Ruler of the Night

  Below the platform, next to the tracks, the air suddenly felt even colder.

  “So, if he wasn’t sick, then he only pretended to shiver,” Ryan said.

  “He wasn’t pretending, but his movements had nothing to do with illness.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “How do you suppose the bomb was detonated?” De Quincey asked.

  “The only practical way is to light a fuse. I’ve heard of attempts to use a clock that causes a hammer to strike a percussion cap and set off gunpowder. But it’s not reliable. A slow-burning fuse is the safest and most dependable method.”

  “Then you believe he paused outside the station and found a place where no one could see him light the fuse inside his bag. After it was ignited, he closed the bag and carried it into the station,” De Quincey said.

  “I can’t imagine a better way.”

  “As he carried the bag past the guard and onto the platform, knowing that the fuse was burning and that the bomb might go off at any moment, he didn’t need to pretend to make movements that looked like shivering. What he actually did was tremble—because of fear.”

  Ryan studied him. “The opium should addle your brain, but instead…Listen to me. I never believed I’d ever say this, but you, Becker, Commissioner Mayne, and Emily might be the only people I can trust. Today Lord Palmerston tried to impede the investigation.”

  “Impede the…But why would he do that?” De Quincey asked.

  “That’s what I intend to find out.”

  Carolyn stepped through her Park Lane gate, walked along the white gravel path, and climbed the wide stone steps, noting that the servants had dutifully scrubbed them.

  A footman opened one of the splendid green doors. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Richmond.”

  “Is everything prepared?” she asked.

  “As you instructed, madam.”

  Carolyn glanced at a tall clock in a corner and saw that the time was almost twenty minutes to three. She wouldn’t have an opportunity to change clothes for the three o’clock event, but it took only a moment for her to decide that her well-tailored costume would be more than suitable.

  After handing her gloves and cape to the footman, she climbed the curved staircase to the next level, turned to the left, and entered a large room that was normally used for dinner parties but that now contained five tables with four chairs at each. A finely woven floral-patterned linen cloth covered each table. A long mahogany sideboard supported a generous selection of special confections—especially lemon cakes—next to cups, saucers, and plates from the most approved china manufacturer.

  The spoons and forks were silver, polished to a luster that was visible from the room’s entrance. If examined closely, which they were by every visitor, the utensils revealed tiny hallmarks that indicated where, when, and by which superior silversmith they’d been crafted. When owners of such high-grade tableware went traveling, they commonly arranged for it to be taken to a bank and stored there.

  Carolyn crossed the deep reds and greens of a much-admired Oriental rug and made certain that the wine-colored satin draperies were open to their full extent. As a rule, residents of the West End did not open their draperies lest unworthy outsiders peer in. But Carolyn didn’t at all mind if passersby saw the luxury in which she lived. More important, she wanted her guests to see the immense balcony and the rustic magnitude of Hyde Park across the way.

  She returned her attention to each table, examining the fresh pads of notepaper and the silver-encased pencils (all from the best stationer in Regent Street and with his mark on them to prove it). The decks of cards (printed for her and labeled, amusingly, CASINO DE RICHMOND) lay on the tables in their sealed packets.

  She went to the sideboard and inspected the four silver caddies, each with an elegant card that identified the tea it contained: green, red, white, or yellow.

  “Marybeth?” she called to a servant, taking for granted that the girl was waiting near a side entrance to the room.

  “Yes, ma’am?” Nineteen-year-old Marybeth, wearing an immaculate white apron, stepped into view and curtsied.

  “The water for the tea?”

  “Is hot, ma’am, and I’m making sure it stays hot. When your guests are ready, we’ll carry it in. Should I bring in the surprise before or after the tea?”

  “Before. Is your mother feeling better?”

  “She is, ma’am, thanks to the doctor you sent.”

  “Well, you can’t do your work properly if you’re worried about your dear mother.”

  “You’re very kind, ma’am.”

