Ruler of the Night

by David Morrell

  “Yes, madam. At once.”

  Carolyn turned to Marybeth. “Please go back to Jeremy.” She started to walk away.

  “Mrs. Richmond, you’re limping. Are you certain you’re all right?”

  “Tired. I’m only tired.”

  Once more, Carolyn put the walking stick under the sash on her dress. She held the lamp in one hand, clutched the brass railing with the other, and hobbled down the staircase.

  At the bottom, she entered the library, where she set the lamp on the desk and made her way to the cabinet of shelves where all of the books had the same author’s name. She opened the door and removed a volume that, because of innumerable readings, parted automatically to the passage she wished to read yet again.

  She sank onto a chair, drew a breath, and returned to when seventeen-year-old Thomas had arrived at the house in Greek Street.

  Again, she heard Thomas’s young voice.

  …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.

  From repeated readings, the pages opened to another passage as though with a will of their own.

  Again, Thomas’s young voice filled her mind, but this time he spoke about the night he’d left the house in Greek Street, intending to journey to a family friend who might be able to redeem him from the life of a beggar. He’d promised to return in five days.

  I set off, accompanied by Ann, toward Piccadilly, for it was my intention to go on the Bristol mail-coach en route to Eton. Our course lay through a part of London which has now all disappeared, Swallow-street, I think it was called. Having time enough, we sat down, not wishing to part in the tumult and blaze of Piccadilly. I had told Ann of my plans, and I now assured her again that she would share in my good fortune, if I met with any, and that I would never forsake her. I loved her. I was full of hope. She, on the contrary, was overcome by sorrow, so that when I kissed her at our farewell, she put her arms around my neck and wept without speaking a word.

  Carolyn went to the desk, took a sheet of paper from a drawer, dipped a copper pen into a crystal inkwell, and wrote hastily.

  Scrittle-scrattle.

  She stopped and peered around the room.

  When the noise wasn’t repeated, she resumed writing.

  Scrittle-scrattle.

  Again, she stopped and listened to the silence of the house.

  It’s the sound of the nib on the paper, she thought.

  Trying to make herself believe that explanation, she rushed on despite the ever-louder scrittle-scrattle, never again pausing, the words having accumulated pressure in her mind over a lifetime.

  She completed the document, blotted it, folded it, and sealed it with wax. She wrote Thomas next to the wax. Then she composed another document, and this she left on the desk for anyone to read.

  She tugged at a bookshelf that swung out and revealed a fireproof safe, the lock of which was the most sophisticated available. After withdrawing a key from a concealed pocket in her dress, she opened the safe, removed an object, and set it on the desk.

  FOURTEEN

  THE DISCONNECTED HEART

  “Mrs. Richmond is not at home,” a footman said when he opened the door the next morning. His face should have expressed the satisfaction of a servant at one of the very best addresses in London, but instead he looked confused and even fearful.

  “She might not be at home to anyone else,” De Quincey said. “But she’s expecting us. Please tell her that Thomas and Emily are at the door.”

  “She put a sealed message on her desk and addressed it to Thomas. Perhaps it’s for you. But truly, Mrs. Richmond isn’t at home.”

  “You look as if something has happened,” Emily said. “What’s wrong?”

  “When the church bells rang at five o’clock this morning, the cook found Mrs. Richmond downstairs in the kitchen. Mrs. Richmond had heated the stove. It didn’t make sense. Mrs. Richmond knows that if she’s hungry, all she needs to do is waken the cook. Mrs. Richmond was dressed to go out. She was limping and supported herself with a walking stick. As if all of that weren’t unusual enough, she left a troubling note and an immense amount of money on her desk.”

  Without waiting for an invitation, De Quincey stepped inside. “Show us.”

  Relieved that someone was taking charge, the footman led the way to the library’s entrance.

  De Quincey and Emily hurried toward the desk and a large stack of Bank of England twenty-pound notes.

  Emily ran her thumb along them, trying to estimate how many there were. “At least ten thousand pounds,” she said in amazement.

  The footman pointed at a piece of paper. “Even though Mrs. Richmond’s message says that she wants this money to be divided among the servants, I swear that none of us touched any of it. We’re afraid we’ll be accused of theft.”

  De Quincey read what was on the paper. “It’s an amendment to Carolyn’s will,” he told Emily in surprise. “She wants the servants to share this money. She wants a maid named Marybeth to take care of her grandson. The infant inherits everything except for whatever money will be required to defend Stella in court and maintain her if she’s put in a madhouse. The only thing she gives to Edward is her contempt.”

  “Look, Father.” Emily pointed to a copy of his Confessions lying open on the desk.

  De Quincey scanned the passage. “It’s about the night I departed for Eton and said good-bye to Ann.”

  He picked up the message that was addressed to Thomas. His hand trembled as he broke the wax seal. The more he read, the more the rushing of his heart made him feel dizzy.

  “What does it say, Father?”

  “There’s no time.” He turned to the footman. “Take us to the kitchen.”

