The King's Justice

by Susan Elia MacNeal

  But Durgin didn’t like to be confined to the Book. “We’re calling our search for the suitcase killer ‘Operation Pinkie,’ ” he told them. “Named after the young criminal in Graham Greene’s novel Brighton Rock.” Some of the officers nodded, while others looked blank. “The novel’s about a series of murders in Brighton.”

  Durgin continued, “Yet another suitcase with bones has been found. This brings the total of suitcases—and skeletons—found to six. The murders are linked and obviously the work of one specific sequential killer. We can all agree the killer is a man, yes?” There were nods and grunts of agreement. “Good. Then we don’t have to go on any merry goose chases with random female suspects. I’ve asked Staunton to allocate key roles in the investigation. After I’m done here, he’ll call your names and you can choose a time to convene.

  “You should know we’re looking for someone who’s going after young men, specifically conscientious objectors. We’re hypothesizing this because of the white feathers found in the suitcases.”

  One of the officers raised his hand, and Durgin nodded. “Pegg.”

  Police Constable Pegg stood. He was a tall man, thin, with a receding dark hairline and shining pate. “We’ve followed up with all registered conscientious objectors, sir. But none of their families are reporting anyone missing.”

  Durgin took a swig of tea. “There are any number of COs in the city of London—I say you need to keep looking, keep asking questions. Perhaps because they’re conscientious objectors, their families are reluctant to come forward and face more hostility.

  “Because of the feathers, we believe we may be looking for someone with a grudge against the COs. Could be a veteran of the Great War—someone who served. Or who didn’t serve and had been given a white feather himself, once upon a time. Or a veteran of this war, maybe injured and sent home—resentful of anyone who’s avoiding service.”

  “Well, that narrows the field,” someone in the back grumbled.

  “He’s strong enough to lift and then dismember the bodies,” Durgin continued. “The coroner estimates the murdered men weighed between a hundred twenty and two hundred twenty pounds. Our man has some idea of human anatomy, so he could be a butcher, a doctor, worker in a meat factory, that sort of thing.”

  Pegg was still standing. “Why the boiling, sir?”

  Durgin closed his eyes. “It’s like washing—a purification ritual of some sort.”

  Pegg nodded. “Those bones are clean all right.”

  Durgin was thinking out loud. “A religious dimension? Cleansing them of their sins? The killer’s job has something to do with cleanliness?” He opened his eyes. “Regardless, it’s about power, control. Boiling the flesh off his victims’ bodies makes him feel superior. It’s about one-upsmanship.”

  Pegg made a face. “Must stink something awful, sir.”

  When he took his seat, another constable stood. “Is there anything sexual going on?”

  There were a few hoots and hollers, but they quieted when Durgin didn’t take the bait. “Hard to tell without examining bodies.”

  Staunton interjected, “Since the killer’s boiling the flesh off the bones, be aware of any strange smells on your beats.”

  There were a few guffaws. Another officer added, “DCI Durgin, shouldn’t we make some kind of statement to the press, telling them about the white feathers? The conchies are at risk, after all.”

  “I did consider that,” Durgin said. He and Staunton exchanged glances. “However, if we release the information to the press, our killer will surely see it. And he might change his MO. We have precious little to go on in this case—I want to keep what upper hand we have.”

  “So we lie to the public?”

  Durgin’s face stiffened into a mask. “It’s a lie by omission. And what I believe is best at this time.” He put down the mug and stood up straight. “There’s a connection to Nicholas Reitter,” Durgin said. “Not only did the suitcases begin showing up right after he was sentenced, but I have a letter, from our new killer.” One of the men in the back gasped.

  Durgin took it from his breast pocket and read it aloud. There were looks of horror, disgust, and determination among the officers. “And so, gentlemen, we must stop him. As soon as possible. That is all.”

  * * *

  —

  In the crypt of St. James’s Church, not far from Southwark Bridge, Maggie was listening to a bomb with an earpiece. “All quiet on the Western Front,” she quipped.

