River of Bones Read online

  River of Bones

  An Anna Kronberg Mystery

  Annelie Wendeberg

  Contents

  All you need to know…

  Prologue

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  18

  Afterword

  Keeper of Pleas

  more…

  Acknowledgments

  Copyright 2018 by Annelie Wendeberg

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  eBook Edition

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  This is a work of fiction. Characters, places, and names in this book are products of the author's imagination. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the copyright owner.

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  Editing: Tom Welch

  Cover Design: Nuno Moreira

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  Bonus content at the end of this book: Preview of Keeper of Pleas

  All you need to know…

  Find me here:

  www.anneliewendeberg.com

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  More Victorian Mysteries:

  To those who have hung out with me since my (terribly unprofessional) beginnings as an author.

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  This is for you.

  Prologue

  Boston, September 1893

  Had Mr Wilbur known that his two Dachshunds would resurrect a corpse, he certainly wouldn’t have taken them for a walk.

  He would have stayed in bed.

  It was a crisp Sunday morning when Mr Wilbur strolled down Middlesex Avenue and into the marshes of Mystic River. The grass stood high. Dew was rubbing off on his new trousers, moisture creeping through cotton, weighing them down. He should have taken the time to put on his wellingtons, he told himself. Or his gaiters, at the very least.

  A thin sheet of fog hovered above the water, tickled by rays of sunlight. Mr Wilbur thought of fairies. He shook his head. Ridiculous. He turned, his eyes searching for his dogs. Their sleek bodies were hidden by the grass, their tails pointing straight up, flicking like whips. When they began yipping in excitement, he wondered what they’d found. He would have to ask the maid to wash them upon his return — they were surely rolling in something revolting.

  The yipping grew more frantic as Mr Wilbur stepped out onto the bank. He regretted the move instantly as his shoes sank into the soft mud. With a curse, he took two steps back, and skidded his mucky soles over clumps of grass. Then he lifted his head to call his dogs back.

  And paused.

  There was a big lump lying on the bank, fifteen yards or so away. The dogs were doing…what precisely? Tugging at something? Eating it? What was it, anyway? He narrowed his eyes. It was large. As large as a fat man. Shaped like one, too. No, that was impossible.

  He would make an appointment with his ophthalmologist. Yes, right away. No, it was Sunday. That would have to wait until tomorrow.

  Mr Wilbur lifted his fingers to his mouth and whistled. The dogs didn’t even look up. They were entirely focused on…whatever that thing was.

  He felt anger roll in his belly. Disobedience would not be toler—

  A sharp, aggressive bark — like a small cannon shot. The dogs scattered like fleas.

  The lump gave a violent twitch.

  A wail cut through the fog.

  1

  Yours is the light by which my spirit's born. You are my sun, my moon, and all my stars.

  E. E. Cummings

  The Boston Post, Tuesday, September 5, 1893

  CORONER’S NOTICE - Body of a man found two days ago at Mystic River near Middlesex Avenue, Somerville: about 45 years old, 5 feet 9 inches in height, stout build, dark hair, smooth face; had on Kentucky jean pants, brown vest, light calico shirt, blue cotton socks, and congress gaiters. Body at City Morgue for identification. Henry Millers, M.D. & Jacob Rubenstein, Coroners.

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  By midsummer 1893, the recession had begun to grind people down. The census reported surging unemployment rates, and panic was beginning to stir among the working class. Housing prices notched up every other week, and the slums grew more and more crowded.

  During that time of economic upheaval, only three things kept Margery from fearing the four of us would surely fall into poverty: her ability to preserve nearly everything she found at the farmer’s market, a rather extensive root cellar for storing unfathomable amounts of food for months (never mind that this wasn’t a root cellar at all, but a tunnel and secret escape route), and my inheritance that was mostly in gold.

  I had told Margery and Zachary that I had inherited more than seventy thousand dollars, which they trusted would be enough for a lifetime. Had I told them the truth of it, Margery would have fallen over in shock.

  Now, with autumn approaching, Margery, Zach, and Klara were going to the market almost daily. They would set out after breakfast and return before lunch, their small handcart laden with whatever was being sold at the best price that day. Then they’d sort their loot in the kitchen. Our tunnel was equipped with two rows of shelves down its considerable length, holding jars of fruits, jams, tomatoes, applesauce, artichokes, casks of sauerkraut and pickles, and even wheels of cheese sealed with cotton cloth and butter. Come winter, our larder would be stocked with ham, bacon, smoked sausages, crocks of lard, and other delicacies.

  Margery seemed to be preparing for war. Or the apocalypse.

  When the others went to market, I would make my way to Wards Six and Seven. It was a world of stink, grime, rats, dead goats, and drunkards. For that stink, I’d quit my lecturing post at the medical school for women. I’d closed my practice for these drunkards. And I hadn’t been happier in years.

  If anyone had asked what had compelled this choice, I’m not sure I would have found a satisfying answer. Slum life isn’t pretty; everyone knows that. But what I found nearly impossible to stomach were the countless drunken children and babies.

