Inspector of the Dead

“It’s good to have you here, Colonel.”

  Under other circumstances, Ryan might have hesitated, but with the colonel watching, he mustered his resolve and climbed onto a bench. Stretching his long legs over the partition, he stepped onto the first bench in Lady Cosgrove’s pew.

  The bench had a back that prevented him from seeing under the second and third benches. Even crouching, all he saw were shadows. Breathing rapidly, ready with his knife, he lowered his barely healed stomach to the first bench. He tried not to think about what might confront him as he leaned his head down and peered under the first bench, seeing beneath the other two benches.

  No one was under there. Feeling the thump of his heart against the bench, he looked up toward Colonel Trask and De Quincey, shaking his head from side to side, indicating that the area was clear.

  “Vicar, please stand,” the colonel requested.

  Determined not to interfere with the murder area by stepping into the blood, Ryan remained flat on the bench and extended his arm. The blood’s coppery odor almost overwhelmed him as he reached the tip of his knife toward the veil that covered the dead woman’s face. Feeling his scars stretch, he strained his arm to its limit, snagged the bottom of the veil, and tugged it away, exposing the corpse’s features.

  “Vicar, is that Lady Cosgrove?” Colonel Trask inquired.

  “God preserve her soul, yes.”

  Ryan heard a thump and assumed that the vicar had collapsed.

  “Lean against me,” Emily was saying.

  Forced to keep his head down near the blood, Ryan shifted his knife toward the note in the corpse’s fingers and managed to free it. After transferring the note to his other hand, he speared the envelope on the floor, much of its paper now soaked with blood.

  He rose from the bench and studied the envelope. Not only was its original color black—so was the wax that had sealed it. The note had a one-inch black border that was used to express only the severest grief.

  Wondering what dreadful news Lady Cosgrove had received before she was murdered, Ryan opened the crumpled note.

  He discovered only two words.

  In shock, he focused on them, recognizing their terrifying significance. Furious memories rushed through him.

  Of fifteen years earlier.

  Of shouts and panic and gunfire.

  Of chaos and the unthinkable.

  He jerked his head up, startled by fierce pounding on the church’s main door.

  THREE

  The House of Death

  In 1855, the concept of preserving a crime scene had existed for only a few decades. Disciplined investigation of a crime depends on organization, but not until 1829 had London’s police force been created, the first citywide unit of its kind in all of England. Its principles were formulated by two commissioners, one of whom was a retired military commander, Colonel Charles Rowan, while the other was a barrister experienced in criminal law, Richard Mayne. Rowan’s military background was essential in the short term, modeling the police force on the regulations and ranks of the army. But over the years Mayne’s legal expertise made the difference.

  Mayne understood that it was one thing to arrest someone for supposedly having committed a crime. It was quite another to prove guilt in a court of law. He taught patrolmen that evidence was as important as an arrest. A thorough search of a crime scene, interviews with everyone in the area, the collection and cataloguing of possibly incriminating objects—these methods were revolutionary.

  Mayne insisted on detailed records for anybody who was arrested: height, weight, color of hair and eyes, scars, aliases, a handwriting sample if that person could write, anything that might be useful in linking someone to a crime and proving it in court. He established a system of what he called “route papers,” in which the details of unsolved crimes in one district were communicated each morning to every other police district in the city.

  “Evidence,” Mayne insisted. “That’s how you capture criminals and put them in prison. Every criminal leaves a trail. Look for it. Follow it. I want details.”

  The pounding on the church’s door persisted.

  “It’s Detective Sergeant Becker!” a voice yelled from outside. “Open up!”

  “Let him in!” Ryan shouted.

  He returned his knife to its scabbard under his trouser leg. He shoved the envelope and its dismaying two-word note into a coat pocket, then hurried over the partition into Lord Palmerston’s pew.

  Colonel Trask stepped toward him. “Your face…What did you read in the note?”

