End of the Century

by Chris Roberson

  It was whispered that this would be the grandest fancy dress ball in nearly a quarter century, since the Prince of Wales's famous ball at Marlborough House in 1874, in which guests arrived in the costume of one of a number of distinct quadrilles, this group costumed in the manner of the Venetian court, that one in the style of the Vandyck, even one costumed as characters from a pack of cards. In the Duchess of Devonshire's ball, by contrast, there were a number of different “courts,” each headed by a well-known lady, attended by “princes” and “courtiers.” The Austrian Court of Maria Theresa, Empress Catherine's Court, the Queen of Sheba's retinue, the Italian Procession, the Doge, even two competing courts of Queen Guinevere and the Knights of the Round Table.

  What the Duke and Duchess of Devonshire wanted very much to keep from the partygoers, and in particular from the Prince of Wales and the rest of the royal party, who were due to arrive in another half hour, was the fact that one of the courts was without a sovereign and that a queen lay dead in the garden.

  The back garden of Devonshire House had been transformed by electricity into a fairyland.

  A large supper tent had been erected in the garden, to which access was obtained by a temporary staircase from the house. Hardly a scene of rustic outdoor dining, the supper tent had been hung with three Louis Quatorze tapestries depicting scenes from Roman antiquity. Strung from trestles throughout the garden were festoons of flowers, from which at intervals electric lights shone.

  A handful of the guests had, on first arriving, descended the temporary stair and inspected the garden for themselves, and it was apparently one of these curious early arrivals who had met an unfortunate end. Luckily, only a few had been on hand when the body was discovered, and these were carefully shepherded away by the police before they could inform the rest of the partygoers. Blank had asked, on hearing the details, why the party had not simply been cancelled, and Melville had informed him that the duke and duchess had made it perfectly clear that cancellation was not an option, especially not with the royal party due to arrive by eleven o'clock. The police had so far been able to prevent a panic from spreading, and it fell to Blank and Miss Bonaventure to learn what they could before the victim's body was cleared away when the partygoers were allowed out into the garden following the quadrilles and waltzes.

  They found the body behind the supper tent. The electric lights overhead blinked on, then off, then on again, so that as they approached they were presented first with a brightly lit tableau, then near darkness, then the tableau again, and so on. A man with a great shock of blond hair and a full beard, dressed in the costume of a Roman equestrian, sat in a folding chair, his head in his hands. On the dark grass at his feet lay the lifeless body of an older woman in a flowing white dress, the fabric stained dark at her neck with her own life's blood. As they drew nearer, they saw that the woman's head lay a short distance away, her white hair spread round her like a nimbus. A police constable, dressed as Friar Tuck, stood a respectful distance away, truncheon in hand.

  It took Blank a moment to recognize the face on the sightless head, sitting in the dark grass as if it had been planted there. It was the Lady Priscilla, she of the League of the Round Table.

  “Lord Arthur?” Miss Bonaventure said, placing a tender hand on the shoulder of the ancient Roman.

  The Baron Carmody looked up, his face streaked with tears, his eyes red-rimmed.

  “Lady Ormonde had already been announced as Queen Guinevere,” the baron said, his voice sounding as if it were coming from somewhere far away, his eyes not quite focusing on the two of them, “with Grosvenor as her King Arthur. Lady Priscilla wouldn't hear of it. She was to be Gwenhwyfar, the true Welsh queen of the Unworld, and I the War Duke Arthur.” Baron Carmody looked down at his costume, the Roman cavalry sword at his hip, surcoat of mail. He shook his head, his eyes moistening. “We came out here, to see the tapestries, and I turned my back for only a moment, before…”

  “Take your time, Lord Arthur,” Blank said gently, kneeling down. “Take your time.”

  “I didn't see who it was. Didn't even hear anything. Priscilla didn't scream, didn't shout out. I heard her talking to someone, sounding cross, but thought little of it.” He glanced behind him at the supper tent and the tapestries within. “I lingered over damned textiles, and by the time I came to see where she'd gotten to, some murderous scoundrel had…had…”

  He tried to bring himself to look at the sightless head, lying a short distance away, but couldn't, bringing his gaze to rest instead on the white shoes upon the Lady Priscilla's feet.

