Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

  Their expressions made it clear that nothing could be done for him.

  “At the back window, I heard him confess to murdering Daniel Harcourt and the others on Thursday night,” Joseph said. “But who was he?”

  The damage to the man’s face was so severe that even if he’d been one of our closest friends, we wouldn’t have been able to recognize him.

  “He worked at the clinic,” Carolyn said wearily. “He noticed Stella when she brought her husband there several times a week for treatments. Over time, he developed an unhealthy attraction to her.”

  “She’s lying!” Stella said with sudden fury. “She hired him to touch me! She hired him to…” Stella began wringing her blood-covered hands. “Don’t touch me. Worst thing to be is a woman. Pawing, pawing.”

  “My daughter managed to survive a brutal attack tonight,” Carolyn said. “She was forced to fight for her life. Clearly she’s so distraught that she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “What were all of you doing here at midnight?” Joseph asked.

  “Worst thing to be is a woman,” Stella kept saying. “Pawing, pawing. Could never have allowed…”

  “Allowed?” I asked in confusion.

  “Sweet little Jennifer.”

  “Yes, your baby daughter,” I said.

  “Could never have…”

  Despite the burning coals in the fireplace, the house suddenly acquired a heavy chill.

  “…allowed her to grow up. To be pawed. Sweet little…she sleeps peacefully. Never to be…”

  The house felt even colder, but that wasn’t why I shivered.

  Carolyn moaned—the most profoundly despairing sound I’ve ever heard. “Stella, what have you done?”

  Carolyn tried to step toward her, but something went wrong with her left leg. It buckled, causing her to grip the side of a chair.

  “You wanted a male heir!” Stella said in a rage. “You told me it was the only thing that mattered! A male heir who would be a lord so that no one would ever look down on us again!”

  Stella’s fury made the sinews in her neck stand out. “But you didn’t tell me how on earth little Jeremy was going to become a lord as long as Harold was alive! Did you hope Harold would drink so much that he’d fall down the marble stairs and break his neck before my husband died from his own injuries? No, you didn’t tell me what to do, but I knew what you thought was necessary!”

  Carolyn sobbed, tears streaming down her face, her lips quivering. “What have you done? What have you done?”

  I stroked Stella’s arm. “It’s finished. You’re safe now. No man will ever touch you again.”

  Stella kept clutching and unclutching her bloody hands. “Pawing, pawing. Sweet little Jennifer won’t ever need to…”

  “‘The horrors that madden the grief that gnaws at the heart,’” Father said, quoting a passage in one of his essays.

  “She’s insane,” Joseph murmured.

  “But in the eyes of the law, only partially,” Father noted. “To avoid the gallows, a judge and jury will require proof that she didn’t know what she was doing and that she didn’t know it was wrong when she murdered her infant daughter and her husband. She obviously knew what she was doing, but she didn’t believe it was wrong. This will be a difficult case.”

  “She won’t be able to bear the horrors of Newgate Prison while waiting for her trial,” Joseph said. “Perhaps a judge will allow her to stay in Bedlam before she stands in front of a jury.”

  “I’ll hire the best lawyers,” Carolyn vowed.

  “Unfortunately, you’ll have more than one use for the lawyers,” Sean told her. He turned to the entrance to the drawing room and the shattered front door beyond it. “Constable, please bring them in.”

  Sean and Joseph weren’t the only people who’d waited with us at Lord Palmerston’s house. The clerks from the firearms shop and the chemist shop had been with us also.

  When they saw the carnage on the floor, they turned away in horror.

  Sean closed the partition at the back of the room, hiding the body.

  “I know this is difficult,” he told them, “but it’s important that you do your duty. Did anyone here come to either of your shops on Friday and Saturday?”

  “That man.” The clerk from the firearms shop pointed at Edward. “He bought a ten-pound keg of gunpowder. He wore the rustic clothes of a gamekeeper. He had a weathered face. But I recognize him.”

  “This is preposterous,” Edward said.

  “And you?” Ryan asked the chemist.

