Inspector of the Dead

by David Morrell

  “You observed this at the risk of your own safety,” De Quincey noted.

  Russell gave a modest shrug. “Colonel Trask understood the importance of my dispatches and found places from which I could watch in relative safety. I emphasize ‘relative.’ I admit there was no place that was completely safe from Russian snipers and bombardment. Often I heard bullets zipping past me.”

  De Quincey peered down at his laudanum bottle. “There are many types of heroes.”

  “I am merely a reporter who seeks the truth.”

  “Sad truths and fearful ones,” De Quincey said.

  Becker emerged from the colonel’s bedroom. “I’m going to find Inspector Ryan and see if he needs help.”

  “Perhaps it would be more useful if you rested,” De Quincey told him. “Mr. Russell, you look fatigued also. It won’t be comfortable, but possibly you could sleep with your head on Colonel Trask’s desk.”

  “In the Crimea, I slept in the rain on cold, mud-covered slopes. By comparison this is luxurious. What about you? Don’t you intend to sleep?”

  “In my opium nightmares, all the regrets of my life haunt me. I struggle to avoid them by remaining awake as long as possible.”

  Continuing the Journal of Emily De Quincey

  The colonel’s body stayed rigid. His only movement was the agitated heaving of his chest, his chloroform sleep obviously troubled.

  Sitting next to his bed, I recalled when I had first met him in the horror at St. James’s Church. He had focused on me, frowning as if he’d seen me before but couldn’t remember when. The next time I met him, at the queen’s dinner, his expression had no longer indicated puzzlement. Instead he seemed pleased to see me again. At the table, he had shown me an unexpected kindness when he coughed to hide…

  Movement interrupted that fond memory. Father’s shadow entered the room. He sat next to me, his short legs not touching the floor. With tenderness, he put his hand on mine.

  “I’m sorry, Emily.”

  “Why? What’s wrong, Father?”

  But despite my question, I had a suspicion about what he meant.

  “In my Opium-Eater confessions, do you recall my description of how the drug made me able to hear the details of countless conversations all around me in crowded markets?”

  Something in me sank, my premonition confirmed.

  “You overheard what I told Joseph? I tried to keep my voice low, Father. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

  “You didn’t hurt me.”

  “But…”

  “Never apologize for speaking the truth, Emily. I know what I am. When I heard you say that you loved me in spite of everything, that you loved me with as full a heart as a daughter can have, my own heart broke. I can never thank you enough for watching over me. In many ways, you are the parent, and I am the child. I only wish that I had watched over you with as much devotion. I’m deeply sorry.”

  “Father, you often say that there’s no such thing as forgetting.”

  “Layers of images and feelings fall upon our memories. Each succession seems to bury what came before. But in reality, no memory is ever extinguished.”

  “But sometimes it’s worth at least trying to extinguish some of them,” I said.

  “Let us both try,” Father told me, holding my hand with greater affection.

  We sat in silence. The adjacent office became quiet, Joseph, William Russell, and the porter evidently having drifted off to sleep.

  As the morning’s light showed at the window, a sound made Father and me straighten: a murmur from the colonel, although I couldn’t determine exactly what he said. Perhaps the effect of the chloroform was what made his voice strangely different.

  For the first time in a long while, he moved his head from side to side. Then his body shifted, the effects of the anesthetic becoming weaker.

  With his eyes still closed, the colonel murmured again. “Cath…”

  The movement of his head became abrupt.

  “Catherine,” he said more distinctly.

  The anguish with which he spoke his dead fiancée’s name was palpable. But his voice had a disturbingly unfamiliar tone.

  A cold wave swept through me.

  “Catherine!” he groaned

  In shock, I raised a hand to my mouth. The colonel had an Irish accent.

  As he squirmed on the bed, slowly regaining consciousness, Father approached him and removed his blanket, exposing his undergarment.

