Three o’clock in the morning. The four of us were in the parlour at Abel Yard, the fire unlit but two lamps burning, sending shadows shifting over the walls. Ricci was mostly pacing up and down, so his shadow was constantly shifting in shape and size, rearing up in the corner so that his thin body looked temporarily bearlike, looming over us. At first, he kept saying the same thing, over and over, that it was everything that Professor Sobrero had feared. And worse – the Queen would be killed and we’d all be hanged as accomplices, until Amos told him sharply to stop. After that, he went on pacing, twisting his hands together so violently that it looked as if he was trying to break his own fingers. Amos was sitting at the table, stubbornly working through what he knew about the ceremony. Inevitably, his mind was fixed on what he understood best – the carriage procession from Buckingham Palace to the Houses of Parliament.
‘It won’t take them much more than ten minutes with the roads cleared for them. They could throw it in from the crowd anywhere – just throwing would do it from what Mr Ricci says – but if they want to be sure of killing her I reckon the most likely time is when she’s getting out of the carriage at Parliament. The man who threw it would be grabbed on the spot, but it would be too late then.’
I went on saying what I’d said from the start – that whatever was going to happen would happen inside Parliament. We knew that craftsmen from the building team were involved and they’d have access anywhere. What their motive was for the assassination, I didn’t know. The expense and complexity of the operation suggested a lot of money – possibly from abroad – but that was irrelevant now and all that mattered was trying to stop it. As soon as I got back from Bow Street I’d tried again to see Mr Disraeli, but the house was in darkness and knocking on the door produced no result. The first servants would be waking up in an hour or so and I’d try again then – force my way into his bedroom if necessary – but at that point the ceremony would be only hours away and Disraeli himself might not be able to get people to listen in time. There was just one other source of help I could think of – although it was clutching at straws – and that was Mr James. A leading foreman would have no powers at all over a state occasion, but at least he knew the parliamentary site. If I went to him and told him everything I knew, just possibly he’d be able to pass some warning up the chain of command. It was a faint hope, but then so was everything else.
Tabby was hunched on the rug by the cold fireplace, out of the way of Ricci’s pacing feet. She looked up and caught my eye.
‘That’s why they killed the Maynard girl – because she knew about it?’
‘I’m sure so, yes. Her half-brother might not have told her everything but he’d said enough to worry her. She was trying to get him away from whatever was happening and I think he wanted to get away. I wondered when I was talking to her friend why Felicity should have been so careful to keep the lion’s feet carving safe. I think Jonah Cave had given it to her as evidence of some kind.’
The more I thought about it, the more it pointed to the House of Lords. It was true that all the buildings of the new Parliament were or would be crusted with woodcarving, but I’d been told more than once that by far the densest and most elaborate carving would be in the Lords, particularly around the throne. Suppose that Cave was part of a gang preparing a secret chamber that would go unnoticed among the rest of the elaboration, enough to contain a small but very effective amount of pyroglycerine? It was half in my mind to go and get the carving, but events were moving too fast.
‘Once he knew Felicity was dead, it made up his mind for him,’ I said. ‘I think he told the people in the plot that he wanted no more to do with it, so they killed him.’
‘Who? Your friend, Minerva?’
‘I think she’d be quite capable of it. But there’s somebody else giving them orders and we don’t know who.’
Amos looked up from the table. ‘You don’t believe it’s going to happen in the procession, do you?’
‘I don’t. Jonah Cave and almost certainly Minerva were workers inside the site. That’s not just a coincidence.’
‘In that case, they couldn’t have got it inside by now – just walked in with it.’
‘Why not? There are materials going in and out all the time.’ My thoughts went to the stone wharves at the back of the building site. A sloop putting in there would be unlikely to attract attention. They’d be taking a risk in using the boat again, but then audacity had been their style throughout. The explosive might be in place already, among the gilding and carving of the Lords’ chamber, and the police wouldn’t look because I was hysterical, vengeful against my husband, obsessed with explosives. It made me mad to think about it.
Tabby had something beside her on the rug and was running her fingers through it. At first, I thought she was stroking the cat, but it was only the bundle of rags we’d brought with us from the Compass that the boy had been using as a pillow. She’d sorted out some more thin slivers of red leather, like the ones we’d found in the yard. Along with them were the remains of an old moleskin waistcoat, pieces of faded chintz and oily rags. I turned them over, wondering without much hope if there might be something of Robert’s there. Nothing. The lamplight caught a piece of soiled velvet in a colour I recognized. It was a panel of the dress I’d worn on the evening I’d been kidnapped. I picked it up then stared at something small and bright underneath it. My hand touched something stiffer, more resistant than the rags. When I picked it up, I was holding a rectangular pouch. It wasn’t as dirty as the other things in the bundle; the colours were still fresh. Thickly clustered embroidery of rosebuds and forget-me-nots, the sort of thing a girl with too much time on her hands might work on to create a tobacco pouch for a young man who probably wouldn’t appreciate it. I must have said something, or at least made a sound, because they were all looking at me. Even Ricci had stopped his pacing.
