Honor's Kingdom (8 page)

I do not paint myself a noble sort, you understand. I have admitted to crimes of my own, though each was done under orders. I was a devil myself. Until the day my will left me bereft and I became useless. But let that bide.

“I doesn’t believe it a bit,” Mr. Archibald said, after I had done telling and left a pause. “A British soldier would never do the like.”

“Tut, Mr. Archibald,” Inspector Wilkie warned him. “Our Teddy come back from the Cri-mee with tales would turn you green. Even tales of officers what done things.”

“Nothing could have been as bad as India,” I told them. “That would be impossible.” I do not know if I was shaking outwardly, chilled as I was by the morning’s wicked turn, but inside I was shivering in remembrance.

“Then you suspects this ’ere was done by a fellow what served in the Mutiny?” the inspector asked me. “Explaining the deed and the fancy box, besides?”

I nodded, but not forcefully. “I think it possible.”

“Well,” Inspector Wilkie sighed, “we ’ave Indoos and niggers of every description running about with the International Exhibition on. But you’re not an Indoo gentleman, Major Jones. And I presumes as you’re not ’oarding gold and jewels. I very much doubt you ’ad family ties to the victim. No, the criminal class likes a pattern, with all respect to your supposings, and I don’t see ’ow this fits the pattern what you’ve described. Where
would be the object? You said you received no threats nor communications. Every criminal deed must ’ave a purpose or a passion. A scientific fact, that is.”

“The business didn’t stop there,” I said, reluctantly. “After we learned more of what had been done within the Delhi walls, or out at the cantonment . . . and, above all, at Cawnpore . . .” I sighed and shut my eyes, for it took a measure of strength to bear my recollections. “ . . . we applied our powers of invention to revenge.”

“Blew the buggers from cannon, I ’eard tell,” Mr. Archibald said, “and the bloody niggers deserved it.”

“Yes,” I said. “We blew them from the mouths of our guns. Especially the Musselman, who has a superstition regarding dismemberment. Such like to go to Heaven in one piece. We stuffed pork fat down their throats first, and smeared the Hindoos with beef tallow. We made their high folk lick the floors we pissed on. We made them lick up blood, which is an immortal defilement, see. Then we killed them in more ways than you can imagine.” I fear I let out a bitter little laugh. “Although some men can imagine more than others. There was a unit of irregular cavalry, Hodson’s Horse—”

“I ’eard of them. Dashing fellows, they was,” Mr. Archibald declared. “All written up in the
Illustrated London News
.”

“Yes,” I said. “Dashing. And brave. Undeniably brave. British-officered, they were, though the other ranks were mounted Seekhs and tribesmen. Hodson himself was fearless to the point of madness. Beyond madness, perhaps. My lads and I had been sent out to guard old Bahadur Shah’s family, see, after the old man was taken out of the Hamayun to be judged. I was a sergeant, but trusted above my station in those days, and so many officers were dead of the cholera or cut down by the Kashmir Gate that I was left with the detachment under my own command.”

I felt my eyes narrowing in remembrance. “One fine morning, Billy Hodson and his plungers come riding up. All pistols and plumes, they were. With him set to arrest two of Bahadur’s
sons and a grandson. Princes every one. When his doings drew a crowd and got them howling, Hodson had the princes stripped of their robes and unmentionables. In plain view. Then he took them a ways down the Delhi road, riding slow and unconcerned, although it stood two thousand against his two dozen. When the crowd followed after, cursing to bring down a thousand heathen gods and pitching clods of dirt, Hodson shot the princes with his pistol. Calm as a man potting rats. And didn’t he ride straight into the crowd thereafter, and didn’t they give him way like he was king?” I leaned on my cane and shrugged. “The high command ignored the day’s doings, as near as I could tell. No doubt some thought him finer for the deed. We were not given to charity that autumn.”

“No harm done, what I sees,” Mr. Archibald said.

