Honor's Kingdom (48 page)

“AND TO THINK,” THE ELDER MR. ADAMS SAID TO ME, “that I almost declined to pursue those letters.” The missives in question lay pale upon his desk. They looked deceptively chaste in the morning light. “Thank God you pressed me to send Henry after them.”

“Sorry I am about the ship getting off, sir.”

He grimaced. “Yes. Well, I’m sorry, too. My fault, not yours. Lord knows, you’ve done all that could be expected, and more. It was folly in me to trust to their wretched laws.” He made a sound similar to spitting, and our Minister to Britain was hardly a spitting man. “Oh, they talk and talk about honor in this country. But that’s all it is: Talk.” He glared down at the letters, which his son and I had delivered the night before. “Had I had these a few days ago . . .”

“Sorry I am for that, too,” I told him.

He waved a hand dismissively. “Done is done. I don’t believe in looking back.” He glanced at me. “Thanks to you, we haven’t come up so badly, after all. That ship may be gone. But I’ll make them pay for it.” He picked up a fistful of the Prime Minister’s errant communications. Holding them away from his person, as he might have handled a soiled cloth, he turned those wintry eyes upon me full. “I’ll promise you one thing, Major. That injury to your face wasn’t suffered in vain. The present government isn’t going to declare war on the United States any time soon, nor will they lay one more finger upon our affairs.”
His voice was firm and inspiring. Yet, his stare broke, as if weakened from within. “They’ve lied to me. About that ship. I had Earl Russell’s word.” He lowered his eyes to the letters. “But I don’t think they’ll lie to me again.”

“You said, sir . . . or implied . . . that gentlemen were allowed to lie in the practice of diplomacy.”

“Not when they give their personal word. And Lord John gave me his.”

Well, that seemed like splitting hairs to me, but I am not a diplomat. To me, a lie is a lie, and that is that. I regretted those that I had told myself, regretting the many necessities my unexpected profession had imposed upon me. I wished to be home with my wife, and my son, and my ledgers. But glad I was that Mr. Adams felt so great a confidence that we would not find ourselves at war with Her Majesty.

Our Minister gave the letters a tap. “These are more timely than you know, Jones. We’ve missed the ship, although I scorched both Russell and Lyons after I found out. But tonight that fellow Lindsay’s to give a grand speech in the House encouraging the government to interfere in our war. In the ‘interests of humanity.’ And the interests of Manchester, of course.” He almost smiled, although his face was not made for that exercise. “I intend to send a note to Lord John. Requesting a personal interview with the Prime Minister, before tonight’s session opens.” A smile fought to crack the marble of his face. “My note will leave the Foreign Secretary in little doubt as to why I wish to present my respects to Lord Palmerston.” He gave me a look at his arctic visage full on, as if rehearsing the effect he would have upon Old Pam, and added, “I would like you to accompany me. It will unsettle Palmerston all the more.”

He lapsed into a bit of quiet and let his eyes graze through a few of the letters. Yes, marble is capable of a blush, and Mr. Adams turned as red as a strawberry. Of a sudden, he gave out a deep breath and roused himself from his study.

“Lord Palmerston,” he said solemnly, as if his sense of order had been ravaged, “appears to be an innovator in the development of the human body’s mechanics.” He brushed a hand through the white fringe of hair that wrapped round his reddened pate. “Astonishing, given the man’s years.”

No doubt I was mistaken, but I almost thought that last remark sounded hopeful.

“Mr. Adams, sir?”

He remembered my presence.

“Although it is not my place to ask favors . . .”

“What is it, Major Jones?”

“It is a personal matter, see. There is an orphan girl I have brought from Glasgow.”

“That pretty little thing Moran shared his apple with?”

I nodded. “I intend to take her with me to America.”

“A relation?”

“No, sir. More of an accident, see. But resolved I am to take her with me. To give her a decent chance.”

“That’s very noble of you.”

I shook my head in denial. “Noble it is not. I
want
to take her with me, see. To do some good, after doing so much harm.” I almost began to explain my understanding of a Christian’s duty, but thought better of it. Our Minister would have things to do—as I did myself—and he did not need a sermon from the likes of me.

