Web of Discord Page 4

  The great aristocrat lumbered to his feet. His bald head shone in the bright March light streaming through the windows from St James’s Park. He began to pull on a pair of stout leather gloves, but suddenly stopped, and looked speculatively at Napier.

  ‘Was there nothing going forward in the Baltic? This Meshed business could be a sign that Russia’s on the move in an old and unwelcome direction, but in that case, I’d expect all parts of that great body politic to move at once.’

  ‘I’ve heard nothing untoward so far, sir. Nothing in the way of troop movements, at least. But we have a man in Vilna who reported only last week that the Russian Government has been setting up some kind of secret establishment in the pine forest near the coastline of their province of Lithuania. Some kind of experimental weapons station, he says.’

  ‘Ah! Interesting. And who do you suppose would feel threatened by that, Napier?’

  ‘The German Empire, sir. The land they call Lithuania is perilously close to the East Prussian wilderness around Königsberg. All the more reason, I suppose, to hope that Goldsmith has invited some of our better class of Prussian to Arlington Street. Meanwhile, I’ll ensure that we continue to keep a wary eye on these places.’

  ‘Do so. You’ll be accounted wise. The Caspian and the Baltic – both more or less inland seas, both firmly in the skirts of Holy Russia, which has been cautiously slithering down the Baltic coast for years – there are sinister possibilities in both areas. We live in interesting times, Napier.’

  ‘We do, sir. Thank you very much for calling on me. I’ll follow your advice, and ask Sir Abraham Goldsmith to invite Captain Andropov to that exotic house of his in Arlington Street. For a merchant banker, I believe he’s very accommodating.’

  ‘He is – so make sure that you are invited, as well! Get the Russians into a corner, where they can’t wriggle away from a bit of clever questioning. But don’t angle an invitation for me, if you please – I’m going down to Hatfield for a week or two, and there, Napier, I intend to stay. Meanwhile, the best of luck to you!’

  When Lord Salisbury had gone, Sir Charles Napier stood at one of the windows of his spacious office, looking down on to St James’s Park. Only a few weeks had passed since a most hideous conspiracy, centred in Germany, had been exposed, and its proponents utterly crushed. Now, it would seem, it was the turn of the great Empire of Russia to muddy the waters. Any move by Russia into Afghanistan could only be aimed at violation of the Indian borders. Salisbury had counselled caution, but he knew as well as Napier that any attack on India from that quarter would lead to war.

  Those agents – ‘correspondents’, as they called themselves – were very difficult to control or contact. They were independent operators, well paid, but with a genuine regard for Britain. Both Abu Daria and Piotr Casimir had sent their reports via telegraph from Petrovosk. What about the man in Vilna, Jacob Kroll? He, too, had sent a telegraphic message. It had been relayed from Vilna via Königsberg.

  Cables…. A magical web of global communication, one of the glories of the nineteenth century! But that great electrical wonder, apparently, had its dangerous weaknesses. Earlier that year he had been visited by a man called Dangerfield, one of the directors of the Eastern Telegraph Company, who had suspected that all was not well with the cables coming into Britain at Porthcurno, on the Cornish coast.

  Napier moved uneasily. Was it any longer a prudent thing to trust to cabled messages? They came in the anonymity of code, so that one couldn’t say, for instance, ‘Ah! Abu Daria’s handwriting gets no better!’ It would as well to check by other means that the three agents remained free from harm.

  Killer Kitely crouched beside the window in the unfurnished room and listened to the shouts and curses of the mob in the narrow street outside. What light there was glinted on the shards of glass on the bare wooden floor. One piece of brick had drawn blood just below his left eye.

  Curse it! Curse them! Why had he turned round when that cringing skivvy of a butler had appeared on the scene? They’d got that cocky little jackanapes Box on the trail, and he was there, outside, in East Dock Street with a pack of bobbies and a gin-sodden mob from the alehouses and the rows of flea-ridden brick cottages.

  What was that? A vibrant groan from outside in the street – crash! They were trying to break the front door down. Well, it was a very special front door, lined with sheets of iron. He’d quit this cursed place as soon as he was ready. It had been worth it. A hundred pounds in gold, the gaffer had given him.

