Mind of a Killer

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘Please forgive the intrusion,’ said Lonsdale. ‘I wondered whether you might be able to help me.’

  Kendal looked him up and down. ‘Of course,’ he said bitterly. ‘I’m sure there’s all manner of things the likes of me could do for the likes of you.’

  Lonsdale took a shilling from his pocket and laid it on the mantelpiece.

  ‘It’s about the fire in Wyndham Street—’

  ‘I see!’ snarled the sweep, coming unsteadily to his feet. ‘You’ve come to accuse me of killing Mr Donovan!’

  ‘No,’ said Lonsdale, standing his ground as Kendal staggered towards him. ‘I just wanted to ask—’

  ‘That fire ruined me,’ said the sweep, turning from anger to self-pity in the way that drunks often did. ‘I should be out there now, working. I had a full week booked. Then Donovan sets himself alight, and who gets the blame? Everyone’s cancelled me, even the vicarage – and I’ve been doing them chimneys for thirty years.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ said Lonsdale quietly.

  ‘The Fire Brigade accused me of leaving a brush up there!’ Kendal gestured to a shadowy corner, where there was a collection of black-headed brooms and poles. ‘But you tell me what you see there. All my brushes, that’s what. They’re expensive! How do they think I can afford to leave them up chimneys?’

  ‘I see your point.’

  ‘I went back to Donovan’s house, you know,’ said Kendal, slumping back down in his chair. ‘On Friday – the night after the fire. I looked up the chimney.’

  ‘What did you see?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Kendal mournfully. He slumped further down in his chair and studied the reporter blearily. ‘You don’t get it, do you?’

  Lonsdale struggled to understand. ‘Nothing? You mean you couldn’t see up the chimney? It was blocked?’

  The sweep nodded. ‘But I could see right up it when I finished cleaning. I got down on my hands and knees, like I always do, and saw a ring of sky like a bright, round penny. I take pride in my work, and if that penny hadn’t been round, I’d have had the brushes up again.’

  ‘Yet it was blocked after the fire?’ asked Lonsdale.

  Kendall nodded. ‘I poked about with a stick, and a ball of burned rags came down. I looked up the chimney again, and there was the penny of sky.’

  ‘So, someone deliberately stuffed them up it, so that the fire would be deemed an accident?’

  ‘Why would someone do such a thing to me?’ wailed Kendal. ‘I’ve been honest all my life. I’ve had plenty of opportunities to slip a silver spoon or a few coins in my pocket, or to filch a bit of crockery. But I never did it, not once. Now I wish I had. There’s so many sweeps that it’s not easy to get work, but I’ve done all right, because everyone knows I’m honest. But some folks are struggling something cruel.’

  Lonsdale glanced around Kendal’s grimy, sparsely furnished home, and wondered how those ‘struggling something cruel’ were forced to live.

  ‘I believe you’re innocent of any wrong-doing, Mr Kendal,’ said Lonsdale. ‘And I’m going to prove it, but I need your help. Will you tell me – with all your knowledge of chimneys and fires – how the blaze started in Donovan’s house?’

  Hope lit the old man’s eyes. ‘I think the rags were shoved up the chimney and set alight. Of course, they’d need to have been soaked in something to make them burn. Oil perhaps. Then the chimney would catch fire, because the flames would be fed by the air coming down it. Once a chimney is going, it’s a devil to put out. More often than not the whole house goes. I told the police all this, but I could tell they thought I was just trying to save my own skin.’

  ‘Did you catch the names of the officers?’

  ‘No, but I can tell you that the first one I spoke to was older, with a scar over his eye, while the second had ginger hair and looked young enough to be my grandson.’

  Lonsdale felt his heartbeat quicken. ‘Was the first one a large man, with black hair?’

  ‘I suppose,’ said the old man, frowning as he tried to recall. ‘Of course, they don’t know their arses from their elbows – the ginger lad told me that the scarred one had never been here.’

  Kendal could tell him no more, so Lonsdale took his leave, promising again to clear his name.

  The Oxford and Cambridge Club was a grand building at 71–77 Pall Mall, with a pillared porch and an imposing façade. Its only requirement for membership was matriculation at – not necessarily graduation from – one of the two universities. It had been founded in the 1830s, after the waiting list for the United University Club had become too long to be tolerated.

