Dance with Death

by Will Thomas

“Of course, no detective has been given a royal warrant before,” Waverly continued. “The idea is patently absurd. On the other hand, why should a shortbread maker receive a warrant when you have succeeded in saving two future monarchs in as many minutes?”

  Barker nodded.

  “It is required that a warrant be given after five years of active service to the empire,” the old fellow said. “You saved the life of the Prince of Wales six years ago, and according to deeper research on my part I was able to discover at least one time in each year when you were of service to the crown. That terrible business with the Whitechapel murders a few years ago. I hear from Scotland Yard that you were instrumental in bringing that case to a successful conclusion.”

  It was Munro, I realized. That old dragon had actually vouched for us. Either he had had a change of heart about Barker since they shared the duties of the Templars or he found himself unable to build a suitable argument against him. I felt generous enough to imagine it was the former.

  “Now, it will take some time, and you must attend a ceremony, but that is a formality. I have come to offer you the warrant. Please tell me, tell us all—the palace and the sovereign herself—that you will not turn down this honor.”

  “I will not,” Barker said. “I accept your generous offer, sir.”

  The colonel gave a broad smile and seemed to relax in his chair. “Jolly good, then, sir. I congratulate you. You shall be able to hang your warrant sign within six months’ time. Mind you, it cannot be too large and ostentatious. You don’t know what arguments we had with a certain candy maker.”

  “Not too large nor ostentatious,” my partner repeated. “I shall hang it on the wall by our front door.”

  “It need not be that small! One could hardly see it from Whitehall Street,” Waverly said, looking toward the bow window.

  “True,” he answered. “But anyone coming to Craig’s Court for an enquiry agent shall spot it readily enough.”

  Waverly looked at Barker as if trying to penetrate his exterior, which was practically impossible. “I don’t know about the detective business, but I’m sure you know what you are about.”

  The colonel drew in the smoke and blew a small but perfect smoke ring. Barker could blow one with the best of them, but allowed him this small flourish. Waverly stood and turned his chair in my direction and then sat down again.

  “Mr. Llewelyn, I have come here all the way from Buckingham Palace expressly to see you as well. I’ve been to Lincoln’s Inn to speak to an old acquaintance of yours and also to a few old cronies on the bench there.”

  “Cronies?” I asked.

  “Yes, the Right Honorable Mr. Palmister Clay, QVC.”

  I nearly jumped from my seat. He was the bounder whose testimony had sent me to prison all those years ago. I had been his batsman before an unfortunate incident in which I was accused of theft.

  “I needn’t take you through the entire process, sir,” Waverly said. “Although you might wish to hear it sometime, but the point is that Mr. Clay has recanted his testimony. All charges against you have been dropped. The government apologizes for your wrongful conviction and imprisonment. Of course, we cannot give you back those eight months, but there will be some compensation given in time.”

  Barker actually looked surprised as well, which meant he had no idea this had happened. For once, something was a complete surprise to him.

  Waverly chuckled.

  “He looks like a fish blowing bubbles, doesn’t he?” Waverly asked the Guv.

  “Close your mouth, Mr. Llewelyn,” my partner said.

  “I don’t know what to say, Colonel,” I replied. “This took me by surprise. I’ll take it, and thank Her Majesty’s government for me. I’ve been carrying that burden around for years.”

  “Yes, and I had a few choice words for your defending barrister, as well. His so-called defense was negligible. There is a vast difference between a servant holding up a coin and one putting it in his pocket. Even a layman knows better than that. I’d have spoken to the presiding judge as well but he is in a higher court now,” he said, pointing to the ceiling.

  “I don’t know what to say,” I answered. I looked at the Guv. “Sir, may I have an hour to speak to my wife and share the news?”

  “Go, but come back quickly,” Barker said. “We have work to do.”

  “Yes, sir. Colonel, you can’t know what this means,” I said, shaking his hand vigorously. “Thank you. Thank you for all you’ve done.”

  “Be gone with you, boy. Give your wife my regards.”

