Lord Under London And Otther Cases of Nat Frayne: a Nat Frayne mystery, #8

By Richard Quarry

Lord Under London

When a methane explosion in the London sewers spews up a much-mangled body, Victorian-era Detective Inspector Nat Frayne finds an ancient Hunter watch pointing to the mysterious disappearance of an aristocrat from an age before the tunnels even existed. As he investigates further a string of fresh corpses start to turn up. Forced to descend back into the depths, Frayne must confront a modern terror born of a century-old crime.

And Make Not Dreams Your Master

Did a missionary found dead in Presbyterian House with an opium pipe in his hand really die of an overdose? So say the police.

Ashleigh Booker-Hyde and his impetutous sister Melisande don't agree. So they call in former Detective Inspector Nat Frayne, now a private inquiry agent since his suspension from the Met, to nose around. Frayne's typically two-fisted methods soon land all three in a violent struggle against an opium smuggling ring ready to enforce its ambitions with a bevy of Chinese assassins.

Perfidious Albion

Dismissed from the London police, Nat Frayne finds himself unexpectedly recruited by the Foreign Office as bodyguard for an aging diplomat. The man's final mission: to deliver a vital letter to the head of the Egyptian government.

But an apparently simple enterprise soon grows dodgy as Frayne discovers the involvement of an old and bitter enemy. Soon cloak and dagger vie in a bloody and intricate dance amid the exotic sun-baked streets of Alexandria.

Set amid the steambath politics of the late-19th century middle East, Perfidious Albion will force Nat Frayne to put his life on the line as he confronts a past he has struggled to forget.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Richard Quarry
• Release date: Mar 30, 2024
• ISBN: 9798224424085

Book preview

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Further Cases of Nat Frayne

Richard Quarry

Copyright © 2024 by Richard Quarry

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Contents

Lord Under London

And Make Not Dreams Your Master

Perfidious Albion

About the Author

What Rough Beast

Lord Under London

Nathaniel Frayne could not prevent his lips from curling inward against the stench. But exercising the restraint his years in the Metropolitan Police had taught him, he managed not to be too obvious about wrinkling his nose. The sewer scrubbers who’d brought the skeleton out from the Fleet Ditch still wore their rubber hip waders and baggy black oilskins, and the odor they carried up with them was foul in a peculiarly penetrating, almost personal way, even for a life-long Londoner.

If Frayne showed any sign that the stink might be too much for him, the scrubbers would gloat. There wasn’t much love lost between workmen and the Peelers. So Frayne hid his distaste with a shiver and pulled his overcoat tighter around as if his only discomfort was the wind whipping in gusts up from Blackfriar’s Bridge.

Fortunately, though he’d been called out to view the skeleton fished out of the Fleet this morning, this wasn’t any case he’d likely get assigned to. Because whether he was looking at murder or misfortune, it had happened a long time ago.

You could see that much just from the scraps of clothing still entwined about the bones. Ragged as they were, and well coated with slime, they clearly came from a different time altogether. Last century, at least. He’d only ever seen clothes like that in illustrations. Like George III maybe, with less gold and embroidery.

Next to Frayne young Booker-Hyde, for all his toffee-nose heritage, exhibited less concern for maintaining his dignity in front of the working class. He was more engaged in not showing everyone what he’d had for breakfast that morning. He clapped a handkerchief over his long aristocratic face, even paler than usual, and from the way his eyes fluttered Frayne feared he might fall over.

As well he might. Skeletons in general were hardly appetizing, but this one was downright repulsive. Bare bones might have gotten rinsed off some when dragged through the foot or so of water above the sewer slime. But this chap had died in his clothes, and the tattered remnants had snagged a most noisome coat of brown slime during their journey through the Fleet. The nasal assault was further augmented by the fire-belching stacks of the London Gas Works a little ways upriver, which added an appallingly sulphurous sweetness to this riot of decay.

Explosion got reported last night, the foreman told Frayne. Rattled the windows in the Royal Hotel some, but didn’t break nothin’. Methane, most likely. Don’t happen much as it used ter, but it ain’t unknown. Wasn’t enough crew on hand to do nothin’ about it. So we went in for a butcher’s first thing. And found ‘im.

He nodded his chin toward skeleton lying on planks thrown across a couple of sawhorses. A coat with the one surviving collar looking long enough to reach the ear, though limp and disheveled now, had gotten twisted around the bones. The front ended just past the breastbone, and though the back was pretty badly chewed up, in life it might have reached to the back of the knee. The color was hard to judge. Either brown, or it had been in the sewer long enough to take on such a shade. Yet with a touch of gold still remaining, if little more than a suggestion.

