Free Inspector of the Dead by David Morrell

Emily struggled next to him. Jostled, she begged a constable to allow them past the gate. The constable kept waving her away.
    “Go home!” another constable yelled to everyone. “There’s nothing to see!”
    “Then why are coppers goin’ around, askin’ if we noticed anythin’ strange?” a servant wanted to know.
    “Well, did you notice anything strange?” a constable demanded.
    Emily called to Ryan, but the din of the crowd absorbed her words.
    Ryan and Becker hurried down the steps.
    “Those two are with us!” Ryan told the constables.
    As Becker opened the gate, Ryan tugged at Emily, who tugged at her father.
    “Make room!” a constable ordered the crowd.
    “Tell us what’s going on!” a reporter yelled.
    “Emily, we’ll need to find a place to take you,” Ryan said, pleased to see her but fervently wishing it were under other circumstances. “Bad things happened inside.”
    “Worse than in the church?” De Quincey asked. His overcoat was askew. A button had been torn from it.
    “That depends on how you look at the matter.”
    “Immanuel Kant couldn’t have phrased it better.”
    The breeze intensified. Clouds lowered and darkened. Snow flurried, finally prompting some members of the crowd to hug themselves and disperse.
    “Sean, when we go inside, warn me when to look away,” Emily said.
    “When we go inside? But I just explained…” Ryan exhaled with resignation. “Yes, when we go inside.”
    “Emily, peer up at the ceiling. I’ll guide you,” Becker said.
    More snow blew past.
      
    T hey settled her into a plush chair in the sitting room.
    “I can’t start a fire to warm you,” Ryan told her, pointing toward the shadowy hearth. “There might be evidence in those ashes.”
    “I understand.”
    “What happened? You’re supposed to be on a train.”
    “Father refused to obey Lord Palmerston.”
    “Refused?” Becker asked in amazement.
    “At the church we overheard the vicar saying Lord Cosgrove’s address. Father insisted on coming here.”
    “I had no difficulty finding it,” the little man said proudly. Just outside the room, he crouched at the base of the staircase and peered at the injury to the dead servant’s skull. His right index finger almost touched the crater. “Fifty-three winters ago, I begged in Mayfair many times. I know it almost as well as I know Oxford Street and Soho.”
    “Lord Palmerston—” Ryan started to say.
    “Will be furious. I’m aware.” De Quincey drank from his laudanum bottle. “At the church you said that you and Sergeant Becker saw the same things that Emily and I did. Surely our many conversations seven weeks ago make you realize that wasn’t the case.”
    “A police investigation involves more than invoking the name of Immanuel Kant,” Ryan said, barely controlling his frustration. “Does reality exist outside us or only in our minds? I can tell you very definitely that reality exists at the front door and at the base of those stairs. Further reality exists in the kitchen beneath us, and reality very definitely exists tied to a chair in the library.”
    “Tied to a chair in the library?” De Quincey straightened with interest. He saw the open door on the opposite side of the hall and walked toward it.
    “Hey, you can’t go in there!” the constable on duty objected.
    “It’s all right,” Becker said. “I’ll go with him.”
    Ryan redirected his attention to Emily. “But how will you manage without Lord Palmerston’s support? You don’t have any money. Where will you sleep? How will you feed yourselves?”
    “Father says that he can survive on the streets just as he did when he was seventeen.”
    “But now he is sixty-nine. And what about you? How will
you
survive?”
    “Father says that he will teach me how to do it.”
    “I fear that opium has finally unhinged his mind.”
    “Death,” Emily said.
    “What?”
    “Father talks frequently about it.”
    “Inspector?” De Quincey’s voice interrupted from