Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

  Lord Palmerston resumed his seat and tried to look as if his absence had been merely an unavoidable nuisance. Known for his oratory, he provided a spirited response to another complaint from the opposition, doing his best not to appear disturbed by the troubling report that Commissioner Mayne had just given him.

  He and the other members didn’t leave the Parliament buildings until half past one in the morning, emerging into a cold, brown fog that was thick with the bitter smoke from London’s half a million chimneys. Lord Palmerston was accompanied by two members of Parliament and his private secretary, a broad-shouldered man whose clerical skills were less important than his combat experience in the Crimea. The emergencies in December and again in February had taught the prime minister to take precautions, and his tense meeting with Commissioner Mayne had reinforced his belief that those precautions, once unthinkable, were necessary for politicians in the modern world.

  At the end of a parliamentary debate, there was invariably a demand for cabs, and Lord Palmerston always arranged for the same driver to be waiting at the same spot. But tonight, even with his escort, he had difficulty finding his way from streetlamp to fog-shrouded streetlamp. As he turned the corner into Abingdon Street, he tried to carry on a conversation with the two members who walked with him. He was grateful that the discussion required him merely to agree with whatever they said.

  “Good night, Prime Minister,” they told him.

  “Good night.”

  He reached the lamppost where his driver waited.

  “To Cambridge House as usual, my lord?”

  “Yes.”

  Shivering, he climbed inside the cab, sank onto the seat, and covered himself with a rug. His escort joined him, peering from the vehicle toward whatever might lurk in the fog.

  The impact of the iron horseshoes on the granite pavers sounded louder than usual. As the cab swayed, Lord Palmerston stared ahead, feeling that he’d disappeared into a void. Because he knew the driver’s habitual route, he sensed when the cab passed the hulking darkness of Buckingham Palace on the left and proceeded up the slight incline of Constitution Hill. Eventually the cab turned to the right at the unseen Hyde Park Corner and continued along Piccadilly.

  “You can stop here,” Lord Palmerston told the driver.

  “But we’re not at your house, my lord.”

  “The short walk will do me good.”

  “But it might not be safe,” his escort warned.

  “After sitting for so many hours, I wish to stretch my legs. You needn’t accompany me.”

  “Prime Minister, I really must insist on going with you.”

  Lord Palmerston stared at him. “You insist?”

  The escort lowered his eyes. “As you prefer, my lord.”

  Lord Palmerston removed the rug from his lap and stepped down from the cab. Even in the fog, a corner streetlamp allowed him to see where Park Lane extended north from Piccadilly.

  That was the direction he took. As the cab clattered away, he kept a tight grip on his walking stick and listened for footsteps, but the only ones he heard were his own. Mayfair’s church bells tolled twice, sounding the hour. Dogs barked. A cat screeched, then another.

  The fog thinned somewhat, partially because this district of London—with several parks—had fewer structures (and thus fewer chimneys) than the rest of the city. To his right, Park Lane had houses only. To his left stretched the expanse of Hyde Park, the openness of which he sensed, even if he couldn’t see it. While his Cambridge House was one of the most valuable properties in London, the houses in Park Lane were even more so. The trees and meadows of Hyde Park provided a rare rustic setting in the world’s largest city. With their pillars and towers, the buildings resembled castles, all the more remarkable because they were separated from one another, unlike the adjoining structures found in most of London. Vast balconies provided dramatic views that in some cases included Hyde Park’s Serpentine River. Unusually large, upper-level bay windows allowed observers to admire the magnificent vista on each side as well as straight ahead. Having a residence in Park Lane said volumes about one’s background and resources.

  A quarter of the way along it, Lord Palmerston reached a streetlamp that allowed him to determine that he’d found his destination. He opened a gate and walked along a white gravel path that led to impressive stone steps. He climbed to a portico illuminated by a hazy lamp above large double doors, the majestic blue of which had been varnished until, even in the fog, the doors shone.

