Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

  The large clock on the waiting room’s wall showed twenty minutes after six when the train squealed slowly to a stop, its voluminous smoke dispersing.

  As I peered through the window, several surprises greeted me. This early, I expected hardly anyone to be coming from London. But when a guard unlocked the third- and second-class carriages, dozens of men burst from them, all in a state of excitement.

  They accosted everyone they saw: Sean, Joseph, the town’s constable, the people waiting to board the train, and even a boy who carried bags.

  “What do you know about the murder?”

  “Who was killed?”

  “Was he stabbed? Did anybody see the killer?”

  “That little man holding the blanket. He’s the Opium-Eater! He knows more about murders than Scotland Yard does!”

  As the newspaper writers surged toward Father, Sean and Joseph intervened, shielding him while they guided him to the waiting room.

  But Sean and Joseph didn’t follow him inside. Their attention became fixed on another surprise: a solitary man stepping from a first-class compartment.

  The man’s shoulders were stooped, giving the impression that he carried a burden. His long gray sideburns emphasized his gaunt features. I knew that he was fifty-eight years of age, but he looked older, and from my experiences with him during the emergency in December and again in February, I understood the nature of the weight upon him. He was Sir Richard Mayne, joint commissioner of London’s Metropolitan Police Force since its inception twenty-six years earlier. Without him, Scotland Yard’s detective division, which he’d created thirteen years ago, wouldn’t exist. No one deserved more credit for establishing law enforcement in England. But it came at a cost. He still hadn’t recovered from the attack on him and his family six weeks earlier.

  Two constables joined him from a second-class carriage. When the newspaper writers recognized him, he became the next target of their hurried questions.

  “Who’s the killer?”

  “Who did he murder?”

  “How many times was the victim stabbed?”

  Sean and Joseph shielded the commissioner as they’d shielded Father, guiding him into the waiting room. The London constables remained outside and kept the reporters from entering.

  “Sir, I didn’t expect my telegram to reach you so quickly,” Sean told him, closing the door on the commotion. “And I didn’t expect reporters to learn about the murder so quickly either.”

  The station’s public telegraph office was closed during the night, but I’d learned that the railway company’s own telegraph system never closed, making it available to relay information in case of an emergency.

  “I assumed you’d want to be informed,” Sean continued. “Although this happened a distance from London, it involves London all the same.”

  Commissioner Mayne nodded solemnly. “The first murder on a train. I alerted the home secretary and the prime minister at once. A crime of this sort affects the entire nation. When reports of the killing appear in the newspapers, there’ll be a panic. We need to assure everyone that railway travel remains safe, and there’s no better way to assure them than to apprehend the murderer as quickly as possible.”

  “We have a general description of the attacker: young, tall, and thin,” Joseph told the commissioner. “Not much, but it’s better than nothing. We have this bloodstained overcoat that he dropped. A local shopkeeper can identify an expensive coat that the killer seems to have stolen to replace it. We’re watching everyone waiting to board trains.”

  “But won’t he assume you’ll do that?” Commissioner Mayne asked.

  “There aren’t many ways to leave the area,” Sean replied, taking over for Joseph. “We warned carriage men to tell us about anyone who wishes to rent their services. There was a hansom cab that brought us here from London, but a station guard made certain it was empty before the driver returned to London.”

  “Immanuel Kant,” Father said.

  Everyone turned toward where he trembled beneath the blanket. They perhaps thought he was still reacting to the cold, but I knew that he trembled for a different reason.

  Proving the point, Father removed a small laudanum bottle from beneath the blanket, its clear glass showing a telltale ruby liquid.

  “Father, where did you get that?”

  “I bought it at the lodging house across the street.” The anguish on his face was heartbreaking.

  “Please give me the rest of the money that your publisher sent to you.”

  Father absently obeyed. “Immanuel Kant,” he repeated. “The great philosopher asks whether reality exists outside us—”

  “Or only in our minds.” Sean quickly completed the proposition with which the group had become all too familiar.

  “A moment ago, Inspector, you mentioned that we’re a distance from London, but in my youth, those ten miles were much longer,” Father said.

  “No,” Commissioner Mayne objected. “Ten miles can’t be stretched.”

  “The astonishing speed of a train has accustomed us to conclude that the only way to travel is swiftly,” Father told him. “Ten miles in twelve minutes—we say that’s a short journey. But in the mail-coach era, ten miles in an hour was a short journey, and before mail coaches, ten miles in two hours was a short journey. Now, two hours to cover that distance seem immense. But only if your reality is that of the railway era.”

  “Are you saying…”—Joseph hesitated, absorbing Father’s logic—“…that the killer walked?”

  “On foot? All the way back to London?” Commissioner Mayne asked in disbelief. “A gentleman would never dream of doing such a thing.”

  “Or probably even be capable of it,” Sean added.

  “Which suggests that the killer is not what his clothing makes him seem,” Father said. Within the voluminous blanket, he looked even smaller than usual. “It might be useful to inquire at the turnpike on the London road. Ask if a well-dressed man walked through there around one o’clock in the morning.”

