Inspector of the Dead (24 page)

“For how long?” Ryan asked, keeping his badge in view.

The attendant searched his memory. “Almost six months.”

“After he came into his inheritance?” Ryan asked.

“Yes.”

“Did you know his uncle?”

“The uncle was a member before Sir Walter was. That’s how Sir Walter was accepted as a member—because of sympathy.”

“Do you recall how his uncle died?”

“I can’t forget how swift it was. The unfortunate man became sick to his stomach one day. The illness persisted. But he didn’t have a fever, and his physician couldn’t determine what was wrong. Finally Sir Walter’s uncle blamed it on the miasma of London. He went to his country estate, but the change of air didn’t treat him any better, and he died two weeks after becoming ill. Very sad, especially considering how pleasant and generous Sir Walter’s uncle was.”

“Unlike Sir Walter himself?” Ryan asked.

“I never speak untoward about our members, Inspector.”

“As it should be. Do you know if Sir Walter is on the premises?”

“A while ago I saw him go into the card room above us. No, wait. There. I see him on the staircase.”

C
lutching his walking stick,
Sir Walter backed away from the body on the floor.

Breathing quickly, he hurried out of the card room. From a balcony he peered down toward the marble floor of the lobby. At this late hour the only people he saw were a man in shapeless commoner’s clothes speaking to an attendant.

Sir Walter decided to summon help and claim that what had happened was an accident. He could make a good case for that. His blow hadn’t struck its target. The young man had reeled back as the knob on Sir Walter’s cane hissed past him.

But the young man had lost his balance. He struck his head on a table. Blood streamed from his head, staining the carpet.

He wasn’t moving.

Yes, get help,
Sir Walter thought. If the young man died, there wouldn’t be anyone to say that he hadn’t merely stumbled and fallen.

R
yan approached
the staircase.

Raising his badge so that Sir Walter couldn’t fail to see it, he told him, “I’m a Scotland Yard detective inspector. I need to speak to you.”

Abrupt movement at the top of the staircase made Ryan peer toward the second level. A man staggered from a doorway. He wavered on a balcony, gripping it for support. Blood streamed from the side of his head.

“Stop Sir Walter! He tried to kill me with his walking stick!”

Sir Walter’s mouth opened in surprise. At the bottom of the staircase he looked at Ryan approaching him.

He looked at the bleeding man on the balcony.

He ran.

T
he police wagon’s
lantern probed the fog as it proceeded down Water Lane. The sounds of the unseen Thames—waves lapping against hulls and docks—felt disturbingly close.

Becker gazed from the wagon and was dimly able to distinguish a sign that read
CONSOLIDATED ENGLISH RAILWAY COMPANY.

“Driver, stop.”

Becker stepped down onto cobblestones and opened the back hatch. He and the driver helped Colonel Trask get out, a difficult task because the colonel remained motionless, staring blankly.

“Stay close to us, Emily,” Becker cautioned as he pounded on the door.

A window showed a light growing in the darkness, someone approaching with a lamp. The person on the other side raised the light to peer out. In a rush the man unlocked the door.

“What happened to the colonel?”

“He isn’t able to tell us,” Becker answered.

“We didn’t know where else to bring him,” Emily added.

The man looked surprised that a strangely dressed but respectable-seeming woman was in the river area at such an hour. His surprise increased when Becker identified himself. “Detective Sergeant Becker. Is there a place where the colonel can rest?”

“He has a room behind his office.”

The man guided them past a murky reception area and up a staircase. The lamp revealed pockmarks on his face.

“Are you a night watchman?” Becker asked.

“A porter. The colonel lets me keep a room here. I helped him build railways. He’s always been fair to me. If he’d asked me to go with him tonight, this wouldn’t have happened.”

“Where did he go?”

“He was taking the train to Watford.”

So the horse
did
come from there,
Becker thought.

“Why was he going to Watford?” he asked, feeling the colonel’s weight as they carried him up the stairs.

“The colonel’s fiancée has a cousin there.”

The colonel’s
dead
fiancée,
Becker thought.