  Ryan pretended not to hear him. Ignoring the pain in his recently healed abdomen, he veered around De Quincey and the others. As he rushed along the aisle, he saw a churchwarden unlocking the door.

  When Becker hurried inside, his face glistened from the effort with which he’d summoned the dozen constables behind him.

  “More men are on the way.”

  “Good. We need all of them and plenty of others,” Ryan said.

  A dozen constables were indeed not sufficient. Nor were a second dozen—and a further dozen after that. Everyone in the church—not to mention those who’d fled amid the cries of “Blood!”—needed to be questioned. Each area of St. James’s needed to be searched: its vestry, its offices, its bell tower, under every bench, behind the organ in the choir loft, everywhere. All the worshippers needed to be identified to make certain that they belonged there. Each garment needed to be checked for blood.

  Ryan sought out Agnes, the chief pew-opener. “The man who escorted Lady Cosgrove, do you know his name?”

  “I never saw him before.”

  Ryan asked the churchwardens and the other pew-openers, “Did you recognize the man who was with Lady Cosgrove?”

  “A face that sour—I’d remember it,” one of them said.

  “He was never in this church before, I can tell you,” someone else added.

  Constables went from box pew to box pew, interviewing the congregation. The waist-high compartments provided the illusion of privacy, even though the conversations rumbled throughout the church.

  “I’m expected at my uncle’s home in Belgravia for two o’clock dinner. Surely you don’t expect me to stay here while you…”

  “Part my coat? Unbutton my waistcoat? Constable, if I didn’t know better, I’d say you intended to search me. I belong to the same club that Police Commissioner Mayne does, and if you wish to continue being a…”

  “What did I notice? That unspeakably dressed woman with trousers under her skirt, and those two poorly dressed men whom I now discover are police detectives, and that little man over there with the frayed cuffs who, I’ve been told, is the Opium-Eater. Here in St. James’s! That’s what I noticed! The Opium-Eater is the one you should question!”

  As Ryan walked up and down the aisles, listening to the conversations, similar details were repeated again and again with the same impatience about being questioned and the same indignation about being detained.

  The reaction to being questioned was by no means a sign of callousness. The rich and powerful inhabitants of Mayfair were indeed shocked by Lady Cosgrove’s murder, which was even more alarming because it had happened in St. James’s. But London’s upper class felt an intense suspicion about intrusion into their personal affairs. Respectable people didn’t commit violent crimes. That was a lower-class phenomenon. If commoners attacked one another in taverns or lurked in alleyways to stab passersby for their purses, how did that concern the inhabitants of Mayfair? Surely these laborers who called themselves constables—for the police were members of the working class—didn’t actually believe that anyone who belonged to St. James’s could have been responsible for Lady Cosgrove’s murder. A rapid search of the streets would soon reveal someone who didn’t belong in Mayfair. That’s how the police should be spending their time, not preventing decent people from traveling to their country houses or visiting family members at Sunday dinners that had been scheduled weeks earlier.

  Ignoring these complaints, Rya
n glanced toward the church’s entrance, where an unshaven man in rumpled clothes appeared, carrying a satchel.

  The man nodded to Ryan and approached through all the activity.

  “Perhaps you’re up and about too soon,” the man said, a trace of alcohol wafting from his breath. “The way your hand’s pressed against your stomach.”

  “Just a stitch in my side,” Ryan told him.

  “Literally several stitches to hold you together. Maybe you should sit down.”

  “In a while.”

  “I know I ought to attend Sunday church more often, but I never expected to go to church for this reason.” The man held up his satchel. “The constable you sent told me some of the details. I assume you want plenty of sketches, just like the last time.”

  “Not exactly like the last time,” Ryan informed him.

  “What do you mean?”

  Another man joined them. His overcoat hung open, revealing that he didn’t wear a waistcoat, a condition of semidress hardly ever seen in Mayfair. Pale, he carried a tripod under one arm and a large equipment case in each hand, burdens that seemed almost too much for his thin frame.

