Murder as a Fine Art

8

The Year of Revolution



DURING THE 1600S, a mallet-and-ball game known as pall mall was so popular in the Westminster district that a street where it was played acquired that name. By 1854, Pall Mall—located to the north of St. James’s Park—acquired a reputation for something quite different, a series of luxurious gentlemen’s clubs where men of similar views could share a meal, have a drink and a cigar, enjoy quiet time in the library, and even find lodgings. While some used their club to avoid their families in the evenings, the bigger appeal was gambling.

Clubs existed for political parties, religious groups, actors, writers, artists, just about any common interest for which approved-only members were willing to pay a 20-guinea initiation fee and a 10-guinea yearly assessment. The denomination of payment indicated the exclusivity of the membership, for while guineas had once been actual coins, they no longer existed except as a concept used for professional fees and luxurious items. If someone requested a guinea, he would receive two coins—one pound and one shilling—the implication being that a guinea (which didn’t exist) was a cut above the common currency of the pound.

On Pall Mall, as many as four hundred gentlemen’s clubs catered to various interests. As a consequence, it wasn’t difficult for some clubs to become anonymous, avoiding attention among their neighbors. In addition, members who preferred not to be seen arriving and departing could take advantage of curtained tunnels that some clubs erected between the street and the entrance. A coach could pull up, its occupants could step into the tunnel, the coach could pull away, and no one on the street would know who had arrived.

This happened at 2 P.M. on Monday, when a coach that looked no different from any other (but the interior of which was well appointed, complete with cigars and brandy) pulled away from the Royal Agricultural Club and disappeared into Pall Mall traffic. A sign in front of the club announced, CLOSED FOR RENOVATIONS.

Three men stood within the curtained tunnel: Lord Palmerston; his security chief, Colonel Brookline; and a member of Brookline’s team. The last remained in the tunnel and watched the street while Brookline approached a man whose uniform indicated that he was the club’s doorman but who in fact was another member of the security team.

“Nothing out of the ordinary, Colonel,” the man reported.

Brookline entered the club, surveyed its polished marble lobby, and noted the strategic positions of two other security operatives, both of whom nodded that everything was under control. Apart from them, the lobby had no occupants.

“Ready, Your Lordship,” Brookline said.

Palmerston stepped inside and proceeded past an abandoned counter, the clerk for which had been instructed to remain at home.

The stained-glass door of a bar beckoned on the left while a restaurant invited straight ahead. But Palmerston and Brookline turned to the right and climbed a marble staircase. Despite his seventy years and heavy frame, Palmerston moved with the confidence of immense political power.

He walked purposefully along a hallway and stopped at the second door on the right, where he waited for Brookline to knock three times, then once.

When the door was opened, an attractive young woman in a beguiling dress stood before them.

“Thank you, Colonel,” Palmerston said. “Return in ninety minutes.”

“Very good, Your Lordship.”

Palmerston smiled to the young woman, stepped inside, and closed the door.


PALMERSTON’S PASSION FOR female companionship was so well known that gossip about it had spread from the upper class until it became the topic of ribald jokes in the poor sections of London. The Times gave him the nickname Lord Cupid.

It was a reputation that Palmerston encouraged, using it as a way to disguise his other activities. On this particular afternoon, the woman in the room—an actress recruited by Colonel Brookline—had allowed herself to be seen entering the club’s curtained tunnel. Brookline took for granted that the club was under surveillance. The arrival of the actress in a men’s club closed for renovation would be a sufficient explanation for Palmerston’s own arrival five minutes later. Even the security guards had been deceived about the reason for Palmerston’s arrival. If an unfriendly observer managed to identify the actress, so much the better. It would reinforce Palmerston’s reputation for preferring exotic liaisons.

The moment Palmerston locked the door, he gave the actress a slight bow. “You are well?”

“Thank you, Your Lordship, yes.”

“You have something to amuse you?”

“A script for a new play I need to study.”

“Is there plenty of blood in it?”

“Yes, Your Lordship. A stabbing in a pool onstage. And two explosions.”

“I look forward to attending.”

Palmerston left her in the sitting room and proceeded to the bedroom. He locked the door and slid a wardrobe away from a wall, exposing stairs that led to the next floor.

At the top, he entered a room that had a long table. Six men sat at it, three on each side. Each had taken care that he wasn’t followed to the building. They were all dressed in laborer’s dusty clothes and had arrived separately at the servants’ entrance at 7 A.M., carrying bags of tools, presumably the workmen accomplishing the renovations that the sign announced outside the club.

“André, you’re thinner than when I last saw you,” Palmerston commented. The man was in fact English, but Palmerston preferred his French alias.