  Suddenly, the Baron Carmody opened his eyes wide and launched himself out of his chair, seizing Blank by the shoulders.

  “You'll find who did this!” It was not a question, not an entreaty, but a statement. “This can't be allowed to go unavenged. Whomever…” He turned his head away, but darted his eyes for the briefest instant to the headless body upon the grass. “…did this, must be punished.”

  Blank reached up his right hand and laid it upon the Baron Carmody's forearm.

  “I seldom give assurances, Lord Arthur. And never when I don't mean it. But I promise you the killer will be brought to account for all that he has done.”

  By the time the Prince of Wales arrived, in the guise of the Grand Master of the Knights Hospitalier of Malta, the remains of the Lady Priscilla had been wrapped in a sheet and borne away, and the ground cleared of any sign of the dirty business. By the time the royal party had taken their seats upon the dais in the house, each court advancing in turn, bowing, and passing on, Blank and Miss Bonaventure had conferred with Superintendent Melville, who dispatched his most trusted officers to escort Baron Carmody to his home in Mayfair. By the time the quadrilles began, stately and sumptuous, Blank and Miss Bonaventure were on their way out, this time through the front entrance, and when the waltzes were in full swing, the pair were already home in York Place, back in their own clothes, their feet propped up on the ottoman. Throughout the hours of the night, as the partygoers were let out into the garden to lounge in the electric fairyland and feast in the supper tent, Blank and Miss Bonaventure reviewed the details of the case as they knew them. And when the party finally dispersed, the morning hours already well advanced, the pair were still talking.

  Whoever the Jubilee Killer was, it could not be the dead-faced man with the smoked-glass spectacles who ran about in the evening hours with a pack of spectral hounds with incarnadine ears, teeth, and claws. At the exact moment when Lady Priscilla had been killed, per Lord Arthur's testimony, the chalky-skinned figure had been face to face with Blank and Miss Bonaventure in Kensington Garden. But if it wasn't their hairless friend with the hounds who was behind this bloody business, who was it?

  Superintendent Melville had refused to detain and question each of the partygoers, despite Blank's urgent request of the night before, insisting that to do so would only cause panic and embarrass a powerful member of the aristocracy with close ties to Buckingham Palace. Blank felt surely that the Duke of Devonshire would be more embarrassed if the Prince of Wales ended up beheaded at a fancy dress ball, but Melville was confident in the abilities of his men, who had been scattered throughout the ballroom in the Lincoln green of Robin Hood's merry men, to safeguard the life of the royal party.

  In the end, Blank had been able to persuade Melville to hand over a full list of the invitees to the ball but had been instructed that he was not to bother anyone on the list without first consulting with the superintendent.

  Blank hoped that paying a visit to the Baron Carmody would not be considered “bothering,” but even if it were, he preferred to think that any invitees with whom he was already acquainted should be exempt from Melville's prohibition.

  So it was that the morning after the Devonshire House Ball, Blank and Miss Bonaventure called on Lord Arthur at his home in Mayfair. W. B. Taylor, the Knight of the Texas Plains himself, was already there, consoling the ersatz War Duke on the loss of their queen the night before.

 
Evidently, the Baron Carmody had not slept any more than Blank and Miss Bonaventure had done. He wore only a dressing gown over silk pyjamas, his Romanesque costume of the previous evening piled unceremoniously in the corner of the library. When Blank and Miss Bonaventure arrived, Lord Arthur was cradling a half-full tumbler of whiskey, starring into space.

  Taylor, who again had his LeMat revolver holstered at his waist, paced the floor like a caged panther, hands at his sides in white-knuckled fists, his brow knit.

  “We hate to intrude on your mourning, gentlemen,” Blank said, his bowler hat in hand, his cane tucked under his arm, “but we hoped to see if Lord Arthur might have recalled anything about the events of last night that might help shed light on matters.”

  The Baron Carmody shook his head, his expression dark. “Nothing. No, nothing.”

