Lawless and The Devil of Euston Square (32 page)

“Greek,” she sighed. “He must realise that his flaws have caused his downfall.”

“Like Hamlet showing the play to Claudius before seeing him off?”

“The savant speaks! You really do like the theatre.”

I fell silent. These messages, I reflected, would mean little to Bertie, who so hated to read. And, as Wardle treated him like a child, it seemed unlikely we would apprise him of the complexities. For Miss Villiers, however, they might provide a key.

She held up the envelope. “Can you leave them with me? I hope to match them to the scribbles. Crack the cipher.”

“I’ve copied them out,” I said, exchanging the envelope for a hastily written sheet of my own. “They seem quite poetic, all written together like that.”

“Poetic?” She stared at the sheet. “Yes, and menacing too. ‘The Monstrous Rotundity has had its day.’ He seems clear that he intends to destroy something, or someone. Oh, I also want that book of his, the one you saw at his mother’s.”

“I can’t just waltz in and take it.” I looked at her, smiling at me insouciantly. “Fairfoul, the step-brother, will have everyone warned about me.”

She nodded, eyes wide. “You have to go back for it.”

It was some time before I had the chance to put Miss Villiers’ thoughts to Wardle. For, much to his chagrin, he was summoned to form part of the team responsible for the new Exhibition. The new theft was even assigned to a different office. This was guaranteed to throw him into a foul temper, as it meant putting everything aside to communicate with foreign dignitaries and ill-mannered industrialists.

Contrary to my expectations, he made a huge effort. Albert had wanted it to be another national triumph. In the face of public apathy, it was as if Wardle took it upon himself to put the late Prince’s desire into effect.

“I’ve to take the King of Bechuanaland sightseeing. I ask you. Where do you take the King of bloody Bechuanaland? St Paul’s? The Greenwich Observatory?”

I thought for a moment and pulled the envelope from my desk. “Will the Prince be showing other bigwigs the sights, sir? We’d better check each place before we go.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Still thinking of Skelton, are you? He’s done nothing since we warned Bertie off the girl.”

“You’re sure?”

“This time I’m sure.”

“All the more reason to worry, sir. Think of it. You told me yourself what a profound effect the Great Exhibition had. This could have the opposite effect. What better chance to embarrass the Prince? To embarrass the country. Your son told me that Skelton–”

“Don’t tell me Charlie knows Skelton.”

“Knows of him. He was well-known in the reform movement, he said, considered capable of great things. But he was disaffected. He left the fold, struck out on his own.”

“When did Charlie tell you this?” He stared at me.

“He came by at Christmas.” I hesitated. “To see you, before leaving for Australia.”

Wardle nodded for a moment. “Uncle Tom Cobbley and all know the bastard, and we can’t find him for tuppence.” He gestured towards the envelope, defeated. “You still making sense of that mumbo-jumbo, then?”

“I don’t think it is mumbo-jumbo. You said he doesn’t know his history. Perhaps he knows it better than us.”

“He got the date wrong.”

“The date doesn’t matter. Blowing up a royal, early November. Guy Fawkes did it with fire, our man with water. Besides, why did you let Bertie come back at all, if you were so concerned?”

“He was required at Windsor.” His jaw tightened. “Birthday. His eighteenth.”

I shook my head in wonder. “A birthday present.” I went to his desk and I emptied the envelope on to it. “And more presents to come.”

Wardle sat impassive. “Why warn us? If he wants to blow up the Prince, why doesn’t he do it, instead of faffing around with hocus-pocus and jiggery-pokery?” He swept a hand wildly through the notes on his desk, scattering them to the floor.

I caught one as it fluttered down. “No sense of tragedy, sir. No sense of vengeance. Unless the Prince comes to realise, slowly and surely, that what he did was wrong, there’s no satisfaction in destroying him.”

“Destroying him?” Wardle snorted.

“‘The monster is slain.’ It’s fairly unequivocal.”

He flared his nostrils.

I smiled. “Don’t you have the feeling he’s been toying with us? It wouldn’t surprise me if he wants the whole country to see Bertie, and his family, held up and ridiculed for their sins.”

