Chapter 37

We stepped out to the yard now filled with sunlight. Pincher was waiting, hitched to the gig. The Superintendent started to climb into the carriage. A shot rang out. A bullet grazed Pincher’s withers, and the horse reared up. The Superintendent fell to the ground. A second shot sounded in the air. A bullet lodged in the driver’s seat of the gig. Then someone fired a third shot.

I grabbed the reins of the frightened horse and brought him under control. The Superintendent picked himself out of the mud, while the guard cowered against the wall of the stable. And in the center of the gate, impeccably attired, smoking gun in hand, stood Sir Percy Wesley, the Queen’s Minister of Public Safety. His two burly companions stood across the street with their hands thrust deep into the pockets of their coats.

“Superintendent, thank God you are uninjured. There has been an assassination attempt by conspirators. These plots grow like vermin in the filthy gin shops of Spitalfields. Fortunately, we heard of it and were able to get here in time. Our information is that your death was to be the signal for a general uprising in the slums.”

I unhitched Pincher from the gig and led the horse back to his stall, where the hostler could treat the bullet wound. Then I walked deliberately past the Queen’s Minister of Public Safety and looked on the street. There, face down in the middle of his wares, was the apple seller. A gun was lying among the fruit, a few inches from the right sleeve of his long coat. It seemed he had both of his hands tucked into his sleeves. I turned the dead man’s head and saw a small hole. One bullet had found its rest directly between his eyes.