  I ran out into the street, waving my arms, and when a hansom finally arrived, I cried, “The City!”

  Inside the cab, I held myself, much as I had held myself the day I was placed in a cell and left on my own. I wanted to do Catherine wheels and handsprings. It all came flooding back. Being caught, then beaten by Clay’s cronies. The arrest, the charges, the trial. Then the treadmill and picking apart old rope for hours on end. I remembered the terrible food, the flea-ridden beds, the thump in the ribs from another inmate when no authority was in sight, merely for the joy of beating another human being. No books to read, no paper to write upon. No letters expected. The cruel notice of the death of my first wife, Jenny, from consumption. It was hell on earth. I served my time. Inexplicably, I was hired by Barker, and on our very first case together, I met a girl named Rebecca Mocatta, a girl of seventeen at the time, and my life began to start again.

  The ride took forever, but I fell into one reverie after another. How did this happen? Would I awaken and find it was all a dream? I knew it was not much in the scheme of things. Those who did not know would probably find out, and those who knew already would never forget. But I was exonerated by Her Majesty’s government, and most would begin to doubt that my disgrace was well founded, at least in their heart of hearts.

  When I arrived in Camomile Street I slowed the cab and rode by once or twice, waiting to see if my wife was receiving a call from one of her set. She was, and I paid the cab and skulked about Bevis Marks Synagogue next door, waiting for them to leave. Apparently, some people are long-winded. At one point I wondered if they had been asked to tea, they were there so long. At last, I watched the two women leave, Rebecca almost pushing them into a cab. She went inside and I vaulted over the gate. That day I could fly.

  When I threw open the door, Rebecca turned about, as if fearing her two guests had made a second attempt to storm the castle. Then she saw it was me.

  “Hello, Thomas,” she said. “What are you doing here in the middle of the day?”

  Then she saw my face and I led her into the parlor. I left the door open so that our maid could hear. She was a spy for Rebecca’s mother, looking for anything to complain about. There was a time when they separated from their daughter over me. Perhaps now they’d have less reason to despise me.

  “What is it?” she demanded. “What is happening?”

  “All charges against me from my time in jail have been dropped,” I said in a rush to get it out. “I am exonerated and shall be compensated for my false incarceration.”

  She cried out with joy, and hugged me. Then we sat down and I told her the story from beginning to end, twice. She has a keen mind, Rebecca, and her remarks were sharp and to the point. Then we hugged again.

  I saw the maid as she skulked off, possibly to call my mother-in-law. Take that in the eye, Mrs. Mocatta. I hadn’t received such good news since Rebecca had agreed to be my wife, and many years before that.

  We rang for tea, which was brought by a very stony-faced maid. Meanwhile, Rebecca lifted the teapot to pour.

  “We must celebrate!” she said. “Can you stay?”

  “I fear I must return for an appointment. We’re still in the middle of the case.”

  Rebecca handed me a cup and studied me carefully. “I always believed you were cruelly used, almost the worst I’ve ever heard of. And now, exonerated! It’s not just a triumph for you, but for the British legal system. Perhaps we should send fl
owers to Colonel Waverly.”

  “A wise choice,” I agreed, “but I believe a box of Dunhills from Astley’s would be more appropriate.”

  “I’ll do that,” she said.

  We kissed again, and then I went in search of another cab. Who could believe it? Even I had trouble swallowing it.

  “Was Mrs. Llewelyn pleased?” the Guv asked, after I returned to the office.

  “Yes, sir. She was. And a warrant! That’s wonderful!”

  “Excellent. Thomas, I want you to send for Soho Vic,” he said. “Leave the wallet here.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Jeremy!” he called to the waiting room. “Come here.”

  Reluctantly, I gave Barker his own wallet and waited to see what order he would give our clerk. My partner was having none of that.

  “Off with you, Mr. Llewelyn. We don’t have all day to dawdle.”

  “No, sir,” I said, stepping out into Craig’s Court and Whitehall Street.