‘It’s the one I gave Mr James.’
Tabby knew at once what I was talking about, but I had to explain to Amos.
‘So what was it doing there?’ he said.
I’d thought my mind was as dark as it could be, but now a deeper blackness came over it and I pictured the good, painstaking man. Mr James had saved my life and I’d repaid him by having him murdered. He’d seemed not to be very interested in what I’d said to him, but he must have started making his own investigations and they’d led him to the Compass. The gang there would have made sure he never walked out of it. At some point, the pouch had fallen out of his pocket and the boy had gathered it up. I explained this to Amos as best I could and he said it wasn’t my fault, though I knew it was. He’d never known Mr James. I thought of the man running his fingers over the carving, his quiet pleasure in his work. He’d have hated the idea that anybody in his team was planning destruction. My plan that I might go to Mr James and get him to do something was destroyed. Surely he’d have been missed at his workplace. I wondered if he’d been reported missing and if the police were looking for him. If so, that might be a way of getting the police to investigate what had happened at the Compass, only there was no time for such an indirect way.
As my mind cleared enough to start thinking again, I decided that, in spite of the loss of Mr James, Tabby and I should still go to the building site, because everything so far had centred on it. Amos, meanwhile, had a decision to make, with two of his carriages ordered for minor lordly families who’d be attending the prorogation ceremony. In a couple of hours, he should be in his stable yard helping to prepare them. Did he cancel the bookings and explain to enraged clients that he feared something was going to happen, or let them go ahead with no warning of possible danger? It seemed a small thing compared to what we were facing, but letting down two influential clients on such an important day could finish his business. In the end, he decided to let them go ahead, on the grounds that the clients were not important enough to be anywhere near the Queen’s large party so would escape whatever was going to happen, if it did. I thought that in his heart Amos did not entirely believe that the attempt would happen, but was too loyal to say so. When it became clear that Tabby and I were determined to go to the parliamentary site, he said he’d meet us at the gates there at nine o’clock and we’d compare notes. He left as soon as it got light.
Soon after he left, I judged that servants would be stirring in the Disraeli household. I decided to take Ricci with me because he’d be more eloquent than I could be on the subject of pyroglycerine. He looked a pretty wild object, still in his creased and stained travelling clothes, his face white and drawn, and I don’t suppose I was very much better, though I combed my hair and slammed on a bonnet. I took us round to the tradesmen’s door, knowing nobody would answer the front door so early, and banged on it until it was opened by the boot boy with a patent leather shoe in one hand, looking angry and scared. He looked even more scared when I told him it was imperative that I should speak to Mr Disraeli at once and he should wake up the butler or housekeeper. He stood there stuttering protests, then tried to shut the door. I leaned my shoulder against it. He was only a small lad and went flying backwards. Ricci picked him up from the floor while I followed him in and shut the door behind us, keeping my back to it. The boy looked up at Ricci, who was still holding him, and let out a yell that brought a maid running, probably from the kitchen regions. She wasn’t much older than the boot boy and her eyes were still bleary with sleep. There were ash smears on her skirt and a smear of blacking on her cheek. I repeated to her my need to speak to Mr Disraeli, and the demand that she should wake the housekeeper. Showing some spirit, she said she’d call the police. I kept my back against the door. I heard a sudden yell from Ricci and curses in Italian. The boot boy had bitten him on the wrist and made a break for it, along the corridor and presumably back to the scullery. Ricci ran after him, goodness knows why, and must have fallen over something, because there was a noise of crashing metal and another yell. The maid opened her mouth and let out a scream that could probably be heard on the far side of Park Lane, then another. I let her scream because the noise was doing what I wanted. Doors opened two floors up, and a woman’s voice called down asking what was happening.
‘Thieves!’ the maid screamed.
Several pairs of feet came padding down the back stairs. A man in a shirt, breeches and bare feet appeared from along the corridor, followed closely by a young woman in corset and petticoats, her hair loose. They closed on me.
‘There’s one of them in the kitchen,’ the first maid gasped. The man ran in that direction and the maid in petticoats grabbed hold of my arm. I tried to tell her that it was all right, that I only wanted to speak to her master, but she clung like a burr and I didn’t struggle. She was still clinging to me when the housekeeper arrived, in dressing gown and slippers, but with her air of authority firmly in place. I’d seen her on a few visits to the house.
