Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

“More than a gold watch,” Ryan said, reaching for it.

  It looked to be almost four inches wide. That amount of gold felt heavy in Ryan’s hand. Although the gold was polished, some of it had streaks of dried blood.

  A portion of a gold chain dangled from it.

  “Must have snapped in the struggle,” Ryan said.

  On the watch’s back were three large, elaborately engraved letters.

  “With all the curlicues, it’s hard to be sure, but it looks like JWB,” Becker said. “Do you suppose those are the initials of the victim?”

  When Ryan opened the case, he exposed two dials, one for hours and minutes, another for seconds.

  He glanced at the large clock on the waiting room’s wall. Every morning, each railway station in England received a telegram indicating the current minute and hour as determined by the Royal Observatory in Greenwich.

  “They both agree,” Ryan said. “Fourteen minutes after one.”

  On the watch’s face, a name was displayed in simple, elegant letters.

  J. W. BENSON

  LONDON

  “So the engraved letters on the back refer to him,” Becker said.

  Ryan nodded. “This is more than a gold watch. It’s officially known as a Benson chronometer.”

  He opened the back of the case and revealed two small holes where a key could be inserted to wind the springs. “The many pieces of the intricate mechanism are hand-tooled at Benson’s shop on Ludgate Hill.” Ryan referred to a prestigious street near St. Paul’s Cathedral. “Can any of you guess how expensive this is?”

  “Fifty pounds,” Becker said.

  “Anyone else?” Ryan asked.

  “Perhaps eighty,” Emily replied, her tone suggesting that she really didn’t believe it.

  “One hundred,” Ryan told them.

  “I suspect that Inspector Ryan means guineas, not pounds,” De Quincey said.

  The group stared at the watch with greater amazement. Guineas were coins valued at one pound and one shilling. Although the coins were no longer minted, the term guinea was still used when referring to prices for costly items such as jewelry, racehorses, and country estates. The magnificent watch in Ryan’s hand was worth one hundred and five pounds.

  “Something so small,” Emily said, “and so valuable.”

  “Touch it,” Ryan said, giving it to her.

  Emily looked surprised by the weight.

  “Eighteen-karat gold,” Ryan said. “You too, Becker. Hold this. It’s not every day you get to experience what two years of salary feels like in your hand.”

  “Sometimes I think there isn’t anything you don’t know about,” Becker said.

  “It’s only a matter of experience. Fifteen years from now, someone younger will say that to you.”

  Ryan instantly regretted drawing attention to his age compared to Becker’s. But Emily didn’t seem to notice.

  “I once investigated a robbery in Belgravia,” he explained. “The earl whose house was violated displayed more concern about the loss of his Benson chronometer than about the theft of his wife’s jewels. I decided that something so treasured was something I ought to learn about.”

  “Did you find who stole the chronometer?” Emily asked. “Were you able to return it?”

  “The thief tried to sell it to shops that specialize in secondhand jewelry,” Ryan answered, “but no one would dare accept it, realizing that the police would look everywhere for an object so valuable and unusual. Several shopkeepers remembered the man who offered it to them. We easily located him and found the chronometer in the false bottom of a drawer in his room. I asked the thief why he didn’t just throw the chronometer in the Thames when he couldn’t sell it. He told me that it was too beautiful to be destroyed and that he often took it out to admire it. I wonder if he still felt that way when he was…”

  Ryan didn’t need to say “transported to a penal colony.” Everyone in the room knew the extreme penalty, a potential death sentence, for stealing something so valuable.

  He changed the subject. “Emily, you and your father look frozen.” He opened the door and asked the guard outside, “Is there a lodging house in town?”

  “Across from the station, Inspector. But I already inquired—its rooms are taken.”

  “Perhaps, for a fee, its proprietor would allow Miss De Quincey and her father to wash the soot and blood from their hands and faces,” Ryan said. “And perhaps he or she would also rent pillows and blankets to allow them to sleep here with some comfort.”

