The Red Hand of Fury

by R. N. Morris

  But to achieve the utopian vision the young woman had described, Villiers would need something more than mere charisma.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The following morning, Quinn had Macadam drive him round to Bedford Square. They waited in the car and watched the three-storey, double-fronted house for half an hour, only getting out once they had seen a silver-haired figure glance out of one of the upstairs windows.

  This time, the ageing butler who had previously barred Macadam was unable to slam the door in their faces before Quinn’s boot intervened to wedge it open.

  ‘If you open the door a little wider, I shall remove my foot.’

  But, of course, he took the opportunity to shoulder his way in. The old butler tottered back on his heels, slumping against the wall to regain his balance. Quinn felt a brief pang of guilt but the man’s readiness to lie dispelled it. ‘His Lordship is not at home, I tell you.’

  ‘It’s Mr Oscar Villiers we have come to see.’

  The hallway was decorated with that effortless good taste that spoke of money and privilege.

  A door to the back of the hall opened and the young woman Quinn recognized as W.G. Portman’s mistress Reg came out.

  ‘What is it Menton? Oh, it’s you.’

  ‘Good day, Miss …?’ Quinn realized he had failed to ascertain her name at their last encounter.

  ‘I’m Regina Villiers.’

  ‘Yes, of course. You must be Mr Villiers’ daughter?’

  ‘I suppose I must be. What do you want?’

  ‘We’d like a word with your father.’

  ‘I told them, Miss Regina, that his Lordship is not at home.’

  ‘Now, now, Menton, you know you mustn’t call him that any more. I’m terribly sorry, Inspector, Menton gets easily confused. Although, in a sense, he’s perfectly right. His Lordship is no longer at home. But Daddy is. Would you come through? He’s in his study. I’m sure he won’t object to seeing you.’

  Quinn frowned. Once again, she made it seem as though the interview depended on some degree of condescension on her part.

  The room was filled with tobacco smoke. Villiers was seated at a large colonial-style desk with a green leather top, puffing away on a calabash pipe which protruded from beneath his unruly moustache. He looked up from a copy of The Times open on the desk. There was no trace of alarm in his expression, merely mild curiosity.

  ‘Daddy, these gentlemen are policemen. They have come to arrest you. But don’t think of escaping. They have the place surrounded.’

  ‘That’s not quite true, Mr Villiers. I am Inspector Quinn of the Special Crimes Department. And this is Sergeant Macadam. We would simply like a word or two with you.’

  Villiers signalled with his pipe for Quinn to go on.

  Quinn resisted an urge to waft the smoke out of his eyes and crossed to the window hopefully. ‘I was at Hyde Park yesterday. I heard you speak.’

  ‘I think you will struggle to find anything criminal in what I said.’ The charisma that Quinn had been willing to grant him yesterday seemed like simple arrogance now.

  ‘You urged men to refuse the country’s call to enlist, should it arise.’

  ‘Why should I encourage healthy young men to volunteer for their own deaths?’

  ‘You went further, I think. In the event of conscription being introduced, you argued that it was every man’s duty to resist it. That sounds suspiciously like sedition.’

  ‘There is a greater duty than that which our country demands of us. What is country anyhow? It is merely an accident of birth. Nationalism is the root of all conflict. I prefer to think of the greater duty that we owe to the human species. To the world. We are all citizens of the world.’

  ‘That’s all very well, but there are always those who would attack us. You cannot get the whole world to lay down its arms at once. That will take time, if it’s possible at all. So in the meantime … we must have a strong army to defend ourselves against our enemies. Do you not see that your words will give encouragement to our enemies?’

  ‘I hope they will. I hope they will encourage them to do the same.’

  ‘Hope? Is that all you have to offer? You pin all this on hope?’

  ‘Hope is a powerful force, Inspector.’

  ‘Let’s say that I agree with you. Let’s say your aims are commendable. Let’s say I share your goal of world peace. What is it you say in your leaflet? War is madness … War is death … Let’s say I agree. I still don’t see how you can stop it. Not by mere hope alone. You need something more powerful than hope to conquer the militarist enemy.’

