Inspector of the Dead (9 page)

“No one of breeding could possibly have committed so grotesque a crime,” Lord Palmerston declared. “We don’t have time for your musings. Young England. Edward Oxford. When the commissioner told me about the note at the church, I immediately petitioned Her Majesty for an audience. Ryan, since you investigated Oxford’s attempt against her life, you’re coming with us.”

“If I may suggest,” Ryan said, “Sergeant Becker ought to accompany us. It’s the quickest way for him to learn the background.”

“All right, Becker, come along. Hurry. We can’t keep Her Majesty waiting,” Commissioner Mayne urged.

“And…” Ryan hesitated.

“What
is
it? We don’t have time.”

“Mr. De Quincey should come also.”

“You’re not serious.”

“My conversation with him convinces me that he knows as much as I do—and possibly more—about Edward Oxford’s attempt against the queen.”

“The Opium-Eater meeting the queen?” Lord Palmerston asked. “Have you been drinking his laudanum?”

“Her Majesty would want us to use every means, no matter how unusual, to protect her, don’t you agree, My Lord?”

Lord Palmerston groaned.

T
he revenger could
be very specific about the day, date, and time when he realized how he could vent his long-suppressed rage. Thursday. The first of May, 1851. Three minutes past eleven in the morning.

That was the first day of the first world’s fair, the Great Exhibition, although everyone called it by the name of the magnificent building in which it was housed: the Crystal Palace. On paper, the “palace” was only a gigantic greenhouse. Many people of influence had laughed when Prince Albert endorsed the idea.

But who could have imagined the glorious result, one of the most remarkable structures anyone had ever seen? As vast as it was resplendent, the Crystal Palace consisted of nearly one million square feet of glass. One million! It occupied a massive fifty-eight acres of Hyde Park and stretched twelve stories high, so tall that the full-grown elm trees left in place as interior landscaping couldn’t reach the ceiling. Immense fountains received water pressure from gigantic towers outside. Music from two huge organs as well as two hundred other instruments and six hundred voices could barely be heard within it.

The revenger could vouch for the latter because he had stood among the powerful guests that day. Despite the more than eight hundred performers, the music had seemed to vaporize. When the royal procession entered, the immense structure fell into respectful silence. Even the fountains were made to go quiet as ten thousand people watched what they regarded as deities walking past them.

Queen Victoria: short, weak-chinned, tending toward plumpness.

Prince Albert: tall, soft-featured despite his mustache, his thin shoulders stooped.

The queen wore jewels of unimagined value and an ornate bonnet that resembled a tiara.

Although the prince had never been in combat, he wore an army uniform with numerous medals.

The revenger hated both of them with a force that he thought might break the bones in the fists that he clenched at his sides. He scanned the towering galleries, floor after floor of exhibits from countries all around the world. Prince Albert had been the impetus behind all of this, and the revenger had hoped with the passion of his hatred that the enterprise would fail. When he read mocking items in the newspapers, he had inwardly cheered.

The crowned heads of Europe had refused to accept the prince’s invitation for fear of mixing with commoners and possible assassins. Those crowned heads had reason to be fearful. Only a few years earlier, in 1848, some 150,000 protestors had marched on London, demanding yearly elections and voting privileges for every man, not only those with property. The army had managed to disperse them. But who knew when another mob would threaten London?

Despite these worries, the Crystal Palace had been a colossal triumph. The admiration of the ten thousand privileged first-day guests had made the revenger direct his hatred toward them as well. Despite the pretense that the Great Exhibition celebrated the brotherhood of nations, he had no doubt that Albert’s purpose was to emphasize the power of Great Britain. How the revenger seethed when people spoke glowingly about the Victorian age, a term that Albert had championed. The revenger fantasized about using the cover of night to sneak gunpowder into the Crystal Palace and blow it apart. But what point was there in destroying a building? It was people that he wanted to destroy: Victoria, Albert, and many others.

The queen, the prince, and two of their many children had joined the prime minister and other dignitaries on a red dais with a lush blue canopy above them. Barely controlling the expression on his face so that his hate didn’t show through the mask of his apparent admiration, the revenger had listened with contempt to the uninspired speech that Albert gave.

The prince’s German-accented voice could barely be heard. The rich and powerful listened with feigned awe, even though most of them probably couldn’t understand a word he said. He droned on and on, addressing his remarks to the queen. When he mercifully concluded his speech, the queen rose from her throne and said something in acknowledgment of whatever wondrous words she felt he had said. Abruptly a choir sang the “Hallelujah Chorus” from Handel’s
Messiah.
No one except the revenger appeared to consider the choice of music blasphemous as it equated the queen and the prince to Jesus Christ.

