Murder as a Fine Art

13

The Inquisition



FOG SWIRLED ON THE STREET known as Great Scotland Yard. Eager to escape the cold, a constable opened a door marked METROPOLITAN POLICE and entered a corridor lit by gas lamps mounted along the wall. He took off his gloves and rubbed his hands together.

On his left, an elderly woman slumped on a bench, with her head tilted back against the wall. Her eyes were shut, her mouth open. The constable peered close, thinking she might be dead. Then he noticed a slight movement of her chest.

She had a faded burn scar on her left cheek.

He turned to his right, addressing a constable behind a counter. “Who’s the old woman on the bench?”

“Came in four hours ago. Says she wants to talk to Inspector Ryan. Says she has information about the murders.”

“Which ones? Saturday or tonight?”

“Neither. The killings forty-three years ago.”

“Forty-three years ago? Ha. A little late to offer information about them.”

“Claims she knows something about those that’ll help us solve these.”

“Poor soul. Look at her. Too old to think clearly, confusing then with now.”

“I asked her what she wanted to tell us. The answer was always the same—she’s so ashamed, she won’t say it more than once, and even then she says she’s not sure she can say it to a man instead of a woman.”

“Seeing as how we don’t have a woman constable, she’ll be waiting a long time. What do you suppose an old woman could be ashamed of?”


Continuing the Journal of Emily De Quincey

With the mob outside the tavern and with no other place to spend the night, Inspector Ryan and Constable Becker sequestered Father and me in an upstairs room. The bed’s rumpled blankets made it obvious that the room had a previous occupant, probably the tavernkeeper, but I remained groggy from having been drugged, and my exhaustion was greater than my revulsion at sleeping on a dead man’s bed. Cushions provided a place for Father on the floor. Ryan and Becker slept outside the room. Despite the corpses downstairs, I managed to sleep.

A loud noise jolted me awake.

The pounding of a fist.

Pounding on the tavern’s door.

One of Father’s essays is titled “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.” It describes the moment when Macbeth and his wife realize the enormity of the murder they conspired to commit. Lady Macbeth says she feels unsexed while Macbeth claims not to be of woman born. Time seems to stop, along with the beating of their hearts. Abruptly a knocking at the gate startles them. The pulse of the universe begins again, rushing them toward their destiny.

I felt that way as I wakened to the pounding on the tavern’s door. Briefly, while I slept, I had managed to forget the horrors of the past three days, of the prison, of the dead in their slumber below me. But suddenly the pounding on the door caused the world to rush at me again, and I had the terrible premonition that the outcome of this wide-awake nightmare would overtake us horribly soon.

“Who is it?” I heard Inspector Ryan demand, hurrying down the stairs.

The pounding continued as I heard him unlock the door.

Indistinct voices drifted up.

Ryan closed the door and climbed the stairs, his sounds less quick, giving the impression of reluctance to deliver whatever message he had received.

I opened the door before he could knock. He and Becker, unshaven and weary-looking, faced me.

“What’s wrong?” Father asked behind me.

“Lord Palmerston wants to see all of us immediately.”


As our vehicle proceeded through the increasing fog, creating the greater impression of unreality, I saw the vague shapes of guards on every corner. Two of them stopped the coach that Lord Palmerston had sent for us. After leaning inside and recognizing Inspector Ryan, they told the driver to continue.

The gloom was dispelled by a growing radiance that troubled me. Every other building on the street was dark, but the wall outside Lord Palmerston’s mansion was illuminated by numerous lamps, as were all the windows of the wide structure’s three levels.

Father had retrieved his flask from me and refilled it with laudanum at the tavern. Now he drank from it as a gate admitted our coach to a curved driveway flanked by more guards.

We stepped down and walked past guards into an enormous foyer, the marble floor of which reflected flames in a chandelier. At the top of a wide staircase, we entered a ballroom in which numerous glasses on tables and the strong smell of champagne provided evidence that an event had occurred the previous evening.

