The Sweet Smell of Decay

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Book: The Sweet Smell of Decay Read Online Free PDF
Author: Paul Lawrence
pursuing in public, however, unless you are inclined to lose your liberty, selected pieces of your body or even your life. So we went to find the woman, whose name was Mary Bedford, on Fleet Street, to save her the role of rector’s scapegoat. This was a gallant deed that made me feel unusually worthy.
    We walked the streets towards the west, for the City had choked up already, such that walking was the quickest mode of transport available. Dowling strode down the middle of the road by himself, oblivious to the evil broth that splashed about his legs, body and ears, while I trod the higher ground with those that knew the difference between man and dog. So it was that he crossed the bridge at Fleet Ditch before me, the filthy stream that served the slums of Alsatia and Bridewell.
    Tiny, dark, airless alleys branched off Fleet Street like dead twigs, every one of them a choking rotten tributary of streaming slops that crept slowly down to the river. Most of the ramshackle buildings were built of wooden planks nailed to posts, covered with pitch and roofed with rough tiles. The only warmth in those hovels was generated from the bodies of those that lived there, nested together many to a room, like rats in a nest. The stink was the foulest stink in the whole of England, a poisonous cloud fed by the soap makers, dyehouses, slaughterhouses and tanneries. The curing pits of the tanneries nestled alongside the outside of the city walls and were full of dog shit, a key ingredient in the tanning process.
    The house that Mary Bedford lived in was tiny and unsteady, tucked in at the top of one of the foul alleyways just behind the much grander half-timbered houses of Fleet Street. It was closed up and the door was shut.
    Dowling looked at me and shrugged, his mind back at his shop I reckoned, but given the rector’s ramblings about witchery we were committed to make greater efforts to find her, fearful of what might become of her were others to discover her whereabouts first.
    The first house we tried was a large family house on Fleet Street. We didn’t hold out much hope of getting sense from the master of the house, for what man of standing would admit to noticing a poor wretch of a woman that sold meats on the street? But we hoped to find out something from the servants. The one that opened the door stared at us uncomprehending and unspeaking, even after we had explained our objective three times, ever slower and clearer. Finally he shook his head in bewilderment and wandered off into the house to find someone else. An imbecile. London was full of them – they came in from the villages, like Dowling. A short time later he returned, accompanied by a middle-aged woman wearing a coarse brown dress and white apron, with a white hood tied around her head. Her face was ruddy and rough, her expression impatient and puzzled. Another imbecile. She listened to Dowling’s questions, mouth agape and hands on her hips. Then she closed the doors in our faces. Washing day, as Dowling pointed out brightly.
    We moved on to the next house and another street full after that.
    ‘Good morning to you.’ A grizzled face looked out through a ground floor window, a man maybe forty years old with a thick welt on his nose and one eye missing. Dowling recited his introduction for perhaps the twentieth time while I stood with my hands in my pockets. It was past lunchtime and my stomach wailed pitifully. The man leant on the sill with his arms crossed, chewing the inside of his cheek, apparently in the mood for a conversation.
    ‘Aye, I know Mary Bedford, Old Mary. Known her since she was a child.’
    ‘Have you seen her today?’ I demanded, astounded.
    ‘Not today. But she’ll be around.’
    ‘Around where?’
    ‘Somewhere.’
    ‘You know why she doesn’t go to church any more?’ Dowling probed.
    The man nodded. ‘Same reason I don’t go no more. She asked to be put on the pensions list after she couldn’t stand her giddiness no more, but the
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