‘I’m Liberty Lane.’ It only occurred to me afterwards how the old name came back to me in anything like a fight. ‘We’ve met. I’ve dined here.’ I pushed my bonnet back with my free hand to let her see my face. It obviously was not reassuring. ‘I need to speak to Mr Disraeli most urgently.’
‘Mr Disraeli is going to be very occupied today. He is not receiving visitors.’ Then, in a less formal voice, ‘Besides, it’s five o’clock in the morning.’
Trying to keep my voice calm, I said it didn’t matter what the time was – he needed to hear what I had to tell him at once. Then a woman’s voice sounded from the next floor.
‘What is it? What’s going on?’
It was Disraeli’s wife, Mary Anne. For some reason, she’d never liked me.
‘It’s a Liberty Lane, ma’am. I’m attempting to explain to her that she can’t see Mr Disraeli.’
I called up desperately, ‘Please, please ask him to see me. It’s a matter of national emergency.’
‘We have those all the time. Now go away and …’ She broke off. From what I knew of Mary Anne, there was only one person in the world who could stop her talking, and my hopes rose. He couldn’t have failed to hear the noise from downstairs. For a minute, there was silence, then Mary Anne’s voice again, telling the housekeeper to come up and see her. The housekeeper glanced down ruefully at her slippers and dressing gown and went, leaving the maid still clinging to my arm. Ricci came back from the kitchen area, his whole face a question mark, with a cut over his left eye. Soon after that, an apparition appeared.
I doubt if Disraeli had ever visited the servants’ area of his house before. He, too, was wearing a dressing gown and slippers, but he looked as glamorous and exotic as a genie in a pantomime, the gown in what seemed to be red-and-gold antique damask, the slippers red velvet, embroidered with crests. His black hair was in fine disorder and his cheeks unshaven, dark stubble contributing to the severity of his frown.
‘Mrs Carmichael, is there a reason for this disturbance?’
‘The best of reasons. Something’s going to happen today, in a few hours. Please listen to us.’
He glanced at Ricci. I introduced him, adding simply that he was a student of chemistry from Turin. Disraeli stared at him, then at me, and made up his mind, still frowning. ‘Come with me.’
He led the way through the servants’ door into the hallway, then to a small salon. It was dim, with the blinds still down over the windows and yesterday’s roses shedding petals on the carpet. Without waiting to sit down, I told him everything, up to and including my belief that a foreman from the parliamentary site had also been murdered. Ricci described the theft of the pyroglycerine and his pursuit of it as effectively as he’d told it to me. Disraeli turned from him to me.
‘And it was your husband that brought it to this country?’
‘Yes.’
‘So where is he now?’
‘In their hands – if he’s still alive.’ It was the first time I’d said it out loud.
‘And the police wouldn’t listen to you?’
‘They listened, but they won’t do anything. There was a gentleman there from the Home Office, I think. He didn’t believe me.’
He walked to the window, tweaked at the side of one of the blinds and looked out. ‘If you’re right – if there’s even a strong possibility that you are right – then the sensible thing would be to call off today’s whole event and let it be known that Her Majesty has taken a chill.’
‘Yes.’ My heart pounded at the size of the decision, but mostly from relief.
‘But that won’t happen. I can tell you that in advance. The Queen is – well, if it were any other lady, I might say stubborn, but let’s say resolute. She totally refuses to believe that any of her subjects wishes to harm her. If all her ministers and MPs were to inform her that there was likely to be an assassin with the most powerful explosive in the world somewhere along the route or in the chamber and beg her not to attend, she’d insist on going ahead as planned. That’s a fact of the case, and there’s nothing I or anybody else in the kingdom can do about it.’
‘You could at least get them to search the Lords’ chamber and put a guard on the wharves where they bring in the stone.’
‘I’ll do what I can, but if the Home Office refuses to believe you, that’s a big weight against which to push. What did this gentleman in the police station look like?’
I described the man and he nodded. ‘Yes, I know him. He’s in the Home Office and pretty senior.’ Disraeli was usually so certain of his own powers that it was unsettling to see him so nearly at a loss. He repeated that he’d do what he could and would personally check the Lords’ chamber before it was opened to ticket holders at midday, but the place was so complex with all its carvings and Gothic ornaments that I knew it would take a large company of men to search it properly. He asked what I intended to do.
‘Get into the building site, at least. I want to know if anybody has missed Mr James and done anything about it.’
In case it would be more difficult to get inside the site on a day of such ceremonial activities, I asked him to write me a pass, for myself and two companions. Something had to be done with Ricci, so we might as well take him with us. Disraeli went upstairs for a pen and paper, and soon came down with a few lines in his authoritative handwriting. He warned me that it wouldn’t get us into the Lords for the ceremony. Duchesses had been battling for tickets for months past. It was enough, I said. It wasn’t anywhere near enough, but it was all I would get.