“Perhaps not. I cannot say. But look you. There is more. A certain Lieutenant Culpeper rode with Hodson. And if Hodson was fearless and cold, Culpeper was wild and cruel. He and a party of his tribesmen remained behind at the Hamayun, which, fitting enough, was something of a palace and a tomb at once, got up to honor dead princes. With other tombs rotting around it in their gardens, and the old Shah’s followers malingering. Twas the screams in the night that brought me to my difficulties with Lieutenant Culpeper. Echoing, they were, for the place was a very honeycomb of stone, with handsome chambers above and cells below. Well, my boys had been there long enough to know the ins and outs of the place, for all its heathen tricks, and I had a dozen men beside me and more coming. Nearly had a battle all our own, we did, between my boys and his. And all of us Company men. For I found those great, tall tribesmen of his each holding onto a child of the royal family, as Culpeper went down the line with his saber, taking off their right forearms, one after another, with the light of Hell in his eyes. All this was in the
purdah
rooms, which had been forbid us and every other man.”

Dear Lord, I saw it all so clear it pained me.

“Oh, the women pleaded and hurled their jewels at him. They even offered themselves, though he took no interest. He
would not stop for God or man, this Lieutenant Culpeper. If even he heard me shouting at the first. Hardly more than a boy, he was, though tall and wide in the shoulders. Drunk with the joy of his doings.” I felt a twitch inside me, as if that night were present in this morning, as present as my companions in that cellar. “Down the saber would come, and the blood would spurt. Then he would laugh and kick the fallen hand. As easily as if the action had been drilled into him. He liked the women’s screams, I think.”

I looked down. Not at the severed hand, but at my own past. “If a woman got away from his tribesmen and come too close, he cut her down, too. Several threw themselves at his boots, despite the fate awaiting them. I screamed at him, when shouting would not work. All this was a horrid matter of seconds, see. Lit by torches and grim as the Devil’s Sabbath. Yes. Screaming I was. Fair shrieking. There was a madness brewing up in me in those days, though one of a different sort. But let that bide. Suffice to say I screamed as a sergeant must not do. Not at an officer. Not even at the lowest soldier, if he is a good sergeant. And Culpeper ignored me. So I had my boys rank up and prepare to fire. I would have given the order, too. But the devil paused just in time. We faced each other then, with his tribesmen loyal as could be and ready with cold steel—for they’re loyal to the death to the officer who has won them over, no matter what he does to man or beast. Ready to rush upon us, they were, whether we had loaded rifles or no.”

I must have been staring at the basement walls, but, really, I was looking through time. Backward through five years of flight from India and its demons. “He backed down. Purple in the face, he was, and I do not exaggerate. Purple. He swore I would be court-martialed and hanged, for interfering with an officer at his duties.” I smiled, as we do when we ache at our own folly. “And he was nearly right, though he had nothing to do with the charges when finally they come round. No, he and Hodson’s Horse rode on. I hear they did good service. But cruelly done, it was. And best forgotten.”

“That one don’t sound like a British officer to me,” Mr. Archibald said, although his voice lacked its earlier confidence.

Inspector Wilkie ignored him. “And you suspect that this . . .” He pointed at the hand, which seemed even smaller now. “. . . this crime . . . is the work of a Lieutenant Culpeper you crossed in India?”

“That would be impossible,” I said. “I heard he was cut to ribbons not long after.”

TWAS HIGH MORNING and burning as we rode across London toward the fish market. Ahead, we saw the false storm clouds sent skyward by the manufactory chimneys down the river. Inspector

Wilkie displayed admirable patience, I must give him that, for he had agreed to set aside the unspeakable business of the child’s hand until I might give it more thought and his underlings could begin a proper investigation. Meanwhile, he took it upon himself to accompany me to an interview with the fishmonger who had found the Reverend Mr. Campbell mixed in among his wares, even though other policemen minded the law in the City Mile and Billingsgate lay outside of his purview. An ever-helpful man the inspector was.

We did not go immediately, for the duties of a policeman are many and varied. First Inspector Wilkie directed our rig to Jermyn Street where a dead man from the Argentine lay in his rooms. Reputed to be a maker of bombs, he had poisoned himself for love. Only after observing the anarchist’s corpse could the inspector accommodate my desires.