Then an amazing thing happened—a life-changing event for the revenger. A brightly dressed man stepped from the crowd. He was Chinese. He wore an elaborately colored Oriental robe. While everyone in the audience seemed paralyzed, the Chinese man approached the queen’s throne and offered deep, profound bows. The queen’s children gaped. Her Majesty, not knowing what else to do, gave the Oriental stranger a respectful nod.

Murmurs spread through the crowd.
Who was
this man?
everyone wondered.
The Chinese ambassador,
some suggested. Others claimed to have seen him talking with dignitaries as esteemed as the Duke of Wellington. Politicians whispered to each other. The prime minister and the lord chamberlain consulted with Victoria and Albert.

They all agreed: without question, this was the Chinese ambassador.

When the queen and the prince led their children toward the thousands of exhibits, politicians and dignitaries followed. The stranger joined them, among the first to appreciate the scope and splendor of the Great Exhibition.

The mystery about his identity occupied the public’s imagination until a newspaper reporter revealed that he was merely a Chinaman who owned a business on a junk on the Thames. His name was He-Sing, and he had put on his native costume, approaching the queen in order to draw attention to his Museum of Curiosities.

For one of the few times in his life, the revenger had smiled honestly, enjoying the Chinaman’s mockery of the queen, the prince, and the Great Exhibition. But the revenger’s smile took nothing away from the fierce resolve that had come to him on that Thursday morning when, at three minutes past eleven on the first of May, 1851, he had understood how to achieve his destiny.

I
n the falling snow,
Ronald struggled to find his way through the labyrinth of narrow streets in London’s notorious East End.

He was afraid.

The previous evening, the bearded gentleman had given him five gold sovereigns.

“Would you like to receive even more sovereigns, Ronald? Twenty-five Garner Street in Wapping. Be there at four tomorrow afternoon. You are about to join a great cause.”

Now, as Ronald strained to see through the falling snow, he still had three of the five sovereigns, the others having been used to buy the warm clothes that the bearded gentleman had instructed him to obtain—waterproof boots and woolen socks, not to mention a warm coat and hat to replace the ragged sailor’s coat and cap he’d been wearing. And warm gloves. And a surfeit of kidney pies and beer, his first full meal in three days.

Few people were on the streets, most having taken refuge in whatever warren they called home. With little opportunity to ask for directions, Ronald felt more panicked. He had started searching at two, using clocks in various shops to measure his progress. But the farther he moved into the decay of Wapping, the fewer places had clocks, and in the falling snow, many windows were shuttered. Now Ronald had no idea how close it was to four o’clock. Eager to receive more sovereigns, he had a dark suspicion that the bearded gentleman would not be pleased if he was late.

Coughing from the chimney smoke that the snow pressed onto the streets, Ronald reached a partially covered sign on a wall. Brushing snow from it, he felt his blood rush when he saw the words
GARNER STREET.
He took longer steps through the snow and studied the numbers on walls. Nine. Seventeen.

Twenty-five!

A dark corridor beckoned.

Ronald peered nervously into it. Without lights or any sign of habitation, could this be the address that the gentleman had meant? Had Ronald failed to remember correctly? If he didn’t find where he was supposed to go, if he didn’t reach there in time, he wouldn’t receive more sovereigns.

Frozen boards creaked as he inched inside and strained to see through the darkness. Dangling plaster touched his head.

A shadow suddenly appeared before him, raising the shield on a lantern, shining the light into his face. “What’s your name?”

“Ronnie,” he answered in surprise, then remembered the bearded man’s insistence that he should always use his formal name. “No. I mean Ronald.”

“What were you given?”

“Five sovereigns.”

“Follow me.”

The shadow stepped across what Ronald now saw was a hole in the floor, an ominous blackness beneath it. The man opened a door and motioned Ronald into a small courtyard that was occupied by a half-collapsed shed.

At another dark corridor, another shadow stepped into view.

“If he brought company, they won’t have trouble following his tracks,” the first man said.

“I didn’t tell anyone,” Ronald protested. “I swear it.”

“We’ll soon find out. No one will get past me,” the second man promised the first.

Ronald continued to follow his guide. At the end of the corridor, stairs lacked a banister. The lantern revealed occasional missing steps. At the top, they reached a gaping window, where a board stretched across an alley toward another gaping window.

