Dance with Death

by Will Thomas

  “You failed last night, George,” Nicholas told him.

  “My apologies, Nicky. I hadn’t prepared for guzzling an entire bottle of port.”

  “You cannot go by halves, you know,” Nicholas said. “It’s all or nothing. You’d better prepare for next time. Where have you been, sport?”

  “I inspected the barracks and stables of the Queen’s Own Guard. Such beautiful horses, and I love the Guard’s shiny helmets and scarlet capes. I’ll have to have a word with the army when I return to Athens.”

  “Where’s Sergei?” the tsarevich asked.

  “Oh, you know, looking after his bit of stuff.”

  “That’s my bit of stuff, remember,” Nicholas interjected. “He’d better remember it, too.”

  “I’m sure he will.”

  I felt sorry for George, having to keep Nicholas occupied. A full bottle of port. I’d have choked after one glass.

  “Did you just get in, Georgie?” the tsarevich continued.

  “I did.”

  “Have you eaten?”

  Prince George shook his head. “No.”

  “I’m starved. Let’s raid the kitchen.”

  “Dinner is being prepared, sir,” Hercules said.

  “Oh, bother dinner. I don’t want to wait until Aunt Victoria deigns to spoon her wretched pheasant consommé. I want some real food. Let’s go down to the kitchen and see what we can liberate.”

  The two young men walked out and we watched them leave.

  “You have our deepest sympathies,” Barker said to Jim Hercules.

  “You have to understand,” Jim said. “Nicky is trying to show Russian strength in front of English imperialism. It’s a complicated situation.”

  “What are you here for, precisely, Mr. Hercules?” the Guv rumbled. “Why did you come?”

  “I’m trying to keep him calm. It is the opinion of the doctors in Saint Petersburg that the tsarevich is having a nervous breakdown. This is all too much for him.”

  “You are surprisingly patient, considering how he treats you.”

  “But you see, he only treated me that way because the two of you are here. When we are alone, we are very nearly equals. My boss has little personal esteem and feels he must show bravado, especially in front of men such as yourselves.”

  “You are saying he is only pretending to be a tsar,” Barker said.

  “Exactly!” Hercules replied. “It doesn’t come naturally to him.”

  “This is your regular work outfit, then?” I asked.

  “It is. I have one that’s worse. A short vest with no shirt and a large turban. They even oil my skin for effect. I look ridiculous.”

  “Why do you do it, then?”

  He shrugged. “It’s a living. If I were back in the States, I’d probably be a sharecropper by now. I’m no longer young and there are a lot of new boxers out there. Grammy’s proud of me. I’ve done the best of all her grandchildren.”

  “You have a very unusual occupation, Mr. Hercules,” I noted.

  “Well, yours is not exactly shining shoes, now, is it, Mr. Llewelyn?”

  The last was said a trifle tartly.

  “My apologies,” I said.

  “Sorry. You’re not the first person who’s told me that. How are things coming along?”

  “It is still early days yet,” Barker replied. “But I now have an idea of what is required. We will start by interviewing various factions of the Socialists.”

  “Have you ever heard of an agent provocateur?”

  “Of course.”

  “The Socialist parties all inform on each other, mainly for money to run their own organizations. Some join other groups to encourage them to do something that will get them arrested, or even executed. I’m from America, gentlemen, and I have seen my share of lynching. Doing it for money or to make your political society a little more powerful is the basest of reasons.”

  “I agree,” Barker rumbled.

  “Oh, and some of the radicals are actually Okhrana plainclothesmen burrowed deep inside the organizations.”

  “What you’re saying,” the Guv replied, “is that we can’t trust anyone.”

  “Yep. Everyone lies. You’ve just got to figure out why.”

  “This is quite a little drama you’ve brought us into, Mr. Hercules.”

  “Now you know why I asked you gentlemen for help.”

  “I believe I now fully understand what is required and what it entails, so I accept your case,” Barker said, shaking our new client’s hand. “Come along, Thomas.”