  “He wore a clergyman’s collar when he bought red food dye and phosphorus from me.”

  “I’ve never seen you in my life,” Edward protested.

  “Red food dye? Phosphorus?” Carolyn asked. “I don’t understand.”

  “The man who detonated the bomb in Waterloo Station vomited red liquid on the railway platform,” Father told her. “Travelers were so shocked that they didn’t notice he left his bag on the platform before he departed to see a doctor. The bag contained the bomb, which had a slow-burning fuse, giving him enough time to escape before the gunpowder exploded.”

  “I had nothing to do with any of that!” Edward insisted.

  “Phosphorus?” Carolyn repeated in greater confusion.

  “The fire on a train out of Paddington Station occurred five minutes after the train departed on Saturday night,” Father explained. “Someone left a travel bag on the luggage rack of a compartment but never boarded the train. Sergeant Becker told me that he and Inspector Ryan were baffled about how even a slow-burning fuse could last that long. It occurred to me that a fuse and gunpowder didn’t cause that fire.”

  Father turned to Edward. “When you and I met for the first time on Sunday morning, we had a discussion about phosphorus and a product you were testing that included phosphorus in a paste that glowed in the dark. As you acknowledged, the recipe for that paste came from me. It was a rat poison that I gave to Carolyn. I might not have remembered our discussion if you hadn’t told me that, should the product ever be sold in shops, you’d try to arrange a small royalty for me. Despite your pose of friendliness, I detected condescension in your voice, the smugness of someone who thought he had gotten away with something.

  “Phosphorus, of course, bursts into flames when exposed to air,” Father continued. “It’s safe when diluted in the paste, but normally it’s stored in a jar of water. All you needed to do was put a jar of phosphorus and water into a travel bag. At the railway station, just before the train departed, you visited the station’s privy, where you poured the water from the jar and dumped the exposed phosphorus into the bag. After putting the bag onto the luggage rack of a compartment, you used sickness as an excuse to walk past the guards and leave the station. Having tested how long the remaining water would take to evaporate from the phosphorus, you knew that the train would be well on its way before the fire occurred.”

  “These are the opium suppositions of a drug-addled brain!” Edward objected.

  Sean turned to the chemist. “Are you absolutely certain that this man bought phosphorus from you?”

  “Yes.”

  “He’s mistaken—”

  “Mr. Richmond, I spent the day at London’s Stock Exchange,” Joseph interrupted.

  “What?”

  “Because of the war, everyone said that the Russians were the cause of the attacks on the railway system,” Joseph explained. “But with Mr. De Quincey as my guide, I wondered if there was another reality. What if someone was using the attacks to lower the price of railway shares? After the attacks stopped, the shares would rise to their original price or even higher. Whoever bought the shares at the reduced price would make an enormous profit.”

  “That’s the principle of the stock market! Buy low and sell high!” Edward insisted. “I advised many people to buy as the price of the shares declined!”

  “And you certainly took your own advice,” Joseph said.

  “What the devil do you mean?”


  “The devil indeed.” Joseph removed a piece of paper from a pocket and consulted a list. “The largest blocks of shares were purchased by Railway Investment Partners, Consolidated Financiers, and Amalgamated Holdings. When I investigated who owned these businesses, I discovered they were all controlled by a firm called United Capital.” Joseph pointed at the list. “There are six members on that company’s board of directors. Five of them don’t exist. The sixth member is you. Edward Richmond, you’re under arrest.”

  “This is outrageous! When the prime minister hears about this—Carolyn, contact our attorneys! Go to Lord Palmerston! These idiots deserve to lose their jobs!”

  But Carolyn just stared at him. Her expression of bewilderment was one that I would expect to see on somebody who was lost in a dark forest, without any compass bearings. She seemed to have even more strands of gray in her hair.

  “What have you done?” she murmured to Edward and then to Stella. “What have both of you done?”

  “Inspector, a carriage has arrived outside,” the constable said.

