Wyre said nothing. Soon he’d be saying plenty.
Six feet tall, muscular frame, thick neck, full, fleshy lips, a gold garnet ring glinting from one long index finger. The Duke of Cumberland was an exercise in sublimity, finished off in pretty white kid shoes. If there was a single deficiency, it was in the eyes, which were curiously uncoupled, the light more profound in the right than the left. He was clad in an olive tailcoat, his right, silk-sleeved arm out, supported by a sling. There was a palm-sized graze above the left temple, and from beneath a medical skull cap, a scratch ran down, terminating at the eyebrow.
Cumberland leaned forward on a metal-tipped cane; over his shoulder, a manservant held a yellow parasol, shading him. “When I let it be known,” the Duke began, looking sternly at Wyre, “that I was willing for you to join Mr Read’s investigation, it never occurred to me this courtesy would be taken as carte blanche to pick apart my servants’ words. You’ve behaved like a naturalist dissecting live dogs.” His lips twitched. “As for the unfounded insinuations you’ve seen fit to throw at Mr Neale, I can only say it is fortunate for you this gentleman is not quick-tempered.”
“Sir . . .” Wyre left it at that.
The Duke set off through the grounds. “Am I to understand,” he said, turning to the Chief Magistrate, “the jury now convenes tomorrow? I believe I left clear instructions. The business was to be concluded this evening.”
Read attempted to bow as he walked, dipping absurdly. “By lunchtime tomorrow, sir, the inquest will be over. Its outcome will be incontestable. Felo de se.”
Two sulphurous butterflies tumbled above thick bushes of buckthorn. In the distance, chicken coops shone in slanting inflections of light.
“Words, Mr Read. Mere air-propelling sounds. You hear so many of them in this house.” He pointed his cane, gripping it beneath its brass marotte, which was carved in the shape of a fool with long peaked hood and cleft chin. “What the great do, the lesser prattle about. They delight in imagining what they cannot see into.” His lips twitched again. “It can’t be helped. I’ve made darkness my secret place. You see that tower over there?” He indicated with his stick. “My brother York has his study at the top. He’s afraid of heights.” His smile conveyed the irony. “I, on the other hand, adore precipitous places. They make me giddy, and I enjoy the sensation, so long as I know I’m safely placed. But I always make sure I am.”
“Sir,” Wyre began, “it may be rash to dismiss the possibility of continued threats to your well-being.” (Read gave a little snort). “It seems likely Sellis was in communication with a club that met at a certain tavern in Vere Street.”
The Duke pulled up. “Mr Read?”
The magistrate’s face was dark. “Where are you getting this rubbish from, Wyre?” Turning to Cumberland, he said, “It’s the first I’ve heard of it, sir.”
Too late to stop now. “There’s reason to believe the plot against you was concocted in The White Swan. In all likelihood, it involved sympathisers of the Tyrant. It would be prudent to work on the basis that a second assassin remains at large in the Palace.”
Read shook his head pityingly.
They arrived at a walled orchard; a trowel and basket of bulbs lay next to the wicket gate.
“A second assassin, you say?” The idea seemed to amuse the Duke. He waited for his manservant to unlatch the gate. “I suppose, looking at this trowel – ” he gave it a prod with his walking stick “ – you’d infer a gardener?”
Read coughed tactfully. “Mr Wyre means well, but he’s let his imagination run away with him. Now, if he could say who the Courthouse believes this assassin to be . . .”
The Duke trained his eyes on Wyre as if he were correcting the parabola of cannon shot. “The Chief Magistrate asked you for the name of this assassin.”
The proverbial ‘now or never’. “A French agent,” Wyre answered slowly, “who goes under the alias of Mr Parlez-Vous.” It felt as if he were being steadily annihilated. “The man found himself employment here, and styled himself Mr Gew. But I knew him as Leighton. He took us all in, I’m afraid. He fled the grounds just half an hour ago. If officers are sent to his known haunts . . .” The phrase sounded ridiculous on his lips.
“Parlez-Vous,” said the Duke, “who is really Mr Gew, who is actually Leighton.” The thinnest of smiles. “Three-in-one, like the divinity himself.” He turned to Read. “But you disagree?” The Duke’s questions had the finality of statements.
