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rushed through him.
    Of fifteen years earlier.
    Of shouts and panic and gunfire.
    Of chaos and the unthinkable.
    He jerked his head up, startled by fierce pounding on the church’s main door.

THREE
The House of Death
    I n 1855, the concept of preserving a crime scene had existed for only a few decades. Disciplined investigation of a crime depends on organization, but not until 1829 had London’s police force been created, the first citywide unit of its kind in all of England. Its principles were formulated by two commissioners, one of whom was a retired military commander, Colonel Charles Rowan, while the other was a barrister experienced in criminal law, Richard Mayne. Rowan’s military background was essential in the short term, modeling the police force on the regulations and ranks of the army. But over the years Mayne’s legal expertise made the difference.
    Mayne understood that it was one thing to arrest someone for supposedly having committed a crime. It was quite another to prove guilt in a court of law. He taught patrolmen that evidence was as important as an arrest. A thorough search of a crime scene, interviews with everyone in the area, the collection and cataloguing of possibly incriminating objects—these methods were revolutionary.
    Mayne insisted on detailed records for anybody who was arrested: height, weight, color of hair and eyes, scars, aliases, a handwriting sample if that person could write, anything that might be useful in linking someone to a crime and proving it in court. He established a system of what he called “route papers,” in which the details of unsolved crimes in one district were communicated each morning to every other police district in the city.
    “Evidence,” Mayne insisted. “That’s how you capture criminals and put them in prison. Every criminal leaves a trail. Look for it. Follow it. I want details.”
      
    T he pounding on the church’s door persisted.
    “It’s Detective Sergeant Becker!” a voice yelled from outside. “Open up!”
    “Let him in!” Ryan shouted.
    He returned his knife to its scabbard under his trouser leg. He shoved the envelope and its dismaying two-word note into a coat pocket, then hurried over the partition into Lord Palmerston’s pew.
    Colonel Trask stepped toward him. “Your face…What did you read in the note?”
    Ryan pretended not to hear him. Ignoring the pain in his recently healed abdomen, he veered around De Quincey and the others. As he rushed along the aisle, he saw a churchwarden unlocking the door.
    When Becker hurried inside, his face glistened from the effort with which he’d summoned the dozen constables behind him.
    “More men are on the way.”
    “Good. We need all of them and plenty of others,” Ryan said.
    A dozen constables were indeed not sufficient. Nor were a second dozen—and a further dozen after that. Everyone in the church—not to mention those who’d fled amid the cries of “Blood!”—needed to be questioned. Each area of St. James’s needed to be searched: its vestry, its offices, its bell tower, under every bench, behind the organ in the choir loft, everywhere. All the worshippers needed to be identified to make certain that they belonged there. Each garment needed to be checked for blood.
    Ryan sought out Agnes, the chief pew-opener. “The man who escorted Lady Cosgrove, do you know his name?”
    “I never saw him before.”
    Ryan asked the churchwardens and the other pew-openers, “Did you recognize the man who was with Lady Cosgrove?”
    “A face that sour—I’d remember it,” one of them said.
    “He was never in this church before, I can tell you,” someone else added.
    Constables went from box pew to box pew, interviewing the congregation. The waist-high compartments provided the illusion of privacy, even though the conversations rumbled throughout the church.
    “I’m expected at my uncle’s home in Belgravia for two o’clock dinner. Surely you don’t expect me to stay here