  Self-conscious about the intimacy, I watched Father roll up the colonel’s right sleeve. That arm—which usually had a sling—revealed no sign of the wound that the colonel had discussed with the queen’s cousin before the dinner at the palace.

  Next, Father pulled up the left leg of the colonel’s undergarment. It revealed nothing remarkable. More self-conscious, I looked away from the colonel’s bare skin.

  But then Father pulled up the right leg of the colonel’s undergarment. Unable to continue looking away, I peered down at that leg and saw an ancient scar. It projected inward where, long ago, something had speared him.

  Abruptly, the colonel’s eyes opened. He looked at me with incomprehension. Then the terror of the previous night flooded through him. With a scream, he sat upright in panic, staring around wildly.

  He was in a bed, he realized. Where? Desperate to clear his thoughts, he saw that inexplicably Emily stood before him. So did her father.

  Hearing his scream, Sergeant Becker, William Russell, and another man rushed into the room.

  In a haze he recognized the other man as a porter in his building and understood that he was in the bedroom behind his office.

  “Colonel, it will take you a while to recover from the shock of last night,” Emily’s father said.

  Colonel?

  Yes.

  “Last night?” Bewildered, he looked around. “How did I get here? Why am I undressed? The last thing…”

  At once, blood-drenched images rushed through his mind, making him want to cry out.

  “Your memory will take a while to focus,” Becker said. “The chloroform has a lingering effect.”

  “Chloroform?” He hid his panic. “I was given chloroform?”

  “It was the only way to force you to rest.”

  What might I have said? he thought. Why were Emily’s eyes filled with shock? Why did her father seem to look at him with new awareness?

  “We’re sorry about your fiancée’s death,” Becker said.

  “Fiancée? No, no, no.” He gestured with violent emphasis. “That’s wrong. I didn’t have a fiancée.”

  “Colonel, please try to concentrate. Catherine Grantwood was—”

  “Not my fiancée.” He could barely force out the words. “My wife.”

  “Your wife?”

  Everyone became very still.

  The horror of it seized him. He’d lost his wife and…His mind ached so much that he pressed his hands against his head.

  “We married two months ago…before I went to the war…in case I didn’t return.”

  “But Catherine’s parents…”

  A sob shuddered through him. “…would never have allowed someone with a history of dirt on his hands to enter their family.” He was barely able to summon the voice to continue. “Catherine told her parents that she was going to visit a friend in the Lake District. Gretna Green is just across the border.”

  Everyone recognized the name. That village in southern Scotland had marriage laws that didn’t require a waiting period or the posting of banns. Impatient couples often eloped there.

  The pain in his mind intensified. “When Catherine’s parents told Sir Walter he could marry her, we were forced to confess to them.” He clutched his head tighter. “We couldn’t have hidden our secret much longer anyhow.”

  “What do you mean?” Becker asked.

  “Catherine…” It was the most difficult thing he’d ever said. “My wife…was with child.”

  The porter gasped.

  “Although the child woul
d have been born in wedlock, Catherine’s parents were scandalized. They revoked their promise to Sir Walter, feeling so ashamed that they didn’t give him an explanation. Insane with jealousy, he attacked me.”

  “What happened last night?” Becker asked.

  Gripping his throbbing skull, he managed the strength to continue.

  “Catherine was supposed to visit her cousin in Watford. Because I was worried about Sir Walter’s rage, I encouraged her to go through with her plan. At the last minute, to provide further protection, I decided to join her, but…” He shuddered. “When I arrived at her cousin’s house, I learned that Catherine had never left the city. I was overcome with a premonition, and I used every means possible to hurry back.”

  Grief of a sort that he hadn’t endured since he was ten years old welled up inside him. One part of him felt as if a powerful hand squeezed his heart to the point of crushing it. But another part warned that if he allowed anguish to overpower him, he might do something else that could betray him.

  “God help me, I didn’t reach her soon enough.”

  God help me? he thought. God can’t possibly help me.

  Mother.

  Father.

