Inspector of the Dead by David Morrell

to explain. ‘We’ll sort it out there!’ I shouted.
    “Carriages and cabs stopped to learn what was happening. Even more people gathered, perhaps a thousand now. Grabbing for the two men we had in custody, they followed us angrily toward the station in Whitehall. The mob clawed at each man’s coat. Hands yanked at their collars, almost strangling them. As more constables arrived, we managed to get the men inside, where it became obvious that the man in the loose trousers was the only assailant. The other man, the one in the suit, had a card identifying him as a spectacles maker. He had a companion who confirmed that he’d wrestled one of the pistols from the attacker. In future days, the newspapers hailed him as a hero.”
    De Quincey lowered his laudanum bottle from his lips. “The man in the loose trousers was Edward Oxford.”
    Ryan nodded. “He readily identified himself. In fact, he was furious at the spectacles maker for drawing attention away from him. ‘I’m the man who fired! It was me!’ he kept insisting. Since the shots didn’t seem to have injured the queen or Prince Albert, I asked him whether the pistols were loaded with more than just powder. He answered angrily, ‘If the ball had come in contact with your head, you would have known it!’”
    “And the queen truly wasn’t injured?” Emily asked.
    “Neither she nor Prince Albert. To my amazement, I soon heard that instead of ordering her drivers to hurry back to the safety of the palace, she told them to continue up Constitution Hill to her Hyde Park destination, as if nothing had happened. According to reports, their pace through Hyde Park was almost stately. Thousands cheered their survival and their bravery.
    “By the time they finally returned to the palace a half hour later, the news had become even more dramatic. Prince Albert, it was now believed, had been nicked by a bullet as he threw his body protectively over Her Majesty. That wasn’t the case, but as the rumors magnified, the heroism of the queen and the prince were universally admired. The prime minister, the cabinet, the Privy Council, all rushed to Buckingham Palace to express their outrage at what Oxford had done and to thank God that the attempt had been unsuccessful.”
    “All this in the course of an evening,” Emily marveled. “But you said that Her Majesty was disliked at the time. Why did the crowd suddenly show allegiance to her?”
    “What initially shocked them was that to attempt to kill a monarch was unthinkable—a crime against nature,” Ryan answered. “But they soon had another reason to cheer her survival.”
    “The queen’s condition,” De Quincey noted. Peering down, he studied his laudanum bottle.
    “Condition? Are you referring to…?” Emily started to ask.
    Embarrassed, Ryan answered, “The palace had kept the information private. Now it revealed that Her Majesty was with child. The news about the possibility of an heir spread like fire throughout London. King George IV and William IV had an abundance of”—Ryan looked delicately away from Emily—“mistresses and illegitimate children, but now Her Majesty offered a legal heir to the throne. Prince Albert’s German origins, his preference for speaking German—all fears about him were forgotten as the population praised him for siring a potential monarch. That night, all the theaters interrupted their performances to announce that the queen had survived an assassination attempt. Everyone sang ‘God Save the Queen.’ Concert halls, eateries, all public gathering places, everywhere high and low, events were interrupted for toasts and songs in honor of Her Majesty.”
    “What happened to Edward Oxford?” Becker asked.
    “The Metropolitan Police didn’t have a detective division in 1840. Commissioner Mayne instructed two of my superiors and me to proceed across the river to where Oxford had a room in a Southwark lodging house. Among other pressing matters, we wanted to learn if he had