Watchers of the Dead

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘I doubt Bowyer would’ve associated with the Archbishop of Canterbury, Alec – he was Roman Catholic. He was the one who paid for that lovely Church of St John of Jerusalem in Great Ormond Street. I have no idea who Dickerson knew, but Haldane and Bowyer were friends.’

  Lonsdale picked up The Echo between his thumb and forefinger. ‘The housekeeper buys this? You should tell her not to waste her money.’

  ‘She doesn’t buy it – it arrives each morning gratis. And, to be blunt, she’d rather read it than The Times. She has a taste for lurid lies.’

  ‘Voules,’ said Lonsdale in understanding. ‘He delivers it! He wants me to know that he has more front-page articles than me and …’

  He trailed off when he saw the leading piece in that day’s edition. It brayed that dangerous cannibals were loose in London, and that they had already claimed one victim – an elderly man at the Natural History Museum.

  ‘A fine example of how to weave a sensational tale out of a few half-understood facts,’ he spat. ‘Voules never lets the truth get in the way of a good story.’

  ‘No one will believe it,’ said Jack, and laughed. ‘Cannibals? Really?’

  ‘Unfortunately,’ said Lonsdale, ‘that bit is true.’

  Outside, rain had turned the elegant white facade of Jack’s Cleveland Square house dismal and dirty, with soot-filled runnels cascading down its front and dripping from its eaves. Lonsdale knew that lakes of filthy water would have pooled in the streets, so he hailed a hansom to take him to work, unwilling to arrive drenched in manure-impregnated spray.

  He felt sorry for the driver, who was hunched into his coat, shivering. Even more, he pitied the horse, which, head down and mane dripping, plodded along the muddy streets. The wet seemed to accentuate London’s familiar racket: the roar of iron wheels on cobbles, the clatter of hooves, the distinctive chorus of street vendors selling ribbons, greasy pies and pots, the slap of human footsteps, and the dull, distant rumble of heavy industry along the river.

  The PMG occupied a tall, shabby building in a short, mean-looking thoroughfare that was more passageway than street. Its neighbours comprised a disused warehouse and offices for companies that sold cheap cloth, spare coach parts and cleaning products. Lonsdale stopped for a moment to stare at his place of work.

  The basement housed the thundering Marinoni printing presses. The ground floor was a distribution area, and the next floor, reached by a dark, narrow stairway, had four rooms: the editor’s, the assistant editor’s, one shared by the sub-editors and city editor, and one for the reporters. The second floor was the domain of the business manager, his clerk and an advertising canvasser. And the top was where the compositors set in type the stories and editorials ready for printing.

  ‘Did you read it?’ came a voice behind Lonsdale, just as he was about to walk through the door. He turned to see Voules, who looked pleased with himself.

  ‘Please don’t deliver any more free copies,’ said Lonsdale coolly. ‘If we want them, we’ll buy them ourselves.’

  ‘But what did you think?’ pressed Voules, grinning. ‘All London will be talking about it, which is more than you can say about The Pall Mall Gazette’s leader yesterday. Who cares about boring old Forster’s views on Britain’s role in Egypt? He’s no longer even in the Cabinet!’

  Lonsdale glared at him. ‘“All London” will include the Natural History Museum and the police, who’ll be furious with you. Moreover, what can be gained from frightening people?’

  ‘Increased sales,’ replied Voules promptly. ‘Copies are flying off the presses. You were a fool not to publish last night. People don’t care about Egypt – nor Morley’s fascination with Ireland. He should accept his shortcomings as an editor and leave.’

  ‘Mr Morley is one of the most talented and well-informed men in the city,’ averred Lonsdale between gritted teeth. ‘He’s a close friend of Gladstone, and when he does finally take the plunge into politics, he’ll play a major role in government.’

  Voules sneered. ‘Doing something tediously worthwhile for it, I suppose. However, I hope he goes soon, because The PMG will fare much better under Stead, who understands that people want to be entertained. There’ll be no dull political analyses when he’s in charge.’

  Lonsdale drew breath to argue further, then decided not to bother. If Voules was incapable of understanding the concept that reporters had a moral obligation to print the truth, Lonsdale was not about to waste his time trying to explain it.