  There are never messenger boys around when you need one, I noticed, and when you don’t they’re standing about with their hands in their pockets. Or yours. I spent almost five valuable minutes looking for one, while Jenkins strolled by as if he’d been given a duty far more important and interesting than mine. Finally, a boy slipped by like a salmon on the River Spey, but I hooked him at the final moment.

  “Le’go, you tosser!” he cried.

  I pulled some coins from my pocket uncounted and slapped them into his hand. He stopped struggling instantly.

  “We need Vic. Now,” I said.

  “Go’ it!” he replied, and was gone as he had come, slipping through the stream of slower-moving pedestrians.

  My duty done, I hopped it inside to find out what the Guv had planned. Of course he wouldn’t tell me.

  “What time is the wedding, tomorrow, Thomas?”

  “Twelve-thirty, sir, according to yesterday’s Times.”

  “St. James’s Palace?”

  “Yes, sir. The Chapel Royal, to be precise.”

  “Let us set our watches.”

  We pulled our repeaters from our waistcoat pockets and stepped outside to synchronize them. It’s easy when the most famous clock in the entire world is down the street. Mine was two minutes behind. It’s the refrain of my life.

  Half an hour later both Jenkins and Soho Vic were struggling to be the first in our office. Vic was once the bane of my existence, the blight on my escutcheon. He was the nominal head of the messenger boys in the area, and a crafty little fellow at seventeen.

  “Wotcher, Push,” he said, using Barker’s underworld moniker. “What have you got for me?”

  “I need you and your boys at the Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park as soon as possible.”

  “That’ll take some doing,” he replied. “How many do you need?”

  “Fifty.”

  We blinked. I think Vic actually winced.

  “Fifty?” he said. “You’re barmy.”

  “I’ll take my custom elsewhere, then, sir. Thank you for your time.”

  “I’ve only got about twenty lads, Push.”

  “Then get some from other gangs,” Barker ordered. “Rival gangs, if necessary. I need them there by five o’clock.”

  “Five o’clock! That’s only an hour and a half away!”

  “Then you’d better stop arguing with me and get on with it. There is money to be made.”

  “Spoken like a Scot,” Vic said. “Five o’clock. Hyde Park. Got it.”

  He wheeled and was gone. In the outer office, Jenkins was looking pleased with himself. There were two small pasteboard boxes on the corner of Barker’s desk. I reached for one and got my hand slapped for my troubles. Really, a partner should not have his hand slapped by a mere clerk. It sets the entire world of commerce at naught.

  “Let us walk along the route to St. James’s and see what we may see, Thomas. Jeremy, you’ll be there at the appropriate hour?”

  “You can count on me, Mr. B.,” Jenkins assured him.

  I was less assured, convinced our clerk would stop for a pint or seven before his arrival, but that was just hubris on my part. For all his peccadilloes, when it came down to it he was always reliable. He even returned Barker’s wallet to me.

  We hailed a cab and turned west on the way to the palace. Then we rode as far as we could before we saw the road was being closed to vehicular traffic in preparation for the wedding the following afternoon. Already, a crowd was forming on both sides of the street.

  “We are cutting it fine,” I said.

  “True,” Barker conceded, “but I only came upon a solution last night.”

  “If we fail, the calamity would not fall upon our shoulders, sir.”

  “Perhaps not, but I would know and you would know. I did not open an enquiry agency in order to fail,” Barker replied, a trifle tartly.

  We walked along the outskirts of the crowd, looking overhead at the buildings. The street bristled with them, most at least three stories high or more. La Sylphide need not shoot from the roof. She could simply hire a room upon the parade route and then melt away afterward.

  “I think she’s half in love with me. Sofia, I mean.”

  “You’re just working that out now?”

  “I never once considered—I mean, she killed Andy McClain, not to mention who knows how many others.”

  “At the time, you were pining for Miss Mocatta, elusive as she was.”

  “Was it that obvious?” I asked.

  “Let us say you would not be a good whist partner.”