  “Thanks for coming,” Ryan told him.

  “Where do you want me?”

  “At the front. I need photographs from several angles. Don’t step in the blood.”

  “Blood?”

  “This’ll be harsh to look at, but at least you won’t need to worry that the person you’re photographing will move and blur the result,” Ryan explained.

  “I’ve photographed dead people before. Families of the deceased hire me.”

  “Then half of this won’t be unusual for you. If this succeeds, I guarantee steady employment.”

  “I can use it.”

  As the man carried his equipment up the aisle, the sketch artist objected. “You’re putting me out of business by hiring a blasted photographer.”

  “I need to keep up with the times.”

  “Then why did you send for me?”

  “To make drawings of a man who isn’t here.”

  “What?”

  Ryan escorted him to where Agnes, the other pew-openers, and the churchwardens were gathered.

  “This is a gentleman from the Illustrated London News,” Ryan told them. “Please describe Lady Cosgrove’s escort to him. He’ll draw a picture, and you can help him make it appear exactly as you remember the man. When everyone is satisfied,” Ryan told the artist, “put it in the newspaper. I’m hoping someone will identify him. After that, go to the front and make sketches of the body.”

  “But you already have someone taking photographs of it.”

  “Which might not be adequate.” Still absorbing the shock of the two-word note in his pocket, Ryan said, “I need to have everything done twice.”

  “Ryan.”

  The authoritative voice made Ryan turn. Commissioner Mayne took quick, troubled steps toward him.

  Mayne was fifty-eight. His thin features looked shrunken beneath thick, gray sideburns. This was his twenty-sixth year as a commissioner, and the effort showed on his face. No one knew more about London’s Metropolitan Police, or indeed about law enforcement anywhere in the world, than he did.

  “I passed several journalists outside,” Mayne said.

  “A team of constables is keeping them at a distance, sir. I know you had an emergency meeting with the home secretary. I wouldn’t have interrupted if this didn’t need your immediate attention.”

  Ryan suddenly wondered if there was a home secretary. Given the government’s collapse, did Lord Palmerston still hold that position? The political chaos made everything uncertain.

  “The murder of someone as distinguished as Lady Cosgrove—in St. James’s.” Mayne sounded outraged. “I came at once.”

  “I’m afraid it’s even worse than you think, sir.”

  “I don’t see how that’s possible.”

  “Lady Cosgrove was holding these.” Ryan removed the envelope and the note from his pocket.

  Mayne stared at the bloodstains on them. Taking the note from Ryan, he studied the two stark words.

  His face became gaunter.

  “Heaven help us. Who else knows about this?”

  “Only you and I, sir.”

  For one of the few times in the fifteen years that Ryan had known him, the commissioner looked shaken.

  “We’re without a prime minister and a cabinet,” Ryan said. “Because this concerns Her Majesty’s safety, shouldn’t the queen be told at once?”

  Accompanied by a constable, Becker hurried along Piccadilly, hoping to avoid attention but attracting stares nonetheless. Twenty-six years earlier, the public had been slow to accept helmeted policemen on seemingly every corner. But in 1842, an even more alarming development had occurred: a plain-clothed detective unit. The radical notion of a constable out of uniform was greeted with great suspicion. The middle and upper classes granted that there was merit to disguised policemen infiltrating taverns, gambling dens, and other places of low repute where criminals plotted their outrages. But at what point would these detectives become spies? How would respectable citizens know whether the seemingly ordinary person they spoke to wasn’t actually a detective prying into their personal affairs?

  Clothing that appeared inconspicuous on ordinary streets didn’t have that advantage in wealthy Mayfair. It was difficult to say which attracted more attention: Becker’s shapeless garments or the uniformed man who accompanied him. He felt eyes peering from behind closed curtains. A group of servants leaving their places of employment for their half-Sunday of liberty regarded him nervously, evidently assuming that Becker was a criminal whom the constable had arrested. The scar on Becker’s chin indicated a rough background. But if that were the case, why was the constable escorting the criminal into the heart of Mayfair instead of to the nearest police station?