  ‘Of course, leaving The PMG was the best thing I ever did,’ Voules went on, although the resentful cant in his eyes told Lonsdale that he was lying. ‘The Echo is lively and exciting. Better yet, I don’t have to work with any stupid women.’

  Lonsdale’s eyes narrowed. ‘There are no stupid women in our—’

  ‘Miss Friederichs,’ spat Voules, his round, flabby face full of venom. ‘Stead was wrong to appoint her. She’s out of her depth. He should get rid of her and reappoint me instead, although I’m not sure I’d want to work here now. I like The Echo too much.’

  Lonsdale laughed at the notion that Voules should consider himself better than Hulda, then became serious. ‘You also wrote the article about Maclean walking around London in his famous bowler hat – I recognize your style. Was he really seen, or did you make it up?’

  The answer was clear in Voules’s defensive sneer. ‘That information is classified,’ he hissed. ‘Go and find your own sources.’

  He was a fine one to talk, thought Lonsdale acidly, dogging the movements of another reporter in the hope of stealing a story. ‘A word of warning: check your facts before going to press. Your piece on the cannibals contained so many errors it was embarrassing.’

  ‘What errors?’ demanded Voules indignantly.

  ‘The cannibals are from where the Lualaba becomes the River Congo, not the “River Bonga”. The dead man was Professor Dickerson, not Dr Richardson. And Owen never told anyone that dinosaurs are still rampant in Argentina.’

  ‘That’s your interpretation,’ said Voules haughtily. ‘Mine is different.’

  ‘Very different,’ muttered Lonsdale, turning on his heel and going inside.

  The reporters’ domain was a scruffy, homely place that always smelled of cigarette and pipe smoke, and the nasty La Jurista cigars that Hulda favoured. Lonsdale was one of only two non-smokers on the staff, and sometimes found it difficult to breathe, particularly when the wind was in the wrong direction, causing the chimney to smoke as well.

  The office had ink-stained tables and wobbly chairs and was nearly always filled with an air of quietly excited industry. There was a plate of homemade lavender biscuits on one table, as Hulda, being made of sterner stuff than Lonsdale, had opted to spend the remainder of her night baking, rather than trying to sleep.

  ‘It allowed me to think,’ she said by means of explanation.

  ‘Think about the murders?’ he asked. ‘Dickerson and Tait’s?’

  She nodded, and indicated the tall, pale, thin young man who sat near the window. Alfred Milner was Lonsdale’s closest friend, and, like Morley, would not be a pressman for long. He had won four major Oxford University scholarships, been elected to a fellowship at New College, and been called to the bar at Inner Temple, but had stunned everyone who knew him by joining the staff of The PMG, where his remarkable abilities had quickly earned him Morley’s unreserved respect.

  ‘I told him about them,’ said Hulda. ‘And he has information to share.’

  Lonsdale helped himself to a biscuit and turned to Milner.

  ‘First of all,’ Milner began, ‘I can tell you that Dickerson and Tait visited the Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum not long before Maclean escaped.’

  Lonsdale blinked. ‘Surely you aren’t suggesting that their deaths are connected to him! How do you know they visited it anyway?’

  ‘Because Mr Morley sent me there last month, and I saw their names in the visitors’ book. He wanted an article about its progressive treatment of criminal lu
nacy.’ Milner withdrew a piece of paper from his pocket. ‘I made a list of everyone who signed the book in the last year. You’ll see that Tait and Dickerson are on it.’

  Lonsdale blinked. ‘Whatever made you do such a thing? I’m sure Mr Morley didn’t ask you to do that!’

  ‘The warders kept me waiting for an age, and I did it to pass the time. I thought I might compare Broadmoor’s visitor numbers to those of a real prison – do its inmates have more or less contact with the outside world than those somewhere like Millbank? It was an idle notion that I’ve never followed up on, but one that’s paid dividends for you.’

  ‘And you just happened to remember the Archbishop of Canterbury and Dickerson?’

  Milner smiled. ‘Yes, because the guards put little red crosses by the names of any interesting or important people. There weren’t many, so they stuck in my mind.’

  Lonsdale took the list and scanned down it. It was not very long, considering the hospital had almost two hundred inmates, and only five or six names had been marked. Other than Tait and Dickerson, there were two politicians, Superintendent Hayes and Morley.

