* * *
—
“Have you heard from Angela?” asked Amelia.
I was seated at the kitchen table, my wife dabbing butter onto my burned hand with a folded muslin cloth. I was pretty sure butter would not make a blind bit of difference, but it seemed to make Amelia feel better, so I let her dab away.
I’d told her I’d had to enter a burning building to retrieve some evidence. She hardly needed telling: all my clothes stank of stale smoke, my eyes were red, and for the last two hours I’d been hawking up disgusting black phlegm that had destroyed my handkerchief. Now I chewed on my moustache as she tended my burn, and pondered what to say. I wanted to blurt out everything—how Akushku had escaped us once again, how our every move thus far had been betrayed by a turncoat I still had not identified, how the days to the funeral were hurtling by and disaster was nearly upon us and how every scrap of evidence I’d found had crumbled to ashes in my hands. How I had very nearly ended up as ashes myself.
“I have,” I said. “It was Angela that led us to that place.”
Amelia paused and looked up, concerned. “She’s still mixed up with that…man?”
“I asked her not to get involved, but…”
“What happened?”
The informant, whoever it was, would not have had time to send word to Akushku before we arrived. But somehow the anarchist had learned of the danger, and torched his hideout, and fled with only moments to spare. The only person who’d known I was coming was Angela.
What if it was she who’d torched the place?
The thought bubbled up like fetid gas from the depths of my mind, by now a swamp of suspicion, despair and exhaustion. I examined the theory all the same, before dismissing it as absurd. Why tip us off about Akushku’s hideout, only to burn it before we got there?
The alternative was far more likely, and even more grim. She would keep watch, her note had said. And she had, and Akushku had spotted her, and caught her, and wrung from her that we were on our way; and now it seemed a near certainty that her body had been beneath that pile of timber soaked in oil and set ablaze.
“I don’t know,” was all I said. Amelia sighed and shook her head. Perhaps she did not believe me, but she knew better than to press. She was still a moment; then she covered up the butter-dish and, rising up, put it away in the pantry and tucked the muslin cloth into the pocket of her apron.
“I’ll run you a bath,” she said quietly. She picked up my coat from the back of the chair where I’d thrown it—I’d come in too shattered and dazed even to hang it on its hook by the door. “Will this need mending?”
“I haven’t looked,” I said.
“Wear your blue gaberdine till I’ve cleaned it.” She sniffed the fabric, and recoiled. “And aired it.” She started going through the pockets, but at the very first one stopped, and drew out the frond of fern I’d found in the burning workshop. I’d forgotten all about it; it was crumpled now and crushed almost beyond recognition.
“I found that,” I said, stupidly. Why had I picked it up at all—some vague sense of it being an anomaly, like that blasted fan on Angela’s wall? Amelia smoothed out the foliage, and lifting it to her nose drew in its scent. I could smell nothing myself except scorched cloth and singed hair.
“Forbidden love,” she said, almost absently.
“What’s that?”
“When Mary and Theresa and I were girls,” said Amelia, “we’d spend hours composing bouquets that told stories. The language of flowers, you know? Silly stuff, but…” She smiled, sadly and wistfully; was she thinking of some childhood beau? “Maidenhair fern means forbidden love. Where did you find this?”
I did not answer. I was staring at her. I might have blinked; because amid the darkness and chaos and confusion and choking smoke, a feeble beam of light had broken through, and at last I thought I could see.
“Damn me for a fool,” I said.
19
The morning sunlight through the windows of St. James’s Palace lit up countless dust motes, swirling in the air above my head as I stood waiting in the long panelled anteroom under the medieval rafters. In this ancient place, I realised, I was looking at the dust of kings, dancing in the draught. How did that quote from Hamlet go?
Imperious Caesar, dead and turn’d to clay
Might stop a hole to keep the wind away
I shivered, and tried to push that thought to the back of my mind. At that moment the door clicked and swung open, and His still-living Majesty the King entered. Something about his posture had changed, I noticed; it was as if the title of Emperor obliged him to stand up more straight.
“Melville! Dashed early for a conference. I thought our briefing wasn’t until this afternoon?”
On closer inspection I could see His Majesty had made haste to join me. Although his black mourning suit was beautifully cut, his tie was a little crooked and there were toast crumbs adhering to his trouser legs, remnants of his breakfast. Queen Alexandra was in Sandringham—which was just as well, given the nature of the conversation I was about to have—and Ross now materialised at the King’s elbow. By the way he was twitching he must have been aware that his master’s appearance was less than immaculate, but at that moment I didn’t give a fig for appearances. I had waited too long for this audience as it was. All the same I took a breath and composed my thoughts; this meeting would call for some delicacy.
“Your Majesty, I think it advisable that our conversation should take place in private.” I looked at Ross and smiled broadly, hoping to draw the sting from my request. Ross showed not the slightest reaction, of course, but Edward seemed to take umbrage on his behalf.
“Don’t be absurd, old man—this is Ross.”
