Grateful though I was for my closed carriage after we’d left the pub, I was nonetheless half frozen and desperate for a warm bath when I reached home, but this did not make me regret finding myself unable to take advantage of these comforts. No sooner had I started for my chamber, than my butler called to me from the bottom of the stairs. When I had first met Davis, more than a dozen years ago, he was a model of propriety, a butler among butlers. I like to think that I had corrupted him, just a bit, during our time together. He still objected to my smoking cigars, but he had accepted my habit of taking port after dinner with such equanimity—and at such an early stage of our association—that I could forgive him nearly anything. He ran a tight ship, and my households, both here and at Anglemore Park, were the envy of my neighbors.
“Mr. Hargreaves on the telephone for you, madam.”
Colin had installed the contraption the moment it became possible, and although I understood—and, at least intellectually, appreciated—the benefits and convenience of it, I still could not count myself among its admirers. I went into the library, where the odious object sat on his desk. My husband’s voice sounded odd and faraway, not like himself at all. But on this occasion, I had to admit I was grateful for the invention. He had called to summon me to Berkeley Square, the scene of our murderer’s latest tableau.
My husband must have told Davis as much, because my butler was waiting for me in the front hall with a dry coat, my warmest scarf, gloves, and an umbrella. I thanked him profusely and set off on foot, as the location to which I headed was both nearby and as familiar to me as my own home. I had, in fact, once called it home, as the house I had briefly shared with my late first husband was situated in Berkeley Square. As I rushed along Mount Street, I struggled to remember what I could about Edward II. Beyond the poker and his death having occurred at Berkeley Castle in Gloucestershire, I knew very little.
The sleet was starting to turn to snow, a change I welcomed, and by the time I reached my destination, thick white flakes coated the pavement. The police had cordoned off the area, but there was very little activity to be seen. There was no sign of the wretched Inspector Gale, who must have already left. Obviously, the crime had occurred long enough ago for the papers not only to have learned of it, but to have printed and distributed their special editions on the subject.
Colin ushered me past the police barrier. “I would have called for you earlier,” he said, “but you understand that, officially, you are not allowed to be here. The coroner is going to remove the body soon, so we’ll have to be quick. I’ve delayed him as long as possible.”
I had never seen anything quite like it. In the center of the square rested a large wooden tabletop. Next to it, lying facedown, was the body of a man wearing a medieval-looking crown. I could not recall having seen a portrait of Edward II, but I assumed the dead man’s attire—his feet were shod in pointed leather boots—was meant to evoke the proper era. A sheet of canvas covered him from the torso to the knees, but did not entirely hide what I could only assume was a poker, no longer red-hot.
“Edward II,” I said.
“Yes,” Colin replied. “He was under the tabletop when discovered.”
“And the cause of death was…” My voice trailed.
“Yes. The poker. Unless the postmortem reveals something else.” He cleared his throat. “I apologize for bringing you to such an unorthodox scene.”
“You know perfectly well I would never have forgiven you if you hadn’t. What do we know about him, other than his name?”
“Not much, I’m afraid,” Colin said.
I approached the body and reached into the back of the tunic worn by the dead man. “The label says Carson’s Theatrical Supply and I shouldn’t be surprised if the costume worn by our Henry VI came from the same source. How does one place a body in such … such…” I took a deep breath. “In such a fashion with no one taking notice? It’s dark now, but it couldn’t have been when it was brought here.”
“The man who reported it saw it out his window around noon. We called at every house in the square and several people said they saw a large tarpaulin covering the spot earlier in the day and assumed there was some sort of work going on. We suspect the scene was staged before the sun rose.”
“No one saw the tarpaulin being removed?” I asked.
“No.” Colin shook his head. I looked around. This was hardly the most trafficked part of town, but neither could it be called out of the way. Surely someone had seen something. I said as much to Colin.