  Gentlemen’s clubs tended to be understated on the outside, but the Oxford and Cambridge was unique in having a smartly uniformed porter on the outside, and by the time Lonsdale and Milner reached him, the door was open. They nodded their thanks and entered the spacious hall. They gave their hats and overcoats to another porter, and Milner also handed over an umbrella topped with a finely carved eagle’s head with very conspicuous eyes. He dreaded the possibility of getting wet in a sudden shower.

  ‘Stead got hold of that today,’ said Milner, nodding to it. ‘He came to the reporters’ room to hold forth. Suddenly, it was in his hands, whirling around as if he were leading a cavalry charge.’

  ‘Did you manage to ditch Harris?’ asked Lonsdale. The American was nowhere to be seen.

  Milner grimaced. ‘He has promised to grace me with his presence later. I’m hoping that it will be late enough that everyone I know will have gone home.’

  They headed up the stairs to the drawing room, a sumptuous wood-panelled chamber packed with comfortable chairs, sofas, and low tables scattered with newspapers. Jack was there, sitting with John Seeley, Regius Professor of History at Cambridge, and the man who had convinced Lonsdale to join the Colonial Service. Lonsdale introduced him and Milner.

  ‘Are you a Cambridge man?’ asked Seeley, shaking Milner’s hand. ‘Or are you from the Other Place?’

  ‘Alfred is too modest to boast,’ said Lonsdale, ‘but he not only took a double first at Balliol, but won no fewer than four of Oxford’s major scholarships.’

  Milner blushed, and Lonsdale was amused to see him at a loss for words. Seeley motioned for them to sit down.

  ‘Jack has been regaling me with the most alarming news, Alec,’ he said. ‘That you’ve decided to turn your unfortunate interest in journalism into a full-time profession. You were one of my best students … and to be telling stories for a newspaper! There must be something we can do to make you return to the Colonial Service.’

  ‘There isn’t,’ said Lonsdale, shortly. ‘This is what I want to do.’ He was very fond of Seeley, so had not wanted to respond too forcefully. But before he could change the subject, Seeley turned to Milner.

  ‘Can you persuade him to abandon this reckless course of action?’ A man of your scholarly background must deplore a squandering of such talents. Alec could someday be a foreign ambassador. Urge him to follow this path.’

  ‘That would be beyond my capabilities,’ Milner responded, ‘not to mention rather hypocritical if I attempted it, under the circumstances. Besides, journalists are ambassadors, are they not? They interpret events and opinions, which they then present to a large body of people.’

  ‘That’s an intriguing notion,’ said Seeley, contemplating Milner’s argument.

  ‘I understand that you have written another book, Professor,’ Lonsdale said quickly, hoping to avoid any awkward differences in opinion. ‘One to be published next year?’

  ‘Indeed I have,’ said Seeley. A discussion of the theories that his new work would propound ensued, and both the professor and Milner were pleased with the challenge of the other’s intellect. Finally, there was a pause, and Seeley looked around gloomily.

  ‘The club isn’t what it once was. I hardly know a soul here. I recognize Francis Galton, but no one else.’

  ‘Galton?’ asked Jack, sitting up abruptly. ‘I’d like to meet him! His theories relating to
natural history … well, they are astounding to say the least.’

  Seeley gave a sly smile. ‘Perhaps I should introduce you to him, Alec. He was in Africa, so he might be able to talk some sense into you about the Colonial Service.’

  Francis Galton, one of the country’s most eminent gentleman-scientists, an expert on travel, and author of several much-acclaimed books on heredity, looked up with rude disinterest when Seeley introduced the Lonsdale brothers and Milner. Galton was a stocky man with thick eyebrows, bald except for a fringe of long, dangling grey hair around the back, and a pair of colossal mutton-chop sideburns. A gentleman in a charcoal grey lounge suit was engrossed in his paper in the chair opposite; he vacated his seat politely when he saw that Galton had visitors, so that they all might sit down together. Something about him was familiar, but Seeley was making introductions, so there was no time for Lonsdale to ponder about him.