  Somebody knocked on the door. It was the local constable, who managed to squeeze past the reporters and enter the room. He shut out a barrage of questions.

  “Inspector, we found this in the burned stable.”

  The constable held an object that I didn’t recognize at first. Then I realized that it was the charred and twisted remnant of a leather document case.

  The flap nearly broke away when Sean opened it.

  “Is anything inside?” Joseph asked.

  “No.”

  “Nothing?” Father stepped closer. “Not even the ashes of burned documents?”

  “It’s totally empty.”

  “But the victim wouldn’t have bothered to carry the document case if it were empty,” Father said emphatically.

  “Inspector, there’s something else,” the constable told him. “This telegram came to me from Scotland Yard. I don’t know if it relates to what happened here, but I thought you should see it.”

  Troubled, Sean unfolded the message.

  For the first time in this busy conversation, Commissioner Mayne had the chance to turn in my direction. “Forgive my manners, Emily. I should have greeted you sooner.” Assessing my soot-covered garments, he asked, “Are you hurt?”

  “No, but I’m grateful for your concern, Commissioner.”

  “We’ll return you to London as soon as possible.”

  “Unfortunately, that might not be as soon as you’d wish, Emily,” Joseph said. “If you’re willing, we’d like you and your father to stay until the noon train brings back the carriage in which the murder occurred. It would help us if you could determine whether anything in the compartment has been disturbed since you saw it. Otherwise we might come to false conclusions.”

  “If we’re willing?” Father asked. “I can’t think of anything else I’d rather do.”

  “Sean?” I noticed that he looked more troubled as he lowered the telegram. “Has something further happened?”

  “The bodies
of a cabdriver and a toll-taker were found at the turnpike booth outside London,” he answered starkly. “The police here have been asked to watch for anyone suspicious who comes in this direction.”

  “But the killer was actually going into London, not away from it,” Father said, fingering the laudanum bottle. “He must have set out on foot before the cab left the station. Eventually the vehicle reached him, and he commandeered it.”

  “Presumably he killed the driver and the toll-taker to prevent them from identifying him. There’s no mystery about that,” Commissioner Mayne said. “But why did he attack the man on the train in the first place?”

  “At first impression, the motive was to steal money,” Sean replied. “The victim’s pockets were cut open. His wallet and any coins or bank notes he carried were taken. The only objects I found on him were a watch key and a railway ticket to Sedwick Hill, the next stop up the line.”

  “I’ll send a constable there to ask the villagers if anyone was expected to arrive last night but didn’t,” Commissioner Mayne said. “That might give us a name for the victim.”

  Father drank from his laudanum bottle. “But stealing money and other valuables wasn’t the motive.”

  “Indeed.” Sean removed the Benson chronometer from a trouser pocket and showed it to Commissioner Mayne. “Mr. De Quincey found this in the murder compartment.”

  The commissioner regarded it with wonder. “I’ve had the opportunity to see only a half dozen of these.”

  “During the struggle, it was broken from its chain,” Sean told him. “Why didn’t the killer make certain he had this in his possession before he escaped? True, it’s so rare that sellers of secondhand jewelry would assume it was stolen and refuse to buy it for fear of trouble with the police. No matter—could a thief have resisted taking this, if only to admire it for a brief time?”

  Sean turned the precious object in his hand, admiring its golden luster.

  “No. The killer wants us to believe that his motive was to steal items of value. But that is not why he killed the man on the train.”

  Commissioner Mayne boarded the next train to London, taking the blood-spattered overcoat with him so that one of his other detectives could show it to proprietors of expensive clothing shops in London and possibly learn who’d purchased it. Despite their fatigue, Sean and Joseph waited on the platform for the noon train from Manchester. In case the murders at the turnpike turned out to have nothing to do with the man they were hunting, they and the nervous-looking shopkeeper persisted in studying the even fewer passengers who boarded the later trains.

  When the shopkeeper wasn’t occupied, I gave him some of the money from Father’s publisher, asking him to bring us the most practical, inexpensive overcoats that he had. He seemed grateful for the purchase.

  Finally the noon train arrived from Manchester. Sean, Joseph, the London constables, and the station guards formed a passage for Father and me so we could move through the horde of reporters.

  “What was the victim’s name?” one of them blurted out.

  “Where’s the body?” another shouted.

  As wheels screeched to a halt and the smoke dispersed, I had a view of the first-class carriages. The one in which the murder had taken place was immediately obvious.

  “No! This is wrong,” I said in alarm.

  During its long journey, the carriage had been turned around, so the dried blood was now on the side that faced the station.

  The reporters pressed forward to get a better look at the gore.

  Amid the jostling, a train guard hurried from the brake van at the back. It was the same guard who’d spoken to us the previous evening. Running strained his lungs and made him cough.

  He ignored the badges that Sean and Joseph showed him, directing his attention to me. “I’m so sorry, miss. I tried to do what you told me. I sent a telegram to Scotland Yard. I did my best to keep everyone away from the compartment, but it was impossible to stop them.”

  “Stop whom?”