“We’ve asked all the papers to publish an appeal for information,” he replied, “but it is perhaps too much to hope that anyone reliable will come forward. Even if someone does, we’re unlikely to get more than a description of an unremarkable-looking person in a coat and hat with a scarf hiding his face.”
I raised my eyebrows. “It sounds almost as if you witnessed the crime.”
“More like I have enough experience to know that whoever is responsible for this would have been careful not to leave himself vulnerable to identification.”
I crouched next to the body. The crown, fashioned from metal painted gold, had been secured with hairpins. I did not remove the sheet altogether, content—rather, grateful—to rely on Colin’s description of the manner of death. If, like our other victim, this one was killed in another location, why choose such a difficult method? Far easier to stab, shoot, or poison the man first and then choreograph the scene. I tugged at the man’s tunic so that I could see his back, but found no signs of injury and rolled him onto his side. No wounds on his chest either.
Colin cleared his throat. “Marks on his wrist suggest that he was bound before the, er…”
“Quite.” The victim’s pained expression was haunting. Eyes wide open, his face frozen in a horrific grimace. A large port-wine birthmark covered nearly half of his left cheek. Colin rolled him back over and pulled me to my feet.
“Home?” he asked. “Carson’s Theatrical Supply is unlikely to still be open by the time we could get there, wherever it is.”
“No doubt the wretched Inspector Gale has already called there.”
“I don’t believe he looked inside the tunic.”
“A shocking oversight,” I said. “Home sounds lovely, but I think you should look at this first.” I recounted for him my visit to the Tower and handed him the envelope I had found there. He opened it and read aloud:
The mercy that was quick in us but late,
By your own counsel is suppress’d and kill’d:
You must not dare, for shame, to talk of mercy;
For your own reasons turn into your bosoms,
As dogs upon their masters, worrying you.
See you, my princes, and my noble peers,
These English monsters!
“Henry V again,” I said. “But this time, Shakespeare’s version. Surely his choice of passage—Henry about to dole out punishment to the nobles who planned to usurp his throne—is significant.”
“Quite,” Colin said. “It makes me all the more concerned about the king. What do you make of the drawing?”
At the bottom of the page, beneath the quote, was an odd sketch. “I haven’t the slightest idea. Is it a rock?”
“It looks that way. At least now we know that it’s meant as a clue to be followed. A scavenger hunt, if you will, and now I’m to find a rock of some sort.” He frowned and returned the note to the envelope. “I must go to Scotland Yard. In the meantime, I’d like you to ring Nanny at Anglemore. It looks as if we shall be in London for some time and it’s been too long since we’ve seen the boys. Have her bring the little chaps as soon as she can.”
He gave me a quick kiss and hailed a hansom cab to take him to the Yard, knowing I would prefer to walk back to Park Lane. I watched as he drove away and then turned back to the unfortunate Mr. Casby. What sort of a person would do such a thing to anyone? Surely this was not meant solely as a warning to our current King Edward. It felt too personal for that. To choose such a brutal method of attack … I cringed thinking about it. In my estimation, that required a burning anger that would not be sated by anything less violent. If Bertie were the cause of the murderer’s ire, would he squander it on someone else? Unless he had something even more awful planned for the king. I crouched next to the body again and closed the dead man’s eyes, vowing that I would seek justice for him.
* * *
Back home, I indulged in a long—and extremely hot—bath. No matter how much I scrubbed, I could not cleanse the horror of Mr. Casby’s death from my skin. It had permeated every pore of my body. After pulling on a dressing gown, I retired to the library, where I gathered all the books I could find on the English monarchs. I sat close to the fire so that my hair would dry more quickly and read everything I could about Edward II.
In short order, I reached the conclusion that Edward had been treated very badly by historians. Some might criticize me for once again relying on my intuition, but it was shouting for me to reject the commonly accepted narration of his reign. His wife, Isabella of France, famously had a long affair with Roger Mortimer, and we are meant to consider this as a natural result of her husband’s … shall we say, lack of interest in her. I am no naïve girl, and understand perfectly well what our writers of history mean when they refer to the king’s close friendship with Piers Gaveston. We have crossed the threshold of the twentieth century and ought to be more enlightened than we were in the past. Has the torment of Oscar Wilde taught us nothing?
