Watchers of the Dead

by Simon Beaufort

  ‘The cannibals didn’t kill him,’ said Lonsdale. ‘The more I learn about the case, the more I’m sure of it. He was murdered by someone else. And he was murdered, no matter what the police claim.’

  ‘So you said at the club last night,’ mused Fleetwood-Pelham, before recounting an amusing anecdote involving the Queen’s favourite horse. They were all laughing as they arrived at the Palace, where they were admitted by soldiers of the Grenadier Guards.

  It was the first time Lonsdale had been inside St James’s Palace, which was the official residence of the Queen’s Equerries and Grooms-in-Waiting, as well as the site of various formal ceremonies. It was an ancient building, smaller and more modest than Buckingham Palace, but beautifully appointed and with an atmosphere of hushed refinement.

  Fleetwood-Pelham had been allocated a pleasant suite of rooms on the ground floor, which opened on to a private garden in the back. They were a curious combination of British comfort and colonial exotic, mixing delicate Regency furniture with a selection of items from his travels across the Empire, particularly India and Hong Kong, where he had served in the 80th Regiment of Foot. There were also several watercolours, including one of Gangkhar Puensum, the highest mountain in Bhutan, and Mount Korbu, the tallest peak in the Malayan state of Perak.

  ‘These are attractive,’ said Lonsdale. ‘Who’s the artist?’

  Fleetwood-Pelham turned from his desk, where he was rummaging for the itinerary. ‘Me – I like to dabble.’

  He was overly modest, because they were skilfully executed by someone with considerable talent. Meanwhile, Hulda went to the window and peered out, trying to see the garden, although it was dark and the lights spilling from the room only illuminated the first few feet. ‘Is that a glasshouse in your courtyard?’

  ‘Just a small one, and there’s nothing in it at the moment,’ replied Fleetwood-Pelham. He smiled. ‘I aim to spend many happy hours there in the summer, as I’ve promised to fill the Queen’s chambers with orchids and African violets.’ He brushed past Hulda to close the curtains. ‘To keep out the winter chill. Now, where is that list …’

  ‘It looks as if you’ve travelled a great deal,’ said Lonsdale, looking at a display of gourds, all decorated with tiny coloured stones. ‘Where are these from?’

  ‘China, mostly. I plan to give them to the Natural History Museum. Roth assures me that they’ll be well-cared-for.’

  ‘Just don’t leave them to him in your will,’ muttered Hulda, and went to look into a purpose-built case containing combs. ‘These are lovely. I especially like the red and white one.’

  Fleetwood-Pelham opened the lid and took it out. It was carved from bone and studded with beads. ‘Please take it – it’ll suit your complexion perfectly.’

  Hulda demurred, embarrassed, but Fleetwood-Pelham placed it in her hair, and Lonsdale found himself thinking that it looked a lot nicer on her than it would on Anne. He blinked, shocked by such disloyal thinking to the woman who would be his wife.

  ‘I can’t,’ objected Hulda, although she allowed Fleetwood-Pelham to guide her to a mirror so she could see herself. ‘It must be worth a fortune.’

  ‘I’m afraid you picked a very unremarkable piece. It cost me the equivalent of a penny when I bought it after the Battle of Ulundi. Had you picked one of the ivory pieces from Singapore, I wouldn’t have been so generous.’

  ‘Then thank you,’ said Hulda, turning this way and that.

  ‘It suits you much better than Lady Morganton, who borrowed it for a ball. Do you know her? She’s the one who married her butler.’

  Neither Hulda nor Lonsdale knew what to say to this piece of gossip but, taking their silence for interest, Fleetwood-Pelham elaborated, eyes gleaming as he related the more scandalous details. Only when the subject had been exhausted did he hand Hulda the itinerary, and ring for a servant to escort them out. While they waited, Lonsdale turned the conversation to the Garraway, more to prevent another scurrilous dialogue than for information, as he was sure the courtier had told them all he knew already. Fleetwood-Pelham was happy to chatter.

  ‘My duties keep me here or at Windsor most of the time, so I don’t visit the club as often as I’d like. I knew Dickerson, of course, but of the five I liked Archbishop Tait best. People will tell you he was a fanatic, but I always found him charming company.’