  ‘What do you have in mind, Inspector? It almost sounds as if you have come here with a proposal.’

  ‘There is a member of your organization called Timon Medway. I spoke to Mr Portman about him.’ Quinn glanced over to Reg. She raised an eyebrow provocatively, a wry indication that she knew what was coming.

  Villiers’ face flushed crimson. ‘Portman! That scoundrel! He’s a bad egg. A bad egg, I tell you. I told Manley Adams we should expel him. And now he’s been talking to the police about confidential membership matters.’

  ‘We already knew. We have a list of your members.’

  ‘How the Devil did you get that?’

  ‘The information is in the public domain. I expressed my surprise to Mr Portman that you would allow such a man as Timon Medway to be a member. You are aware of his history?’

  ‘I fail to see the point you are making?’

  ‘He is a murderer. A multiple murderer. Hardly the best qualification for a pacifist.’

  ‘All that was very unfortunate, I grant you. But the fact that he has chosen to join us shows that he is no longer a man of violence.’

  ‘Unless he wishes to use your organization to mask his own ends.’

  ‘How on earth could he do that?’

  ‘I don’t know. All that I do know is that I do not trust Timon Medway.’

  ‘Everyone deserves a second chance, Inspector.’

  ‘That’s what Mr Portman said to me.’

  ‘Well, there you go. If even Portman can say that.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  Quinn caught the warning shake of the head from Reg to her father.

  ‘Well, you know Portman. Utter scoundrel. No respect. Utterly immoral. He’ll say anything to get a woman into bed. There’s no place for his kind in the Gracchi.’

  ‘You would prefer a child murderer to a philanderer?’

  ‘That’s not the point, Inspector, and you know it. What I mean is, even Portman – who in many aspects of his life has no principles whatsoever – even he understands the principle of Christian forgiveness.’

  ‘Have you ever had any direct communication with Timon Medway? Has he ever offered to help your organization in any concrete manner? Has he ever, for example, offered a more substantive method of bringing about world peace than simple hope?’

  ‘What do you have in mind?’

  ‘I don’t know. That’s why I’m asking you.’

  ‘I don’t see what he could do, given that he is locked up in a lunatic asylum.’

  ‘But did he ever offer?’

  ‘We would not have taken any such offer seriously, had it been made. Naturally, we value the support of all our members. Our cause does occasionally excite the enthusiasm of the more eccentric elements.’

  ‘Timon Medway is not eccentric. He is evil.’

  Villiers made light of Quinn’s warning. ‘We take such offers with a pinch of salt.’

  ‘What was his offer?’

  ‘He offered to form a cadre of militant pacifists who would carry out a series of acts.’

  ‘What acts?’

  ‘That was never specified. But I rather had the impression he was thinking of bomb blasts and other outrages. Standard anarchist activity. Not our kind of thing at all.’

  ‘He wrote to you of these proposals?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Do you still have the letters?’

  Villie
rs rose from his seat and crossed to a filing cabinet. A moment later he handed Quinn a wad of folded papers. ‘There was only one, that I was aware of. Mind you, one was enough.’

  Quinn glanced down. He felt a jolt, as if from an electric shock. There was no mistaking the tiny handwriting. A sudden queasiness came over him. He felt the strength drain from him, as if the bundle of paper he held was immeasurably heavy. He was suddenly empty, and cold. He watched his hand begin to shake.

  He did not need to read the letter to know that Timon Medway had not changed. Would never change.

  Back at his desk, Quinn studied the letter. There were seven pages of it, filled on both sides with Medway’s compact, obsessive writing. He wrote on squared mathematical sheets of foolscap. Although he did not adhere to the lines of the grid, he wrote in unerringly straight and uniformly spaced rows, except that some letters were off-set from the rest, either floating slightly above, or sitting slightly below the line. But there was a regularity to this off-setting. It was clearly deliberate, although the purpose behind it, if there was one, was at first sight difficult to guess. It formed an elusive, asymmetrical pattern that was oddly distracting.