Read glowered at Wyre. “The man Mr Wyre’s referring to was a Bow Street officer. But if the Courthouse had troubled to share their theory with me, I would have set them straight.” A look of discomfort spread over the magistrate’s face. “As a matter of fact, sir, I oversaw the man’s placement at the Palace myself.”
Cumberland frowned. “His placement?”
“It followed the death of a footman earlier this year, a troubled young fellow called Tranter. But Leighton let us all down. He used his position to knuckle jewels from a big house in Mayfair. I had men out looking for him. Then last week, his body was found in a dive near Cheapside. He’d swallowed arsenic. Took the easy way out, just like Sellis. Whoever Mr Wyre believes he saw running from the Palace, it certainly wasn’t Leighton.”
Wyre opened his mouth to protest, but the Duke waved his cowled stick dismissively.
“I leave such affairs to you, Mr Read. They do not interest me. Let us continue with my deposition. I’m tired, and wish to withdraw.”
“Of course, sir.”
“Very well. It began with a clicking noise. At first, I thought some bat had flown against me. They find a way in sometimes.” Cumberland cast his eyes around the orchard as though expecting to see one of the twilight creatures flittering between the fruit trees. “In my dream, I received two blows on my head and, when I woke, two more. There was a low flame on my table, but I saw no one. I leaped from my bed and opened the nearest door. From the darkness, someone struck me on my right thigh. A sabre blow.” The Duke glanced at Wyre. “I knew it to be such because I saw the weapon flash in a looking glass at the foot of my bed. I couldn’t find my pull-bell. Later we conjectured the villain had severed it. I called out for Mr Neale, who was sleeping next door.”
Cumberland’s good hand went up, adjusting his black cap. (Wyre stared at it. If he yanked the silk to one side, would he find a bloody gash, or smooth, unbroken skin?) “Mr Neale came running. He observed the door to the yellow room had been flung open. Usually when I am in bed, it is locked.” The Duke trapped a thrusting flower between stick and fingers, tearing it head from stem. “By the door lay a naked sword. I never heard the man who struck me utter a single word.” He turned to Read. “The assassin must have fled through the yellow room and from there made his way to the other side of the house, to the householder apartments.” The Duke walked a little way in silence.
“And then, sir?” The Chief Magistrate prompted delicately.
The Duke looked up. “And then, sir, I made my way downstairs with Mr Neale. I ordered him to make sure the doors were secured. In the corridor we met Mrs Neale, whom I instructed to fetch Mr Jackson. I also asked her to rouse Joseph Sellis.” He paused. “At that point, I came over totty-headed, and was forced to return to my bedroom. Mr Neale accompanied me there for safety. While I lay on the bed, that gentleman conducted a more thorough search of the room, during which he discovered the sabre’s scabbard discarded in the closet, along with Mr Sellis’s slippers and a dark lantern. I’ve seen Sellis with it before. Small and brown, with glass sides and tin sliders.” His eyes met Read’s, holding them. “Sellis was the man.”
“Mr Neale remained with you the whole time, sir?”
“He did, and was a great comfort.”
Wyre coughed respectfully. “May I ask, sir,” he began carefully, “if you’d recently given Sellis any cause for anger?”
“Cause?” The Duke’s cheeks flushed. “Cause to attack his master?” He looked away scornfully. “I am not one of those Lords who fling lu
mps of bread and cheese among the crowd for votes. I treat all men with the consideration they deserve. He had no cause.”
Read jumped in. “I gather Mr Neale’s wife went with the porter to fetch Sellis. Was that when they discovered him in his room with his throat slashed?”
That was putting words into the Duke’s mouth.
“From heathen ear to heathen ear.” The Duke’s lips curled.
They reached a raised pond full of leaves, flies and frogs.
“By which time, sir,” Read went on, “Mr Jackson arrived to tend your injuries. Is that correct?”
Wyre couldn’t believe his ears. The Chief Magistrate was blatantly feeding his informant. “Perhaps we should give the Duke an opportunity to answer in his own words.”
“It was quite as you say, Mr Read,” the Duke spoke. “Mr Jackson arrived to tend my injuries.”