  “Who is it?!” Taylor spat, whirling on his heel and pointing a finger at Blank and Miss Bonaventure. “Who is it keeps picking us off? And what the goddamned hell did we ever do to them?!”

  The cowboy poet was clearly agitated, and for a moment Blank thought he might draw his revolver and demand answers at the end of its barrel, but then Taylor slumped onto the sofa and buried his head in his hands.

  “This ain't right, I tell you,” Taylor insisted. “Waiting around for some bastard to come out of the shadows and cut us to ribbons. It ain't right!”

  Blank was forced to agree.

  “Please, Lord Arthur,” Miss Bonaventure said. “You must have heard or seen something that might help us.” She paused, waiting for an answer that wouldn't come. “Blank and I heard mention of someone at the party early on who was expelled for arriving in modern dress. It occurs to us that this might have been the killer, assuming that it wasn't one of the invited guests. Did you see anyone who was out of costume, Lord Arthur?”

  A long silence stretched out, as all eyes turned to the Baron Carmody. At long last, he shook his head, blinking slowly.

  “This…” Lord Arthur began, his voice barely above a whisper. “This league of ours, this pipe dream of an Arthurian renaissance.” He shook his head, angrily. “It's all a fantasy. I see that now. Stuff and nonsense to keep us from seeing ourselves, hiding from me my loneliness, from Lady Priscilla her own lack of purpose, from Brade his lack of originality and from Taylor…” He paused and rolled his eyes over in Taylor's direction.

  “My lack of talent,” the cowboy poet put in.

  Lord Arthur nodded, slowly. “Perhaps.” He took a deep breath and let out a ragged sigh. “She was old enough to be my mother, the Lady Priscilla. Or an elder aunt, at least. Not that things between us were ever romantic. But I think we filled for each other the role of the spouses we had lost, at least in some small measure. With her daily visits and endless lectures, I could forget, if for a moment, all that I had lost in Africa and how empty this damned house still is.”

  “Lord Arthur,” Blank insisted, his tone firm, “try to remember. Is there anything, anything at all, that you haven't told us yet?”

  Lord Arthur's chest rose and fell with another ragged sigh, and he turned to look at the cold ashes in the fireplace. “I've had enough of England, enough of London. There isn't a corner I can turn in this city that doesn't remind me of my departed Penelope, or little John, and now poor Priscilla is added to the chorus of ghosts that haunts me.” He raised his tumbler to his lips and paused, looking over the rim. “Perhaps I'll go to America, as Penelope and I always discussed we someday might. Maybe there I can start a new life.” He took a sip of his whiskey, then sucked his teeth as it reached the back of his throat. “Maybe even start a new family.”

  Miss Bonaventure exchanged a glance with Blank and then tried a new tactic. “There was someone taking pictures last night, as I recall. Perhaps there might be some clue to be had in those.” She stepped closer to the baron, and in a low voice said, “Lord Arthur, do you recall who was taking the photographs?”

  “What?” Baron Carmody raised an eyebrow and looked up into Miss Bonaventure's eyes as if seeing her for the first time. “Yes, I had my photograph taken,” he answered, sounding somewhat annoyed, as if the question was obvious. “They gave me some sort of claim ticket. It's over there somewhere…” He waved to the pile of costume in the far corner.

  Blank stepped over, and shifting through the brightly colored cloth, picked out a printed card from the pile. “It seems that we'll be paying a visit to the firm of J. Lafayette, Number 179, New Bond Street.”

  Taylor leapt up from the sofa, his mouth drawn into a tight line, his jaw set. “I'll tag along, if you'll have me. I don't like the notion of sitting here in the dark, waiting for death to mosey along and find us.”

  Blank regarded the cowboy poet for a moment, then nodded with a slight smile. “We'd be delighted to have your company, Mr. Taylor.”

  The trio said their farewells to Baron Carmody, who hardly seemed to notice. Leaving the Carmody house near Grosvenor Square, it was only a short distance to the offices of J. Lafayette on New Bond Street, a matter of some four or five blocks, just up from the Doré and Grosvenor Galleries.

