Murder As A Fine Art Part 47

"He dressed different and wore a yellowish beard, but he's the same size, and I'd recognize his voice anywhere," Doris responded.

"Colonel, does your concern for the poor extend to paying these kind ladies the additional fee that you promised them for antagonizing me at Vauxhall Gardens?"

Brookline stumbled on, staring at something far beyond the shadowy street. Margaret and I followed. So did Becker and Commissioner Mayne. So did the constables and the streetwalkers, who kept pace with Brookline.

Father walked directly behind him.

"Colonel, what happened to your concern for the poor? If you have any honor, you will keep your promise to these ladies."

Staring straight ahead, Brookline fumbled in his coat and pulled out his pockets, dropping coins onto the cobblestones. Their copper, silver, and gold made different metallic sounds as they landed and rolled.

The streetwalkers raced for the coins, fighting for them.

With his outturned pockets blown by the wind, Brookline reached a signpost that said Cannon Street. He staggered to the north past dismal buildings that seemed about to collapse. The constables and the rest of us stayed with him.

"What about Ann?" Father asked. "Do you have information about her?"

"Who?"

"Ann! You brought me to London, claiming you had information about her!"

"For all I know, the s.l.u.t died from consumption after you abandoned her."

"I didn't abandon her! Tell me! Do you have anything at all to report?"

"How could a prost.i.tute with consumption have possibly survived? For most of your life, she's been rotting in a pauper's grave. You're a fool."

I was close enough to see the emptiness that seized Father's face. The last vestige of his youth slipped away. His skin shrank around his cheeks. His eyes receded with hopelessness. A moan escaped him-or perhaps it was a sob, rising from the depths of his broken heart.

A wretched-looking woman stepped from a decaying structure and stared in fear at us. A sickly thin man appeared behind her.

Speechless, they followed Brookline, seeming to sense what was happening.

Other pathetic men and women emerged from bleak doorways, frowned at Brookline, and joined the horrid procession.

Soon dozens of people were with us, then a hundred, then two hundred, their footsteps sc.r.a.ping on the cobblestones.

Brookline reached a large intersection. A sign on a wall said Cable Street. Abruptly I remembered something that Father had written. Chilled, I understood that Brookline had taken the route by which his father's body had been brought here forty-three years earlier.

The procession halted as Brookline wavered toward the middle of the crossroads. The lanterns of the constables illuminated him. He scanned the crowd that filled the intersection, although his faraway gaze made it seem that he couldn't see us.

Again he exhaled an immense sigh from his depths.

He fumbled to pull something from beneath his coat.

"Stay back!" Becker warned us. "It might be a weapon!"

Brookline's knees bent. His tall body didn't drop as much as it collapsed. He landed face downward on the stones.

He trembled, then lay still.

Hushed, the crowd stepped forward, surrounding him at a careful distance.

"Cannon and Cable streets," Commissioner Mayne said. "Somewhere under this crossroads, under these paving stones, John Williams is buried."

"Not somewhere," Father told him. "Here. I'm certain Brookline knew the exact spot where his father's bones rest."

"Emily and Margaret, look away." Becker stooped warily to turn Brookline onto his back.

But we didn't turn away. Normal emotions had deserted me. I was so numbed that I didn't flinch or feel nauseous when I saw the knife that Brookline had pulled from beneath his coat and slid between his ribs when he landed.

As when Brookline had wailed toward the sky, his mouth was open in anguish.

"He was already dying, and yet he felt the compulsion to use the knife. It's not precisely a stake through his heart," Father said. "But I imagine Brookline intended it to be the same as what ultimately happened to his father. Margaret, I'm sorry."

"He was dead to me a long time ago," the elderly woman replied. "There's no need to feel sorry about that. But for what he did because of my weakness, G.o.d pity me."

"A man can find within himself, in a separate chamber of his mind, a separate alien nature," Father said, echoing something he had written. "But what if that alien nature contradicts his own, fights with it, and confounds what he once thought to be the inviolable sanctuary of his soul?"

"Can you do without me?" Becker asked abruptly, glancing from Father and the commissioner toward Margaret and me.

"We are safe now. Go!" I urged.

Becker broke into a run, hurrying through the crowd, racing toward the glow on the dark horizon.

FLAMES CRACKLED. Horses reared in terror. The din of bells summoned more help as men lay on the docks, stretching over the side to fill pails with water. They handed the pails to a line that led toward the warehouse. In a rush, another line brought empty pails back. Hoses went from the water to fire wagons, where men furiously worked the pumps and other men directed a spray toward the warehouse.

In the chaos, Becker charged toward a constable. "Where's Detective Inspector Ryan?"

"Don't know him."

In the reflection of flames, Becker sprinted toward another constable. "I'm looking for Detective Inspector Ryan!"

"Haven't seen him."

Breathless from his rush to the docks, Becker looked around frantically.

"Did you say you were looking for Ryan?" a guard asked.

"Yes!"

"He was with those constables who were killed," the guard reported.

"Ryan's dead?"

