'Before you screamed?'
'Yes. I didn't give voice, sir, until I was at the garden gate. I was arunning too hard.'
Burton and Trounce looked at one another.
'Did he say anything else?' asked Burton, turning back to the girl.
'Nothing, sir.'
'Can you describe him for me?'
The girl gave a description that exactly matched the man Burton had just encountered in Marvel's Wood.
A few minutes later, the two men left the cottage. As he stepped out, Burton cast a glance back and saw the mother, Tilly Tew, standing in the opposite doorway. She was looking at him with a strangely furtive expression on her face.
They opened the gate and walked back into the field.
'Odd,' said Trounce. 'In past attacks, he's always done a bunk after being interrupted. You'll remember the case of Mary Stevens, for example. She screamed, people came running, and Jack skedaddled.'
'Probably not the same Jack, Inspector.'
'Well, be that as it may, this time he put his hand over her mouth, the assault was conducted in relative silence, and no one came to her assistance. Yet he didn't-for want of a better expression-go all the way. Instead, he tore her dress and got a good eyeful-but then let her go. Why?'
'He said, 'Not you'-which suggests he was looking for a specific girl and got the wrong one. I have to return to London. Can I take one of the rotorchairs?'
'Help yourself. Park it outside your house and I'll send a constable along for it later. What's your next move?'
'Sleep. I'm exhausted and my malaria is threatening to take hold. And you?'
'I'm going to talk some more with the Tew family. I'm looking for a link between his victims.'
'Good man. We'll talk again soon, Trounce.'
'I'm certain of it-our spring-heeled friend will be back, you can be sure of that. Where will he appear, though? That's the question. Where?'
'One more thing, Inspector,' said Burton. 'Pay close attention to the mother, Tilly. There was something about her expression when we left that leads me to suspect she knows more than she's letting on!'
THE MATTER
Conquer thyself, till thou has done this, thou art but a slave; for it is almost as well to be subjected to another' s appetite as to thine own.
By two o'clock that afternoon, Burton was back at work. He'd slept for a couple of hours, washed, dressed, and eaten lunch, and had then sent two messages: one by runner to the prime minister requesting an audience; the other by parakeet to Swinburne asking him to call early that evening.
An hour later, a reply from 10 Downing Street landed on his windowsill.
'Message from that degenerate idle-headed lout Lord Palmerston. Come at once. Message ends.'
'No reply,' said Burton.
'Up your spout!' screeched the parakeet as it flew off.
Forty minutes later, having walked briskly through the thinning fog that was still clinging to central London, Burton was once again sitting opposite Lord Palmerston, who, while hurriedly scribbling notes in the margins of a document, spoke without looking up.
'What is it, Burton? I'm busy and I don't require progress reports. Just write up the case when it's done and send it to me.'
'A man died.'
'Who? How?'
'A cab driver named Montague Penniforth. He accompanied me to the East End and was there killed by a werewolf.'
Palmerston looked up for the first time. 'A werewolf? You saw it?'
'I saw four. Penniforth was torn apart. I had no way to take care of his body without placing myself in jeopardy. He was a good man and didn't deserve an East End funeral.'
'The Thames, you mean?'
'Yes.' Burton clenched his fists. 'I was a damned fool. I shouldn't have got him involved.'
The prime minister laid his pen to one side and rested his hands in front of him with fingers entwined. He spoke in a slow and level tone.
'The commission you have received from the king is a unique one. You must regard yourself as a commander in the field of battle and, on occasion, His Majesty's servants will be required to serve. It's highly likely, given the nature of your missions, that some of those servants will be killed or injured. They fall for the Empire.'
'Penniforth was a cabbie, not a soldier!' objected Burton.
'He was the king's servant, as are we all.'
'And are all who fall while in his service to be dumped unceremoniously into the river like discarded slops?'
Palmerston pulled a sheet of paper from his desk drawer and wrote upon it. He slid it across to Burton.
'Wherever possible in such circumstances, get a message to this address. My team will come and clean up the mess. The fallen will be treated with respect. Funerals will be arranged and paid for. Widows will be granted a state pension.'
The king's agent looked at the names written above the address.
'Burke and Hare!' he exclaimed. 'Code names?'
'Actually, no-coincidence! The resurrectionist Burke was hanged in '29 and his partner, Hare, died a blind beggar ten years ago. My two agents, Damien Burke and Gregory Hare, are cut from entirely different cloth. Good men, if a little gloomy in outlook.'
'Montague Penniforth had a wife named Daisy and lived in Cheapside. That's all I know about him.'
'I'll put Burke and Hare onto it. They'll soon find the woman and I'll see to it that she's provided for. I have a lot to do, Captain Burton. Are we finished?'
Burton stood. 'Yes, sir.'
'Then let us both get back to work.'
Palmerston returned to his scribbling and Burton turned to leave. As he reached the door, the prime minister spoke again.
'You might consider taking an assistant.'
Burton looked back but Lord Palmerston was bent over his document, writing furiously.
Propriety demands that young women do not visit the homes of bachelors without a chaperone but Isabel Arundell didn't give two hoots for propriety. She was well aware that Society was already looking down its ever-so- haughty nose at her because she'd accompanied her fiance to Bath and stayed in the same hotel as him, though, heaven forbid, not in the same room. Now she was willfully breaking another taboo by visiting him at his home independently-and not for the first time.
Her willful destruction of her own reputation bothered her not a bit, for she knew that when she and Richard were married they'd leave the country to live abroad. He would work as a government consul and she would gather around herself a new group of friends, preferably non-English, among whom she'd be considered an exotic bloom; a delicate rose among the darker and, she imagined, rather less sophisticated blossoms of Damascus or, perhaps, South America.
She had it all worked out, and, generally, what Isabel Arundell wanted, Isabel Arundell got.
