A Christmas Odyssey by Anne Perry Page B

tea. Bessie managed to consume more than the other three together.
    “What do we know?” Henry asked, looking at each of them in turn. “Somebody was killed at thebottom of those steps. There was too much blood for those wounds not to have been fatal.” He turned questioningly to Crow.
    “Yes,” Crow agreed. “From the way it was placed, it could have been two people. Or it could have been one dead and one badly injured. It looked as if they had been dragged, but where to? Where are they now?”
    “Why move them anyway?” Henry asked. “That’s a question to which we need the answer. Buried decently, or just disposed of? Hidden to conceal who killed them, or who they were?”
    “Or that they were killed at all,” Crow added. “Except that they didn’t wash away the blood. They could have done something about that.”
    “Rats’ll get rid of that, in time,” Squeaky pointed out.
    Crow’s face registered his distaste, but also a sudden spark of interest. “Then it can’t have been there long,” he observed. “No one we spoke to admitted to having seen anything at all.” He leaned forward a little over the table. “Is that indifference, even to the bribe of food? Or are they too afraid to answer anyone? Is this man Shadwell’s power so great?” He looked at Henry and Squeakyin turn. “Or is it that the murderer never came aboveground into the world in which we have been asking?”
    Henry shivered, his face bleak with exhaustion, and the weight of the terrible new way of existence that had never entered his imagination before now. “I suppose there is nothing with which the police can help us?” he asked, but there was no hope in his eyes.
    Squeaky nearly dropped his mug of tea, saving it with difficulty. “Damn.” It would have ruined his bread and bacon. “Never!” He also narrowly avoided using the language that sprang to his mind. “We don’t want the police in this,” he said fervently. “If it’s Lucien who’s dead we don’t want his father to find out this way. Then all the world’ll know.” He saw the alarm and the pity in Henry’s face and how no more explanation was necessary.
    “We have to know whether it was him or not,” Henry said quietly. “How can we do that?” He looked first at Squeaky, then at Crow.
    It was Bessie who answered, her mouth still full of toast.
    “In’t no use lookin’ fer the corpses. If it’s Shadwell wot done it, ’e’ll put ’em where the rats’ll get’em. Rats are always ’ungry, an’ bones all look the same.”
    Crow stopped eating, as if he could not swallow the bacon in his mouth.
    Henry closed his eyes, then opened them again slowly. “Have you any idea where else we should look, Bessie?” he asked.
    “ ‘We can’t find Sadie, we could look fer ’oo owned ’er,’ ” she replied. She took another piece of toast and bit into it, then wiped her hand across her chin to rub away the excess butter. “She’s a fly piece, an’ all, but worth summink. ’Ooever ’e is, ’e’s goin’ ter be as mad as ’ell if she’s dead. Yer gotta look after yer property, or anybody’ll take it from yer. ’E’s gonna make sure as ’ooever did this pays fer it, so’s it don’t ’appen again. Keep respect, like.”
    She was suddenly conscious of the three men staring at her. She lowered her eyes and rubbed her sleeve across her chin, just in case there was still butter there. She wasn’t used to food like this. In fact, she wasn’t used to having her own food at all, specially set out for her alone, on a separate plate.
    Squeaky knew she was right. He was annoyed that he hadn’t thought of that himself. He shouldhave! He really had to get out of Portpool Lane; his brain was curdling.
    “Course,” he agreed a little sourly. “That’s the one thing we know. She were the woman dead, so someone’s going ter be mad as hell, ’cause he’s been robbed. By all accounts she were something real special. Drove men mad for ’er. Who