You Buy Bones , livre ebook

Title Page
YOU BUY BONES
Sherlock Holmes and his London Through the Eyes of Scotland Yard
Marcia Wilson



Publisher Information
First edition published in 2015 by MX Publishing
335 Princess Park Manor, Royal Drive, London, N11 3GX
www.mxpublishing.com
Digital edition converted and distributed by
Andrews UK Limited 2015
www.andrewsuk.com
© Copyright 2015 Marcia Wilson
The right of Marcia Wilson to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1998.
All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without express prior written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted except with express prior written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright Act 1956 (as amended). Any person who commits any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damage.
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The opinions expressed herein are those of the authors and not of MX Publishing.
Cover layout and construction by www.staunch.com



Prelude
Somewhere on the Cornish Coast
The two men huddling around the lonely camp-fire against the gloom were similar in height and build if years apart in age. In a particular-ness of dress and demeanor they might have been father and son within the demands of their duties - if the father had lived much harder than the son. Tonight they were united in the garb of common labourers in threadbare greatcoats over slops, [1] grey-blue shirts over corduroy trousers tied at the ankles with packing twine, and coarse cowhide boots better fit for trapping the cold against the foot than keeping it warm. Fitting to their temporary identities, they were no credit to the nose.
“Is it supposed to have those green bits?”
The elder never looked up from stirring the coals about the cooking-trivet that had begun its life long ago as an iron waggon-wheel. “Those “green bits” are leaf celery and beetroot-tops.” He tapped the pot with his stick; sparks showered up. “You should remember, Hopkins,” he said pointedly with a flash of those too-dark eyes. ‘You helped pinch them this morning.”
Stanley Hopkins (also a Yarder but far from being as long in the tooth as his supper companion) didn’t want to remember. The theft was from a long-abandoned garden but it was still someone’s private land and policemen - even policemen out of twig [2] were really supposed to be above that sort of thing.
Still, all other considerations failed at the sight of what Lestrade had (with apparent optimism), termed supper . He couldn’t positively identify what their oven had once been, but it was never meant for culinary practicality. It was thin cast-iron; he saw that much. Lestrade had arranged the tinfoil-wrapped vegetables in the bed of coals and covered them with ash; after that, the mysterious round metal sheet, and on top, the small cooking-pot. There was something about it that made the young man think of the Great Western Railway. He hoped he was wrong... but he doubted it.
Night crept over Cornwall from behind. Despite the gloom lurking in the celestial backdrop, Hopkins found his attention increasingly drawn to the soft smears of colour tinting the delicate line between ocean and the sky. It was a compelling view and better than the jumbled lumps of dank stone remains across the lonely moor at their backs. They reminded him of alleyway thugs, drunkenly lurching their way to an even drunker victim. Hopkins didn’t like the old Neolithic huts at first chalk; with the fading of the day, the place was even worse. Nightmarish. Positively gruesome and disturbing and... threatening in ways the London rookeries weren’t.
He wasn’t superstitious; he didn’t believe in ghosts, but Hopkins could well believe the land had forgotten to tell the residents that the Ages had moved on without them. Images of wild savages in skins with murderous spears were leaking into the young man’s brain. Ghosts would be preferable.
“Hopkins, you’ve been jittery all day. You’ve been in disguise before; what is it?”
Hopkins breathed out, grateful that Lestrade only looked puzzled and concerned rather than impatient. “I suppose part of it’s because I haven’t been out in the open in a few years,” he began slowly. “But also, it’s quite an ugly case we’re on! When was the last time the Home Office had to pull in so many different Inspectors and Sergeants for a single job?”
“1891.” Lestrade answered promptly. “Twelve Inspectors, three sergeants, and I believe the total of PCs and Chief Constables came to... 39. I might be wrong about that one... did Bow Street use both of the Irish Twins, or just one?”