  On the bottom level of the house, the kitchen was appointed with the largest cast-iron stove that De Quincey had ever seen.

  “You found Mrs. Richmond here before dawn?” De Quincey asked the cook.

  The round-faced woman nodded in bewilderment. “She’d stoked the fire in the stove until it was as hot as when I prepare dinner.”

  “What was she doing?” Emily asked.

  “Making biscuits.”

  “Biscuits?” De Quincey repeated. The word sounded like a moan.

  “The strangest biscuits I ever heard of,” the cook said. “Brandy, lard, sugar, flour, and—”

  “And a big chunk of something that she took out of a jar of water,” De Quincey said.

  The cook nodded. “Whatever it is, another servant uses it to make the green-glowing paste that’s in the saucers on the stairs. I didn’t know you could eat it.”

  “And then she departed from the house?” De Quincey asked hurriedly. “That’s what the footman told us.”

  “I did my best to advise her not to,” the cook insisted. “Her left leg didn’t have any strength. Her left arm looked weak also. But she wouldn’t listen. She’s my mistress. How could I stop her? She put the biscuits in her coat pocket, braced herself on her walking stick, and went away.”

  “Did she tell you where she was going?” Emily asked.

  “No. All she said was ‘Thank you for your years of help. There’s something for you and the other servants on my desk in the library.’ What in the name of heaven is going on?”

  “It’s not in the name of heaven,” De Quincey said. “Emily, we need to hurry. We might already be too late.”


  As they ran from the front door, Ryan and Becker came through the gate.

  “At Lord Palmerston’s house, a servant told us where to find you,” Ryan said. “We thought you’d like to be present when we ask Edward Richmond more—”

  De Quincey interrupted. “We need to find Carolyn as soon as possible.”

  They hurried to the nearby cabstand on Hyde Park Corner. All day, drivers came and went, but the same water boy remained, attending to the horses and helping passengers get into the vehicles.

  “When did you start working this morning?” Becker asked him.

  “Five o’clock.”

  “Did a woman with a limp hire a cab around that time?”

  “She also ’ad trouble with one of her arms. She gave me this when I ’elped her climb inside.” Amazed by his good fortune, the boy showed them a twenty-pound bank note. It was more than he could earn in a year.

  “Do you remember where she told the driver to take her?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes, to—”

  De Quincey supplied the answer. “Greek Street near Soho Square.”

  “That’s right. How did you know?” the boy asked.

  “It couldn’t be anywhere else.”

  De Quincey climbed quickly into a four-seat cab. Emily, Ryan, and Becker joined him.

  As the driver did his best to hurry through the clamor of dense traffic, De Quincey showed them the message that Carolyn had left for him.

  Reading it, Emily wept. When she managed to regain her voice, she repeated something that De Quincey had said during Stella’s revelations the previous night. “‘The horrors that madden the grief that gnaws at the heart.’”

  The cab reached Greek Street and proceeded toward Soho Square.

  “Which house?” the driver called down.

  “The gap between buildings,” De Quincey replied.

  People were gathered at the wooden barrier, pointing in alarm at something below them.

  “We didn’t get here in time,” De Quincey moaned.

  He jumped from the cab before it stopped. Emily, Ryan, and Becker followed, pushing through the crowd.

  De Quincey was so short that he needed to stand on his toes to peer over the barrier and glimpse the stone floor of what had once been the kitchen on the bottom level.

  Carolyn lay facedown on one of the slabs.

  Ryan and Becker moved a section of the barrier, revealing steps that descended to the bottom level. They rushed down. Despite his short legs, De Quincey reached Carolyn before anyone else did.

  She wasn’t moving. When he gently turned her onto her back, he whimpered. She had aged alarmingly. Her formerly radiant smooth skin was now the color of pewter and etched with wrinkles. Her hair seemed coated with dust.

  “Emily, do anything you can to help her,” De Quincey begged.

  Emily pointed. “There’s a remnant of a biscuit in her hand. And there are crumbs at the corner of her mouth.”

  She felt for a pulse. She opened Carolyn’s eyelids and studied her eyes. She performed all the other tests, finally gripping Carolyn’s ankles.

  “Cold. So cold. The poison was too powerful. Father, she’s gone.”

  De Quincey sank to his knees. The message Carolyn had left for him was clutched in his hand. He could never forget the words on it.

  Dearest Thomas,

  Memories are indeed like the stars, which disappear during the day but come back in the darkness…along with ghosts and nightmares.

  One ghost in particular.

  The night you left me alone while you went to Eton to try to persuade a family friend to lift you from poverty, I couldn’t bear to be without you. I followed you. I saw you meet Ann, where she waited for you farther along Greek Street.

  I didn’t understand why you wouldn’t let me go with you. If you let Ann walk with you to the mail coach, why couldn’t you have included me? I followed you both to Swallow Street, where you sat on a bench. The two of you were obviously making plans. I watched as she put her arms around you. I watched you kiss her.

  After you left, I went to Ann on the bench. She was weeping. When she noticed that I too was weeping, we hugged. I asked her to come back with me to that wretched house so that we could console each other.