Below the coat the bones sported a thick waistcoat in what appeared to be a wave pattern, though hanging in shreds. The black pants were scarce more substantial than strands of seaweed waving in the Thames, but a leather strap was still buckled about the left knee. Below the buckle protruded a short length of what might have once been white hose.

What do you think, Ashleigh?

Frayne knew it discomfited Ashleigh Booker-Hyde to be addressed by his first name by a social inferior. That’s why Frayne did it. To his credit, Booker-Hyde did his best to espouse egalitarian ideals, but once a toff, always a toff.

Booker-Hyde lowered the handkerchief from his face. The scrubbers tried to hide their grins at his scrunched features. Before Beau Brummel, certainly, or there’d be more black. The coat material doesn’t look to be as thick as you’d expect back around the time of Fielding and Johnson. I’d guess between 1770 and 1800. Quality. The clothes, I mean, he added hurriedly, to avoid giving offence.

Thank you, Ashleigh. Most enlightening.

Frayne told the two constables to carry some buckets of water from one of the iron pump stands used to fill the water sweeps on the adjoining Farringdon Road. Then had them slosh the rags and bones as clean as possible. Meanwhile he had the foreman, Roughleby by name, fetch him a pair of gloves.

Delicately as he could, more for his own sensibilities than respect for the dead, he patted the corpse down, squeezing the loose fabric. He did not want to leave this for the morgue because objects of any value had an odd habit of disappearing en route.

He found three guineas of an older type in a tiny pocket he didn’t know was there till he felt them. Then from what remained of the waistcoat he extracted a gold watch with elaborate floral engraving on both sides.

Quality, all right. Pocket watches were relatively cheap these days, but Frayne, who’d gained a bit of knowledge scouring pawn shops for stolen items, knew that back then they were prized possessions, admired more for their appearance than their rather dubious ability to keep time.

Rinsing the watch off in another bucket of water, Frayne laid it on the planks next to the skeleton.

If you don’t mind? he asked Booker-Hyde. More your patch than mine, I’d think.

Ashleigh hesitated, then assuming that stiff upper lip acquired on the playing fields of Eton, gamely took up the watch.

Hunter case, he announced. Meant to be closed with one hand. Popular with horsemen. This chap may have ridden to hounds. Or around St. James, at least.

Another spasm of hesitation, then he fiddled with the clasp. Much to Frayne’s surprise, the watch opened with a gritty sound.

Booker-Hyde peered at some writing engraved in a floral script on the inside of the cover. Then peered more closely.

My lord! he exclaimed.

Is it a lord? asked Frayne.

It … he …. Booker-Hyde gave a quick shudder of his head, took a deep breath, and tried again. Yes. Yes, he is. Chauncey Swain. Fifth lord of Brant.

Means nothing to me, said Frayne. Family friend?

Chauncey Swain was believed to have been murdered here in London. It was a famous scandal of the time. Suspicion held he was killed by his younger brother Randolph, who wished to inherit the estate. And did. That would have been, oh, around 1790, I’d say.

So he’s been swimming around underground for eighty years? Well, that’s business for the Bow Street Runners, not the Metropolitan Police.

I doubt it will prove so simple, Frayne. Litigation over the estate went on for years. It’s my impression that the only reason Randolph went free was because no body was never found. Now here it is.

Well, if anyone still feels that strongly about it, I suppose they can dig up Randolph Swain and hang him. They can even rebuild the gallows at Tyburn, to get the proper effect.

And that was where Frayne left it.

Until mid-afternoon, when he was called into the Assistant Commissioner’s office at Scotland Yard.

The A.C.’s secretary was Ashleigh Booker-Hyde. Whose father, naturally, was an old friend of the Commissioner. As part of grooming Booker-Hyde for a position in administration, the A.C. had taken to having him tag along with Detective Inspector Nathaniel Frayne, a man said to get results.

Of course Ashleigh had informed the Brigadier of the scandal about to be unleashed.

I’m afraid, Frayne, said the A.C., "that the newspapers are going to have a field day with this. You can imagine. The Times will take one side, the Pall Mall Gazette the other, just to whip up a frenzy and sell more papers. And Ashleigh is entirely correct that a storm of litigation is bound to start up between the two branches of the family. Both sides will be calling on us to identify the body one way or the other. And whoever’s not satisfied will hire a host of ‘experts’ to prove we’re buffoons. On that at least the papers will all agree. There may even be more calls to shut down the Detective Branch altogether and return everyone to uniform. You remember the outcry over Jack Whicher back in ‘60. And when five years later he was proved right after all, did a single voice in the press apologize? Not that I remember, certainly. Well, it’s not going to happen on my watch, Frayne. Not on my watch."

