Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

“Good.”

  “I’ll show you the way.”

  “I already know it. Right through here.”

  The messenger nodded in curt greeting to two other guards on duty near the entrance. He turned toward the bleak structure on the left and opened the door.

  Wearing a robe over his nightclothes, the governor sat behind his desk. The office was cold, the fire having been allowed to dwindle. Closed draperies did little to keep out the chill. The governor leaned close to the only heat source, a lamp on the desk, which revealed that his normally puffy face was even more so because he’d been suddenly wakened.

  “From Lord Palmerston?” the governor asked nervously.

  “Yes. About the Opium-Eater.”

  The messenger closed the door, crossed the office, and handed the sealed envelope across the desk.

  The governor used a letter opener to break the seal. As he removed the folded document, he absently told the messenger, “You may sit.”

  “Thank you, but I’ve been instructed to return promptly to assure Lord Palmerston that his orders are being followed.”

  “At this institution, Lord Palmerston’s orders are always followed.”

  “He appreciates obedience.”

  As the governor read the document, the messenger plunged the letter opener into his throat, destroying the governor’s larynx, making it impossible for him to cry out. While the governor struggled for air, choking on his blood, the messenger went to what resembled an accountant’s ledger on a side table.

  The ledger contained a diagram of the prison, with notes indicating which prisoner was in which cell.

  By the time the messenger gained the information he wanted, the governor had toppled forward onto the desk, his weight pushing the letter opener farther through his throat, its tip projecting from the back of his neck.

  The messenger opened the door only wide enough for him to step outside, preventing the guard from viewing the office.

  The yellow fog drifted around them.

  “The governor has gone back to bed. He wants me to speak to the Opium-Eater,” the messenger said.

  “I’ll take you to the jailer.”

  “Thanks. Sorry if I sounded officious at the entrance. Lord Palmerston is a difficult man to please, not that you heard it from me. Sometimes when he doesn’t like the messages I bring back, he blames me instead of the sender.”

  “The governor isn’t much better.”

  Their footsteps sounded along the cobblestone path. A lamp above the hub’s entrance gradually became visible.

  The guard unlocked the door. “What’s all the noise from the river?”

  “Several riots.”

  “What?”

  “The killer slaughtered eleven more people tonight, including a surgeon and a constable.”

  “A surgeon? A constable? Then nobody is safe.”

  “The mobs think a sailor did it.”

  “But isn’t the Opium-Eater the killer?”

  “Seems not. The mobs are grabbing every sailor they can find.”

  “Lord save us.”

  And Lord save you, the messenger thought, if you don’t follow the suggestion I’m about to make.

  “I know what to do from here. The jailer’s just behind this door. Better get back to the gate in case the mobs come in this direction.”

  “You’re sure you can find your way back to the entrance?”

  “Returning, all I need to do is follow this path.”

  The guard hesitated.

  The messenger prepared to kill him. “Better hurry to the gate in case there’s trouble. It sounds as if one of the mobs is almost here.”

  The young man rushed through the fog.

  When the messenger could no longer hear the guard’s urgently retreating footsteps, he opened the door to the hub.

  INSIDE, THE YELLOW flames from gas fixtures showed the barred doors to the radiating corridors. The flames also showed the open doors to four rooms situated between the corridors.

  The doors were open. In the first room, the jailer was slumped over his desk. In the second, a guard was similarly slumped. In the third, a big man in street clothes lay unconscious across a desk while the Opium-Eater’s daughter slept on a cot.

  The fourth room was empty, the prison’s efficient, secure design requiring no other personnel to be on night duty here.

  Each man had a bowl in front of him. While the guards’ food was of better quality than that of the prisoners, all of it was prepared in the prison’s kitchen, and all the food brought to the hub and the radiating corridors, whether to prisoners or guards, had been drugged by someone who worked in the kitchen and owed the messenger a great favor.

  The sight of the Opium-Eater’s daughter and her escort was unexpected but convenient.

