The Dead Assassin

CHAPTER 34 THE SUN BREAKS THROUGH

Conan Doyle found his children, Kingsley and Mary, tossing crusts to the swans gliding the periphery of the circular pond in Hyde Park. His wife, Louise, was ensconced in a bath chair. The day was bright and breezy, but chilly. Pushing the bath chair was a tall, graceful young woman of striking beauty: Miss Jean Leckie.

“Arthur?” Louise Doyle called out as the Scottish author strode across the grass lawns to join them. “Is it still Arthur? Or must I now curtsey and call you, Sir Arthur?”

Conan Doyle smiled sheepishly. “I’m afraid I remain just plain Arthur for now.” He laughed at their disappointed faces. “But not to be sad — the role Oscar and I played has been recognized. And now I have a happy surprise for you all.”

“A surprise?” Jean Leckie asked. “What kind of surprise?”

“A carriage ride,” Conan Doyle answered, and added, mysteriously, “A very special kind of carriage ride.”

When the family emerged from the gates of Hyde Park, the yellow landau drawn by four zebras waited at the curb, where it was rapidly drawing a crowd of curious onlookers. As they caught sight of it, the Doyle children shrieked with glee and ran to pet the zebras. Conan Doyle held the carriage door open for Jean Leckie, and then put his arm about his wife and lifted her into the carriage. Both women were delighted to find Oscar Wilde already ensconced inside.

“Hello, Touie. Hello, Miss Leckie.”

“But whose is this wonderful carriage?” Miss Leckie asked. “And the zebras?”

“A princely favor,” Conan Doyle explained. “We have use of the landau until nightfall.”

Wilde patted a straw hamper on the seat next to him. “Arthur and I stopped at Fortnum & Mason’s on the way here.” He hefted it from the seat and set it down upon the carriage floor to make room for the children. “It’s a tad brisk out, but we thought the occasion called for a ride through the park followed by a picnic.”

And so on the first fogless day in weeks, the friends set off on a long, lazy circuit of Hyde Park, drawing stares of wonder and stopping traffic wherever they went.

A gray morning where dawn was slow arriving beneath a pall of winter clouds. A crowd stood assembled in the courtyard of Newgate Prison. The doors of the execution shed had been thrown open and now, at precisely three minutes to nine, a grim procession filed out: a black-frocked chaplain (whose faltering gait suggested he had, once again, been sampling the communion wine), a balding physician, a pair of uniformed guards, and the dour prison warden, William Bland, bringing up the rear. As usual, Dr. John Lamb accompanied the party, only this time he walked with his hands pinioned at his sides, a burly warder gripping either arm. Without ceremony, he was led onto the trap, where one warder dropped to a crouch as he pinioned his legs. The chaplain stumbled through the prayer of benediction, and then Warden Bland asked if the prisoner had any last words.

Dr. Lamb’s hair had clearly not enjoyed the application of curling papers, and had instead been chopped into spiky clumps by the prison barber’s dull shears. Yet, he stood tall, wrapped in the tattered rag of his former dignity, as he addressed the crowd in a clear, unwavering voice, devoid of fear.

“I believe in the Resurrection,” he said, but then added with a sick smile, “the resurrection of the Marquess Rufus DeVayne. For he will rise aga—”

Warden Bland’s gray face turned black, his frown lines crevassed. At a nod from him, the executioner stepped forward and roughly snatched a white hood down on the doctor’s head, silencing him. With unseemly haste, he looped the heavy hawser about Lamb’s neck, stepped smartly from the trap and gripped the release lever in his gloved hands. The hour began to sound: CLONG… CLONG…

And as the final bell tolled, the executioner yanked the lever, the trap dropped open, and Dr. John Lamb plummeted from this life into the next.

After a brief religious ceremony (which he would have despised), the Marquess of Gravistock, Rufus DeVayne, was quietly interred in the family crypt at the DeVayne family seat, the underground remains of which were the only part of the house not to have been razed by the fire.

Three days later, a gardener found the bronze tomb door wrenched loose from its hinges and the crypt empty apart from a torn burial shroud.

Although the grounds were searched, the mortal remains of the late marquess were never found.