  ‘I learned that Dickerson and Gurney were Watchers,’ said Lonsdale. ‘Are you sure you’ve never heard of the group?’

  ‘Quite sure,’ replied the courtier. ‘Although you did tell me that you were thinking of joining it, so perhaps you should reconsider, given that it sounds so dangerous. Would you like me to put out a few feelers the next time I go to the Garraway? Perhaps Señor d’Atte will know something – he spends half his life at the club.’

  ‘Best not,’ said Lonsdale hastily, sure that the killer would not appreciate such an inveterate gossip probing his business, and not wanting a sixth victim claimed. ‘At least, not until we know more about it.’

  ‘As you wish,’ shrugged Fleetwood-Pelham. ‘But let me know if you change your mind. Morley is a good friend, and if I can help his paper, you only need say the word.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Lonsdale, hoping it would not be necessary, and that he would find answers without sending Fleetwood-Pelham into the fray.

  Lonsdale and Hulda took a hansom to Galton’s house, which allowed them a few minutes to exchange news. Lonsdale went first, then Hulda.

  ‘I searched the offices of The Illustrated London News from top to bottom,’ she said, ‘including broom cupboards and boiler rooms. The cannibals aren’t there.’

  ‘How did you manage that?’ asked Lonsdale, startled and impressed.

  ‘I told Ingram that The Echo had hidden a spy inside. He was so appalled that he even lent me some printers to help me roust the culprit out. When we finished, I suggested we search his house, too. Both were Kumu-free.’

  ‘Lord!’ breathed Lonsdale. ‘What happens when Ingram next meets the editor of The Echo, and accuses him of espionage?’

  ‘He’ll deny it and Ingram will assume he’s lying,’ replied Hulda briskly. ‘But speaking of The Echo, have you seen Voules today?’

  Lonsdale grinned. ‘Yes, but he won’t be trailing us to Galton’s house. Turkish Ma has taken care of that.’

  Hulda pulled a face. ‘Turkish Ma? She sounds like a prostitute!’

  ‘Funny you should say that …’

  Francis Galton and his wife Louisa lived in a bright white, five-storey house in a corner of Rutland Gate, just to the south of Hyde Park. The great man was protected from unwanted visitors by a heavy-set, self-important butler, who tended to admit guests only if he liked the look of them. He did not like the look of Lonsdale and Hulda, but had been told they were coming, so had no choice but to let them past. He took them to an empty sitting room, which was fireless and unwelcoming, then disappeared without a word.

  ‘Odd behaviour,’ remarked Hulda, bemused. ‘Did we arrive too early?’

  Lonsdale nodded to the clock on the mantelpiece. ‘Not according to that.’

  The door opened, and the butler indicated with a surly flap of his hand that they were to follow him to the dining room. They obliged, entering just as Galton was straightening the tablecloth and Louisa was setting out the last fork.

  ‘We’re suffering a domestic crisis,’ explained Galton by way of greeting. ‘The cook was sick all over the croquettes of leveret and has retired to bed to await the physician. Unfortunately, most of the rest of the staff have followed her example—’

  ‘Other than the butler, the footman and the scullery maid,’ said Louisa. ‘And, as the men can’t cook, we have to rely on Ethel to provide tonight’s victuals.’

  ‘So sit down and let’s see what she has made for us,’ said Galton, rubbing his hands together enthusiastically. ‘She has promised us a meal fit for a queen.’

  Lonsdale and Hulda sat, but there was a long delay before the first course appeared. Galton re
fused to do business until he had eaten, ‘entertaining’ his guests with a rambling monologue on how his experiments growing sweet peas contributed to his development of the idea of regression to the mean. All the while, Louisa gossiped about the servants, interjecting her remarks at random points during her husband’s discourse, so it was clear that neither of them was paying the slightest attention to the other.

  ‘Eugenics is the only way to solve society’s problems,’ preached Galton, launching into another of his favourite topics. ‘We can’t have everyone breeding as and when they please, and there must be regulations.’

  ‘The footman is a homosexual,’ announced Louisa, seemingly oblivious of the fact that the man in question had just arrived with the hors d’oeuvres. ‘I have no objection to those, generally speaking.’

  ‘I am glad to hear it,’ Hulda managed to say before Galton cut across her.