The event must have been joyless, given the stern look we received from a heavyset man of perhaps seventy, with long, thick, brown-dyed sideburns and the narrow eyes of someone accustomed to giving commands. He wore evening clothes, evidently not having retired after the conclusion of the event.

Next to him was a tall, straight-backed man in his early forties. His strong, harsh features reinforced the impression of discipline that his military posture communicated.

When Inspector Ryan respectfully removed his cap, exposing his red hair, both men gave him a disapproving look.

“I’ll take care of this business quickly.” Lord Palmerston pointed toward a tall stack of newspapers. “These will soon be on the streets. I don’t know how reporters obtained information about the attempt on my life this afternoon, but—”

“Someone tried to kill you, Your Lordship?” Ryan asked in surprise.

Lord Palmerston’s sharp gaze left no doubt of its meaning—Don’t interrupt me.

“The city is already in a panic. Reports of my near assassination will only make things worse. Eight people slaughtered in a tavern. A surgeon, his wife, and a constable killed at the surgeon’s home. Mobs attacking sailors and constables. The governor of Coldbath Fields Prison killed during a rescue of the Opium-Eater.”

“Rescue? No,” Becker objected. “That was an attempted murder.”

“What’s your name?” Lord Palmerston demanded.

“Constable Becker, Your Lordship.”

“Not any longer. You’re relieved of authority. Your coat is in rags. Why is there blood on it?”

“At Coldbath Fields Prison, I attempted to stop the intruder from killing Mr. De Quincey, Your Lordship.”

“From rescuing him, you mean.” Lord Palmerston turned away. “Ryan, you’re relieved of authority also. Not twenty-four hours ago, I warned you what would happen if you failed to control this crisis. Instead you chose to put yourself under the sway of the Opium-Eater.”

With each reference to that disparaging term, I sensed Father become more rigid beside me.

“When I ordered you to arrest the Opium-Eater, my motive was to assure the population that events were under control,” Lord Palmerston continued, as if Father were not in the room. “Putting a logical suspect in prison gave us time to discover the actual murderer while calming the citizenry. But now I believe that the Opium-Eater is in fact responsible.”

“This is wrong!” I exclaimed.

“Colonel Brookline, tell them what you discovered.”

The tall man with a military bearing stepped toward several documents on a table. “The Opium-Eater can’t account for his activities at the time of the murders on Saturday night. He argues that his age and lack of strength make him incapable of overpowering so many people. That his daughter helped him isn’t credible.”

The colonel’s dismissive tone in my direction made me feel insulted.

“But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have help. The accomplice who tried to rescue him from prison proves that he isn’t working alone.”

“No,” Becker insisted. “The man was trying to kill Mr. De Quincey, not rescue him.”

“If you become more argumentative, I shall order you removed and perhaps arrested,” Lord Palmerston warned. “Colonel Brookline, continue.”

“After the Opium-Eater’s arrest, I conducted a thorough inquiry. The evidence here proves his intention to instigate a rebellion comparable to what happened during the Year of Revolution six years ago. From his earliest days, he demonstrated contempt for authority. He ran away from a school in Manchester and settled among the worst elements of London, living on the streets with prostitutes. When he became a student at Oxford, he participated in almost no educational activities. In fact, he left the university during his final examinations, apparently realizing that the requirements to demonstrate facility in Greek were too demanding for him to bluff his way through.”

“No, the examination was too easy—in English rather than in Greek!” Father protested. “I left because I felt insulted!”

Colonel Brookline continued to act is if Father were not in the room. “While the Opium-Eater pretended to be a student at Oxford, most of the time he appears to have actually been in London in the company of radicals. He had a fascination with atheism.”

“Atheism?” Father repeated indignantly.

Colonel Brookline turned on Father, for the first time acknowledging his presence. “Do you deny your familiarity with Rachel Lee, the notorious atheist?”

“She was a guest at my mother’s house.”