“Not from illness, Your Lordship.”

“Indeed not. You have a new female friend.”

André looked surprised.

“Her name is Angelique,” Palmerston reported. “She is twenty years old and comes from Reims. She likes to dance. Her father is a cabinetmaker.”

“Your Lordship, I am careful about what I tell her. She is part of my cover. She does not know my secrets.”

“No need to be alarmed, André. I determined that she isn’t a threat. I mention these details merely to emphasize that even though we meet only twice a year, I think about each of you every day.”

“Your Lordship,” the Englishman who called himself Giovanni said quickly, “if you heard that I was drinking, it is not to the excess that I pretend. It is all for appearances, so that the Italian authorities won’t suspect that I am serious.”

“I am aware of that,” Palmerston responded. “I’m not disappointed in any of you.”

They looked relieved.

“I trust that you won’t disappoint me. You are truly always on my mind.”

Palmerston focused his gaze on each of them, one at a time, displaying the powerful presence that had made him variously war secretary, foreign secretary, and home secretary.

“Face-to-face every six months, we reestablish our bond. We reaffirm from the solid looks we give one another that I can depend on you and that you can depend on me. Can I? Can I depend on you?”

“You know you can, Your Lordship,” Niels assured him.

“Anselmo, Wolfgang, Mikhail?” Again Palmerston used aliases that identified the countries to which the English operatives were assigned.

“You have my complete loyalty, Your Lordship,” Mikhail asserted. “The mission is all that matters.”

The others nodded resolutely.

“Make your reports.”

One by one, they described their progress.

“I am encouraged.”

“Thank you, Your Lordship.”

“Do you need more resources?”

“Additional weapons, ammunition, explosives, and printing presses,” Wolfgang responded. “Not to mention the alcohol to prime mobs into using them.”

“And all of that will require?”

“Twenty thousand pounds.”

The others identified the amounts they needed in France, Spain, Italy, Denmark, and Russia.

“The funds will be provided through the usual means,” Palmerston told them, taking the huge sums of money for granted.

“I hear rumors that the queen is with child again,” André said.

“No,” Palmerston replied, “although I’m assured that she plans to keep trying. Eight children aren’t sufficient for her. Her Majesty wants more offspring and intends to marry all her children to the royal houses of Europe in the hopes of guaranteeing that Europe won’t threaten the British Empire. She wishes to be known as the grandmother of the Continent. But that will take many years, and Her Majesty is foolish to imagine that blood relations won’t quarrel. Our way is more assured. Eighteen forty-eight proved the wisdom of our method. Destabilizing Europe is the only way to protect the empire.”


EIGHTEEN FORTY-EIGHT. The widening division between rich and poor became so extreme that revolutions spread throughout almost every nation on the Continent.

The upheavals began in France, where the original blood-filled revolution of 1789 was still being felt and where a near civil war in 1848 brought an end to the recently returned monarchy. The furor spread to the Italian and German states, to the Habsburg Empire, to Belgium, Switzerland, Denmark, and Poland. In many cases, the effects of the uprisings were short-lived, with aristocrats soon returning to power. But a mere six years after the Year of Revolution, fear still preoccupied the upper class throughout Europe.

Great Britain was one of the few countries not to experience a revolution, with the result that it rose to the height of world power, becoming the master of the globe. What only a handful of the inner circle knew was that Lord Palmerston’s methodical progression from war secretary to foreign secretary to home secretary had allowed him to establish a network of provocateurs, who incited the workers of the Continent to rebel against their rich masters. By keeping Europe in turmoil, he assured Great Britain’s dominance.

As he told his espionage operatives, “Destabilizing Europe is the only way to protect the empire.”

But for all his apparent confidence, Palmerston knew that he had gone almost too far. The spirit of revolution that he had created on the Continent had inadvertently infected England. In 1848, a total of 150,000 members of a labor group called the Chartists had assembled in London, south of the Thames on Kennington Common near Vauxhall Gardens. They intended to march on Parliament and demand yearly elections, universal voting privileges for every man in England, and the right for non–property owners to be elected.

Fear of the consequences caused Palmerston to commission 150,000 special constables to preserve order, one for every Chartist. Military units blocked all the bridges across the Thames. In the end, the Chartists agreed that only a few representatives would cross the river and present their petition to the government, which pretended to consider it but ultimately did nothing. The Chartists returned to their homes throughout the country. The crisis was averted.

But Palmerston knew that things might have turned out quite differently because of the demon that he had created.


HE DESCENDED THE HIDDEN STAIRWAY, slid the wardrobe back into place, crossed the bedroom, unlocked the door, and greeted the beguiling young actress in the sitting room.