  A fan-shaped window over the doors showed that a single lamp in the interior hall was lit. Other than that, the immense structure was dark.

  He hesitated only briefly before raising his hand to the lion’s-head knocker, preparing to disturb the house’s residents.

  “Henry?” a woman’s voice asked behind him, sounding puzzled.

  He turned. A portion of the fog appeared to waver. A cloaked, hooded woman emerged from it, her footsteps sounding on the gravel path.

  Henry. Not many people had the freedom to address Lord Palmerston by his given name, only his wife, his blood relatives, a few members of the peerage with whom he’d attended Harrow and the University of Edinburgh, one or two politicians whom he’d known forever—and the woman who climbed the steps, extending her gloved hand to greet him.

  “Is something wrong, Henry? What are you doing here at this hour?” she asked.

  In the light from the lamp above the door, the woman’s oval face—framed by her cinnamon-colored hood—showed that she was perhaps in her early sixties. She was beautiful, lines of maturity adding substance to her elegant features. Her back was regally straight, her shoulders poised with confidence. Strands of hair framed her face as much as the hood did, and although those strands had streaks of gray, their color mostly resembled the cinnamon of her cloak.

  “Carolyn…” He didn’t feel ready to answer her question. “Where did you come from? I didn’t hear your carriage.”

  “I was walking in the park.” Carolyn’s voice had a resonance as attractive as her features.

  “In the park? Surely not.”

  “I go there when I can’t sleep.”

  “In the fog?”

  “The smooth paths are easy to follow. The place is calming.”

  “But it isn’t safe.” All at once, Lord Palmerston recalled his protective escort warning him that it wasn’t safe for him to walk alone.

  “No one of means would be expected to walk there at night, so criminals don’t have a reason to go there. But just in case…” Carolyn showed him a walking stick that was stouter than his.

  Lord Palmerston couldn’t help smiling at her confidence. There was a time when his amorous nature would have compelled him to try to make their relationship even more than it was. But he was no longer Lord Cupid, as the newspapers had nicknamed him in his prime.

  “Despite your smile, your eyes are gloomy.” Carolyn removed a key from her cloak. “My husband is in Manchester on business. Nonetheless, you’d better step inside.”

  Except for their footsteps on the marble floor and the echo of the door as she locked it, the enormous house was silent. In the vast entrance hall, the only light came from one of the gas lamps on the walls, illuminating a few of the paintings, pedestals, and ancient Roman sculptures that Lord Palmerston’s visits here had made familiar.

  What wasn’t familiar was a curious green glow on a saucer at the bottom of the curved staircase. A similar saucer gave off a green glow at the staircase’s top.

  Noticing his confusion, Carolyn explained, “At night, I tell the servants to bring them out so people won’t trip on the stairs in the dark.”

  “Is the glow caused by phosphorus?” he asked.

  “A paste that contains it. My husband advises a company that’s testing it as a product to prevent such accidents.”

  They spoke softly to avoid waking the servants. Lord Palmerston’s stealth filled him with bittersweet memories of his youthful midnight visits to mistresses.

&nb
sp; Carolyn turned to an elaborately carved side table. Next to an Oriental vase of red roses, she took a match from a box, struck it, and lit the wick in a silver lamp.

  Parting the shadows, she led the way to a door beneath the curved staircase. From his many visits, Lord Palmerston knew their destination. They entered a high-ceilinged library that was handsomely appointed with a stately mahogany desk, thickly cushioned armchairs, and abundant shelves filled with countless books, many of which had spines with gold-embossed titles.

  To avoid scandal, Carolyn left the door open, although if a servant discovered them alone together, especially at this hour, rumors would still spread. It was a further mark of her confidence that she felt free to meet him like this.

  She set the lamp and her walking stick on the desk. Then she pulled the hood from her head, exposing her lustrous auburn hair streaked with gray.