“Which tells us about the dubious nature of your home environment,” Brookline noted.

“Leave my mother out of this.”

“While you posed as a student at Oxford, you made contact with Rachel Lee during the infamous trial in which she accused two Oxford students of abducting and attempting to rape her. Their own testimony indicated that she had gone willingly with them in an effort to leave her husband and engage in a ménage à trois. The trial came to a startling conclusion when she was asked to give testimony on a Bible but she refused on the grounds that she did not believe in God. The proceedings were immediately halted, the students exonerated. These are the sorts of dangerous people with whom you enjoy collaborating.

“Your association with the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge is even more suspect. You followed them to the Lake District, a well-known radical enclave. There, Coleridge created a socially disruptive newspaper to which you pledged both money and enflaming articles. You assisted Wordsworth in publishing a pamphlet that was libelous in its attack of Parliament. Wordsworth’s disruptive praise of the common man—farmers and milkmaids and so forth—impressed you to the point that you showed your contempt for the structure of society by descending beneath your station and actually marrying a milkmaid.”

“My dear departed wife was not a milkmaid.” Father’s expression became rigid.

“Call her what you will, her father was the most extreme radical in the Lake District, constantly urging the overthrow of the gentry.” Brookline’s accusations rushed on. “You have frequently been sought by law-enforcement officials. You often assumed aliases and concealed your numerous addresses, sometimes having as many as six lodgings at one time.”

“Because of debts, I changed my name and moved frequently to avoid bill collectors.”

“Or were you avoiding Home Office agents assigned to keep track of your rebellious activities?” Brookline demanded. “You wrote aggravating essays for both conservative and liberal magazines, urging both sides to extremes.”

“To pay my bills, I worked for whoever wanted my services. The editors encouraged me to be reactionary.”

“In one case, your invectives contributed to a lethal argument between the editors of two magazines. In a duel, one of the editors was mortally shot. No doubt you hoped that both of them would be killed and that the resultant outrage would lead to more violence.”

“You twist things.”

“It is your mind that twists things. You advocated the immoderate use of laudanum.”

“I described my own experience as a caution to others.”

“You also indulged in a drug called ‘bang.’ ”

“Bang?” Lord Palmerston sounded baffled.

“Otherwise known as hashish, Your Lordship, from which the word ‘assassin’ is derived.”

“Good heavens.”

“During the Crusades, fanatical Muslims smoked it before their murderous attacks on English officers, Your Lordship.”

“No! Hashish encourages an appetite, not violence,” Father insisted.

“Violence. Yes, you praised extreme violence in several of your essays, revealing your obsession with John Williams and the original Ratcliffe Highway murders. You called Williams a genius.”

“An attempt to be humorous.”

“The many people who were murdered recently are not amused. Through drugs, violence, and radical views, you persistently advocated the overthrow of the aristocracy. Now your obsession with violence has impelled you to encourage accomplices to re-create the original Ratcliffe Highway murders in an effort to destabilize London. I have proof, Your Lordship.”

Brookline raised an item from the documents on the table. “In one of former inspector Ryan’s few helpful acts, he arranged for a newspaper artist to sketch the face of the dead man at Coldbath Fields Prison. The man gained access to the prison by claiming to be a messenger from you, Your Lordship.”

“From me? But I sent no one to that prison,” Palmerston replied in confusion.

“He had a message in an envelope with your seal on it.”

“Impossible.”

“No doubt a forgery. The message inside turned out to be of no importance, merely a trick to gain entrance. Here is the sketch, Your Lordship. Certain grotesque aspects of his death have been eliminated in an attempt to achieve an ordinary likeness. Do you recognize this man?”

Palmerston held the sketch near a candelabrum on the table. “He didn’t work for me. I’ve never seen this man in my life.”

“Although he didn’t work for you, you have in fact seen him, Your Lordship.”

“I don’t—”

“Granted, you saw him only fleetingly as I pushed you to the floor of your coach. This is the man who tried to assassinate you this afternoon.”

