The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914
Read The Dark Palace--Murder and mystery in London, 1914 Online
Authors: R.N. Morris
Table of Contents
A Selection of Recent Titles by R.N. Morris
The Silas Quinn Series
SUMMON UP THE BLOOD *
THE MANNEQUIN HOUSE *
THE DARK PALACE *
THE GENTLE AXE
A VENGEFUL LONGING
A RAZOR WRAPPED IN SILK
THE CLEANSING FLAMES
*
available from Severn House
A Silas Quinn Mystery
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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. â (A Silas Quinn mystery; 3)
1. Quinn, Silas (Fictitious character)âFiction.
2. Assault and batteryâEnglandâLondonâFiction.
3. London (England)âHistoryâ1800-1950âFiction.
4. Motion picture industryâFiction. 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.
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).
Love
ONE
T
he 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.
P
eregrine 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 â¦
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.