  Milo grinned; he was slightly more relaxed this time. “You’re too pretty to be Louis Wolheim,” he teased, referring to the burly actor who’d played Stanislaus Katczinsky.

  “Perhaps I’m more of the Lew Ayres type.” The two bantered back and forth, masking their fear. After all, death held court down in the crypt, hidden in one shadowy corner, like a toad. But they didn’t have to acknowledge it.

  Finally, Maggie nodded. “All right then, tell me,” she said in her best Aunt Edith teaching tones, “what kind of fuse are we dealing with?” Before he could answer, they heard the noise of the Tube nearby and the stones shifted. Both of their faces turned gray.

  “Shhhh!” Maggie still had her earpiece attuned to the bomb. “Now it’s ticking.”

  Milo blanched. “Well, of course it is,” he muttered. “Honestly, I don’t know ’ow you do it.”

  “Copious amounts of tea, cigarettes, and alcohol,” Maggie quipped. “Look, the deacon said we’re only a few meters from a gas line. If the bomb explodes and ignites the gas, the whole block could be destroyed.”

  “What are the odds?” Milo tried to play off his fear, but his voice cracked.

  But this was the part Maggie loved most, the potential of destruction, the edge where something violent could happen. It felt familiar to her, safe. She hung the probe around her neck and stood, wiping dirty hands on her trousers. “What kind of fuse?” she repeated.

  Milo looked. “It’s one of the smaller ones,” he said. “Type Seventeen.”

  “Close,” Maggie told him. “It’s a Type Seventeen delayed-action clockwork fuse coupled with a Type Fifty. Do you know—German engineers build it deliberately, so it delays exploding until it’s moved or tapped?”

  “Wunderbar.”

  Ah, but we’re fighting fire with fire, she thought. They’d brought a new device, the Q coil. Maggie and Milo began to work, grateful the bomb was less than five hundred kilos, as Q coils weren’t as effective with the larger bombs. Must have something to do with the magnetic field being weakened by more metal, Maggie thought, trying to distract herself from the ticking.

  She drew in a ragged breath and took a moment to steady her sweaty hands. She closed her eyes for a moment, and the fear faded away. When she opened her eyes, she was fully focused on the task at hand. Nodding to Milo, she fit the magnet around the bomb.

  When at last the Q coil was in place, Maggie exhaled. Milo flipped the switch. Silence. She pulled out the probe from her belt and placed the end against the bomb. Silence. Blessed silence. When she was able to breathe again, Maggie used her sleeve to wipe at her sticky brow, leaving a trail of dirt.

  But they weren’t finished. “Now let’s defuse this bad boy,” she said. Milo nodded and pulled out the crabtree, handing it to her. “Your turn,” she told him.

  He fitted it on the bomb, to drain the power from the condensers, and timed the operation. When three long minutes were over, Maggie nodded. The bomb was impotent. As he began working with the universal key, he joked, “Good thing I remembered to use the loo,” though his hands were trembling.

  But Maggie was feeling the familiar shock of euphoria now—adrenaline coursing through her veins. Blessed lovely relief. “And so we live another day.” She looked at the young man. “You did well,” she said, clapping him on the shoulder. “We make a good team.”

  His voice trembled. “Sha
ll we go back to headquarters and have a cuppa?”

  Maggie shook her head. “Next time,” she said. “I need to get home and clean up.” She smiled. “I have a date tonight.”

  “With DCI Durgin?”

  “Indeed. And what about you? Any fun plans?”

  “I have a date, too.” Milo looked more terrified than thrilled. “But later in the week.”

  “Really,” Maggie drawled, teasing him. “What’s her name?”

  A look of fear mixed with sadness flitted across his face. “I’d, er, rather not say.”

  Maggie felt a splash of impatience. “So what’s she like? This secret woman.”

  “Older.” And no matter how much Maggie teased, he would say nothing more.