  “Henry, you didn’t answer my question. What’s wrong?”

  “Your informants sometimes know things before I do. But just in case you aren’t aware…”

  “Of what?”

  “You heard about the murder on the train Thursday night?” Lord Palmerston said.

  “Everyone who owns railway stock heard about it. The price has declined by twenty percent since the incident.”

  “Indeed, the price declined,” Lord Palmerston repeated somberly. “The man who was murdered…”

  “You know who he was?”

  “I just found out. Daniel Harcourt.”

  For a long while, Carolyn didn’t move.

  “Daniel Harcourt?” she murmured. She looked down at an intricate Persian carpet. Finally, she drew a breath and peered up from the swirling pattern.

  “Yesterday, in my husband’s absence, I needed to meet Daniel about a matter that couldn’t wait, but when I arrived at his office, he wasn’t there for my appointment,” Carolyn said. “At first, I thought that he was showing his usual distaste for doing business with a woman, but then his secretary assured me that he’d missed appointments all day and no one could explain why. I never dreamed that he was the man who’d been…” Her voice dropped. “Do the police have any idea who killed him?”

  “No.”

  “Daniel lived in London. What on earth was he doing on a train, especially at that hour?”

  “The police don’t have an answer for that either,” Lord Palmerston replied. “The newspapers haven’t had a chance to print any of this yet, but I assume your informants told you that the victim had a ticket to Sedwick Hill.”

  “It startled me,” Carolyn answered. “I finally decided that it was only a coincidence, that the murdered man was a bank clerk or some such on his way home to Sedwick Hill after a late night at the office. But now that I know who the victim was…”

  “Do you have any idea whom Daniel might have been going there to see?”

  She shook her head. “My daughter’s husband has a country house in the area, but if Daniel had acted for him, I’m sure I’d have known. Other members of the peerage own property there. And of course, there’s the hydropathy clinic.”

  “The last thing we want is for the police to get interested in the clinic,” Lord Palmerston said. “The inspector in charge of the investigation thinks Daniel was bringing documents to someone near there.”

  “Documents?” Carolyn frowned. “Of what sort?”

  “Important enough that someone would kill for them. A Scotland Yard—what should I call him?—adviser whose opinion is reliable despite his opium raving believes the same thing.”

  “Opium raving?” Carolyn asked.

  “Yes. The man is infamous for having written Confessions of an English Opium-Eater.”

  “Confessions of…” Carolyn sounded amazed. “Surely you don’t mean Thomas De Quincey!”

  “You’ve heard of him?”

  “More than heard of him! Good heavens, he and I were childhood friends.”

  “What?”

  “When Thomas was a beggar in Oxford Street, my father—a solicitor—took pity on him! I haven’t seen him since—”

  “You call him Thomas?”

  “This is astonishing! I thought he lived in Edinburgh. Did you say he’s an adviser to Scotland Yard?”

  “For the past three months. Lord help me, because the queen and the prince find him amusing, he and his daughter stay with me.”

  “Thomas has a daughter?” Carolyn asked in surprise. “And they’re just around the corner?”

  “The newspapers mentioned him in connection with some murders he helped to solve in December and February. He’s been a common topic of conversation. You didn’t notice?” Lord Palmerston suddenly remembered. “But no, you couldn’t have. You were in Italy during that period.”

  “After all these years…and Thomas believes that the killer’s motive was to obtain documents in Daniel’s possession?”

  “Well, as we know, Daniel’s files do indeed contain secrets,” Lord Palmerston said.

  “Yes. But not after tomorrow,” Carolyn told him.

  Lord Palmerston nodded. “I’ll make certain that it happens.”

  Standing on the portico, Carolyn watched Lord Palmerston descend the stone steps and disappear into the fog.

  Thomas, she thought.

  As Mayfair’s church bells tolled the half hour, she closed the door and locked it.

  Thomas, she repeated to herself with greater amazement.

