Robin Paige - Death in Hyde Park

His face darkened, and for an instant, she thought he was going to say something. But then he smiled, glanced at his watch, and hoisted himself off the settee. “Say, it’s still early, Nell. I’ve been hearing about Earl’s Court, and I want to see it. Let’s go have some fun.” And without waiting for her to reply that she was actually a little tired and would prefer to end the evening now, he was striding toward the door.

The rest of the evening-the night, really-was a blur. Nellie was more tired than she had thought, but she tried to put her weariness aside and match Jack’s boundless, boisterous energy. She had been many times to Earl’s Court, but always found it most enticing in the evening, when darkness threw a mysterious cloak of illusion and fantasy over the scene. In the center of the Court was a lake rimmed with colored lights that cast shimmering pools of color across the surface. There was an exotic stone grotto at one end and a bridge across the middle, where one could stand and watch little electric launches designed to look like gliding swans. At one side of the lake, boats full of people swept down a tall water-chute and into the water with a giant splash. From beyond the bridge Nellie could hear the sprightly sound of a German band playing a polka, and a Chinese dragon railway puffed real steam as it ran around the lake, its miniature cars filled with squealing passengers. And then there was the Exhibition Court, in which all sorts of side-shows were offered, and there was champagne to drink.

During the day Earl’s Court was always crowded with children and their nannies, but at night it attracted people of all classes: wide-eyed servant girls in their Sunday best strolling on the arms of their gawking beaux; and top-hatted men of the world squiring velvet-clad ladies decked with glittering jewelry. If any of these lovely ladies were no better than they should be, it would have been exceedingly difficult to pick them out from the others, for the multihued gaslights cast a shimmering veil over all, softening sharp features, sweetening sour tempers, and disguising illicit intentions.

With so many other well-dressed ladies around her, Nellie did not feel at all out of place in her velvet finery, although she was not entirely comfortable when Jack insisted that they tour the India Exhibit. This was a circus-like coterie of snake-charmers, jugglers, exotic (and smelly) leopards, and veiled women dancers with bare navels and bare feet, the latter much applauded by a great crowd of drunken men. In fact, by now Nellie had rather got the idea that Jack preferred the gaudy excitement and bawdy silliness of Earl’s Court to the earlier elegance of the Carlton. But perhaps that was simply the American in him. She had not known many Americans, but she had the idea that they thrived on excitement, as Jack certainly seemed to do.

She decided that this was definitely the case when he bought more champagne, and then tickets on the Big Wheel, and they found themselves sailing up and up into the cool dark night, the bright lights and sparkling music wafting eerily up out of the fog below.

“Not as tall as the Ferris wheel in Chicago,” Jack said critically, and began to rock their carriage to see how far he could make it swing, until Nellie squealed with fear. “But I guess it’ll do.” He smiled down at her and slipped his arm around her shoulder. “Hell,” he said. “I know it’ll do.”

Nellie shivered with pleasure, and when Jack bent to kiss her, it was easy to kiss him back, gently at first and then fiercely, with a passion she had not realized was in her. And when the ride was over, he took her hand and led her to the exit, and into a cab, and there was more kissing, far more than Nellie (for she did not have nearly the experience she pretended) had ever before allowed. And within a very short while they were at her door and she was clinging giddily to his arm and fumbling for her key, and he was taking it from her and letting them both into the little house.

And then he was pulling her dress off her shoulders, not at all gently, and yanking off his shirt and trousers. As his intention became clear, she tried to push him away, crying “No, no, please, no!” with a mounting fright, as much at the urgency of her own whirling desire as at the brutal roughness of his hands and mouth. But he pulled her to him as if her resistance only fueled his passion, and as he pushed her onto the bed, still crying out in protest, she realized how incredibly strong he was. There was no use in fighting, for he would do just as he willed. He would take what he wanted, without restraint.

Everything became very blurry after that, and when Nellie woke in the gray light of an early morning, she had a savage headache, her mouth was as dry as a desert, and her body ached as if it had been assaulted-as, to tell truth, it had. She lay for a moment, not quite remembering what had happened, and then sat up in bed, clutching the rumpled sheets around her nakedness.

Jack was gone, but there was a pencilled note on the dresser, in a sprawling, careless script. “Dear Nell,” it said. “Thanks for the evening. Remember, if you happen to see Miss Conway, let her know I’d give anything to talk to her. Yrs, JL”

Pressing her lips together to keep them from trembling, Nellie, still naked, stood for a very long time with the note in her hand. Then she took it to the fireplace, where she knelt down and put a match to it, watching as it flared into an orange flame, then fell into a heap of black ash. By the time the last spark had died, there was a hard ache in her throat and her eyes were swimming with tears. She had the feeling that something very precious had been taken from her, and she had received nothing in return.

Adam Gould sat on a wooden chair in a dark cage in a small room in the depths of Holloway Prison. Across from him, on another wooden chair on the other side of the wire barricade, sat Mr. Morley, of Masters, Morley, and Dunderston, the solicitor sent to him by the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants. Morley was thin as a broom-straw, stiff-necked and nearly bald, and with a dour and depressed demeanor. He felt-no, he knew, and gloomily asserted as much-that nothing short of a miracle could save Adam from the retributive power of the law.

“If I’ve said it once, I’ve said it a hundred times,” he added in a sour whisper, as if he did not wish to be overheard by the guard, who stood not ten paces away. “Anarchists are trouble. And, sir, you have asked for it. Hanging about the offices of the Clarion, consorting with known Anarchists. Nothing good can come from the Anarchist principle, I say, and that’s the short and the long of it.” He sniffed contemptuously. “Nothing, to put it in the fewest possible words.”

Adam sighed, for Morley had never been a man to put anything into the fewest possible words, and his political persuasions were already very well known. Like most of those involved with the trade unions, he felt that the Anarchists were nothing but inept bunglers, and dangerous in their ineptitude. “What I want to know,” Adam said patiently, “is whether you’ve heard anything from Miss Conway.”

“No, and not likely to, either,” Morley rejoined, in a low, dispirited tone, as if oppressed and deadened by the burden of his gloom. He took out a large white handkerchief and blew his nose with a loud honk. “Infernal places, prisons,” he muttered. “Dank and musty. Not good for the lungs, nor for the heart, nor for the spirit. In short, not good at all. In fact, I do truly believe that each time I am forced to come here, I-”