In the early morning hours of Tuesday, the eighth of March, the fog blanketed the city; a moist discomforter that swallowed light and muffled sound. Police Constable William Alberts walked his rounds with a steady, measured stride, insulated from the enveloping fog by his thick blue greatcoat and the Majesty of the Law. The staccato echo of his footsteps sounded sharp and loud in the empty street as he turned off Kensington Gore into Regent's Gate and paced stolidly past the line of stately mansions.
P.C. Alberts paused and cocked his head. Somewhere in the fog ahead of him there was — what? — a sort of gliding, scurrying sound that he could not identify. The sound, perhaps, of someone trying to move silently through the night but betrayed by a loose paving stone.
He waited for the noise to be repeated, turning to face where he thought it had come from and straining his eyes to pierce the black, fog-shrouded night.
There! Farther over now — was that it again? A muted sound; could someone be trying to sneak past him in the dark? A scurrying sound; could it be rats? There were rats even in Regent's Gate. Even the mansions of the nobility had the occasional rats' nest in the cellar. P.C. Alberts shuddered. He was not fond of rats.
But there — another sound! Footsteps this time, good honest British footsteps pattering around the Kensington Gore corner and approaching the spot where Constable Alberts stood.
A portly man appeared out of the fog, his MacFarlane buttoned securely up to his chin and a dark-gray bowler pulled down to his eyes. A hand-knitted gray scarf obscured much of the remainder of his face, leaving visible only wide-set brown eyes and a hint of what was probably a large nose. For a second the man looked startled to see P.C. Alberts standing there, then he nodded as he recognized the uniform. "Evening, Constable."
"Evening, sir." Alberts touched the tip of his forefinger to the brim of his helmet. "A bit late, isn't it, sir?"
"It is that," the man agreed, pausing to peer up at Alberts's face. "I don't recollect you, Constable. New on this beat, are you?"
"I am, sir," Alberts admitted. "P.C. Alberts, sir. Do you live around here, sir?"
"I do, Constable; in point of fact, I do." The man pointed a pudgy finger into the fog. "Yonder lies my master's demesne. I am Lemming, the butler at Walbine House."
"Ah!" Alberts said, feeling that he should reply to this revelation. They walked silently together for a few steps.
"I have family in Islington," Lemming volunteered. "Been visiting for the day. Beastly hour to be getting back."
"It is that, sir," Alberts agreed.
"Missed my bus," Lemming explained. "Had to take a number twenty-seven down Marylebone Road and then walk from just this side of Paddington Station. I tell you, Constable, Hyde Park is not sufficiently lighted at night. Especially in this everlasting fog. I am, I will freely admit, a man of nervous disposition. I nearly jumped out of my skin two or three times while crossing the park; startled by something no more dangerous, I would imagine, than a squirrel."
They reached the entrance to Walbine House: a stout oaken door shielded by a wrought-iron gate. "At any rate I have arrived home before his lordship," Lemming said, producing a keychain from beneath his MacFarlane and applying a stubby, circular key to the incongruously new lock in the ancient gate.
"His lordship?" P.C. Alberts asked.
Lemming swung open the gate. "The Right Honorable the Lord Walbine," he said. He lifted the keychain up to his face and flipped through the keys, trying to locate the front-door key in the dim light of the small gas lamp that hung to the left of the massive oak door.
"I served his father until he died two years ago, and now I serve his lordship."
"Ah!" Alberts said, wondering how the stout butler knew that his new lordship was still absent from Walbine House.
"Goodnight then, Constable," Lemming said, opening the great door as little as possible and pushing himself through the crack.
"Goodnight," Alberts said to the rapidly closing door. He waited until he heard the lock turned from the inside, and then resumed his measured stride along Regent's Gate. It was deathly quiet now; no more scurrying, no fancied noises, only the slight rustle of the wind through the distant trees and the echo of his own footsteps bouncing off the brick facades of the Georgian mansions that faced each other across the wide street.
At Cromwell Road, Constable Alberts paused under the street-lamp for a moment and peered thoughtfully around. He had the unwelcome sensation that he was being watched. By whom he could not tell, but the feeling persisted, an eerie, tingling sensation at the back of his neck. He turned and started back down the dark, fog-shrouded pavement.
From some distance away on Cromwell Road came the clattering noises of an approaching carriage, which grew steadily louder until, some twenty seconds later, a four-wheeler careened around the corner into Regent's Gate. The cab sped along the street, the horse encouraged by an occasional flick of the jarvey's whip. Entirely too fast, Alberts noted critically.
Halfway down Regent's Gate, opposite Walbine House, the jarvey pulled his horse to a stop. From where Alberts stood he could make out the form of a top-hatted man in evening dress emerging from the four-wheeler and tossing a coin up to the jarvey. The Right Honorable the Lord Walbine had obviously just returned home for the night. Lemming, Alberts thought, had been right.
The four-wheeler pulled away and rattled on down the street as his lordship let himself into Walbine House. All was quiet again P.C. Alberts resumed his beat, the tread of his footsteps once more the only sound to be heard along the tree-lined street. He kept to a steady methodical pace as he headed toward Kensington Gore.
It took P.C. Alberts almost ten minutes to make the circuit along Kensington Gore, back up Queen's Gate, and then across Cromwell Road to the Regent's Gate corner. As he turned onto Regent's Gate again, from somewhere ahead of him there came a sudden cacophony of slamming doors and running feet. The faint gleam of a lantern wavered back and forth across the street. It caught Alberts in its dim beam. "Constable!" came an urgent whisper that carried clearly across the length of the street. "Constable Alberts! Come quickly!"
Alberts quickened his stride without quite breaking into a run. "Here I am," he called. "What's the trouble, now?"
The butler, Lemming, was standing in the middle of the street in his shirtsleeves, his eyes wide, breathing like a man who has just been chased by ghosts. An older woman with a coat misbuttoned over a hastily donned housedress peered from behind him.
"Please," Lemming said, "would you come inside with us?"
"If I am needed," Alberts said, taking a firmer grasp of his nightstick. "What seems to be the trouble?"
"It's 'is lordship," the old woman said. " 'E just come in, and now 'e won't answer 'is door."
"His lordship arrived home a short while ago," Lemming explained, "and immediately retired to his room. Mrs. Beddoes was to bring him his nightly glass of toddy, as usual."
" 'E rang for it," Mrs. Beddoes assured Alberts, "as 'e always does."
"But the bedroom door was locked when she arrived on the landing," Lemming said.
"And 'e don't answer 'is knock," Mrs. Beddoes finished, nodding her head back and forth like a pigeon.
"I'm afraid there's been an accident," Lemming said.
"Are you certain his lordship is in his bedroom?" Alberts asked, staring up at the one lighted window on the second story of the great house.
"The door is secured from the inside," Lemming said. "I'd appreciate having you take a look, Constable. Come this way, please."
P.C. Alberts followed Lemming up an ornate marble staircase and down a corridor on the second floor to his lordship's bedroom door. Which was locked. Alberts knocked on the polished dark wood of the door panel and called out. There was no response.