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John shuddered, and turned away to pick up his breeches. When he had pulled these on over his nightshirt, and had thrust his feet into a pair of shoes, Waggleswick invited him to come down and see what had awaited him in the wash-house below his room.
‘Jem and me’ll lock the cull and his moll in the cellar till morning,’ he said. ‘Taken me a rare time to snabble you, my buck, ain’t it? You’ll pay for it! Get down them dancers, and don’t you go for to forget that this little pop o’ mine is mighty liable to go off! Mighty liable it is!’
He motioned the landlord to go before him into the cupboard, grinning at John’s face of horror. ‘Didn’t suspicion what there was behind these here doors, did you?’ he said.
‘I never tried to open them. Good God, a stairway?’
‘Down to the wash-house. Took me three visits to get a sight of them, too! Ah, and you’d have gone down ’em feet first if I hadn’t have been here, master, like a good few other young chubs! To think I been here four times, and never a blow come worth the biting until you walked in tonight, with your pocket-book full o’ flimseys, and your talk of no one suspicioning you was in England! Axing your pardon, you was a regular noddy, wasn’t you, sir?’
Mr Cranbrook agreed to it humbly, and brought up the rear of the little procession that wound its way down a steep, twisting stair to a stone-flagged wash-house, where a huge copper was steaming in one corner, and the tapster was standing over Mrs Fyton, loudly protesting her innocence of evil intent in a chair in the middle of the room.
‘My assistant – junior, o’ course, but a fly cove!’ said Waggleswick, jerking a thumb at the tapster. ‘All right, Jem: we’ll stow ’em away under hatches now!’
John, whose revolted gaze had alighted on a chopper, lying on a stout, scrubbed table, was looking a little pale. He was left to his own reflections while the prisoners were driven down to the cellar; and his half-incredulous and wholly nauseated inspection of the wash-house made it unnecessary for Waggleswick to inform him, as he did upon his return with Jem, that it had been the Fytons’ practice to chop up the bodies of their victims, and to boil down the remains in the copper. ‘Though I don’t rightly kno
w what they done with the heads,’ added Mr Waggleswick thoughtfully.
John had heard tales reminiscent of this gruesome disclosure, but he had imagined that they belonged to an age long past.
‘Lor’ no, sir!’ said Waggleswick indulgently. ‘There’s plenty of willains alive today! We’ve had this ken in our eye I dunno how long, but that Fyton he was a cunning one!’
‘Ah!’ nodded Jem, signifying portentous assent.
‘You might have told me!’ John said hotly.
‘Well,’ said Waggleswick, scratching his chin, ‘I might, o’ course, but you was in the nature of a honey-fall, sir, and I wasn’t so werry sure as you’d be agreeable to laying in your bed awaiting for Fyton to come an’ murder you unbeknownst if I was to tell you what my lay was.’
A horrible thought crossed John’s mind. ‘Miss Gateshead!’
‘She’s all right and tight! She was knowed to be putting up here, and Fyton never ran no silly risks.’
‘’Adn’t got no ’addock stuffed with beans neither,’ interpolated Jem, somewhat incomprehensibly.
Waggleswick said severely: ‘Don’t talk that cant to flash coves as don’t understand it, sap-head! What he means, sir, is she hadn’t no full purse, like you told us all you had!’
‘Not but what Fyton might ha’ done a bit in the body-snatching line,’ suggested Jem.
Mr Cranbrook shuddered.
‘Well, he ain’t snatched her body,’ pointed out Mr Waggleswick.
John looked at him. ‘She must not know of this! It is ghastly!’
Waggleswick scratched his chin again. ‘I dunno as she need. She won’t be wanted as a witness – like you will, sir!’
‘Yes, of course: I know that! I am very willing. Has that monster disposed of many travellers in this frightful way?’
‘There’s no saying,’ replied Waggleswick. ‘Not above two or three since we got wind of it in Bow Street.’
‘And before? It is horrible to think of!’
‘Ah!’ agreed Jem. ‘Dear knows ’ow many went into that there copper afore us Runners come down ’ere!’
On this macabre thought, Mr Cranbrook retired again to his interrupted repose, if not to enjoy much slumber, at least to employ his time profitably in thinking out what plausible tale he would concoct for Miss Gateshead’s benefit in the morning.
4
THEY MET IN the coffee-room, still shuttered and unaired. Miss Gateshead was unbarring the shutters when John came into the room, and her comments on the lack of orderly management in the inn were pungent and to the point.