  “It’s for Mother, Edward, and me,” Stella said, apparently oblivious to the blood on her face and hands and black bereavement dress. She kept clenching and unclenching her crimson fists. “May we go back to Park Lane now?”

  Gently, I helped her to stand. “You and I will leave in the carriage,” I told her.

  I leaned toward Sean and whispered, “Shall I take her to Bedlam?” I referred, of course, to London’s mental institution, which had a wing for the criminally insane.

  He nodded sadly.

  “I’ll go with you,” Joseph said.

  “No!” Stella exclaimed as he stepped toward her. “Keep away! I won’t be pawed! Won’t be pawed!”

  “I’ll be safe with her,” I assured Joseph.

  “Constable,” Sean said, “to the west along this street, you’ll find a police van waiting for us. We’ll transport Edward Richmond to the Whitehall police station.”

  “I’m warning you! When the prime minister hears about this—”

  “Shut up, Edward,” Sean told him.

  “And what about…” The constable nodded toward Carolyn.

  “My long-ago friend and I shall wait for someone to bring a vehicle back for us,” Father said. “We have much to discuss.”

  “Carolyn, this place is almost as cold as Lord Cavendale’s country house,” De Quincey told her after everyone had left. “Please sit with me in front of the fire.”

  He motioned toward a thickly upholstered chair across from him. As he eased down on his own chair, he noticed that she faltered when she sat.

  “What’s wrong with your leg?” he asked.

  “I’m not certain. This morning, it began to fail me.”

  “We should ask Dr. Snow to examine it.”

  “Yes.”

  “You look weary.”

  “Yes.”

  De Quincey drank from his laudanum bottle. His legs were too short for his boots to reach the dusty rug on the floor.

  “Carolyn, this morning, I sent telegrams to various places in Bristol. To the police, the principal newspaper, and the courthouse.”

  She looked at him with defeated eyes, her once-vivid cinnamon-colored hair now lifeless.

  “I asked for information about events that occurred around 1802 or 1803, at approximately the time you and Brunell disappeared from London. My inquiries were related to the narrative you gave me about what subsequently happened to you. I asked about a prosperous dock merchant whose partner was killed in an accident and who himself was killed in an accident shortly thereafter, with the consequence that his estate was thrown into confusion. About a cousin who inherited the business but gave generous considerations to the merchant’s widow. About a long-banished son returning with a ten-year-old child whom the widow learned to cherish.”

  Carolyn turned her gaze toward the burning coals.

  “The answers to my telegrams indicated that there’s no record of any of those events having occurred,” De Quincey said. “Nor is there a record of an Edward Richmond doing business in Bristol or a record of your marriage to him there, as you implied to me.”

  Staring at the fireplace, Carolyn murmured again, “Stella and Edward. What have they done?”

  “It was all a fiction—am I correct?” De Quincey asked.

  Carolyn seemed to try to muster the strength for an explanation, but in the end, she only shrugged.

  “Today, Inspector Ryan made inquiries about your purchase of Park Lane,” De Quincey said. “That occurred seven years ago, in 1848. No one had any idea where you came from, but everyone was impressed by the ability of you and your husband to purchase a house in that exclusive street.”

  “It was indeed an impressive thing to be able to purchase that house,” Carolyn said in a wistful tone.

  De Quincey studied his laudanum bottle, deciphering the secrets of the universe from the dosage instructions on the label.

  “Most people remember 1848 as the Year of Revolution, when numerous nations in Europe erupted into flames because of mobs that toppled monarchs,” he said. “England itself almost erupted into flames when a hundred and fifty thousand laborers marched on London, demanding rights from Parliament. Only because of terrible weather and an overwhelming police presence did the crisis end. Was it a coincidence that you came to London in that year?”

  Carolyn stared at the burning coals, shivered, and didn’t reply.

  “Did you escape from one of the endangered European capitals?” De Quincey asked.

  “I could tell you another fiction, but I suspect that you’re so dogged, you’ll learn the truth eventually,” Carolyn replied in exhaustion. “Yes, I escaped from Europe before the revolutionaries could steal my assets.”

