The Black Crow Conspiracy (9 page)

XIV

“But I still don’t understand how what Professor Walker told us can possibly help to free Monty.”

Alfie shook his head, a perplexed expression lining his features as they turned left off the Strand, heading up Bedford Street back to
The Penny Dreadful
’s office. The late afternoon sun was already three-quarters of the way across the sky, weary office boys unbuttoning their cuffs as they left work to search for the nearest hostelry. Penelope squinted into the sunlight. At a newsstand on the corner, unnoticed by them both, a billboard proclaimed
The Evening Standard
’s headline:

CORONATION POSTPONED

“It proves there’s a connection,” Penny replied. “You heard what Professor Walker said. Röntgen was recruited by Kaiser Wilhelm to lead his scientific institute in Berlin. It was only this
year that he made his way to London to join the Society for the Advancement for Science. Now all we have to do is find out how his experiments have created these radiant boys. Once we’ve proved that they were the ones responsible for the theft of the Crown Jewels, then Inspector Drake will have no choice but to release Monty.”

The two of them were nearing the broad stone steps that led up to the offices of
The Penny Dreadful
.

“And how are we supposed to do that?” Alfie asked as they started to climb the steps. “If Professor Röntgen really is some mad scientist who has trained an army of ghostly thieves to do his bidding, then he’s hardly going to let you waltz into the Society again to catch him mid-experiment.”

Unable to answer, Penny reached for her keys.

“I don’t know yet,” she said, a cloud passing over her brow. Reaching for the door handle, she noticed that it was already unlocked; her guardian must have returned from the printers in their absence. Maybe Alfie was right, perhaps it was time to confide in William at last. Opening the door, her eyes widened in surprise at the sight that awaited her.

Seated behind her desk, his broad shoulders slouching forward as he rested his head in his hands, was Monty. The beginnings of the beard that Penelope had seen when she had visited him
in his cell had now bloomed into full flower, dark shadows framing his features as he stared back at Penelope.

“Monty!” she cried, her face flushed with relief. “They’ve released you at last!”

But Monty’s face remained grave as from the shadows on either side of the door two police constables appeared. Penny recognised them immediately as the same men who had dragged Monty from this office only days before. Her eyes darted around the room searching for the man who must have brought them here again. Inspector Drake stepped forward from the rear of the office, the expression on his face impenetrable.

“Have you released my uncle?” she said, addressing the question now to Inspector Drake.

The detective gave no reply. Instead he gestured through the open door to a waiting hansom cab parked on the street outside.

“You have kept us waiting for quite long enough, Miss Tredwell,” he said. “My superiors have some urgent questions they wish to ask of you and your uncle. You must both accompany me at once.”

As Alfie looked on anxiously, the burlier of the two police constables placed his hand on Penny’s arm. His manner was respectful, but the meaning was clear. She had no choice in the matter. An avalanche of questions tumbled through her mind. Had Monty revealed the truth about his
role at
The Penny Dreadful
? What further crimes had the Black Crow committed whilst she had been following his trail? And where on earth was her guardian when she needed him now?

“Am I under arrest?” Penelope asked, her gaze sparkling with defiance.

“No,” Drake replied. “Not yet.”

As Penny was escorted down the stone steps, she glanced back to see Monty, Inspector Drake and the second police constable keeping a tight grip on his arms as they shuffled down the steps. Beneath his new beard, the actor’s face was pale, but meeting Penelope’s gaze he managed to raise a weak smile.

“What about me?” Alfie asked, standing framed in the doorway.

“Consider yourself under house arrest,” Drake snapped, not even bothering to glance back over his shoulder. “Stay here and if anyone calls at
The Penny Dreadful
for Montgomery Flinch, you take their details and tell them he is otherwise indisposed. I will return to question you anon.”

As the burly constable held open the cab door, Penelope climbed inside. She glanced back to meet Alfie’s gaze, recognising her own anxiety reflected in his eyes. Then Monty and the detective climbed up into the cab behind her, Drake drawing up the steps to leave his two constables standing on the pavement. With a rap of his knuckles against the roof of the cab, he
signalled for the cab driver to depart. The cabbie twitched his reins to set his horses off at a trot, drawing the cab round in a sweeping manoeuvre as it headed back towards the Strand.

Alfie watched it depart with a sinking feeling. What would he tell Mr Wigram now?

“Where are we going?” Penelope whispered, sliding in her seat as the cab clattered round yet another corner.