She peered up from the script of the new melodrama that would include a stabbing in an onstage pool as well as two explosions. With a smile she asked, “Are you finished with me, Your Lordship?”

Palmerston studied his pocket watch and sighed. “Unfortunately.”

“Always at your service, Your Lordship.”

“You’re very charming.”

Someone knocked on the door—three times, then once. Palmerston peered through a peephole and opened the door, where Brookline waited for him.

“Ninety minutes. Punctual as always, Colonel.”

They proceeded along the club’s corridor, passed the security officer at the top of the marble stairs, and descended to the club’s ornate lobby. Meanwhile, on the topmost floor, the agents disguised as workers left the meeting room and continued pretending to renovate the club. At sunset, they would exit through the servants’ door. A different set of workers, these legitimate, would arrive the next morning.

“Colonel, you were in India in ’forty-eight,” Palmerston said at the bottom of the stairs. “Did word reach there about the near-revolt in London?”

“The Chartist rebellion, Your Lordship? Yes. Most alarming. We were always alert against a similar attempted mutiny by the natives in India.”

Outside the club, they passed the security agent dressed as a doorman. At the end of the curtained tunnel, a different-colored coach awaited them.

“You’re using another vehicle?” Palmerston asked.

“It’s one of my new security precautions, Your Lordship. Anyone who followed you here might have continued following the earlier vehicle in the expectation that it would return here for you. That would be easier for them than waiting for you to leave and taking the risk that they’d be noticed on the street.”

“You suspect I’m being followed?”

“That’s always my assumption, Your Lordship.”

Brookline and the operative guarding the tunnel flanked Palmerston so that no one could see him step into the coach. As a final precaution, just before Brookline climbed inside, he scanned the area.

He looked for the telltale indicator of surveillance—someone who wasn’t moving amid the constant commotion of the street. Today, it was easier to look for surveillance because the street was less populated than usual, nervous people hurrying home before dark and the further set of murders that were predicted to occur.

Brookline sat opposite Palmerston in the well-appointed interior as the coach drove into Pall Mall traffic, a security operative at the reins, a second operative next to him.

“Your Lordship, is there a reason you mentioned the Chartist rebellion?”

“It happened only six years ago and remains fresh in people’s minds. The only time I saw comparable fear in the streets was after the Ratcliffe Highway murders decades earlier. After Saturday night’s murders, that fear is on the streets again. We need to do everything to stop it.”


BROOKLINE CALLED TO THE DRIVER, “Turn left onto Marlborough Road.”

“That isn’t the way to my home,” Palmerston objected. “I need to return for a reception Lady Palmerston has arranged for the prime minister. We should be going to the right up St. James’s Street.”

“That would be the expected way, Your Lordship. For another security precaution, we’re taking an unanticipated route.”

“Another security precaution. Do you expect trouble?”

“To repeat what you said, Your Lordship, fear is on the streets again. As home secretary, you might attract the displeasure of someone who believes you haven’t done enough to keep the streets safe.” While he spoke, Brookline didn’t look at Palmerston but instead directed his attention toward the windows on either side of him, studying the street. “I can’t change where you live and work, but I can change the route you use to go to them.”

The coach passed Buckingham Palace on the left and proceeded to the right, up Constitution Hill.

“I’m not reassured that Her Majesty suffered six assassination attempts on this very street,” Palmerston said.

“Because she lives here, Your Lordship. But no one can anticipate that you’re taking this route home.”

“Four years ago, someone tried to kill Her Majesty by striking her head with a cane—outside my home when her cousin Lord Cambridge owned it.”

“As I mentioned, Your Lordship, I can change the route, but not where you live.”

The coach turned to the right at Wellington Arch and entered Piccadilly, the street on which Palmerston had his mansion. The area had once been countryside. A tailor who earned a fortune from selling then-fashionable stiff collars with perforated lace borders, known as piccadills, built a mansion there, Piccadilly Hall, and the name became synonymous with the area. Other mansions soon were built. The prestigious location was directly across from Green Park, famous for its fireworks on special occasions.

As the vehicle approached the walled gates to the semicircular driveway in front of Palmerston’s mansion, Brookline kept scanning the street and noticed a man emerge from the park.

The man was distinctive because he walked with determination across the street, so focused on the coach that he paid no attention to the carriages that were forced to stop abruptly, horses rearing in protest.

The man had a revolver in his right hand.

“Get down on the floor, Your Lordship.”

“What?”

“Down on the floor, Your Lordship! Now!”

Brookline recognized the revolver as an 1851 Colt navy model. Its specifics came automatically to him: a repeater whose cylinders were front-loaded with 280 grains of powder and a .380 ball.