  Emma.

  Ruth.

  Catherine.

  My unborn child.

  “Sir Walter.” Attempting to divert attention, he said, “Nobody knew a thing about him until six months ago. Where did he suddenly come from? He never talks about his past. He’s hiding something.”

  “He is indeed hiding something,” a voice intruded.

  Everyone turned.

  Braced against the doorjamb, Ryan pressed a hand to his stomach. He sounded in pain.

  “We caught Sir Walter at the Seven Dials rookery. We took him to jail, where he confessed to poisoning his uncle. We have his walking stick. We’re comparing its knob with the wounds on the heads of the servants at Lord Grantwood’s house and the houses of the other victims.” Ryan’s words were quick, conveying even more pain. “We’re trying to make Sir Walter admit that he murdered Catherine Grantwood and her parents and that he killed Lord and Lady Cosgrove and—”

  “Sean, there’s blood on your coat!” Emily exclaimed.

  Ryan slumped to the floor.

  As Emily and Becker hurried toward Ryan, De Quincey remained in the colonel’s bedroom.

  With a clatter, William Russell swept everything from the desk in the adjacent office. “Put him on this!”

  “My wound reopened. I expected Dr. Snow to be here,” Ryan murmured.

  “I’ll bring more hot water and clean rags,” the porter said. The floor reverberated as he rushed toward the hallway.

  “Joseph, help me get his coat off,” Emily urged.

  Alone in the bedroom, De Quincey and Colonel Trask looked at each other.

  “I’ll dress quickly,” the colonel told him. “The inspector can have my bed.”

  De Quincey nodded but stayed where he was. “Your wife’s murder was not fine art.”

  “Not fine art? What are you talking about?”

  “It was clumsy. It lacked style.”

  “In my grief, you speak to me this way? Has laudanum made you insane?”

  “The murders of your wife’s parents were staged so that they related to the other killings and the threat against the queen. But your wife’s murder was crass, as if the killers didn’t expect her to be there. Colonel, while you were unconscious, I rolled up the right sleeve of your undergarment.”

  “You what?”

  “That arm shows no sign of the wound that you discussed at the queen’s dinner.”

  “My injury is a sprain. The Duke of Cambridge called it a wound. I chose not to correct him.”

  “You do have the mark of another wound, however,” De Quincey persisted. “Your right calf has an ancient scar that projects inward, as if your leg had been spiked by something when you were young, the spike on top of a fence, perhaps.”

  “The scar is from an accident when I was helping my father to build railways.”

  “While you slept, you spoke your wife’s name.”

  “I’m in grief. Of course I spoke my wife’s name.”

  “Your voice sounded different.”

  “Everyone’s voice sounds different in their nightmares. Kindly leave me to mourn my wife and my unborn child.”

  “You had an Irish accent.”

  Again, the two men assessed each other.

  De Quincey suddenly was aware how small the bedroom was, how near to touching he and Trask were. It would take the colonel only an instant to close the distance and strike him dead.

  But instead of retreating, De Quincey stepped forward. The prospect of dying this way was better than dying from opium. “You’re the boy who ran next to the queen’s carriage fifteen years ago, begging the queen to help your father, mother, and sisters.”

  “My father is Jeremiah Trask, who certainly isn’t Irish. Ask that man.” Trask pointed toward the porter, who peered into the bedroom, having returned with the hot water. “He worked with me when I helped my father build railways.”

  “It’s true,” the porter said. “Mr. Trask senior definitely isn’t Irish.”

  “What possible need would I have had to beg the queen to help my father,” Trask demanded. “Did you say ‘fifteen years ago’?”

  “The year of the first attempt against Her Majesty.”

  “In eighteen forty, my father had established much of his railway empire. He wouldn’t have needed me to beg the queen for anything. Inspector Ryan needs this bed. Since you won’t give me privacy…”

  Trask stood and dropped his blanket. He started to unbutton his undergarment.