“I don’t know,” Monty hissed, his bulky frame pressed against hers. “I’m just glad to be out of that blasted place.”

The grand buildings of Whitehall flashed by the window: Admiralty House, Horse Guards, the Board of Trade; the great offices of state and government. It was clear to Penelope from the route they were taking that they weren’t heading to New Scotland Yard. She glanced across at Inspector Drake, the surly detective leaning forward in his seat to fix them both with a belligerent glare.

“If I had my way, I would have left you to rot in that cell until you told me the truth, Flinch,” Drake snapped, drumming his fingers to match the rhythm of the horses’ hooves. “You’re hiding something, that’s for sure. However, events are moving too fast for me to wait for you to crack. It seems as though your niece’s preposterous story might warrant further investigation after
all.” He turned towards Penelope. “And if I find out that you’ve been lying to me, girl, I’ll put you into a cell right next to your uncle and let your age be damned.”

Penelope didn’t quail under the fierceness of his gaze, determined not to show any sign of weakness. If she was to have a chance of solving this mystery, she had to convince Inspector Drake and his superiors that what she had said was true.

“So where are you taking us then?” she asked.

Drake just grunted in reply as the cab swung right off Whitehall. Pulling at his reins, the driver slowed his horses to a trot, bringing the hansom cab to a halt outside a smart row of terraced houses. Turning in her seat, Penny looked through the window, her heart skipping a beat as she saw their destination.

A white number ten was fixed to a black front door, an iron knocker in the shape of a lion’s head resting beneath this. Above the letterbox she could just make out the following words on the nameplate:

“My God,” Monty breathed, peering over her shoulder. “This is 10 Downing Street.”

XV

Penelope sat primly in her chair, nervously smoothing the folds of her skirt as Monty fidgeted on the seat next to her. In front of them, Inspector Drake was pacing the room, his shabby shoes wearing a path across the lush green carpet. With his threadbare suit, the detective seemed somehow out of place amid the dark oak elegance of the small outer office. At a desk by the window, a hawkish-looking man glanced up from his papers, a look of irritation flashing over his features at the inspector’s incessant perambulation.

The shrill ring of the telephone on the private secretary’s desk caused both Monty and Penny to jump in alarm. Lifting the handset, the secretary held the telephone close to his ear, listening intently as the voice of the person speaking squawked through the receiver.

“Yes, of course, sir,” he replied, nodding his head in earnest. “I’ll send them in straight away.”

Reverently placing the receiver back in its cradle, the man looked up to meet Drake’s expectant gaze.

“The Prime Minister will see you now,” he said, gesturing towards the green baize door. Inspector Drake turned back to Monty and Penelope, motioning for them to follow him with a chivvying gesture. Rising from her chair, Penny followed his instruction, a nervous sensation tying her stomach in knots. When Inspector Drake said his superiors had some urgent questions for them, she hadn’t imagined that he meant the Prime Minister. With his hand on the door handle, the detective turned back to face her.

“Remember what I said, Miss Tredwell. You had better be telling the truth.”

His warning given, Inspector Drake opened the door, ushering them both into the Prime Minister’s study. With a sense of awe, Penelope cast her eyes around the room, quickly taking in her surroundings with an authorial gaze.

Along the entirety of one wall, floor-to-ceiling bookcases stretched, their dark oak shelves filled with thick leather-bound volumes, whilst on the other walls gilt-framed portraits of past prime ministers were hung: Sir Robert Peel, Pitt the Younger, Benjamin Disraeli. But the room was dominated by a large mahogany desk, behind which the current occupant of this post was
seated: Lord Salisbury. Prime Minister of His Majesty’s Government.

Glancing up from the papers scattered across his desk, Lord Salisbury’s eyes blinked myopically as he focused his gaze on his visitors. His bald head shone in the sunlight slanting in from the window, whilst behind his unkempt beard, a troubled expression haunted his features.

“And who are you?” he growled, staring pugnaciously at the detective.

“Inspector Drake, Your Lordship. I have been investigating the theft of the Crown Jewels. It was after I took Mr Montgomery Flinch into custody that I learned—”

“Yes, yes.” The Prime Minister gruffly waved the inspector into silence. He turned towards a second man, who was standing by the window, his slicked-back hair and drooping moustache revealing the profile of his nephew, the First Lord of the Treasury, Arthur Balfour. “Arthur has read to me your report on the progress of your investigation. Damned disappointing it is too.”

