Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  “André, you’re thinner than when I last saw you,” Palmerston commented. The man was in fact English, but Palmerston preferred his French alias.

  “Not from illness, Your Lordship.”

  “Indeed not. You have a new female friend.”

  André looked surprised.

  “Her name is Angelique,” Palmerston reported. “She is twenty years old and comes from Reims. She likes to dance. Her father is a cabinetmaker.”

  “Your Lordship, I am careful about what I tell her. She is part of my cover. She does not know my secrets.”

  “No need to be alarmed, André. I determined that she isn’t a threat. I mention these details merely to emphasize that even though we meet only twice a year, I think about each of you every day.”

  “Your Lordship,” the Englishman who called himself Giovanni said quickly, “if you heard that I was drinking, it is not to the excess that I pretend. It is all for appearances, so that the Italian authorities won’t suspect that I am serious.”

  “I am aware of that,” Palmerston responded. “I’m not disappointed in any of you.”

  They looked relieved.

  “I trust that you won’t disappoint me. You are truly always on my mind.”

  Palmerston focused his gaze on each of them, one at a time, displaying the powerful presence that had made him variously war secretary, foreign secretary, and home secretary.

  “Face-to-face every six months, we reestablish our bond. We reaffirm from the solid looks we give one another that I can depend on you and that you can depend on me. Can I? Can I depend on you?”

  “You know you can, Your Lordship,” Niels assured him.

  “Anselmo, Wolfgang, Mikhail?” Again Palmerston used aliases that identified the countries to which the English operatives were assigned.

  “You have my complete loyalty, Your Lordship,” Mikhail asserted. “The mission is all that matters.”

  The others nodded resolutely.

  “Make your reports.”

  One by one, they described their progress.

  “I am encouraged.”

  “Thank you, Your Lordship.”

  “Do you need more resources?”

  “Additional weapons, ammunition, explosives, and printing presses,” Wolfgang responded. “Not to mention the alcohol to prime mobs into using them.”

  “And all of that will require?”

  “Twenty thousand pounds.”

  The others identified the amounts they needed in France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Russia.

  “The funds will be provided through the usual means,” Palmerston told them, taking the huge sums of money for granted.

  “I hear rumors that the queen is with child again,” André said.

  “No,” Palmerston replied, “although I’m assured that she plans to keep trying. Eight children aren’t sufficient for her. Her Majesty wants more offspring and intends to marry all her children to the royal houses of Europe in the hopes of guaranteeing that Europe won’t threaten the British Empire. She wishes to be known as the grandmother of the Continent. But that will take many years, and Her Majesty is foolish to imagine that blood relations won’t quarrel. Our way is more assured. Eighteen forty-eight proved the wisdom of our method. Destabilizing Europe is the only way to protect the empire.”

  EIGHTEEN FORTY-EIGHT. The widening division between rich and poor became so extreme that revolutions spread throughout almost every nation on the Continent.

  The upheavals began in France, where the original blood-filled revolution of 1789 was still being felt and where a near civil war in 1848 brought an end to the recently returned monarchy. The furor spread to the Italian and German states, to the Habsburg Empire, to Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and Poland. In many cases, the effects of the uprisings were short-lived, with aristocrats soon returning to power. But a mere six years after the Year of Revolution, fear still preoccupied the upper class throughout Europe.

  Great Britain was one of the few countries not to experience a revolution, with the result that it rose to the height of world power, becoming the master of the globe. What only a handful of the inner circle knew was that Lord Palmerston’s methodical progression from war secretary to foreign secretary to home secretary had allowed him to establish a network of provocateurs, who incited the workers of the Continent to rebel against their rich masters. By keeping Europe in turmoil, he assured Great Britain’s dominance.

  As he told his espionage operatives, “Destabilizing Europe is the only way to protect the empire.”