  ‘Mr Morley went there?’ he asked, glancing up at Milner in surprise.

  ‘Gladstone wanted an independent report from a man he trusted,’ explained Milner. ‘Mr Morley was impressed. Last month he assigned me to write a piece extolling its virtues.’

  ‘I understand why Hayes went,’ said Lonsdale. ‘It houses criminals, so the police will obviously have dealings with those. Moreover, Hayes was the officer who arrested Maclean. But why would Tait and Dickerson enter such a place?’

  ‘The guards were unable to say. However, look at the name below Dickerson’s – “Timothy Roth, professor’s assistant”. Perhaps he will be able to answer your questions.’

  Lonsdale decided to visit Roth that day. He felt he should go anyway, if for no other reason than to ask after his friend’s health following the shock of finding his supervisor’s body.

  ‘There’s another name of note,’ he said, scanning the list more carefully. ‘Voules.’

  Hulda went to the window and peered out. ‘He was lurking about outside earlier, but he’s gone now. Pity. We could’ve asked him what he was doing there.’

  ‘I’m sure he’ll reappear soon,’ said Lonsdale. ‘He never strays very far from my heels these days.’

  ‘Milner told me something else about the murders, too,’ Hulda went on. ‘Namely that we have four victims, not three. Besides Tait, Dickerson and Haldane, there’s another who recently lost his life in a violent manner.’

  ‘George Bowyer?’ asked Lonsdale, and raised his hands in a shrug when Milner and Hulda regarded him in surprise. ‘He played a role in Maclean’s trial, and his death struck me as untimely when I read about it.’

  ‘Well, it was,’ said Hulda. ‘And Milner thought the same. He knows Lady Bowyer, so he went to see her early this morning. She told him that Bowyer was stabbed outside their house.’

  ‘Moreover,’ put in Milner, taking up the tale, ‘Bowyer had a connection to Maclean because he was the foreman on the grand jury that sent Maclean to trial.’

  ‘So Bowyer was on the grand jury,’ summarized Hulda. ‘He and Haldane aimed to change the “not guilty, but insane” law, and Dickerson and Tait visited Broadmoor when Maclean was there.’

  Lonsdale became businesslike. ‘So, we need to find out why Tait and Dickerson went to Broadmoor. We also have to meet Bradwell at noon, and I want to check on Roth. Not to mention cornering Voules.’

  ‘But first, we must see Mr Morley,’ said Hulda. ‘He told me to bring you to him the moment you arrived, so you’d better wipe those crumbs off your face, Lonsdale, or he’ll think you’ve been sitting here devouring biscuits instead of following orders.’

  Hulda and Lonsdale entered the editor’s office respectfully – Morley was a formidable presence; his intellect was unnerving and he rarely smiled. He had once claimed to like drab men best, and his serious, sedate sobriety ran through everything he did. In appearance, he was nondescript, but such was the force of his personality that Lonsdale invariably felt he was waiting on royalty when he was in his presence.

  He sat behind a table, which was lit by a pair of six-paned windows, and to his left was a fireplace. He indicated that Lonsdale and Hulda should take the two chairs opposite him. He wore a single-breasted, navy-blue suit with a grey waistcoat and a crisp white shirt. For a few days, he had sported a spotted necktie, but had evidently decided this was too frivolous, and had soon reverted to his usual grey one.

  Other than Milner, with whom Morley shared a passion for ‘great affairs’ – that is, Ireland and an unwavering opposition to state intervention in social and economic matters – Morley always made his reporters uncomfortable. This was in part because he had a barely concealed scorn for popular journalism and was contemptuous of the trivia that interested the general reader. His reporters, therefore, invariably ended up pretending that they had little interest in ‘common’ events either. He always listened to his staff with an air of such gravity that Voules had once remarked that it was like having an audience with God.

  ‘Have you heard from Cook, sir?’ asked Lonsdale, referring to a fellow reporter who had been sent to Dublin, to follow the investigation into the infamous Phoenix Park murders. The fatal stabbings of Lord Frederick Cavendish, the Chief Secretary for Ireland, and his permanent undersecretary had been in May, but the killers had not been caught. Morley published regular updates on the enquiry, even when there was nothing much to say.

