by Will Thomas
Barker nodded and stood. “Just so. We are agreed on that.” He began to pace again. “Did you see anything directly after the shot?”
“My eyes were full of blood, sir,” Dinsdale replied. “Couldn’t see nothing. I wanted to pull out my sword to defend myself, but there was no one nearby to defend against. Besides, it’s useless, isn’t it? A sword against a long-distance rifle.”
“Indeed,” murmured the Guv. “Continue.”
“Then I heard a call from Alf, my mate, and the carriage bowls off as fast as the horses will pull it, which is standard protocol. I knew that something happened after that, but I don’t really know in detail. The Russian came out and was chased back in, right?”
“Something like that,” Barker answered.
“It’s not fair. Prince George, third in line to the throne, is shot at, but our traditional enemy is kept out of harm’s way. For all I know, this could all be a Russian plot.”
I thought it likely as well, but it wasn’t politic to say so. However, I decided it was time to put in an oar.
“Have you been all over the palace, roof to basement?” I asked.
“Oh, yes, we all have. We guardsmen get bored sometimes, so we look about. Sometimes we learn things. For example, the Prince of Wales likes to step out on one of the balconies to smoke in peace, but he carries a pair of opera glasses to watch the women pass. He has an eye for a well-turned ankle.”
“Have you heard tale of a tunnel under the palace?” I pressed.
“There is a rumor but it’s just rubbish. Some of our boys have searched for it, without any success. It’s just an old wives’ tale, I think. Or a soldier’s idea of a prank. Besides, if such a tunnel existed, I’m sure the Prince of Wales would have used it by now.”
Dinsdale laughed at his own joke. It would be churlish to repeat remarks about the prince when the watch he gave Barker was in my very pocket, but Prince Albert was known for his interest in the fair sex and his love of personal freedom. The Guv grunted. He had very decided opinions about how an heir to the throne should conduct himself.
“This schedule you mentioned,” Barker said. “How easily would a member of the public—a bold member—be able to glance at the schedule?”
“He might see it, sir, if he was clever enough.”
“Where is it kept?”
“Now, sir, that’s palace business.”
Barker nodded. The corporal had just risen in his estimation.
My partner offered our guest a cigar, but the soldier did not smoke. Then he crossed to a large jar full of his private blend and stuffed an ivory-colored pipe. He put it between his teeth and lit it. When he had it going he came forward and removed his jacket and straddled the chair again.
“Did you come into the palace after the shooting?”
“No, sir. I was a sight. I didn’t want to be seen like that. A servant brought out some water and towels and then I went ’round the back to the servants’ quarters to see if my beautiful uniform could be salvaged. It was done in, I’m afraid. Only my boots were able to be saved.”
Barker puffed for a minute in silence. Dinsdale and I listened to the sound of the tobacco gurgling in his pipe.
“Let us begin again,” the Guv said.
And so we did, from beginning to end. Every action, every word spoken, every thought or impression. The corporal was beginning to look fatigued, which is sometimes a good thing. People will say things when they are tired. We went through it, and then Barker began again. That’s when it happened.
“You brought your horse around in front of the carriage,” my partner remarked. “You didn’t speak to His Highness, but you greeted your friend, Alf. Is that correct?”
“Correct, sir.”
“And how did you feel?” he asked.
“Well enough,” Dinsdale said. “I had a bit of a headache.”
“Did you?”
“Yes, sir. It was the din.”
Barker frowned. “What din?”
“The caterwauling,” the corporal answered. “It was loud in the lobby, you see.”
“I’m afraid I don’t. What caterwauling?”
“A child was crying.”
The Guv glanced at me. “A child in the palace? A royal child?”
“No, sir. A regular child there wandering around.”
“Why was a child allowed in the palace foyer?” I asked.
“They were waiting for the tyke’s mother.”
“A second person unmentioned?” Barker asked. “Tell me about her.”
