*
Blackstone paced fretfully up and down a short strip on the Embankment in front of the public telephone box.
Why didn’t she ring? he asked himself for perhaps the hundredth time. Why didn’t she bloody ring?
Because she might already be in trouble, a nagging voice in the corner of his brain whispered. Because she might already be dead!
The screech of the telephone bell cut through the still air, and shook him to the core. He flung the door of the kiosk open, and grabbed at the receiver.
‘Is that you, Sam?’ asked a voice at the other end of the line.
‘It’s me.’
‘You were right about Dalton. He left his coach and walked on foot to an office on Fenchurch Street. It’s—’
‘It’s the Empire Living Pictures Company,’ Blackstone interrupted.
‘How did you know?’
‘That doesn’t matter now,’ Blackstone said. ‘Listen very carefully, Hannah. I want you to get away from Fenchurch Street as fast as you possibly can. Go somewhere you know you’ll be safe. A friend’s house—someone Turgenev isn’t likely to know about.’
‘But why—?’
‘Just do it!’ Blackstone snapped.
He slammed the mouthpiece of the telephone back on to its cradle, cursing his own stupidity.
The purpose of Turgenev’s trip to Afghanistan all those years ago. The Jubilee celebrations. And Empire Living Pictures. They all fitted together so perfectly that he should have seen the pattern the moment he’d talked to Dobkins and Wottle.
But he hadn’t. Only now did he understand the enormity of what was being planned—and he was far from sure that he would be in time to stop it.
Thirty-Two
As the hour of the Thanksgiving Service drew ever closer, the few people who had been on Fenchurch Street drifted away towards St Paul’s, and by the time Blackstone reached Philpot Lane the street was completely deserted—save for the attractive woman with black eyes and black curled hair who was standing a few doors up from Empire Living Pictures.
‘What in God’s name are you still doing here?’ Blackstone gasped angrily. ‘I told you to find somewhere safe to hide!’
‘The situation has somewhat changed since I rang you,’ Hannah said, her voice eerily calm. ‘You no longer have just Lord Dalton to deal with. Turgenev and two of his henchmen are here now. You will need help.’
‘From you?’ Blackstone asked incredulously.
‘From me,’ Hannah confirmed.
Blackstone shook his head. ‘You have no idea just how dangerous these people are. There’d be nothing you could do against them, and you’d only get in my way when I tried to do something.’
‘Do you have a gun?’ Hannah asked.
‘Yes.’
‘So do I. And I am an excellent shot.’
‘Those men in there are not targets on a range. You’d never be able to bring yourself to—’
‘To kill them?’ Hannah interrupted. ‘There was a man in Petersburg who thought I would never pull the trigger. They buried him the next day.’
This was insane, Blackstone thought. It was as if he were only now seeing the real Hannah. And he didn’t have the time to deal with it—didn’t have time to come to terms with the fact that this woman whom he loved had turned out to be a complete stranger.
‘If I let you come in with me, you must promise to stay near the door,’ he said.
‘All right.’
‘And to get out if anything goes wrong.’
‘If I am with you, nothing will go wrong,’ Hannah said confidently.
Blackstone sighed. ‘Then if we are going to do it, let’s get it over with,’ he said.
*
The royal procession turned down Constitution Hill. Seven times, in her long reign, there had been assassination attempts on the Queen, and twice they had taken place on Constitution Hill.
The first had also been on a June day like this one, June 10th 1840. She had been three months pregnant with Vicky, and she and Albert had been driving to Belgrave Square to see her mother. They’d been in an open droshky when they’d heard a loud explosion, and turning their heads, they’d seen a small man holding a pistol in each hand. Albert, dear Albert, had pushed her to the floor of the carriage, so that the second bullet had flown over her head, and the would-be killer had soon been surrounded and rendered harmless by passers-by. Dark rumours circulated that Edward Oxford—for that was the man’s name—had been hired by the King of Hanover, who would have succeeded to the British throne if Victoria had died, but the police found no evidence of such a link, and the man was judged by the courts to be criminally insane, then locked away in a lunatic asylum.