Inspector Drake bristled at the criticism, but with the same instinct for self-preservation that served him so well as a detective, he now held his tongue as Balfour began to speak.

“So these are your prime suspects then?” he asked bluntly. “A potboiler author and his slip of a niece?”

“As I explained in my report, Mr Flinch has
displayed an unnatural knowledge of the theft of the Crown Jewels, even describing the crime in the pages of his magazine mere weeks after it took place. As for his niece, Miss Tredwell has made several unsubstantiated claims that may be linked in some way to the calamitous events of Monday night.”

Penelope stared at the inspector, a puzzled frown creeping across her brow. There had been no mention in yesterday’s newspapers of any calamity. Then a shiver ran down her spine, her thoughts returning to the flock of ghostly figures she had watched emerge from the bowels of the Society late on Monday night. Could the radiant boys have struck again?

“And I have read your report and thank you for it, Inspector Drake,” Balfour replied courteously. He turned his gaze towards Monty and Penelope. “Now, if this is Mr Flinch and his niece, you can return to your duties at the Yard.”

Open-mouthed, Drake stared at the politician, unable to believe he had been dismissed in such a peremptory fashion. Then, with a swift nod of his head, he turned to leave, casting Penny a final warning glance as he stepped out of the office, the door closing behind him with a click.

From behind his desk Lord Salisbury stared up at them both, his shoulders sloped as if worn down by the cares of office.

“So you’re Montgomery Flinch, eh?” he said,
fixing Monty with a melancholy stare. “My wife used to read every one of your tales in
The Penny Dreadful
. Whilst I worked through my red boxes, she would be sitting there in her armchair, her attention rapt as she turned the pages.” The Prime Minister’s voice trailed away, Lord Salisbury staring towards the fireplace where an empty armchair was set. “How I miss you, my dear.”

Balfour cleared his throat, the sound of his cough bringing the Prime Minister’s attention back to the matter in hand.

“And what about this latest story of yours then, Flinch?” Lord Salisbury peered down at his papers again. “
The Thief Who Wasn’t There.
How do you explain the fact that it describes the treasonous crime of which you have been accused?”

Monty blanched, the sense that his new-found freedom might be short-lived swiftly dawning on his face. His hand reached up to nervously smooth his freshly grown bristles, streaks of grey now showing amidst the black.

“It’s a coincidence,” he replied. “You have to believe me, Your Lordship. I swear I am an innocent man.”

Penelope looked on, almost holding her breath, as Lord Salisbury held Monty’s gaze. If the Prime Minister of England didn’t believe him, what hope was left? Her thoughts flicked through the clues
she had found: the anonymous letter, the radiant boys, Professor Röntgen, and the secret passage joining the German Embassy to the Society for the Advancement of Science. Inspector Drake’s last words of warning echoed in her mind.
You had better be telling the truth.
The truth was all she had left now.

Stepping forward, Penny cleared her throat with a delicate cough.

“My uncle is telling the truth,” she began. “The inspiration for the plot of
The Thief Who Wasn’t There
was not his own.”

Monty glanced across at Penny in surprise. After all that she had said, he hadn’t expected that Penelope would give up
The Penny Dreadful
’s secrets so easily.

“For the past year, Montgomery Flinch’s fictions have been absent from the pages of
The Penny Dreadful
,” she continued, “as my uncle has been afflicted by an ailment of the mind that has made it impossible for him to write. He has suffered from a dearth of inspiration, his muse sadly absent, meaning that every story that he started failed to get past the first page.”

Lord Salisbury stared at Penelope as she pressed on with her explanation, his expression inscrutable beneath his bristling eyebrows.

“This is why
The Penny Dreadful
launched a competition for its readers to suggest the plot for Montgomery Flinch’s newest tale. Most of the
entries he received were unworthy of my uncle’s talent, but there was one letter that suggested a story based around a most audacious crime: the theft of the Crown Jewels from the Tower of London itself.”

In the lengthening shadows of the Prime Minister’s study, the three men listened spellbound as Penelope recounted the events that had brought her to this place. The anonymous letter signed with the sketch of a black crow, the sightings of the radiant boys spread across the city, the trail that had led her to the Society for the Advancement of Science and her suspicions about Professor Röntgen.

Unlike Inspector Drake, the two statesmen listened to her tale in silence, interrupting only to clarify a particular point or ask an illuminating question, and when she had finally finished speaking Lord Salisbury turned to his nephew, now standing pensively beside his desk.