“Go,” the guide ordered, closing the shield on the lantern.

Ronald’s confidence returned. Accustomed to climbing masts on a British East India Company ship, he had no difficulty advancing over a slippery, snow-covered board in near darkness. It was nothing compared to securing sails on a vessel pitching in a storm.

Four paces took him to the opposite side and a murky room that seemed to be filled with crates. His guide stepped down after him and pulled the board inside, then opened the shield on the lantern and led Ronald to a stairway, down which they descended to a cold, musty basement filled with more crates.

A murmur attracted Ronald’s attention. The murmur grew louder as they approached a door.

A shadow emerged from behind a crate. “Are you Ronald?”

“Yes.”

“Excellent.” The man put a friendly hand on Ronald’s shoulder. “Everyone’s been waiting for you.”

The man opened the door. The three of them entered a room filled with the glow of lanterns, the aroma of ale and tobacco, and the smiles of several men, who rose in greeting.

At the center stood the bearded gentleman with the silver-tipped cane.

“Welcome to Young England, Ronald!”

L
ord Palmerston’s coach
hurtled along Piccadilly, snow muffling the sound of horseshoes and metal-rimmed wheels. Despite the body heat of six people squeezed into a vehicle intended to hold four, the enclosed area felt cold, the silence outside unnatural.

Ryan pointed toward the two gates and the curved driveway in front of Lord Palmerston’s mansion, telling Emily, “Five years ago, someone tried to kill Her Majesty there.”

“
Another
attempt against her?” Emily asked in surprise. She was seated between Ryan and Becker. Once more, she was grateful for her bloomer skirt. A woman in a hooped dress could never have fit into the crowded coach.

“All told, there have been
six
attempts,” Ryan answered. “I intend to make certain there isn’t a seventh.”

“
Six
attempts?” Emily sounded even more taken aback. “And one of them was outside your house, Lord Palmerston?”

“It wasn’t mine then. The queen’s favorite uncle lived there. When Her Majesty went to visit him, a curious crowd gathered around her carriage and prevented it from moving. A man suddenly stepped forward and struck his cane across Her Majesty’s head. The blow was so strong that it drew blood.”

“Good heavens!”

“Indeed,” Lord Palmerston said. “Royalty is not supposed to be capable of bleeding.”

“Was
he
a member of an imaginary secret organization also, Your Lordship?” Emily asked. “Did
he
too write documents plotting to overthrow the government and the crown?”

“No. His name was Pate. He was a strange man who paid the same cab driver every day for months on end to drive him to various parks, where he charged into thickets and returned with his clothes soaking wet, covered with brambles. On the street, he marched with a goose step while he flailed his cane as if it were a sword in combat.”

De Quincey stared pensively toward the snow streaming past his window. “Pate wasn’t always that way. At one time he was a cavalry officer with three horses that he treasured above everything. All three were bitten by a rabid dog and had to be shot. After that, Pate acted strangely.”

“So, a mad dog was responsible for turning him into a mad man,” Becker offered.

“Except that, according to the law, Pate
wasn’t
mad,” De Quincey said as the coach jolted to the left from Piccadilly onto Constitution Hill.

“But his behavior…” Becker said.

“…was bizarre in other respects as well,” De Quincey added. “He sang raucously at all hours, annoying everyone around him. He refused to bathe in anything except whiskey and camphor. People describe such a man as a lunatic, but eccentric behavior isn’t proof of madness. According to the law, insanity is a disease of the mind that prevents someone from being aware of what he does and whether his actions are wrong.”

“You know the law?” Commissioner Mayne asked in surprise.

“After my studies at Oxford, I considered a career in it,” De Quincey answered, “but a year of legal training made me decide that it wasn’t for me.”

“To the benefit of the legal profession,” Lord Palmerston murmured. “Murder as a fine art indeed. You’re the one who’s insane.”

“But not according to the law,” De Quincey noted. “At Pate’s trial, the jury concluded that, even though his behavior—goose-stepping down streets, flailing with his cane, and so on—was unnatural, he knew that he was doing wrong when he struck the queen. The jury declared him guilty. As the judge said when sentencing him, ‘You’re as insane as it’s possible for a person to be who is sane.’”

“My headache worsens,” Lord Palmerston said.

“As is proper when considering matters of the mind,” De Quincey told him. “Determining madness isn’t simple. How interesting that Pate’s name is synonymous with the head.”