  ‘I was hoping you might persuade Alec to rejoin the Colonial Service,’ said Seeley amiably once introductions had been made, ‘instead of wasting his great talents on newspapers.’

  ‘You’re a reporter?’ asked Galton, in much the same way that he might have spoken to a dung collector; clearly, there was no difference between the two in his eyes. ‘I hope you don’t think I shall speak to you about my cousin Charles Darwin. I’ve had the press pestering me day and night, wanting a eulogy. Well, you shall not have it!’

  ‘I see,’ said Lonsdale, taken aback by his vehemence and exchanging an uncomfortable glance with Milner. ‘But we didn’t—’

  ‘Your work on heredity and intelligence can only be described as brilliant, Mr Galton,’ said Jack enthusiastically, breaking into what could have become an embarrassing discussion. ‘I can’t tell you how much I enjoy your writing.’

  Galton’s pale eyes immediately softened. ‘Of course you do. Any man of breeding and intellect will appreciate the significance of my work.’

  Milner caught Lonsdale’s eye and raised an amused eyebrow. Lonsdale looked away quickly, not wanting to laugh, although Galton was far too engrossed in himself to notice.

  ‘I’m working on another book entitled Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development,’ he continued pompously. ‘It will be a seminal work, admired and consulted by scholars for many generations to come.’

  ‘What’s its central thesis?’ asked Jack keenly.

  Galton preened. ‘It builds on my previous work, including Hereditary Genius and English Men of Science, and it presents the results of several experiments. It begins with an analysis of physical characteristics – such as facial features and physical build. Then it considers energy and sensitivity, both of which are shown to be greater in the intellectually gifted – like me – than in the less able of our species.’

  ‘Goodness!’ blurted Jack, showing that even he was taken aback by Galton’s boastful manner.

  ‘I have investigated the subject of character, perhaps best illustrated in the traits that distinguish the sexes,’ Galton went on. ‘You see, characteristics found in mankind can also be discovered in lesser species – such as directness in men and a caprice in women.’

  ‘Caprice?’ echoed Lonsdale, thinking of Hulda and unable to imagine her ever having a ‘capricious’ moment in her life.

  Galton nodded impatiently. ‘Yes. The willy-nilly disposition of the human female in matters of love is also apparent in the butterfly, so it must have been continuously favoured from the earliest stages of animal evolution. Capriciousness has thus become a heritage of ladies, together with a cohort of allied weaknesses that men have come to think admirable in their wives and lovers, but that they would never tolerate among themselves.’

  ‘I would hardly—’ Seeley began, but Galton droned on mercilessly.

  ‘The next section of my book investigates such matters as fear, revulsion, conscience, and gregariousness. And the last part draws it all together by showing how selective breeding would control these characteristics and benefit our race as a whole.’

  ‘How intriguing,’ said Jack nervously.

  ‘Breeding,’ announced Galton in a loud voice, ‘is the heart of the problem. It should never be done without thought or reason.’

  Lonsdale regarded the scientist in genuine horror, thinking his comments were every bit as distasteful as those made by Wilson.

  ‘To no nation is a high human breed more necessary than our own,’ Galton brayed on. ‘We plant our stock around the world, laying the foundation for future millions of the human race. Yet you’ve only to walk in Whitechapel to see how the weak are numerically supplanting the strong – and the appalling poverty that accompanies this. It cannot be allowed to continue, and, by denying criminals, the idle, and other undesirables the opportunity to breed, we would abolish much suffering and misery.’

  There was a stunned silence before Seeley, with a stricken, apologetic glance at the three younger men, hastened to change the subject. Lonsdale was relieved, having never expected to hear such offensive sentiments in his own club. ‘Lonsdale was in southern Africa for a spell,’ Seeley said, a little desperately. ‘You were there, weren’t you, Galton?’

  ‘A spell?’ drawled Galton, in distaste. ‘And what was your “spell”, young man? A couple of weeks? It is my contention that one cannot understand a continent in less than a month.’

  ‘Nine years,’ replied Lonsdale, gratified to see the great man’s surprise. But good manners got the better of him, obliging him to add, ‘I hear you were there in the forties, sir. Your experiences must have been fascinating—’

  ‘I can tell you about them now,’ said Galton, glancing at his watch. ‘I have a few hours to spare.’