“Who’s to know?” Hopkins wondered, and for the first time that evening, the two men laughed. Humour in the face of a crawling wet mist wasn’t an easy thing to come by. “You’re thinking of the Docks Case,” Hopkins mused. “Lord, what a mess that was.” He sighed and touched his leg with a sudden mischievous expression. “My first true battle-scars.”
“Dear me. I couldn’t tell you how many I picked up on that one,” Lestrade grimaced. “I think I lost count after they stuffed me into that barrel. Some of the details are a blur.”
Hopkins shuddered. “I don’t mind telling you, I never regret the conclusion of a case, but there are times when we’re working on one that I fear we aren’t doing any good.”
“Get used to that.” Lestrade gave the pot a tap. More sparks took wing. “Right. Just a bit longer and we’ll have supper... the Great Way Round.” (This sadly confirmed Hopkins’ reluctant identification as to the scrap metal cookery). [3]
“I suppose what really makes it hard for me is the knowing there’re so many deaths on this case already.” Hopkins sighed and stuffed his hands into the deep pockets of his rag-shop slops. The man he was impersonating had been of the unwashed sort and Lestrade had said bluntly there was no need to don his exact clothing unless they were likely to be smelt from the ocean - not when he had to work with him, thank you. “Fourteen poor tinners [4] murdered... all for being in the wrong place in the wrong time. Who would bother killing miners , I ask you? Their lifespan is chancy enough!”
“You’re asking the wrong person. Relics and professional degrees mean this -!” Lestrade snapped his fingers; it made a cracking sound across the plain, “-against a man’s life. I don’t care how many years are spent in their education, how many strings they had to pull, favours to cull, patrons to worry. Bone-hunters are a queer lot. They’re not murdering each other for survival ; they’re murdering for their reputation .” Lestrade finished by tapping his forehead to indicate insanity. “When it comes to the landed folk, I swear to you, the lot’s barmy as the Queensbury’s Third Marquis.”
Hopkins shuddered. The cannibal Marquis was not a nice image for one who was all but alone, in unfamiliar territory, with equally unfamiliar nourishment... in front of a cook-fire no less. “Reputation... It’s a small thing in the whole scheme.” He said thoughtfully. “Too small to be worth triggering a mine’s collapse so you don’t have to pay some hungry miners a few bob for helping you smuggle out Stone Age treasures!” A part of him was still sour because this was all doomed to wrack and ruin, and they had only been called in because the local police might be lynched if they dared bring the local perpetrators to justice.
“It is a small thing.” the older Yarder agreed as he threw in a lump of soft-coal he’d harvested at the shoreline. Sparks fountained into the night. Wisps of oily smoke curled up around the edges and Lestrade wiped his hand fastidiously on the damp grass. Bituminous was like that; it put a layer of grime on you before and after it was burnt. “You’d be surprised how many people have been murdered here, Hopkins. Not just for silly potsherds and stone bits and pretty stones. I would say this has been going on since before the Romans.”
“How can you be so sure?” Hopkins wondered, more curious than challenging. That was his great strength although he wasn’t aware of it. His burning need to know touched the hardened oldsters at the Yard - even the Bow Street crowd, who remembered something of their young selves in the newcomer. “There’s not that many records after the Romans left, and most of those are mouldering church records.”
Lestrade merely shrugged. “First of all,” he began, drawing orange letters in the air with the glowing end of his stick: ONE. “This is Cornwall . People have been mining it since they found out about bronze. Tin was valued, so naturally no one was just going to up and tell the powerful trading partners across the seas where they were and how they were doing. If your teachers were anything as brutal as mine, they would have mentioned something about the role of tin in the Roman Invasion.” He shrugged. “The Greeks believed in a mythical Cassiterides - Tin Islands - west of Europe, so this place is as good as any to be a point of mythological misdirection.”
Hopkins made a musing sound and picked up his tiny teapot. “I remember my teachers saying the Tin Islands had to exist somewhere in the ocean, or they wouldn’t be called islands .”
“Academics.” Lestrade scoffed. “No comparison to honest work. Islands also mean lumps of earth that rise up... I learnt that from a real teacher, name of Mortimer. [5] A tin seam is an island, Hopkins. Mines are just the means to extract the stuff hiding in the ground. And as long as there’s something worth having, the neighbour sees it as something worth getting.” He took his own cup