Saturday or not, the density of carriages upon the streets was such that we had to turn down through Haymarket, where the Theatre Royal advertised
Our American Cousin.
Now, I will tell you: At times I wish the theatre were not immoral, for I will admit to you, as finally I did to Mick Tyrone, that I would like to see the works of Mr. Shakespeare played upon the stage. But that is how our fall from Grace begins, see. With our succumbing to desires that seem most innocent. And then it is like a rout in the wake of a battle, where tragedy compounds with every
step. We must be firm in the first instance, putting up a sound and constant defense against sin and evil. For once the barricade is pierced, late efforts go awry. So I content myself with reading Mr. Shakespeare, who is edifying upon the page, and true.

Evading morning drill, a Guards officer stepped into the street with a lady on his arm, confident the world would give him way. And we did.

Past St. Martin’s church we went and along the solvent jollity of the Strand. The narrowness of the archway at Temple Bar delayed the succession of wagons and carriages, and an obstinate omnibus held us back for a time. Then we come free again and rolled down Fleet Steet, where the gutters flow with ink. Beyond the rotund wonder of St. Paul’s, the fineness of the streets became less so, declining slowly and steadily to the east. After the proud facade of Mansion House, the ragged began to outnumber the respectable, though men of business were always to be seen. Public houses churned the damned by daylight, and sellers of second-hand clothes wedged their barrows between those hawking edibles. The competition of cries could have risen from a heathen bazaar. Along Cannon Street, a woman tugged at a man who smashed her face. I thought Inspector Wilkie would stop to intervene. But the woman only got up and tugged again, as if it were her custom, and we rolled onward.

A man could tell a poor lane from a fine one in pitch dark, by the smell of excrement. We had entered a portion of the city less salubrious. Yet, vivid with life it was, there was no denying. Navvies worked with rolled-up sleeves, pouring sweat in the day’s young heat, and the children not set to work played in the streets, oblivious to danger.

I wondered if one of their brothers had lost his hand. There are matters upon this earth that only worsen as we think on them.

“Might I ask, then,” Inspector Wilkie said of a sudden, “what it is you ’ope to learn of the eel-man?”

I needed to be careful. Yet the fellow was all willingness and assistance, so I had to tell him something of the business.

“He may not be a member of your criminal class, Inspector Wilkie. But I believe he knew an opportunity when it passed his way. I think that, upon finding the body, he had the presence of mind to empty Mr. Campbell’s wallet, replace it, and take his watch and chain.”

“And why would you think that, Major Jones?”

A girl shouted her plum duffs and tarts. Dirty she was, but gay.

“Those who killed Mr. Campbell were not robbers. Out to embarrass Mr. Adams, they were. With no wish to be misunderstood as thieves. No, I am certain the eel-seller took what money was in the purse, as well as any other effects of value.”

“Then why did he put the parson’s purse back in ’is pocket?”

I watched a row of shabby fronts trail by.

“Because he was afraid,” I said coolly, “and a fool. He dared too much and too little at once, and such brings failure upon us.”

“But he won’t ’ardly admit to it.”

I nodded, but half my mind was on that child again. I pictured him wandering the world missing a hand. Likely they killed him after, of course. I understood that much. But our minds are willful and strange.

“He will admit to it,” I said, “when I make him an offer. I will tell him that a killer has been found and that he admits to the murder, but denies the robbery. That will unsettle him. Then I will tell him one of his friends betrayed him this very morning, and that we know all. Finally, I will offer him a bargain: He may keep the money, and good riddance, but he must produce the watch and chain for the parson’s family, or at least tell where he pawned it. Otherwise, he will see the inside of a prison, if not transportation. A man who robs a corpse will not be steady, and will blabber before he knows he has been fooled. And . . . the family will have the good parson’s watch. To remember him by.”

Twas something of a lie, I know. And may I be forgiven. But that is how these things are done on earth.

“I was thinking the very same thing meself,” Inspector Wilkie said. “All reasoned out in a scientific nature.”

We passed the Monument and the air took on a startling tang of seaweed.

“If bright Lucifer could fall, so can a fishmonger,” I said, as the sun lit up a glittering catch in a barrow.

“You’re a philosopher, Major Jones,” the inspector said.

“No,” I told him. “Only a Christian who has seen more than he wished.”

“DEAD AS A CONKED flounder ’e was,” the porter declared, although we could see the eel-man’s body for ourselves, “all purple and pinched in the gullet, Lord rest ’is soul. Slipped out to drain ’is willie, and they kilt ’im dead as a cod.”

But I must not go too quickly.