  “That hadn’t occurred to me, Inspector. I’ll look into it.”

  Ryan turned to Becker. He disliked saying this, but there were too many things that needed to be done, and as the senior detective, he was the one who had to do them: “Take care of Emily and her father. I’ll go to the tunnel and examine the body.”

  Becker gave him a look of respect, understanding that Ryan would much sooner have traded places with him.

  Holding a lantern, Ryan entered the tunnel’s smothering darkness. Ahead, the lights of two other lanterns guided his way. In the penetrating cold, he reached a constable and another railway guard. The metallic odor of blood was strong.

  “Constable, I’m Detective Inspector Ryan from Scotland Yard. With your permission, I’d like to examine the victim.”

  “You know more about this kind of thing than I do,” the constable said, sounding grateful to surrender the responsibility.

  “In that case…” Ryan prepared himself. “Please, raise your lanterns over the body.”

  He crouched, breathing shallowly. What he saw was as bad a killing as he’d encountered, even when the events of December and February were considered. Based on harsh experience, he knew that the only way he could tolerate doing this was to focus on objective details. The victim was a man of average height, around five feet seven inches, stout. Despite the injuries to the body’s neck and forehead, Ryan could tell that he was bald and that he had what was called a rim beard—whiskers along the line of his jaw only and no mustache.

  The victim seemed expensively dressed, although the quantity of blood on his clothing made it difficult to judge exactly how expensively dressed. A boot remained on one of his feet, the other having been hurled off by the force of the impact. Despite scuff marks from the gravel, the leather of the boot showed evidence of having been meticulously polished. The heel had little sign of wear. Yes, the victim had been someone of means.

  His right leg was held to the body only by a length of muscle, most of the limb having been severed by what Ryan guessed was a train wheel. The blood on the victim’s clothes appeared to have come from wounds to the chest in addition to those in the throat and the forehead.

  The guard made a gagging sound and turned away.

  So did the constable.

  “No breakfast or lunch for me,” the guard said.

  “How can you bear to look at that?” the constable asked Ryan.

  “I remind myself that the victim felt much worse than I do,” Ryan answered. Thinking of Commissioner Mayne, he added, “Thirteen years ago, the man who trained me to be a police detective told me that I should ignore what I feel and concentrate on the details that’ll help me find the monster who did this.”

  “And can you do that?” the constable asked. “Ignore what you feel?”

  “No.”

  Ryan brought his lantern closer to the body. He guessed that the wounds to the chest and the throat were caused by a knife. But what about the pulverizing damage to the forehead?

  Emily and her father had mentioned blood on the compartment’s outside step, on one of the train’s wheels, and on the side of the next compartment, the one in which Emily and her father had sat.

  Ryan imagined that the victim’s weight would have prevented the killer from lifting the body to its feet and hurling it from the compartment after kicking the locked door open. More likely, the murderer had dragged the heavy victim to the doorway and dropped him straight down. The victim’s head might ha
ve struck the metal step. The body could have flipped toward the train and hit a wheel, the spinning motion of which had caused blood to spray upward toward the De Quinceys’ compartment.

  Possibly, Ryan thought. He would know more when he examined the compartment in which the attack had occurred. He was curious about whether he’d find streaks of blood on the floor, indicating that the victim had indeed been dragged.

  The victim lay on his side. Ryan reached over and, with effort, pushed him onto his back.

  He noticed a broken watch chain attached to a buttonhole on the victim’s waistcoat. Before leaving the station’s waiting room, he’d taken the Benson chronometer from Becker’s hand. Now he removed it from his trousers.

  “What’s that?” the constable asked, braving another look toward the body.

  “It’s something that people die for,” Ryan said.

  The chronometer had a section of broken chain attached to it. Ryan compared the chain to the fragment attached to the victim’s waistcoat. The style of the links was identical, and their broken parts matched.

  After putting the chronometer back into his trousers, he searched through the victim’s pockets.