  We left him then, standing in front of a door, though there was no one inside to guard. As we walked out through the glass doors of the Orangery I heard a sound coming from Barker, a kind of grunting noise. It took me a moment to place it. He was humming to himself.

  “You seem quite pleased with yourself,” I remarked.

  “I am pleased with myself.”

  “Now we’re in for it. Three separate assignments and none of them aligns with the others.”

  “Aye, lad, but it gives us freedom to do whatever we wish. It is another fine day, is it not?”

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  When Cyrus Barker ruminates, he nestles back against the buttoned leather of his green chair and turns it on its casters toward the window as if seeking inspiration, crosses his meaty arms at the peril of his suit coat seams, and then he scratches under his chin with the backs of his fingernails, flicking them forward without being aware he is doing so. That could go on all day. I recall a particular case once involving the old Spring-Heeled Jack legend, where he sat for two days entire. Generally speaking, however, he might do so for an hour or two, at the expense of my nerves. Once or twice I’ve taken a walk, giving him time to think without his partner squeaking a chair or typing correspondence. That was out of the goodness of my heart, mind you, and had nothing to do with any personal impatience of my own.

  I was dying to know the particulars of Mr. Bayles, and how he went from a cell in Colney Hatch to shooting at the Duke of York in one hour. However, he was expecting me to ask, so I held my questions until a proper time. I knew the subject would arise eventually.

  He’d lingered deep in thought for the next hour and a half. I dared not move or interrupt his train of thought. The mantel clock ticked as if regretful for the interruption, and there was a wheezing, almost whistling noise I eventually tracked to our clerk’s desk. He was asleep. This was another danger of prolonged inactivity.

  Suddenly, I heard our clerk jump to his feet. If Jeremy Jenkins has a gift beyond forgery, it is the ability to become totally awake at a moment’s notice when it is required.

  “Good day, sir.” His voice carried from the next room. “Welcome to the Barker and Llewelyn Agency. How may I help you?”

  “I wish to speak to Mr. Barker on a private matter,” an elite upper-crust voice replied. “Mr. Llewelyn as well, I should imagine.”

  An old duffer who’d got himself caught in a problem he couldn’t get out of, I supposed. There is no fool like an old fool, save perhaps a young one.

  “Have you a card, sir?” Jeremy enquired of our visitor.

  “I do, but I do not wish to give it.”

  “Ah,” Jenkins replied, looking put-upon. I could just see his face from where I sat. He would not get to deliver it to the Guv on his beloved silver salver. I don’t know how that tradition began, because it started before my time. Certainly Barker would never require such a thing. I suspected our clerk purchased it in a stall in Covent Garden in order to give our agency a certain tone.

  There was a squeak of the chair and Jeremy entered our chambers and came to the desk.

  “A gentleman to see you, sir.”

  “Hmmph?” Barker did not move. He still stared out the window.

  “A visitor,” I repeated. “We have a visitor.”

  “Do we?” the Guv asked. “Where is his card?”

  My partner can be brusque when interrupted. In a near-silent room he had not heard our visitor utter
a word. That is concentration.

  “He prefers not to give it,” Jenkins replied. “A private matter, he said.”

  “Well, show him in.”

  Our clerk looked disgraced. I didn’t blame him.

  The visitor entered. He was a duffer, just as I suspected. Sixty if he was a day. He was immaculately dressed, however, from his glossy top hat down to his shiny pumps. He was slender and the waxed tips of his gray mustache were bent at the ends as if they had been caught in a mousetrap.

  Barker did not rise, as if longing to go back to his thoughts.

  “How may I help you, sir?” he growled.

  “I wish to speak to you privately, sir. You and Mr. Llewelyn, that is.”

  “Is that necessary?” the Guv asked. “Mr. Jenkins is the soul of discretion.”

  “I fear it is.”

  It wasn’t what he said, but the way he said it. He, too, could be frosty, and there was a degree of authority in his voice. Perhaps he was a solicitor ready to lay a summons to the Old Bailey, or a general in Her Majesty’s Army, requiring his services.