  The sound of the door knocker alerted Carolyn that her guests were arriving. She gripped the staircase’s gleaming bronze handrail and descended to the entrance hall, where she greeted each lady as she stepped through the door. Each indeed had the right to the title Lady; every guest was the wife of a duke, marquis, earl, viscount, or baron. Only members of the peerage attended Carolyn’s twice-monthly whist parties.

  Each guest had a female servant who helped her mistress take off her cape and gloves. Outdoor bonnets were replaced by indoor caps adorned with blue ribbons and ornate lace.

  “Perfectly frightful day,” one lady said.

  “And it seems to be turning colder,” another replied. “With the clouds gathering, I feel as though it will rain.”

  “Well, it’s March,” a third lady added. “What do we expect other than clouds? No matter—it would take a much worse afternoon than this to discourage me from attending one of Mrs. Richmond’s gatherings.”

  “You’re too generous, Lady Warwick,” Carolyn said.

  Looking through the open door, past more arriving ladies, Carolyn saw hooded carriages departing, their pairs of horses magnificent. Colorful crests on the doors indicated the importance of the owners, as did the equally colorful livery of the drivers.

  “Mrs. Richmond, how wonderful to see you!” a guest declared.

  “Thank you, Lady Beresford, and as always, it’s a pleasure to see you again. You’re looking well.”

  “I owe it to a week at Dr. Wainwright’s clinic at Sedwick Hill. I’m so delighted that you recommended him. At first, I thought that the wet sheeting, the plunge bath, and the shoulder douche were much too aggressive, but after the attendant shampooed my back, I never felt so relaxed. Sometimes I felt I was in a waking dream.”

  “I’m going there next week,” a countess said.

  “How fortunate. I hear the doctor’s schedule is filled until June,” Lady Beresford said. “I’m trying to persuade my husband to consult him. Dr. Wainwright says that the relaxation would improve His Lordship’s dyspepsia.”

  “If anyone can feel relaxed after what’s been happening on the trains,” Lady Montagu said.

  “Trains? Plural? Don’t tell me there’s been another—”

  “Haven’t you heard? A bomb exploded in Waterloo Station.”

  “Good gracious!”

  “What’s this country coming to? The man who was murdered Thursday night—Daniel Harcourt—he was our solicitor!”

  “And ours! I don’t know if I’ll ever feel safe on a train again.”

  “I’ve never felt safe on one,” Lady Garvis said. “I always expect the contraption to fly off the rails.”

  Carolyn gestured toward the staircase. “Ladies, if you please…”

  Amid the whisper of velvet, they mounted the staircase one at a time, their wide hooped dresses preventing them from going in pairs.

  “And the war keeps raging. I asked my husband why he voted to allow the country to get into such a mess. He still hasn’t given me an answer I can understand.”

  “When can you ever understand them when they talk about money and politics? I’m not sure they themselves understand what they’re saying.”

  When the group entered the parlor, they found name cards at each table. Carolyn always varied the seating arrangement so that cliques couldn’t form and sets of players couldn’t dominate.

  “My husband’s in a
state about what happened to the price of railway stocks,” a lady said as a servant adjusted her chair.

  “It’s a temporary setback,” Carolyn told the women.

  “Temporary?” Lady Beresford asked, opening a pack of cards.

  “Yes, the stock market is like a person,” Carolyn explained. “It needs to adjust to the shock of the first time a particular calamity occurs.”

  “As I adjusted to the calamity of my wedding night,” a lady at another table said.

  Several women laughed.

  “But just as people adjust to shock, so will the market,” Carolyn continued. “I’m sure my husband can explain this better than I can.”

  “Mrs. Richmond, when men explain finances, they make it sound like Greek. But I always understand you.”

  “Thank you, Lady Garvis. Listening to my husband, I’ve concluded two things about the stock market.”

  “Do tell.” Lady Warwick finished dealing. “Thirteen. Does everyone have thirteen cards?”