“So what do you make of this, Arthur? If what Miss Tredwell says is true, then it confirms our worst fears.”

“What do you mean?” Penelope asked, no time now for society’s normal courtesies. In her mind she could see the two black-coated figures slipping through the shadows as she stalked them through St James’s Park. “What has been stolen from Buckingham Palace?”

For a second, the politicians remained silent.
Then with a glance at the Prime Minister as if seeking his permission to speak, Balfour gave his reply.

“Not what, Miss Tredwell, but who,” he said bluntly. “On Monday night, King Edward the Seventh was kidnapped from Buckingham Palace directly under the noses of his guards.”

Penny and Monty gasped in unison, this revelation leaving them both reeling.

“And that’s not all,” Balfour continued. “The rest of the royal family are missing as well: Queen Alexandra, the Duke of York, Princess Victoria, the Duke of Connaught, the Duchess of Fife. Nearly thirty members of this nation’s ruling family all spirited from their palaces and stately homes by persons unknown. At this very moment, Great Britain has no king.”

Monty stared at the First Lord of the Treasury aghast. “But the coronation is tomorrow.”

“The coronation has been postponed,” Balfour replied soberly. “The press has been informed that the King is suffering from a digestive complaint, and that the royal family have withdrawn from all public duties out of respect for his condition, but we will only be able to maintain this deception for a limited time. We must find the King and restore him to his throne before Britain’s enemies can act in our hour of weakness.”

Penelope’s mind raced, trying to join the dots between what Balfour had told them and the
clues that she’d already found.

“Our enemies?” Monty asked. “Surely you don’t mean the Boer? I thought that we’d finally seen the back of those blighters with the signing of the Treaty of Vereeniging.”

Balfour shook his head.

“I am not thinking of our recent foes in Africa,” he replied. “The Boers fought with guns, but the enemy we face now is of a more cunning mind.”

Penelope remembered the naval uniforms that she had seen hanging next to the radiant boys’ disguises. But before she had the chance to voice her suspicions, Lord Salisbury cleared his throat with a bone-rattling cough.

“My nephew has omitted to inform you of one fact. Not all of the royal family have been spirited away. Queen Victoria’s eldest grandchild, Kaiser Wilhelm the Second, King of Prussia and Emperor of Germany, is in London for his uncle’s coronation. If King Edward and his family have been murdered by these ghostly thieves you have seen, then the Kaiser is next in line to inherit the British throne.”

Penelope stood there in silence, digesting the full meaning of the Prime Minister’s words. If what Lord Salisbury said was true, then this was a conspiracy to unseat King Edward the Seventh and put Kaiser Wilhelm the Second on the throne in his stead. The British Empire conquered by Germany without a single bullet fired. She
remembered the haunted features of the boy she had seen hiding in the shadows outside the palace, his skin glowing green as if lit from within. Did he realise the part he was playing in history?

“But if you know all this, why don’t you search the German Embassy?” she asked. “I told you what I saw there. Perhaps the King and his family are hidden there too?”

“By God if I could,” Lord Salisbury cried, slamming a fist against his desk before succumbing to a coughing fit. While he recovered himself, his nephew stepped in with his own explanation.

“The German Embassy is the sovereign territory of the Imperial Reich. If I even sent Inspector Drake or one of his men inside to follow this lead you have found, the Kaiser would be within his rights to treat it as a declaration of war.”

Monty piped up in outrage.

“But if those blighters have taken dear old Teddie, then surely we can fight to find our King?”

Balfour set his face in a mollifying expression, even as Lord Salisbury beamed his approval at Monty’s patriotic outburst.

“The situation is rather more delicate than that,” he replied, steepling his fingers in front of him as he stepped forward to explain. “If it turned out that our suspicions were unfounded, the price we would pay for any rash act would be a high one. The Triple Alliance between Germany,
Italy and the Austro-Hungarian Empire would mean that the forces of half the continent would be lined against us. We cannot risk blundering into war on the strength of a young girl’s word.”

“So what do we do?” Penelope asked, an indignant blush colouring her complexion. “Wait for the coronation of Wilhelm the Second instead?”

Lord Salisbury shook his head with a growl.

“The British public would not wear it,” he replied. “Such an event would mean the end of the monarchy, provoking civil unrest and protests in the street. The fabric of our nation would be torn to pieces and the great Empire that Queen Victoria built, God rest her soul, would fall to our enemies.”