  But for all his apparent confidence, Palmerston knew that he had gone almost too far. The spirit of revolution that he had created on the Continent had inadvertently infected England. In 1848, a total of 150,000 members of a labor group called the Chartists had assembled in London, south of the Thames on Kennington Common near Vauxhall Gardens. They intended to march on Parliament and demand yearly elections, universal voting privileges for every man in England, and the right for non–property owners to be elected.

  Fear of the consequences caused Palmerston to commission 150,000 special constables to preserve order, one for every Chartist. Military units blocked all the bridges across the Thames. In the end, the Chartists agreed that only a few representatives would cross the river and present their petition to the government, which pretended to consider it but ultimately did nothing. The Chartists returned to their homes throughout the country. The crisis was averted.

  But Palmerston knew that things might have turned out quite differently because of the demon that he had created.

  HE DESCENDED THE HIDDEN STAIRWAY, slid the wardrobe back into place, crossed the bedroom, unlocked the door, and greeted the beguiling young actress in the sitting room.

  She peered up from the script of the new melodrama that would include a stabbing in an onstage pool as well as two explosions. With a smile she asked, “Are you finished with me, Your Lordship?”

  Palmerston studied his pocket watch and sighed. “Unfortunately.”

  “Always at your service, Your Lordship.”

  “You’re very charming.”

  Someone knocked on the door—three times, then once. Palmerston peered through a peephole and opened the door, where Brookline waited for him.

  “Ninety minutes. Punctual as always, Colonel.”

  They proceeded along the club’s corridor, passed the security officer at the top of the marble stairs, and descended to the club’s ornate lobby. Meanwhile, on the topmost floor, the agents disguised as workers left the meeting room and continued pretending to renovate the club. At sunset, they would exit through the servants’ door. A different set of workers, these legitimate, would arrive the next morning.

  “Colonel, you were in India in ’forty-eight,” Palmerston said at the bottom of the stairs. “Did word reach there about the near-revolt in London?”

  “The Chartist rebellion, Your Lordship? Yes. Most alarming. We were always alert against a similar attempted mutiny by the natives in India.”

  Outside the club, they passed the security agent dressed as a doorman. At the end of the curtained tunnel, a different-colored coach awaited them.

  “You’re using another vehicle?” Palmerston asked.

  “It’s one of my new security precautions, Your Lordship. Anyone who followed you here might have continued following the earlier vehicle in the expectation that it would return here for you. That would be easier for them than waiting for you to leave and taking the risk that they’d be noticed on the street.”

  “You suspect I’m being followed?”

  “That’s always my assumption, Your Lordship.”

  Brookline and the operative guarding the tunnel flanked Palmerston so that no one could see him step into the coach. As a final precaution, just before Brookline climbed inside, he scanned the area.

  He looked for the telltale indicator of surveillance—someone who wasn’t moving amid the constant commotion of the street. Today, it was easier to look for surveillance becaus
e the street was less populated than usual, nervous people hurrying home before dark and the further set of murders that were predicted to occur.

  Brookline sat opposite Palmerston in the well-appointed interior as the coach drove into Pall Mall traffic, a security operative at the reins, a second operative next to him.

  “Your Lordship, is there a reason you mentioned the Chartist rebellion?”

  “It happened only six years ago and remains fresh in people’s minds. The only time I saw comparable fear in the streets was after the Ratcliffe Highway murders decades earlier. After Saturday night’s murders, that fear is on the streets again. We need to do everything to stop it.”

  BROOKLINE CALLED TO THE DRIVER, “Turn left onto Marlborough Road.”

  “That isn’t the way to my home,” Palmerston objected. “I need to return for a reception Lady Palmerston has arranged for the prime minister. We should be going to the right up St. James’s Street.”

  “That would be the expected way, Your Lordship. For another security precaution, we’re taking an unanticipated route.”

  “Another security precaution. Do you expect trouble?”