  “I’ll ignore your sensibilities as my comrades and I were forced to do in the war. The moment I finish dressing, the inspector can have this room.”

  Opening more buttons, he walked toward the wardrobe and removed a shirt from it.

  De Quincey stepped from the bedroom.

  As Colonel Trask shut the door behind him, De Quincey watched Emily wipe blood from Ryan’s wound.

  “Do you have a key to that door?” he asked the porter.

  “On this ring.”

  “Lock it.”

  “Lock it?”

  “While we send for constables.”

  “To arrest the colonel?” the porter asked in surprise.

  “I may not be able to prove that he’s the Irish boy who begged the queen for help fifteen years ago, but at least I can try to stop him from killing her.”

  “You don’t know what you’re saying,” the porter told him.

  “Lord Palmerston has often maintained as much. Please lock the door.”

  “Colonel Trask is my employer and my friend. I cannot do it.”

  A sound at the door made them look in that direction. Although cautiously done, it was the unmistakable scrape of a bolt being secured.

  “Colonel Trask?” De Quincey approached the door. “Is everything all right?”

  He didn’t receive a reply.

  “Colonel Trask?” De Quincey knocked.

  Again, he didn’t receive an answer. De Quincey knocked harder.

  “Force it open,” Ryan told them, trying to sit up.

  “Sean, be still,” Emily ordered.

  Becker walked to the door and rammed his shoulder against it. But the door was made of thick oak; it barely moved.

  “Leave him alone, if that’s what he wants. He’s not going anywhere,” Becker decided.

  “Perhaps he intends to harm himself,” De Quincey said.

  “Harm himself? Why would the colonel want to do that?” the porter asked.

  “I heard your accusations,” William Russell said. “From a journalist’s viewpoint, your reasoning is based only on coincidence.”

  “Mr. Russell, have you ever seen paintings that show one thing when viewed from the right but show something else when viewed from the left?”

  “At the Crystal Palace Exhibition. When I stood on one side, a woman was
smiling, but when I stood on the opposite side, the painting showed a man who frowned.”

  “Which was the reality?” De Quincey asked.

  “Both of them, depending on how you looked at the painting.”

  “Immanuel Kant would applaud your conclusion. Please consider the Crimean events that you described to me. The commander of the military discovered that you were sending war reports to The Times. He ordered his officers not to speak to you, and he refused to allow your dispatches to be taken to the Turkish mainland, where the telegraph could relay them to England.”

  “That was the case,” Russell agreed.

  “Colonel Trask sought you out, offered his own vessel to transport your dispatches, and further impressed you by ordering his crew to bring back food, clothing, and tents for our soldiers.”

  “He is generous.”

  “He then arranged for you to have a vivid vantage point from which to witness various battles in which he proved himself to be heroic.”

  “What are you implying?”

  “I don’t yet know how the Irish boy from fifteen years ago became the man in that room. But I do know how he managed to get close to the queen. As soon as he arrived in the Crimea, he sought you out. He made you his ally. He arranged for you to see him perform heroically, even to the point of rescuing the queen’s cousin. Without you, no one in England would have known of his bravery. Without you, he never would have been knighted and have gained access to the queen. Without the information that he supplied to you, the British government would not have collapsed.”

  “You can’t prove any of this!”

  De Quincey turned toward Becker and Ryan, the latter watching in pain from the desk.

  “At the church, the colonel’s dramatic entrance provided the distraction that allowed Lady Cosgrove’s body to be propped up in her pew without anyone noticing. Last night, the colonel provided another deception. Traveling to Watford to visit his wife, he hoped to ensure that no one, especially not her, would suspect that he was responsible for what happened at the same time—the slaughter of her parents by the members of the new Young England that he created. That’s why Catherine’s murder was so crude. The men he sent to commit the crime never expected to find her there. They didn’t know how to react, except to stop her from being a witness. They chased her up the stairs, stabbing her repeatedly until she stopped screaming.”