“What’s that?” he barked.

I held up the threat in my hand. “‘Whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.’”

“Spare us the philosophy, Watchman,” he said grimly. But he stood up and began to pace back and forth. That was all the sense I could get out of him.

Later, I found him scrutinising the threats at his desk. Over the next weeks, he paid special attention to Bertie’s official diary. When there were lesser functions, he cancelled them. At major events, he chaperoned him or, when the Prince grew weary of this attention, shadowed him at a distance. Though he maintained his dour demeanour with others, I could feel beneath the surface the panic that Berwick had instilled. He began to look tired and haggard. It took me some time to realise he was overwrought trying to outguess Berwick, coming up with wild suppositions from the series of threats.

“Perhaps it was a spelling mistake. Not Fawkes. Captain Fowkes, the genius Albert chose to design this exhibition hall. A threat to his Greenhouse.”

To that I pointed out that Fowkes had not even been chosen when that threat was sent. Nonetheless, I couldn’t deny the sense in maintaining close watch on it. Yet with twenty thousand exhibitors and a limited number of constables, there was only so much we could do. Wardle communicated to the other inspectors his concern that there was a danger of some kind of attack. But he could not be more specific, not without exposing all that he had worked so carefully to conceal. So he was restricted to vague warnings, warnings which in those times of Gas Wars and Fenian protesters made so little impact on his colleagues as to make no difference.

When I met Miss Villiers in the cafe, she looked tired. “I’m all right,” she said.

I nodded. “What have you got?”

“Not much so far.” She bit her lip, then opened a book. “First, all the threats have a punitive feeling. Somebody is to get what they deserve. This Monstrous Rotundity, whatever he means by it, is linked to apocalyptic imagery. This one’s about Samson, pulling down the temple on the Philistines. Guy Fawkes, Cromwell, the Storming of the Bastille.”

The passages she spoke of were marked in the margins with scribbles and arrows. There was the odd little drawing, too, stick figures, buildings collapsing, flames and floods.

I took a deep breath. “He’s mad.”

“Not at all. Obsessed, I give you. But there are clear threads running through it all.” She blinked with tiredness. “If only I could unravel them.”

I smiled awkwardly. “What do you make of it?”

“I think he has chosen somewhere to destroy. Some final cataclysm.”

“Where?”

“It could be any number of places once you start thinking of it. The Monstrous Rotundity. One of the pleasure rotundae. Nelson’s Column: that’s a symbol of power. The new Parliament tower: the clock face is round, the bell is round.”

I put my head in my hands. “Wardle’s going to love this. He’s already boxing at shadows. Reckons the Fawkes threat was a misspelling for Captain Fowkes, and Skelton’s going to blow up the Greenhouse.”

She didn’t smile. “Why not? It’s costing the nation a fortune and distracting everyone from the country’s real problems. And it’s got a great big rotunda at each end.”

It was some weeks later that I drew up in the early morning to Wyld’s Great Globe in Leicester Square, and stepped down from my pony and trap to request an interview with the manager. Strange to say it, I was enjoying myself immensely. Wardle’s advice, recalling his Mary Ann Brough case, made sense to me now. Here was I, moving up in the world, purely by being in the right place in an unexpected crisis. Some of the other sergeants had raised eyebrows at the role I had been given in the operation, but none of them knew what we were really seeking, and Wardle wasn’t about to begin explaining.

Wardle’s reaction, when I told him of Miss Villiers’ theory about the rotundae, had been beyond my expectations. I say I told him of her theory. I must admit I allowed him to think that the idea was my own. Finally he seemed convinced of Berwick’s ability, and his disaffection. The hydraulic spout seemed gentle, compared with the scenarios we were now envisaging.

Within days, he was seconding constables left, right and centre, demanding extra protection and care for all the foreign dignitaries, and so on and so forth. He had me organising teams to carry out checks on all the popular public buildings in London, the pony and trap often picking me up from home. We characterised it all as security for the Exhibition, protecting the dignitaries and very important persons flooding into town. Indeed, as spring drew on, the town was filling with colourful faces and colourful voices, as if the country, feeling itself wounded by Albert’s death, had cried out for an infusion of life from overseas.