  The messenger removed a ring of keys from the drugged jailer’s waist. He unlocked the door to the middle corridor and proceeded past the quiet cells. He found a door on the right whose number matched the entry in the governor’s ledger that indicated where the Opium-Eater was being held.

  He unlocked that door. It could be opened only outward. The gaslight in the corridor cast his shadow into the cramped cell.

  The light was sufficient to reveal that the cell appeared unoccupied.

  The messenger frowned. Had he made a mistake when he’d examined the governor’s ledger? Perhaps he’d misread the number next to the Opium-Eater’s name. No. The messenger didn’t make mistakes. It was far more likely that the governor had made a mistake when he wrote the entry.

  Remaining just outside the doorway, the messenger peered in toward the corner on the right. No one. He peered in toward the corner on the left. No one was there either.

  He slowly entered the shadowy room. At the opposite end, the hammock hung against a wall, its thin mattress and its blanket upright within it, awaiting a new prisoner. The messenger directed his attention toward the table. Its chair was slightly askew, as if making room for someone under there. Ready to complete his mission, he yanked back the chair and lunged under the table.

  His hands grabbed air.

  There wasn’t an empty bowl on the table. Only a Bible.

  The governor wrote the wrong number! the messenger inwardly bellowed. Now I need to go from cell to bloody cell!

  He returned to the corridor and closed the door so that his view of the corridor would not be impeded. Arbitrarily, he chose the cell on the right. He unlocked the door and stepped into the fetid confinement, which smelled of night soil in the pail that served as a chamber pot. An empty bowl on the table showed that the cell’s occupant had eaten the drugged food. A large man—too large to be the Opium-Eater—snored on a hammock.

  Blast it.

  The messenger proceeded to the next cell and the cell after that. In each case, the Opium-Eater was not the occupant.

  How much time do I have before the guard who escorted me here comes looking for me? I can’t search every cell in all five corridors! That’ll take hours!

  THE OPIUM-EATER SLOWLY released his breath after the intruder abandoned the cell and closed the door. He was hidden in the only place available.

  In desperation, he’d concealed the bowl of potato and broth in the pail that served as a privy. He’d pulled the chair partway from under the table, making it look as if he might be under there.

  Detecting a sound at the far end of the corridor, he’d removed the blanket and mattress from the hammock. Fear shooting through him, he’d unhooked one end of the hammock and pulled it across to hook it to the other end, folding the hammock so that it hung against the wall the way it had been positioned when he had arrived. In a rush, he’d set the mattress upright inside the folded hammock and placed the rolled blanket on top of it—again as they’d been positioned when he’d entered.

  Hearing footsteps in the corridor, he’d squirmed fearfully behind the upright mattress. Squeezed into the corner behind it and the hammock, his short, thin body blended with the shadows.

  To all appearances,
the cell had not been assigned a prisoner.

  Or so he prayed the intruder would conclude.

  He strained not to breathe as the intruder surveyed the room, grabbed under the table, noted the absence of a food bowl, and decided that the cell was empty. Further sounds indicated the door being closed and an adjacent door being unlocked. Then another door. Then the door after that. The intruder made no attempt to muffle the sound of his impatient footsteps

  The Opium-Eater didn’t understand. Why wasn’t the intruder afraid of waking the prisoners whose cells he invaded? Were they so trained not to talk to anyone that they wouldn’t dare cry out even if someone burst into their cells in the middle of the night? Was it possible for the prisoners to be cowed so severely?

  Or could there be another explanation? Could the prisoners have been…

  The dark suspicion strengthened.

  Drugged?

  The Opium-Eater thought of the potato in the bowl that he had hidden in the slop pail.

  The intruder proceeded angrily from cell to cell, not caring how much noise he made.

  Squeezed into the corner behind the folded hammock, the Opium-Eater allowed himself to breathe more freely as the sounds went farther and farther from him.

  The corridor lapsed into silence.

  The Opium-Eater strained to listen. The silence deepened.

  The cell door banged open.

  The intruder stepped furiously inside.

  “It took me a while to wonder why this door was locked if the cell was empty. There’s no need to lock a cell that doesn’t contain a prisoner.”