  I told Ann that you’d given me a recipe for biscuits. The coals from which you and I had built a fire still glowed in the hearth. I blew on them, creating flames to which I added the rest of the coal that you’d brought. I found an old pan in one of the dusty cupboards. I cooked biscuits.

  Thomas, I used to fantasize that you and Ann were my father and mother and that I was your child and that you’d always take care of me. Sometimes I fantasized that instead of being my father, you were my husband. When I saw you making plans with Ann, not including me…when I saw you kiss her…

  At the chophouse on Saturday, you told me that when you’d returned to the house five days later, the stench was dreadful. I explained that it came from the many rats your poison had killed.

  But the stench was from something else. That’s why Brunell fled with me. He was afraid that his enemy would discover what I’d done and blame it on him. After hiding what he could, he forced me to run away with him. In the end, I had done it all for nothing.

  Is there anything about my life that I wish I could change? I wish that I hadn’t followed you that night. I wish that I hadn’t brought Ann back to the house. I wish that I hadn’t…

  Perhaps the three of us could have been a family, the two of you taking care of me. How wonderful it is to imagine. But then, as you said, you wouldn’t have had Emily.

  Yours forever,

  Carolyn

  De Quincey slumped beside Carolyn and wept.

  “Inspector Ryan,” he finally said.

  “Yes?”

  “Please do me a favor.”

  “Certainly.”

  “I noticed some workmen farther along the street. Would you ask if they have a pole that you can use to pry at something?”

  Ryan looked puzzled but said, “Of course.”

  “Father, I…” Unable to find the words, Emily knelt beside him, putting an arm around him.

  “Sergeant Becker?” De Quincey asked.

  “Yes?”

  “Please help me to move Carolyn’s body.”

  Emily helped also. Gently, they shifted her toward the steps.

  When Ryan returned with a pole, De Quincey pointed toward the stone slab upon which Carolyn had lain facedown.

  “Please lift that,” he said.

  Ryan stuck the end of the pole into a gap between the slab and an adjacent one. He pulled down on the pole. As the slab rose, Becker pushed it aside, the sound of its impact booming off the walls.

  In the dirt beneath the slab, a skeleton was arranged with its hands over its breastbone.

  “Ann,” De Quincey said, his voice breaking. “I finally found you.”

  “Is there nothing I can do to persuade you to change your mind?” Lord Palmerston asked. He, Commissioner Mayne, Becker, and Ryan were seeing Emily and De Quincey off, and the train to Manchester was making impatient chugging sounds. “I complained about your midnight pacing. But all of a sudden I realize that I’ll miss the company of the only man in England who cares so little about himself that he’ll always tell me the truth.”

  “My lord, it’s been an honor to share your hospitality and admire your greatness,” De Quincey said.

  Lord Palmerston smiled. “And I shall even miss your sarcasm.”

  “The memories here are too strong,” De Quincey explained. “In December, I was lured to London from Edinburgh because someone promised to reveal to me what had happened to Ann. That promise turned out to be a cruel hoax. But now at last I have learned what happened to Ann, and my purpose in coming to London has been achieved. If I stay any longer, I fear that I shall dwindle even more than I already am, crushed by the memories that Oxford Street and Soho Square and Greek Street evoke. While there’s no such thing as forgetting, that doesn’
t mean I should torture myself by allowing my memories to be vivid. Away from those memories, I’ll attempt once more to reduce my laudanum intake.”

  “I wish you good luck in your efforts,” Commissioner Mayne said. “Where will you and Emily go?”

  “To Grasmere, in the Lake District,” De Quincey answered. “I spent many happy years there in my youth. Emily and I intend to complete the journey that we began on Thursday night. Perhaps some of my books survived the auction.”

  “I don’t know if London can manage without you,” the commissioner said. “The next time there’s an inexplicable murder—”

  “Inspector Ryan and Sergeant Becker are more than capable,” De Quincey told him, smiling, “as long as they follow the principles of Immanuel Kant.”

  The commissioner chuckled.

  “We’re pleased to have studied the fine art of murder with you,” Becker said.

  Travelers passed them and climbed into train compartments. In the days since the funerals for Ann and Carolyn, the latter in unhallowed ground because she was a suicide, the newspapers had published numerous reports assuring readers that the person responsible for the attacks on the trains had been apprehended and that there was no longer a reason to fear the railways. Each day, more people boarded the trains.

  “The queen and the prince are at Windsor Castle,” Lord Palmerston said. “The news of your departure reached them too late for them to return to London and offer their good-byes. They told me to say they will miss you. And, Emily, they wish you the greatest success in your medical endeavors, if that is what you decide to pursue. They asked me to give the two of you some financial assistance for your upcoming travels. Perhaps it will help relieve the pressure from your bill collectors.”

  Lord Palmerston gave De Quincey some bank notes that were secured in a bright blue band.

  “There must be three hundred pounds here,” De Quincey said in astonishment. “I can’t accept this.”

  “Actually, Father, you can.” Emily took the bank notes from him and put them in her pocket.