The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 Read online

  Table of Contents

  Cover

  A Selection of Recent Titles by R.N. Morris

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  Epigraph

  Part One: Love

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Part Two: Money

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Part Three: Death

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty-Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Chapter Fifty-Six

  A Selection of Recent Titles by R.N. Morris

  The Silas Quinn Series

  SUMMON UP THE BLOOD *

  THE MANNEQUIN HOUSE *

  THE DARK PALACE *

  The Porfiry Petrovich Series

  THE GENTLE AXE

  A VENGEFUL LONGING

  A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK

  THE CLEANSING FLAMES

  * available from Severn House

  THE DARK PALACE

  A Silas Quinn Mystery

  R.N. Morris

  This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which is was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicably copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  This first world edition published 2014

  in Great Britain and the USA by

  Crème de la Crime, an imprint of

  SEVERN HOUSE PUBLISHERS LTD of

  19 Cedar Road, Sutton, Surrey, England, SM2 5DA.

  eBook edition first published in 2014 by Severn House Digital

  an imprint of Severn House Publishers Limited

  Copyright © 2014 by R.N. Morris

  The right of R.N. Morris to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

  Morris, Roger, 1960

  The dark palace. – (A Silas Quinn mystery; 3)

  1. Quinn, Silas (Fictitious character)–Fiction.

  2. Assault and battery–England–London–Fiction.

  3. London (England)–History–1800-1950–Fiction.

  4. Motion picture industry–Fiction. 5. Detective and

  mystery stories.

  I. Title II. Series

  823.9'2-dc23

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-059-1

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78029-544-2

  ISBN-13: 978-1-78010-508-6 (ePub)

  Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to living persons is purely coincidental.

  This ebook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland.

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  My thanks to Andrew Martin and Piers Connor for their help with certain details of the London Underground of the period, and to Britta Osthaus for help checking the German. Any mistakes in either case are entirely mine.

  Thanks also to everyone at Severn House, especially Kate Lyall Grant and Sara Porter, my copy-editor, Claire Ritchie, and proofreader, Emma Grundy Haigh, and to my agent, Christopher Sinclair Stevenson.

  Love constitutes a great human interest, of course. Money has an appeal as strong or sometimes even stronger. Then there is death, horrid enough one might think, yet capable like the rest of being turned for the occasion into an unwilling pay box attendant.

  The Handbook of Kinematography

  Colin N. Bennett, F.C.S., and collaborators (London: Kinematograph Weekly, 1911).

  PART ONE

  Love

  ONE

  The darkness liberated him. He moved through it like a fish through the depths. It was his element.

  He was clad in black, a loose black hood over his head. He felt the cloth of the hood against his face. As if the darkness had formed itself into a soft membrane and drifted on to him.

  He smiled beneath the hood. A smile that no one would ever see.

  There was no darkness like the darkness in this place. It was leavened by a silver cast of moonlight from the high windows. But it was what he knew about this darkness that distinguished it. His knowledge of what it contained.

  And he was part of it now. He was at one with it. More than that, he was about to make off with its secrets, the source of its unique potency.

  He had a right to smile. He had earned it.

  He picked his way through a lattice of shadows, his arms held out as if to initiate an embrace. He had trained himself to move without reliance on sight. It was a perverse skill for one who lived by the visual to develop, but it served him well at moments like this. And there always would be moments like this. He had counted the steps earlier in the week, when the assistant he had bribed and flattered and cajoled had led him to the room where treasures he wanted would be stored.

  The door was a looming presence, a sentinel.

  His black-gloved hand flicked out to test the handle. Locked, as he knew it would be. He tensed a muscle in his hidden smile. He knew how little municipal workers were paid. It had not taken much to buy the privilege of handling the keys for long enough to make an imprint. Naturally, he had been ready with a perfectly innocent explanation. And the promise of fame and riches had been enough to quell any doubts the man might have had.

  That was all it had taken: to locate the vanity of a weak, overlooked man and exploit it. Every man had his vanity, which was only the same as saying every man had his price.

  The key resisted. He kept the pressure firm and constant, careful not to force it.

  Click!

  He looked behind him anxiously, a redundant gesture. He knew there was no other living soul in the
place at this time of night.

  And now, as he stepped into the room, he had the sense that the darkness here had been waiting for him. There seemed to be an eagerness contained in it.