  The intruder closed the door, blocking the exit.

  “He warned me you’re a clever little shit.”

  He?

  The Opium-Eater flinched as the intruder charged toward the folded hammock, yanked away the upright mattress, and lunged into the corner. The Opium-Eater gasped as the attacker grabbed him, lifted him, and slammed him against the wall.

  The impact took his breath away.

  But people do not submit to die quietly. They run, they kick, and they bite. Panicked, he did much of that now. The intruder was tall. Suspended in the air against the wall, the Opium-Eater felt his boots against the intruder’s knees.

  He kicked those knees repeatedly. Right, left, right, left. Despite his age, his legs had the strength of walking thousands of miles a year. He kicked fiercely, frantically, striking the intruder’s groin.

  With a roar, the intruder slammed him harder against the wall. The impact of the Opium-Eater’s head against stone sent a flare through his mind. Abruptly the flare dimmed, and he feared he was going to pass out.

  He managed to turn his head and sink his teeth into the intruder’s right hand, which held him off the ground, squeezing his throat. Biting, he felt the attacker’s blood spurt into his mouth. He gnawed deeper, twisting his head from side to side. As his teeth tore flesh from the intruder’s hand, blood dribbled from his lips.

  The intruder threw him to the floor. The crack of his body against it stunned him and made him feel that the cell was spinning. But his desperation to live was greater than his pain. When the attacker reached down, he rolled. As small as the cell was for him, it was even smaller for a man as big as the intruder, with almost no room to maneuver. On the floor, the Opium-Eater squirmed this way and that, evading the intruder’s arms. When he banged against the slop pail, he grasped its handle and swung it, bashing it against the intruder’s face.

  He swung the pail a second time, but the attacker grabbed it and hurled it away. On his back, the Opium-Eater pushed from the attacker’s hands. He felt the chair behind him and tried to use it as a shield, but the attacker grabbed it and hurled it away also.

  The Opium-Eater kicked at shins and knees in a frenzy, but the attacker only exhaled in rage and dragged him back toward the folded hammock.

  “I can’t hang you in here the way John Williams died. No overhead pipe. But I can do this.”

  Using one large hand to press the Opium-Eater against the floor, the attacker pulled the blanket toward them.

  The Opium-Eater writhed and kicked and felt the attacker add the weight of his knee onto his chest. It became almost impossible to breathe. He opened his mouth to draw in more air.

  And gagged as the attacker shoved a corner of the blanket between his lips.

  Terrified, he flailed, desperate to get free, to push away the attacker’s hands and spit out the portion of blanket. But the attacker pressed his knee harder onto his chest. Struggling for air, the Opium-Eater reflexively opened his mouth wider and gagged as the attacker shoved another section of the blanket into it.

  Past his tongue. Into the top of his throat.

  Dry and dusty, the blanket absorbed all the moisture in his mouth. His lungs convulsed. His stomach propelled bile toward his mouth, but the wedge of blanket deflected the bile into his lungs.

  His heart pounded with such frantic force that he feared it would burst. In the greatest frenzy of his life, he felt the shadows of the cell become darker.

  His arms weakened. His sight narrowed. The attacker shoved even more of the blanket into his mouth, cramming it down his throat.

  At once he had a floating sensation, a dream state overtaking him, much like the effect of opium. As a child, he’d had a persistent nightmare about a lion threatening him. In the nightmare, he’d been so frightened that paralysis seized him. He’d been tempted to lie down before the lion in the hope that the lion would spare him if he acquiesced.

  As his mind dimmed and his chest heaved with less force, he thought that it would be so easy to lie down in front of the lion now.

  So peaceful to surrender.

  No!

  He groped in his coat pocket. Rage filling him, he clutched the spoon Emily had given him.

  In fury, he gripped the round end of the spoon and thrust its handle up with all his remaining strength.

  Something popped. Warm, thick liquid streamed onto his fist as the spoon’s handle rammed into what he suddenly realized was the attacker’s left eye.

  The attacker stiffened.

  Screamed.

  Shoving with all his remaining might, the Opium-Eater thrust the spoon’s handle deeper into the man’s eye.

