Part 12 (1/2)
Outside, constables hurried through the fog to form a wall behind the exotic figure.
”It can't be.” De Quincey kept staring. ”After so many years.”
”Then you do recognize him?”
”No.”
Baffled, Ryan turned to the newcomer. ”What do you want? How did you get past the constables outside?”
”We heard a shout down the street, like someone being attacked, Inspector,” a policeman said.
”But while they ran to investigate, I stayed,” another policeman said. ”I wasn't twenty feet away. He couldn't have pa.s.sed me.”
”Of course he could,” De Quincey said. ”He's a Malay.”
”What do you want?” Ryan repeated to the newcomer.
The only response was a puzzled narrowing of the intruder's dark eyes.
”What are you doing here?” Ryan insisted.
The man shook his head in confusion.
”I don't think he understands English,” Becker said.
”The Malay I met many years ago didn't understand English, either,” De Quincey said.
”Many years ago?” Ryan asked.
”A man who looked like this man once came to my home in the Lake District,” De Quincey explained. ”His sudden appearance was astonis.h.i.+ng. It was as if he'd arrived from the moon. I tried Latin and Greek, with no effect. When communication failed, he lay down on my kitchen floor and slept. After an hour, he rose abruptly and walked down the road, vanis.h.i.+ng into the countryside. The experience was so unreal I had many dreams about him. But that was so long ago, he can't possibly be the same man.”
”... omas,” the man said.
”What's he trying to say?” Becker wondered.
”... omas... incey.” The Malay seemed to have memorized words without understanding them.
”Thomas?” the Opium-Eater asked. ”De Quincey? Is that what you mean to say?” He pointed toward himself. ”Thomas De Quincey?”
The Malay nodded. ”... incey.” He reached under his s.h.i.+rt.
Becker quickly stepped forward and grabbed the Malay's hand, making certain that he wasn't withdrawing a weapon. Instead what the Malay produced was an envelope.
De Quincey grabbed it and tore it open. As he read the message, his face became pale.
”What is it, Father?” Emily asked.
His hand trembling, De Quincey gave her the piece of paper.
Emily read the message aloud, her voice becoming as unsteady as her father's hand.
To learn what happened to Ann, to find her, come to Vauxhall Gardens at eleven tomorrow morning.
”Ann?” Ryan asked. ”You mentioned that name when we met you returning to your house. Who's she?”
”My lost youth.”
”What?”
”There is no such thing as forgetting.” Although De Quincey stared at the note in Emily's hand, his blue eyes seemed to focus on something far away. ”When I was seventeen and starving on the streets of London, I fell in love with a streetwalker.”
Ryan and Becker looked amazed by De Quincey's frankness. They weren't shocked only by his reference to a prost.i.tute-and in front of his daughter. Almost equally surprising was that he expressed an emotion as personal as love. Candor of this sort, especially in public, was unimaginable.
”I promised to meet Ann at a certain hour on a certain street, but unavoidable circ.u.mstances prevented me from being there.”
Haunted, De Quincey pulled out his laudanum flask, taking a long swallow from it.
”When I finally managed to arrive on a later day, Ann wasn't waiting, and I never saw her again, no matter how many years I spent searching for her. I never would have come to London now if I hadn't been promised that I'd be told what happened to her.”
”Who promised you this?” Ryan demanded.
”I have no idea, but he also arranged for the rent of the townhouse where Emily and I are staying. I was lured here to be connected with the killings. Am I the murderer's audience? For certain, he's been following me.”
”Following you?”
”How else could he have known I was here tonight so that he could send the Malay to deliver the message? And then there's the matter that he chose a victim who came from Manchester and whose last name was Hayworth.”
”You thought that was important earlier, but you didn't tell us why,” Becker said.
”I was raised near Manchester. My family home was called Greenhay.”
”Greenhay. Hayworth. It's a coincidence,” Ryan told him.
”No.”
”You're seriously suggesting that the killer chose the shop owner as his victim because you both came from Manchester and his name is similar to that of your family home?”
”It's not a coincidence that these killings occurred a month after my latest publication. Detail by detail, they match what I wrote in the postscript to 'Murder as a Fine Art.' To make the a.s.sociation with me more perfect, the killer selected a victim with echoes to me. He connects me with his crimes. G.o.d help me, how else does he plan to involve me in his butchery?”
7.
A Garden of Pleasures.
IN 1854, THE BRITISH EMPIRE was the largest the world had ever known, far greater than Alexander's conquests or that of the Romans. Its territories encircled the globe, including Canada, the Bahamas, Bermuda, Gibraltar, Malta, Cyprus, a third of Africa, and a significant portion of the Mideast as well as India, Burma, Malaya, Singapore, Hong Kong, Borneo, New Guinea, the Solomon Islands, Fiji, Samoa, Australia, New Zealand, and portions of Antarctica.
The man at the center of it, arguably the most powerful man on earth, was Henry John Temple, known officially as Lord Palmerston. For almost half a century, beginning in 1807, Palmerston had developed an expanding, profound influence in the British government, first as a member of Parliament, then as secretary at war (nineteen years), secretary of state for foreign affairs (fifteen years), and currently the home secretary, a position that put him in charge of almost everything that happened on domestic soil, particularly with regard to national security and the police. Most observers were confident that Palmerston would soon become prime minister, but prime ministers came and went, whereas a man who had a lifetime of influence in the War Office, the Foreign Office, and the Home Office in effect controlled the government. Prime ministers and even Queen Victoria herself frequently summoned Palmerston, demanding to know why he enacted policies that neither Parliament nor the prime minister had authorized.