“Nevertheless, Your Majesty.”
I said no more, but merely waited. One cannot command royalty, nor even the lowliest member of a king’s retinue, but there are ways of encouraging compliance. Edward scowled, clearly puzzled and irritated, but turned and gave Ross a brusque nod. His man departed as inconspicuously as he’d arrived. When the latch of the massive oak door clicked behind him, the King turned to me with a glare that said, Well?
“Your Majesty knows that my men and I are currently trying to apprehend the anarchist known as Akushku, who intends to disrupt the funeral.” “Disrupt” was quite the euphemism, but Edward knew that as well as I did.
“Well, of course. I’ve been reading your reports.”
“Your Majesty may not be aware, however, that our operations have been compromised.”
“Compromised? What d’you mean, compromised?” Without thinking he had pulled his cigarette case from an inside pocket, but realising only now that Ross was not there to offer him a light, he put it away again. The King was a slave to his urges; that’s why I was there.
“The men we seek have somehow gained access to sensitive information about our work. Two of my detectives were keeping a house under surveillance, hoping to catch Akushku. Instead he ambushed and murdered them. He knew they were watching him.”
“Yes, I read your report about that. Shocking business, horrible.” The King seemed momentarily lost for words. “I’m very sorry, Melville. I know how fond you are of your men.”
“Thank you, sir. We’ve been trying to trace Akushku’s source, but with no luck, thus far.”
Now the King saw where this was going, and his sympathy turned to indignation. “You’re coming to me with this? Damn it, Melville—you’re not suggesting it’s someone in my own household?”
“Not in your household, sir, no.”
“Can’t see how it could be. None of them have any access to my private papers. Not even Ross, and I trust him with all manner of…” He stopped, and finished feebly, “I mean, I trust him implicitly.”
“Sir, I regret to say it, but I suspect an acquaintance of yours is responsible. Someone wh
o encouraged you to discuss my reports.”
“Hang it all, Melville, I’m not an utter cretin. I never discuss anything in your reports with anyone, not even the Privy Council. I wouldn’t even if they asked. And if they did ask I’d damn’ well want to know why.”
“Nevertheless, Your Majesty—”
“It’s simply out of the question.” Agitated, the King drew out his cigarette case again, looked around for a light and seeing the massive fire roaring in the grate strode over to it. “I don’t mean to tell you your job,” he boomed, “but I do think you’ve got the wrong end of the stick. Ten to one the problem will be somewhere in Scotland Yard—some cleaning lady or clerk, I shouldn’t wonder.” He held his cigarette’s tip over a tongue of flame. I paused, and took a deep breath. Interrogating emperors is a delicate business.
“Lord Diamond is a close friend of Your Majesty.”
“Diamond? I don’t discuss affairs of state with him. Not that he’s ever been interested.” Edward sucked on the lit cigarette and peered at the end to check it was drawing.
“And his wife, Lady Diamond? Has she ever been interested?”
In the pause that followed we could hear nothing but the cracking of the fire, the distant rattle of traffic and the cries of the street-vendors in nearby Pall Mall. I waited, saying nothing. His Majesty had understood.
“Lady Diamond?” he said at last, affecting nonchalance, badly. His voice was suddenly thin, lacking any of its earlier conviction. I waited some more; I had no intention of letting him off the hook. “I know the lady, of course, but…she wouldn’t—that is, I wouldn’t…She is a friend, yes, a close acquaintance, but…”
Now at last I could see him thinking it through. He licked his lips, uncertain of how to proceed, and I might have felt a twinge of pity, had his misjudgement not cost me so much in blood. “We have talked,” the King conceded. “That is…I may have confided in her, yes.”
“Might I ask, sir, precisely what you confided in her?”
“Good God, Melville. It’s absurd, it’s out of the question. The lady is loyal, utterly devoted, she’s proved that—often—”
I’m sure she has, I thought, and he could see me thinking that, and he blushed crimson. But he carried on justifying himself all the same. It was a song I’d often heard guilty men sing, every refrain another nail hammered into the scaffold. “Yes, I’ve discussed some of these details with Lady Diamond. She’s a most intelligent woman, a good friend, as I said, and I value her advice, and I have complete confidence in her.”
“Is Your Majesty currently in correspondence with her?” I wasn’t talking about billets-doux.
“I have seen her quite recently, yes, but our conversations were purely—damn it all, Melville!”
He had stumbled at the word “conversations,” and I wasn’t surprised. “Criminal conversation” was the legal term for adultery, and Edward was a keen conversationalist. When he was a student at Cambridge, his dalliance with an actress had caused a public scandal, and his father had travelled up there to lay down the law. The Prince Consort caught a bad chill on that trip, and two weeks later contracted typhoid, and a week after that he was dead. Heartbroken, Victoria had blamed her son for his father’s death, and never truly forgiven him, and it had made not a whit of difference to his behaviour.