“I don’t see that you’ve done all that much harm,” Mr. Adams said. Then his head gave the slightest wobble, as if he had seen into the thing a little way. “A man’s conscience is a curious thing,” he said. “But what was the favor?”

“Might you keep her with you, sir? For a few days only? Until matters are settled? It would not be proper for me to have a girl of, perhaps, thirteen by me in a hotel. And her with no tie of blood, see.”

He frowned, and I feared he would deny me. But he only asked, “Is she clean? She looks clean. But is she? Mrs. Adams is a perfect tyrant on the subject.”

“She has been bathed, sir.”

His head went into that slight wobble again. “Well, I don’t see how I can refuse you. Or why I should. Especially, given all you’ve done for us.”

“Thank you, sir. She’s a good girl, and will give no trouble.”

I only hoped she would not run away in an effort to seek me out at my hotel. Nor did I want her billeted with the White Lily of Kent, who had offered time and again to take the girl to her. I fear Miss Perkins was proving no better than she should be, although I do not mean that ungratefully. Twas only that she had spent the journey back to London showering me with attentions I thought insincere. I believe she did it to bedevil young Mr. Adams. And Fanny was not above a bit of jealousy herself, I had found. The child had a way of flaring her nostrils and setting her eyes that, surrounded with those swirls of auburn hair, gave her the look of a warrior queen out of Ossian. A lesser spirit than that of Miss Perkins would have crumpled under her glare.

With a minor straightening of his shoulders, Mr. Adams altered the mood in the room. It is a trick the great have to let us know when our time has come to leave them.

“I will expect you at five,” our Minister told me. “Until then, I think you should have a well-earned rest—didn’t you mention you wanted to visit the International Exhibition? Perhaps you could take your orphan girl along?”

“I cannot,” I told him. “Tomorrow, perhaps. If you will allow me. First, there is a last thing I must do.”

MEN KNOW WHEN THEY ARE CAUGHT. When I appeared at the door of his cubbyhole office in Bow Street, Inspector Wilkie turned white as a flag of surrender.

“May I come in, then?” I asked him.

When he proved incapable of reply, I stepped into the tiny room, which was taller from floor to ceiling than it was deep or wide. It smelled of a bad dinner badly digested. The foul air seemed to make my cut burn under its plaster, and the stitches
felt as if they hoped to rend themselves. Discomfort does not improve demeanor.

“I think I will shut the door behind me,” I told him. “For I do not want your colleagues to arrest you before we are finished.”

“I ’asn’t got no idea what you’re—”

“Will they hang you under English law?” I asked him. “Or will you have a hope of transportation?”

Doubtless, the wild Russians or stoical Eskimaux learn to distinguish between a hundred shades of white in their snow-swept lands, and even I had eyes to tell that Wilkie had gone distinctly paler than he had been not five seconds before.

“May I sit down?” I asked him. Although I recalled the wooden chair before his desk as uncomfortable, perhaps to worry criminals into confessions. We should have exchanged our seats, if such was the case.

I sat me down and looked across the desk at him. Those bushes of black whiskers seemed to wilt, and his eyes were dreadful.

“You made a very great fool of me,” I told him. “Although I did my bit to help you along, and there is true. I should have seen it earlier, of course. But it is a weakness of mine to put faith in authority, and to expect better of a policeman. You must have thought I guessed the truth a dozen times, at least.” I smiled at my own clumsiness. “That must have alarmed you. Surprised I am you did not try to have me killed.”

“I ain’t never killed a single—”

“No,” I waved his concern away, “the murderers themselves are dead. Most, if not all of them. I do not think you have the liver for murder, Inspector Wilkie. But I believe the law will hang an accomplice, if it cannot apprehend the principal.”

