CHAPTER SEVENTY-FOUR
Polidori sipped from his flask and checked his fob watch. Less than an hour before Hamilton and he were due at Kensington Palace.
Two women lay dead in his basement. Nine others in the grand home in Mayfair. He held no doubt at least one would rise to continue the killing. He pulled on a fresh jacket and coat and descended the stair from his bedroom at speed, hesitating only momentarily at the hall stand to see the package he’d ripped open earlier—the first printing of Ernestus Berchtold: Or the Modern Oedipus. There was also a letter from Mary. He placed the unopened envelope in his breast pocket.
Outside, he nodded to the Bow Street Runner stationed in the shadows of early morning beside 38 Great Pulteney Street and climbed up into the cabriolet with Officer Hamil
