“Some time before noon. He had a late start this morning.”
“What was he wearing?”
“Ah … a bowler, dark gray Chesterfield overcoat.”
“Paddy, take that down. Add Arrest Major Peter FitzGerald. Tall, dark-haired, carrying a carpetbag.”
“Don’t forget the scar on his cheek,” Sir Lionel said.
“Thank you.” Tennant sent the second constable to the telegraph office on Pall Mall with orders to send it to Dover, Portsmouth, Southampton, Bristol, and Liverpool.
“Sir?” A flushed copper had returned from the carriage house. He jerked his thumb over his shoulder. “There’s a dead bloke inside.”
They rounded the house and entered the stables through its flung-open doors. Just inside lay the body of a man with a bayonet driven into his throat, a rifle at his side. His staring, milky eyes shaded to light blue at the edges of the irises.
“Simon Flood,” Dermott said. “The Pale Assassin, by the color of those eyes.”
“Someone’s turned the tables on him.” O’Malley rounded the body. “There’s something …” He bent over the corpse. “It looks like a letter folded into his hand.”
“Retrieve it, Sergeant.” Tennant said. “Constable, search the hayloft.”
Tennant opened the letter and turned it over to look at the signature. “It’s from McGrath.” He read, “‘This is a deathbed confession because I won’t be surviving the week. I know that, and I am prepared to die a martyr’s death for Ireland. But I believe in God and a reckoning in the hereafter, so I testify to this as true. I contracted with Peter FitzGerald to smuggle the riflesto aid our holy cause. Not his cause. He did it for the lion’s share of ten thousand pounds to settle his debts. But when that money wasn’t enough, and there was none more to be had from the smuggling, he hired me to shoot his wife. In return, he was to help me escape, so he thought. Her death makes him guardian to his two sons and puts his wife’s fortune into his hands, at last. I aimed for the lady’s shoulder and hope she recovers. I went along because I needed his help to achieve a last great aim. FitzGerald is unaware of my intentions.
“‘As for that piece of horse dung with the bayonet in his throat, Simon Flood and I served as sergeants in the Crimea with the major. FitzGerald was our company captain then. Like me, Flood was a Kildare man. When he was a child, his people farmed FitzGerald lands before hard times and eviction sent them to England. Flood enlisted in FitzGerald’s regiment, making the most of the family connection. Now that I think of it, Flood did all the man’s killing. FitzGerald got his scar from a Russian saber, but it was Flood who knocked the Ivan off his horse and ran him through the throat.
“‘When Flood and I met up again in London, he was FitzGerald’s head groom. When he was in his cups, Flood bragged about a smuggling scheme. Later, it gave me the idea for getting the guns into the country with no questions asked. Truth be told, I was surprised FitzGerald played along. But gambling debts made him desperate for money.
“‘Flood murdered Lizzie, persuading FitzGerald that the girl was a mortal threat if word of her condition reached the queen and his wife. The other deaths followed the first. Flood bragged about it a week ago, not knowing I was Maggie Dowling’s brother. No reason he should. I was in France and Ireland when he murdered my nieces. But never has the hand of Providence been so clear to me, His instrument. My one regret is that I returned to Ireland too late to save my kin from destitution. I tried. I looked for them, but the trail ran cold at Naas.
“‘The truth of this, I swear on my mother’s grave. I sent FitzGeralda warning in his morning post, and he’ll head straight to Dover. But the message I sent to the Yard that brought you here—’”
O’Malley grunted. “What message, I’d like to know. The creature might escape us yet.”
Tennant continued. “‘You’ll catch him before he gets away. He thinks he has more time than I gave him. It pleases me to have the major on the run for a bit, hunted like an animal. Like the red-coated officers galloping across the Curragh, slaughtering foxes, caring about nothing around them. You’ll trap him at Dover and drag him back to London in disgrace. I’m sorry I won’t see it. I’m sorry I won’t watch him hang. Now, I have one last act of devotion to carry out.
“‘God save Ireland,
Padraig McGrath, Patriot.’”
“Sir?” the constable called down from the hayloft. “I found a crate of seven rifles up here.”
“Mother of God.” O’Malley looked around the empty coach house. “FitzGerald took a cab, the butler’s saying. Where is his carriage?”
“And why warn him,” Sir Lionel asked, “if McGrath wants him caught?”
“Not just for the fun of a chase,” Tennant said. “He wants to divert us. ‘One last act of devotion.’ My guess? The missing carriage is on its way to Marlborough House or Windsor Castle with McGrath and a rifle inside. He wants us chasing FitzGerald to Dover.”
Twenty miles away in Windsor, “Marcus York” patrolled the castle’s grounds with a white handkerchief tied to his sleeve. The other armed grooms and groundmen mustering with the uniformed soldiers wore them, too.
“Don’t want some jittery private shooting you, York,” the head groom had said, tying the knot.
He’d been assigned with four other stablemen to make therounds of the castle’s perimeter. McGrath felt strangely calm, but tension thrummed in shouted orders, rifles at the ready, and in the soldiers’ eyes, scanning the distance. Six Coldstream Guardsmen stood at each gateway into the inner courtyards. From time to time, a tall, burly Scotsman in a kilt and tweed cap appeared at a gate and stood with his arms folded over his barrel chest, watching. Five Guards detachments patrolled Windsor Great Park and guarded Castle Hill, the road leading from the town to the castle’s gates.
At one o’clock, replacements relieved McGrath and his companions for a meal and an hour’s rest. The other stablemen wandered back to the mews while he stayed behind, talking to the sergeant in charge at the William IV Gate.
McGrath looked up at Windsor Castle’s towers. “Which one is the Queen’s Tower?”
The sergeant grinned. “All of them, I’d say.”