Yes sir, said Frayne, standing stiffly at ease. The A.C., like everyone else in the administration of the Met, had never actually been a serving policeman; instead he was an old India hand, and loved military discipline. And what exactly would you have me do?

Look into it, Frayne, look into it. After all, you’re the one the press calls ‘the Mastiff of Scotland Yard,’ aren’t you?

Among other things, sir.

Never quite trust a man who enjoys the favor of the press, meself. More than a hint of pandering in it, don’t you think? Still, I suppose it can be used to advantage every now and then. Just make damn sure that whichever way we call it, we get it right. Understand, Inspector?

Quite, Commissioner.

And Ashleigh, I’m seconding you to Frayne for the duration. These are more your class of people, on both sides. Don’t let Frayne get too high-handed with his betters.

Yes, Sir.

Frayne and Booker-Hyde did their best to keep open resentment out of the looks they gave each other. During the last case they’d worked together, the young gentleman had come to regard Frayne as high-handed about everything. Most especially his betters.

I couldn’t very well not tell him, said Booker-Hyde as they left the A.C.’s office together.

Remember you said that.

What is that supposed to mean?

It’s hard enough solving murders by people who are still alive to leave clues. Now you’ve landed us in an eighty-year old case with all those involved long since enrolled in the silent majority. Where are we to go for evidence?

Booker-Hyde furrowed his brow. Only five years out of Cambridge and a resolute idealist, his first reflex was to cast all questions in terms of right or wrong. He hadn’t yet been knocked about by the world enough to acquire a more pragmatic streak. A deficiency Frayne meant to address. Thoroughly, and soon.

I don’t know, Booker-Hyde confessed. Where does one go for evidence in a case such as this?

You are about to find out. And I hope it proves salubrious.

Booker-Hyde tried to puzzle that one out. Do you mean educational?

Do I? Frayne occasionally got over-ambitious with his vocabulary. Well that too, then.

Each man carried a lantern. To be alone down here in the Fleet Ditch without light spelled death. The gas jets were encased in thick glass within an iron frame. Not only to avoid breaking the lantern in a fall, always a possibility given the slippery footing, but to ensure the open flame would not be exposed. For that could ignite a fatal explosion if methane gas had built up in that section of the sewer.

Which had been the initial presumption about last night’s blast. Now the foreman, Roughleby, wasn’t so sure.

Don’t look like no gas explosion I’ve ever seen.

He swung the torch downstream, in the direction of the Thames, then up. Every time the lamp swung around, Booker-Hyde’s head spun with it. The green-stained brick of the tunnel was too close, the darkness in either direction too absolute, the atmosphere too fetid.

The beam of the foreman’s torch illuminated the fungi hanging from the arched tunnel roof. They glowed with a green luminescence fading in shimmers like a will-‘o-the-wisp in the distance.

See there, said Roughleby. The only burnt-off patch is right above us.

The light swung straight up. Booker-Hyde swayed as he tried to keep his balance against the sudden movement. He stood in a foot and a half of water, or something like, flowing above the tunnel’s floor of slime, soft and shifting underfoot. The stench didn’t just bring nausea to his stomach; it seemed to swell his whole head. He desperately didn’t want to fall here.

Overhead the bricks had been blackened in a fan-shaped pattern for maybe ten feet to a side. The drooping fungi had been blown clear, but some colorless algae still clung in partially dislodged mats, hanging like bats from the ceiling.

See, said the foreman. The damage all comes from there, to starboard. Opposite wall’s just scorched a bit. A good pop of methane will clear the mushrooms for yards around. Leastways from what I’ve seen. And look here.

He shone the lantern on what he called the starboard side of the wall. The brick tube was roughly fifteen feet in diameter in this section. Sediment had built high enough that foot-wide banks of mud ran along the sides. As the party, all clad in waist-high waders and long black oilskins, trudged to the site, rats squealed and scurried ahead of them along these banks.

Don’t mind them, Roughleby had told them. They’re harmless enough. ‘Less you fall and injure yourself, of course. I’ve seen skeletons picked clean as a whistle, and so I have, too. Not that I can swear they wasn’t already dead when the rats got to ‘em, mind. Ain’t so rare to get bodies turnin’ up from time to time.

