lips. Gripping the dead man’s chin with his left hand, Hawkwood used the knife to prise open the jaws. He knelt close and peered into the victim’s mouth.
The teeth and tongue had been removed.
The extraction had been performed with a great deal of force. The ravaged, blood-encrusted gums told their own story. Hawkwood could see that a section of the lower jawbone, long enough to contain perhaps half a dozen teeth, was also missing. A bradawl had been used for the single teeth, Hawkwood suspected, and probably a hammer and small chisel for the rest. Hard to tell what might have been used to sever the tongue; a razor, perhaps.
The verger’s hand flew to his lips, as if seeking reassurance that his own tongue was still in situ. He stared at Hawkwood aghast. “What does it mean? Why would they do such a thing?”
Hawkwood wiped the blade on his sleeve and returned it to his boot. He looked down at the corpse. “I would have thought that was obvious.”
The three men stared back at him.
Hawkwood stood up and addressed the verger. “Your most recent burial – where was it?”
Verger Symes looked momentarily confused at the sudden change of tack. His face lost even more colour. “Burial? Why, that would be … Mary Walker. Died of consumption. We buried her yesterday.” The verger glanced at the two gravediggers, as if seeking confirmation.
It was the older man, Hicks, who nodded. “Four o’clock, it were, just afore the rain came.”
“Where?” Hawkwood demanded.
Hicks jerked a thumb. “Over yonder. Top o’ the pile, she was.”
A sinking feeling began to stir in Hawkwood’s belly.
“Show me.”
The gravedigger led the way across the burial ground towards a large patch of shadow close to the boundary of the churchyard, and pointed to a dark rectangle of freshly turned soil.
“How deep was she?” Hawkwood asked.
The two gravediggers exchanged meaningful glances.
Not deep enough, Hawkwood thought.
“All right, let’s take a look.”
The verger stared at Hawkwood in disbelief and horror.
“I’d step away, if I were you, Verger Symes,” Hawkwood said. “You wouldn’t want to get your shoes dirty.”
Blood drained from the verger’s face. “You cannot do this! I forbid it!”
“Protest duly noted, Verger.” Hawkwood nodded at Hicks. “Start digging.”
Hicks looked at his partner, who looked back at him and shrugged.
The shovels bit into the soil in unison.
At that moment Hawkwood knew what they would find. He could tell from the expressions on the faces of the gravediggers that they knew too. He had the feeling even Verger Symes, despite his protestation, wasn’t going to be surprised either.
In the event it took less than six inches of topsoil and a dozen shovel loads to confirm it.
There was a dull thud as a shovel struck wood. They used the edges of the shovels to scrape the soil away from the top of the coffin. What was immediately apparent was the jagged split in the wood halfway down the thin coffin lid.
“Good God, have you no pity?” The verger made as if to place himself between Hawkwood and the open grave.
“If I’m wrong, Verger Symes,” Hawkwood said, “I’ll buy your church a new roof. Now, stand aside.” He nodded to Hicks. “Open it up.”
Hicks glanced at his partner, who looked equally uncomfortable.
“Give me the bloody shovel,” Hawkwood held out his hand.
Hicks hesitated, then passed it over.
The three men watched as Hawkwood inserted the blade of the shovel under the widest end of the lid and pressed down hard. His effort met with little resistance. Other hands had already rendered the damage. The cheap lid splintered along the existing split with a drawn-out creak. Hawkwood handed the shovel back to its owner, gripped the edges of the shattered lid and lifted.
The verger swallowed nervously.
Hawkwood knelt, reached inside the coffin and lifted out the crumpled fold of cloth.
The burial shroud.
Burial plots were at a premium in London and mass graves were common in many parishes. It was often impossible to dig a fresh grave without disturbing previously buried corpses. The pit at St Giles in the Fields was a prime example where, for years, rows of cheap coffins had been piled one upon the other, all exposed to sight and smell, awaiting more coffins which would then be stacked on top of them. The depths of the pits could vary and coffins weren’t always used. A year or two back, in St Botolph’s, two gravediggers had died as a result of noxious gases emanating from decomposing corpses. Graves were often kept open for weeks until charged almost to the surface with dead bodies. In many instances the top layer of earth was only a few inches deep so that body extremities could sometimes poke through the soil.
Which made it easy for the body stealers.
Hawkwood left the gravediggers to fill in the hole and retraced his steps back to the murder scene. He looked down at the corpse and then at the grubby shroud in his hand.
Strictly speaking, bodies were not considered property. Burial clothing, however, was a different matter. Steal a corpse and you couldn’t be done. Steal clothing or a shroud or a wedding ring and that was a different matter. That carried the punishment of transportation. Whoever had ransacked this grave had been careful.
Which begged the obvious question.
Why leave the dead man’s corpse behind? Why wasn’t this one bound for the anatomist’s table as well? The dead man was relatively young and, other than the obvious fact that he was lifeless, he appeared to be in good physical shape. He should have been a prime candidate for any surgeon’s anatomy class. The corpses of well-built men were always in demand, for, with the skin stripped away, they could be used to display muscles to their best advantage. To any self-respecting body stealer, this wasn’t just a cadaver, this was serious cash-in-hand.
There was the soft pad of footsteps from behind. It was the verger.
“How many?” Hawkwood asked.
The verger bit his lip. “Four in the last two weeks, including the Walker woman. The other three were all male.”
Hawkwood said nothing and reflected on the speed of the corpse’s transformation from Mary Walker to the Walker woman. “What about a night watchman?”
Verger Symes shrugged. “It’s true we have employed them in the past, and it makes a difference for a time. The snatchers go elsewhere: St Luke’s or St Helen’s. But then the watchman becomes complacent and relaxes his vigilance, usually with the aid of a bottle, and the stealings begin again. We are not a wealthy parish, Officer Hawkwood.”
It was not an uncommon story.
The number of graveyards in the capital that had escaped the attention of the sack-’em-up men could be counted on the fingers of one hand. Deterrents had been tried – night watchmen, lamps, dogs, even concealed spring guns – but to little avail.
The wealthy could inter their dead in deeper graves, in family mausoleums and private chapels or beneath heavy, immovable headstones, encasing the remains in substantial coffins, either lead-lined or made entirely of metal. The poor could not afford such luxuries. They did their best, mixing sticks and straw with the grave soil for example, in the vain hope that the resulting fibres would choke the stealers’ wooden shovels. Paupers’ graves were easy targets.
“Can I ask you a question, Officer Hawkwood?” The verger looked pensive. “When I enquired earlier