  “To repeat what you said, Your Lordship, fear is on the streets again. As home secretary, you might attract the displeasure of someone who believes you haven’t done enough to keep the streets safe.” While he spoke, Brookline didn’t look at Palmerston but instead directed his attention toward the windows on either side of him, studying the street. “I can’t change where you live and work, but I can change the route you use to go to them.”

  The coach passed Buckingham Palace on the left and proceeded to the right, up Constitution Hill.

  “I’m not reassured that Her Majesty suffered six assassination attempts on this very street,” Palmerston said.

  “Because she lives here, Your Lordship. But no one can anticipate that you’re taking this route home.”

  “Four years ago, someone tried to kill Her Majesty by striking her head with a cane—outside my home when her cousin Lord Cambridge owned it.”

  “As I mentioned, Your Lordship, I can change the route, but not where you live.”

  The coach turned to the right at Wellington Arch and entered Piccadilly, the street on which Palmerston had his mansion. The area had once been countryside. A tailor who earned a fortune from selling then-fashionable stiff collars with perforated lace borders, known as piccadills, built a mansion there, Piccadilly Hall, and the name became synonymous with the area. Other mansions soon were built. The prestigious location was directly across from Green Park, famous for its fireworks on special occasions.

  As the vehicle approached the walled gates to the semicircular driveway in front of Palmerston’s mansion, Brookline kept scanning the street and noticed a man emerge from the park.

  The man was distinctive because he walked with determination across the street, so focused on the coach that he paid no attention to the carriages that were forced to stop abruptly, horses rearing in protest.

  The man had a revolver in his right hand.

  “Get down on the floor, Your Lordship.”

  “What?”

  “Down on the floor, Your Lordship! Now!”

  Brookline recognized the revolver as an 1851 Colt navy model. Its specifics came automatically to him: a repeater whose cylinders were front-loaded with 280 grains of powder and a .380 ball.

  The man kept coming.

  One of the gates opened slowly.

  “Forster!” Brookline shouted to the driver. “You and Whitman get His Lordship through the gate! I’ll distract the man!”

  The coach came nearer to the slowly opening gate.

  Brookline jumped from the coach.

  “Stop!” he told the man with the gun. He held up his hands in a placating gesture. At the same time, he moved forward.

  The man came relentlessly.

  “You’re too late! Lord Palmerston’s going into the house!” Brookline warned him.

  “Not yet he isn’t!”

  The man had a German accent. He dodged to the side, gaining a view of the coach where it was only beginning to enter the open gate.

  He raised the pistol.

  A woman screamed.

  “I know what the bastard’s doing in Germany!” The man aimed. “But he won’t do it anymore!”

  Brookline lunged.

  The man pulled the trigger.

  The revolver exploded.

  Amid a burst of gray smoke, Brookline swung his fist down like a club, knocking the revolver from the man’s grasp. The next instant, he collided with the assassin, slamming hard against him.

  But the man was strong and solid. Absorbing the blow, he lurched back but didn’t fall.

  Brookline swung his fist toward the man’s throat.

  The man blocked the blow and swung toward Brookline’s throat, a maneuver that indicated that he too was a trained fighter.

  Brookline jumped backward, avoiding the lethal punch.

  A horse reared.

  Someone shouted from the closing gate, “His Lordship’s inside!”

  The attacker darted around the front of the horse, slapped its haunches, and startled it into charging at Brookline.

  As Brookline dove toward the sidewalk, feeling a rush of air from the stampeding cab, the attacker used the vehicle to shield him while he raced across the street and into the park.

  Brookline surged to his feet and charged around the back of the cab, only to see another panicked horse speeding toward him. He hurried in front of it just in time and chased the attacker into the park.

  Paving stones gave way to grass. Lampposts became trees. As the attacker sped along a path, a servant with a baby’s pram cried out and shoved the pram toward bushes, choosing one collision over another.