Now the foreman shone his lamp upon a section of the wall where the surface of the brick had been blown loose in a spreading pattern three to four feet wide. Four or five inches in, the brick, though cracked, held. The mud below the area had been blown clean away, splattering the walls on the opposite side.

Wasn’t methane did that. No way it could hit one spot so hard, and leave the rest.

Dynamite, do you think? asked Frayne. On the surface he didn’t look affected by the stench, but Booker-Hyde heard a slight tightness in his voice.

Might be, said Roughleby. I ain’t the one to judge.

And this is where you found the skeleton?

‘Bout ten foot down, guv. Up on the bank, there.

Frayne waded the distance, slowly, peering around with his lantern and sifting cautiously through the silt underfoot with his boots.

Well, he said, I’m certainly not going to sift through this with rakes, and I’m not going to ask your boys to do it either.

Booker-Hyde cleared his throat. If there are more clues to be found—

I’ll address that later, thank you.

He went to the spot where Roughleby indicated the bones had been found. He spent a long time considering the mud with his lantern. It wasn’t Booker-Hyde’s place to urge a Detective-Inspector to speed up his investigation, but he really didn’t know how much longer he could bear it down here. The roof was squeezing down closer and closer by the minute, trying to force him down into the noisome brown liquid. How did the sewer scrubbers, who patrolled the tunnels for blockages, survive?

At last Frayne straightened. The Ditch walls, he said to Roughleby, ruptured back in ’62. Flooded the whole area. There was a mausoleum off Farringdon Road, just across the way. Bodies, or what was left of ‘em, were swept along for miles. Far as King’s Cross and Paddington. I was just a constable then, and I remember gathering in bones far and wide.

Roughleby was nodding vigorously. No need to remind me, guv’nor. Not something I’m likely to forget. Much as I might like to.

And do you still sometimes find human remains from that time?

Happens. Not as much as a few years back. Tunnels flood time to time, come the hard rains. Washes up bodies been buried in the muck.

When was the last one?

Middle of last month. Remember it kept pourin’ cats and dogs? Water in this section of the Ditch rose a good five feet.

So let us, ah, hypothesize, said Frayne — he was vain about his hard-earned vocabulary, but the fact that he had not been born to it emerged from time to time when he hesitated over the big words — that a flood carried down these bones from wherever and whenever. They got buried in the silt so’s no one noticed. Could the force of the explosion have stirred things up so they ended up on the bank here?

Roughleby showed an expression of distaste. Which considering where they stood, said something about the man’s constitution.

I’m not sayin’ it couldn’t.

Thank you, said Frayne. You’ve been most educational. Now hark to me. Very shortly you’re going to find yourself mobbed by the jackals of the press. I have a pretty good idea what your thoughts on the matter are, and I’m asking you to keep them to yourself.

You tellin’ me to lie? the foreman said pugnaciously.

I’m asking — asking, mind — that for now you don’t say more than that the police have asked you not to comment because of an ongoing investigation. Refer them to Detective Inspector Frayne, if they keep on. These people will shout a bunch of questions at you, and demand you answer yes or no. Even while others are shouting different questions. Pay them all the attention they deserve, which doesn’t amount to a tinker’s damn. Some may offer you a pound or two to say what they want to hear. But I’m telling you, Mr. Roughleby, this one’s going to court. And you’ll be there too. No way around it, I’m afraid. When you’re testifying under oath, you say whatever your conscience tells you to. Till then, don’t pour oil on the flames. Do we have an understanding?

The foreman thought about it, then nodded.

As you say.

As soon as they were aboveground and out of their oilskins, Frayne and Booker-Hyde charged into the nearest pub.

Booker-Hyde did not normally drink. Drunk as a Lord was no idle expression, and he’d witnessed too much of it at Cambridge and on country estates. It disturbed him on a visceral level. How could you claim an inborn superiority to all those born of a less elevated class, then spend your whole life acting like a jackass?

Now, though, he gulped down a pint with scarce time to breathe, then sat nursing a second as he gratefully breathed the cozy aroma of stale pipe smoke, long-spilled beer, and a coal fire from a flue that badly needed cleaning last year.

So why, he asked Frayne, when he’d washed away enough of the Fleet Ditch stink to speak without dreading fumes from underground floating back up through his nostrils, do you refuse to sift the, ah, silt? Don’t you think there might possibly be other artifacts that might help prove the identity of the corpse?

I’ll prove the identity of the corpse all in good time, said Frayne. "One thing I can