  “You’re tougher than I am,” the constable said.

  “If you needed to, you’d do what was necessary,” Ryan assured him. “Do you have a photographer in this town?”

  “We did until we didn’t grow as fast as the speculators promised. He moved back to London.”

  “How about a portrait artist? Is there someone here who draws true-to-life sketches?”

  “I know a retired army officer who draws birds. They look like they’ll fly off the page.”

  “Retired army officer?”

  “He was wounded in the Crimea.”

  “Then maybe he saw enough in the war that he won’t be shocked. When I finish, one of you needs to waken him while the other stays here.”

  “Waken him?”

  “We can’t move this body until detailed sketches are made, and it must be done soon. We don’t want to be in this tunnel when the trains come through in the morning.”

  He continued to search. Most of the victim’s pockets had been slashed open. If he’d carried a purse and money, they’d been taken. All Ryan found was a small key—presumably for the chronometer—and a train ticket in a waistcoat pocket, both of which he removed.

  “This ticket’s to Sedwick Hill,” he said, holding it close to a lantern.

  “That’s the next stop,” the train guard said. “What a shame. To be struck down so cruelly so close to his destination.”

  “Why, though?” Ryan murmured.

  “Begging your pardon, Inspector, but the slashed pockets tell the story. He was killed for his money.”

  Ryan thought about it.

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  “This won’t be as comfortable as Lord Palmerston’s house, Emily, but you’ll be warm, and perhaps you’ll be able to sleep. You also, Mr. De Quincey.”

  Becker spread blankets on two benches in the station’s waiting room, then set down pillows.

  “Thank you,” Emily said, her eyes expressing her appreciation.

  “I’m happy to help. You know I’d like to do more.”

  “Yes,” Emily said. “I know.”

  The looks they exchanged indicated that they were both mindful of a conversation they’d had a month earlier in which Becker had asked her opinion about marriage and Emily had explained that her responsibilities to her father made it impossible for her to think about the future. Perhaps one day, Becker hoped, she would change her mind.

  “What about you, Mr. De Quincey? Can I help you in any way?” Becker asked.

  “You can bring me some laudanum.”

  “I’m afraid the shops are closed, sir.”

  De Quincey sighed. “Unfortunately, the shops are indeed closed.” He sank onto a bench.

  “Sleep well,” Becker told them, directing his gaze toward Emily.

  She touched his arm. “We’re grateful, Joseph.”

  The feel of her hand lingered as Becker dimmed the lamps. After watching Emily stretch a blanket over her father and then pull a blanket over herself, he stepped from the waiting room and closed the door.

  “Watch over them carefully,” he told the man outside. “The people in there are very important to me.”

  “I’ll keep them safe,” the guard promised.

  The glow of a lantern came through the darkness, following the railway tracks toward the station. In a moment, Ryan climbed onto the platform.

  “Emily and her father are inside trying to sleep,” Becker reported.

  “How much did the lodging house charge to rent the pillows and blankets?”

  “Two shillings.”

  Ryan searched in his pockets and gave Becker his share.

  “I’ve been trying to imagine what happened after the murderer dropped the body into the tunnel,” Becker said.

  “Good,” Ryan told him. “Act it out in your mind. Put yourself in the killer’s place.”

  “He wouldn’t have risked jumping from the train while it was moving, not in the dark, not knowing what he might land on.”

  “Agreed,” Ryan said.

  “He’d have waited until the train stopped at the station,” Becker suggested. “Emily and her father were shouting to the train guard, demanding to have their compartment unlocked. In the commotion, the killer could have stepped from the broken door into the darkness on the opposite side of the train without anybody noticing. Then he could have walked around the back of the train, climbed onto the platform, and mingled with people there, pretending to be as shocked as everyone else.”

  “You think the killer reboarded the train?” Ryan asked.

  “Emily told me that the driver was in a hurry to depart and maintain the company’s strict schedule. It’s possible the killer’s in Manchester by now.”

