Shadow of Death Page 17

  “Now,” he proceeded, “when you come to the field of crime in England, one finds that, much the same as in the field of forensic medicine, dramatic changes come about as the result of simple but radical ideas.

  “In the fourteenth century, about the time of the Black Death, there was a veritable war going on between crime and civilization. You may think we have a problem with organized crime today. But back then, gangs of criminals would band together and descend on towns where festivals were being held. The people gathering to celebrate would be lulled into believing they had achieved safety in numbers, never suspecting that great hordes of criminals would fall upon them and commit almost every outrage imaginable.

  “And there was not much going on in the way of detection. The conventional way the authorities would process an accused person—when they were fortunate enough to catch one—would be to torture him until he confessed—and, as we have seen, the ‘physicians’ were there to tell the officials how much torture the accused might be able to bear. Or the accused was bound and thrown in a lake; if he floated, he was innocent. Or he was brought into the presence of the corpse and if the deceased’s eyes opened or wounds bled, the man was guilty.

  “In the middle of the eighteenth century, Henry Fielding, the novelist—and author of Tom Jones—became a magistrate. The question in his mind was: Why not drop the emphasis on bizarre and barbaric punishments—gibbets, torture chambers, the rack, the iron maiden, and so forth—and attempt to prevent crime before it happened by creating an efficient police force?

  “A simple concept like that of Professor Locord, but one whose time was long overdue.

  “Fielding’s idea led to the formation of the Bow Street Runners, the forerunners of the ‘bobbies’ of the nineteenth century.”

  Koznicki looked across at his two companions with a self-reproachful expression, as if suddenly realizing that he had talked throughout almost their entire dinner. Although, somehow, he had managed to finish his dinner while lecturing between bites.

  “Oh, I do beg your pardon,” he said, “I am afraid I have gone on far too long.”

  “Not at all, Inspector,” said Toussaint, whose expression throughout had been, as usual, inscrutable. “Please continue.”

  “Well, there is little more to tell. Sir Robert Peel, after whom the bobbies are named, organized the first professional police force for London, after trying out his theories in Dublin. He selected the building, which backed into an ancient court known as Scotland Yard, thus the name. The first commissioners laid down some guidelines that today, 150 years later, are still as significant and relevant to police work as they were then.

  “I secured a copy of those guidelines this afternoon from my friend. Superintendent Charlie Somerset.” He took a sheet of paper from his inside jacket pocket. “Let me just read them to you: ‘The primary object of an efficient Police is the prevention of crime: the next that of detection and punishment of offenders if crime is committed. To these ends all the efforts of Police must be directed. The protection of life and property, the preservation of public tranquility, and the absence of crime will alone prove whether these efforts have been successful, and whether the objects for which the Police were appointed have been attained.’

  “And now,” Koznicki summed up, “we find ourselves in London, determined to prevent a crime, in the very city where the notion of crime prevention came to full flower.

  “But,” he shrugged apologetically, “I have made a short story too, too long.”

  “Not at all, Inspector,” reiterated Toussaint. “It was a very informative explanation. And interesting. One does not often think of the police in terms of crime prevention. The more popular image is that they are the ones who come to pick up the pieces and to catch the criminal.”

  “Now that you have brought it up,” Koesler said, “I can think of many instances when the presence of the police can prevent crime: speeders on the highways, shoplifters in the stores, muggers in the streets—they all have to watch out for the police. And with the police around, the potential criminal undoubtedly is deterred from acting.”

  “Let us hope that the presence of the police in Westminster Abbey tomorrow evening will deter a couple of assailants,” said Toussaint.

  “From every indication we have so far,” said Koznicki, “I fear that killers such as the ones we are dealing with are not the type to restrain themselves from acting even if they know the police are present. These give every evidence of being such fanatics. We will simply have to anticipate them and move faster than they do.”

  “Let us pray you are able to,” said Toussaint.