  As for the content, Oscar Villiers’ judgement of it seemed to be accurate. It was a rambling, self-justificatory and frankly tedious document. It lacked the passion and the coherence to be called a diatribe.

  The most striking aspect of it was the reference Medway made to his own crimes, although he did not call them crimes. Certain bold acts brought me to the world’s attention.

  He went on to propose that: the Fellowship of the Gracchi be equally bold in its efforts to further its laudable objectives.

  Was he therefore proposing that they resort to child murder?

  An act is neither good nor evil in and of itself but only when its repercussions and consequences are taken into account. If the effect of Act A is to propulgate the aims of the Fellowship, then Act A can only ever be deemed good.

  We must learn from those whose objectives are diametrically opposed to our own, but whose methods are incontrovertably effective. Let us grasp the sanguinary hand of the militarist. Nor shall we wash off the blood that adheres to our own hands until we have made real our vision of universal peace.

  Medway’s handwriting itself had always struck Quinn as self-conscious, even arch, although he had never seen such curious upping and downing of the letters before.

  Despite their almost minuscule scale, Medway executed the letters with precise consistency and control. It’s true that he allowed himself the occasional excessive flourish: an extended bar on every t, or oversized loops on the gs and ys. Sometimes these flourishes were executed at the expense of other letters. But there was a mechanical repetitiveness to them which undermined any sense of spontaneity or flair. Timon Medway’s handwriting was a peculiarly lifeless and depressing artefact.

  And then there were the letters that he seemed to be drawing attention to by placing them with perfect consistency and control at exactly the same distance from the true every time. It gave the impression of randomness, but Quinn sensed the pattern behind it. More than that, he had a premonition of a meaning that was eerily personal to him.

  He started to make a note of the letters pulled out: a, i, n, l, a, u, l, s, a, n, i, n, l, l, s, i, a, i, q …

  His heart started to thump. His palms grew moist.

  He rationalized the list to unique instances of its constituent letters: a, i, n, l, u, s, q.

  They were the letters of his own name. Silas Quinn.

  That night Quinn entered the house with his usual stealth. He could hear voices coming from the drawing room. The door was ajar. The mood inside struck his ear as jolly, excitable even. People were talking over one another. Laughter was quick and ready, though it had a nervy brittleness to it.

  The volubility of the gathering drowned out the sound of his entrance.

  Still he paused for a moment at the threshold, straining to listen, like a burglar breaking into his own home.

  As usual, Appleby and Timberley were dominating the discussion. Quinn identified Miss Ibbott’s tinkling laughter and her mother’s rather indulgent chuckle. The new couple were there too. The husband’s droning monotone piped up regularly with some no doubt boorish or asinine comment, which his wife was quick to contradict.

  Was it wrong of Quinn to take pleasure in the evident tension between them? Did he imagine himself usurping Mr Hargreaves in the marital bed? He shook his head at his own absurdity. This was a dangerous path to go down.

  ‘It was an absolute hoot, I tell you!’ declared Timberley.

  ‘You have never seen the like,’ confirmed Appleby.

  ‘Well, I am peeved that you two went to see him without me!’ complained Miss Ibbott.

  ‘Oh, it wasn’t a suitable entertainment for young ladies.’

  ‘Now, now, Mr Appleby, we are not quite as delicate as you imagine, you know,’ put in Mrs Hargreaves.

  ‘Oh, you’d be fine!’

  There was much outraged hilarity at the unflattering implication of Appleby’s remark.

  ‘I meant unmarried young ladies,’ he clarified.

  ‘Well, I’m glad we’ve cleared that up!’ said Hargreaves, lamely.

  ‘Was it a horribly indecent show?’ wondered Miss Ibbott. ‘I’m not sure I approve of you two innocent boys being exposed to such shocking scenes.’

  ‘Oh, as it turned out, it wasn’t indecent at all,’ insisted Timberley.

  ‘More’s the pity!’ The ill-judged quip came from Hargreaves.

