Dance with Death

by Will Thomas

  “Don’t humor me, Thomas. I understand if I am going to be your wife that I shall have to learn a few things, and I don’t mean sewing and piano playing. I must study, and I am out of practice.”

  “I could help you.”

  “No, I’d prefer not to be your pupil. Do you suppose Mr. Grant might be able to suggest some books for me to study?”

  “That’s like asking a dairyman if he could suggest a place to get milk. I’m sure he’d like to help you, and you know where he is to be found most nights from nine in the morning to nine at night.”

  “He seems a gentle sort.”

  “Yes. Obviously, he is something of a recluse,” I replied. “His circle of friends could not form a circle at all. It would be good for both of you.”

  “He’s very old-fashioned and courtly.”

  “I suspect he got his manners from a book, probably one a century old. I don’t believe the chap’s had much experience with the fair sex.”

  “I would need to study at the museum occasionally, I think, or find some titles to purchase.”

  “I’m sure he could suggest a few, and I have a membership at the Reading Room.”

  We rode on for a few minutes.

  “Oh, very well,” she said. “What is a sword of Damocles?”

  “There once was a king…” I began.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Once we were safe and sound in Lion Street again, I excused myself and knocked at the corner of Barker’s staircase.

  “Come,” his voice rumbled.

  I went aloft. The Guv was in a nightshirt and robe, his large feet in slippers.

  “How was your visit?”

  “Interesting,” I answered. “But then Liam Grant is an interesting fellow.”

  “Were you safe?” he asked. “You did not put your wife in any danger?”

  “We were not followed, sir,” I replied. “And there was no way the assassin could have known I was visiting the museum. We returned by a different route, and I do not believe there was a spot high enough in Newington to shoot from, save perhaps the Metropolitan Tabernacle, and the assassin wouldn’t dare.”

  “He would. Assassins are not a pious people. Was it worth the effort?”

  “I’ll leave that for you to decide,” I answered. “Mr. Grant informed me that there is an old legend of a tunnel between the palace and the Goat Tavern. I saw his map for myself.”

  Barker scratched his head. His hair was disheveled. He had been asleep in a chair by the fire when I knocked.

  “A tunnel?” he repeated.

  “Yes, sir. Times were dangerous when William of Orange was brought in to restore the monarchy in 1689. The palace was being enlarged.”

  “A good time to build an escape tunnel, then,” he remarked.

  “Indeed, unless it was already in place.”

  “You believe it possible that La Sylphide will return and use the tunnel to kill the tsarevich,” the Guv said.

  I nodded. “It’s possible, certainly.”

  Barker considered the matter. His pipe lay on a round table at his elbow, I noticed, atop a copy of Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, volume 2.

  “If one has a bucket, and there is a hole in it, it must be plugged.”

  “Agreed, Thomas. We shall look into the matter in the morning. Did Mr. Grant appear to find the legend believable?”

  “He has made a subterranean map of all London, sir. The tunnel is on it, inked in sepia, which means he believes in the veracity of it, although there is no proof without investigating it.”

  “A map?” Barker asked, his mustache bowed in a small smile. Most people’s countenances brighten when they smile. His became more devilish. “I should very much like to see that map, lad.”

  “Should we enquire about the tunnel tomorrow, then?”

  “It is worth the effort, even if we prove the legend false. Good work, lad.”

  “Thank you, sir,” I said. “See you in the morning.”

  “Good night, Thomas.”

  I was on the stair when he called again. “How did Mrs. Llewelyn find your friend?”

  “I believe she preferred him to me.”

  “Ah,” he rumbled. “Sensible woman.”

  I grumbled on the way to our rooms. Rebecca was in front of her vanity, unpinning her hair.

  “Sensible, indeed,” she said.

  “There is no privacy in this house. Henceforth, I shall be as silent as the tomb.”