  ‘Yes – there’s still no news about the culprits,’ replied Morley grimly. ‘But that’s not why I summoned you. I understand you were at the Natural History Museum yesterday, where there was a murder. Stead aims to publish an account of it, but I want to know more about it first. The Pall Mall Gazette doesn’t print sensational tales.’

  Seeing a chance to convince him of the story’s significance, Hulda charged ahead in her inimitable fashion, telling him everything they had learned. Morley’s eyes narrowed when he heard that Tait and Dickerson had visited Broadmoor in the period before Maclean’s escape.

  ‘They went to see him specifically?’ he asked. ‘Or just the asylum?’

  ‘I can ask Roth what Dickerson did there,’ replied Lonsdale.

  ‘Good,’ said Morley. ‘However, I imagine Dickerson – and Tait, too – went to assure himself that conditions for the inmates are morally acceptable. I knew both men, and they were fine, upstanding individuals. They shared an interest in prison and law reform.’

  ‘Broadmoor isn’t a prison,’ Lonsdale pointed out.

  ‘No, but it still houses criminals,’ countered Morley, ‘and there are still high walls, locked gates, and cells. It would fall under their remit for scrutiny.’

  He was silent, pondering. Lonsdale and Hulda knew better than to speak, and for a while the only sounds were the tick of the clock on the mantelpiece and the yells of the newspaper-sellers in the street below, urging the public to read the thrilling stories in their various papers. Voules was right, thought Lonsdale sourly: most Londoners would rather know about escaped cannibals than a politician’s views about a country none of them was likely to see.

  ‘So,’ said Morley eventually. ‘You have four influential men stabbed to death, all of whom had a connection in Maclean—’

  ‘If visiting the asylum in which he was housed is a connection,’ cautioned Lonsdale. ‘Or, in Haldane’s case, having an interest in the wording of Maclean’s verdict.’

  ‘You interrupted before I could finish,’ said Morley sternly. ‘Maclean isn’t the only connection. There are two more. First, all four were friends, and second, all four were members of the Garraway Club on Exchange Alley.’

  ‘The Garraway Club?’ asked Lonsdale, frowning. ‘I’ve never heard of it.’

  ‘There’s no reason to think you would – it doesn’t bray about its existence. It was named after the coffee house that once stood on the same site, which was famous for i
ntelligent political debate. The members of the current club honour that tradition, and most are Liberals, hoping to protect and enhance the freedom and liberty of the individual but doing so under the rule of law.’

  ‘Are you a member?’ asked Hulda.

  ‘I was invited, but the demands on my time are substantial now that Mr Gladstone relies on me so heavily.’

  ‘Do you know how many members it has?’ Hulda asked.

  ‘Two hundred or so, I believe, some of whom live outside London. You’ll have to visit and see what you can learn, because the loss of these four men is a tragedy, not only for their friends and families, but for society as a whole.’

  ‘I thought Tait was dogmatic, touchy and rude,’ said Hulda baldly.

  ‘He had a good heart,’ countered Morley. ‘So I want you to consider all four deaths as one case. You can go to Surrey to find out exactly what happened to Tait, then visit the London homes of Haldane, Dickerson and Bowyer.’

  Lonsdale stood. ‘We’ll start as soon as we’ve heard what Bradwell can tell us.’

  ‘See Stead first,’ instructed Morley. ‘He’s more concerned with these missing cannibals than the murders. Then write something about the museum’s opening for today’s early edition – try to offset some of the damage done by that fool Voules.’

  ‘We will,’ promised Hulda.

  ‘Oh, and you must have answers for me by Christmas Eve,’ said Morley. ‘I can’t give you any longer.’

  Lonsdale struggled not to gape at him. ‘But that only gives us eight days! It’ll take all of one to visit Broadmoor, all of another to visit the archbishop’s family in Surrey—’

  ‘Then you’d better make a start,’ interrupted Morley, unmoved.

  ‘Why the rush?’ demanded Hulda, not bothering to hide her exasperation.

  Morley looked down at his hands for a moment. ‘I can’t reveal much, but the Phoenix Park murders investigation will leap forward soon. Therefore, I’m sending Milner to join Cook in Ireland. That means Lonsdale will have to do Milner’s work.’