At Wyld’s Globe I explained the purpose of my visit to the owner, James Wyld, MP.

“I’m glad someone thinks we’re still popular,” said Wyld, twiddling his moustache. “Public’s forgotten us. Closing the bally thing down. Putting back the garden at my own expense. Ah well. Everything has its day. To be frank, it would be a blessing if somebody went and blew the place up.”

I looked at him sharply.

“Spice up our reputation, you see. Insured to the hilt, of course. Have to be, public place like this. Otherwise any old grandmother leans out to touch Canada, loses her footing, can sue us silly. Sorry. Bad taste after Tooley Street, what?” He wiped his nose carelessly. “We had some boys, took to hiding in northern New South Wales. It’s a broom cupboard, you see. Look, you can reach it from the floor or leap from the stair. These chancers would roll out when nobody was looking, yelling in agony, claiming they’d fallen from the top. Rather enterprising, I thought. Can’t offer to show you round, I’m afraid I’m off to the House. St George’s Day, you know, and there’s a rather appetising debate on Baby Farming.”

With a slap on the shoulder, he entrusted me to the manager, a dull-faced man who launched into a rehearsed spiel as he led me up the stairs in the centre of the great spherical building. “Sixty feet in diameter, a global map of the world inside-out, as it were, viewed from four landings.”

I paused on the second, tickled at the notion of gazing upon the whole world. I glanced back and forth between diminutive England and majestic Australia and wondered. Was Charlie Wardle already starting his new life? I spotted the broom cupboard door and chuckled, drawing a scowl from the manager. Fairfoul had told me that was where Berwick had vanished to. How green I had been to believe him.

Even now, we were being made fools of. The International Exhibition was to start on the first of May, just over a week away, with a party for important persons the night before. The Queen, immersed in her grief, had squarely rejected public appearances. Bertie had reluctantly been persuaded to make his first significant contribution to public life. He was scheduled to attend a packed programme of functions through the summer; visits from princes and presidents; the opening of Big Ben, the Parliament bell already twice repaired; and the Exhibition party. Yet his presence gave opportunities for Berwick to act. I never doubted his expertise; surely one motive behind the spout was to show off how easily he could strike. Now that Wardle was finally convinced of his intent and his fervour, our doubts multiplied. How long could we risk Bertie appearing publicly? Should we not wheel out in his stead whatever old dukes and earls we could lay our hands on?

The manager’s voice cut through my reverie. “It’s the public taste, you see. Their diminishing appetite for wonders. Everyday life is ever more fanciful, what with telegrams, trains underground and who knows what next. Who wants to waste their time looking at pictures in a dark room?”

I thanked him and hurried on.

My punishing list of checks comprised rotundities, and anything that might be termed a rotundity. I checked cellars and broom cupboards, offices and boiler rooms, noting every sign of machinery, hydraulics especially, and assigning constables to stand guard, watching for suspicious behaviour. Would that ward off Berwick? Like Wardle said, fighting crimes that haven’t yet happened is a way to drive yourself mad.

I headed next for Burford’s Panorama, just off Leicester Square, a beautiful building, but the show terribly outdated: Moving Pictures of the Siege of Sebastopol. I confess I was disappointed, for I expected the pictures to be moving in the literal sense. As for the figurative sense, Hunt might have shed a tear, remembering some fallen colleague; but I could not see how the thing paid.

I gave it the all clear, and moved on to the Regent’s Park pleasure domes.

The Park Square Diorama had become a Baptist Chapel. It seemed sound enough.

In Burton’s Colosseum, the vista of London from the top of St Paul’s Cathedral was realistic enough to give me a vertiginous moment. I sent a constable.

The next day, I went good and early to St Paul’s itself. An enthusiastic verger showed me enough nooks and crypts and passageways to conceal an army. By the time we climbed to the Golden Gallery, above the dome, I was not only out of breath, but in panic. As I emerged onto the outer terrace, the force of the wind shocked me. My stomach lurched as I peered out across the city.