  Following the directions Becker had received at the church, he turned right onto Half Moon Street, then left onto Curzon Street, navigating his way to the side-by-side houses on Chesterfield Hill.

  “Go to Lady Cosgrove’s house,” Ryan had told him. “Inform the occupants about what happened. God willing, you’ll get there before the reporters tell them. Learn what you can.”

  White stone buildings stretched before him, one adjoining the other—imposingly different from the cramped, squalid hovels that Becker had patrolled in the East End. These expensive, four-story houses looked so much alike that, if not for discreet brass numbers near each door, it would have been impossible to distinguish them.

  The air felt colder. A growing breeze swept dark clouds over the sun. When Becker reached the address he’d been given, he paused at an iron gate and peered up the steps toward the entrance. All the curtains were closed, but in wealthy neighborhoods curtains were always closed, so that was no indication of whether anyone was at home.

  Becker pointed at two reporters who followed him. “Constable, make certain those men don’t come closer. No one passes this gate without permission.”

  So recently promoted that he felt awkward giving orders, Becker opened the gate and approached the house.

  How can I deliver the news about Lady Cosgrove? he thought. He recalled rushing to his mother in their leased farmhouse, frantically telling her that his father had fallen from a ladder in the barn and that his neck was twisted at a terrible angle. The devastated look on his mother’s face was something that Becker had never banished from his nightmares.

  After a deep breath, he climbed the steps. There were only five, but they seemed like more. At the top, he used the lion’s-head door knocker, its solid impact reverberating.

  Ten seconds passed. No one responded. Feeling like an intruder, Becker knocked again, this time louder. Again, no one answered.

  He looked down, braced himself to knock once more, and noticed a stain from a liquid that had trickled under the door. The liquid had dried. The color had dulled to brown. But after the events of the morning, there was no mistaking the nature of the
stain—it was blood.

  Aware of the reporters watching from the street, Becker managed not to show a reaction. Testing the latch, he felt his pulse lurch when the door moved.

  He opened the door a few inches and shouted, “Hello?” People inside might have chosen not to respond to a knock on the door, but surely they would react to a voice.

  “Can anyone hear me? My name is Detective Sergeant Becker! I need to speak to you!”

  His voice echoed back to him.

  He pushed the door a few inches farther, trying to see as much as he could. But now the door encountered resistance, an object blocking the way.

  “Hello?” Becker called.

  He glanced over his shoulder. The two newspaper writers were stepping closer to the gate.

  “Constable, make certain they keep their distance!”

  Becker leaned harder against the door, felt the object on the other side move, and created enough space to step through.

  He smelled death before his eyes adjusted to the shadows.

  The object on the other side was the corpse of a butler. His head had been bashed in. Blood had gushed from it, forming a pool, now dried, that had trickled under the door.

  Again Becker reached for the truncheon that had been on his equipment belt when he was a constable. Of course it wasn’t there. But he had a knife that Ryan had taught him to wear in a scabbard under his trouser leg. (“Use the blunt end before you use the blade,” Ryan had warned, “or there’ll be questions.”)

  Drawing it, feeling cold fear spread through his chest, Becker steadied himself against a possible attack and scanned the area. A murky vestibule led to a hall in which there were two doors on each side—both shut—and an ornate staircase that ascended toward the upper floors.

  Until now, Lord Palmerston’s mansion had provided Becker’s only experience with wealth. Although he’d been there on numerous occasions, he still had not adjusted to the contrast with the leaky shacks in which he had lived while working sixty hours a week in a brick factory. He found it amazing that Lord Palmerston referred to his residence as a house. Perhaps he was so accustomed to wealth that to him it was indeed no more than a house, in which case what would Lord Palmerston envision a mansion to be?