“Are you quite certain you sent Mrs Neale to fetch the surgeon?” Wyre said, still unable to square the idea of the slight blonde woman being dispatched alone through the dark passages. “Might it have been Mr Neale?”
With a thin smile, the Duke said, “Do you imagine I don’t know them apart?” He raised his eyebrows. “And now you have the salient details.”
Read thanked him for his time, dipping absurdly again. The secretary brought his pencil down on his notebook in an exaggerated full stop.
Slowly, Cumberland turned. “Oh, Mr Wyre.” He lifted his injured arm from his sling, fumbling for something in his jacket. He cursed, more a sigh of exasperation. “I beg your pardon, gentlemen; my little finger was almost severed. Thomas?” His manservant reached a slender hand into the Duke’s pocket, retrieving a pearl-handled razor. “Ah, there it is. A beauty, isn’t it?”
The Duke passed it to Wyre. He turned it in his hand; the blade bore the stamp of its maker. The instrument seemed to collapse the space around it. “Was this Sellis’s?”
“It was. I asked Mr Read for it, and he consented. It has a fine edge. Sellis didn’t spoil the strop . . . Kept it wet, as he should, with drops of sweet oil. It serves as a memento of that night.” He looked from Wyre to Read. “Gentlemen, I’ve changed my mind. I shall remain in the orchard a little while longer, until the air becomes too sticky. Good evening.” He made a curious gesture with his hand, as if releasing a dove.
Read dipped again. Without another word, and not meeting Wyre’s eyes, he left with his secretary. For a moment, Wyre was alone with Cumberland, who regarded him with an expression poised somewhere between distaste and amusement. He made an awkward bow of his own, and followed Read. The magistrate, however, took the path curving back to the Palace. Wyre’s way lay in the opposite direction, towards the octagonal towers, to the city beyond.
At the piazza, he glanced back down to the orchard. The Duke was still visible, standing beneath his apple trees. A man had arrived to clear the leaves from the brazen surface of the pond.
4.
MARTYR’S TEARS
61. Balk Space
The morning’s dry air was full of flies and floating seeds. Most shops had closed for the day, and a solemn silence hung over the city; people drifted along the pavements with bleached, immobile faces. All the newspapers carried identical accounts. Wyre peered into The Gazette.
29. August 1810. This day, at Windsor, about twelve o’clock, departed this life her Royal Highness the Princess Amelia, his Majesty’s youngest daughter, succumbing to the disease that had baffled the art of medicine, to the great grief of all the royal family.
Ladies to wear black bombazeens; plain muslin or long lawn; crape hoods; shamoy shoes and crape fans. Undress: dark Norwich crape. Gentlemen to wear black cloth without buttons on the sleeves; cravats and weepers; crape hatbands; black swords and buckles. Undress: dark grey frocks.
Beneath the death notice was an advertisement extolling the medicinal virtues of stramonium, whose effects the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries described as a gorgeous clouding of the mind. Perhaps this was the sensation experienced now by the Princess as she floated beyond the breathing world. Wyre stopped at a narrow cross avenue intersecting St James’s Street, and conned along the shop boards for a giant coffee pot marked Habib’s. Cline had suggested meeting there, rather than at the Palace. He’d have his reasons.
The sky abruptly turned hazy. Wyre raised his eyes in astonishment as he was engulfed by tiny scraps of airborne paper like snow, or snow indeed. The flakes settled on his collar. Everywhere else remained summer. A sweet odour of wood smoke cleared up the mystery. In a shop yard nearby, two men of the borough were tending a bonfire.
The coffee house’s window was filled with biggins, drip-pots and silver percolating machines, presenting a baffling involution of tubes and spouts to the street. A Persian proverb hung over the door. One cup of coffee is worth forty years’ friendship.
Surgeon Cline was waiting for him inside, a freshly cut rosa mundi gracing his button-hole.
“All roses,” he said, matter-of-factly, following Wyre’s eyes, “were originally white until changed to red by a single drop of Venus’s menstrual blood. Do you have a creed, Mr Wyre?” He pointed at the lawyer’s copy of The Gazette. “An apposite enough question, perhaps, on such a morning.” The surgeon scratched his nose with a slender finger. “Personally, I’ve always found the last shreds of superstition hardest to shake off. After you left Guy’s yesterday, I treated a prostitute for syphilis. She told me she was an unfortunate girl and would happily leave that way of life. The hardening and thickening was very advanced.”
