked aside.

He continued around the perimeter, reasoning that not even Dick Gibbons would leave anything incriminating or that could be of value in the open center of a room. He touched as little as possible, moving things aside with his boot.