Inspector of the Dead

by David Morrell

  “If His Lordship had notified me that he intended to have guests use his pew, I could have prepared it for you,” Agnes explained. “The charcoal brazier hasn’t been lit.”

  “Thank you,” the young woman assured her, “but there’s no need to give us heat. This is far more comfortable than we’re accustomed to at our home church in Edinburgh. We can’t afford to rent a pew there. We stand in the back.”

  So she’s from Scotland, Agnes thought. And one of the men is Irish. That explains a great deal.

  Lord Palmerston’s box had three rows of benches with backs. The two tall men sat on the middle bench while the woman and her father occupied the front one. Even when he was seated, the little man’s feet moved up and down.

  With a forced nod of politeness, Agnes jangled her keys and proceeded to the back of the church, where a churchwarden shifted toward her, looking as puzzled as Agnes felt.

  “You know who that little man is, don’t you?” the churchwarden whispered, trying to contain his astonishment.

  “I haven’t the faintest. All I know is, his clothes need mending,” Agnes replied.

  “The Opium-Eater.”

  Again, Agnes was certain that she hadn’t heard correctly. “The Opium-Eater? Thomas De Quincey?”

  “In December, when all the murders happened, I saw a picture of him in the Illustrated London News. I was so curious that I went to one of the bookshops where the newspaper said he would sign books for anyone who bought them. An undignified way to earn a living, if you ask me.”

  “Don’t tell me he was signing the book.” Agnes lowered her voice, referring to the infamous Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.

  “If his name was on it and someone was willing to buy it, he was ready to sign it. That scandalously dressed woman is his daughter. At the bookshop, whenever he tried to pull a bottle from his coat, she brought him a cup of tea to distract him.”

  “Mercy,” Agnes said. “Do you suppose the bottle contained laudanum?”

  “What else? He must have drunk five cups of tea while I watched him. Imagine how much laudanum he would have consumed if his daughter hadn’t been there. I hope I don’t need to emphasize that I didn’t buy any of his books.”

  “No need at all. Who would want to read his wretched scribblings, let alone buy them? Thomas De Quincey, the Opium-Eater, in St. James’s Church? Heaven help us.”

  “That’s not the whole of it.”

  Agnes listened with greater shock.

  “Those two men with the Opium-Eater. One of them is a Scotland Yard detective.”

  “Surely not.”

  “I recognize him from the constitutional I take every morning along Piccadilly. My route leads me past Lord Palmerston’s mansion, where the younger man over there visits each day at nine. I heard a porter refer to him as ‘detective sergeant.’”

  “A detective sergeant? My word.”

  “I also heard the porter and the detective talk about another detective, who apparently was wounded during the murders in December. That other detective has been convalescing in Lord Palmerston’s mansion. The Opium-Eater and his daughter stay there, also.”

  Agnes felt her cheeks turn pale. “What is this world coming to?”

  But Agnes couldn’t permit herself to be distracted. The special visitor would soon arrive. Meanwhile, gentlemen gave her impatient looks, waiting for their pews to be unlocked. She clutched her ring of keys and approached the nearest frowning group, but as if the morning hadn’t brought enough surprises, she suddenly saw Death walk through the front door.

  The mid-Victorian way of death was severe. A grieving widow, children, and close relatives were expected to seclude themselves at home and wear mourning clothes for months—in the widow’s case for at least a year and a day.

  Thus Agnes gaped at what she now encountered. Astonished churchgoers stepped away from a stern, pinch-faced man whose frock coat, waistcoat, and trousers were as black as black could be. Because Queen Victoria and Prince Albert disapproved of men who wore other than black, gray, or dark blue clothing, it was difficult to look more somber than the male attendees at St. James’s, but the stranger made the glumly dressed men in the church look festive by comparison. In addition, he wore the blackest of gloves while he held a top hat with a mourning band and a black cloth hanging down the back.

  A man whose clothing announced that extremity of grief was almost never seen in public, except at the funeral for the loved one he so keenly mourned. Dressed that way at a Sunday service, he attracted everyone’s attention.

