Chapter 16
Alderman James was at Mr. Edwards’s house, sitting at the same dining room table where Kate had lunched. They had just enjoyed a large dinner; Edwards was drinking brandy and James coffee.
“Do you lot ever stop drinking alcohol?” James smiled at him.
“Not if we can help it,” Edwards laughed back. “The world can be a dull place without it.”
“You’ve heard by now, I’m sure, of the Sommers girl being attacked?” James asked, knowing full well that Edwards did—and probably knew more than he did.
“Indeed,” Edwards replied, quaffing his drink. “I was in the vicinity when it occurred.”
“You saw it?” James asked, sitting forward.
Edwards smiled. “No, no, I was on Francis Street in one of our club houses when it happened.”
“You heard it, then?”
“No, when you are at a Hellfire gathering, you don’t hear anything that goes on outside, I can assure you.” He laughed.
“Well, anyway, you are aware, no doubt, of this ridiculous rumour in the lower classes about the soul of Thomas Olocher being responsible for the attacks?”
“I have, and to be fair to them, you can see why a person with no education would believe such a thing.”
“Yes, I suppose,” James agreed. “Now, with this attack on the witness who sent him down, it is all but gospel truth over in the Liberties and Hell and spreading outside those areas as well.”
“I can imagine.”
“We have been getting reports of sightings of all kinds of animals in the last few days,” James said scornfully. “There was even a report of a huge black elephant!”
“How do you think all this fear will manifest itself?” Edwards asked seriously once he stopped chuckling about the elephant.
“I don’t know, but I have been thinking about what you said the other night about it being an animal come in on a ship.”
“That was just idle talk.”
“Yes, I know, but idle talk is how gossip starts. I have extra patrols near the docks, but I have asked them to be as discreet as possible.”
“You think if that rumour starts, there will be a riot against the ships?”
“I do.”
“Well, you and I both know that there will be an explosion of some kind when the people get scared enough, but it is often difficult to guess what form that will take.”
James thought about this as he sipped more of the thick, bitter coffee. He was doing what he could to redeem his name, and this riot that he could feel coming was going to have to be put down somehow. That would probably mean the army again, and he might be forced into the same position as before. Only this time, it would be the scared and not the angry who were rioting, and they were a different kettle of fish altogether. He had to catch whoever was responsible as soon as possible.
“What do you think of this blacksmith?” James asked, and as expected, Edwards knew who he was talking about.
“Timothy Mullins,” he said. “I don’t see it. I went to his house and saw the red at his door—clearly rust—and his story about a delivery to a client in Hell is true as well; I have checked that out. He left the pub and got home in what seems to be a five-minute window, which would be about right for the walk he had to do. I actually have my own suspicions about who it might have been.”
James perked up at this, his hopes raised at once by this man who seemed always to know everything before he did. “Who?”
“In the course of my questioning, I came across another piece of information, which I also followed up.”
“What was it?”
“Someone left the cabin just before the blacksmith, and the direction they went was not the direction home for this person.”
“Who?”
“Someone you know well who has a propensity for violence,” Edwards hinted. James could see he was enjoying this.
For a moment, James thought he meant a gentleman who was liberal with his fists after a few drinks, and he racked his brain, trying to think who it might be. But then he realised that no one he knew would frequent such a place as a whisky cabin on Cook Street. “There are many criminals well known to me who could have been there that night.”
“Yes, but this one fits very well with the crimes committed.”
“Tell me, man!”
“Lord Muc.” Edwards smiled.
“The Liberty Boys leader?” It seemed unlikely. Lord Muc loved violence, but he liked it in the pitched sense, on open ground and with his gang around him. James couldn’t see him skulking around at night and attacking with stealth; he was too boisterous for that.
“That’s him, yes,” Edwards answered. “He left the cabin about ten minutes before Mullins. Lord Muc lives in Schoolhouse Lane, which means that he would turn left when he left the cabin on Cook Street, but I have it on good authority that he turned right and then went up New Row.”
“Good authority?”
“One of our lads was on the way to the meet on Francis Street and saw him.”
“And who was this?”
“He is above suspicion, Alderman, and as such, there is no need to use his name.”
“Lord Muc has not been questioned, as far as I know,” James said.
“He fits the bill in a couple of ways, I think. He is violent and sneaky. He was drunk at the time and walking the streets in terrible weather. Do you know what ‘Muc’ is the Irish for, by the way?”
“No.”
“Pig.” Edwards smiled.
“You don’t say!” James uttered.
“Yes, it seems crude, but apparently he has worked with pigs in the past, and that is where he got the moniker he goes by. He would probably have access to pig body parts and hides, and he could be using them as a disguise to deflect the rumours to the gossip about Olocher,” Edwards said, almost seeming to muse out loud.
“I’ll have someone talk to him,” James said.
“It is only a slight suspicion, Alderman, and one which I don’t believe is true; in fact, I would be quite disappointed if it were true.”
“Then why tell me?” James said, annoyed now by the playful attitude Edwards was always adopting.
“It could be right. The circumstantial evidence is all there, and even if it is not true, it will start new rumours.”
“What good is that?”
“With this blacksmith and now Lord Muc being questioned seriously about these crimes, the rumour mill will steer away from wild horror stories of demon pigs and focus on evil men with evil intent, something that the general populace is not all that afraid of.” Edwards smirked.
“And when they are not afraid anymore, the chances of a riot diminish accordingly?”
“Exactly, Alderman. This is what you call a win-win situation.”
James sat back in his chair, and he wondered if there was ever anything in Edwards’s life that wasn’t a win for him. He didn’t like the network this man had for getting information, and Edwards was always keeping the names of his Hellfire Club friends out of affairs. They were a wild lot, and he would not have been all that surprised to find them responsible for a lot more than they got credit for.
A riot had to be avoided at all costs, or else people were going to die. He would to have to order that people die. His mind jumped from this to Lord Muc, and he thought of the famous elephant dissection in Temple Bar over a hundred years ago. Not many of the lower classes would know anything about that, but he could only imagine what would happen if people started to believe there was a killer animal of that size on the prowl at night.
A riot had to be avoided at all costs. He would have to go to the streets himself and catch this killer. That was the only way he could be both sure that it was done and sure that he might, perhaps, redeem himself in the eyes of the people.