  “Is that where you and Brunell fled in 1803, to Europe, not Bristol, during the week I was away from London?”

  Carolyn nodded despondently.

  “Why did the two of you flee?”

  “You know Brunell was always afraid and never slept in the same building twice in a row.”

  “His fear was palpable,” De Quincey agreed.

  “Whomever he feared finally came too close. One day, while you were away in Eton, he rushed into that dismal house in Greek Street and told me we were leaving.”

  “He never acknowledged you as his daughter,” De Quincey said. “Why would he take you with him when he was in so great a hurry?”

  “Did you hear something?” Carolyn shifted her gaze toward the closed partition that concealed the corpse in the back half of the drawing room.

  “It’s only the contraction of the house in this cold,” De Quincey answered.

  “Yes, in this cold.” Carolyn hugged herself.

  “To where did the two of you flee?”

  “To Paris.”

  “Why did Brunell take you with him?” De Quincey repeated.

  Carolyn shivered. “Since he didn’t have the authority to act as a lawyer in the French courts, he resorted to other measures to earn a living.”

  “Other measures?”

  “He took refuge in a Paris brothel. He earned money by offering me to its patrons.”

  De Quincey couldn’t speak for a moment. “My heart breaks for you, Carolyn.”

  She made a brushing-away gesture with her hands, showing contempt for her past, disposing of it.

  “Brunell was a fool. Without imagination. As I wept each morning after yet another unspeakable night, I tried desperately to think of a way to save myself. At last, I realized how he could earn far more money than by offering me to…” Carolyn shuddered. “It required the help of another man, a strong, hateful-looking man, and it required us to look presentable. With the last of his money, Brunell and I went to the public baths. It had more water than I ever imagined I could be immersed in. He bought better clothes for us. He took me to the sort of taverns where so-called respectable men seek diversion. He offered me to them, but as soon as I was in a rented room with one of them, the hatefu
l-looking man would charge inside and demand to know what the gentleman was doing with his daughter. The intruder carried a cudgel and told the man the choice was his: he could receive a thorough beating or he could hand over a generous sum to compensate for the insult to his daughter.

  “Some nights, we earned as much as the equivalent of a hundred pounds. We were able to afford better clothes and attract wealthier gentlemen searching for the kind of entertainment of which their wives and children would not approve. Eventually we needed to leave Paris for French cities where we wouldn’t be recognized. Then we went to Spain and Portugal and the Italian states, wherever wealthy English gentlemen traveled for secret diversions.”

  Carolyn again turned toward the partition that separated her and De Quincey from the corpse in the next room. “Are you certain that you don’t hear anything back there?”

  “Only the contraction of the house,” De Quincey assured her.

  “You don’t hear rats? I should have brought saucers filled with the phosphorus paste. I should have placed them in each room.”

  “Tell me about Europe, Carolyn.”

  Slowly she removed her gaze from the partition. “Eventually I grew too old to play the role of a young, innocent girl. Our scheme changed and I became a virginal sister whom Brunell had supposedly abducted from a family in Kent. The hateful-looking man became a brother who claimed to be searching for me. This worked well, but it didn’t produce the degree of shame in our victims—and the commensurate amount of money—that the original scheme did.

  “Soon I thought of a better plan. After Brunell rented me to a gentleman and we went to a room, the angry-looking man burst through the door, this time claiming to be my husband and holding a crying baby. He thrust the baby into my arms and threatened to beat the gentleman to within an inch of his life for despoiling the baby’s mother. We earned considerable money with that particular dodge. But the babies didn’t know how to be actors. They cried when we didn’t want them to, and when we did want them to cry, they often remained exasperatingly silent, so in time we went back to a version of the original scheme and arranged for gentlemen to be alone with girls of six, eight, and ten years when they were interrupted by the hateful-looking man with a cudgel. As I said, we earned considerable money. Brunell and the various assistants whom we employed gambled and drank their money away. But I saved mine.” Carolyn nodded proudly.