  ‘It just sort of made you think that it could take an indecent turn at any moment,’ Timberley explained.

  ‘It was chaos! Utter chaos. He had one fellow believing he was a window cleaner up a ladder. And a woman believing she was in the tub, you know …!’

  Suitably scandalized laughter greeted this revelation.

  Appleby continued: ‘There she was, merrily soaping away. The window cleaner chap climbs up his ladder … Or at least that’s what he thinks he’s doing. There’s no ladder, no window, no bucket of suds nor chamois leather. Well, you can guess what happened, I’m sure.’

  Just in case they couldn’t, Timberley supplied the details: ‘He looks through the window and sees her there in the bath, in the altogether. She screams and covers her privates. And he gives a filthy leer. That’s the amazing thing. They both behaved as if she really was completely naked!’

  ‘She wasn’t though, was she?’ asked Mrs Hargreaves, sweetly anxious.

  ‘Of course not!’ her husband scoffed. ‘Oh do keep up, Cissy. It was all in her head.’

  ‘He had another fellow convinced he was a pug or some kind of lady’s lap dog or other. He had to sit up and beg for imaginary titbits from this rather common woman who was convinced she was the Duchess of Devonshire, or some such. And I can tell you, never was there a less aristocratic individual!’

  ‘It was very funny. Especially when the pug jumped up on his mistress’s lap.’

  ‘The whole place was in uproar.’

  ‘I’ve never laughed so much in my life. It was pandemonium.’

  ‘That’s what they call him. Professor Pandaemonium!’

  Quinn was through the door before he had time to question his decision.

  ‘What did you say?’

  Mrs Ibbott must have been as startled as everyone, but she was quick to hide her surprise. ‘Inspector Quinn! What an unexpected surprise. Come in, come in, take a seat. Join us, do.’

  Quinn collected himself enough to say: ‘I beg your pardon. I didn’t mean to intrude. I was just passing, and I couldn’t help hearing …’

  ‘Not at all! Not at all! No need to apologize,’ insisted Mrs Ibbott.

  ‘You were talking about a show of some kind?’

  ‘A stage hypnotist, that’s right,’ said Timberley, somewhat warily.

  ‘What was his name?’

  ‘Professor Pandaemonium.’

  ‘And where did you see this show?’
/>   ‘At the Camden Empire.’

  ‘And do you recommend it?’

  ‘Indeed I do. It is most entertaining.’

  ‘Thank you. That’s all I wished to know. Good evening.’

  He gave a series of bows to each of them in turn, as if he had just performed a music hall act himself. But there was no applause. They sat in stunned silence as he backed out of the room, still bowing.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  The next few days passed slowly. It was hotter than ever in the attic room. They opened all the windows but there was no relief. It was as if there was not enough air to go around all departments and, regrettably – perhaps because they had not completed the requisite forms in time – it had been denied them.

  The slightest exertion, mental or physical, left Quinn short of breath. Once he had the sense that his lungs were failing him. That somehow they had fallen out of step with the rhythm that was needed to keep him alive. He began to panic. His breaths became progressively shorter and more ragged. He became convinced that the only possible outcome of this unpleasant experience was his death. How could a body that had forgotten how to breathe keep itself alive?

  It was only Sergeant Macadam, suddenly by his side, whispering soothing words to him, encouraging him to count backwards from ten, that calmed him.

  In general, Quinn was beset by a curious sense of everything coming together and falling apart at the same time.

  When he was not crippled by panic, he was stymied by indecision.

  The last thing he wanted was to find himself up against a conspiracy that went all the way up to the highest echelons of government. He was therefore inclined to do what he had been urged to do. To let it go. To look elsewhere. Without conviction. Without hope of success. To go through the motions until something else came along.

  But even when he made a show of dropping the enquiry into Colney Hatch, and instead investigated the pacifists and Irish militants, it was curious how he was led back to that cursed place. First, the red hand of the UVF. And then the fact of Medway’s membership of the Gracchi. Were they meaningless coincidences, or evidence of an emerging pattern – signs, in other words.