Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  “You surely can’t come inside.”

  “Why not? I’ve seen death before, especially my mother’s long, wasting illness.”

  Ryan gave Becker a look that suggested, Maybe you can deal with her.

  But before Becker could say anything, the Opium-Eater opened the door and stepped into the shop. Trying to stay in control, Ryan entered, moving ahead of him. The next thing, Emily was inside, followed by Becker.

  Although the bodies had been removed, the room continued to have a foul odor. Ryan glanced back at Emily, concerned that she might faint. But although she looked pale and held a handkerchief to her nose, she surprised him by seeming more curious than horrified.

  Becker closed the door and stopped the cold fog from drifting in.

  “Apart from the absence of the bodies, is everything as the murderer left it?” De Quincey asked.

  Or as you and an accomplice possibly left it? Ryan wondered. “No.”

  “How is it different?” De Quincey continued.

  “My purpose in agreeing to bring you here is to ask you questions, not the other way around,” Ryan informed him.

  “But how is it different?” De Quincey indicated an open door to the left of the counter. “I see considerable dried blood on the hallway floor. There are contours as if the blood pooled around bodies. Where were they taken?”

  “After an artist made detailed sketches, the remains were removed to the basement.”

  De Quincey nodded. In 1854 London, there weren’t any funeral parlors. Corpses were kept at home until burial. Family members placed the body of a loved one on a bed, cleaned and dressed it, and made the corpse look as if it were sleeping. Sometimes a death mask was made, and with the advent of the daguerreotype process, photographs sometimes were taken. After that, friends were allowed to enter the bedroom and view the remains. The visitations might last five days until it became obvious that a coffin was required.

  After a religious ceremony at the deceased’s home, the coffin was transported via a horse-drawn hearse to a cemetery, but London’s rapid growth put a strain on burial capacity. Cemeteries designed for three thousand burials were forced to accommodate as many as eighty thousand, eventually piling ten, twelve, and even fifteen caskets on top of one another. As the bottom caskets disintegrated, cemetery workers helped the process by digging down and jumping on the remains to compact them so that additional caskets could be placed on top.

  New cemeteries were located miles from the center of London, with the result that a horse-drawn funeral procession would take most of the day for the body to arrive at its resting place. But only a month earlier, in November, an innovation had occurred with the construction of the London Necropolis Railway Station. A funeral procession could now board a special train that transported mourners and the coffin to the recently created Brookwood cemetery, twenty-five miles away. After the interment, the train would then bring the mourners back to London, all in a previously impossible single day’s round trip.

  AN ABRUPT NOISE INTERRUPTED De Quincey’s questions. It came from the rear of the building, not the creak of beams shrinking in the cold but of footsteps climbing stairs.

  Becker stepped in front of Emily, his hand over the truncheon on his belt.

  A shadow lengthened in the corridor, reaching the top of the basement stairs.

  Becker heard Emily inhale with apprehension.

  At once a figure approached them, stepping around the dried blood on the hallway floor.

  Becker recognized the man he’d discovered pounding on the door the previous night in an effort to deliver a blanket to his sick niece. This was also the man who’d led the mob’s assault on the stranger who the mob had believed was the killer.

  The burly man frowned toward the group before him. His hair was unkempt. Dried tears streaked the grime on his beard-stubbled cheeks.

  Seeing strangers, he tensed until he focused on Becker’s uniform. “I’m Jonathan’s brother.”

  “This is Detective Inspector Ryan,” Becker said.

  The brother nodded. “I saw you earlier.”

  “In the fracas. Yes.”

  “The constable outside said it was all right for me to come in.”

  “It is,” Ryan agreed.

