Free Dark Entry by M. J. Trow

sheep across the river.
    ‘Who found her?’ Winterton asked.
    ‘I did, sir. Nicholas Drew, ferryman.’
    The coroner took in the man. No need to invoke the Sumptuary Laws here. He was dressed as a ferryman should be. ‘What were you doing here?’
    ‘Fishing, sir.’
    ‘Well, Master Drew.’ Winterton knelt with as much dignity as his age and his Venetian breeches would let him. ‘Today you have become a fisher of men. Or should I say woman?’ He peered at the sad bundle on the bank. What was she? Forty? Fifty? It was difficult to say. The water had done its work and she had been in the water for some time. He checked the hands. The skin was wrinkled, loose, as it was on the scalp where the once-auburn hair was partially detached and wrapped in her dress.
    ‘Any of you women –’ Winterton glanced up at the little crowd – ‘used to laying out?’
    They hesitated. ‘I am, sir,’ one of them said, and a thin, angular woman bobbed to him.
    ‘Mrs Drew, sir,’ the First Finder said. ‘My wife.’
    ‘Good.’ Winterton got up. ‘We can keep this in the family, then. Both of you will accompany me to the Dead House. Knowles –’ he clicked his fingers to a servant – ‘rig something up, will you? We haven’t time to send for a cart and I don’t want . . . that . . . inside my carriage.’
    Mrs Drew had done her work by candlelight in the Charnel House by the Grey Friars. She had peeled the sodden dress and chemise off the corpse, floppy and slippery as it was. She had washed the body carefully and dried it, combing what hair was left and she had placed the dead woman’s arms across her breasts, for modesty’s sake. Then she spread a folded shroud across her hips. Men should not look on such things.
    Edward Winterton waited until the layer-out left the room and he went to work. He was a husband, father and grandfather, too, and he had the same sensibilities as the next man. But he had a job to do. He looked at each hand. Despite the wrinkled skin, he noticed the mark left by a wedding ring, but the ring itself had gone. Was this the mark of a robbery? He peeled back the cloth and looked at the abdomen. Had she ever borne a child, this child of the river? He didn’t know. He prised open her eyelids. The eyes were sunk, the sockets almost empty and he couldn’t tell the colour the irises had once had. The breasts were small and well-formed, but the skin was blackened now with exposure to the air. He checked her feet. The soles were thick and pale. She had been in the water, he’d wager, for four days, perhaps five. She had been found at Paradise, but where had she gone in? And who was she when she walked upright, talking and laughing, dancing and loving? Perhaps only God knew now.
    Time and again he was drawn to the dead woman’s throat. The lips were tight and pursed and around her neck, embedded deep into the purple skin, was a crucifix. Whatever else she had been, the woman was a Papist.
    That was the year when the carpenter, Joseph Fludd, was Constable of the Watch. In fact, it was rather more than a year because nobody else wanted the job. His cottage, with its adjoining workshop, lay off the road which ran from the south into Cambridge, a little below the ancient church of St Michael and St Mary, Trumpington.
    And it was here, wading through fragrant wood-shavings and decidedly un-fragrant chicken droppings, that Jeremiah Butler and his wife came that Monday morning, a little after nine of the clock. They knocked on the little door below the thatch.
    ‘Are you the one they call Trumpy Joe?’ Butler asked as the door opened.
    ‘I am Joseph Fludd, carpenter and Constable,’ the cottager said, standing as tall as the doorway would let him. Each man eyed the other, assessing status. Butler was clearly a yeoman, well dressed but unarmed and his wife wore a French hood of intricate design over her coif. Fludd was still in his leather apron, splinters in his fingers and polish under his