  “Say,” said Koesler, “maybe that’s an answer to our vocation crisis: Maybe we should train seminarians to prevent heresies instead of reacting to them.”

  Toussaint laughed. “I do not think that approach will fill the seminaries, Bob.”

  “Well,” said Koesler, “back to the drawing board.”

  “Oh, by the way. Inspector,” said Toussaint, “our tour tomorrow will include Westminster Abbey. We can do a little reconnoitering ourselves.”

  “Very good,” said Koznicki, “it is impossible to have too much security.”

  2.

  “I’m sure you’ve all seen blokes like these before,” the guide said loudly. He was referring to the men dressed in the ancient livery of the English Yeomen of the Guard. “At least I’m sure you’ve seen outfits like these if you’re a fancier of good gin.”

  The group tittered appreciatively.

  Father Koesler regarded the yeomen more carefully than he first had. They looked ridiculous. Further, he thought, some of them seemed conscious of looking ridiculous, especially as the guide, like a circus barker, was calling the group’s attention to them. But, Koesler concluded, if you could buy the uniform of the Swiss Guard, why not the Yeomen of the Guard? Besides, these men would get done with their day’s work, change into modern-day civvies, and drop in at the neighborhood pub on the way home. Swiss Guards, on the other hand, he thought, quite possibly slept in their pantaloons.

  “Well, now, folks,” the guide continued in his semi-shout, “there’s a bit of a story behind the moniker these chaps carry. They’re called beefeaters, as you all very well know. There’s them as says they’re called beefeaters simply because they were given a lot of beef to eat. Now that’s hardly a very romantic reason.

  “No, I prefer the explanation that goes like this:

  “Now, the king, God save him, has not always been the most popular personage in town.”

  Appreciative titter.

  “So, when the king would go out among the people—rare as that was—he would be surrounded by his guard, attired in precisely the same manner as these blokes here who are wearing the authentic uniform of the time.

  “And just in case there’d be an angry constituent or so as would try and smack His Royal Highness, who would take the blow but his ever-faithful guards, the ones who had surrounded him—the ones dressed exactly like these blokes here.

  “Now the Norman French saw all this goin’ on and they up and called the guards, ‘buffetiers,’ or those which took the buffets or the blows that was intended for the king. Don’t ya see?”

  The guide was a squat man whose face seemed to have been pushed in from a few too many fights and whose vein-discolored nose betrayed a habit of downing a few too many Beefeater gins. His accent was drifting in and out of very correct English, while angling into the vague fringes of cockney. Koesler assumed the man to be a born actor, if not an outright professional. He’d be willing to bet the guide could put on any accent that seemed appropriate.

  “Now,” the guide continued, “people began callin’ these yeomen ‘buffetiers,’ according to this story. Except that the English simply didn’t fancy tryin’ to wrap their tongues around foreign soundin’ words. So they very simply changed the pronunciation to ‘beefeaters’. And that’s what they’ve been called to this very day.”

  Oohs of comprehension and agree
ment.

  “And a good thing, too, wouldn’t you say, ladies and gents? For wouldn’t it have been a God’s awful pity for that loverly London drink to be called Buffetier’s gin!”

  More appreciative merriment.

  “By the same token, the worl’ famous bridle path in Hyde Park where the king was apt to go ridin’ was known to the Normans as ‘Route de Roi’—the king’s road. So, a’course, our English tongues made their own sense of it, and converted it to . . .” He looked about. “Anyone have a guess?”

  His audience was stumped.

  “Believe it or not, we call it ‘Rotten Row.’”

  “That’s what happened to that man’s name!” exclaimed Koesler.

  “What man’s name?” Toussaint asked.

  “That commissioner—Inspector Koznicki’s friend from Scotland Yard. What was it . . .?” Koesler removed from his coat pocket a small piece of paper and consulted it. “Beauchamp! Assistant Commissioner Henry Beauchamp of the C.I.D.