“Did Sir Walter Cumberland do this to him?” the porter asked.

Becker reacted to the name. “What makes you say that?”

“Sir Walter came here around noon and accused the colonel of buying Miss Grantwood from her parents. The colonel struck him several times and knocked him into the gutter.”

They reached the top of the stairs, where a corridor of shadows faced them on each side. The echo of their boots resounded in a vast darkness.

“This is the colonel’s office.”

The porter searched among keys on a ring and unlocked it. Inside he lit a gas lamp on the wall, then opened a farther door and led Becker and the constable into a private room that was simply furnished with a wardrobe, a table, two wooden chairs, and a narrow bed tucked into a corner.

Becker felt uncomfortable about invading the colonel’s privacy.

“It’s a pleasant room—one that I’d be happy with.” He helped the constable place the colonel on the bed. “But it’s not what I expected of a wealthy man. I imagined him living in a fine hotel or the luxury of a Mayfair mansion.”

“His father has a house in Mayfair, where the colonel often stays,” the porter explained. “Mr. Trask senior is confined to his bed. Nearly worked himself to death. But the colonel makes certain that his father is cared for.”

Through the open doors, Becker heard someone pounding on the entrance downstairs. “We’re expecting a physician named Dr. Snow.”

“Will he stop the colonel from being this way—not moving, not even blinking? If I didn’t see his chest rising, I’d swear he was dead.”

S
ir Walter charged
past a gentleman who came around a corner, the force of his passage knocking him against a wall.

“Watch where you’re going!” the man exclaimed.

But Sir Walter paid no attention. Hurrying along a corridor, he reached the club’s back door, thrust it open, and raced into an alley that tradesmen used for deliveries.

Still clutching his walking stick, he veered to the right. Without an overcoat, he immediately felt the night’s cold. In spite of the fog he saw his urgent breath bursting from him in frosty gusts.

Shouts pursued him.

“Sir Walter, stop! I told you I’m a Scotland Yard inspector! I need to speak to you!”

The alley ended at the Haymarket. Sir Walter darted to the left, hoping to rush into one of the many theaters along the street and mingle with the audience when it departed. But the quantity of brandy he’d consumed caused him to misjudge how late the hour was. All the theaters were dark.

He reached an oyster house, but it was dark also. Ladies of the night beckoned him toward the glaring gaslights of a tavern, but when they saw the desperation on his face, they quickly retreated.

Behind him, the bootsteps pounded closer.

As he sped to the right onto a side street, the effect of the brandy made it difficult to keep his balance on the frozen slush. For a moment he considered stopping, but he feared that the brandy would also make it difficult for him to explain why the man at the club had accused him of trying to murder him.

What other things might I not be able to explain?
he thought.

He rushed onto another street, the night’s chill seeping into him.

“Sir Walter, I order you to stop!” the pursuing voice shouted.

At the shuttered food shops on Coventry Street, a constable’s lantern startled him. He charged toward the opposite side, and now there were
two
shouting voices. The raucous noise of a police clacker filled the night. A second clacker answered.

He scurried into an alley and paused in the darkness, trying to catch his breath. Plodding forward, ready with his walking stick in case someone accosted him, he stumbled over something. When it groaned, he realized that it was a beggar on the verge of freezing to death. In horror, he again hurried forward.

More police clackers and shouting voices joined the pursuit.

I’ll die like that beggar if I don’t find a place that’s warm,
he thought.

At the next street, he was completely confused about his location. The number of police lanterns behind him increased, illuminating the fog.

“This way!” a voice yelled. “I hear him over here!”

A noise guided him: the stomping of hooves. He reached a wall on which a sign advertised
ALDRIDGE’S HORSE AND CARRIAGE REPOSITORY.
The commotion had wakened the animals.

Can I climb the wall?
he thought.
Can I hide among the hay bales?

He shoved his walking stick under his waistcoat and jumped upward, but his numb fingers lost their grip on the top. He fell hard onto the cobblestones, stood with effort, withdrew his walking stick, and lurched onward. The street narrowed. The lamps became farther apart.