“What?”

“The man who tried to kill you is the same man who attempted to rescue the Opium-Eater from prison. I strongly suspect that this isn’t the Opium-Eater’s only accomplice. With Your Lordship’s permission, I think it would be appropriate to question the Opium-Eater in a persuasive manner after he is readmitted to prison.”

Anger so controlled me that I raised my voice in defense of Father. “Persuasive manner. You can’t be serious. Torture an old man?”

“No one used the word ‘torture.’ The British government does not torture prisoners,” Brookline said.

“Then perhaps it’s the British military who does the torturing, Colonel.”

Brookline gave me the harshest glare I ever received. “I don’t understand why this woman is allowed to be here. She doesn’t serve our purpose, except to show by her scandalous clothing the contempt that she and her father have for the standards of society. Not only is the bloomer dress immodest by revealing the outline of her legs, but it is also synonymous with a notorious female activist who campaigns for the disruption of society by advocating the right of women to vote.”

“Immodest?” Father said angrily. “First, you insult my mother.”

“I merely state facts.”

“Next you insult my dead wife.”

“The daughter of an agitator.”

“Now you insult my daughter.”

“Don’t try to distract us from our purpose.”

“Which is to torture an old man!” I protested.

“Old?” Brookline scoffed. “Your Lordship, the Opium-Eater uses his age to deceive those who might otherwise suspect him. In the past few days, he demonstrated more nimbleness than most men twenty years younger than he is.”

“I am thirsty,” Father announced.

“What?”

Father went to a table in the corner and chose one of the half-full champagne glasses.

He swallowed its contents in one gulp.

My companions Ryan and Becker were accustomed to seeing this behavior, but Lord Palmerston and Colonel Brookline opened their mouths in astonishment.

Father selected a second half-full champagne glass and swallowed its contents as well. He looked around for a third.

“We’ll see how insolent you are in Coldbath Fields Prison when you reveal the names of your accomplices,” Brookline said.

Father turned toward Palmerston. “Your Lordship, the man you should be searching for is a British soldier who spent considerable time in the Orient. He learned the languages of that region sufficiently to be able to give instructions to a Malay. He became an expert in disguises there. He has extensive experience with killing.”

“This is a laudanum fantasy, Your Lordship. British soldiers do not kill English civilians,” Brookline objected.

“Are you suggesting that they kill only Oriental civilians?” Father asked him.

“Don’t be impertinent.”

“Only someone with extensive combat experience could have accomplished the recent skillful slaughters,” Father elaborated. “Someone who was trained, someone who has done it many times.”

“Outrageous! British soldiers are not madmen!” Lord Palmerston protested. “If we suspect British soldiers, there’ll be no end of it. Your description could apply even to Colonel Brookline.”

“Indeed it could.” Father stared at Brookline. “Did you serve in India, Colonel?”

“This is another of the Opium-Eater’s attempts to undermine society, Your Lordship. Through his accomplices, first he persuades the populace to believe that the killer is a sailor, with the consequence that many sailors were attacked and work at the docks has halted. Then he convinces the mob that the killer is a constable, with the consequence that several policemen have been assaulted and faith in law enforcement has been eroded. Now he attempts to draw suspicion toward the military. By the time he’s finished making accusations, no one will be above suspicion. Next, he’ll claim that you’re the killer, Your Lordship.” Brookline turned toward our group. “Former constable Becker.” He put the emphasis on “former.”

“Yes?” Becker frowned.

“Even though you choose not to appear in uniform, I hope you are professional enough to possess handcuffs.”

“They are in my coat pocket.”

“Put them on the Opium-Eater.”

“Excuse me?”

“When you address me, call me ‘Colonel.’ Put the damned handcuffs on the Opium-Eater.”

Becker hesitated.

“Perhaps you too would enjoy a night’s lodging at Coldbath Fields Prison,” Brookline suggested. “You could pass the time with men you arrested.”

