Ruler of the Night, Page 3

  “The wall,” I said. “Something banged against it.”

  Father leaned forward. Even in the meager lamplight, I could see that for a change, his eyes showed interest rather than despair.

  The next thump was so strong that the partition trembled.

  Now there were several loud thumps in a row, followed by a muffled shout. All at once, the vibrations seemed to come from the side of the compartment instead of the wall, many of them, loud and rapid.

  Abruptly the stars and the half-moon disappeared as we entered a tunnel. The enclosure amplified the roar of the engine and the fierce clatter of the wheels while the thumps and the shouts in the next compartment became silent.

  As the train rocketed from the tunnel, its noise diminished. A dark liquid covered the area of the window that wasn’t open, rippling in the wind created by the train’s rush.

  “It must have started to rain,” Father said. “Drops of it flew in. I feel them on my face.”

  “But before we entered the tunnel, I could see the sky, and it was clear,” I told him. “I don’t understand how clouds could so suddenly have overtaken us.”

  “Then why did I feel rain strike my face?”

  Father wiped the cheek that was near the open window. He peered down at his hand.

  “Emily,” he said. His tone chilled me as he showed me the dark liquid on his fingers. He seemed to fear that he was suffering an opium delusion.

  “It’s real, Father. Turn your face toward the light.”

  When he exposed that section of his face, I shivered. His cheek was covered with the same dark liquid that smeared the window, and there wasn’t any question that it was blood.

  Lester Aldridge had a cough. By itself, that wasn’t remarkable. After an unusually cold, snowy winter, many people had coughs, but Aldridge was a train guard, and his employment put a different perspective on the condition of his health. He’d noticed that many train guards developed coughs, and his wife had a theory that being constantly exposed to the smoke and cinders from locomotives affected his lungs the way soot in a chimney affected a sweep’s lungs—and no one had ever met a chimney sweep who didn’t have a cough.

  As the nine o’clock from Euston pulled into its first stop, Aldridge raised his fist to his mouth, coughed yet again, and turned the wheel on the brake van at the rear of the train. Because none of the carriages had a braking system, one of Aldridge’s jobs was to bring the train to a halt.

  He jumped down to the platform and ran along it, using his key to unlock all the compartments. In the event of a collision or a derailment, that task was essential. Otherwise, the passengers would be trapped amid the chaos of the wreckage.

  He heard shouts ahead but decided not to attend to them until he came closer. Right now he needed to keep the train on its strict schedule. Quickly, he unlocked the freight carriage. That was easy. There was only one door, in the middle.

  He hurried to the third-class carriages, but ahead, the shouts grew louder, a woman demanding, “Guard! Guard!” So he kept rushing forward.

  People on the platform gathered to learn the cause of the commotion. Aldridge made his way through them and found a blue-eyed young woman at an open window, her attractive features distorted with alarm. He remembered when she and a small elderly man had boarded the compartment at Euston Station. Considering the trousers that extended below the hem of the young lady’s hoopless skirt, Aldridge was surprised that they could afford first-class tickets; they most likely belonged in a third-class carriage.

  “Let us out!” she insisted.

  After another cough, Aldridge inserted his key into the door. “Is there a problem, miss?”

  “My father has blood on his face!”

  “Blood?” someone in the crowd exclaimed. “Where?”

  “Did your father have an accident, miss?” Aldridge inquired in distress, hurrying to open the door. “Did he somehow cut himself?” Even as Aldridge asked the question, he couldn’t think of anything in the compartment that was sharp enough to cause an injury.

  “The window!” the young woman told him, helping the small elderly man hurry from the compartment. The lamps on the platform revealed the blood covering one side of his face.

  “My God!” a man said, lurching back.

  “Did something crash against the window, miss?” Aldridge asked, trying not to appear as agitated as he suddenly felt. He knew that ruffians sometimes threw rocks at passing trains, and on rare occasions, birds flew against the windows, breaking the glass.

  “No. No. The window was open.”

  “Let us out!” the passengers in the second-class carriages were yelling.

  A platform guard rushed to Aldridge. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know yet,” Aldridge said. He suppressed another cough and acted as if he were in control of the situation. “Unlock the other doors. Let the other passengers out.”

  Returning his attention to the young woman, Aldridge said, “A station guard will bring medical help. What happened?”

  “Blood came through the window.”

  “Blood through the window?” someone in the crowd repeated in horror.

  “Open the next compartment,” the elderly man said. The crimson that dripped from his face made him look so grotesque that the crowd stepped even farther back.

  “But what does the next compartment have to do with—” Aldridge started to ask.

  “Listen to my father,” the young woman instructed. “Unlock the next compartment.”

  Suddenly in motion, Aldridge unlocked and opened the next door. He frowned when the faint light from the single lamp showed that the compartment was empty.

  “But passengers were definitely here,” Aldridge insisted. “I remember one of them spoke to me before I locked the door. Then a second passenger boarded at the last minute. Where did they go?”

  The woman’s father squeezed next to him and peered inside. “The floor mat is in disarray,” he noted. “So are the cushions.”

  Aldridge started to climb inside.