  Of course, he was enough of a psychologist to know that these were his own feelings he was projecting on to it. But that was the thing about the darkness, the beauty of it. It was a fantastic receptacle of projections.

  He shivered. The room was cold, icily cold. But it was more than that. It was as if something had come out of the darkness and gripped him.

  For a moment, it seemed that he might lose his nerve.

  But then he remembered why he was doing this. And how far he had come, all he had been through, to get to this point. He reminded himself, too, of what would be the consequences of this act. Of everything that he stood to gain.

  He felt his hidden smile return.

  A fine layer of moonlight lay over everything, like a midnight frost. He could just about make out the grid of drawer-fronts that filled one wall of the room.

  The first one he chose was empty. Wisps of refrigerated vapour teased him. The next several he tried were the same. He had not reckoned on this; that he might make his raid on a night when the darkness had nothing to offer him.

  He opened and shut drawers with mounting panic, like a mad organist working the stops of a giant organ. The silence was shattered by the metallic squeaking and slamming.

  Finally he came to a drawer that resisted his first effort to open it. It took both hands and the weight of his shoulders to ease it open. It gave a screech of protest as it shifted on its mechanism. The released vapour rushed upwards as if desperate to make its escape.

  In the moonlight, the sheet that concealed the drawer’s contents appeared like a flow of mercury. He studied the mounds inside the drawer, the contours of the body beneath.

  His hand shook as he lifted the sheet.

  TWO

  Peregrine Alexander Launcelot Dunwich, Baron Dunwich of Medmenham, held open a copy of that morning’s Times. He lifted the pages of the broadsheet to block out the sunlight from the window, then settled back in the winged armchair to study the markets.

  Momentarily blinded by the direct glare of the sun, he perceived the shadowed paper as a charcoal negative of itself. It took his eye a moment to adapt, a moment of blankness.

  His mind, as it often did, resorted to a lascivious magic lantern show of remembered pleasures: a breast, a nipple, thighs parting, the exquisite curvature of the mons pubis topped with those plush scented curls, beneath which … the entrance to paradise! The phantom images provoked the physical responses associated with them. His lungs seemed to expand, as if filled with a volatile, intoxicating gas. His heart quickened. His mouth flooded with saliva at the thought of licking that questing nipple. His fingertips tingled as he imagined them delving into the gleaming moist cleft. He felt the pressure of a rigid erection tent his trousers and shook down the newspaper to hide his embarrassment.

  He did what any man in his position would do. He cleared his throat. And slyly glanced about to check that there was no servant there to witness his priapism.

  But why should he be ashamed of himself? He delighted in his virility. It amazed him to think that after all the cavortings of the previous night, he still had it in him to deliver a vigorous cockstand. It was a pity that Emily, or Amanda, or whatever the whore’s name had been, was not there to relieve him of it.

  He tried to focus on the market prices, to no avail. The rounded numerals brought to mind luscious female rotundity, while those consisting of straight lines reminded him of his own stiffened rod. Even if he said it himself, he had to be the most satyric man he knew. A veritable pagan. A goat of a man.

  But it was a devil of a job to concentrate. If he carried on at this rate, it was going to be hard going at the ministry this morning. Unless he resorted to the practice of his youth and took himself in hand in the lavatory of his club. It was simply a question of hygiene, nothing shameful about it at all. A man couldn’t be expected to keep his mind on his work if he had a heavy load of spunk to discharge. And with all the rumblings from Germany, not to mention the troubles in Ireland, he was going to need a clear head today and in the days ahead.

  That was why he had taken to associating with ladies of the night in the first place. He had sought out prostitutes because he believed that his inability to concentrate was putting his country at risk. Damn it all, it was his patriotic duty to frequent brothels. Of course, there were risks involved. The thought of contracting a vile disease horrified him. He knew too that he was laying himself open to the threat of blackmail. It wasn’t just money-grabbing whores that he had to worry about. A man in his position was especially vulnerable. If the enemies of the Empire had an inkling of his nocturnal activities, there was no doubt they would attempt to use it for their own nefarious purposes.

  And of course, it would hurt Virginia awfully if she ever found out.

  He could hear her now.

  Oh, Perry, how could you!