At the counter, a thick-set Turkish émigré fixed a burlap bag of pulverized beans across the mouth of a juddering water urn, and opened a tiny tap to activate the grounds.
To the hiss of copious steam, Wyre asked, “What do you think the Princess died from?”
Surgeon Cline sniffed the air. “I think she succumbed to roses.”
“Isn’t everything these days supposed to be curable? Was there really no remedy?”
The elegant, spectacled man shrugged. “Not nitre and rhubarb. We can discount that now. Perhaps Peruvian bark.”
Wyre’s coffee arrived. Cline waved away the offer of sugar. “None of your blood-sweetened beverages, Habib. He’ll take it as it is.” He sipped from his own cup.
“Your letter found me,” Wyre said, adding, “it was waiting in my lodgings, neatly folded on my writing table.”
Cline didn’t respond.
“I would have sought you out, in any case, this morning.” He levelled his gaze at the surgeon. “I met Leighton, you know.”
“Ah, Mr Leighton. And how was he? When I saw him last, his throat was bad.” Not an atom of embarrassment.
“Well, he wasn’t dead, for a start,” Wyre answered, his eyes not leaving the surgeon’s face. “Who is he really, Mr Cline?”
“I’m afraid you’re asking the wrong person.”
Wyre hesitated. “I’ve said nothing of your role to Mr Read.”
Cline appeared to weigh this, at length saying, “You ask me who Leighton is. I can tell you he carries an old injury to his shoulder, which troubles him at night, especially when the weather is wet. He has a growth on his ankle, but it’s been there since childhood, and doesn’t worry me in the least. Beyond that – ”
“Enough subterfuge!” Wyre struggled to keep his voice down. “I know you helped him stage his own d–” He bit his tongue. Heads were turning. “I suppose you helped him with the wound he supposedly received from Vallon. Another sham,” he said bitterly.
Cline’s face was expressionless. “I know nothing of that. As for those overripe stage props, he paid me five pounds.” The surgeon took another sip of coffee, replacing his mug on the table with precise movements. “Some years back, I was acquainted with a poet.” He pushed his spectacles up his long nose, tightening the coloured ribbon as he spoke; red, blues and whites – the shades of the tricolour, it suddenly occurred to Wyre, though they were in the wrong order. “Inspiration used to strike at the oddest moments. I often saw
him running into a shop to beg scraps of paper. He used to carry his verses home in cheese wrappings.” The Guy’s man leaned back. “Doctoring is a more methodical business, much more like an Ignatian meditation. In that respect, perhaps it’s not all that different from being a lawyer.” Amusement broadened into a smile. “Or a Bow Street Runner.”
“The inquest into Sellis’s death is almost over. Read looks certain to get his way. The verdict will be returned as suicide, and things will simply go on as before.”
“Things always do. That is why they are things.” Cline smoothed finger and thumb over his upper lip as if grooming an invisible moustache. “Skin, Mr Wyre, is the most interesting of materials. Nothing man-made I know matches it. Extremely elastic, very tough. You have to slice through the superficial layers, then go back again over your line to make your way in.”
“Some people seem to think Sellis managed it in one go,” Wyre commented wryly.
“If so, he would have made an excellent surgeon. Just think, in those final moments he was both surgeon and patient.” Cline regarded Wyre. “A little over two years ago, a man was delivered to my anatomy room. His oesophagus – ” Cline pinched his own Adam’s apple “ – had been cut as deeply as Sellis’s. In itself, nothing unusual. I see a dozen such cases each year. But as I walked home yesterday with Mr Cooper, a colleague of mine, I happened to remember something said by the man who’d brought in the corpse back then. He told me that when the fellow had been alive, he’d driven princes around the city.”
“I don’t suppose you have a name?”
The flicker of a smile. “He arrived in a hessian sack, and the man who donated him was the kind it is unwise to press for answers.” Cline’s eyes drifted past the display of coffee machines to the world outside. “Are you familiar, Mr Wyre, with the concept of ‘lust murder’?”
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