  “Miss, you know that the lock was broken. I couldn’t keep people from opening the door and…”

  I looked down at the metal step, where the previous night the blood had been undisturbed. Now there was an obvious boot print, and when the guard swung the door open, I saw boot prints in the dried blood there as well. The cushions were missing.

  “What on earth happened?” I asked.

  “The first murder on an English train, miss. The hat, the umbrella, the cushions, the floor mat. I did everything I could, but I couldn’t stop them from taking souvenirs.”

  I was the only member of our group who had the means to buy four railway tickets back to London. Because of the soot that Father and I deposited on everything we touched, we traveled in a second-class compartment, where there weren’t any cushions that would need to be cleaned. In truth, given our debts, a second-class compartment was more expensive than I would have chosen, but Sean and Joseph had been awake for most of the night, and I wished to save them from standing in a third-class compartment, which is what the police force would have paid for. They insisted that they’d reimburse me, but I declined their offer, mindful of how swiftly and generously their reward money had been expended. I salvaged their pride by assuring them that I’d used some of the five sovereigns that Lord Palmerston had given me.

  On a hard bench, I sat next to Joseph while Sean sat next to Father. At the sound of the guard’s key locking us in, my heart beat faster. With a jolt, the train departed from the station.

  “I hate to think of the panic when people read tomorrow’s newspapers,” Sean said. “Every train will be empty.”

  “One of the reporters asked a question that made me curious,” I told him.

  “Oh? What question is that, Emily?”

  “He wanted to know what happened to the victim’s corpse.” Three months earlier, I would never have imagined being in a circumstance that required me to discuss this topic.

  And Sean no doubt would never have imagined so frank a conversation with a member of the opposite sex. He no longer seemed embarrassed. “I asked the local undertaker to put the corpse in a coffin and hide it at his place of business. This morning, the coffin was loaded into the baggage compartment of the train that took Commissioner Mayne back to London. The undertaker’s neighbor accompanied the coffin. He wore a black armband and pretended to be a grieving son in case the reporters asked who was in the coffin. By now, the body should be at Westminster Hospital, where Commissioner Mayne is instructing surgeons to examine the wounds to see if they can tell us something about the killer, whether the stab wounds came from the right or the left, for example, suggesting which hand he favored.”

  When the rattling train sped around a curve, I gripped one of the support straps that dangled from the ceiling. The carriage seemed poised to fly from the rails at any moment.

  Father removed his laudanum bottle from a pocket. “Twenty-five years ago, on the first day of the Liverpool-to-Manchester railway, at the start of the new era”—he concentrated on the bottle’s skull-and-crossbones label, seeming to read his words from it—“a historian noted that a plover raced against this new smoke-belching creature. The bird flapped its wings mightily in a desperate attempt to match the locomotive’s increasing speed, but the effort was futile. Realizing that an immense change had come over the world, the bird broke away from the race and took solace in the nearby woods. As everything moves faster, perhaps we’ll all wish for the solace of the woods.”

  “Good God, look at you!” Lord Palmerston said, hurrying down his staircase. “When I heard about the murder on the train, I immediately reported to Buckingham Palace. Her Majesty and His Royal Highness are shocked. No one will feel safe anywhere. The queen and the prince are also worried about the two of you. What happened to your fingers? You have”—he shuddered—“scabs on them.”

  “My lord, we were forced to throw gravel at wild dogs,” De Quincey said.

  “What?”

  “To protect a corpse
in a railway tunnel, but the dogs persisted, and we set fire to our overcoats.”

  “Wild dogs? Corpse? You set fire to your…” Lord Palmerston groaned. “I promised Her Majesty and His Royal Highness that I’d take care of you. If they see you like this, they’ll blame me.”

  He turned to a servant. “Take Mr. De Quincey and his daughter upstairs. Fetch them hot water. They’ll need clean clothes. Get one of the maids to remove the soot from their hair. Quickly. The queen said she might visit at the earliest opportunity.”

  “Lord Palmerston, what my father needs is a chance to rest,” Emily said. “Inspector Ryan and Sergeant Becker could use some rest also.”

  “Thank you, but we’ll rest when we have time,” Ryan told her. “Right now, we need to hurry to Ludgate Hill.”

  Ludgate was originally an actual gate, the western entrance to the ancient Roman settlement of Londinium. Most of the walls of that settlement had disappeared long ago, but the word Ludgate survived as part of a street name situated in the exclusive district known as the City.

  Although the City was only a portion of greater London, Ryan was very aware that it had its own police force and government and that the Metropolitan Police had no authority within it.

  He and Becker passed the offices for the Times, the Morning Chronicle, and other newspapers in Fleet Street. The two men had no doubt that tomorrow’s editions would increase the alarm.

  A constable stood on a corner, surveying his busy domain.

  “I expect no one would object if we asked a few questions here without permission,” Ryan told Becker. “But it’s better to make it official.” He approached the constable and showed his badge. “We need to speak with someone in your district. Would you mind accompanying us to a shop?”

  The constable looked uncertain.

  “My commissioner will make it right with your guv’nor, I promise,” Ryan said. “And it’s a very interesting shop.”