  “No, not that way,” the little man objected. “Quickly. Come with me.”

  Confused, Aldridge felt the woman in the bloomer skirt tug his arm. Her authority was such that he couldn’t resist following her father into the compartment they had occupied.

  “The door on the opposite side,” the man said. “See the part of the window that isn’t open? See the blood on it? Unlock that door.”

  “But it’s dark on that side of the tracks. We won’t see anything out there.”

  Trying not to brush against the young woman, Aldridge made his way outside and grabbed a lantern that hung on an iron post.

  Again, he maneuvered around the woman. As the little man sat sideways on cushions, Aldridge reentered the compartment and gave him the lantern. Then Aldridge removed his key from his uniform, shoved his arm between the brass bars at the open window, twisted his hand down, and managed to unlock the far door.

  He felt relieved to step down onto the gravel and have sufficient space not to bump into the woman. She and her father descended behind him and stood between two sets of tracks, one on which their train had arrived and another set for trains heading in the opposite direction.

  “Good Lord,” Aldridge said when he raised the lantern toward the exterior of the next compartment.

  The iron step below the door was covered with blood. So was a wheel between that compartment and the one from which he’d just descended. The side of the latter compartment was spattered with blood, as was the closed portion of the window.

  “What in heaven’s name…”

  “Unlock this door,” the woman’s father said.

  By now, Aldridge was so accustomed to receiving commands from this strange pair that he automatically obeyed. But when he put the key into the lock, he didn’t need to do anything. At his touch, the door swung open.

  “It isn’t secured,” he said. “But I know all the doors on this side were locked. I did it myself.”

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sp; “The latch has been broken,” the woman said, pointing.

  Aldridge brought the lamp closer. Not only was the latch broken but the interior of the door showed severe damage to its polished mahogany—or, rather, what had once been polished mahogany; much of the battered wood was now covered with blood, as were the upended cushions and the twisted mat. Even the ceiling was spattered with crimson.

  Aldridge coughed and raised a boot toward the metal step, intending to look inside.

  “No!” the little man warned. “You’ll disturb the blood on the step. You mustn’t touch anything until the police arrive. Give the lantern to my daughter, and lift me under my chest and legs. Put me inside so I can look around without standing on anything.”

  Again the authority of this strange couple was such that Aldridge obeyed, pleased that the little man weighed almost nothing.

  “All I see is a hat and a blood-covered umbrella,” the man said, his voice sounding muffled beyond the compartment’s open door. “Maybe the umbrella was used as a weapon.”

  “There isn’t a leather case?” Aldridge asked, continuing to hold him above the floor in there. “I remember the first passenger carried both a document case and an umbrella.”

  “Only the hat and the umbrella. No, wait—I see something under this seat. Tilt me down closer.” The little man hovered over the floor and peered under the seat. “I’m wrong,” he said. “It’s nothing.”

  “Your cough sounds persistent,” the young woman told Aldridge.

  “From the train smoke, miss.”

  “Boil water in a pot. Add a chunk of pine resin. Inhale the steam,” she advised. “The vapor from the pine resin will open your airways.”

  “You know about medicine?” Aldridge asked. His chest began to feel the effort of holding up the woman’s father.

  “A doctor is teaching me. Your lungs will feel better for a time, but they won’t improve if you continue to be exposed to the smoke.”

  “What can I do, miss? With four children and a wife, I need the work.”

  “Perhaps a mask would help when you’re alone at the back of the train.”

  “You’re kind to think of me, miss.”

  Suspended within the compartment’s interior, her father said, “There doesn’t appear to be anything else inside. You may set me down now, thank you.”

  Aldridge’s chest continued to ache even after he returned the little man’s boots to the gravel. “Nothing like this has ever happened on a train before. I don’t know what to do.”

  The locomotive hissed. A fierce whistle sounded.

  Aldridge quickly closed the compartment’s door but couldn’t lock it, so damaged was the latch. At least it stayed shut. “I’ll summon the constable at the station. He’ll try to make sense of what happened.”

  “Just be certain the constable doesn’t enter that compartment and disturb anything,” the young woman insisted. “Send a telegram to Detective Inspector Ryan at Scotland Yard. Tell him that Miss De Quincey and her father are here. He’ll come at once.”

  The train’s whistle blew again.

  “It doesn’t matter how swiftly the inspector arrives,” Aldridge told her. “The train will be gone.”

  “What?”

  “We’re behind schedule.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “The train has to depart immediately and try to gain the time it lost.”

  “But someone was attacked here!” the woman said.

  “There’s no choice. Railway time is relentless. Nothing can interfere with the schedule. If one train falters, the rest of the system falters also. Everything comes to a halt.”

  “Uncouple the carriage and leave it here for Inspector Ryan to examine,” she told him firmly.

  “Impossible! This station doesn’t have a siding on which to shunt the carriage. We need to reach Manchester for that. This carriage can’t be brought back here until noon tomorrow.”

  The train’s whistle shrieked again, this time longer.

  Aldridge hurried to climb into the compartment that the little man and his daughter had occupied. “You’d better get aboard.”

  “How far behind us is the tunnel?” the woman asked.