“I only saw her for a moment, sir. It was a sad story. She was a widow. Had a Victoria Cross pinned to her breast and her dressed all in black.”
“And why was she in the building with her child?”
“She’d been overcome, sir, in the heat of the day. She was heavy with child. Said she would have preferred to stay at home but she’d had her son there for weeks and he was fit to be tied with boredom. She took him to the park, but she began feeling faint. It was a warm day, as you recall. One of us took her into the palace. We have rules, but we’re not savages.”
“Describe the woman for me, Corporal.”
“She was partially veiled, Mr. Barker. I could only see the bottom half of her face. Her skin was pale, her lips ashen. I think she was pretty, or had been when her husband was alive, poor blighter.”
“She was heavy with child, you say?” the Guv asked.
“Very heavy, sir. Ready to give birth any day, I suppose.”
Barker considered the matter. “What became of her?”
“Someone helped her to a water closet, I believe. I wasn’t told it, but that’s what I assume happened. There’s a lot of rumors in royal service, sir, but not many facts.”
Barker blew a smoke ring to the ceiling. “Describe the child.”
Dinsdale shrugged. “A spoiled brat. He wore a sailor suit and a cap with a ribbon. The staff was having trouble keeping him out of everything. He was left with them, and a regular little savage he was.”
“Did you see them leave?”
“No, sir,” Dinsdale replied. “I went out and climbed onto Nell and then boom! Everything started.”
The Guv stood. “You’ve been very patient, Corporal. I’ll let you get back to the barracks now. I’m sure you must be tired.”
“Thank you for the dinner, sirs. Best I’ve had in London.”
We saw him down the stairs, into his coat and hat, and out the door. Barker led us to the library and we fell into the chairs. It was just past eleven.
“You rather tossed the fellow out, bum-over-brains,” I told him.
“He was obviously all in, and there is a point beyond which pertinent information will be compromised. I got out of him what I needed.”
“Do you really believe a woman with child is shooting at royals from the roof of Kensington Palace?” I asked. “You credit that theory?”
“I do. If you were an assassin, how would you transport an air rifle from the lobby to the roof of Kensington Palace and back again?”
“Under a voluminous dress? I’m sure the rifle would be as long as a broom, at least.”
“I’ll credit your cluelessness to the lateness of the hour. She carried it in pieces, perhaps hooked on a belt of some sort under her dress.”
“Then La Sylphide is really a woman!”
“I’ll stake my professional reputation on it.”
“But how?” I asked. “How does a woman train to become an assassin?”
“We already know one fully trained.”
I felt my face blanch cold and fell back in my chair. “Sofia Ilyanova.”
“Aye, Thomas. Daughter of the late, unlamented Sebastian Nightwine and the murderer of my best friend, Andrew McClain.”
“My word,” I said. “What do we do?”
“Right now I need you to make a telephone call.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Shortly before midnight there was a telephone call. I heard Mac pick up the receiver, and
then come up the stairs. He never knocked; that was a constant when I was a bachelor. But now that I was married he could not simply walk in. So, his solution was to hover at the top of the stair and clear his throat, like a phlegmatic angel.
“Yes?” I called.
“You have a telephone call.”
“Thank you, Jacob. I shall be down directly.”
After he left, I buttoned my waistcoat and adjusted my tie.
“That should be Israel,” I said to Rebecca.
I went downstairs and lifted the receiver. “Ahoy.”
“Ahoy, yourself,” Zangwill said. “I’m over at the Elephant and Castle. Come see what I’ve got.”
“Just come here. You know Mac makes wonderful ale. Porter, stout, bitter. You name it.”
“I’m already here and my Old Spotted Hen is in front of me.”
“You’re just afraid to beard the lion.”
“Thomas, everyone is afraid to beard your bloody lion,” Israel said. “You must accept that fact.”
“He’s not a cannibal, you know.”
“I demand proof of that. Are you coming?”