  Someone was shouting. Shouting through a megaphone. What was he saying?

  ‘Kitely! This is Detective Inspector Box of Scotland Yard. Come out, with your hands above your head. We’ll give you five minutes only!’

  What’s that? A cheer? A cheer for Box from those half-starved, consumptive labourers and dockers? What had that busy little bantam ever done for them, or for their thin wives and barefoot children? But they were all after his blood, curse them, just because he’d blasted their favourite toff to kingdom come. Well, before he made himself scarce, perhaps they’d like a dose of the same medicine….

  Box, standing with Sergeant Knollys among a knot of uniformed policeman on the opposite side of East Dock Street, looked critically at the blank windows of the mean house where Killer Kitely lay hidden. This row of houses down near Shadwell Basin contained Joseph Kitely’s lair. Box had ringed the whole side of the street with police, so that all normal exits were covered. But there was more to this warren of derelict houses than met the eye. He turned to a stolid, bearded man of thirty or so who was standing motionless beside him, surveying Kitely’s lair through field-glasses.

  ‘I don’t like the feel of this, Sergeant Porter,’ said Box. ‘Kitely’s taking too much time to come out. He’s up to something. I know all about these houses. They’re joined by tunnels through the cellars, and they go right down to the docks. I want you to go now, Sergeant, to Old Field Court. There are gratings there, in the area of number six. Take Sergeant Knollys here with you. See if you can find Sergeant Ruskin – he’s here, somewhere – and tell him to go with four constables to Connaught Lane, just past Samuelson’s warehouses. There’s a tunnel entrance there. Kitely might emerge through either of those exits.’

  Sergeant Porter saluted, and he and Knollys disappeared down an alley. There was no point in waiting any longer, thought Box. It was time to storm Kitely’s citadel. He put the megaphone to his lips.

  ‘Joseph Kitely—’

  His words were immediately drowned by a deafening report that echoed along the narrow street. A bright flash of flame lit up one of the shattered ground-floor windows of the besieged house. At the same time one of the bystanders screamed and spun grotesquely off the pavement into the carriageway. Kitely had fired into the crowd from his lair.

  In the beleaguered house, Killer Kitely crawled across the floor of the bare room and out into the passage. Best to leave the double-barrelled shotgun behind him. He stood up, and tiptoed through the dust and debris into the dim rear quarters of the house. There was a strong smell of escaping gas, and a menacing hissing sound coming from the back scullery. Time to go.

  In a dark corner of the pantry was a trap door, under which a ladder led down to a tunnel that would take him into the area of a house in Old Field Court. Box and his clodhoppers would be left laying siege to an empty house. Curse this gas! They’d hear him coughing. He seized the handle of the trap door, and pulled.

  The trap door remained firmly shut. Kitely rattled the handle in fury, and felt the rigid resistance of bolts that had been shot closed under the trap. Someone had cut off his way of escape. Had the police got down there, too? Coughing and wheezing, Killer Kitely stumbled into the dark kitchen. There would be a hatchet there—

  Kitely saw the hissing slow-match when it was too late to prevent it igniting the marine flare to which it had been attached.

  Outside in East Dock Street it had started to rain. The crowd was now screaming with rage. A further volley of bricks
and stones showered into the empty house, and the clatter of uprooted cobbles turned to thunder as they rolled down the steep slate roof. Thank goodness that Mackharness had assembled such a large force of men to accompany him on his mission! It was time to curb the enthusiasm of the mob, and Old Growler’s men could do that task admirably. He’d make one last attempt to make Kitely see sense. He cupped his hands, and shouted across the street.

  ‘Joseph Kitely—’

  As though in reply, the house in East Dock Street erupted in a ball of orange flame. Two men on the roof shrieked, and slithered down into the road. The crowd cried out in alarm and pushed desperately back away from the inferno. The windows of the house became six bright orange rectangles darting out wicked tongues of flame.