  Brookline ran past her and the now-wailing baby. Stretching his long legs, he came closer to his target, but at once the man veered from the path, crashed through bushes, and disappeared down a slope.

  Brookline reduced his speed and studied the bushes.

  Abruptly he dove to the ground as a fireball sped at him. Sparks flying, it shrieked over his head and struck a tree, the skyrocket exploding. Despite the cold weather, Brookline felt heat pass over him.

  A second skyrocket sped horizontally through the park, exploding against a bench.

  A third struck another tree.

  Now every other manner of fireworks erupted. The slope burst into flames: red, green, yellow, blue. Sparks gushed as if from a fountain or spun on the ground as if on a wheel. Others shrieked or crackled like gunfire. Debris flew everywhere, smoke making it impossible to see down the slope.

  Brookline pressed hard against the grass, compacting his body as much as possible. He squeezed his hands over his ears, as if he were under bombardment. His heart pounded against the frozen earth. He could almost hear the screams of battle.

  Gradually, the explosions stopped. Glancing up, he saw the smoke dwindle. He rose carefully to a crouch, scanning the devastated bushes and slope. Branches smoldered. Dry grass was blackened.

  THE REVOLVER HAD TOO MUCH gunpowder in it?” Palmerston asked, still in shock.

  “Yes, Your Lordship. Overcharging it can cause that model to explode.”

  They were in Palmerston’s mansion, in the ballroom on the second level, where tables glittered with champagne stemware ready to be filled at the soon-to-occur reception. The destroyed weapon sat on a polished tray.

  “And you couldn’t find him?”

  “Not after the fireworks diversion he prepared. By the time the explosions ended, he was nowhere in sight.”

  “But why would the madman have wanted to kill me?”

  “To quote him, Your Lordship… forgive my language.”

  “Just tell me.”

  “As he prepared to try to shoot you, his exact words were, ‘I know what the bastard’s doing in Germany! But he won’t do it anymore!’ ”

  “Germany?”

  “Yes, Your Lordship. Do you have any ide
a what he was babbling about? It didn’t make sense to me. Our current quarrel is with Russia in the Crimea. We don’t have any hostile involvement with the German states. Besides, you’re the home secretary now, not the foreign secretary or the war secretary. Anything that happens in Europe doesn’t concern you any longer, only what happens here at home.”

  “Exactly. How could I have anything to do with Germany? The man was delusional.”

  Lady Palmerston, his former mistress, appeared in the doorway, her look indicating that the guests would soon arrive.

  “Do you think you should cancel the event?” Brookline asked.

  “And disappoint the prime minister?” Lord Palmerston asked in dismay. “Admit that the current instability is having an effect? Emphatically not. But Colonel Brookline…”

  “Yes, Your Lordship?”

  “Increase my protection.”

  9

  The Separate System

  A TRAIN CHUGGED PAST VAUXHALL GARDENS. Beyond the tracks, numerous boats navigated the Thames. Ryan watched the train’s black smoke merge with the fog forming above the river. His summoned-to-meet-Lord Palmerston clothes felt stiff and uncomfortable, especially his high collar and the straps that looped under his boots, keeping his trousers taut.

  Those weren’t all that made him uncomfortable. He turned toward the many constables who led the twenty-four prostitutes from the gardens and put them into police wagons. The women were complaining again. But dealing with them was simple compared to the problem with De Quincey.

  “I wish I could believe that laudanum hasn’t unhinged his mind,” Ryan told Becker as the Opium-Eater and his daughter emerged from the gardens. “Did any of what he said make sense to you about his two dead sisters and the Wordsworth child? My older sister died when I was ten. She fell into a river and drowned. I grieved for her, but I adjusted. I hardly think about her now.”

  “Yesterday, when we crossed Waterloo Bridge to go to the telegraph office, I noticed that you looked uncomfortable,” Becker said.

  “What does that have to do with De Quincey? Right now, I’m uncomfortable about a lot of things.”