  * * *

  We arrived in Whitehall the following morning at seven-thirty precisely. The Guv is nothing if not punctual. He examined the morning post and attacked the first newspaper. It all concerned the royal wedding: who would attend and in what order they would appear in the procession, what the bride would be wearing, and whether the service would be long or short. The bookmakers said long.

  “When are we going to the palace?” I asked the Guv.

  “No earlier than ten, I should say,” he answered. “Most royals sleep late, then dawdle over their breakfast. I thought we might beard Mr. Pierce in his den first and put the matter before him.”

  “It seems as good a plan as any,” I replied.

  “I am pleased it meets with your approval, Mr. Llewelyn. Let us go and see if we can roust him from his chair. It is a good day to walk.”

  It was, indeed. The sun was out in Whitehall Street, but there were pockets of cool air in the shadows. Once we reached the Home Office we climbed the stair and asked for directions to Pierce’s office.

  Hesketh Pierce was in shirtsleeves with a cup of coffee in his hands when we arrived and knocked upon his door. He looked rumpled. I couldn’t help thinking the man kept almost royal hours.

  “Gentlemen,” he said, running a hand over his slick, pomaded hair. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

  I looked about. Every inch of his office was taken up with maps—large ones of London, small ones marked with the parade route in red ink. One in particular caught Barker’s attention, a map of Kensington Palace itself.

  “Mr. Pierce, Mr. Llewelyn has come across a piece of information that you might find useful,” Barker said. “We wish to trade it for a letter giving us official permission to investigate this case. We cannot go about claiming to be working for the tsar or Her Majesty’s government or the Home Office if we have no proof. It slows the process.”

  Pierce looked down his patrician, Cambridge-educated nose at us. “No.”

  “Very well. When I find whoever has hired an assassin to kill the tsarevich, I will be certain to tell The Times, the Daily Mail, and every other newspaper who asks how the Home Office was not in any way helpful to our enquiry.”

  Pierce took a sip of his coffee and retrieved a silver case, extracting a cigarette. It took three strikes to get his Vesta lit, which is always demoralizing. Finally, he lit his cigarette and drew the smoke into his lungs. He was using the time to consider the request. The Guv did have an impressive record.

  “How viable is this information?” Pierce asked.

  “Not very, I admit, but it is necessary for you to investigate since we have no permission to do so.”

  “I will consider it.”

  “Very well,” Barker said. “I will give you the information and rely upon the Home Office to do the proper thing. Have you ever heard a rumor about a tunnel connecting the palace to the Goat Tavern across Kensington High Street?”

  “A tunnel?” Pierce repeated, sounding surprised. “Good heavens, no. Do you mean a recent one?”

  “No,” I answered. “One from the days of William of Orange, when the building was being renovated. At that time, it was dangerous to be a royal.”

  “It still is, Mr. Llewelyn,” he replied. “Which is why I assume you are here. Who claims there is a tunnel there?”

  “A scholar I consulted,” I replied. “An amateur.”

  “Interested in tunnels, is he?” Pierce asked, sounding unimpressed.

  “He works for the British Museum,”
I said, stretching the truth somewhat, “and is a collector of out-of-the-way information about London.”

  “Quite,” Hesketh Pierce replied.

  I began to feel foolish.

  “Nevertheless,” Cyrus Barker said, “the palace must be searched. The tunnel must be found, if it exists. You are charged with protecting the tsarevich. You must also protect the Duke of York, his fiancée, and the other royals who live there. It is your duty.”

  Pierce sighed. The Guv draws out one’s better nature, whether one wants him to or not. The Home Office man was just learning that.

  “Please do not lecture me about my duties, Mr. Barker,” he replied. “It is too early in the morning. Very well, but we must search ourselves. The Queen’s Guard, that is. We cannot have amateurs crawling all over the palace.”

  “Why, Mr. Pierce,” Barker said, bristling. “We are not amateurs. We are professional enquiry agents. We have been hired.”

  “No doubt, but you cannot search the palace yourselves,” Pierce insisted. “I’m afraid that is final.”