“Do what he wants,” Father said. “At the moment, there’s no alternative.”

“For a change, the Opium-Eater makes sense,” Brookline noted.

I had difficulty catching my breath as Father held his wrists in front of him and Becker pressed the shackles onto them.

“The key.” Brookline extended his hand.

“Any constable’s key will fit any set of handcuffs,” Becker said, “but if you’re determined to have mine, here it is.”

Becker gave him the key.

When Brookline reached for Father, his impatience prompted him to push Ryan out of the way.

Ryan bumped into me. “I’m extremely sorry, Miss De Quincey.” In the confusion, he pressed something into my palm.

It was the key to the handcuffs that Ryan himself carried, I realized. The key would fit any set of handcuffs, including Becker’s.

Brookline tugged Father toward the door.

I forced myself to burst out weeping. “No!” After pushing my way past Brookline, I grabbed Father, doing my best to sob hysterically.

“Everything will resolve for the best, Emily.”

“We’re wasting time.” Brookline pulled Father toward the door.

“I’ll pray for you, Father.”

While I clung to Father, I put the handcuff key into his coat pocket.

“Your Lordship,” Brookline told Palmerston as he pulled Father from the room, “it’s dangerous for you to go to your office tomorrow. For the time being, I recommend that you conduct your business here.”

The next moments were a blur as Lord Palmerston’s guards urged Becker, Ryan, and me down the marble stairs. We followed Father and Brookline across the foyer and out the front door, into the lamp-lit fog, where we watched them climb into the coach that had brought us to the mansion.

Father leaned out, shouting, “You know where I’ll be, Emily!”

“Yes, in prison,” Brookline mocked.

“Where I listened to the music.”

“Completely insane.”

“Remember, Emily! Where I listened to the music!”

Brookline pulled Father all the way inside the coach. A guard stepped in with them, slamming the door. Another guard joined the driver on top.

The gate opened. The horses clomped forward. Almost immediately, the coach disappeared into the fog.

“Please bring another coach,” Ryan told a footman.

“Not for you.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Colonel Brookline’s instructions were emphatic. He said the three of you can walk.”


Beyond the illumination of Lord Palmerston’s mansion, the coach entered dense shadows, bumping over paving stones on the unseen expanse of Piccadilly. A lamp next to the driver cast a faint glow through an opening and permitted the occupants an indistinct view of one another’s faces.

Colonel Brookline sat across from De Quincey. A security agent sat beside him.

The handcuffs pained De Quincey’s wrists.

“I met your son, Paul, in India,” Brookline said.

“Indeed?”

“In February of eighteen forty-six. After the Battle of Sobraon in the first Anglo-Sikh War.”

“India’s a massive country. How surprising that you happened to meet him.”

“Yes, a remarkable coincidence. Your son told me he enlisted in the military when he was eighteen.”

“That is correct.”

“I received the impression that he wanted to get away from home. To put considerable distance between you and him.”

De Quincey refused to show that his emotions had been jabbed. “My children who survived to adulthood turned out to be wanderers.”

“Now that I think of it, another of your sons joined the military and went as far as China.”

“That is true also.”

“He died from fever there.”

“I do not wish to be reminded of that.”

“Perhaps if your son hadn’t been so eager to get away from you, he would still be alive.”

“You keep bringing my family into this.”

The coach thumped over a hole in the road. The impact jostled them.

It also aggravated the grip of the handcuffs on De Quincey’s wrists.

“When I pulled you into the coach,” Brookline said, “I felt something in your coat pocket.”

“I have nothing.” De Quincey was very conscious of the key that Emily had put into his coat. His heart cramped.

“But you do. I felt it.” Brookline reached toward his coat. “Surely you don’t believe you can sneak something into prison.”

De Quincey held his breath, trying not to betray his apprehension.

“And look at this,” Brookline announced victoriously.