“We’re here,” Commissioner Mayne said tensely.

The coach stopped before the awe of Buckingham Palace.

L
ess than a
hundred years earlier, Buckingham Palace had been nothing more than a house. In 1761, King George III purchased the building for his wife to use and began improving it. In 1820, when George IV became king, he lived elsewhere while continuing the apparently eternal process of renovation, at the expense of more than half a million pounds, until the house had finally been expanded into a palace. When Queen Victoria assumed the throne in 1837, she was the first monarch to use it as a primary residence, but as the number of her children increased, it needed to be enlarged yet again.

Surveying the vast, three-story edifice, De Quincey marveled, “So much has changed. When I last saw London decades ago, the Marble Arch stood here as an entrance. In place of this wing, there was only a wall.”

Commissioner Mayne nodded. “To make room for the east wing, the arch was dismantled eight years ago and eventually rebuilt in Hyde Park.”

“It celebrated our victory over Napoleon,” De Quincey said, “and yet it occupied its original place of honor for only fourteen years before Her Majesty and His Highness took it down. How glory fades.”

“For God’s sake, don’t speak that way inside,” Lord Palmerston warned.

The home secretary walked through the snow and approached a gate. Announcing himself, he told a guard, “Her Majesty expects us.”

The guard snapped to attention and led them to another guard, who took them to a third. Finally they were escorted into a tunnel-like entrance, where an attendant conducted them through a bewildering sequence of corridors.

As if in a laudanum dream, De Quincey peered up at the stunningly high ceilings and their ornate chandeliers. He walked along the soft carpet in a daze, prompting Lord Palmerston to urge him to walk faster. The walls were papered and wainscoted and stuccoed and pillared in a French neoclassical style with pink, blue, and gold highlighting everywhere. There were Chinese patterns also, the strange contrast making De Quincey feel that he was hallucinating.

Lord Palmerston’s urgent request for an audience with Her Majesty must have included the caution that the matter needed to be discussed in utmost confidence, for their escort took them away from the palace’s public areas, guiding them through deserted sections and up a narrow staircase perhaps used only by servants. The deeper they penetrated into the palace, the colder it became.

More stairs, twists, and turns brought them to the largest room that De Quincey had ever seen. It was three times the size of the ballroom in Lord Palmerston’s residence.

De Quincey wasn’t the only person who was amazed.

“The Throne Room?” Lord Palmerston asked the attendant. Confused, he indicated the vast pink-and-gold magnificence. “Are you certain there hasn’t been a mistake? Surely this isn’t Her Majesty’s idea of a place for a confidential meeting.”

“My Lord, the queen was explicit. She said that she and Prince Albert would meet you in the Throne Room. Please be seated.”

As the attendant departed, De Quincey reached to open a curtain.

“Don’t touch anything,” Lord Palmerston warned. “Get over here and sit down.” He pointed toward a line of chairs between French doors. Like almost everything else in the palace, the chairs were neoclassical in style.

Everyone sat.

“I wish my mother and father were still alive so I could describe this to them,” Becker said, awestruck.

At the far end of the massive room, a throne dominated an ornate dais. Pink curtains hung in the background, creating the impression of a theater’s stage.

Emily kept her coat on and pressed her arms to her chest.

“It used to be even colder before the fireplaces were repaired,” Ryan said.

Emily looked confused. “You sound as if you’ve been here before.”

“Often,” Ryan answered. “The first time was in eighteen forty—because of Edward Oxford. The palace had an odor then.”

“Quiet,” Lord Palmerston said. “The queen might hear you.”

“But it’s a compliment to Prince Albert that the odor was removed,” Ryan noted. “Mostly it was caused by the smoke from the poorly designed fireplaces. The maids spent most of their time wiping soot from the furniture. The ventilation was so poor that when gas fixtures were installed, we worried that everyone might die from asphyxiation. Prince Albert took charge and put the palace in order.”

“I met King George the Third once,” De Quincey said.

“Be still,” Lord Palmerston repeated. “I hear footsteps.”

“When I was fifteen, through a friend whose family had a title, I was invited to a royal event at Windsor,” De Quincey recalled, reaching for his laudanum bottle.

“No, Father,” Emily said.