  “The first secret of success is to be an investor, not a speculator,” Carolyn said. “People who have an urge to gamble should confine themselves to playing cards.”

  “Ha,” a lady said, beginning the play at her table with a nine of clubs. “And the second secret?”

  “Patience,” Carolyn replied.

  “Well, anyone who’s been married to a politician as long as I have knows about patience,” Lady Garvis said.

  “Hearts are trumps,” a woman reminded the players at her table.

  “I’m sure that my husband would advise people to buy more railway stock because the price will eventually return to its previous level—and higher. That’s what always happens.”

  “Spades,” someone at another table said.

  “Enough of this depressing topic,” Lady Beresford said. “Mrs. Richmond, you always have something clever for us. What is it this time?”

  “Tonic water.”

  “Tonic water?”

  “It’s a beverage that Dr. Wainwright will soon offer to his guests. If they find it refreshing, he’ll make it available to the better shops in London.”

  “But what is it?”

  “Carbonated water with quinine added to it. As you ladies perhaps know, quinine is a substance that our soldiers in India use to ward off malaria. It’s a powder that dissolves in water. It’s very bitter. But Dr. Wainwright discovered a way to make it refreshing by adding sugar and carbonation. Perhaps the best part is that, unlike London water, there isn’t a risk of anyone becoming ill from drinking it.”

  “Dr. Wainwright boils the water to rid it of impurities?” someone asked.

  “There’s no need,” Carolyn replied. “Those of you who’ve been to his retreat know that the springs at Sedwick Hill have a rare purity. Even the queen is said to favor its water.”

  “But why are you proposing this as something clever?” Lady Beresford asked. “Surely we’re not all in danger of coming down with malaria.”

  “Quinine also happens to be useful for controlling leg tremors, which some of you admit you have. But Dr. Wainwright’s primary motive is to combat intemperance, since, unfortunately, our soldiers in India have decided that the only way to make quinine palatable is to mix it with gin.”

  “Gin?” someone exclaimed in horror.

  “Dr. Wainwright’s tonic water tastes so pleasant on its own that he intends to ship bottles of it to India in the hope that our soldiers there will get their necessary quinine from that rather than by mixing it with gin. But he believes that Britain will be his principal market. His goal is to promote health through pure water and a taste so refreshing that it discourages people everywhere from drinking not only gin but even brandy and soda.”

  “How commendable!” Lady Garvis gushed.

  Carolyn turned toward a side door and called, “Marybeth.”

  The young servant appeared, carrying a tray of bottles that resembled small bowling pins.

  After corks were popped and the fizzing water was poured, each lady sipped from the crystal stemware she was offered. Some of them wrinkled their noses as bubbles tickled them.

  “It is indeed bitter, but with a pleasant sweetness also,” Lady Montagu noted. She took a second sip and debated. “And it does have a bracing tonic quality.”

  “I have bottles for all of you to give to your husbands. Perhaps this time, they’ll be interested in what happened at our card party.”

  “As long as it keeps my husband’s mind off the railway stocks,” Lady Garvis said.

  In the echoing cavern of Paddington Station, railway guard Matthew Harrigan hurried along the carriages of the train to Bristol, locking each compartment. Only a third of them were occupied. Word about the explosion at Waterloo Station had traveled quickly, and the relatively few passengers on what would usually have been a crowded Saturday-night train looked at him apprehensively as his key made a scraping sound at each door. The expressions on their faces suggested that they felt like prisoners being consigned to their doom. Unless they were traveling with people they knew, the passengers took pains to find compartments in which they would be alone. Given the circumstances, that solitary arrangement wasn’t difficult for them to manage.