  ‘Weavers, for example. We should teach them not to procreate, because their skills are redundant now we have mills. If none of them breed, we’ll not have their hungry mouths to feed. Miners, on the other hand, are much in demand, so we should reward them for producing fodder for the mines.’

  He droned on, blithely unaware that his guests found his remarks outrageously offensive. Lonsdale decided it was best not to listen and concentrated on the food instead. The first course was garlic mushrooms, and comprised one small piece of fungus apiece, smothered in uncooked garlic cloves. Galton and Louisa did not seem to notice the pungent flavour as they cleared their plates, although Lonsdale only managed half of his, while Hulda just ate the mushroom.

  ‘The butler won’t be kissing the chambermaid if he devours any of this!’ Louisa sniggered, as the man reached to take away the plate. ‘She’ll be able to smell his breath from Cheapside.’

  Hulda released an unladylike snort into her wine glass, and Lonsdale saw she was struggling not to laugh. She need not have worried about displays of unmannerly mirth, he thought acidly, because Galton and his wife were too engrossed in themselves to notice anything she might say or do. Then the next course arrived.

  ‘Beef and oyster pie,’ intoned the butler gravely.

  It looked delicious, with a layer of flaky golden pastry across the top, but when the butler sliced into it, it was to reveal four very rare steaks stacked on top of each other, surrounded by oysters still in their shells.

  ‘I told Ethel to use her imagination,’ said Galton, by means of explanation, and launched into a harangue about universal suffrage.

  ‘Ethel has one serious flaw among her many minor ones,’ said Louisa, sawing her meat with considerable vigour. ‘She’s a dreadful gossip.’

  This time, Hulda’s snort was much louder, and when Lonsdale nudged her foot under the table, he thought she might choke with her efforts to retain her composure. Her face turned red and her eyes watered.

  ‘Of course, that’s why the rest of them are pretending to be ill,’ continued Louisa. ‘They see it as an opportunity to have a night off for some malicious chatter.’

  The last course was a ‘sweet tart’, which was an apposite description, as it was a topless pie and it was sweet. Indeed, it seemed to comprise pure sugar, and Lonsdale did not think he had ever eaten anything so sickly. Galton gobbled his slice at a furious rate of knots while holding forth about the current state of the navy, and Louisa mused that Ethel’s mind had probably been on the boot boy while she had been cooking, because she aimed to bed him.

  When the plates had been cleared away, Galton declared it was time for the men and Hulda to retire to the drawing room for port and cigars. Louisa, the only one excluded from the invitation, took the hint and left.

  Galton’s drawing room was large, old-fashioned and dark. It was full of the treasures he had collected from his travels in Egypt, the Ottoman Empire and Southern Africa, and smelled unpleasantly of the potions he used to preserve them. He indicated that Lonsdale and Hulda were to sit, poured them some port, and set a box of El Diamante cigars on the table. His eyebrows shot up in astonishment when Hulda took one and lit it with the panache of an experienced tobacco connoisseur.

  ‘To business, then,’ he said, as Hulda proceeded to fill the room with thick, reeking smoke. ‘I understand you require my expert opinion on a matter of some importance.’

  ‘Of great importance,’ said Lonsdale. He produced the grass and explained it had been found on a killer’s fifth victim. ‘Can you identify it?’

  ‘It’s African,’ replied Galton, then his eyes narrowed. ‘I hope you didn’t take this to Henry Morton Stanley before consulting me. That man is an ignorant braggart.’

  ‘We didn’t—’ began Lonsdale, but Galton was on a roll.

  ‘He’s just come back from the Congo because he says he’s “exhausted”. What does he think African travel is – a holiday? He’s an upstart, who knows nothing about exploration except hacking through jungles and letting native porters do all the work. He has no intellectual refinement or scientific knowledge, and shouldn’t be allowed on the Isle of Wight, let alone the Dark Continent.’

  Lonsdale had considered Stanley’s journeys remarkable. ‘I think—’

  ‘He’s Welsh, you know,’ said Galton in a hiss, as if it were a disease.

  ‘So is my mother,’ Lonsdale managed to interject. He smiled rather challengingly. ‘Which makes me half Welsh.’

  Galton changed tack. ‘And illegitimate. He grew up in a workhouse.’