  Wailing, the attacker raised his hands to his face.

  The Opium-Eater shoved him, hearing an impact as the attacker’s head struck the wooden box on the wall.

  The Opium-Eater struggled to pull the blanket from his mouth. He tugged and tugged. Dear God, how was it possible for so much of the blanket to have been crammed into his mouth? Abruptly the thing was out of him. He drew a frantic breath, but his stomach kept heaving, and bile kept rising, burning in his throat.

  He twisted his head and vomited.

  The attacker crawled toward him. The Opium-Eater kicked, feeling his boot shove the spoon deeper into the man’s eye socket.

  Delirious, he rolled. He struck the wall and used it to grope to his feet. The attacker grabbed his ankle. The Opium-Eater kicked his hand away and staggered toward the door. Behind him, the attacker struggled upright.

  The Opium-Eater shoved the door open and was almost blinded by what would normally have been faint gaslight. Dizzy, he heard the attacker charging toward him. He stumbled into the hall, slammed the door, and struck the attacker’s face.

  With one hand against the wall, he staggered along the corridor.

  Behind him, the cell door crashed open.

  He strained to move faster toward the hub at the end of the corridor.

  Footsteps lurched after him.

  He struggled to increase speed.

  A hand grabbed his shoulder.

  BECKER SLUMPED ACROSS THE DESK in the office in the hub. The last thing he remembered was that Emily complained of drowsiness and set down the knife he’d lent her to eat the potato.

  “It’s been a long, stressful day,” he had told her. “I’ll go into the next room so you can sleep.”

  But as Emily rose from the desk and
lay on the cot, he felt drowsy also. He set down the potato he’d been eating and made an effort to stand from the desk, but his knees had no strength, and he felt his eyelids flickering shut.

  Gradually he became aware that his head was on the table. He had a vague sense that a lot of time had passed. He strained to open his eyes and saw his right hand in front of him. Blurred, it held the potato he’d been forcing himself to eat.

  Metal clattered, as if a pail had been thrown. A wooden object struck a wall—perhaps a chair. But the noises were distant, as if in a dream.

  A scream brought Becker’s eyes fully open, it too from a distance but definitely not in a dream.

  Dizzy, he raised his head. Beyond the desk, Emily lay on the cot.

  The sounds of a frantic struggle echoed beyond the room. A door banged. Footsteps stumbled along a corridor. The door banged again, other footsteps stumbling along the corridor.

  Legs unsteady, Becker managed to stand. He didn’t understand why the jailer wasn’t responding to the sounds. Where was the other guard who watched the corridors at night?

  A cry of pain made him grab his knife from the table. Light-headed, he stepped from the room and turned toward the middle corridor.

  What he saw made him waver in confusion. De Quincey was out of his cell. A huge man, with blood on his face, pressed De Quincey against the wall and squeezed his throat.

  “Hey!” Becker managed to shout.

  The tall man kept choking De Quincey. The contrast between the tiny man and the large attacker was grotesque, like a giant choking a child.

  “Stop!” Becker yelled.

  The door to the corridor was ajar. With increasing strength in his legs, Becker stepped through. The shock of what was happening cleared the fog from his mind. He ran along the corridor and rammed the butt end of his knife against the attacker’s skull.

  The blow should have knocked the attacker unconscious. Instead, the man merely turned in fury and startled Becker with the discovery that something protruded from his left eye socket. God in heaven, it looked like a spoon. Gore dripped from the socket.

  The man released his hands from De Quincey’s throat, dropping him to the floor in a heap. With an intense glare in his remaining eye, he reached under his coat. The next instant, he thrust a hand toward Becker. The hand held something that glinted, and Becker ducked back in time to realize that the object was a knife. The blade slashed across Becker’s chest, slicing his coat, nicking his skin. He lurched farther back as the attacker spun the knife so that its glint resembled a furiously pivoting wheel. The movement was too fast for Becker to follow. All he could do was keep stumbling away from the terrifying blur, moving just fast enough that pieces of his coat parted but not his skin.