The second attempt came two years later, and the would-be killer—John Francis—selected almost the same spot as Oxford had chosen. He too, pleaded insanity, but had been sentenced to death—a sentence that was later commuted to a lifetime of transportation.
The Queen doubted that either of them had been insane. They had been nothing more than hateful little men with a grudge against society, which they thought they could assuage by killing their monarch. Victoria brushed aside thoughts of such unpleasant incidents, and turned her mind, instead, to the way Constitution Hill looked on that very special day.
The hill was lined with raised seats, on which the rich and powerful would have paid a fortune to sit. But those privileged to witness the start of the procession were neither rich nor powerful. One section of seats was filled by the Queen’s servants and personal attendants—as well as those from other royal households. Another section was occupied by the Chelsea Pensioners, old or disabled soldiers who lived in the Royal Hospital established as a home for them in 1682 by Charles II. And then there were the children—pupils from the Duke of York’s and Greenwich schools—who waved their Union Jacks furiously and cheered her at the top of their thin voices.
Later the Queen would pass in front of the National Gallery, where a special stand had been erected so that the peers of the House of Lords—dressed in their ermine and coronets—would have their chance to show as much enthusiasm as the children had done. Later still, after the service in front of St Paul’s, she would cross the river to the poorer part of London.
Victoria approved wholeheartedly with the way things had been planned—she was the queen of the whole nation, from the highest to the lowest, and it was only right that the whole nation should get the opportunity to see her.
Standing in front of the offices of Empire Living Pictures, Blackstone glanced quickly up and down the empty street. There was not a soul in sight. No one to be alarmed by what he was about to do—but no one to raise the alarm if anything went wrong, either.
He turned to Hannah. ‘I’m going to kick the door in,’ he whispered. ‘While they’re still in shock, we should have about two seconds to make our move. Don’t waste them!’
‘I won’t.’
Blackstone tensed himself. It was vitally important to smash the lock with the first kick. Because if he failed, the men inside would he forewarned and ready for them—and both he and Hannah would be as good as dead.
He slammed his boot into the door, and felt the lock give way. In the moment it took the door to creak its protest and swing open, he corrected his balance and stepped into the room.
Blackstone quickly scanned from side to side—assessing the situation, deciding where danger was most likely to come from. It wouldn’t come from Wottle and Dobkins, that was for certain—men with their throats slit rarely cause trouble. But as Hannah had told him, there were four other men in the room.
Dalton and Turgenev were standing in one corner, as if, a moment earlier, they had been deep in a private conversation. Turgenev’s two thugs were bending over the workbench, adapting the cameras to the task for which they were to be used.
‘If anybody moves, I’ll kill him!’ Blackstone shouted.
He sensed—rather than saw—Hannah slip into the room, and move slightly to his right.
The Count turned towards her, and a look of total amazement came to his face.
‘You!’ he gasped.
‘Me!’ Hannah replied, with a note of triumph in her voice.
Something was terribly wrong here, Blackstone told himself. Why should Turgenev be shocked to see Hannah with him, when he’d already seen them together at the boxing match? But he hadn’t, had he? All he had seen had been the Inspector and a woman wearing a veil!
‘How is it you know each other?’ he demanded.
‘I am a member of the Okhrana—the Russian secret police,’ Turgenev told him. ‘Back in St Petersburg, we have an extensive file on this woman. She is a well-known criminal.’
Blackstone wished he could turn to look at Hannah’s face, but he dared not take his eyes off Turgenev and Dalton even for a second.
‘Is this true, Hannah?’ he asked, out of the corner of his mouth.
‘I am a well-known revolutionary,’ Hannah replied. ‘And this man is no longer a member of the Okhrana. Even that foul organization did not have the stomach for his methods. He was expelled over a year ago.’