  “Did the best I could for ’em. Poor Jonathan. Never should’ve come here from Manchester. None of us should’ve. I set up trestles and planks in the basement. Put ’em on the planks. Tried to make ’em look natural, I did, but God help ’em…” The man’s voice wavered. “After what the bugger did to ’em… excuse me, miss… how can I possibly make ’em look natural? The undertaker wants sixteen pounds for ’em for the funeral. Says I need white coffins for the two children. The baby…” Fresh tears welled from his eyes. “Even the baby costs for a funeral. And where will I find sixteen pounds? Ruined I am. The bugger destroyed Jonathan and his family, and now I’m ruined too.”

  Snot mixed with his tears. He shook his head in despair.

  Emily surprised Becker by saying, “I’m sorry.”

  She further surprised Becker—and Ryan and especially the grieving man—by crossing the room and touching the man’s arm. The only person who didn’t look surprised was De Quincey.

  “My heart goes out to you,” she said.

  The man blinked, unaccustomed to kind words. “Thank you, miss.”

  “Mr….?”

  “Hayworth.”

  “Mr. Hayworth, when did you sleep last?”

  “A few hours here and there. Hasn’t been time. Truth is, my mind won’t allow me.”

  “And when did you eat last? I can smell that you’ve been drinking alcohol.”

  “Apologies, miss. With the shock of everything, I…”

  “No need to apologize. But when did you eat last?”

  “Maybe this morning.”

  “Do you live around here?”

  “Five minutes.”

  “Do you have a family?”

  The man wiped at his face. “My missus and a little boy.”

  “Detective Inspector Ryan will arrange for someone to escort you home.”

  Ryan blinked.

  “Mr. Hayworth, I’m giving you strict orders to let your family know that you’re all right,” Emily continued.

  “Strict orders?”

  “Yes. Your wife and son must be worried sick. What’s more, given what’s happened, they must be afraid. They depend on your safety.”

  “You’re right, miss,” the man told her sheepishly.

  “I want you to go home immediately and eat something. Then I want you to rest your head. Even if you can’t sleep, lying down will do you good. The man who escorts you to your home will tell me where it is. I’ll go there when I have the opportunity. If I discover that you haven’t followed my orders, I shall be displeased, and you do not wish that.”

  “No, miss. I promise, miss.”

  Ryan give Becker a subtle nod.

  “I’ll take care of it,” Becker said. “One of the constables will escort Mr. Hayworth home.”

  “Thank you,” Emily said to Becker and Ryan.

  “Thank you, miss.” Hayworth sniffled, wiping his sleeve across his face.

  “And we’ll give some thought to how your funeral expenses might be alleviated,” Emily added. “But right now, your priorities are your family, food, and rest.”

  Hayworth nodded. Hope mixing with exhaustion, he sniffled again and allowed Becker to lead him from the shop.

  WE’LL GIVE SOME THOUGHT to alleviating his funeral expenses?” Ryan asked Emily as Becker returned and closed the door against the cold fog.

  “Yes. I’m confident that a solution will come to us,” Emily replied.

  “Us?” Ryan asked. “The Metropolitan Police can’t assume that obligation.”

  “Manchester,” De Quincey interrupted. “The victim was from Manchester. The family’s name is Hayworth.”

  “That’s what he told us. Why?” Ryan asked. “You look as if you think those details are important.”
>
  “Perhaps. May I see the sketches of the bodies?”

  “You’re still asking questions instead of answering them. How do you know so much about the original Ratcliffe Highway murders? What age were you in eighteen eleven?”

  “Twenty-six. Old enough to have the strength to commit the murders, if not the size. Your next question should be, Where was I during that December night forty-three years ago?”

  “Precisely.”

  “I was in Grasmere in the Lake District, residing in William Wordsworth’s former home, Dove Cottage. At that time, it was a several-days’ journey to London via coach, although I suppose I could have managed it if I were desperate to slaughter a family on Ratcliffe Highway. However, I would have been missed because at the time I was engaged in a much-protracted disagreement with William and his family over shrubbery that I chose to have ripped from their former garden. William’s wife, Mary, and his sister, Dorothy, were much displeased. Believe me, they would have noted my absence. William and Dorothy have joined the majority, God bless them. But Mary is still alive and assembling new editions of her husband’s poetry. I am not certain where she resides, but perhaps she still remembers the rancor of that December.”

