Mind of a Killer
Page 32
Peters arrived just as the engine began to disappear into the tunnel at the other end of the station, breathing hard, his face streaked with sweat and soot.
‘Damn!’ he yelled, all exasperated fury.
Weeks was looking back at them with a gloating smile. He was kneeling on the top of the train, swaying slightly as it gathered speed. He raised his hand in a triumphant farewell.
Lonsdale closed his eyes tightly as the last carriage entered the tunnel. From the platform, he heard a woman scream. Weeks had misjudged the height of the hole.
Peters’s men rushed towards the crumpled body, while Lonsdale pulled himself up onto the platform, away from the rails. Peters followed Lonsdale, watching his constables mill about the body that sprawled across the tracks in a bloody heap.
Lonsdale slumped on the platform and tried to catch his breath.
‘I hope it dashed the bastard’s brains out,’ he said in a hoarse whisper.
Peters sat next to him. ‘Oh, it did,’ he said grimly. ‘It did.’
EPILOGUE
‘I find it utterly reprehensible that you won’t let us tell the entire story,’ raged Hulda. ‘We exposed the plot at great personal risk, and now all we can publish is a watered-down version. We can’t even use the perpetrators’ real names.’
‘Don’t blame me, Miss Friederichs,’ said Peters, pulling out his pipe and tobacco. ‘It came from one of those “higher sources” you dislike so much.’
‘Small wonder she’s vexed, then,’ put in Bradwell. ‘If that’s what higher sources do, perhaps they shouldn’t be in higher places.’
It was Monday afternoon, six days after the fateful encounter at the Imperial Demographic Institute. For the first time since then, Lonsdale, Hulda, Peters and Bradwell were together, enjoying a meal at the restaurant in Derry & Toms.
‘It was Morley who agreed not to print everything,’ Peters said mildly. ‘So some of your irritation should be directed his way. Not mine.’
‘Morley has his reasons,’ said Lonsdale. ‘But it would be different if Stead were editor.’
‘Something we may see before too long,’ said Hulda enigmatically.
Lonsdale raised his eyebrows. ‘Do you know something I don’t, Friederichs?’
‘A great deal,’ replied Hulda. ‘But as regards The PMG, I just sense a change in the offing. There’ll be a seat in the Commons open soon, and Morley will be Gladstone’s choice to fill it.’ She smiled in anticipation. ‘Then, with Stead in charge, we’ll have some excitement!’
There was silence at the table for several moments, before Lonsdale spoke again.
‘So, we all know that the Imperial Demographic Institute has been closed down and a number of individuals arrested, Inspector. What else can you tell us?’
‘That Weeks kept most of the important documents elsewhere, and we haven’t been able to locate them, and the ledger you mentioned had disappeared by the time we searched his office. That leaves us struggling to hunt down many of those involved. We found seventy-six cerebra in the basement, but we don’t know if that was the total number of victims.’
‘Has Leonard told you anything?’
‘Not much – he feels I helped destroy his dreams. He says Ramsey and I are two of a kind – neither with the vision to understand the greatness of Weeks’s plan. Sorensen has been more helpful, and answered some of the questions you wanted us to ask. For example, one of their colleagues was supposed to follow you home after the Walker inquest, so that Weeks would know where you lived. But he followed Miss Friederichs’ hansom instead, so Weeks went to her house in the morning, hoping she would lead him to your residence. Instead, of course, he followed her to Salmon and Eden.
‘Sorensen has also identified some of the low-level participants. We’ve caught two men who were involved in murders, although Morgan has disappeared. You heard about Pawley, didn’t you?’
‘No,’ said Lonsdale.
‘He was found on a Great Western train travelling without a ticket. He refused to pay so was taken into custody, where his identity was ascertained. He’s been incarcerated in an asylum. He denies any involvement with Weeks, and says he’ll break out at his first opportunity.’
‘So, do you think,’ asked Bradwell, ‘that there are individuals who’ll try to continue the scheme?’
‘We seem to have the most important active participants,’ said Peters. ‘There are people like Wilson who believe in the concept, but didn’t play a role that we know of – they’re still free. But, without Weeks, I think we’re safe from more of this madness.’
‘And hopefully, we always will be,’ sighed Lonsdale.
Lonsdale sat comfortably in the morning room at Cleveland Square and opened The Observer. He had three-quarters of an hour to spare before he and Jack were to meet Emelia and Anne. He was looking forward to the afternoon considerably more than to dinner that night with Emelia’s family. But he had found in recent weeks that he was prepared to put up with a great deal to please Anne.
Idly, he scanned through the news. The world seemed to be holding on for one more day. But the smile left his face when he read:
A gunpowder explosion resulted in a double fatality yesterday morning at 94 Old Bath Road in Bristol. After a fire in the upper rooms was extinguished, the lodgers, Mr and Mrs Hicks, were found on the floor with the upper portion of their heads blown off. An examination revealed a large number of canisters containing gunpowder and loaded cartridges. It was apparent that Hicks was filling cartridges when the explosion occurred. The police say there is no need for further investigation, and that the case is closed.
Lonsdale felt himself shaking. ‘The case may be closed,’ he muttered. ‘But it certainly hasn’t ended.’
HISTORICAL NOTE
The account of the gunpowder explosion that killed Mr and Mrs Hicks in Bristol was true, as were all the news articles and many of the events described in Mind of a Killer. The quotations were taken directly from The Pall Mall Gazette, The Times, or other London newspapers. This is just one interpretation of what might have happened when this strange series of seemingly unrelated events took place.