“I never ’as meant to—”

“I wondered how they did it all so artfully, guiding me to each next place exactly on their schedule. Leading me by the hand, as it were.” I shook my head at myself, not at him. “I should have seen it that second morning, when you accompanied
me to the fish-market—though not until the eel-man was safely dead. That other police fellow from within the City Mile as much as told me you had gone rotten, though he did not know it himself. When he complained of the ‘Great Wilkie out of the West,’ who had invaded his own territory without right. First to assume control of a corpse turned up in a basket of eels, then to bring along an American officer who could have gone to Billingsgate perfectly well on his own.” I fixed my eyes upon the inspector’s, and his failed to withstand my scrutiny. “Only the influence of the rich and powerful could have inspired your superiors to such a bending of the rules—oh, I don’t believe they knew what you were about, not at all. But when the mighty hint at the desirability of so slight a thing as a temporary grant of greater freedom to a trusted inspector, one who’s needed to smooth over some diplomatic unpleasantness, well . . .”

I shifted my behind, begging your pardon, for the chair was of miserable construction. “There was so much evidence in front of my nose. A blinded fool I was. When I raised the issue of young Pomeroy’s attendance at the morgue, suggesting that he might have given information to the murderers, you defended him as above suspicion. Because he was one of the directors of your secret career. By the by, did the boy hang himself? Or did a greater power help him to it? No matter, I suppose. No matter to me, at least.”

I had talked myself into a bitterness. “You it was who took me everywhere they told you I must go, from the Seven Dials to the lawns of Regent’s Park.” I mused for a moment. “I should have seen it there, if not before. An old police veteran such as yourself would not have been quite so shocked at the sight of that poor boy on the grass, unless there was more to it. Not a man with your great knowledge of the ‘criminal class amongst us.’ ” I remembered the sight of that child all too well. “Now, I will credit you with this—you had not signed on for murder in the beginning, and you were soon frightened at the depths into which you had cast yourself. Then you saw the remains of that boy, and you feared the same could happen to your own children
if you placed one foot awry—what are their names again? The names of your son and daughter?” I had not forgotten, but I wanted to hear him speak. For I knew those names would burn his lips like fire.

“Albert,” he said, in a voice that might have come from a dead man. “And Alice.”

“Your shock was far too great to be explained. Unless you yourself had something precious to lose. And I will credit you again—you tried to withdraw from the business after that.” I looked at him as coldly as ever I have looked at a man. “They should have killed you then, before you could blunder so badly.”

“I never knew, I swear. I never knew it was to be murder and the like. I never would ’ave—”

“Quiet you, until I finish. You know a Welshman likes to talk, and happy you were to listen to me before. To listen when I was telling you things you wanted to hear. So that you could relay them to Culpeper and the Pomeroys and the rest of them. Listen, and we will shortly make an end of things. Although I think you would benefit from patience. For when I am done, then you will be done, too.”

He began to rock back and forth in his chair, gently but with great regularity, as I have seen soldiers do who have lost their wits in battle.

“Their mistake was asking you to do so much, while telling you too little. You did not know the importance of the letters. And you did not know of the involvement of Betty Green. You were not meant to go with me to the house in Lambeth, see, for you had begged them to let you off any further adventures and they decided to do so—doubtless to kill you later and keep things tidy. They cut you out in a moment, for they worried that you had weakened and might be a danger, and they led me along themselves, with hints and teasings from young Pomeroy, then from Disraeli. Had they tied me up and carried me to Lambeth to present me to ‘Mrs. Sarah Pomeroy, the Hungarian Jewess,’ they could not have been more sure of my going to find
her. But
you
did not know of that part of the scheme. When I asked you to go with me, it come at you all of a sudden, and you feared you would be punished if you let me go off unattended. For they had relied on my own need of some secrecy, and saw no reason why I would ask you to go along. But you went, indeed. It is always the way of such things, see. The evil comes out, for it cannot be tied up in a neat little parcel. And you told me a thing I would never have learned on my own, that the fabled Hungarian Jewess was really Betty Green. Late of a house in Lisle Street, was it not?”

“You don’t understand. You can’t—”

“I understand that you will never see your children again. Whether you hang, or are condemned to Australia.”

“But I did it for them, don’t you see, Major? If only—”

“Perhaps they will be better off in an orphans’ home. Or would relatives take them?”

“
Please.
You don’t understand. You’re off to your America again. But what ’ope ’ave my Albert and my Alice? What ’ope ’ave I got? When I ain’t going no ’igher in my profession, because proper gents are brought in and placed above us. Gents what don’t know a thing about police doings, who never ’ad to work for their—”