  My partner bowed. “We understand. What about the letter?”

  “Oh, ruddy hell. If it will get you out of here.”

  After the Home Office man scribbled a note on a piece of official stationary, the Guv led us outside. I could see the frustration on his face.

  “This could all be for nothing,” I reminded my partner.

  “It could, indeed.”

  “A good number of my ideas come to nothing all the time.”

  “I’ve noticed that,” Barker answered.

  “But still,” I replied.

  “Aye, still,” he said. For a moment, he paused, deep in thought. A moment later, he spoke. “If we cannot examine the palace cellars, let us try at the other end.”

  We hailed a cab and Barker ordered the driver to take us to Kensington. We stopped in front of the palace, but the Guv did not enter the gate. In fact, he turned away.

  “The Goat Tavern, of course!” I said, realizing at once what he was up to. There are two ends to every tunnel. “What incentive shall you offer the publican to have a look ’round his establishment?”

  “Let us see. One is bound to come to mind.”

  Barker grasped his wrist behind him and walked with his head down, pondering things. I liked when he pondered things. It was a good sign.

  We crossed the street and stepped into the shade of the entrance. Despite the warmth outside, it was cool inside the building.

  “Two porters, please,” I said to the barman. There were empty tables everywhere, but the Guv hooked his boot on the rail in front of the bar. I watched the ale being poured into pint glasses. The barman took his time, pouring slowly, which is the proper way to respect a dark ale. Good stout should never be rushed. Barker took a long draught, put his glass down, wiped the foam from his mustache with a crooked finger, and spoke.

  “Sir,” he said to the man. The latter was as burly as my partner, with a curling mustache and thinning hair. He looked a no-nonsense sort of fellow. He would not take it nor give it. “We would see your cellar, if you please.”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. It must have been a while since anyone challenged him, and in his own mansion, so to speak.

  “The devil you say.”

  “I am working with the Home Office,” Barker said, and pulled the folded paper from his pocket.

  “I don’t care if you bring a note from God Almighty. You’re not seeing my cellar,” the man replied.

  “You’re retired navy, are you not?”

  As the Guv spoke, I noticed the anchor tattooed on the man’s forearm.

  “What of it?”

  “Mason?”

  “Don’t have no truck with secret societies.”

  “Ah,” Barker said. “Churchman?”

  “Nor them, neither.”

  “Payment, then. Would twenty pounds suffice?”

  “Here now, clear off.”

  “Fifty pounds, then, just to look about your cellar.”

  “Hop it!” the man said, lifting an ugly-looking club from under the bar. From the scratches and dents in it, it looked well used.

  “No self-respecting publican would refuse fifty pounds to look about an empty storeroom,” Barker said to me. “Our friend here is hiding something.”

  The barman rose his club and brought it down on what he hoped would be Barker’s head, but the Guv rose his left arm and caught the blow with his forearm. Had it been my arm it would have snapped like kindling, but my partner’s arm was all sinew and muscle from running a sailing vessel in the South China Sea. Also, I heard the clang of metal, and remembered that he always kept a knife in a leather sheath strapped to his wrist.

  The Guv reached forward, curled a hand around the man’s thick neck, and slammed his head forward into the edge of the bar. It sounded like the thump of a melon. I leaned over the bar and watched as the fellow slid down to his knees and fell over onto his side. The club made a rattling sound on the stone floor as it rolled and came to a standstill.

  We were not alone. There were perhaps ten people in the room, enjoying a pint and an early lunch. A cook came out of the kitchen wiping his hands on a rag, and looked at his employer lying insensible on the floor.

  “I suggest you bring a constable and an ambulance, sir,” Barker said nonchalantly. “This poor fellow has injured himself.”

  The cook looked at us, glanced at the prone publican behind the bar, and then studied the people in their chairs, who had turned to look at us with their pints in their hands.

  “Go!” Barker growled.