  As they made their way out of the rubble of the crypt, Milo said, “I heard one of the men talking earlier—this was his child’ood parish. He said it had been destroyed in the Great Fire of London, and then rebuilt by some bloke—named Christopher something or other.”

  “Christopher Wren?” The stairs had been damaged and it was hard to get a foothold. Maggie’s foot slipped and she grabbed at the railing.

  “That’s ’im! ’E told us during the Great War, a bomb dropped by a zeppelin just missed. So every year after, they had the ‘Bomb Sermon’ on the anniversary.”

  Maggie snorted. “You’re joking.”

  “I wish.”

  Maggie was an atheist, who believed in logic and science. “If there’s a God, He really does have quite the sense of humor.”

  Milo nodded. “So, you see—it can’t blow on our watch,” he finished, as they reached the ground floor. “Not after all those bomb sermons.” He crossed himself. “God couldn’t be that cruel.”

  Oh, Milo, Maggie thought, a pain piercing her heart. You’re so innocent. How long will it last?

  * * *

  —

  Maggie met Durgin at the Renaissance-style Wigmore Hall, a chamber music concert venue in Marylebone known to have near-perfect acoustics. When she saw him, her heart skipped a beat, and he responded with a shy grin. He was in his usual black suit, while Maggie wore a new rayon dress she’d bought with ration coupons, a dark purple. Before she could stop herself, she went up on tiptoe to kiss him on the cheek. They gazed at each other for a long moment.

  “Shall we go in?” he said finally.

  The distinctive iron-and-glass canopy at the door had been removed, replaced with sandbags. “Let’s.”

  After they checked their coats in the lobby, Durgin showed their tickets to an usher; their red velvet seats were at the end of the thirteenth row.

  “This is perfect!” Maggie told Durgin, squeezing his arm. “Just what we need—something different for one evening. And music—well, ‘Without music, life would be a mistake.’ ”

  “Tolstoy?”

  “Nietzsche.” Maggie looked around—the concert hall was small, just over five hundred seats, with alabaster and marble walls. An Arts and Crafts–style cupola above depicted the Soul of Music in front of a deep blue sky. Next to her, a man in glasses with a pink carnation in his lapel was doing a crossword puzzle in pen.

  “You smell different,” Durgin said, passing her a program.

  She reached for his hand. “You know, most men would just say, ‘You look lovely.’ ” She smiled. “I suppose that’s what I get for dating a detective.”

  “But you do smell different.” Durgin sniffed at her. “What is that?”

  “New scent.”

  “Why would you change?”

  “Ran out of the old one. And since it’s French, who knows when it will be available again.”

  “I liked the old one,” Durgin grumbled, settling in and opening his program. “It was very…you. Fresh and pretty. Innocent, youthful. Like spring flowers. This one—”

  “It’s called Tabu.”

  “Well, it smells…salacious.”

  It’s certainly darker, Maggie thought, but she liked it. She leaned in closer and whispered, “And I’ll take ‘salacious’ as a compliment.”

  She opened her program. There was a large photograph of Giacomo Genovese, along with his biography. Genovese had been born in London in 1912, his parents hailing from Palermo, Sicily. He’d attended the Royal College of Music in London on scholarship. Later, he studied at conservatories in Siena and Santiago de Compostela.

  Although he mostly played concerts as a soloist now, much of his earlier career was as first violinist for the London Philharmonic. Around her, Maggie overheard different voices: “Valentino of the Violin,” along with “enfant terrible,” “arrogant,” “brilliant,” and “magnetic.”

  Maggie realized why they were there. “Really?” she said to Durgin. “Really?”

  “I thought you loved classical music,” he replied mildly.

  Anger sparked through her, and she pushed back a lock of hair springing free from her tightly wound curls. “Don’t think bringing me here is going to get me to help with this case.”

  “Perish the thought.”

  There was a short silence, then: “If Genovese’s Stradivarius was stolen,” she said, “what’s he playing tonight?”

  “I’m told he has a Del Gesù. On loan from the Royal Academy of Music.” He looked to her. “Did you read the file I gave you?”