“I shall be along directly,” I said.
I left the house. Barker could work out where I had gone. The E and C is the busiest public house in Southwark. It was a coaching inn a century ago, but had grown like a mushroom and now featured six floors, two turrets, and a dome. Saying “Meet me at the Elephant and Castle” was like saying “I’ll be in Hampstead Heath. Come find me.” It took me near twenty minutes to locate my friend.
“Your beer’s gone flat,” Israel said. “Where’ve you been?”
“Be lucky I don’t pour it on your head. I came as fast as I could.”
“Now, now, I’m doing you a favor, remember?”
“Sorry,” I replied, sitting down across from him. “I’m tired. What have you got?”
“People have seen a group of men going in and out of an empty building in Menotti Street, a former tailor shop. It’s in…”
“I know where it is.”
As Barker explained earlier, I once passed a test to become a cabman, just so I could please him by being able to name every street in London and to drive him somewhere if required. Menotti Street was near the Jewish burial ground in Bethnal Green, and was known for its population of Russian immigrants. I should have deduced the address myself.
“There were about eight of them, and they look rough,” he continued. “The two people that told me said the men conversed in Russian, but no one knew them. I know it’s not much to go on, and it might be a false lead, but it’s the only thing I’ve heard that was out of the ordinary.”
“What’s the number?”
“Twenty-seven.”
“Thank you, Israel.”
“You owe me lunch when this is over,” he said, smiling.
I nodded. “Very well.”
“A beer, a dessert, and coffee.”
“That’s all?”
“No, no, Thomas. The lunch, as well.”
“I’ll have to check the budget.”
“Hang your budget,” he said. “You owe me.”
“Oh, all right,” I replied. “I’ll keep you posted about what happens.”
“No, leave me out of it,” he insisted, holding up his hands. “I wasn’t here.”
“As you wish.”
Once I was in Lion Street again, I headed up to Barker’s garret and told him what Israel had said.
“Menotti Street,” Barker murmured, staring out a dormer window into the darkness. “Of course. Mr. Zangwill has more resources than I give him credit. Not that the Okhrana is accustomed to hiding their movements. It is part of their power.”
“When are we leaving?”
“Within the next half hour, if Mrs. Llewelyn will permit you.”
“Permit me?” I scoffed. “I’m a grown man. I can make my own decisions.”
He looked over his shoulder. I believe I saw skepticism in his expression. “No doubt. However, I think you should inform her that we are leaving.”
I did. I’m sure Rebecca was not pleased, but she understood. Her only fear was that I would not return at all one of these evenings.
True to his word, we left within the half hour. We walked to a cab stand in the Old Kent Road, and found a cabman who conveyed us over Tower Bridge to the East End. Once in Commercial Road, very close to our destination, Barker called and the horse and cab rumbled to a stop where we alighted. Having located the street, we lounged against a wall and he pulled his watch from his pocket.
“What are we doing?” I asked.
“We are timing the beat of the local constable. I need to know his exact whereabouts.”
It was black as pitch and so quiet I heard the constable’s boots as he walked down Commercial Road. He gave us a glance and then a frown, but we seemed harmless enough. He continued on his way.
“Fifteen minutes, precisely,” Barker pronounced when he went by again, consulting the watch one more time in that way of his. “A conscientious fellow. Now we know with whom we are working. Let us view the tailor shop.”
Menotti Street was a row of attached houses from Regency days, cut up into flats, shops, and whatever else the landlords found capable of earning their keep. We saw a soiled “To-Let” sign in the window, but there was a light inside. It had to be the Russians, unless there was a gang of lawless tailors, fresh from prison, determined to take over the East End trade.
“Do you suppose they’re all in there?” I said in a low voice when we found the address. The old shop was dusty, battle-scarred, and bedraggled. Oilcloth had been pasted to the back of the windows, but light still shined through.