  And without further ado, he began a detailed monologue describing every moment of what sounded to be a remarkably dull expedition. His audience listened politely, but all attempts to change the subject or escape were ruthlessly quashed. After an hour, a steward came to say that Harris had arrived, and it was a testament to Galton’s tediousness that Lonsdale actually envied Milner for being able to go and greet the obnoxious American. Galton droned on, and Lonsdale looked at Milner with pleading eyes when he returned with his guest a few moments later. Milner took a deep breath and returned to the fray.

  ‘I’m afraid I must take my friends away, Mr Galton,’ he began. ‘They—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Galton and continued his story. ‘I found the daughter of the king of Ovampoland installed in my tent in her finery – she was covered with red ochre and butter, and as capable of leaving a mark on anything she touched as a well-inked printer’s roller. Meanwhile, I was dressed in my one well-preserved suit of white linen—’

  But Galton had reckoned without Harris, who, on recognizing him, homed in on him like a bluebottle on rotting meat. He thrust his outstretched hand into Galton’s face. ‘Ambrose Harris of The New York Herald. I wonder if I might ask you a few questions about Mr Darwin for the overseas audience.’

  ‘Young man,’ said Galton, brushing the proffered hand away contemptuously, ‘a gentlemen’s club is for gentlemen. It is not somewhere to demonstrate distasteful forwardness.’ He stood and addressed Seeley. ‘If you ever needed an instrument of persuasion against journalism, that man is it. He has quite put me off my dinner. I shall go home instead.’

  ‘Thank God,’ muttered Jack as the scientist gathered up his belongings. ‘And thank Milner!’

  ‘You seem a decent enough fellow,’ said Galton, turning to Lonsdale before he left. ‘I’ve enjoyed discussing Africa with you. Call on me at home next Friday afternoon, and I shall finish my story, although I appreciate you will find it hard to wait for the denouement. And then I shall show you something you will never forget – my collection of dried grasses from the Trans-Orange region!’

  ‘I can think of little I’d enjoy more,’ lied Lonsdale.

  ‘I do enjoy the Reverend Carpenter’s sermons,’ said Jack the following morning – Sunday – as he and his brother strolled through Kensington Gardens. ‘He makes his case about th
e teachings of the Church with the intellect of a barrister, the precision of an engineer, and the force of an Evangelical.’

  ‘I’m not sure that he would appreciate being called an Evangelical,’ said Lonsdale. ‘Or worse yet, a barrister.’

  ‘Do not try to vex me – not today of all days,’ said Jack mildly. He tipped his hat to a couple strolling the other way. The gentleman tipped back.

  ‘Don’t worry. I’ll behave when your fiancée and her sister come to dine today.’ Lonsdale glanced at him. ‘This custom of constantly raising the hat is very odd. Before I left for Africa, it was thought to be foreign and in bad taste. Now everyone is doing it.’

  ‘Emelia likes the respect it affords,’ said Jack, tipping to another couple. ‘And I aim to please. Shall we go home now to make sure Mrs Webster and the servants have returned from church and are preparing the meal? If it is not ready by two, Emelia will be irked.’

  Lonsdale disliked the way Jack was constantly changing himself to please Emelia. The couple had first been introduced a year before at a meeting in support of the Married Women’s Property Act, and had become engaged at Christmas. He had dined with her family three of every four Sundays since, and, despite him being twelve years older than her, both families had been supportive of the proposed union.

  Jack had hosted Emelia and her family before, but never when Lonsdale had been there. Lonsdale had thus never met any of the clan other than Emelia. Jack was anxious that they – and especially Emelia’s sister Anne – should like his brother, and evidently was terrified that Lonsdale might do something to make them think twice about having given him permission to marry their younger daughter. Lonsdale was mildly offended that Jack did not have more confidence in him, and could only suppose that the decision to become a journalist had given his brother a deeper shock than he had realized.

  ‘Don’t worry, Jack,’ said Lonsdale kindly. ‘You have a gem of a housekeeper in Mrs Webster. No one realizes better than she does that this is the first time you have entertained Emelia with only her sister and me as chaperones. Moreover, I am sure Anne will like me and will sing my praises to your fiancée.’