  The photographic firm of J. Lafayette was located in a five-story building surmounted by the queen's royal crest in bas relief above an image of a sunburst. The Lafayette firm, headquartered in Dublin, had only recently opened a branch in London, added to those already in Glasgow and Manchester.

  The offices had just opened for the day, and Blank, Miss Bonaventure, and Taylor were asked to wait while someone in authority could be summoned. They were shown into the waiting gallery on the ground floor, where the handiwork of Lafayette and company were on display, in particular a familiar image of Queen Victoria on the occasion of her Golden Jubilee, ten years previous, which according to the accompanying placard had earned Lafayette a Royal Warrant as “Her Majesty's Photographer in Dublin.”

  After a brief wait, the branch's manager appeared in the waiting gallery. Blank, presenting his featureless calling card, employed a bit of persuasion, and in short order the trio were being escorted into the development labs on the building's second floor. The heavily shuttered room smelled of chemicals, and the already developed photographs hung drying on lines strung from wall to wall, like photographic garlands.

  Most of the photographs were staged against the backdrop which had been arranged in the corner of the Great Ballroom of Devonshire House. There was Miss Arthur Paget as Cleopatra and Daisy Pless as the Queen of Sheba, the Hereditary Prince of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha as Duke Robert of Normandy and the Princess of Wales as Marguerite de Valois, Frances Evelyn Warwick as Marie Antoinette and the Honorable Reginald Fitzwilliam as Admiral Lord Nelson. There was even the Baron Carmody as the Roman Briton war duke Arthur, in contrast to the more fanciful King Arthurs portrayed by the seventh Baron Rodney in full plate armor and Grosvenor in surcoat and mail. And here was the Lady Priscilla as Gwenhwyfar in a flowing gown of samite, looking years younger with her hair cascading over her shoulders than she did in modern dress with it lacquered into a bun.

  Some of the photographs, though, were not staged, but were more candid snapshots of the Great Ballroom itself, and of the crowds milling there. The Crystal Stair curved up out of view in one shot, while another showed the serried ranks of waltzers moving across the floor. And in one photograph, in the far right side of the image, was plainly visible a man in modern dress, his hair wiry and his beard stringy, carrying in his arms a long slender case. The man's eyes were wide and crazed-looking, and his lip curled in an expression of distaste.

  It was, unmistakably, Mervyn Fawkes.

  Needless to say, Mervyn Fawkes was not included in the invitation list for the Devonshire House Ball. Doubtless, he had been the interloper in modern dress thrown out in the party's early hours. And it seemed a surety that he'd been the one to murder poor Lady Priscilla, and by extension Brade and Villers and all the rest.

  Mervyn Fawkes was the Jubilee Killer.

  WITH THE STEEL DOOR OPENED, the innumerous klaxons sounding downstairs co
uld be faintly heard, like distant sirens.

  “What the hell is he doing here?!” Alice shouted. But no one had an answer for her.

  “I've heard about you for years, of course,” Temple said to the Huntsman, as the red-sword-wielding figure advanced into the gallery. “Never had a chance to make a proper study. Would you be willing to sit for a few tests with my researchers? You'd be compensated, of course.”

  Temple reached out his hand, offering to shake.

  The Huntsman, the red sword in a two-handed grip, responded only by swinging the blade in a wide arc.

  Temple's arm below the elbow thumped to the floor.

  “Now, see here!” Temple waved his stump of an arm, from which strange fluids oozed. “I think I've been most reasonable up to now, but this has gone on far enough. Now, you…”

  Whatever Temple was going to say next, it was lost when the Huntsman casually picked him up with one hand, like a sack of potatoes.

  “Put me down!” Temple ordered.

  In a matter of strides, the Huntsman was at the window. In one fluid movement, he drove the point of his red blade through the glass. Then he yanked the sword back at an angle, and the window shattered into a million pieces. The pieces fell towards the street far below, and with a shove Temple went after them, only now putting up a spirited resistance, thrashing with his legs and remaining arm. His bare foot caught the side of the Huntsman's face a glancing blow but succeeded only in knocking off his wraparound sunglasses; too little, too late. He dropped over the edge and out into the night, disappearing from sight.