In 1882, The PMG was a small but very influential London newspaper. Founded in 1865, it had been on the verge of financial collapse when Frederick Greenwood, the first editor, convinced his brother James to spend a night in the Lambeth workhouse and to write a series of sensational articles about the experience. The four instalments not only exposed the horrific conditions in workhouses, but also helped guarantee the paper’s success by doubling its circulation in three days.
In 1880, the newspaper’s ownership and political orientation changed, and John Morley (1838–1923), a much-respected intellectual and political commentator – called ‘the last of the great nineteenth-century Liberals’ – became editor. Morley left The PMG in 1883 after being elected to Parliament. He later twice served in the Cabinet as Chief Secretary for Ireland, having told Prime Minister Gladstone that if he could manage Stead, he could manage Ireland. He was also twice Secretary of State for India, and was created Viscount Morley in 1908, after which he became Lord President of the Council.
One of Morley’s first moves as editor was to hire the Liberal firebrand W. T. Stead (1849–1912), from the Northern Echo of Darlington, to serve as assistant editor. Stead succeeded Morley as editor, and in the next seven years his ‘New Journalism’ introduced many innovations, brought American-style sensationalism to the British press, and demonstrated how the press could be used positively to influence government policy in the creation of child welfare and social legislation – what Stead called ‘Government by Journalism’. In 1890, Stead founded and became editor of the non-partisan monthly Review of Reviews, a position he held until his death in 1912 on Titanic.
Under Morley and Stead, the staff of The PMG was one of the most remarkable in the history of the press. Alfred Milner (1854–1925) served as a reporter and then Stead’s assistant editor, before abandoning journalism for a career as a politic
ian and colonial administrator. He was High Commissioner for South Africa and Governor of the Cape Colony, a member of the War Cabinet during World War I, Secretary of State for War, and Secretary of State for the Colonies. He was knighted in 1895 and created Viscount Milner in 1902.
Edward Tyas Cook (1857–1919) ultimately succeeded Stead as editor, and in 1893, after new ownership had changed The PMG to a Tory newspaper, he founded a new Liberal evening paper, The Westminster Gazette. He later became editor of The Daily News, and was renowned as the world’s leading authority on John Ruskin – editing his writings, which were published in thirty-nine volumes. He was knighted in 1912.
Hulda Friederichs (1856–1927) initially joined The PMG as Stead’s personal assistant, and thereafter became the first woman journalist in London engaged on exactly the same terms, with regard to work and pay, as the male members of staff. In 1893, she went to The Westminster Gazette with Cook and, three years later, became editor of the Westminster Budget. She wrote biographies of several important British figures of the time.
Clustered in the months around the death of Charles Darwin on 19 April 1882 were numerous incidents appearing in this book. For example, W. J. Willoughby was found dead on a train track in France, after two companions with whom he was travelling disappeared; the murderer Dr George Lamson confessed his crimes to his gaoler; the pauper Bingham died after being placed in a fumigating box; and Frederick Kempster and Edmund Corlett were burned to death at their factory.
The PMG also featured coverage of the death of Jesse James; the explosion at the Court Theatre, during a performance that the Prince of Wales was attending; an attack on a ship by a sperm whale; the riots in Camborne; the eruption of Mount Etna; and Milner’s two-part story on ‘nomads’, explaining the way vagabond women selected men at workhouses. Other pieces of news included milkman John Poole being arrested for stealing milk, Teresa Godley being killed in a beach fire after being part of a group that robbed Frank Wood, and Thomas Pawley – an escapee from a lunatic asylum – being found on a Great Western Train travelling without a ticket.
Perhaps the most intensely covered news event of the time was the double-murder of Lord Frederick Cavendish and Thomas Henry Burke in Dublin’s Phoenix Park. The resolution to these murders did not come until the next year, after the members of the ‘Invincibles’, a small, violent faction of Irish rebels, had been arrested. Ultimately, five were hanged and three given penal servitude for life, while James Carey, who turned Queen’s evidence against them, was murdered while being smuggled by the government to Natal.
The other newspapers mentioned in the book all existed. At the time, The Daily Telegraph and The Standard had the largest daily circulations in the world. The New York Herald – which was widely disliked by the British press for its use of sensationalism – at times had the largest circulation in the United States and full-time staffs for both its Paris and London editions. The restaurants mentioned – including Craig’s Oyster Bar, Pagani’s and the Aerated Bread Company – were all successful at the time, as was Derry & Toms, the London department store. The homes that Lonsdale, Milner and Galton lived in can still be seen in London, although Galton’s is much changed after being damaged by a bomb in World War II.
Galton was one of the great gentleman-scientists of his generation. He had travelled in Africa and then returned to Britain, where he achieved prominence for his investigations into numerous aspects of heredity and genetics. The originator of the concept of eugenics, he received the letter from his cousin Charles Darwin in December 1869. His book Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development was published to critical acclaim in 1883, and his later achievements included the founding of the anthropometric laboratory and being one of the fathers of fingerprinting. At this time, several of Lonsdale’s other acquaintances – including Sir Garnet Wolseley (1833–1913), who was raised to the peerage as Baron Wolseley later in 1882, and Professor John Robert Seeley (1834–1895) – were also at the height of their powers and influence.