  “But he isn’t.”

  “Oh?” Becker looked surprised by Ryan’s confidence.

  “Keep putting yourself in the killer’s place. Remember how Emily’s father looked.”

  Becker realized his mistake. “I didn’t imagine strongly enough. Mr. De Quincey had blood on his face.”

  “And the killer would have been splattered with it also,” Ryan said. “If he climbed onto the platform and tried to mingle with the other passengers, they’d surely have noticed.”

  “Then where did the killer go?”

  Becker followed Ryan’s gaze toward dark trees beyond the two sets of tracks.

  “Who’s there?” a frightened voice asked. “Leave us alone. We ain’t done nothin’.”

  No matter how cautiously Becker moved through the leafless bushes, branches scraped. Wary, he emerged into a clearing, where his lantern revealed the wooden frame of a half-completed building. Considerable debris suggested that work had been halted abruptly, perhaps another failed speculation.

  “Scotland Yard! I’m Detective Sergeant Becker!”

  “Scotland Yard’s in London!” another voice objected. “Tell the railway to quit botherin’ us. We done no harm. The opposite. We’re watchin’ this place so nobody steals its bricks and boards.”

  Now Ryan’s lantern came through the bushes, joining Becker’s.

  “Gentlemen,” Ryan said, “we’d be pleased to let you go back to your dreams, but we need a favor.”

  “‘Gentlemen,’ he calls us. Ha.”

  “Truly, we need a favor,” Ryan told them. “In exchange, we’ll speak to the railway about letting you protect this building for a few nights longer.”

  “Without anybody botherin’ us?” a voice asked.

  “We can make it happen.”

  “What kind of favor?” The voice belonged to a ragged man who now limped into view.

  A scrawny figure joined him, crawling from a hole in a hollowed-out stack of bricks. A third man squirmed from the building’s foundation. His tattered clothes hung on him.

  “You look like you set yourselves up very sm
artly,” Ryan said. “Do you manage to avoid getting wet?”

  “We keep dry enough. But there’s not much we can do about the cold.”

  One of them wheezed from deep in his lungs. “Except tonight. Harry over there had good luck tonight.”

  “Oh? What sort of good luck?”

  “Someone else came through here.”

  “Indeed?” Becker asked. Following Ryan’s example, he acted as if this were nothing more than a casual conversation. “And how was that good luck?”

  “Because he threw this away as he ran past,” a frail voice answered. “It landed right in front of where I live under that pile of boards. All I had to do was reach out and pull it inside.”

  A man tottered forward. He had long dirty hair and whiskers to match, although the whiskers didn’t conceal how scabbed his features were. In contrast, he wore an overcoat of exceptionally fine quality.

  “May I look?” Ryan asked.

  “Promise you won’t take it from me,” the spindly man implored.

  “What I’d like to do is make a trade.”

  “A trade?”

  “Yes.” Ryan aimed his lantern toward the overcoat. “Your coat has blood on it. A lot of blood.”

  “Blood?” The beggar flinched. “Where? My eyes ain’t too good lately.”

  “Harry, he’s right,” one of his companions said. “In the light from the lantern, I see blood all over your new coat.”

  Harry made a sound that might have been a sob. “And I was thinkin’ my luck had finally changed.”

  “Take my coat,” Ryan offered. “It’s warm, and I guarantee there isn’t any blood on it.”

  “You’re sure? If my coat has blood on it, animals will attack me while I sleep. There’s wild dogs around here, you know. Every night, I’m frightened.”

  “Maybe we can do something about that—help you not to be frightened,” Becker said. “But first we need that favor. Did anybody see the man who ran through here?”

  “I did,” answered a beggar who leaned on a board, using it as a crutch. “At least, I saw his outline. There’s a half-moon, and unlike Harry, I have pretty good eyes, but he was movin’ awful fast. I can’t tell you much about him.”