His wife, Alexandra, to her credit, put up with Edward’s countless affairs, and I as his bodyguard refrained from passing judgement; my priority was the King’s safety. But second only to that was the safety of the men who worked under me, and now Edward’s weakness had cost two of them their lives. For the first time, it seemed, King Edward saw that too: he drew his hand down his face as if sweeping away cobwebs, or pulling off a blindfold. He was mortified, and momentarily lost for words.
“We have reason to believe, sir, that she and this terrorist Akushku know each other. That they may even have been intimate, at some point. And that they might still be.”
“Dear God. Are you absolutely certain about this, Melville?” If he was seeking forgiveness or reassurance, I was in the mood for neither.
“I would never voice such an accusation without good reason, sir. And if as you say you have discussed our operations with her, you have just confirmed my fears. Might I ask, have you arranged to see the lady again?”
“I—yes. Tonight, in fact. But I’ll get Ross to make some excuse. I’ve done that often enough, she won’t suspect…” He tossed his half-smoked cigarette into the fire and watched it flare and burn, shaking his head in disbelief. “If you are right—I’ve been the most pitiful ass. Two of your men dead? It never occurred to me that Valeriya…I am truly sorry, Melville. You know I actually felt—” He stopped before he could humiliate himself any further, and I didn’t press him. It was pointless; when colleagues have died, apologies are worth little, even royal apologies. I felt neither pity for Edward in his embarrassment, nor anger. Too late for either.
“We must find how she’s been passing on the information,” I said. “I doubt she meets this man in person—that would be far too risky for both of them.”
“Will this matter become public knowledge?”
“Absolutely not, sir, if I can help it.”
He was worried about scandal, of course, but we’d deal with that when we had to. The absolute priority was to prevent Akushku learning we had identified his informant; for the first time in this endless nightmare we would have the advantage.
“Everything you and I have discussed will remain absolutely confidential. There are lives at stake.” Including his own, I did not need to add. Edward nodded.
“Understood, Melville. And—thank you, I suppose.”
I bowed, briefly. “At Your Majesty’s service, as always. If I might be excused?”
Edward tried a smile. “Good luck, old man.” He made it sound as if I was going out on a fox hunt. Which I suppose I was.
* * *
—
My cab was waiting in the freezing palace courtyard, its horse stamping and shaking its mane, the driver seated above, blowing on his gloved hands. “Back to Scotland Yard,” I barked at him. There was no time for niceties. I nearly fell over as the hansom lurched out of the courtyard into the teeming traffic of St. James’s Street, heading south.
“Well?” Even inside the cab it was so cold Steinhauer’s breath was condensing in clouds.
“It is as I feared,” I said. It would be futile, I’d decided, to try and hide this development from Steinhauer—he was too shrewd to be long deceived, and I would need his help for what came next.
“Hm,” grunted Steinhauer. “Ironic that your King sent you to save my Emperor, when he has been the one endangering him.”
“The danger comes from Akushku,” I said, trying not to sound defensive. “The King and the Kaiser will ride together at the funeral. If my master has endangered yours, he has also endangered himself.”
Steinhauer nodded. “This is true,” he said. “I suppose then we are even.” He smiled at my grim demeanour. “Chin up, William. Now we have a chance. This insight of yours…it was inspired.”
“If you say so, Gustav.” But I felt grubby all the same.
* * *
—
“One of the maids left the house at nine,” said Johnson in his customary drone. “A girl of about twenty, slight build, mousy-coloured hair.”
“Lady Diamond’s maid,” I said. There were four of us—myself, Steinhauer, Quinn and Connolly—gathered in my office listening to Johnson’s report.
“We followed the young lady to the offices of the Pall Mall Gazette, where she visited the Classifieds desk and tried to place an advertisement in the Personal columns.”
“Tried to? You didn’t intercept her?” said Quinn.
“Of course not, sir,” said Johnson, unruffled. “We watched her pay for the insertion, then Digby followed her back to Berk
eley Square, while I made myself known to the newspaper’s editor. I have the advertisement here, sir.”
He produced a crisp, heavy-laid envelope already slit open. I took it from him—no call for cotton gloves this time—tugged the note out and unfolded it. “Dearest Wilhelmina,” I read. “A very happy birthday, with fondest love from all the family.” The handwriting was an elegant copperplate.
“I did ask, sir,” said Johnson, “if that particular young lady had placed any adverts there in the past few weeks.”
“And?”
“Seven days ago she placed a similar message, sir. I tracked it down.” He flicked to the next page of his notebook. “ ‘Dear Uncle Quentin, happy birthday from your devoted niece Lily.’ ”
“Seven days ago?” asked Quinn.
“From Q to W is seven letters,” said Steinhauer. We all looked at him, and the young German looked vaguely apologetic, as if he’d laid down a piece in someone else’s jigsaw puzzle. “It’s possible Lady Diamond is sending messages through a different newspaper or magazine every day,” he explained, “in a sequence previously agreed.”
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