  Harrigan finished locking the final compartment and climbed aboard the brake van at the rear of the train. Despite the smoke and cinders, not to mention the cold wind that would soon overpower him back here, he considered himself lucky. Four months earlier, he’d been a soldier in the Crimea. When he wasn’t eluding enemy bullets and cannonballs, he was nearly starving from the meager food allotted to him while the officers dined in high style. During sleet storms, he’d shivered in a summer uniform in a leaking tent while the officers wore thick greatcoats and warmed their hands over stoves on their commander’s yacht. After an explosion during a Russian attack knocked Harrigan unconscious, the universe had shown him mercy, for his almost frozen body had been gathered with other casualties and shipped to the military hospital near Constantinople. There, his good fortune had persisted when none other than Miss Nightingale, the blessed Lady with the Lamp, had taken pity on him, nursed him back to health, and arranged for him to be sent home.

  Fate had continued to smile on him in England. A boyhood friend, now a senior clerk for the Great Northern Railway, felt sorry for him and gave him a job as the brakeman on this train. Because of the health hazards of the job, few people wanted it, but to Harrigan, this was easy duty compared to the horrors of the Crimea.

  He turned the wheel that released the brakes. He leaned out and waved his lantern, signaling to the driver that everything was ready.

  Far ahead, the engine made a loud chugging sound that reverberated throughout the station. Similar sounds followed in quick succession. After a jolt, the brake van moved forward with the rest of the train.

  Normally, Harrigan raised his hand in a friendly farewell to the people who remained on the platform, but tonight, most of the people he saw were guards, porters, and beggars wearing tattered war uniforms.

  “Wait until Monday,” a porter had told him, obviously hoping for a return of his customers. “People ’ave a short memory. They’ll be back as soon as they can’t put off goin’ on a business trip or visitin’ a sick grandmama.”

  But that had been before the explosion at Waterloo Station.

  The train increased speed, clattering past the shadows of factories and slums. As smoke and cinders drifted back toward Harrigan, he made certain that the white lamps at the front of the van—and the warning red lamps at the rear—were lit. Then he stepped inside the van’s shed, put a hand against its trembling wall to brace himself, and peered earnestly through the grimy window.

  After three weeks on this route, Harrigan was starting to know every straightaway and curve on the tracks. As the train rattled over a familiar bridge, the air became clear. The van’s lanterns reflected off a stream that he recognized, and he estimated that the first stop was ten minutes away. To the right, he saw the silhouette of a farmhouse.
r />   Ahead—again on his right—he saw a glow that he would usually have assumed was from the lanterns at the next station, but that station was too far away to be seen. If clouds hadn’t obscured the moon, he might have concluded that what he saw was its light reflecting off a window as the train rounded a curve.

  The glow grew brighter.

  Harrigan opened the shed’s door and stepped into the wind. The irritating odor of the engine’s smoke was unusually strong. He gripped a pole and leaned out as far as he dared, though not so far that he risked being struck by something. Focusing along the side of the swaying train, he saw that the glow was even larger, and in fact it wasn’t a glow any longer. Its crimson light rippled and pulsed. Black smoke billowed, rushing toward the back of the train.

  My God, it’s a fire in one of the compartments, Harrigan realized.

  He grabbed red filters from the shed and put them over the lamps at the front of the van. He grabbed another red filter and put it over his lantern. Then he leaned out and swung the red lantern to warn the driver to stop.

  Lord in heaven, make him look back! Harrigan mentally pleaded.

  The carriages didn’t have a corridor that linked the compartments within each carriage or that linked one carriage to another. There wasn’t a way for passengers in the burning compartment to escape. Harrigan could only pray that it wasn’t occupied.

  He swung the red lantern in a greater frenzy. On the left side, flames now erupted from a window. The rhythm of the train faltered, suggesting that the driver had finally looked back and seen the fire. As the train’s speed lessened, Harrigan grabbed the wheel that projected from the floor of the van. He turned it, desperately applying the brakes.

  They squealed, sparks shooting from them.

  The train lurched, making Harrigan fight for balance. All at once the train slowed enough for him to jump to the gravel. He ran beside the tracks, the light from his lantern barely sufficient to keep him from stumbling in the smoke.

  He paused only long enough to remove the key from his uniform and unlock the door to the baggage compartment.