“I’ve no doubt you will change that.”
The brow above the silken band which covered Sir Johns eyes wrinkled in a frown. “What do you mean? I don’t quite understand.”
“Surely after you’ve heard what I can tell you, you will go to the night manager and tell him of our meeting five years past.”
“Not necessarily,” said Sir John. “Though I admit I shall have my ears set sharp for any reports of theft from this hostelry.”
“Fair enough. You’ll hear of none involving me.”
It was then as if both men had stepped back and taken the other’s measure. A slight space of time passed. When they resumed, the air between them seemed, metaphorically, to have cleared a bit. They were notably less guarded than before.
“Now, tell me, sir,’’ said the magistrate, “how did it come about that you found the corpus? ‘’
“Well, I had not much more than come on duty, which would put it a little past six, when this young fellow come up the stairs and past my station, and he stops and turns back to me, and he says, ‘I’m checking out early. I wonder, would you give my coat a good brushing? Get to it when you can. I’ll be leaving in about an hour.’ That’s as near exact as I can make what he said to me. And right then and there he takes off his coat and hands it to me, then goes to the room at the end of the hall — the one to the right — lets himself in with his key. Now, that was, I daresay, a bit unusual, him takin’ off his coat and handing it over in that way — but a long way from the most unusual I’ve seen since I’ve been working here.”
“Had you seen the man before?’’
“No, but remember, I said I’d just come on duty. It would not be at all the sort of thing I’d remark upon if half the rooms on my floor had changed tenants during the day.’’
“I see. Go on, please.”
“There were a few other things for me to attend to, so I didn’t get to brushing the coat for a time, and in the meantime, an old gent went on down the hall and lets himself into the room next to the first fella’s, the young one. And he’s not in there more than a minute or two, and he comes out, and says there is a great commotion in the room next to his. ‘What sort?’ I ask. ‘Why, it sounds like there is a fight going on there,’ says he. ‘You mean, with a lot of yelling and cursing and such?’ ‘No,’ says he, ‘it sounds like a couple of big men are in there trying to kill each other — thumping and bumping about.’”
“What, then, did you do?”
“What could I do? I am certainly not a big man myself, and the old man who come to me with the complaint wouldn’t have been any help, and so I ran for aid — downstairs, to the stable. On my way I told the night manager what was afoot. I returned with the ostler and the stable boy, and the ostler carried his pitchfork along with him. We numbered quite a party as we made our way back. We listened outside at the door — but there was naught to hear. At last we got up our courage and proceeded inside — the door was unlocked.”
“Describe the scene as precisely as you can, please, “ said Sir John.
“Well, at first there wasn’t anything to describe, for there was no light in the room at all.” The porter thought again about that. “Now, that ain’t quite true, for I remember a bit of dim light from a single candle burning off in one corner. The room was all tore apart, though — chairs overturned, one had the legs broke off, a table all flattened, dents in the wall. It looked just as the old man had said: Two men were trying to kill each other in that place — and one of them managed to do just that to the other one. We didn’t find the body right off, for it was off on the other side of the bed. “
“Could you be more specific?”
“It was between the bed and the windows.”
“Go on, then. What was the condition of the body?”
“All battered and bloody, it was, but not like it had been cut with a knife, just beat hard with fists, a chair leg, anything that was handy.”
“In your opinion, had he been beaten to death?”
“Oh, no,” said the porter most emphatically, “not a bit of it. There was something like a rope round his neck, been pulled tight, it had.”
“You say something like a rope. What did it look like? How was it not quite a rope?”
“I’d never seen one like it before. It wasn’t out of hemp, or any such stuff. No, it was woven leather, so it was, just as tough and tight as it could be. There was no question in my mind but that he had been strangled with it. His tongue was sticking out in a manner most hideous, and his beard was all soaked with puke and blood, and — “
“What? Repeat that, please.”
“Puke and blood.”
“No, no, before that you said his beard, did you not?”
“Why, yes, I did, because he certainly does have one. He — “
“Then, sir, you must take us at once to the room. Jeremy?”
Together the three of us fairly flew to the door at the end of the hall, Sir John held fast to my arm, pushing me forward, urging me onward. We stopped before the room, and the porter felt hastily in his coat pockets for the key. He produced it and, explaining that he had thought it best to secure the room while waiting for Sir John’s arrival, he unlocked the door.
The place smelled of death. There were the odors of sweat and bodily evacuation and there was a peculiar sour smell that I could not quite place. It was dark in the room. The single candle mentioned by the porter burned low in its holder and provided the only light. I grabbed it up and asked the fellow to light more candles. By the time I had located the body and knelt over it, there was appreciably more light by which to look.
There was, in any case, sufficient to see that the man upon the floor was Eli Bolt. But for his beard, I am not sure I would have recognized him. It was not only black and gray in the same pattern and proportions as Bolts had been, but it was also long and braided. There could surely be only one such beard in two braids in all of London.
“It’s Bolt, Sir John,” said I to him.
“Are you sure?”
“The beard’s the same, and the size of him is right. As for the rest …” I was reluctant to claim absolute certainty.
“Describe the body to me.”
“The face is somewhat battered, the eyes protrudent — bulging nearly out of his head, they are — and his tongue is discolored, a sort of dark purple.” I turned to the porter and asked if the body had been moved in any way.
“Well, we turned him over to see if he might still be alive,” said he.
“Though he surely looked dead, lying on the floor, it seemed only proper to make sure.”
“You felt his pulse? His heartbeat?’’ asked Sir John.
“I didn’t have to. I been up to Tyburn often enough I know how a hanged man looks.” He hesitated, then added: “There was one of them with us — I think it was the old man from the room next door, he put his hand on this. . this dead man’s chest and said there was no heartbeat.”
As the two discussed this matter, I discovered something that did pique my curiosity. The porter had mentioned the presence of vomit and blood in Bolt’s beard. I had expected that the blood had been regurgitated with the vomit, and perhaps some of it was; but beneath that dark beard of black and gray I found a wound, a cut where the leather had dug so deep into Bolt’s throat that it caused a wound and left some bleeding. I called this to the porter’s attention and, holding his own candle close, he inspected the bloody wound in the throat.
“Aye,” said he, “went deep, didn’t it? Never seen that before, but then again, I never seen a rope of leather used before. You could damn near cut a man’s head off with such as that, couldn’t you?”
“Which reminds me,” said Sir John, “the victim of that unfortunate hanging in 1763 had had his head nearly severed from his body by the leather rope from which he was suspended.” He took a moment to ruminate upon that and then addressed the porter: “Mr. Simmons, or Simon, or however you would prefer to have it, could you suggest how it came about that the report carried to the Bow Street Court had it that Mr. Lawrence Paltrow had committed suicide? Now, it is evident to us that the dead man is not Mr. Paltrow, and should be evident also that he did not die a suicide. You did not cut him down, I assume?”