He yanked the flask from De Quincey’s pocket and shook it, listening to the liquid inside. “Could this be cough medicine, or perhaps some brandy to ward off the night’s chill? Let us investigate.”

Brookline unscrewed the cap, sniffed the contents, and grimaced. “Why am I not surprised that it’s laudanum?”

He unlatched the window and threw the flask into the street. “Even mixed with alcohol, its odor is disgusting.”

In the dark, the flask clattered across paving stones.

“That’s where filth belongs. In the gutter.”

“You’re familiar with the odor of opium, Colonel?”

“The lime used to process it reminds me of the quicklime that is dumped into mass graves. In both warehouses and battlefields, I encountered the deathly odor of lime almost every day of my many years in India. When I arrived there, I was eighteen, the same age as your son who fled to India to avoid you.”

“Perhaps you were fleeing your own father.”

“If you are trying to bait me, you won’t succeed,” Brookline said. “My father has no relevance. I never knew him. My mother lived with a former soldier. He never complained about the military, so after he died in an accident, I decided to give his former profession a try. In India, I was trained by a sergeant who explained about the British East India Company and the opium trade. The sergeant said that if he caught any of us using opium, he would break our bones before he killed us. He called it the devil.”

“He was right.”

“That is not the impression you give in your Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. You praise the drug for increasing your awareness. You claim that music becomes more intense, for example, almost as if you can see what you’re hearing.”

“Yes. But as I make clear in my book, the effect lessens with each taking. An increasing amount must be ingested in order to achieve the same effect. Soon, massive amounts are necessary merely to feel normal. Attempting to reduce the quantity produces unbearable pain, as if rats tear at the interior of my stomach.”

“You should have emphasized that in your Confessions,” Brookline directed.

“I believe that I did.”

“The sergeant who warned me about opium owned a copy of your book. He made all his trainees read it so that we would understand the devil. In fact, he ordered me to read your foul confessions to those soldiers who could not read. I read it so often that I memorized your offensive text. But he was mistaken to order us to read it. Your book is an encouragement to use opium rather than a caution.”

“That was not my intention.”

“How many people became its slave because of you, do you suppose? How many people did you trap in hell?”

“I can easily ask the reverse. How many people took my advice to stay away from the drug once they understood its false attraction? There is no way to know either answer.”

“In India and China, every battle I fought, every person I killed, was because of opium. Over the centuries, hundreds of thousands died in conflicts because of it. Millions of people in China were corrupted by it. In England itself, how many slaves to opium are there?”

“Again, there is no way to determine that number.”

“But with laudanum available on every street corner and in every home, with almost every child being given it for coughs or even for crying, there must be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who require it without realizing the hold it has on them, do you agree?”

“Logic would say so.”

“Fainthearted women who seldom leave their homes and keep the draperies closed and surround themselves with a swirl of patterns in their shadowy sitting rooms—do they not seem to be under the influence of the drug? Laborers, merchants, bankers, members of Parliament, members of every stratum of society—they too must be under the influence?”

“An argument can be made that you are correct.”

“An influence that you encourage.”

“No.”

“My disgust for your opium-eating Confessions led me to investigate the rest of your vile work.”

“I’m impressed. Some editors complained that I myself should have read my essays before submitting them.”

“Everything is a joke to you. Not content with advocating opium abuse, you praised the Ratcliffe Highway killer, John Williams. ‘All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his,’ you said. You described Williams as an artist.”

“Yes.”

“The Ratcliffe Highway murders were ‘the sublimest that were ever committed,’ you said.”

“Those are indeed my words.”

“ ‘The most superb of the century,’ you described them.”

“Your research is thorough.”

“Extremely so.”

“ ‘Obsessive’ is the word that comes to mind.”

“Opium abuse, killing, and death are not things to be mocked. In Coldbath Fields Prison, I shall demonstrate that truth to you.”

Brookline lurched as the coach struck another hole in the road.

De Quincey had been praying that it would happen again. He had primed his reflexes, knowing that this might be his only opportunity. He had thought it through carefully, anticipating precisely what needed to be done.