De Quincey sighed and returned the bottle to his coat. “I was playing next to a stream when the king and his escorts strolled along it. ‘And how are you, young man?’ the king asked. ‘Fine, Your Majesty,’ I answered. ‘What is your name?’ the king wanted to know. ‘Thomas De Quincey, Your Majesty,” I answered. ‘De Quincey,’ the king said. ‘That sounds aristocratic. Were your ancestors French?’ ‘They came to England from Normandy with William the Conqueror, Your Majesty,’ I replied. The king indicated that he was impressed and walked on.”

“You come from noble ancestry?” Lord Palmerston asked with new regard for him.

“No, My Lord.”

“But you told the king…”

“I needed to tell him
something
that sounded of consequence. I couldn’t just say that one day my mother decided to add ‘De’ to the family name to give it more dignity.”

Commissioner Mayne gasped. “You lied to the king? Thomas De Quincey isn’t your real name?”

“What magazine editor would buy essays from someone whose name was as plain as Thomas Quincey?”

“I wish I had never met you,” Lord Palmerston said.

Footsteps again sounded in a corridor.

“Stand when the queen and the prince enter,” Lord Palmerston told the group. “The men will bow their heads. Miss De Quincey will curtsy.”

Lord Palmerston looked at Emily’s bloomer skirt. His expression suggested that he’d become so accustomed to seeing trousers beneath it that only now did he realize how unorthodox her garments might appear to the queen.

“Commissioner Mayne and I will approach the queen and the prince when they indicate that is what they wish,” he explained quickly. “Inspector Ryan, stay here until we summon you. Sergeant Becker, Miss De Quincey, and Mister De Quincey”—Lord Palmerston sounded sarcastic when he used “Mister” and “De”—“remain standing. Under no circumstances say anything. How I wish you were on a train bound for Scotland.”

“Mister De Quincey will be useful, My Lord,” Ryan said. “I have no doubt.”

As footsteps entered the vast room, the group hurriedly stood, facing the most powerful monarch in the world and her closest advisor, her husband, Prince Albert.

I
n 1855, Queen Victoria
and Prince Albert had been married for fifteen years. Initially the adjustment had been difficult. A husband normally exerted unquestioned dominance, to the point that his wife had no legal rights for herself or her children and no share of the property that she brought to a marriage or that the husband subsequently acquired. But in this extraordinary situation, the queen enjoyed centuries-long legal rights and owned massive amounts of property over which Albert had no control. Indeed Parliament insisted that Albert occupy a lower rank than his wife, making their marriage the most unusual alliance in the empire.

There were many other ways in which the marriage was unusual. Middle- and upper-class wives took pride in not having an occupation, but the business of being the queen was the most prominent anyone could imagine. Wives were normally satellites of their husbands, but Albert was the satellite of his wife.

When the excitement of the wedding passed, he had little to do except blot the ink on documents that Victoria signed. She excluded him from her meetings with her prime minister and her Privy Council. She didn’t allow him to read the parliamentary reports that occupied hours of her time.

Albert took to pacing the palace corridors. In a fit of boredom, he became the equivalent of a nineteenth-century wife and organized the royal household, which absolutely needed to be organized. Servants responsible for the interior of the palace could wash the inside of windows but weren’t allowed to go outside and finish the job, a task reserved for other servants. Those responsible for placing wood in a fireplace weren’t allowed to light the fire, a chore assigned to others. The inefficiency was such that the palace, only recently renovated, was dirty and already showed signs of disrepair. Burdened by far more servants than were necessary, the household budget—grudgingly awarded by Parliament—needed to be increased each year. But after Albert released superfluous staff members and coordinated the work of the remainder, the improved conditions in the palace—not to mention the money he saved—prompted politicians who had initially disliked him to become his supporters.

Meanwhile, Victoria gave birth to a succession of children, four boys and four girls by 1855. Frequently unable to attend public functions, she assigned Albert to take her place. In time, she asked him for advice and gave him a desk next to hers. After she read confidential documents, she passed them to him. He added his notes to hers. He attended her meetings with the prime minister and her other advisors, offering his opinion. In all but name, he became a co-monarch.

But only four years after Albert’s triumphant Crystal Palace Exhibition, England declared war against Russia. The mismanagement of the Crimean War, the needless deaths of thousands of English soldiers, and the real possibility that Russia would be the victor turned the populace against the government and the monarchy.

Albert, in particular, experienced a spectacular fall from public admiration. Despite all his efforts to make England forget his origins, by February of 1855 people on the street had reverted to their initial dislike of him as a foreigner from a poor German state. They again believed that he would plunge the country into debt and make it the vassal of another nation. Germany. Russia. What was the difference? They decided that Albert was probably a spy.