The body of an infant has been discovered in a privy at the end of Coneystreet nearest St. Martin’s Church. Please come as quickly as you can.
I sighed heavily. Enquiring into the death of an infant was an awful business. I called Martha and told her we were going back out.
Chapter 13
“There are few things more horrible than investigating the murder of an infant,” I said as we neared Coneystreet. “And sometimes finding the culprit only makes matters worse.” I didn’t have to tell her that most infanticides were committed by servants, pregnant by their masters and desperate for escape. Sometimes the infant’s body was carefully wrapped and left at a church door in the hope that he would receive a Christian burial. Other times the body was thrown away like so much trash. I could not decide which case was more heartrending. We turned onto Coneystreet and immediately saw where the child’s body had been found. A crowd gathered around the entrance to a courtyard, and I could see a footman holding Edward’s horse. As we approached, Edward emerged from an alley and waved us over.
“One of the neighborhood children heard crying from inside the privy,” he said. “By the time they got the baby out, he was nearly dead. He was a boy.”
“Someone threw the child in the privy while it was alive?” Martha asked in horror. Edward glanced at her and nodded.
“I need to see the body,” I said.
Edward led us through the crowd and into a courtyard. A distraught woman stood by herself, holding a small bundle that could only be the child’s body. I motioned for Martha to wait. I went to the woman and held out my arms. Sobbing, she handed me the child. The boy’s eyes were closed as if he were sleeping, but his skin had a waxy texture that bespoke death. Taking the child’s body into my arms made me think of my Michael, but I pushed that memory away. I could grieve for him later, but right now this child needed me. The swaddling clothes were clean, and one of the neighborhood women had washed him after he had been retrieved from the privy. I gently unwrapped him and examined his body. Whoever had cut the cord did a poor job of it, hacking rather than slicing, and it was clumsily tied. I looked at his fingernails and found them long—he was born on time. I wrapped him and handed him back to the woman.
“Did you retrieve the body?” I murmured. She nodded, tears coursing down her face. “How was he wrapped when you found him?”
“He’d been swaddled in fine linen.” She pointed to a soiled cloth lying next to the privy. As she spoke, she realized the significance of this. No mother would wrap her child in expensive cloth and then cast him away. “This was someone’s bairn,” she whispered in horror. “Someone took him from his poor mother and killed him.”
“You might be right,” I said, “but you should keep such thoughts to yourself. If we are going to find whoever did this, we must keep our knowledge secret.” I went in search of Edward to tell him what I’d found.
“He was newly born, and not delivered by a midwife. His color was such that he had taken a breath.” Edward nodded—we knew all this. “I don’t think he was killed by his mother; more likely it was his father.” At this, Edward looked at me sharply. Infanticides rarely involved fathers, and it raised the prospect of a scandal touching on a citizen. “The child had been well tended until he was murdered. He was wrapped in expensive linen, and I believe he had fed at his mother’s breast.”
“No doubt it was a servant got with child by some apprentice or another,” Edward said. He was eager to turn my attention to one of the city’s meaner sort. After the murder of Stephen Cooper, he would be loath to see another respectable man pulled down.
“Few servants or apprentices could afford the linen that the child was swaddled in. This child came from a wealthy home.”
“The linen proves nothing. A woman who would murder her own child would not hesitate to steal from her master.”
“In recent days you’ve shown yourself ready to credit flimsier evidence than this,” I noted testily. “A poor woman would not steal expensive linen so that she could then throw it away with her child. If the child was born to a maidservant, the father was a wealthy man, and he was the one who killed the child.”
Edward pursed his lips in annoyance. “Whatever the case, it will be easiest to find the mother. I’ll send word to all the midwives in the city,” he said. “They will enquire if any servants or other singlewomen have been pregnant or given birth of late.” Martha and I exchanged a glance, each of us thinking of Anne Goodwin. The look was not lost on Edward.