  I looked up. So many windows. Too many windows to count, not to mention the roofs. The weather was warm. Windows would be opened. No one would wish to watch a parade through a pane of dirty glass. They’d want a good view. And in any of those windows could be a woman holding a mechanical weapon capable of vaporizing a man’s head with a puff of condensed air.

  Barker and I were stopped by the congestion of the crowd.

  “This is impossible,” I remarked.

  “Let’s head for the Speakers’ Corner. It’s our next stop.”

  Half an hour later, we arrived at the far end of Hyde Park on Piccadilly and walked to the Speakers’ Corner.

  First of all, it isn’t a corner at all. It is an open area where all Her Majesty’s citizens can come and hear someone speak on any subject for the common good. There is no stage, no podium, just a set of short steps one would use to mount a horse. People could come and state their views and the crowd was allowed to question, argue, or even call down the speaker. In fact, at that very moment a woman was giving an impassioned speech, while the crowd was doing all three.

  “Violence shall find us all clapped in irons!” Eleanor Marx was crying. “All the good work the Socialist League has done in London will be sullied irretrievably if we turn to anarchy. Give Scotland Yard no reason to arrest us and we can argue about our government’s egregious wasteful spending afterward!”

  She was being hooted down. The anarchists weren’t standing for her rhetoric. If anything she was too pretty, too intelligent, and too well-spoken. She sounded like one of them, the bourgeoisie. She lived in a beautiful home in the South of London. She’d never gone to bed hungry. She’d never spent a night on the street, or slept in a doss-house. The few times she’d been arrested, a solicitor had been there to post bail. She was a woman, and no anarchist wants to listen to a woman counseling them to calm down and be peaceable.

  “It looks like Sofia Ilyanova may not be the only one to watch,” I said, looking at the unruly crowd. “I hope Scotland Yard is up to the task.”

  “They’ll have to be,” the Guv answered. “We’ve got our hands full at the moment.”

  The meeting broke up. From where I stood Miss Marx did not look particularly pleased. As the crowd dispersed, I saw that there were over a dozen boys waiting for the next speech. More were coming from every direction, running, looking about, even breaking into fights. They belonged to various gangs with known grievances against each
other.

  “Give me my wallet, Thomas,” the Guv said.

  “Better you than them, sir,” I said.

  Soho Vic was waiting at the bottom step of the platform when we arrived. He saluted, but I suspected he was as nervous as I.

  “How many did you speak to?” the Guv asked.

  “About thirty, Push, but they are going to bring their mates. Everyone knows there’s money to be made with you.”

  They began to arrive in earnest then, wondering what was going on. They were an even surlier crowd than the one Eleanor Marx had spoken to. The youths ranged in age from six to twenty. While many were still arriving, the group in front of us began hooting with impatience. I looked at Barker and he at me. Perhaps we need not wait another hour.

  “’Ello, Mr. L. Here I am,” Jenkins said, appearing with the mysterious boxes.

  As I suspected he was plowed as a field. Our clerk could barely stand, but he was here and on time. That was what mattered, I supposed.

  Barker handed one of the boxes to Vic. I heard jingling inside them. Bells? I thought. Christmas bells. What was he about? I was going to ask but my partner was already mounting the steps and quieting the crowd.

  “Gentlemen,” he boomed. “And ladies.” The latter was directed toward a small girl in the front row. “I won’t take up much of your time. Listen carefully. There will be a woman near the gate of St. James’s in Pall Mall at noon tomorrow who means some sort of mischief toward the royal family. She should not be difficult to spot. Her face and hair are very pale and she is dressed as a widow. We do not know which building she will be hiding in but she must be found. Scotland Yard is occupied with the wedding. The Home Office will be searching the area building by building. They consider you a rabble of no consequence, but I believe the group of you are a match for both the Met and the Home Office any day.”

  The children laughed and many of them nodded their heads in agreement. To some it was novel to be spoken to by an adult as a group.

  “In these boxes here are Acme Thunderers, the best whistles in England. You will each be given one. Whoever is the first among you to spot the woman in question, I will give fifty pounds.” He reached into his pocket and held up a fifty-pound note for all to see. The crowd was going wild.