  In the slums, alcohol makes life bearable. In stale beer dives, the dregs from old casks were gathered and rounds of beer were sold at two cents. The recession hadn’t changed that in the least, and the slum dwellers kept on drinking savagely. To them, alcohol was an anaesthetic. It lifted any and all inhibitions. It wiped away worries. Consequences no longer existed. People coupled, made babies. Pregnancies were a mere afterthought. Births happened nearly accidentally for mothers so stone drunk they didn’t even feel the contractions. If both mother and child survived, the father or one of the older siblings would often wrap up the newcomer in some dirty rag to dump it in a park or an alleyway, or on the doorstep of some fashionable house.

  Most of those babies ended up in squalid almshouses, with paupers, drunks, and the insane for company. They slept and cried and shat in small cardboard boxes lined with cotton wool, their lifespans measured in days.

  My daughter seemed to have inherited my impulse to try to fix hopeless situations. She kept bringing home dying animals. Songbirds and their chicks that she’d wrenched from the maw of a cat, horribly chewed up but still twitching. Sickly kittens that were only skin and bone, and much too small to survive without their mother. And once, a small dog that must have been purposely set on fire. They all died. It was heartbreaking to watch Klara trying her best, and failing. I did all I could to help her care for them, but she needed to understand that sometimes, all one could do was to make a passing more bearable.

  She had a thousan
d questions, but asked none of them. She rarely spoke a word.

  Margery couldn’t fathom why I frequented Boston’s worst slums, why I wanted to help the dregs, the ignorant, the shiftless. Zach, though, understood without me ever needing to explain.

  Once you open your eyes to the suffering around you, it’s nearly impossible to ever shut them again.

  But one day, my trip to the slums was forestalled by a knock at the front door.

  ‘Good day, Dr Arlington.’ Inspector McCurley ripped off his hat, and straightened his mop of unruly hair with several impatient flicks of his hand.

  It took me a moment to process his appearance. I hadn’t seen him for three months. Not since shortly after he and I killed Haywood — the man who had murdered three women and was known as the Railway Strangler.

  McCurley looked healthier. Happier. A light shone in his blue eyes that hadn’t been there before.

  ‘Is your daughter well?’ I asked.

  He smiled broadly. ‘She’s crawling.’ And then his eyes flared with a mix of pride and fear. ‘She’s horrifyingly fast.’

  I chuckled. ‘Ha! Wait until she starts walking. That is most terrifying. They wobble around on chubby legs and their huge head seems to take aim at every pointy bit of furniture nearby.’

  His shoulders dropped. I regretted my words a little. As a police inspector, he must have seen enough blood and gore to know how a toddler with a head wound would look.

  Clearing his throat, he pushed his hands into his pockets. ‘I’ve come to ask a favour. For your help, really. You’ll be paid for your time, of course…’ He trailed off, glanced over my shoulder and spotted Klara, who was getting ready to leave with Zach and Margery. ‘She has grown so much.’

  ‘Sometimes I could swear she grows half an inch overnight. Why don’t you come in, Inspector?’ I said, stepping aside.

  We walked toward the sitting room, but he said, ‘I’d like to talk to you in private. In your office, perhaps?’

  ‘Of course.’ Steering us into my office, I wondered what he might want.

  He shut the door, and cleared his throat. ‘Early this morning, a body was found on the bank of Mystic River in Somerville.’

  I propped my hip against the edge of my desk. ‘And you’ve been assigned the case, which allows only one conclusion.’

  He inclined his head. ‘First evidence points to homicide. An autopsy is scheduled for…’ He looked around the room, then pulled a watch from his pocket. ‘An hour and a half from now. But that’s not why I’m calling on you. A boy was found huddled with the corpse. Maybe six or seven years old — we’re not sure. He’s malnourished. Skittish as a cornered rabbit. The police surgeon described him as disturbed and unresponsive.’

  ‘He examined the boy?’

  ‘Well…from a distance. More or less. The boy wouldn’t let the man touch him. He began screaming when the surgeon tried to pull him up. It was the strangest sound. Like a tortured animal.’ McCurley shrugged helplessly. ‘He’s covered in grime and reeks of decomposition.’

  ‘Did he say anything?’

  ‘Not a word.’

  I chewed on the inside of my cheek. ‘And he is your only witness to a possible crime?’

  A brief nod.

  ‘You think I could get him to talk?’

  ‘I’ve seen you work with children—’

  ‘Babies,’ I corrected him.

  ‘Babies, their fathers, wet-nurses and sons of wet-nurses.’ He gave me smirk. ‘Every time you came to visit, it felt like we’d learned how to breathe again. Even Ms Hacker ceased fidgeting. You have a way of making even the wariest people trust you.’ He came to a sudden halt. Blood rose to his ears.

  His reaction puzzled me. I knew him as an unreadable man, who held his emotions on a very short leash.

  ‘Is the boy aggressive?’