  The Guv nodded at Jenkins. “Jeremy, go have a pint.”

  I tossed him a shilling and he blew away like smoke from a chimney. One did not need to tell him twice.

  “Now, sir, again, how may I help you?”

  Belatedly, the man pulled a card from a silver case in his waistcoat pocket and handed it to Barker, who scrutinized it carefully. Then and only then did he rise and offer the man a seat.

  I reached forward and snatched the card from his desk. It read:

  Col. Henry Francis Waverly

  Equerry

  Equerry. There weren’t a great lot of equerries about, and those that were generally worked for Victoria Regina, our gracious queen.

  Barker’s brows rose above the twin circles of his black-lensed spectacles. Not in astonishment, but in irritation. He’d already asked our visitor how we could help him and he was damned if he was going to ask again.

  “I’ve been sent by the palace, gentlemen,” the colonel said. “Is it true that you were present at an assassination attempt on the life of Prince George?”

  The Guv and I looked at each other as if to say we seemed to recall such an event, but weren’t certain. Finally, we nodded.

  “Did you in fact apprehend the man who shot at the prince’s carriage, with the aid of two guardsmen?”

  “That was Mr. Llewelyn,” Barker explained. “I was injured last year and am not as swift off the mark as he.”

  “But you threw, what? Some pocket change at him?”

  “Aye,” the Guv replied.

  The equerry turned his attention to me. “You subdued him?”

  I looked at the Guv and back at the colonel. “I did.”

  “Good fellow. But he was then shot from somewhere on the grounds?”

  “Yes,” I answered. “Yes, he was, sir.”

  Waverly glanced at Barker. “According to servants, the Russian tsar’s son came out of Kensington Palace then to see what the commotion was about. You then convinced him to go back into the building, using yourself as a shield, Mr. Barker. Is that correct?”

  It dawned on me that the palace was keen to find out precisely what had happened that put the Queen’s son in danger.

  “It is,” Barker replied. “But I was only to hand, and it was the briefest interval before the guardsmen surrounded us and helped him back to the safety of the palace.”

  “Why were the two of you in front of the palace in the first place?”

  “We’d just finished eating at the Goat Tavern in the High Street,” I answered. “We felt the need to stretch our limbs in Hyde Park. The sun was out.”

  “Do you dine there often?” Waverly asked.

  “From time to time,” I said. “Their chef is Welsh and I like the rarebit he makes. It’s difficult to find a good rarebit in London.”

  “I dare say,” Her Majesty’s equerry said. I suspected he wouldn’t know a good rarebit if he were standing in it. “You visited the restaurant randomly, then.”

  “We did,” Barker replied. “Can you tell me your purpose in coming here, Colonel Waverly?”

  “All in good time, sir, if I may intrude a few minutes longer,” the equerry continued. “I’m sure you have other duties and so do I. I have a point and I must eventually come to it. May I continue?”

  The Guv held out a palm. “The floor is yours.”

  “Thank you,” Waverly replied. “Was there not a time several years ago when you defended the Prince of Wales against a bomb-maker?”

  My mind went back immediately to that day. Maire, her name was. Maire O’Casey. She was a pretty Irish girl who fell among the Irish Republican Brotherhood. She blew the two of us off the Charing Cross footbridge hard by Scotland Yard. I survived. She did not.

  “She was running past the prince with a Fenian bomb in a satchel,” Barker explained. “I’m not certain she recognized him. He’d just come out of one of the clubs.”

  “You’re being modest, Mr. Barker. Did he not give you an engraved pocket watch in appreciation?”

  “He did,” I said, pulling it out of my waistcoat pocket by its chain, and opened it to read the inscription:

  To Cyrus Barker, from HRH the Prince of Wales

  for services rendered to the Crown

  “That was years ago,” my partner said.