  ‘Then how impressive that he rose above it and achieved so much – all on his own merit,’ said Hulda pointedly. ‘He had no rich and famous family to set him on his feet.’

  Rather than acknowledge her point, Galton altered course again. ‘Let me get my magnifying glass to look at this grass. Lord! Is that blood on the stem?’

  ‘Yes, sir,’ replied Lonsdale. ‘Samuel Gurney the banker’s.’

  ‘I’ve never liked bankers,’ remarked Galton absently. ‘They have the effrontery to think they know more than I do about money.’

  ‘How presumptuous,’ said Hulda, with such a straight face that Lonsdale nearly choked on his port.

  ‘Hah!’ exclaimed the great man, eyes gleaming as he peered at the grass through a huge magnifying glass. ‘I do know this little beauty. It’s one of a group that grows in the southern reaches of Africa. Its Latin name will mean nothing to you. However, as it has a tendency to favour high, barren areas that are good for nothing except burials, one local name for it translates as the Watchers of the Dead.’

  Lonsdale stared at him, levity forgotten. ‘Are you sure?’

  Galton regarded him coolly. ‘If I hadn’t been certain, young man, I wouldn’t have said it. Of course I’m sure. I encountered it when I was in Africa.’

  ‘Does it grow anywhere near the Congo?’ asked Hulda.

  Galton wagged a finger at her. ‘You want to know if those escaped cannibals left it on their victims. Well, they might have done, but I can tell you for a fact that this isn’t a plant they’d have at home. Of course, they should never have been ripped from their villages and transplanted here in the first place. It was a wicked thing to do.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Hulda soberly. ‘It was.’

  ‘There are many different sub-species of watcher-grass,’ Galton went on. ‘The differences all lie in the shape of the seeds. I may even be able to give you a precise location for this fellow, given time.’

  Lonsdale rather thought Galton had given them enough by saying the plant was not native to the Congo, as it seemed to exonerate the Kumu, but he accepted the offer of further investigation with a murmur of thanks.

  ‘I don’t suppose you’re a member of the Garraway Club, are you?’ asked Hulda, to see what else Galton might be able to tell them.

  ‘Certainly not! I prefer not to hobnob with churchmen, lawyers and bankers, if it can be avoided. I prefer the Athenaeum or the Oxford and Cambridge, where Lonsdale and I first met.’

  ‘Then have you heard of a group who call themselves the Watchers? We know that at least
two of the dead men belonged to it, and all were members of the Garraway.’ Hulda nodded at the grass. ‘Perhaps that’s their emblem.’

  ‘In the Bible, Watchers are fallen angels, who keep an eye on people,’ said Galton. ‘Some are said to have taught us how to use weapons or read the weather. It’s a lot of twaddle, of course, but I can see why the name might appeal to people with delusions of grandeur. However, I’ve not heard of such a society.’

  ‘The painting!’ exclaimed Lonsdale. ‘There’s a painting in the Garraway of an angel sitting on St Paul’s Cathedral, looking down across London.’

  ‘Well, there you are then,’ said Galton. ‘The Garraway must be the place where this organization gathers. Did this angel have an evil visage or an amiable one? That might give you a clue as to what manner of activities your Watchers promote.’

  Lonsdale considered. ‘Its face was hauntingly beautiful, but neither evil nor amiable. It was just watching.’

  ‘Then I suggest you tread very carefully,’ said Galton. ‘Once men start thinking they’re akin to celestial beings, they tend to consider themselves free from the rules that bind the rest of us, and that makes them extremely dangerous.’

  EIGHT

  Despite being bone weary after his day of traipsing around the city in search of answers, Lonsdale did not sleep well that night. It had been nearly midnight by the time he had taken leave of the Galtons, seen Hulda safely home, and returned to Cleveland Square. Then he had sat in the drawing room for an hour, sipping a brandy and thinking about what Galton had said.

  Dickerson and Gurney – and perhaps the other victims, too – had been Watchers, and the grass left on the bodies was known as the Watchers of the Dead. Did that mean a fellow Watcher was dispatching them? Or someone who disapproved of whatever the society did? And what about the Watchers’ plans for Christmas Eve – the sacrifices that would ‘show what the Watchers were capable of’? Was the killer aiming to prevent it; in which case, was he actually dispatching people who aimed to commit some dreadful atrocity?