  She returned to the library, set down the lamp, and opened a cabinet door to reveal numerous shelves crammed with books that had the same author’s name on their spines: Thomas De Quincey. Here were the collected works that an American publisher had released, as well as the first volumes of a set that a Scottish publisher was in the midst of releasing. Here were all the individual books that Thomas had written throughout the years. Here were stacks of magazines in which his essays and stories and reviews had appeared—shelves and shelves of them.

  Thomas has been living in London, just around the corner in Lord Palmerston’s house, and I didn’t know it? Carolyn thought.

  She drew a hand reverently along the books, but there was never any doubt which title she would choose. She pulled down Confessions of an English Opium-Eater and took it to the lamp she’d set on the desk.

  The aged volume opened automatically to a worn page that she had turned to countless times.

  Reading Thomas’s account of his ordeal as a beggar in London’s wintry streets when he was seventeen, she remembered his tormented voice from a lifetime ago. She could almost hear him describe the day when they’d met in the vile house in Greek Street.

  I suffered the anguish of hunger as bitter as ever any human being can have suffered who survived it. A few fragments of bread from one individual constituted my whole support, and these at uncertain intervals. I seldom slept under a roof. When colder weather lengthened my sufferings, the same person allowed me to sleep in a large unoccupied house. Unoccupied, I call it, for there wasn’t any furniture. But I found that the house already contained one single inmate, a poor friendless child, apparently ten years old. I learned that she had lived there alone for some time, and great joy the poor creature expressed when she found that I was to be her companion through the hours of darkness. From the want of furniture, the noise of the rats made a prodigious echoing on the spacious staircase, and amidst the fleshly ills of cold and hunger, the forsaken child suffered still more from the self-created one of ghosts. We lay upon the floor, with no other covering than a horseman’s cloak. The poor child crept close to me for warmth and security against her ghostly enemies. I took her into my arms.

  Carolyn stared at the page, reliving the heartbreaking way that distant winter had ended. She returned the book to its appointed place and closed the cabinet door. As memories rushed at her, she picked up the silver lamp and her walking stick and left the library.

  The saucer of green-glowing paste illuminated the bottom of the curved staircase.

  She’d told Lord Palmerston that a company her husband adv
ised was testing it as a product to prevent accidents in the dark. That was the truth, as far as it went. But the manufacturer hadn’t invented the product, and it had originally served quite a different purpose. The recipe—flour, sugar, lard, brandy, and a dirty white chunk of something covered with water in a jar—had been a gift from Thomas to her the last time she’d seen him so long ago.

  “I can make biscuits with these!” she’d rejoiced, her stomach growling.

  “No. You mustn’t eat them,” Thomas had warned.

  “But I’m hungry!”

  “Carolyn, which would you prefer? To quiet your stomach or be free of rats?”

  “I can’t bear the rats.”

  “Then I’ll show you what to do.”

  In the cobwebbed kitchen of the abandoned Greek Street house, Thomas had removed pieces of coal from his ragged pockets and set them in the empty fireplace.

  “Where did you get the coal?” she asked in astonishment.

  “I had some good fortune.”

  “Tell me, tell me!”

  “In a while.” He sounded strange.

  He built a fire and poured some of the brandy into an old pot. As the liquid heated, he added portions of the lard, sugar, and flour.

  “Now pay attention, Carolyn. This is the really important part.”

  Using a twig, he broke off some of the dirty white chunk that was in the jar of water and added it to the simmering mixture.

  “What’s that?” she asked in confusion.

  “Phosphorus.”

  Only ten years old, she asked in greater confusion, “What’s phosphorus?”

  “A substance you must always keep covered with water except when you put it in the mixture,” Thomas answered with the wisdom of his seventeen years. “Without water, phosphorus bursts into flame. Like this.”

  He blew on the twig, drying the water and exposing a remnant of the dirty white material. The twig suddenly started burning.