Then nothing made sense. In every direction, there was only a jumble of decrepit lanes. Walls leaned, touching and supporting one another. Broken windows gaped. Doors hung askew. Boards dangled.

Amid a pile of debris, something made a scraping sound.

“Who’s ’ere?” a feeble voice asked. “A bobby?”

“Naw. Don’t have a uniform. This un’s dressed like a gentleman.”

“Don’t have an overcoat, neither,” a third voice said. “Maybe some’un took it afore
we
could. Kind sir, it’s terrible cold. Can you spare us some pennies?”

“And your frock coat and your waistcoat?” a fourth voice asked.

The scraping sounds came closer, shadows surrounding him.

My God,
Sir Walter thought in a panic,
I’m in the Seven Dials rookery.

“T
hank you for coming,”
Becker said as Dr. John Snow entered the dimly lit room behind Colonel Trask’s office.

“Well, I can’t complain about being wakened to treat a war hero.”

The man who had identified a Soho water pump as the source of a cholera epidemic the previous year, Dr. Snow was in his early forties, with a slender face, a high, balding forehead, and dark sideburns that emphasized his narrow jaw. He carried a leather satchel.

He paused in surprise when he noticed Colonel Trask sitting motionless on the bed, staring in anguish toward a wall.

“We don’t know how badly injured he is,” Emily said.

“Bring hot water and clean rags,” Dr. Snow told the porter. “Hurry.”

“I’ll help,” Emily said, rushing away.

“We need to undress him,” Dr. Snow told Becker, who knew how unusual it was for a physician to be willing to do this. Physicians rarely laid hands on their patients, leaving that crude job to surgeons, the lower members of the medical establishment.

They raised the colonel and removed his tattered overcoat.

“Look at the burn marks on it,” Dr. Snow commented. “Easy with the sling. Good. Now help me with the rest of his clothes.”

Although Trask’s eyes were open, he showed no indication of being aware that the two men moved his legs and arms to undress him.

Already uneasy about having entered the colonel’s private room, Becker felt more self-conscious as he helped Dr. Snow tug off the colonel’s shirt and trousers. Beneath was a woolen undergarment that reached from his neck to his ankles, covering his arms to his wrists.

“I don’t see any blood on his undergarment. No need to remove it,” Snow decided.

Emily and the porter returned, the porter carrying a basin of steaming water while Emily held a stack of rags.

“Emily, you shouldn’t be here,” Becker said. “The colonel isn’t in a decent state.”

“Nonsense. I see nothing that I didn’t see when I ministered to Sean as he recovered from his wounds. When I changed the dressing on Sean’s abdomen, I saw more than his drawers, I assure you. If I’m to pursue a career as a nurse, I expect to see even more without being shocked.”

It was Becker who exhibited shock.

“A career as a nurse?” he asked.

“Yes. Florence Nightingale’s service in the Crimea shows that women are fit for more than being shopgirls or governesses. If not for her, many of our wounded soldiers would have died from lack of care.”

“You never said anything about wanting to be a nurse,” Becker continued in surprise.

“One sad day, I shall no longer need to attend to Father. I must consider what to do then.”

Emily placed the stack of rags on the foot of the bed. She washed her hands in the basin of steaming water that the porter set on a table. Then she dipped a rag into the water and began cleaning the dried blood from the colonel’s face.

For the sake of modesty, Becker put a blanket over him.

Dr. Snow opened his satchel and removed a metal canister, from which a tube and a mask extended. He took out a bottle and poured a clear liquid into the canister. A faint sweet odor drifted from it.

“What’s
that?
” the porter asked.

“A chloroform inhaler.”

“Is it safe?” the porter asked with suspicion.

“The queen herself asked me to make chloroform available when she gave birth to her most recent child.”

The porter continued to look suspicious.

“Depending on the colonel’s injuries, sleep might be the best treatment that I can give him,” Dr. Snow said.

Emily finished cleaning the colonel’s face. She swept grit from his hair and studied him. “The only wound I can find is the gash on the side of his forehead.”

“It doesn’t appear to need stitches,” Dr. Snow decided.