Lord Dalton had been looking very calm for a man whose complicity in at least three murders had just been uncovered, but this fresh news seemed to shake him.
‘You never told me you were kicked out!’ he said to Turgenev.
‘Why should I have done?’
‘Because I am as involved in this operation as you are, and I have the right to know!’
‘I did not tell my washerwoman, either,’ the Count said scornfully. ‘I pay her—just as I pay you—and that is all she needs to know.’ He turned his attention back to Blackstone. ‘You appear to have the upper hand for the moment, Inspector. How are we to resolve this situation?’
‘We resolve it by me arresting you,’ Blackstone told him. The Count shook his head. ‘That is not a good idea—and you know it. You tried arresting me once before. Remember?’
‘This time, I have solid evidence.’
The Count laughed. ‘Evidence!’ he repeated. ‘What good do you think your evidence will be against the word of a Russian count and an English lord?’ He paused for a second to let this thought sink into Blackstone’s mind, then said, ‘I think I have a better solution to our little difficulty.’
‘And what might that be?’
‘If you were to walk away now, and pretend to have seen nothing, I give you my word as a gentleman that when this is all over, I will see to it that you are paid ten thousand pounds.’
Blackstone felt outrage welling up inside him. ‘Is that what you paid him?’ he demanded, glancing at Dalton.
The Count laughed again. ‘Oh no. Much more than that. A noble lord has far greater needs than a humble police inspector does.’
But the noble lord did not look so noble any more. Since Turgenev had shown his contempt by comparing the other man with his washerwoman, Dalton’s shoulders had slumped and his face was set into a mask of misery.
‘Yet even though you would not make as much out of this as Dalton has, with ten thousand pounds in your pocket you could still live like a king for the rest of your days,’ the Count continued. ‘You’d be a fool not to take it, don’t you think?’
The contemptible offer was not even worthy of an answer, and instead, Blackstone turned his gaze—and his growing anger—on Lord Dalton.
‘For all your talk about honour and dignity, you’re no better than a common prostitute, offering yourself to the highest bidder,’ he said.
‘I wouldn’t expect a man like you to understand what a man like I will do for love,’ Dalton replied, regaining a little of his old spirit.
‘Will someone here please tell me exactly what’s going on?’ Hannah demanded.
‘They were planning to kill the Queen,’ Blackstone said.
‘Why?’
‘In Dalton’s case, it’s for the money.’
‘And Turgenev?’ Hannah said. ‘Why should he want to assassinate your queen?’
‘Why don’t you tell her, Count?’ Blackstone suggested.
‘Why not?’ Turgenev agreed. ‘Victoria is the glue which holds the British Empire together. To some of her subject peoples she is almost a god.’
‘But gods don’t get killed at the moment of their greatest triumph,’ Blackstone said. ‘Take away the mystery, and the colonies—especially India—would revolt.’
‘And even the lily-livered scum we have running Russia now would be forced to intervene on the side of the Indians,’ Turgenev said. ‘We could not do it openly, of course, but even our covert help would be enough to ensure that once the British were kicked out, we would be welcomed in as honoured guests. We would achieve our dream at last—the dream which has driven us for hundreds of years. We would own the keys to our house.’
Blackstone had sensed Hannah shifting as Turgenev spoke. Now he felt the barrel of her pistol pressing into his spine.
‘Hand over your gun to Count Turgenev,’ the Russian woman said, in a voice which somehow managed to combine sadness with authority.
‘Hannah—’ Blackstone protested.
‘Hand it over now, or I will kill you.’
This was no bluff. Blackstone was as sure as he’d ever been of anything that she meant every word she’d said. He held out the pistol, and Turgenev, looking perplexed, stepped forward to relieve him of it. Only when the Count had retreated again did the pressure of Hannah’s gun against Blackstone’s spine cease.