  But he wasn’t alone. He supported a frail woman whose stooped posture suggested that she was elderly. She wore garments intended to show the deepest of sorrow. Her dress was midnight crepe, the wrinkled surface of which could not reflect light. A black veil hung from the woman’s black bonnet. With a black-gloved hand, she dabbed a black handkerchief under the veil.

  “Please unlock Lady Cosgrove’s pew,” the solemn man told Agnes.

  “Lady Cosgrove?” Agnes suddenly realized who this woman was. “My goodness, what happened?”

  “Please,” the man repeated.

  “But Lady Cosgrove sent word that she wouldn’t attend this morning’s service. I haven’t readied her pew.”

  “Lady Cosgrove has more grievous concerns than whether her pew has been dusted.”

  Without waiting for a reply, the man escorted the unsteady woman along the center aisle. Again Agnes heard whispers and sensed that every pair of eyes was focused on her. She reached the front of the church and turned toward the right, passing the Opium-Eater and his strangely dressed companions in Lord Palmerston’s pew. The little man continued to move his feet up and down.

  The next pew at the front was Lady Cosgrove’s. Situated along the right wall, it was the most elaborate in the church. Over the centuries, it had acquired a post at each corner and a canopy above them. Curtains were tied to the posts so that in the event of cold drafts, Lady Cosgrove’s family could draw the curtains and be sheltered on three sides while facing the altar. Even on a warm day, the occupants had been known to draw the curtains, supposedly so that they could worship without feeling observed by the other parishioners when in actuality they were probably napping.

  As Agnes unlocked the pew, Lady Cosgrove lowered her black handkerchief from beneath her black veil.

  “Thank you,” she told the pinch-featured man.

  “Anything to be of assistance, Lady Cosgrove. I’m deeply sorry.”

  He gave her a black envelope.

  Lady Cosgrove nodded gravely, entered the pew, and sank onto the first of three benches.

  Hearing a discreet cough, Agnes noticed that the vicar stood in a doorway near the altar, ready to begin the service. At once the church’s organ began playing “The Son of God Goes Forth to War,” the choir’s voices reverberating off the arched ceiling. With a rumble, everyone stood. Followed by the funereal attendant, Agnes made her way to the back of the church, where she turned to ask about Lady Cosgrove’s distress, but to her surprise, whichever way she looked, the somber man was no longer visible.

  Where on earth could he possibly have gone? Agnes wondered. What she did see, however, was the scarlet coat of the special visitor who waited in the vestibule, and with so much excitement, Agnes had difficulty calming the rush of her heart.

  “The Son of God goes forth to war / A kingly crown to gain.”

  Amid the rising chords of the majestic hymn, the Reverend Sam­uel Hardesty made his way to the altar, bowed to it, and turned toward his congregation.

  Proudly, he scanned his domain: the servants and commoners standing at the back, the wealthy and the noble seated in their pews. Any moment, the special visitor would appear. With a smile that he hoped hid his confusion, the vicar noticed four poorly dressed people, obviously not residents of Mayfair, who inexplicably occupied Lord Palmerston’s pew.

  To his farther left was Lady Cosgrove’s pew. The vicar was shocked to see her wearing the blackest of bereavement
garments. She unsealed a black envelope and read its contents through her veil. In despair, she rose, untied the curtain at the back of her pew, and pulled it across. She drew the other curtains forward.

  Her grief now hidden from everyone except the vicar, she knelt at the front of her pew and rested her brow on its partition.

  A glimpse of scarlet made the vicar swing his attention toward the back of the church.

  The scarlet became larger, brighter. A fair-haired, handsome man emerged from the crowd. He wore an army officer’s uniform, its brass buttons gleaming. While his erect posture conveyed discipline and resolve, his elegant features were pensive, his intelligent eyes pained, suggesting that his resolve came at a price, the most obvious sign of which was his wounded right arm, which he supported in a sling. A beautiful young woman and her parents accompanied him.