  Box heard footsteps behind him, and saw that Knollys had returned. Both men were silent for a moment, watching the burning house. A number of policemen, their serge uniforms smoking, emerged from the alley beside the houses, dragging a burning bundle between them. The crowd, which had fallen silent, began to disperse.

  ‘Sir,’ said Sergeant Knollys, ‘you were right about Connaught Lane. Sergeant Ruskin found the tunnel opening you mentioned. It’s got a battered iron gate covering it. He and his men had staked it out. I was present when the gate was pushed open from inside. A man’s face peered out for a moment – a pale, cadaverous face it was – and then drew back into the tunnel. I thought you’d want to come back and take a look, sir.’

  ‘I do, Sergeant Knollys, because whoever it was, it wasn’t our friend Kitely. Let’s start walking. I’ll be very interested to see who comes out of that tunnel.’

  As Box and Knollys walked away from East Dock Street, some of the policemen upended a rainwater butt on to the wet pavement, and doused the smouldering remains of Killer Kitely.

  It was now late in the afternoon, and the March sky was darkening. Box and Knollys threaded their way through a maze of bleak, wet streets rising in huddled squalor from the bustling docks bordering the Thames.

  As they turned the corner from Green’s Basin, the stocky, bearded figure of Sergeant Porter appeared beside them as though by magic. He checked them with a warning hand, and jerked his head towards Connaught Lane. They shrank back against the blank wall of a warehouse and looked out across the half-demolished site towards the concealed tunnel entrance. There was nobody in sight.

  ‘Sergeant Ruskin’s done well,’ Box whispered.

  ‘He has, sir. There’s six of them there, all watching that tunnel. They – look, sir!’

  The battered iron gate closing the tunnel had been cautiously pushed aside, and a figure was emerging. It was a man in a long black overcoat, with a peaked cap pulled well down over his eyes. It was an incongruous sight to see anyone emerging from what Box knew to be a disused ventilation shaft belonging to a long-replaced deep sewer.

  ‘Nimble enough, but not in the first flush of youth,’ muttered Box. ‘Five foot ten or thereabouts. I wonder who he is? Are you trained in surveillance, Sergeant Porter? If you’re not, tell me honestly.’

  ‘I am trained, sir. I can tail that cove with the best of them.’

  ‘Very well. He’s moving off down the lane towards the river. Split from me now, Sergeant, but don’t lose sight of Sergeant Knollys and me. Remember the golden rules: no footfall, no shadows, move only when your quarry’s just out of sight.’

  The man walked swiftly through the lanes and alleys of the docklands, bearing steadily downhill towards the river. After ten minutes or so, pursuers and pursued emerged on to the dockside. The sky above the river had grown surly and threatening, and a few gas lanterns were flaring along the quays, where several cargo ships were moored.

  ‘St Thomas’s Stairs,’ Box muttered. ‘What’s he up to? Is he going to cross the river? Come on, we’ll lose him if we’re not careful!’

  Box broke cover, and the two sergeants followed him. The river was alive with ships and boats of all kinds. Winking mast lights crossed and recrossed each other in the growing gloom. Their quarry had disappeared under a cast-iron arch, and was clattering down a flight of steps. Evidently the man suddenly realized that he was being pursued, for he all but jumped into a steam launch that had evidently been waiting with steam up for his arrival.

  Box stood on the end of the pier, watching the launch as it moved rapidly into mid-stream, where it was lost among the maze of shipping. It was now raining heavily, but Box seemed not to notice. Sergeant Porter shaded his eyes with his hand, and tried to follow the progress of the launch.

  ‘No identity marks, sir,’ he said. ‘It was a grimy little craft, but a swift one for all that. Well, we’ve lost him. I don’t suppose we’ll ever know who he was.’

  ‘Maybe not, Sergeant Porter,’ said Box, ‘but at least we can assume that he was involved in that gruesome funeral pyre back at East Dock Street. I reckon he was the man who hired Kitely, and then made sure that he couldn’t escape from his lair. So we know something about our cadaverous friend. Perhaps a bit of gentle probing in certain quarters will reveal a bit more. Time will tell.’