  “The tunnel? A quarter of a mile. Why do you wish to know?”

  “The attack happened when the train passed through it.” She turned to her companion. “You know what we need to do, Father.”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m sorry about your books.”

  “As am I,” her father said.

  “Give me your lantern, please,” the woman told Aldridge.

  “But—”

  She took it from him and started along the tracks.

  “Wait!” Aldridge demanded. “What are you doing?”

  “The victim might still be alive!” she called back. “I might be able to help him! Perhaps I can stop the bleeding!”

  “But it isn’t safe out here!”

  “Send guards as quickly as you can!” she urged.

  Aldridge watched her run along the tracks, her elderly father managing to stay with her. The light from the lantern swayed in the darkness, becoming smaller. Then the train’s whistle was even more insistent, and Aldridge rushed to obey it.

  The cold air stung De Quincey’s cheeks.

  “Father, I truly meant what I said about the loss of your books,” Emily told him as they hurried along the shadowy tracks. “I understand the sacrifice you’re making.”

  “The sacrifice was made a long time ago, Emily. Finally I realize how much I deceived myself.”

  Behind them, the train made rapid chugging sounds. The connections between carriages clanged. Wheels scraped. Peering over his shoulder as he hurried, De Quincey saw the red lanterns at the end of the brake van recede into the night. Then all that remained were the distant lamps on the platform and the shadows of the countryside.

  “Even if I reached Grasmere in time, how could I possibly stop the landlord from auctioning my books? I’m forced to admit that they were doomed the moment I locked the door on them.”

  Gravel crunched under their rapid footsteps.

  “I see the tunnel,” Emily said, raising the lantern.

  The looming, dark entrance made her stop.

  “Can you hear me?” De Quincey yelled into the tunnel. His words reverberated in the blackness.

  “We’ve come to help you!” Emily shouted.

  But the only sound was a rumbling echo.

  “Maybe he’s too weak to answer us,” Emily said. “God grant that we’re not too late.”

  She gripped De Quincey’s hand. They stepped into the void.

  Instantly, the air became colder and heavier. They heard the echo of their footsteps and the sound of water dripping from the ceiling.

  Emily aimed the lantern between the two sets of tracks, but the light wasn’t powerful enough to chase the darkness from the widely spaced, curved walls.

  “The abyss of an opium nightmare,” De Quincey said.

  “Perhaps you should have remained at the station. Father, do you feel strong enough to continue?”

  “What this makes me feel is…”

  “Yes?” Emily asked.

  “…alive.”

  The adrenaline of having a purpose suppressed the weariness of De Quincey’s sixty-nine years, stifling decades of regret for the snare in which he’d allowed opium to entrap him. His habit of walking as much as fifteen miles each day to subdue his craving, his compulsive midnight pacing that Lord Palmerston complained about, gave his legs the strength to keep up with his daughter.

  “Ahead.” De Quincey pointed. “There’s something on the gravel.”

  The lantern revealed a dark shape lying between the two sets of tracks.

  Emily rushed forward but then stopped abruptly.

  Even if the victim hadn’t been motionless in the way that only corpses can be, clearly the man was beyond help. His neck had been slashed. His forehead was pulped. One of his legs was almost severed.

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nbsp; “Oh,” Emily murmured.

  She set the lantern down and dropped to her knees at the edge of the considerable blood that surrounded the body. After a moment’s hesitation, she reached over and touched one of the man’s wrists, searching for a pulse.

  She shook her head despondently.

  “In December, I believed I’d seen the worst that I would ever encounter,” she said. “After what happened in February, I became even more certain. But now…” She sighed. “God help this man—because there’s no way I can.”

  De Quincey tried not to inhale the coppery odor from the blood.

  “I hope you don’t think this is murder as a fine art,” Emily said.

  “Aristotle would be the judge of that, not me. Pity and terror—those are the great philosopher’s requirements.”

  De Quincey helped his daughter to stand. “Without question, what was done to this man produces terror.” He turned Emily away from the corpse. “But what about pity?”

  “Father, I know what you’re doing.”

  “Merely trying to create a reality in your mind that’s greater than what lies behind us.”

  “Thank you.”

  “The helplessness that this man felt, trapped in a locked cell on a speeding projectile, is something we all feel every time we step into a train, and now the vileness of the human imagination prompted someone to commit murder in one of those locked compartments. Will there come a time when the world moves so fast that there’ll be no place in which we’re not afraid? Yes, I pity this man.” De Quincey’s voice dropped. “I pity us all.”

  They faced the far-away curved entrance to the tunnel. The moonlight beyond it provided a pale contrast to the dense blackness around them.

  “You shivered. Are you cold, Father?”

  “You shivered also,” he told her.

  “But we can’t leave,” Emily said, the tunnel echoing. “Not until station guards arrive to make certain that everything remains the way we found it. Sean will want to have all the details preserved.”

  “Do you see the lights of the station?”

  “No, Father. It’s too far away.”

  “Do you see the outlines of guards hurrying toward us?”

  “No, I don’t see them either,” Emily replied. “What do you suppose is taking them so long?”