  This special visitor was Colonel Anthony Trask. All of London was abuzz about his bravery in the Crimean War—how he had single-handedly dispatched thirty of the enemy at the siege of Se­vastopol. After emptying his musket, he had used his bayonet to lead a victorious charge up a blood-drenched slope. He had rallied weary troops and repelled a half-dozen enemy attacks, and if that wasn’t extraordinary enough, he had saved the life of the queen’s cousin, the Duke of Cambridge, when the enemy surrounded the duke’s unit.

  Upon his return to London, Queen Victoria had knighted Trask. The Times reported that when she addressed him with his new title as “Sir,” the colonel had asked the queen to keep calling him by his military rank “in honor of all the valiant soldiers I fought with and especially those who died in this blasted war.” When the queen blanched at so vulgar a word as “blasted,” Trask had quickly added, “Forgive my language, Your Majesty. It’s a habit from the years I spent building railways.” Trask hadn’t only physically built railways, but he and his father also owned them and made a fortune from them. Rich, handsome, a hero—privately, it was said, young noblemen hated his perfection.

  As the hymn reverberated, the group reached the front of the church. After Agnes hurried to unlock the pew, Colonel Trask followed his beautiful companion and her parents inside.

  The organ extended the hymn’s final chord. St. James’s fell into a noble silence.

  The Reverend Samuel Hardesty smiled broadly. “My deepest welcome to everyone, with a more-than-special welcome to Colonel Trask. His heroism inspires us all.”

  Some parishioners raised their hands as if to applaud but then remembered where they were.

  The vicar shifted his gaze to the left, toward Lady Cosgrove. “Whenever our burdens become too great, consider the hardships that our brave soldiers endure. If they can be strong, we can also.”

  Flanked by curtains, Lady Cosgrove remained kneeling with her forehead against the front of her pew.

  “There is no calamity with which God tests us that we cannot bear. When we have the Lord on our side…”

  A glimpse of scarlet made the vicar pause. But this time it wasn’t the scarlet of Colonel Trask’s uniform. Instead it was liquid on the floor in front of Lady Cosgrove’s pew.

  The vicar’s hesitation caused a few puzzled whispers.

  “Indeed, with the Lord on our side…”

  The scarlet liquid was spreading. Its source was the bottom of the entrance to Lady Cosgrove’s pew. Had Her Ladyship spilled something? the vicar wondered. Might she have brought a container of medicine that she had accidentally dropped?

  Lady Cosgrove shifted, inexplicably moving in two directions.

  Her black-veiled face tilted upward while the remainder of her body slid downward.

  “My God!” the vicar exclaimed.

  Up and back went Lady Cosgrove’s head, and now the vicar saw her mouth, but the mouth became wider and deeper—and great heaven, that wasn’t Lady Cosgrove’s mouth. No mouth was ever that wide and red.

  Her throat was gashed from ear to ear, and her veiled face was now angled so far back that it stared impossibly toward the ceiling while the rest of her kept sinking.

  “No!”

  The vicar lurched from the altar. Pointing in a frenzy, he saw that the scarlet pool was spreading even wider.

  The gaping slit in Lady Cosgrove’s throat grew wider also, deepening as her head tilted farther back, threatening to fall from her body.

  The Reverend Samuel Hardesty screamed.

  From the Journal of Emily De Quincey

  After last night’s fog, a strong breeze cleared this morning’s sky. The only thing brighter than the sun was Lord Palmerston’s eager smile as he greeted us for what he clearly hoped would be the last time.

  Glad to be rid of us, one of the most powerful politicians in England shook our hands heartily as we reached the ground floor of his mansion. Despite the war crisis that had caused the government to collapse, Lord Palmerston’s voice was enthusiastic.

  “Pressing national matters prevent me from being here when you return from church.” His aged eyes were bright next to his brown-dyed sideburns. “But be assured that your bags will be waiting for you, and my coach will most certainly be ready to transport you to the railway station.”

