Inspector of the Dead by David Morrell Page B

around him.”
    “Yes, while at other times he stared at walls for hours on end. His behavior was so strange that he couldn’t hold jobs for more than a few months. He was mostly employed as a potboy, serving beer in taverns. ‘Don’t believe a word of what this lunatic says,’ the Attorney General told the jury at his trial. ‘Put him in a madhouse, where he belongs.’”
    “Which is where he now resides for the rest of his life,” De Quincey said. “But let’s return to a previous topic. Did Oxford’s pistols actually contain ammunition?”
    For a long moment, Ryan didn’t answer. “You can indeed read minds. You sense that it troubled me.”
    “How many people do you estimate were in the crowd at the time the shots were fired?” De Quincey asked.
    “Perhaps two hundred.”
    “Among that many people, fifteen paces from the queen and Prince Albert, Oxford fired twice, and not only failed to hit his supposed target but also failed to hit anyone else or even several horses and the queen’s carriage. That is a remarkably poor aim. The bullets were never found, am I correct?”
    Ryan nodded. “The palace wall is on the opposite side of Constitution Hill. The pathway there was searched. After that, it was raked, every pebble studied. No bullets were discovered. The wall itself was examined in case the bullets had become embedded there. On the opposite side of the wall, the palace gardens were searched in case the bullets had flown over. But they were never found.”
    “So Oxford’s only proven crime was that he frightened the queen,” De Quincey said.
    “Without evidence to the contrary, yes.”
    “Plenty of Londoners break out in giddy laughter and stare at walls. People say that they’re lunatics, but those poor souls aren’t sentenced to a lifetime in a madhouse.”
    “They don’t shoot at the queen,” Ryan noted.
    “With pistols that no one can say for certain had ammunition,” De Quincey countered.
    “Remember what Oxford told me—that if the ball had come in contact with my head, I would have known it,” Ryan said.
    “But the conditional clause is not persuasive. As you admitted, this part of the event troubled you,” De Quincey parried.
    “The only way you could know so much about this is by reading everything you could possibly find about it,” Ryan said. “You could have described that evening as well as I did, even though you weren’t there.”
    “I could have described different versions of that evening, but not the vivid version that you provided, Inspector. The many newspaper accounts disagreed with one another, again proving that there are many realities. Some witnesses claimed that they heard the balls whistle over their heads. If true, Oxford’s aim was so high that he couldn’t have pointed his pistols at the queen, and therefore he didn’t try to kill her. As for the whistle of the balls, can we give credence to those statements, when no bullets were found after several days of looking for them? Without any evidence to prove that Edward Oxford did in fact try to kill Her Majesty as opposed to merely startling her, why was the queen’s Attorney General so determined to ensure that Oxford was sequestered in a madhouse for the rest of his life?”
    “Do you have answers?” Ryan asked.
    “Several.”
    “Tell me. They might explain why someone wants us to connect these murders with what happened fifteen years ago.”
    “I can’t speak the answers.”
    “You can’t speak? My God, the laudanum has finally impaired your faculties.”
    “In this case, I dare not speak the answers,” De Quincey told him. “They border on treason.”
      
    A gain, something creaked outside the room.
    As a shadow grew in the doorway, Emily gasped.
    Ryan and Becker stood protectively.
    “Treason?” a voice asked.
    Startling them, Lord Palmerston entered, followed by Commissioner Mayne. They brought the cold with them, their overcoats dotted with melting snow.
    “What are you saying