The man kept coming.

One of the gates opened slowly.

“Forster!” Brookline shouted to the driver. “You and Whitman get His Lordship through the gate! I’ll distract the man!”

The coach came nearer to the slowly opening gate.

Brookline jumped from the coach.

“Stop!” he told the man with the gun. He held up his hands in a placating gesture. At the same time, he moved forward.

The man came relentlessly.

“You’re too late! Lord Palmerston’s going into the house!” Brookline warned him.

“Not yet he isn’t!”

The man had a German accent. He dodged to the side, gaining a view of the coach where it was only beginning to enter the open gate.

He raised the pistol.

A woman screamed.

“I know what the bastard’s doing in Germany!” The man aimed. “But he won’t do it anymore!”

Brookline lunged.

The man pulled the trigger.

The revolver exploded.

Amid a burst of gray smoke, Brookline swung his fist down like a club, knocking the revolver from the man’s grasp. The next instant, he collided with the assassin, slamming hard against him.

But the man was strong and solid. Absorbing the blow, he lurched back but didn’t fall.

Brookline swung his fist toward the man’s throat.

The man blocked the blow and swung toward Brookline’s throat, a maneuver that indicated that he too was a trained fighter.

Brookline jumped backward, avoiding the lethal punch.

A horse reared.

Someone shouted from the closing gate, “His Lordship’s inside!”

The attacker darted around the front of the horse, slapped its haunches, and startled it into charging at Brookline.

As Brookline dove toward the sidewalk, feeling a rush of air from the stampeding cab, the attacker used the vehicle to shield him while he raced across the street and into the park.

Brookline surged to his feet and charged around the back of the cab, only to see another panicked horse speeding toward him. He hurried in front of it just in time and chased the attacker into the park.

Paving stones gave way to grass. Lampposts became trees. As the attacker sped along a path, a servant with a baby’s pram cried out and shoved the pram toward bushes, choosing one collision over another.

Brookline ran past her and the now-wailing baby. Stretching his long legs, he came closer to his target, but at once the man veered from the path, crashed through bushes, and disappeared down a slope.

Brookline reduced his speed and studied the bushes.

Abruptly he dove to the ground as a fireball sped at him. Sparks flying, it shrieked over his head and struck a tree, the skyrocket exploding. Despite the cold weather, Brookline felt heat pass over him.

A second skyrocket sped horizontally through the park, exploding against a bench.

A third struck another tree.

Now every other manner of fireworks erupted. The slope burst into flames: red, green, yellow, blue. Sparks gushed as if from a fountain or spun on the ground as if on a wheel. Others shrieked or crackled like gunfire. Debris flew everywhere, smoke making it impossible to see down the slope.

Brookline pressed hard against the grass, compacting his body as much as possible. He squeezed his hands over his ears, as if he were under bombardment. His heart pounded against the frozen earth. He could almost hear the screams of battle.

Gradually, the explosions stopped. Glancing up, he saw the smoke dwindle. He rose carefully to a crouch, scanning the devastated bushes and slope. Branches smoldered. Dry grass was blackened.


THE REVOLVER HAD TOO MUCH gunpowder in it?” Palmerston asked, still in shock.

“Yes, Your Lordship. Overcharging it can cause that model to explode.”

They were in Palmerston’s mansion, in the ballroom on the second level, where tables glittered with champagne stemware ready to be filled at the soon-to-occur reception. The destroyed weapon sat on a polished tray.

“And you couldn’t find him?”

“Not after the fireworks diversion he prepared. By the time the explosions ended, he was nowhere in sight.”

“But why would the madman have wanted to kill me?”

“To quote him, Your Lordship… forgive my language.”

“Just tell me.”

“As he prepared to try to shoot you, his exact words were, ‘I know what the bastard’s doing in Germany! But he won’t do it anymore!’ ”

“Germany?”

“Yes, Your Lordship. Do you have any idea what he was babbling about? It didn’t make sense to me. Our current quarrel is with Russia in the Crimea. We don’t have any hostile involvement with the German states. Besides, you’re the home secretary now, not the foreign secretary or the war secretary. Anything that happens in Europe doesn’t concern you any longer, only what happens here at home.”

“Exactly. How could I have anything to do with Germany? The man was delusional.”

Lady Palmerston, his former mistress, appeared in the doorway, her look indicating that the guests would soon arrive.

“Do you think you should cancel the event?” Brookline asked.

“And disappoint the prime minister?” Lord Palmerston asked in dismay. “Admit that the current instability is having an effect? Emphatically not. But Colonel Brookline…”

“Yes, Your Lordship?”

“Increase my protection.”