  “Since you’re both asking and answering the questions, what should my next question be?”

  Becker noted that Ryan didn’t sound frustrated any longer. The detective had found a way to make De Quincey cooperate.

  “The one with which you started. How do I know the details of the original murders? Because I researched them, Inspector Ryan. I was so impressed by the paralyzing effect the murders had on the nation that I accumulated copies of every newspaper with even the slightest information about them. The panic of those days was exceptional and widely reported. You’ll find the newspapers in one of the many lodgings for which I do my best to pay rent in order to store things. Unfortunately I can’t recall which of those lodgings they’re in.”

  “Lothian Street in Edinburgh, Father,” Emily said.

  “Are you sure, Emily?”

  “You asked me to fetch them from there when you were writing your third murder essay.”

  “Thank you, Emily.” De Quincey turned toward Ryan. “May I see the sketches of the bodies now?”

  “They’re at the end of the counter.”

  De Quincey drank from his laudanum flask, making Ryan raise his eyes in disgust.

  De Quincey then proceeded to the counter and examined one sketch after another.

  Becker expected a reaction of horror, but instead the short man displayed only intense concentration.

  When he finished, his voice was filled with sadness. “From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.”

  “Excuse me?” Ryan asked.

  “It’s a prayer from the general petition of the English Church,” De Quincey explained. “Odd how the Church considers sudden death to be worse than pestilence and famine. Julius Caesar viewed it in a different light. The night before his assassination, he happened to be asked what he considered to be the best mode of death. He replied, ‘That which is most sudden.’ He meant a death that would cause neither pain nor terror. Interesting that the English Church prefers a lingering death in which pain tortures the victim, giving him time to settle not only with God but with the grocer.”

  Becker had never heard anyone speak this way. The Opium-Eater’s strange thoughts made his mind spin. “Well, the shopkeeper didn’t feel terror. From the looks of things, he didn’t know what hit him.”

  “Yes.” De Quincey pointed at one of the sketches. “It appears that he was struck twice from behind before his throat was slit.” Significantly, De Quincey didn’t apologize to his daughter, seeming to take for granted that she had heard conversations of this sort before. “He wouldn’t have known what was done to him. Nor the infant. But the wife, the servant, and the young girl were struck from in front. They saw what was coming. They definitely felt terror.”

  “And your point is…?” Ryan asked.

  “Was any money taken?”

  “No.”

  “If the motive wasn’t profit, what else could it have been?” De Quincey wondered. “Revenge? On whom? The shopkeeper? It’s a poor revenge when the victim doesn’t know he’s being punished. Revenge on the wife because she rejected the advances of the killer in an earlier encounter? Perhaps. But then why kill the servant, the young girl, and the infant? The wife wouldn’t have seen her children being killed. She wouldn’t have experienced the maximum torment. Could the servant have been the true victim? If so, why did the killer then brutalize the infant?”

  “These questions already occurred to us,” Ryan said impatiently.

  “Sometimes our minds trick us into seeing things in a way that they aren’t.”

  “I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Father, explain about the Indian emperor and the coach,” Emily suggested.

  “Thank you, Emily. An excellent example.”

  “The Indian emperor and the coach?” Ryan raised his hands in frustration. “Can we please confine the conversation to the murders?”