As the impact jolted Brookline and the other man, De Quincey lunged toward the door.

The force of the wheel coming out of the hole knocked Brookline against the back of his seat. He grabbed for De Quincey too late. The Opium-Eater was already out the door, jumping into the darkness.

The force of coming off the moving vehicle threw him off-balance. He nearly toppled forward and smashed his face on the paving stones. But he managed to keep his balance, straightened, and ran panicked into the swirling fog. His direction was to the right.

Brookline shouted.

Boots landed hard on the street. Three sets: Brookline, the interior guard, and the man riding with the driver. As long as they made noise, the sounds that he himself made would be undetectable.

Brookline seemed to read his thoughts and yelled, “Quiet!”

Behind the Opium-Eater, the night became silent. Meanwhile his hurried bootsteps echoed.

“That way!”

De Quincey ran harder. The long strides of the tall men would soon close the distance he had managed to gain. Despite his age, fear gave him strength, as did his habit of walking thousands of miles a year. His only hope was to race back along Piccadilly in the direction of Lord Palmerston’s mansion.

Green Park lay across from it. If he could reach that park, its grass would muffle the sound of his boots.

A lamppost suddenly loomed. Heart thundering, De Quincey shifted to the side. His shoulder jolted past it, sending a shudder through him, making him groan. Again he was in darkness.

“I hear him! He’s not far ahead!” Brookline shouted.

De Quincey ran faster. His lungs burned. His shoulder throbbed. His legs felt the strain of greater exertion.

Another lamppost loomed, but this time he avoided it. Abruptly an uneven paving stone tripped him. He landed and groaned, but his terror was greater than his pain, and he struggled upright, lurching onward into the fog.

“He’s close!” Brookline yelled.

At once the sounds on the street changed. Until now, echoes had come from both right and left, indicating that there were buildings on each side. But now the echo came only from the right.

The expanse of the park must be on his left.

Or perhaps his panic had distorted his hearing. If he was wrong, he would crash into a building.

“I see a shadow moving!” Brookline shouted.

In one of the greatest acts of faith in his life, De Quincey darted to the left. Reaching out, he touched the spike-topped palings that enclosed the park. As he raced along them, he heard one of his pursuers slam into the palings and curse.

Running, De Quincey drew his hand painfully along the palings, searching for the gate. Where was it? Had he passed it?

Bootsteps rushed closer.

De Quincey felt the gate. Frantically lifting the metal latch, he pushed and ran into the murky park. At the same moment, he heard the rush of a hand grab for him and miss.

The noises he made changed to silence as he veered to the right, leaving the stones of a path for the softness of grass.

The bootfalls behind him became silent also as Brookline and his two men entered the park. Or almost silent. The grass didn’t entirely muffle sounds. Occasional dead leaves crunched under De Quincey’s soles.

“Over there!” Brookline shouted.

De Quincey was forced to run slower, to lessen the impact he made. Despite the night’s cold, his lungs felt on fire, but he couldn’t inhale fully to cool them, lest the noise of his harsh breathing indicate where he was.

He heard one of the men strike something.

“Watch out for the trees!” Brookline’s voice warned.

De Quincey reduced his pace even more. After the illumination of Lord Palmerston’s house, the street had seemed in total darkness, but in fact, the lampposts had provided a periodic hazy glow. Now in the park the darkness was absolute. The fog was a veil through which he groped, the range of his cramped arms limited by the painful handcuffs.

The throbbing in his shoulder intensified. His chin swelled from where he had fallen and injured it.

Surprising him, his hands touched tree bark. He moved around the trunk. His waist struck a bench.

“There!” Brookline’s voice yelled.

What had been an urgent race was reduced to a tense walk. Behind him, someone scraped against leafless bushes.

To his left.

He veered to the right, all the while moving deeper into the park.

“Reach under the benches! He’s small enough to hide there!” Brookline ordered. “And under bushes!”