  Following the murders in December, it had been Lord Palmerston’s idea for Father and me to stay in the top-floor servants’ quarters of his mansion while we recovered. He had also insisted that Inspector Ryan stay there while his wounds healed. None of us was deluded into believing that His Lordship’s motive was selfless. A former war secretary and foreign secretary, he was now home secretary, the supervisor of almost everything that took place in England, particularly matters of national security and the police. I sensed his worry that, during our investigation, we might have learned secrets that could compromise him. He found frequent opportunities to ask seemingly innocent questions, the answers to which might reveal whether we knew things we shouldn’t.

  But the answers failed to enlighten him, and after seven weeks, I cannot blame him for urging us, in the politest way, to leave. Indeed I’m surprised that he tolerated us as long as he did, or rather that he tolerated Father, whose incessant pacing as a way of controlling his laudanum intake clearly aggravated His Lordship’s nerves.

  A few nights ago, as St. James’s bell tolled three, I went down to the ballroom to collect Father where he marched back and forth, his footsteps echoing throughout the dark mansion.

  Pausing just outside the ballroom’s entrance, I saw Lord Palmerston—in a robe, with a three-flamed candelabrum in one hand—confronting Father.

  “Good God, man, doesn’t the opium make you sleepy?”

  “On the contrary. According to Brunonian medicine—”

  “Brunonian medicine? What the devil is that?”

  “John Brown developed his Brunonian system at Edinburgh University. When you studied there, My Lord, perhaps you heard of his Elementa Medicinae.”

  “I heard nothing about Brunonianism whatsoever.”

  “It maintains that physicians invent ways to make medicine seem complicated in order to delude ordinary people into believing that physicians are more learned than they truly are.”

  “Not only physicians but also lawyers and politicians inflate themselves. Finally you make sense,” Lord Palmerston said.

  Observing from the dark hallway outside the ballroom, I flinched when I felt someone next to me. Turning quickly, I discovered that Lady Palmerston had joined me. The light from Lord Palmerston’s candelabrum reached just far enough for me to see her wrinkled, troubled features under her nightcap. I expected her to scowl at me for eavesdropping. But in fact, her look indicated that she worried about His Lordship’s pensive late hours as much as I worried about Father’s.

  We exchanged nods and turned toward the conversation in the ballroom.

  “My Lord, the Brunonian system concludes that illness comes from a lack of stimulation or else too much of it. When these polarities are in balance, good health is the consequence,” Father said.

  “At the moment…” Lord Palmerston sounded exhausted as he set the c
andelabrum on a table, then continued, “I suffer from too much stimulation.”

  “Because of the war and the collapse of the government, My Lord? Your responsibilities must be considerable.”

  “Talking about the war gives me a headache. Please answer me. Some people die from a spoonful of laudanum, but you drink ounces of it, and you’re not only walking around—you never stop walking. Why doesn’t the opium make you tired?”

  “The Brunonian system considers opium to be a stimulant, My Lord. It’s the most powerful of all the agents that support life and restore health.”

  “Ha.”

  “That is the truth, My Lord. When I was a university student and first swallowed laudanum to remedy illness, the increase in my energy was palpable. I suddenly had the strength to wander the city for miles on end. In markets and on crowded streets, I heard the details of countless conversations all around me. When I went to concerts, I heard notes between notes and soared with unimagined crests in the melodies. The reason I pace is to reduce opium’s stimulation to a beneficial level.”

  “What I’d like to reduce is this confounding headache.”

  In the shadows outside the ballroom, Lady Palmerston clutched my arm.

  “If I may suggest…” Father pulled his laudanum bottle from his coat pocket. “This will relieve your headache.”

  “The queen dislikes me so much, she’d be only too happy if she learned that I drank opium with you.”

  “One sip will not create a habit, My Lord. But if you won’t accept the benefit of laudanum, I recommend that you walk with me. At best, the activity will balance your nervous congestion. At worst, it will make you sleepy.”