‘I want you to walk slowly to the far end of the room, Sam,’ the Russian woman said. ‘When you get there, you will face the corner, raise your arms above your head and place the palms of your hands flat against the wall. My pistol will be covering you at all times, and if you make the slightest wrong move, I will pull the trigger.’
Could this really be the charming, amusing woman he had spent most of the last few days with? Blackstone asked himself as he followed Hannah’s instructions. Was he such a fool as to have been completely taken in?
‘What has made you change sides?’ Turgenev asked Hannah.
‘As long as you get what you want, does that really matter?’ Hannah replied.
‘I suppose not,’ the Count said. ‘But it does seem strange that a revolutionary like you—’
‘You have already wasted five minutes,’ Hannah interrupted him. ‘If you are to succeed in your mission, you’d better move now.’
‘What about him?’ Dalton asked, pointing at Blackstone, prone against the wall.
‘I’ll take care of him,’ Hannah said.
‘He knows too much about my involvement in all this,’ Dalton said. ‘He has to die.’
‘I am well aware of that,’ Hannah answered. ‘And as I have already told you, I will take care of him.’
Thirty-Three
The closer the royal procession got to the cathedral, the slower it moved. Several times, when a particular section of the crowd broke out into ‘God Save the Queen’, it stopped completely. Queen Victoria did not mind the delay. After sixty long years of putting her country first, it was gratifying to now be harvesting that country’s tribute to her.
When the procession finally did reach the square in front of St Paul’s, the sight before her almost took the Queen’s breath away. Around the perimeter stood rank after rank of colonial troops. Indians, Canadians, Australians, Africans and Polynesians—there was not a race which was not represented. Mounted on horseback closer to the cathedral were senior officers from the Queen’s regiments—Royal Scots Greys in their busbies, Lancers and Royal Horse Guards in their plumed helmets, Hussars wearing their curious fur hats.
Victoria turned to look at the cathedral itself. There were perhaps a thousand people standing on the steps—dignitaries on the left and right wings, the massed choir and musicians in the centre. Beefeaters from the Tower of London, looking splendid in their crimson uniforms, were providing the honour guard, and both the Bishop of London and
the Archbishop of Canterbury were in attendance to conduct the proceedings.
It was a short service, as Victoria had requested, and because she was too lame to mount the cathedral steps, she stayed in her landau throughout it. A Te Deum, especially written for the occasion was sung, and the Queen found the Lord’s Prayer so beautiful that she was almost moved to tears. Then it was all over, and to the sound of renewed cheering the procession set off again for the Mansion House, where the Lady Mayoress would present the Queen with a silver basket full of orchids.
And after that, it would finally be time to show the people of Southwark their monarch.
*
From his position in the corner of the room, Blackstone had twice tried to talk to Hannah, but the Russian woman had ordered him to be silent—and since she was the one with the gun, silence had prevailed.
Now, after what he estimated had been more than three-quarters of an hour, he heard Hannah say, ‘You can turn around now, Sam. But please do it very, very slowly.’
He turned. Hannah was standing in the centre of the room, and had her pistol pointed directly at him. He calculated his chances of making a sudden dash at her and grabbing the gun—and quickly decided that he would be dead before he got halfway there.
‘Why, Hannah?’ he asked. ‘Why are you going to let that madman get away with it?’
‘Because, for once, his interests and ours coincide,’ the Russian woman said simply.
‘Ours?’
‘The group to which I belong.’
‘It can’t help you to have Britain lose India,’ Blackstone said.
‘No,’ Hannah agreed. ‘But there will be other consequences to the assassination.’
‘What other consequences?’
‘Once your government learns that a Russian was behind the death of your queen—and I will make sure that it does—there will no choice but for your country to go to war with mine. It will be a long and bloody war which will all but destroy both of them.’
‘And hundreds of thousands—perhaps even millions—of innocent people will die,’ Blackstone pointed out.
Blackstone and the Rendezvous With Death (The Blackstone Detective Series Book 1 Page 20