Isabella, only twelve years old when she married Edward, could hardly have complained that the marriage went unconsummated for some time. She did eventually bear the king four children, so could not argue that she was cast aside. It seems to me wrong to condemn the man when we can know nothing about the intimate details of his personal life.
By the time Colin came home, I was so wound up that I subjected him to a half-hour rant on the injustice of historians’ views of Edward. He listened patiently and without comment until I finished.
“I agree that we know very little about him as a person,” he said. “But it cannot be denied that he was not the best sovereign England has ever had.”
“There are plenty of others no better,” I started. “He is tarred because of speculation about his … his most private moments, and that is unjust. And for him to have been killed in such a manner—”
“You will get no argument from me. For the moment, however, I think it best that we focus on someone else killed in such a manner: Mr. Casby. You may find your outrage at his treatment somewhat lessened when you hear what I have to say. He was a notorious procurer in the East End, known for his brutal treatment of the women who worked for him. The police could never get enough evidence to convict him of anything, primarily because the women were too afraid to speak against him.”
“Hideous,” I said, “but even so, no one, not even the most awful amongst us, deserves to die in such a manner. This does, however, confirm my belief that this crime was personal and vindictive. Surely you can no longer suspect that our murderer is acting only to give notice that he intends to kill the king?”
“I don’t think that is his only motive, no, but he is certainly sending a message that no one—not even a king—is safe. Why else would he go to such trouble to stage his victims? If his motive stems only from a belief that these men should die, he would kill them and be done with it. There is something more to his crimes.”
“Perhaps he is a vigilante, righting wrongs. He has saved Casby’s women from abuse, and stopped Mrs. Grummidge from being beaten.”
“We do not have any solid proof that Mr. Grummidge beat his wife. I have great faith in your intuition, my dear, but even if you saw bruises—and I do not doubt you did—that does not necessarily mean her husband was the cause of them.”
“It was not only the bruises,” I said. “It was everything about her. Her manner, the obsequious way she talked about her husband, how she didn’t blame him for staying away from her after their child died. We cannot dismiss the possibility that we are dealing with a murderer who believes he is stopping gross injustices.”
“Why, then, is he making his victims look like dead kings?” he asked.
“Perhaps to warn those who would take advantage of a position of power?”
“And who in Britain is better situated to take advantage of a position of power than the king himself?”
“The messages you have received—particularly the one the queen gave to you—it is almost as if someone else in a position of power is behind all this. Une sanz pluis. One and no more. Sapere aude. Dare to know. Two murders staged to look like the deaths of medieval kings. Is there someone in Britain who believes he has a better claim to the throne than Bertie?”
“We’re not on the verge of a crisis of succession, if that’s what you mean,” Colin said. “There is no question that King Edward is his mother’s son.”
“Yes, but Victoria was not William IV’s daughter, she was his niece. And he had plenty of illegitimate children who might have thought they deserved the throne more than she.”
“Illegitimate children—even those of kings—do not expect to inherit the throne. Not in this day and age.”
“Of course, the sensible ones don’t, but we are dealing with an individual who is an unhinged murderer. He could have any number of unreasonable expectations. What was the surname of William’s illegitimate children? FitzClarence? Their mother was an actress, I believe?”
“I have not the slightest idea. Furthermore, it is unlikely any of them are still living—”
“Their children could want the throne,” I interrupted.
“I do not think it would be a good use of your time to investigate the descendants of William IV’s bastard children. Your crazed vigilante theory has more merit.”
“Then that is what I shall pursue,” I said. I agreed it was a more likely solution to our case, but was not altogether prepared to abandon the notion of a war of succession. What better motivation for murder could a person have than a desire to usurp the throne of Britain?