  “It is, of course, a Norman French name. If I can trust my none-too-trustworthy French, ‘beauchamp’ means fine, or handsome, field. But the English, as our long-winded guide has just explained, are not only unwilling to admit that any other nation should have a mother tongue, they disdain even pronouncing words that seem foreign and therefore unpleasant to their ears. So, if circumstances force them into confronting a non-English word, they simply anglicize it.

  “Thus, ‘buffetier’ becomes ‘beefeater,’ ‘Route de Roi’ becomes ‘Rotten Row,’ and ‘Beauchamp’ becomes ‘Beecham.’ It’s a lucky thing for the linguistic world that, finally, the sun can set on the British Empire!” He shook his head. “But what a sun and what an empire!”

  “Eh?”

  For the past several minutes, Toussaint had been immersed in his own thoughts. He had been paying little attention to the guide, who was doing his best to educate his covey of sightseers as he commenced to give them a capsulized history of the Tower of London, the first stop on their Frames Tour. Even Koesler’s enthusiasm had fallen on all but deaf ears. Toussaint had heard only Koesler’s last few words.

  As if in apology, the deacon picked up his end of the discussion. “I know this strategic site goes back to Julius Caesar and the Roman Empire, and that it was at one time a fortress from which the city could be defended. And now, it houses, among other memorabilia, the crown jewels. But all I can think of it as is an infamous prison, a place of torture and execution.”

  “Yes, I know what you mean.”

  Koesler and Toussaint separated from the tour group and strolled to a nearby stark fence. A flight of steps led down to the moat, once filled with water from the Thames, but now dry. Several feet beyond the bottom step was an ancient portal. Above the portal was inscribed the words, “Traitor’s Gate.”

  “Can you imagine the emotions of all those famous prisoners as they were ferried into this place through that?” Toussaint, in a sweeping gesture, indicated the gate.

  Both were silent for a few moments.

  “Yes,” said Koesler, “when they heard that gate grate shut behind them, they must have known they had left freedom and now faced imprisonment, possible torture, and probable death. It must have been a terrifying moment.”

  “Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth I, Catherine Howard, and Sir Thomas More, among others.” Toussaint enumerated some of the better known personalities who had at different times in history docked at these steps and climbed them to this very spot.

  “And poor old Bishop John Fisher,” said Koesler, consulting his Guide to the Tower of London.

  “It says here, that both More and Bishop Fisher were imprisoned up there, in the Bell Tower. Of course, the skyline of London has completely changed. But just think: Basically, Fisher and More saw the same things we are now looking at. The same River Thames, the same shores, more or less, the same general land contours—and of course the same fortress prison.”

  “And they were here,” Toussaint commented, “only because Henry VIII made himself head of the Church so he could marry the woman he would eventually have executed.”

  “Such a waste.”

  “You get the impression from reading the history of those times,” said Toussaint, “that the doomed were made to feel grateful to the king for his commuting the manner of execution.”

  They began walking toward the site of the block where so many of the executions had taken place.

  “Both More and Fisher,” Toussaint sounded almost reminiscent, “had been condemned to be hung, drawn, and quartered. Barbaric! Then the king in his infinite mercy ruled that they simply be beheaded.” He stopped and turned toward Koesler. “You know, the thought just occurred to me, Bob: I wonder how Thomas More would be regarded today if he had been successful in his strategy?”

  Koesler thought for a moment. “You mean if he hadn’t been executed? I never thought of that. We do tend to think of him in the role of a martyr. And as a martyr, we picture him marching quite deliberately off to his death for the sake of his faith. Which, of course, he literally did eventually, didn’t he?”

  “Yes,” Toussaint replied, “but not before he defended himself as the brilliant lawyer he was. He did not want to die. But he refused to publicly commit himself to agreeing that the king was the head of the Church in England. On the other hand, he did not state that the king was not what His Majesty claimed to be. More maintained that his silence should be legally interpreted as consent to the king, even though he would not so state. And it was only because of perjured testimony that he was convicted. Do you know, Bob, he could be my patron.”