  This was the damned awkward thing about having to be in London while one’s wife remained in the country. One was driven to such measures. Having said that, he had to admit that even when they were living in the same house, they seldom slept in the same room, let alone the same bed. Virginia had made clear almost from the outset her distaste for all things animal, as she termed it. Certainly there was no question of it after the boy had come along. He was curiously grateful to her. He felt it relieved him of the obligation of trying.

  But she was no fool. A damned sensible woman, in fact. He wouldn’t have married her if she hadn’t been. And so, she had to know that he looked elsewhere for his gratification.

  At first he had meant it to be a single, solitary indulgence. Something that he could explain in retrospect, if it ever came out, as a lapse. One visit to one prostitute to get him through a particularly difficult patch. At the time, it was not simply the satisfaction of his physical urges that he had craved. Even more shaming was the terrible loneliness that came upon him in the middle of the night. The feeling that everything that made him what he was had been scraped out of him, leaving him empty, bereft, a weeping wreck in the darkest hours. Inexplicable, in the cold light of day. That he had been so weak as to hunger for the warmth of another human being. Humiliating.

  Once it had occurred to him as a possible solution, he had been unable to get the idea of it out of his mind.

  He had been confident that one discreet visit was all it would take to get the whole sordid fascination out of his system. His self-loathing and disgust would be such that he would never want to repeat the experience.

  Strangely – if he was honest with himself – it was the self-loathing and the disgust that drew him back. The knowledge that he was sinking as low as a man could, debasing himself, as well as betraying everything he held dear. Putting himself, his good name, his family, his reputation, his honour – not to mention his country’s security – in jeopardy. It was part of the attraction, part of the excitement.

  And so he indulged again. He was careful to spread himself thinly, to frequent different brothels and ask for different prostitutes, so as not to give any one woman power over him. But his appetites were such that before long he found himself going back to the same women. He became well known in that world. Naturally, he used an assumed name. But sooner or later there was bound to be someone who recognized him, if not as an individual, then at least as a type. The type that could be blackmailed.

  The simple truth was the more he used prostitutes the more he needed them.

  He began to wonder if this was the only true thing that could be said about him. Everything else – his family, his lineage, his position, his upbringing, his club, his role within the government – none of that meant anything. None of that was real. Or true. None of that was him.

  All that he was, his core, his truth, was the hot ache throbbing beneath his trousers.

  It felt a little wet in there. A small amount of
pre-ejaculate had leaked out from the tip of his penis. It would not take many strokes to have the whole joyous spend shoot hotly out.

  That was his truth: that moment of immense release. And there were times when he didn’t care who knew it. When he almost longed to be discovered naked in a moment of high engorgement and its messy aftermath. When he wanted the world to see him for who he really was.

  Dangerous thoughts. Dangerous thoughts for a senior official in the Admiralty, with access to state secrets.

  He looked up just in time to see one of the club’s servants enter the breakfast room. He arranged his newspaper carefully, but felt his erection wither anyhow.

  The man placed a silver tray of breakfast things on the table by his chair. Coffee and a soft-boiled egg, with toasted bread soldiers.

  Lord Dunwich noticed a small square package neatly wrapped in brown paper on the tray. ‘Thank you, Etherington. I say, what’s this?’

  ‘It was delivered for you this morning, My Lord.’

  ‘Was it, indeed?’ Lord Dunwich studied the address. The script was formal, calligraphic. It was not a hand he recognized. ‘Green ink? Who uses green ink?’

  ‘I cannot say, My Lord. Shall I pour the coffee, My Lord?’

  ‘Please do, Etherington, there’s a good fellow.’ Lord Dunwich frowned down at the package. The colour of the ink unnerved him. He noticed too that there was no postage attached. He was beginning to have a decidedly uneasy feeling about this package. Perhaps the moment he had so long dreaded had at last arrived. And yet it seemed the wrong size and shape to contain incriminating photographs. Besides, he would have known if anyone had ever taken photographs of him in flagrante delicto. He would have seen the flash gun discharge. ‘I say, Etherington. Did you see who delivered it?’

  ‘I did not, My Lord. I could ask Mr Cork, if you wish. He took delivery of it, I believe.’ The servant replaced the china coffee pot on the tray with delicate precision.

  ‘No need. All will be revealed when I open it, I’m sure. Thank you, Etherington.’ Lord Dunwich made his voice sound cheerier than he felt.