"I don't know." The guard needed to raise his voice to be heard above the shouts and the roar of the fire. "He was stabbed."

"Stabbed?"

"I helped him from the warehouse before it blew up. It tossed us through the air. I never saw him after that."

"Where? Show me where the blast threw you!"

"Over there!"

The guard indicated a gravel area. No one was there.

Becker strained to look in every direction. "Ryan! For G.o.d's sake, where are you?" He stopped a man hurrying by. "Do you know where the injured were taken?"

"There! To the spice warehouse!"

The man pointed toward a building near the burning warehouse.

Becker ran to it.

The living and the dead were positioned on blankets. Becker rushed to each of them, searching their faces, wiping soot from them.

Desperate, he ran back to the opium warehouse. Through the flames, he saw where a doorway had been blown apart. Anyone coming through it would have been lifted by the explosion and- Becker followed a line from the doorway toward the section of gravel that the guard had indicated. He found blood. He followed it to the wood of the dock. The blood went over the side.

"Ryan!"

Kneeling, Becker stared down toward the greasy water. Despite the speed with which his heart pounded, it nonetheless seemed to stop when he saw a figure half submerged, right arm snagged on a loop of rope.

"Help me!" Becker yelled. "For G.o.d's sake, someone help!"

A constable heard and raced toward him.

"I'm a policeman!" Becker shouted. "That's Detective Inspector Ryan down there!"

Becker pulled his overcoat off with such urgency that several b.u.t.tons popped. He yanked off his boots and jumped.

The water was painfully, shockingly cold. Plunging into it, Becker felt the cold only briefly. In seconds, numbness spread through him. His hands shook as he grabbed a rope that the constable dropped to him. He tied the rope under Ryan's arms and motioned for the constable, who'd been joined by another man, to pull Ryan up.

But as Ryan was lifted from the water, the reflection of the flames showed the terrible slash in his abdomen.

Becker almost gagged but stifled the urge and yelled, "Stop! He's been cut! We're separating the wound!"

The constables eased Ryan back into the water. Becker, whose tenant-farming father had insisted he learn to swim before he could fish from a river that flowed near the farm, gripped Ryan with one arm and pulled at the water with the other, forcing his way along the dock. His water-soaked clothes weighed him down, but he gripped a piling and pushed beyond it. He grabbed at more water, fighting toward a walkway that stretched down from the dock.

There, the constables waited, helping to lift Ryan from the water.

"He's dead," one of them murmured.

"No!" Becker said. "He can't be! I won't let him be!"

"Look at the gash in his stomach," the other constable said, not even bothering to note the slice in Ryan's left arm.

"I think he moved," Becker said.

"I want him to," one of the constables said, "but it's just the flames playing tricks."

"He did! His lips! I saw them move!"

Becker leaned close, straining to hear what Ryan said.

The other constables leaned close also.

"Snow," Ryan murmured.

"The poor man's hallucinating. He thinks it's snowing."

"That's not the snow he means! Help me lift him! Help me take him to Dr. Snow!"

WILL INSPECTOR RYAN survive his wounds?" Lord Palmerston asked.

For the second time in two nights, De Quincey, Emily, and Becker stood in the ballroom of Lord Palmerston's mansion. Commissioner Mayne had been summoned also.

Dawn paled the darkness beyond the windows. But Palmerston was dressed as if for business, wearing his customary gray slacks, black waistcoat, and black coat, the hem of which descended to his knees. His heavy frame continued to give him authority, as did his thick, long, brown-dyed sideburns that emphasized his powerful eyes.

"Dr. Snow is cautiously optimistic, Your Lords.h.i.+p," Becker explained. "The doctor says that under usual circ.u.mstances, Ryan would have bled to death, but apparently the cold water did something to his body-reduced the blood flow is how I understood it. The doctor disinfected the wounds and closed them. Now it's a matter of waiting to see if Ryan's body can heal itself."

"Where is Ryan now?"

"Resting at Dr. Snow's residence until he can be transported to a hospital," Becker replied. "Ryan had sufficient strength to warn us about the men who helped Brookline. They were arrested, trying to leave the city in hea.r.s.es that Ryan heard them talk about. The men were dressed as undertakers and had money they stole hidden under corpses in coffins."

"Commissioner Mayne, send a constable to Dr. Snow and tell him that I want Ryan brought here instead of to a hospital."

"Your Lords.h.i.+p is very generous."

Lord Palmerston nodded. "When Ryan is well enough to converse, I'll have an opportunity to learn further details about what happened. During last night's confrontation, did Brookline say anything about me?"

"About Your Lords.h.i.+p? I, uh..."

"Answer my question, Commissioner."

"He did in fact speak about you."

"In what specific words?" Palmerston's gaze suggested that the conversation had entered dangerous territory.

"With Your Lords.h.i.+p's forgiveness..."

"Get on with it."

"He said that you and your... I beg your indulgence... what he called your wealthy, powerful, arrogant friends were greedy and indifferent to the poor."

"And?"

"That is all, Your Lords.h.i.+p."