  “That’s precisely what I’m doing. A British diplomat once gave a coach to an Indian emperor. The coach had a high roof with four seats inside and an outside forward seat for the driver. It was ornate to the point of magnificence, but at that time, coaches didn’t exist in India, and after the official departed, the emperor didn’t know what to make of the gift. What he did know was that his exalted stature required him to be above everyone, so he and his advisers climbed to the top of the coach, where the emperor sat in the precarious throne of the driver’s seat. Meanwhile the driver, whose status was so low that he didn’t deserve to be seen, climbed into the coach and threaded the reins through a hole he created beneath the driver’s seat. In that position, unable to view where he was going, the driver urged the horses forward. At first, the emperor enjoyed the excitement of the violent ride, but after he was tossed this way and that for a sufficient length of time, he ordered the driver to stop. Not wishing to appear undignified, he smiled as he was helped to the ground, after which the coach was put away and never seen again.”

  “And what is the point of that story?” Ryan demanded.

  “We see things from a perspective that we take for granted, such as the emperor thinking that the driver’s seat was preferable because it was high. But what if our perspective is incorrect? Looking at the scene of these murders, what we think is one thing might be something else entirely. The bodies have been removed. What else has been changed?”

  “All the doors were closed,” Becker responded, the first he’d spoken in a while.

  “Who discovered the bodies?”

  “I did,” Becker added. “I came upon the brother pounding on the front door. It was locked, so I climbed a wall and came in through the back.”

  “Where you saw…?”

  “The mother and the young girl on the floor in the hallway.”

  “Then you…?”

  “Opened that door”—Becker indicated the doorway next to the counter—“entered the shop, and found the body behind the counter.”

  “And after that?”

  “I opened the doors to the kitchen and the bedroom and discovered the other bodies.”

  “The killer didn’t achieve his full design.”

  “I don’t understand,” Ryan said, exhaustion straining his voice.

  “In my essay about the fine art of murder, I refer to pity and terror as the ultimate goals. We feel pity for the victims. But who feels the terror? The shopkeeper didn’t. The infant didn’t. Yes, the wife, the servant, and the young girl felt terror, but only for the briefest of moments as they gaped at the mallet coming toward them. Constable Becker, what time did you reach the shop as you made your rounds?”

  “Ten fifteen, the same as every other night.”

  “The reliability of every constable’s
schedule. I assume that the killer would have known your schedule and intended to wait until ten twenty before he unlocked the front door and stepped outside into the darkness. He couldn’t have known that the brother would arrive and interfere with the plan. In the normal order of things, the next day someone would have wondered where the shopkeeper and his family were. That person would have knocked on the door, found it unlocked, and entered. The odor and the blood spatters would have led to the discovery of what lay behind the counter. Horrified, the person would have run for help. More people would now have entered the shop, and with each door they opened, further horrors would have greeted them, until the spectacle achieved its maximum effect with the opening of the final door and the discovery of the slaughtered infant.”

  De Quincey walked toward the doorway that led to the rear of the building.

  Surprised by his sudden movement, Becker and Ryan followed as he entered the hallway, took a wide step around the dried blood, and peered into the kitchen.

  “Teeth on the floor,” De Quincey commented. “Sublime.”

  “You’re insane,” Ryan said.

  “The coach and the Indian emperor,” De Quincey told him. “To understand what happened here, you need to pretend you’re the killer. If you’re disgusted, you won’t truly see. You need to admire the butchery as a masterpiece.”

  “The laudanum has twisted you.”

  “To the contrary, it allows me to see perfectly straight.”

  Becker looked back to make sure that Emily wasn’t following. She remained in the shop, seeming to feel sorry for them.

  De Quincey entered the kitchen and studied the mallet on the table. “May I pick it up?”

  “By all means. I’d like to see how you manage it,” Ryan agreed.

  The Opium-Eater assessed the matt of hair and dried blood on the striking surface. “Note how ungainly it is in my hand. Only someone large would feel comfortable with this.”

  He inspected the top of the mallet, where the wooden handle was secured to a hole in the metal head. “And here are the initials punched with a nail into the metal. J. P. The same as on the original mallet. That mallet also had an imperfection on its striking surface, a zigzag pattern in the metal. May I scrape away some of the hair and dried blood?”