  “How’s that?”

  “I find that the longer I live, the more I have to live for. I do not know what I would have done had I been in the shoes of Sir Thomas More—none of us does, I suppose—but I believe I would have done the same thing: I would have fought to stay alive.”

  “But you brought up an interesting point, Ramon. How would he be regarded if he had succeeded in fighting off the death penalty? He probably would have remained imprisoned in one of these towers for the rest of his life. He would not have been a murdered martyr. I guess one could argue that he might never have been declared a saint. Yet, he would not have disappeared from history. He was too famous. Lord Chancellor of England, author of Utopia, and opponent, if not victim, of King Henry VIII.”

  “I think I could have lived with that.” Toussaint smiled. In the distance they could see their guide gathering his group near the Bloody Tower. It was time to leave. Toussaint and Koesler hurried to join the others.

  “We’re going to have to stick with the group,” said Koesler, “if we want to see everything on this tour. After all, we’ve got only the one day.”

  “At least until we reach Westminster Abbey. I am so eager to get there and do our reconnoitering, I would almost be willing to skip lunch and the visit to St. Paul’s . . . but, all in good time,” concluded Toussaint.

  “I should say; especially St. Paul’s. You wouldn’t want to pass up the place where the Marriage of the Century between Prince Charlie and Lady Di took place, would you? Besides, before Henry decided to split with Rome, it used to be one of ours.”

  Koesler found that he was breathing heavily just from the rapid walking he’d been compelled to do to catch up with the group before it moved on. He was about to make a resolution to do some jogging when he returned to Detroit. However, he remembered that upon reaching his fortieth birthday he had resolved to stop making ridiculous resolutions.

  “Hurry along, ladies and gents. Remember the motto of the Bloody Tower: If we don’t hang together, we’ll hang separately. Stay together now. Stay together. First, we’ll visit St. Paul’s, then we’ll have a lovely luncheon, then the great one—Westminster Abbey—and, finally, the famous Madame Tussaud’s, where, if we’re in any luck at all, we’ll see a likeness of yours truly.”

  An appreciative titter from the tourists.

  3.

  “Now, ladies and gents, we’ve just come in the west entr
ance of Westminster Abbey. I’d like to call your attention to this plaque in the floor. It marks the grave of the unknown warrior. His body was brought over from France and laid to rest right here, in the presence of King George V himself, on 11 November 1920.

  “And over there, you’ll be able to see the memorial to Sir Winston Churchill.”

  “Do you get the impression,” said Joe Cox, “ that these places are more mausoleums than churches? I mean, those sarcophagi of Wellington and Lord Nelson in St. Paul’s were humongous. And look at the statues in this place; two to one there’s a body under damn near every one of them.”

  “Well,” Pat Lennon responded, “if you go back to the beginning of Christianity, that’s the way it was. Take Rome, for instance: not only were there no Christian churches, but the early Christians were forced to gather and worship underground in the catacombs. And the catacombs were burial places. So, I guess they’ve got the right idea burying people in churches.”

  “I don’t know why I let you talk me into this tour.” Cox was on the verge of pouting.

  “Quiet! It will broaden you. And besides, we don’t have a story to file until after tonight’s ceremony.”

  “Now, ladies and gents, you’re lookin’ at the old abbey in her best get-up. The nave roof, for instance, has just been cleaned extensively and is in its pristine splendor.

  “Now, we’re comin’ to the south transept, where we’ll find, among many other memorable relics, the Poets’ Corner.

  “You can just imagine, ladies and gents, a little more than a century ago, when the abbey was black with grime, and heavier stained glass windows obscured the light much more than now, it was Washington Irving who referred to this great abbey as ‘the empire of Death; his great shadowy palace, where he sits in state, mocking at the relics of human glory, and spreading dust and forgetfulness on the monuments of princes.’”