Chapter 14 #3
“The victim.” Rennie rubbed his hands vigorously. “Why shoot this lady and let the princess be? It’s the royals these lunatics are after. Think of all the attacks on the queen. Did the gunman make a mistake?”
Julia looked down at the fair-haired Harriet. There is a resemblance. She wondered if Tennant had ever met Mrs. FitzGerald.
In the morning, Commissioner Mayne summoned Tennant and Sir Lionel to a meeting with the Fenian Department’s chief. Colonel Fielding looked pointedly at his watch. Sir Lionel Dermott was late.
“Let’s begin,” Sir Richard said. “Inspector?”
“I think the stolen French rifle all but settles the matter,” Tennant said. “We must consider that the shooter is Patrick McGrath, and his real target was Princess Louise, not Mrs. FitzGerald.”
“By God, I want action.” Sir Richard banged the conference table, rattling the French rifle lying in the middle. “It’s time the gloves came off.”
The door opened. “Apologies, gentleman.” Sir Lionel took his seat. “A cable from Karachi arrived at the Colonial Office. The message was sent there by mail steamer from Australia. Five days ago, an assailant in Sydney shot Prince Alfred in the back.”
The commissioner groaned. “Christ, Almighty. And the prince?”
“Expected to recover.”
“What else do we know about the attack?”
“The shooter is in police custody,” Dermott said. “His name is Henry O’Farrell, born in Dublin, and a suspected Fenian.”
“Worse and worse,” the commissioner muttered. “What in Hades was the prince doing in Australia?”
“His Royal Highness is on a round-the-world voyage,” Dermott said. “The HMS Galatea isn’t due back for several months.”
“It’s hard enough to protect the royals at home, damn it,” Colonel Fielding grumbled. “Never mind on the other side of the world.”
“And half the royal princesses are married to bloody Germans,” Sir Richard said. “Is the Prince of Wales under lock and key?”
“Yes. Bertie called it house arrest,” Dermott said. “But he’s agreed to remain at Marlborough House if only to avoid Princess Louise’s fate.”
“Which is?” Sir Richard asked.
“The queen ordered her back to Windsor. The remaining royal offspring in England are at the castle now.”
“Good,” Colonel Fielding said. “Safest place for them.”
“Bollocks, Fielding!” Sir Richard shouted. “No place is safe.”
“I agree,” Tennant said. “Lady Middlebury was murdered in Windsor Great Park.”
“The number of soldiers patrolling the castle will double,” Dermott said. “The commander has given the Home Office that assurance.”
“Good,” Sir Richard said. “London is the Yard’s responsibility. I want constables out in force in Irish neighborhoods. Inspector Tennant, see to it.”
Sir Lionel asked, “What intelligence do we have from the Fenian Department, Colonel? Anything at all, or have all your ‘eyes and ears’ gone blind and deaf?”
Fielding pushed back his seat; the leg caught on the carpet and fell with a thud. “You’re a smug bastard, Dermott.” The colonel stalked out and slammed the door.
“Dear me,” Lionel said, getting up and righting the chair.
“You are a smug bastard, Sir Lionel.” Sir Richard’s smile flickered. “But I had the same question.” He waved Tennant and Dermott out of his office. “You have my orders, Inspector. Carry on.”
Outside, Tennant asked Lionel, “Any word on Mrs. FitzGerald?”
“I came directly from the hospital. She’s holding her own, thank God. The surgeon’s assistant, Doctor Rennie, seems a sensible chap.”
“That’s a relief. Sir Godfrey struck me as a—”
“Pompous blowhard?” Dermott said. “I understand Doctor Lewis was there yesterday and returned in the morning.”
“And Major FitzGerald?”
“Bowled over, poor fellow. You’ll hear no more jokes from me.”
“Turning over a new leaf?”
“Well …” Dermott pulled on his gloves and drew his walking stick from under his arm. “At least until Harriet is out of the woods. As for the two heroines of the hour, Princess Louise and Lady Styles leave for Windsor this afternoon. The queen asked her to accompany the princess.”
“What about their escort to the castle?”
“A detachment of the Queen’s Household Guards. Now, I must run. I’m collecting Susan at her flat and taking her to the station to catch the royal train.”
“And I must crack the whip at Sir Richard’s command.”
“About this show of force in Irish neighborhoods … Useful?”
Tennant shrugged. “My guess? We’ll do more harm than good and learn nothing.”
Tennant and O’Malley took charge of the raids on the two Irish neighborhoods closest to the scene of the shooting. As for the others, Tennant relayed his recommendations to the divisional inspectors and was forced to rely on the common sense and restraint of sergeants he didn’t know.
