"Indeed, sir, I do. Every morning."
"Oh, splendid! I say, do you suppose we might ride out together again tomorrow? I should enjoy the company and we might chat about Eddy, share a few amusing anecdotes, perhaps?"
"I should enjoy it tremendously. At eight o'clock, if that isn't too early?"
"Not at all." He made a mental note to check the train schedules to time their ride past that so-convenient windmill. "Eight o'clock it shall be." And so they rode on, chatting pleasantly while John Lachley laid his plans to murder the amiable young man who had helped Eddy with one too many translations.
Early morning light, watery and weak, tried vainly to break through rainclouds as Lachley stepped off Greenwich pier from the waterman's taxi he'd taken down from London. The clock of the world-famous Greenwich observatory struck eight chimes as Lachley rented a nag from a dockside livery stable and met James Stephen, as agreed. The unsuspecting Stephen greeted him warmly. "Dr. Lachley! Well met, old chap! I say, it's rather a dismal morning, but we'll put a good face on it, eh? Company makes the gloomiest day brighter, what?"
"Indeed," Lachley nodded, giving the doomed tutor a cheery smile.
The scent of the River Thames drifted on the damp breeze, mingling with the green smell of swampy ground from Greenwich Marshes and the acrid, harsh smell of coal smoke, but Dr. John Lachley drew a deep, double-lungful and smiled again at the man who rode beside him, who had but a quarter of an hour to live.
Riding down the waterfront, past berths where old fashioned, sail-powered clipper ships and small, iron-hulled steamers creaked quietly at anchor, Lachley and Mr. Stephen turned their nags up King William Walk to reach Greenwich Park, then headed parallel to the river past the Queen's House, built for Queen Anne of Denmark by James the First in 1615. Greenwich boasted none of London's stink, smelling instead of fresh marshes and late-autumn hay and old money. Tudor monarchs had summered here and several had been born in Greenwich palaces. The Royal Naval College, once a Royal Hospital for Seamen, shared the little village on the outskirts of London with the Royal Observatory and the world-famous Greenwich Meridian, the zero line of oceanic navigation.
As they left behind the village with its royal associations, riding out along the bridle path which snaked its way between Trafalgar Road and the railway line, Lachley began sharing an amusing story about Eddy's latest forays into the East End, a low and vulgar habit Eddy had indulged even during his years at Cambridge, in order to drink and make the rounds of the brothels, pubs, and even, occasionally, the street walkers and fourpence whores who could be had for the price of a loaf of bread.
"... told the girl he'd give her quid if she'd give him a four-penny knee-trembler and the child turned out to be an honest working girl. Slapped his face so hard it left a hand-print, little dreaming she'd just struck the grandson of the queen. And poor Eddy went chasing after her to apologize, ended up buying every flower in her tray..."
They were approaching the fateful windmill Lachley had spied the previous morning. The screaming whistle of a distant train announced the arrival of the diversion Lachley required for his scheme. He smiled to himself and slowed his horse deliberately, to be sure of the timing, leaning down as though concerned his horse might be drawing up lame. Stephen also reined in slightly to match pace with him and to hear the end of the story he was relating.
The train whistle shrieked again. Both horses tossed their heads in a fretting movement. Good... Lachley nodded approvingly. A nervous horse under Mr. James K. Stephen was all the better. The sorrel Stephen rode danced sideways as the train made its roaring, smoking approach. A moment later they were engulfed in a choking cloud of black smoke and raining cinders.
Lachley whipped his hand into his coat pocket and dragged out the lead-filled sap he'd brought along. His pulse thundered. His nostrils dilated. His whole body tingled with electric awareness. His vision narrowed, tunnelling down to show him the precise spot he would strike. They passed the whirling blades of the windmill, engulfed in the deafening roar of the passing train. Now! Lachley reined his horse around in a lightning move that brought him alongside Stephen's sweating mount. Excitement shot through him, ragged, euphoric. He caught a glimpse of James Stephen's trusting, unsuspecting face—
A single, savage blow was all it took.
The thud of the lead sap against his victim's skull jarred Lachley's whole arm, from wrist to shoulder. Pain and shock exploded across Stephen's face. The man's horse screamed and lunged sideways as its rider crumpled in the saddle. The nag bolted straight under the windmill, crowded in that direction by Lachley's own horse and the deafening thunder of the passing train. Stephen pitched sideways out of the saddle, reeling toward unconsciousness. And precisely as Lachley had known it would, one of the windmill vanes caught Stephen brutally across the back of the skull. He was thrown violently to one side by the turning blade. The one-time tutor to Prince Albert Victor Christian Edward landed in a crumpled heap several feet away. Lachley sat watching for a long, shaking moment. The sensations sweeping through him, almost sexual in their intensity, left him trembling.
Then, moving with creditable calm for a man who had just committed his second murder with his own hands—and the first in open view of the public eye—John Lachley wiped the lead sap on his handkerchief and secreted his weapon in his pocket once more. He reined his horse around and tied it to the nearest tree. Dismounting from the saddle, he walked over to the man he'd come here to kill. James K. Stephen lay in a broken heap. Lachley bent down... and felt the pulse fluttering at the man's throat.
The bastard was still alive! Fury blasted through him, brought his vision shrieking down to a narrow hunter's focus once more. He stole his hand into his pocket, where the lead sap lay hidden—
"Dear God!" a voice broke into his awareness above the shriek and rattle of the train. Lachley whirled around, violently shaken. Another man on horseback had approached from the trail. The stranger was jumping to the ground, running towards them. Worse, a striking young woman with heavy blond hair sat another horse on the trail, watching them with an expression of shock and horror.
"What's happened?" the intruder asked, reasonably enough.
Lachley forced himself to calmness, drew on a lifetime's worth of deceit and the need to hide who and what he was in order to survive, and said in a voice filled with concern, "This gentleman and I were riding along the trail, here, when the train passed. Something from the train struck him as it went by, I don't know what, a large cinder perhaps, or maybe someone threw something from a window. But his horse bolted quite abruptly. Poor devil was thrown from the saddle, straight under the windmill blades. I'd just reached him when you rode up."
As he spoke, he knelt at Stephen's side, lifted his wrist to sound his pulse, used his handkerchief to bind the deep wound in his head, neatly explaining away the blood on the snowy linen. The stranger crouched beside him, expression deeply concerned.
"We must get him to safety at once! Here... cradle the poor man's head and I'll lift his feet. We'll put him in my saddle and I'll ride behind, keep him from falling. Alice, love, don't look too closely, his head's a dreadful sight, covered in blood."
Lachley ground his teeth in a raging frustration and gave the man a seemingly relieved smile. "Capital idea! Splendid. Careful, now..."
Ten minutes later the man he'd come all this way to murder lay in a bed in a Greenwich Village doctor's cottage, in a deep coma and not—as the doctor said with a sad shake of his head—expected to survive. Lachley agreed that it was a terrible tragedy and explained to the village constable what had occurred, then gave the man his name and address in case he were needed again.