  3

  Why Lady Courteline Screamed

  The gas lamps were glowing in Edgerton Square when Box called at Sir John Courteline’s house early that evening. As he stepped over the threshold, he fancied that the hallway still echoed to the screams of the frantic widow, although in reality it was enveloped in a brooding calm.

  Lady Courteline received Box in her private sitting-room on the first floor. She lay on a sofa drawn up to the fireplace, where a low fire was burning. An open door in the room led into a kind of miniature study, where, Box had been informed, the family’s physician was waiting in case he was needed.

  ‘No, Mr Box,’ Lady Courteline was saying, ‘I was not present when my husband was shot. It was, I think, just before twelve o’clock – some minutes before – and I was here upstairs, talking to my daughter Olga. My husband was downstairs in his study. He said he was going to smoke a cigar.’

  Box looked gravely at the handsome, dark-haired woman reclining on the sofa. Her quiet voice held the faintest hint of a foreign accent. Whatever her earlier emotional state, she had regained her natural poise, and her delivery, though low, was firm in tone. But she looked like a woman completely crushed by sorrow, and the dark shadows beneath her haunted eyes told Box of almost unendurable pain.

  ‘Was Sir John about to go out, Lady Courteline? Although he’d not yet put on a topcoat, he seemed dressed for a foray out of doors.’

  ‘Yes, he was on his way out to one of his numerous daily engagements. It was his habit to smoke a cigar in the study before leaving. He smoked those thin, dark little things that don’t last for hours – what do you call them?’

  ‘Cheroots.’

  ‘Yes, that’s right. My husband, Mr Box, was a public figure: I may say, a national figure. He had enormous philanthropic interests, and was fiercely concerned for the welfare of the poor, as these demonstrations outside his house today will have shown you. As to the manner of his death, I am at a loss to account for it. I cannot help you in the least. Sir John was universally esteemed.’

  ‘Do you by any chance know, ma’am, where your husband was going today?’

  ‘What? No. I’ve no idea. My husband is frequently away from the house in the afternoons. At one time, years ago, he’d tell me where he was going, but with the passing of the years we both felt that it was a useless courtesy. If there were any grand evening engagements, then, of course, I would accompany him. But these daytime things – no.’

  The widowed woman seemed to lose sight of Box for a moment. He could see her anxious eyes fill with vacancy as her mind moved away somewhere far from Edgerton Square. Box felt suddenly uneasy. If Sir John Courteline had been due at a public function somewhere that afternoon, why had no one connected with that function responded to his very public death?

  ‘I will have been left very comfortably off,’ said Lady Courteline, ‘and Olga, too. Perhaps I shall return to Odessa….’ She was spea
king to herself, in her inner world, not to Box. She caught sight of him waiting attentively for her to speak, and burst back into the present with a start. She looked at Box for a moment as though she could not recognize him.

  ‘My husband, Mr Box,’ she said, ‘belonged to many clubs and societies – debating clubs, dining clubs, coteries of like-minded men who would meet together for mutual congratulation and bonhomie. Like all men, he revelled in secret societies and exclusive gatherings. Sir John rather liked being inscrutable over these activities of his, and we pretended to be overawed. He was very much in the world, was my husband.’

  Lady Courteline suddenly sat up on the sofa. She bit her lip in vexation. Box saw a guarded expression come to her face, and her voice, which had started to rise imperiously, subsided to what he imagined was its usual refined, quiet tone.

  ‘I think that is all I can tell you, Inspector Box. You may wish to talk with my daughter Olga, who is downstairs. It remains for me to thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for your success in running to earth the foul assassin of my dear husband.’

  There was an unmistakable tone of dismissal. Box rose from his chair. At the door he turned, and asked one final question.

  ‘Lady Courteline, did you or your husband ever know a Dr Nikolai Ivanovich Karenin?’

  Lady Courteline’s body convulsed, and she collapsed on to the sofa, crying out, as though in pain, ‘Karenin? No! I recollect no such name!’ The physician appeared immediately from the adjoining room. He took the widow’s hand in his, and shook his head as a sign to Box that his interview should go no further. Box stepped out on to the landing, and the doctor firmly closed the door of Lady Courteline’s room.