“I doubt it,” Barker answered. “The Okhrana is still guarding the tsarevich. If Chernov is in there, the light is a good sign. If he were dead, they’d have decamped.”
“So, what do we do?” I asked.
“Take this.”
He put something in my hand. I held it up to the puny light coming from the tailor shop.
“A police whistle?”
“Aye. Go down to the end of the street, then turn left and go onto the next. I want to see how many sparrows fly out. Count to twenty, then blow for all you’re worth.”
“Yes, sir.”
The Guv pulled his repeater from his waistcoat pocket and consulted it again. How he saw anything at night in those dark spectacles is one of the questions about him I’ve never fully answered.
“You’ve got less than a minute,” he said. “And when the constable comes running, hide the whistle and look uncommonly innocent. You’re good at that.”
The old streets there were narrow and there was a gutter channel running down the middle of the road. Every building was stained and the stone looked as if it had been battered with a hammer. I reached the end of the street and crossed to the next.
“Eighteen, nineteen, twenty…”
It’s not an easy thing to do, using a police whistle. It takes some practice, and I’ve had it. I blew my lungs through that small cylinder of metal until my chest ached. Ten seconds later I heard an answering whistle from where I had come. Then a pounding on a door. Cyrus Barker is an expert at pounding on doors. Then I heard him bellowing.
“Scotland Yard! Open this door! Police!”
I tucked the whistle in my pocket and watched two men shoot out into the street I was watching. I leaned against a wall as they passed and ran squarely into the young constable, hurrying in answer to the whistle, bowling him over. I recognized Rachkovsky’s men from when they had come to our offices. One of them was Olgev. The two ran off in different directions.
“Are you all right, Officer?” I asked, helping the fellow to his feet. He looked young and eager and was thin as a rail.
“Never mind that,” he bawled. “Did you hear a whistle?”
“I did. In the next street.”
It had begun to mist. The constable wore an oilskin cloak and he nearly slipped on the wet pavement. He turned into the nex
t street and disappeared. I pulled my collar up around my ears, pushed my bowler hat down on my head, and followed him.
The yellow light spilling into the narrow street from the shop doorway reminded me of the molten steel in a foundry. All about it now seemed profoundly black as if this were the only light in the universe. I stepped into the doorway and took in several things: a door nearly knocked off its hinges. Barker sitting in a chair, with both hands on the brass ball of his walking stick. The poor constable trying to make sense of it all. In the middle of the room was a dirty cot, little more than rags, upon which a man lay. The cot was stained with blood. There was a poker on the floor near a fireplace, and many corresponding burns on the body of the victim, whom I assumed was Chernov.
“He is alive,” Barker stated, holding a thumb to his wrist. “But unconscious.”
“Who are you?” the constable demanded.
“Cyrus Barker, sir,” the Guv said, handing him his card. “I am a private enquiry agent.”
“I heard of you. I take it you, sir, are Mr. Llewelyn?”
“Guilty as charged,” I said.
“We are friends of the commissioner,” the Guv added.
The latter was a polite way of saying “Mind your step.”
“What’s this, then?” he asked, pointing at the cot with his truncheon.
“Let’s say it was a misunderstanding. Some officials who are guests of our government thought it necessary to question this fellow, who is a known anarchist. The officials were not aware that torture is illegal in this country. That is, unless they know but do not care. What is your name, Constable?”
“P. C. Perkins.”
“Well, then, Perkins. The men that did this ran out the back of the house.”
“Was you the one with the whistle?”
Barker pulled his from the pocket opposite his repeater. It was attached to his watch chain.
“Mr. Llewelyn and I intend to give our statements, but this fellow needs medical attention immediately. How would you care to proceed?”
“I, well,” P. C. Perkins said. He may be punctual, but he was no Isaac Newton.
“Mr. Llewelyn and I shall wait here until you return with a hand litter for Mr. Chernov. Then we shall proceed to ‘H’ Division and make our statements.”