Sergeant O’Malley and six constables headed to St. Giles while Tennant and a squad of coppers traveled to Kensington.
The inspector’s destination was one of London’s most squalid Irish rookeries: the collection of backcourt houses known as the Jennings Rents, located just beyond the gates of Kensington Palace.
The inspector shared his cab with a Kensington constable and a sergeant. Tennant rapped the cab’s roof, and the hackney slowed to a stop near “the Grandy,” the Marquis of Grandy public house on the High Street. A second cab carrying four other constables rolled up behind them.
Tennant and the young sergeant took a quick look behind the pub. Ramshackle wooden houses with rotting clapboards and missing roof tiles ringed the courtyard.
“Must be hell in the cold and wet,” the copper muttered. “The pigs on my uncle’s farm live better than this.”
“There’s a back door from the Grandy into the court, Sergeant. We’ll need to cover the exit.” They headed back to the waiting officers.
Tennant gathered them. “Before we go into the pub, remember. It’s information I want. Cracking heads and turning over tables is the surest way not to get it. Your sergeant agrees with me, I know.”
“Yes, sir,” he said.
Tennant assigned the sergeant and two coppers to the back-court to “grab any bolters.” He gestured to the others to follow him.
When the inspector and three uniformed constables walked through the front entrance, half the drinkers froze.
The others scrambled out the back door. Tennant delivered his message and then made his way to the building’s rear.
Two men sat with their backs against the Grandy’s rear wall. A third twisted and squirmed in the sergeant’s grip.
Tennant said, “Stop resisting, or the officer will apply his truncheon to your head. Which will it be?”
The man’s shoulders went slack. When the sergeant released him, he slid to a sitting position at the base of the wall and glared.
Tennant looked around the backcourt at the careworn women with soiled aprons knotted over tattered gray dresses, their faces as colorless as their clothing. They stared, looking up from basins, pots of peeled potatoes, and piles of washing. The inspector hoped his message might register with them.
“I am Detective Inspector Tennant, and I’ll tell you what I told them inside the Grandy.
The Yard is looking for two men. One is English, tall and thin, fair-haired, and with pale blue eyes.
The second is a Kildare man named Patrick McGrath, dark-haired and of middling height.
In his early forties. He served in the Crimea and has been to America.
I’m offering five pounds for useful information. No questions asked.”
No one spoke, but Tennant hadn’t expected them to inform before an audience.
“You know the bobbie on this beat. A quiet word to him, and he will pass it on to me.”
Tennant didn’t know it, but he had driven by the house where his quarry hid.
McGrath was a world away from the squalor of the Jennings Rents but closer than the inspector imagined, holed up in comfortable quarters.
He stretched out on a hay bed and eased off his new boots. The narrower toes pinched a bit.
McGrath waited for his “host” to return, knowing he’d worn out his welcome.
The man was desperate to get him out of his carriage house loft.
McGrath had reminded him that coppers would swarm the rail stations and ports at Dover and the south.
He’d head west to Bristol, where he had friends.
But McGrath had to wait until the storm blew over and proposed to hide in the last place on earth anyone would expect to find him.
His host’s first reaction had been, “You’re mad.” But McGrath saw the calculation in his eyes: the scheme might work, no matter how unlikely. He’d looked McGrath up and down and said, “Can you sound like something other than a bog-trotting Irishman?”
“Don’t get yer cob on, mon. Lived a few years in Liverpool,” he said in a Merseyside accent.
The man left, and McGrath waited. Then he heard the scrape of boots on the ladder’s rough wood, followed by the sounds of a second man who handed McGrath a sheet of paper. It was a letter addressed to the head groom and signed with a flourish.
“He’s given you an English-sounding name, Marcus York.” The man’s smile didn’t touch his pale blue eyes.
“How do I get there?”
“No worries, boy-o,” the thin man said. “I’m old mates with the head groom.” Then he dropped to his knees by a wooden crate, lifted the lid, and sighed. “Shame, that.”
McGrath said, “What is?”
“These.” He pulled out a rifle and fixed its bayonet. “They’re worth the better part of a hundred quid, but it’s too risky to flog the last lot now.”
After the men left, McGrath lit a Havana, a luxury he hadn’t indulged in since his time in the States.
He blew smoke ring after smoke ring, watching them rise, blue halos that wobbled and vanished as they drifted toward the ceiling.
McGrath thought through his final moves on a chessboard in his head.
The knight was nearing his last jump. As for the pawn, the newly christened Marcus York had an endgame in mind for him, too.
Susan heard the crunch of carriage wheels. A moment later, she opened the street door.