  The cook dropped his rag and ran out the door. We walked around the end of the bar and looked at the barman. There was an angry welt above his brow.

  “His skull looks thick enough,” he said. “I shall stay here, but you’ve got perhaps three minutes to inspect the cellar.”

  I crossed to an unmarked door and opened it. It was a public water closet, but there was a curving stairwell at the far end. I descended it quickly. The stair continued down two flights, but I expected that. The lower the basement, the cooler the temperature to store ale barrels therein.

  The stair opened onto a square room lined with old timbers and crumbling plaster. There were shelves containing glasses, plates, and equipment of the restaurant trade. The rest of the cellar was taken up with barrels of all sizes, brands, and types, some stacked haphazardly upon the others. I tried to push one and found it near impossible to move, but I heard the slosh of beer within. I climbed on top of it and worked out which direction the palace was in relation to the Goat. I was facing a wall. There was no tunnel that I could see. I looked about, tried to move the smaller barrels, and poked my nose anywhere I could put it. I hunted for spring catches that might suddenly reveal an opening. There was nothing.

  Coming up the stair, I cursed under my breath. No tunnel, I thought. Why had I trusted Liam Grant? He was a friend, of course, and I had few of those, but he was a bit of a one-off, an eccentric even by Barker’s standards.

  Returning to the bar I found a constable already in residence.

  “You’re saying this fellow burst in here and demanded to see your cellar?” the officer asked, writing in a notebook.

  The publican was seated in a chair, looking both angry and dizzy. The redness extended to his entire face.

  “Yes,” he shouted. “Stop making me sound like an idiot!”

  “Well, stop sounding like one. Why would a stranger demand to see your cellar? And if they burst in, why are there two half-finished pint glasses here on the bar?”

  “There was a difference of opinion, Constable,” Barker said. “Blows were traded, but no one was permanently damaged.”

  “Mr. Barker, is it? Did you want to see this man’s cellar?”

  “I did.”

  “I see,” the constable said, taking in Barker’s size and generally threatening appearance. “And why was that, sir?”

  “I cannot tell you.”

  The constable, who
was a stout veteran with gray in his mustache, eyed him as if he, too, was thinking of clubbing him. “And why not?”

  “It is palace business.”

  The Guv reached into his coat again and pulled the letter from his pocket. The Met officer took the letter and read it, studying it for some time. I don’t believe he spent his evenings in libraries.

  “Home Office,” he said, looking at the publican as if to say “Quit wasting my time.” “So, are you going to inspect the cellar?”

  I spoke up. “I already have.”

  “And who are you, sir?” the constable asked.

  “I’m his partner,” I replied, handing him my business card.

  “Nice card. Did you find what you were looking for, sir?”

  “I’m afraid I did not. There was a rumor about a tunnel leading to the palace, but it seems to have been a prank from the newspaper. Still, we had to investigate it.”

  The publican pointed at us both. “I demand this man be arrested!” he said. “Both of them.”

  “As many in this room will attest,” Barker said, “you were the one who struck the first blow. I merely defended myself. I’m a good friend of the commissioner, by the way. He is aware of my connection in this matter. The wedding, you know.”

  As a private enquiry agent, one is often called upon to invent a story on the spot and make it sound convincing. However, nothing can improve upon the unvarnished truth. The constable didn’t care about tunnels and altercations in public houses, which happen too frequently to mention. He had a beat and he had to maintain it according to schedule.

  The constable bent over and spoke to the publican as if he were hard of hearing or perhaps simpleminded.

  “I’m sure you won’t be pressing charges, sir,” he said. “That would require shutting down your establishment for the day and questioning each and every person in this room over and over again.”

  The barman turned. Every patron was now glaring at him. They had come in for lunch. They had no intention to stay for dinner also. And of course, if the Goat Tavern closed for a day, a great deal of revenue would be lost.

  “No harm done, I suppose,” the man grumbled.

  “What was that, sir?” asked the constable, who was near enough to hear every word.