  “His Highness recalls it,” stated Colonel Waverly. “Why shouldn’t you? You must understand, gentlemen, that Her Majesty is very concerned about these events. She nearly lost a son, only a few days from his wedding. She has also been attempting to arrange a marriage between the House of Romanov and the House of Hanover from which the royal family springs. This is of unimaginable importance, an alliance between the two most powerful families on earth, sworn enemies since the Crimean War. It is also extremely complicated. Dozens of ministers are involved and hundreds of missives sent between London, Saint Petersburg, and Germany. It is a very delicate business. Dowries must be considered, spheres of influence balanced. There was a time when the tsar refused the match and another when talks broke down completely because Alix of Hesse refused to become Russian Orthodox. Had the tsarevich died this morning, all of Europe and most of Asia would have fallen out, diplomatically speaking. Many countries have sent their leaders and emissaries here. It is to be the first royal wedding in over thirty years.”

  “I am glad we were there to help,” Barker said.

  “Yes,” Waverly replied. “Very fortunate there. Very fortunate.”

  The equerry reached into the inside pocket of his coat and retrieved a small notebook. He began to thumb through it. “Now, yesterday morning you were approached by an employee of the imperial household. Some sort of guard.”

  “Jim Hercules,” the Guv supplied.

  “Yes. What did he want?”

  Barker frowned and sat back in his seat. “The gentleman was concerned that the tsarevich was not being adequately protected.”

  Waverly rose a brow. “With the combined services of the English and Russian armies?”

  “Now, sir, we know the Russian delegation is largely ceremonial,” the Guv replied, tenting his fingers. “As for the English, all eyes are on the wedding. The Queen’s Guard did excellent work safeguarding Prince George and disarming his assailant. However, Nicholas strolled out onto the lawn of Kensington Palace alone. I conveyed him to safety with the help of a few servants.”

  “This was the day after you were hired to protect the tsarevich.”

  Barker held up a hand. “I was not hired. I refused the enquiry.”

  “Why did you refuse it?”

  My partner reflected on the question. “I have accepted the duties of a bodyguard in the past and have regretted doing so. A determined killer will always find a way. It is difficult for one man—excuse me, Mr. Llewelyn—two men to predict all contingencies in order to save a man’s life. It’s too difficult an operation for our agency.”

  “Yet the two of you found y
ourselves in front of the palace in time to stop an assassination,” the colonel said.

  “No, sir,” I said. “We did not stop an assassination.”

  Waverly nodded. “You are correct, young fellow. Forgive me. It was a poor choice of words.”

  Waverly pinched one of the bent tips of his mustache in apology and harrumphed. He was a trifle embarrassed.

  “Yes, but the two of you were there. Are you telling me that it was a coincidence that you should be in Kensington Gardens at such a time?”

  “We do eat at the Goat Tavern now and again, Colonel Waverly,” the Guv said. “But I’ll admit I was mulling over having refused Mr. Hercules’s request. I felt guilty, in fact. I thought I might see under what conditions the tsarevich was being protected, even if it were but a glance from the front gate. Of course, I did not expect anything to happen. The assassination attempt was as much a surprise to us as it was to everyone else.”

  The equerry began sifting through pages in his notebook. “We’ve been collecting information about you in the past few hours. It made for interesting reading, but there are gaps, and I must admit some of what we have seems difficult to believe.”

  Cyrus Barker leaned forward and rested his arms on his desk. “Name something and I’ll tell you if it is a fact.”

  “Very well. You helped the Empress Dowager in Peking.”

  “Aye, she was being poisoned. I discovered the culprit. In gratitude, she gave me one of her prized dogs. He still lives with me. Doesn’t he, Thomas?”

  “Or we with him,” I replied.

  Waverly consulted his notebook again. “You were born in Scotland and moved to Foochow with your missionary parents, who passed away.”

  “Of cholera,” Barker supplied.

  “Yes, and the next bit of information we find is that you were in the civilian army at Shanghai during the Taiping Rebellion as a youth.”

  The Guv nodded. “True.”

  “Then you came to London, tried to become a police constable but were refused, and opened your own agency here in Craig’s Court.”

  “All of it true.”

  “You own a house on the Surrey side of London,” Waverly continued.