Again, De Quincey’s shackled hands scratched against a tree. He shifted around it, bumped his head on a limb, and moved warily onward.

Abruptly he changed his mind. He couldn’t allow himself to move so far from the street that he would be disoriented and walk in circles. It was essential that he go back to the street. His plan depended on that.

He returned to the tree, felt the limb that he had bumped against, and stretched up to determine if he could reach a higher one.

Indeed he could.

“Spread out!” Brookline commanded.

De Quincey’s urgent pulse swelled his veins as he made another act of faith and climbed onto the first limb. His shackled wrists had sufficient space between them to allow him to grip the next limb and pull himself farther up.

His clothes brushed against the tree.

“There!” a man yelled.

Boots hurried quickly, crushing leaves. Using their sound to cover his own, De Quincey pulled himself higher.

“I heard him!” Brookline’s harsh voice came from below him. “Somewhere around here!”

Braced between a branch and the tree trunk, De Quincey held his breath.

Trouser legs brushed against each other.

“Stop and listen,” Brookline said.

The park became quiet.

The silence stretched on for several moments.

“While we search under benches and bushes, he can keep moving,” one of the men noted.

“Yes, he could be anywhere in the park by now,” Brookline agreed.

They lapsed into silence again and listened.

De Quincey’s chest ached from not breathing.

“He can’t keep running forever,” one of the men said. “We’ll catch him eventually.”

“I want him now.”

They waited longer. De Quincey became dizzy from not breathing.

“Colonel!” the coach’s driver shouted from the unseen street. “Shall I summon more help?”

Brookline debated, cursed, then shouted, “No!”

He led his men back toward the street.

De Quincey parted his lips, trying to be as silent as possible when he released air from his lungs and slowly inhaled.

But he didn’t dare move. For all he knew, Brookline had merely pretended to leave in the hope that De Quincey would feel confident and betray where he was hiding.

The faint sounds of Brookline and his men diminished.

At last, except for a distant barking dog, the night drifted into silence.

Wedged between the branch and the tree trunk, De Quincey’s legs were cramped, but he couldn’t allow himself to shift position, and no matter how much his lungs demanded air, he forced himself to inhale slowly and quietly.

The final hours of the night stretched on.

His shoulder ached. His chin throbbed.

The fog became less dense as dawn commenced. Still not feeling safe, De Quincey nonetheless needed to move. It was imperative that he reach the street while there was a chance of his not being seen.

Straining not to make a sound, he descended painfully. When he reached the bottom of the tree, his legs buckled. He needed to rub them, easing the cramps.

The heavy handcuffs irritated his wrists and made them swell. He desperately wanted to remove them. Thanks to Emily, the key was in his coat pocket. But the lock was on the outside of each cuff. There was no way he could reach his fingers around to insert the key into the locks.

As the air became gray, he snuck through the lessening fog, pausing to interpret any sounds he heard. Near the street, he crouched behind bushes and assessed the risk of moving forward.

No one seemed to be in the area. Creeping past benches at the edge of the park, he reached the gate. Would an enemy be waiting? De Quincey hoped that this would seem the last place to which he would go rather than a distant refuge. With no other choice, shoved by the terrible responsibility of the task he needed to perform, he stepped through the gate.

No one seized him. Hurrying despite his cramped legs, he moved to the right, away from Lord Palmerston’s house. His destination was farther along the street, past the park, where buildings occupied both sides of the street.

Bent forward in the gloom, he scanned the edge of the sidewalk and felt his heart expand when he saw what he searched for.

The flask lay in the gutter where Brookline had tossed it. Brookline had said that it belonged there, and De Quincey agreed. It did indeed belong in the gutter.

Nonetheless he needed the flask. He snatched it up and raced back to the park.

But for once the laudanum wasn’t for him. Although his body urgently craved it, he had a far more important use for it.

With its help, he might be able to prevent more people—a lot more, he feared—from dying.