  ‘Aggressive? No, not as far as I can see. He sits hunched in a corner for the most part. He doesn’t react when spoken to. When someone tries to touch him, he screams. But he doesn’t lash out. He makes himself smaller, if that’s even possible. It’s obvious that the boy is terrified.’

  ‘Hum.’ I pushed away from my desk, glanced at my doctor’s bag, wondering whether I would need it, but grabbed it just in case. As we left the office, a thought struck me. ‘Just a moment.’ I dashed into my bedroom, found coloured pens and paper and Klara’s illustrated book on exotic birds, and stuffed them into my bag. Then I went into the garden, looking for my daughter.

  Zach was pulling the handcart out from the toolshed, and Klara was busy picking strawberries. Her lips and cheeks were red with berry juice. There was a smudge of dirt above her eyebrow.

  ‘Would you like to go on an adventure with me?’ I asked.

  At the word “adventure,” she perked up. She grinned and a strawberry nearly dropped from her mouth. She stuffed it back in with her knuckles.

  ‘I need to go to the police station to talk to a boy. I think I might need your help.’ I held out my hand to her, and then called to Zachary, ‘You don’t need her to steer the chariot, do you?’

  Zach blinked down at the handcart, snorted, and waved me off with a shake of his head.

  Klara gathered her apron in one hand and grasped a seam of my knickerbockers in the other. McCurley looked at us, about to ask a question, but then dropped it.

  As the police carriage was driving us to Headquarters at Pemberton Square, McCurley interjected, ‘You look well.’

  ‘Thank you. You, too.’

  His gaze slid from me to Klara, who was stuffing strawberry after strawberry into her mouth.

  I bumped her gently with my elbow. ‘Leave two or three for the boy. The Inspector said he’s skinny.’

  Klara stopped chewing, her cheeks bulging, eyebrows raised. She swallowed, gave me a small nod, and gazed down at the strawberries in her lap. She counted out three in her left hand and, after a brief paused, added another two. Then she gathered the rest in her right hand and shoved them into her face.

  ‘The boy is not in a cell, is he?’ I asked McCurley.

  ‘He’s in my office. Boyle is keeping an eye on him.’

  We alighted, entered Headquarters, and climbed a flight of stairs to McCurley’s office. He knocked once, then pushed the door open. Boyle, sitting inside next to the door, nodded in greeting and tipped his hat. A thick wave of odours hit me. The office stank of river muck and decomposition. I peeked into the room and spied a boy squeezed under McCurley’s desk. His clothes were in tatters. His skin was so entirely covered in dirt that one couldn’t even be sure if a boy or a girl was hidden underneath the grime.

  We entered. McCurley dismissed Sergeant Boyle. The boy’s gaze was stuck to the legs of the chair Boyle had vacated, and that McCurley now occupied.

  Klara and I sat down on the floor, a short distance from the desk. The boy sat on his haunches, the fingers of one hand splayed against the floorboards, eyes glued to McCurley’s shoes. Only twice did his gaze dart toward my daughter and me.

  I opened my bag, pulled out the pencils, paper, and book, and pushed them all to Klara. Then I sat back and watched. The boy did not move. But his attention was dragged away from McCurley’s shoes to the sheets of paper Klara had arranged in front of herself. She placed a row of strawberries on one sheet, and began to draw on the other. A tree, a flower, a butterfly.

  As though shocked by his audacity to find himself staring at the colourful things laid out in front of him, the boy’s eyes flared, and then squeezed shut just before he pressed his face against his knees.

  Klara looked from him to me, frowning. She picked up the strawberries, held them out to me, and cocked her head toward the boy.

  ‘Just a moment,’ I said softly to her, and then to the boy, ‘Would you like strawberries? They are from our garden. Klara picked them for you.’

  There was no reaction.

  ‘What is your name? Mine is Elizabeth.’

  Still no reaction.

  I tapped a finger on one of Klara’s pe
ns, rolling it in his direction. And then another. They bopped against his threadbare boots. He lifted his head a fraction to peek through his bangs. Sharp hazel eyes held mine for a brief moment. A tremor went through him, and he scooted back an inch, away from the offending pencils.

  I rolled another toward him. He frowned at it, then up at me.

  ‘Would you like a strawberry?’ I asked.

  Instantly, his gaze dropped to my lips.

  And very slowly, I repeated my question.

  He swallowed.

  I nodded at my daughter. ‘I think you can offer one to him now.’

  In a flash, her small fist shot forward, her fingers uncurled to present slightly mushed berries. The boy didn’t move, didn’t unfasten his gaze from Klara’s outstretched hand. She scooted a little closer, and a little closer yet.

  His hand crept forward.

  Unceremoniously, Klara dumped the berries on his palm.

  He stared at them, stunned.

  I said, ‘They are yours.’ When he did not react, I waved my hand in front of my face to draw his attention, and spoke slowly, ‘They are yours. You can eat them. If you like strawberries.’

  And one by one, he picked them from his hand and conveyed them to his mouth. All the while, there was nothing but fear in his expression. That of a dog who’d been kicked too often.