  “I did,” Maggie admitted. “I’m sorry the Strad was stolen. It was a magnificent instrument, apparently. And irreplaceable.” Antonio Stradivari, one of the Italian Cremona violin makers, had created the legendary instruments in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Since then, Stradivarius violins had become almost mythic in their status and influence. Although later and modern violin makers made excellent instruments, many believed they didn’t come close to the voice, the power, and the sensitivity of the Stradivarii.

  As a viola-playing mathematician, Maggie had always been fascinated by the physics of the violin. She knew a vast amount of pseudohistorical and pseudoscientific literature existed, filled with incredible claims about why the Cremona violins were acoustically superior. Was the secret the design, the wood, its treatment, or its varnish? Or some combination or permutation? The mathematician in her pondered the design of blind tests, to really see if the myths of the Stradivarius matched reality. Someday, someday physicists will solve the mystery, she thought.

  She turned her attention back to the program. “He’s playing Paganini, Spohr, Vieuxtemps, Ernst, and Wieniawski. Paganini’s an interesting choice these days.”

  “He is Italian, after all.”

  “Actually, he’s British,” she insisted, thinking of Milo. “Born in London—Soho—according to the program. His parents are probably Italian.”

  But before Durgin could respond, the houselights dimmed and the stage lights came up. The back door of the stage opened and out walked the accompanist, a slender, stoop-shouldered, bald-headed man in formal dress. He bowed and went to the piano.

  Then Genovese himself strode onstage, gleaming violin in hand. He nodded to the audience as applause roared through the hall. He was wiry and slight, almost impish in his white tie and tails, with slicked-back dark hair. He gave the audience a conspiratorial smile, as if saying that together they would do great things. He raised his bow. The lights glinted off gold cuff links, and his face shone with joy.

  The moment the horsehairs touched the string and the first note pierced the air, the crowd stilled. There was virtually no other sound in the concert hall—even the piano seemed to quiet and then disappear. In Genovese’s hands, the violin sang; he was completely immersed in the performance, feeling every note.

  Maggie was riveted. The audience, rapturously silent while the music was playing, burst into long-held coughs and sniffles during the pauses. When the music ended, there was a long, hushed moment, then an explosion of euphoric applause, along with shouts of “Bravo!” Maggie clapped unti
l her hands hurt, through several curtain calls and even after Genovese had left the stage.

  “How fabulous!” she heard from a man in the row behind them when it was finally over. “I thought for a moment he’d set fire to his violin and we’d all go up in a blaze of flames!”

  “Come on,” Durgin said, rising. “We’re going backstage.”

  Maggie was still under the spell of the music. “What? Why?”

  “Follow-up with the maestro. Come on.”

  “With Genovese?” Isn’t this supposed to be a date? Maggie thought. But meeting the star violinist also seemed an incredible opportunity; she sighed and slipped her arm through Durgin’s as they went to one of the side doors.

  * * *

  —

  Genovese’s dressing room was filled with lights, mirrors, and vases and vases of hothouse blooms—dark red roses, white calla lilies striped with dusty pollen, spiky orange birds-of-paradise. The air was thick with their perfume.

  “Welcome, welcome!” he cried. “The infamous Detective Durgin, and you must be Miss Hope.” Their eyes met and Maggie felt the deep pull of attraction. “Did you like the concert?” He was shorter, slighter, and yet somehow even more charismatic in person, Maggie realized, radiating an almost boyish charm. He looked as if a live wire ran through him.

  “Wonderful,” she responded, unable to look away from his strong jaw and mischievous brown eyes. “Absolutely wonderful.”

  “Yes,” he said, raising one finger, “but it would have been better with my own violin, my dear Anna Maria.”

  Maggie had heard the expression “mad about the Strad” and wondered if Genovese qualified. “Do you really think so?” she asked as he gestured to a few velvet chairs around a low table and they all took a seat. “It’s your talent and skill and experience that make the music.”