Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  “Poor soul. Look at her. Too old to think clearly, confusing then with now.”

  “I asked her what she wanted to tell us. The answer was always the same—she’s so ashamed, she won’t say it more than once, and even then she says she’s not sure she can say it to a man instead of a woman.”

  “Seeing as how we don’t have a woman constable, she’ll be waiting a long time. What do you suppose an old woman could be ashamed of?”

  Continuing the Journal of Emily De Quincey

  With the mob outside the tavern and with no other place to spend the night, Inspector Ryan and Constable Becker sequestered Father and me in an upstairs room. The bed’s rumpled blankets made it obvious that the room had a previous occupant, probably the tavernkeeper, but I remained groggy from having been drugged, and my exhaustion was greater than my revulsion at sleeping on a dead man’s bed. Cushions provided a place for Father on the floor. Ryan and Becker slept outside the room. Despite the corpses downstairs, I managed to sleep.

  A loud noise jolted me awake.

  The pounding of a fist.

  Pounding on the tavern’s door.

  One of Father’s essays is titled “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth.” It describes the moment when Macbeth and his wife realize the enormity of the murder they conspired to commit. Lady Macbeth says she feels unsexed while Macbeth claims not to be of woman born. Time seems to stop, along with the beating of their hearts. Abruptly a knocking at the gate startles them. The pulse of the universe begins again, rushing them toward their destiny.

  I felt that way as I wakened to the pounding on the tavern’s door. Briefly, while I slept, I had managed to forget the horrors of the past three days, of the prison, of the dead in their slumber below me. But suddenly the pounding on the door caused the world to rush at me again, and I had the terrible premonition that the outcome of this wide-awake nightmare would overtake us horribly soon.

  “Who is it?” I heard Inspector Ryan demand, hurrying down the stairs.

  The pounding continued as I heard him unlock the door.

  Indistinct voices drifted up.

  Ryan closed the door and climbed the stairs, his sounds less quick, giving the impression of reluctance to deliver whatever message he had received.

  I opened the door before he could knock. He and Becker, unshaven and weary-looking, faced me.

  “What’s wrong?” Father asked behind me.

  “Lord Palmerston wants to see all of us immediately.”

  As our vehicle proceeded through the increasing fog, creating the greater impression of unreality, I saw the vague shapes of guards on every corner. Two of them stopped the coach that Lord Palmerston had sent for us. After leaning inside and recognizing Inspector Ryan, they told the driver to continue.

  The gloom was dispelled by a growing radiance that troubled me. Every other building on the street was dark, but the wall outside Lord Palmerston’s mansion was illuminated by numerous lamps, as were all the windows of the wide structure’s three levels.

  Father had retrieved his flask from me and refilled it with laudanum at the tavern. Now he drank from it as a gate admitted our coach to a curved driveway flanked by more guards.

  We stepped down and walked past guards into an enormous foyer, the marble floor of which reflected flames in a chandelier. At the top of a wide staircase, we entered a ballroom in which numerous glasses on tables and the strong smell of champagne provided evidence that an event had occurred the previous evening.

  The event must have been joyless, given the stern look we received from a heavyset man of perhaps seventy, with long, thick, brown-dyed sideburns and the narrow eyes of someone accustomed to giving commands. He wore evening clothes, evidently not having retired after the conclusion of the event.

  Next to him was a tall, straight-backed man in his early forties. His strong, harsh features reinforced the impression of discipline that his military posture communicated.

  When Inspector Ryan respectfully removed his cap, exposing his red hair, both men gave him a disapproving look.

  “I’ll take care of this business quickly.” Lord Palmerston pointed toward a tall stack of newspapers. “These will soon be on the streets. I don’t know how reporters obtained information about the attempt on my life this afternoon, but—”

  “Someone tried to kill you, Your Lordship?” Ryan asked in surprise.

  Lord Palmerston’s sharp gaze left no doubt of its meaning—Don’t interrupt me.

  “The city is already in a panic. Reports of my near assassination will only make things worse. Eight people slaughtered in a tavern. A surgeon, his wife, and a constable killed at the surgeon’s home. Mobs attacking sailors and constables. The governor of Coldbath Fields Prison killed during a rescue of the Opium-Eater.”

  “Rescue? No,” Becker objected. “That was an attempted murder.”

  “What’s your name?” Lord Palmerston demanded.

  “Constable Becker, Your Lordship.”

  “Not any longer. You’re relieved of authority. Your coat is in rags. Why is there blood on it?”

  “At Coldbath Fields Prison, I attempted to stop the intruder from killing Mr. De Quincey, Your Lordship.”

  “From rescuing him, you mean.” Lord Palmerston turned away. “Ryan, you’re relieved of authority also. Not twenty-four hours ago, I warned you what would happen if you failed to control this crisis. Instead you chose to put yourself under the sway of the Opium-Eater.”

  With each reference to that disparaging term, I sensed Father become more rigid beside me.

  “When I ordered you to arrest the Opium-Eater, my motive was to assure the population that events were under control,” Lord Palmerston continued, as if Father were not in the room. “Putting a logical suspect in prison gave us time to discover the actual murderer while calming the citizenry. But now I believe that the Opium-Eater is in fact responsible.”

  “This is wrong!” I exclaimed.

  “Colonel Brookline, tell them what you discovered.”

  The tall man with a military bearing stepped toward several documents on a table. “The Opium-Eater can’t account for his activities at the time of the murders on Saturday night. He argues that his age and lack of strength make him incapable of overpowering so many people. That his daughter helped him isn’t credible.”

  The colonel’s dismissive tone in my direction made me feel insulted.

  “But that doesn’t mean he didn’t have help. The accomplice who tried to rescue him from prison proves that he isn’t working alone.”

  “No,” Becker insisted. “The man was trying to kill Mr. De Quincey, not rescue him.”

  “If you become more argumentative, I shall order you removed and perhaps arrested,” Lord Palmerston warned. “Colonel Brookline, continue.”

  “After the Opium-Eater’s arrest, I conducted a thorough inquiry. The evidence here proves his intention to instigate a rebellion comparable to what happened during the Year of Revolution six years ago. From his earliest days, he demonstrated contempt for authority. He ran away from a school in Manchester and settled among the worst elements of London, living on the streets with prostitutes. When he became a student at Oxford, he participated in almost no educational activities. In fact, he left the university during his final examinations, apparently realizing that the requirements to demonstrate facility in Greek were too demanding for him to bluff his way through.”

  “No, the examination was too easy—in English rather than in Greek!” Father protested. “I left because I felt insulted!”

  Colonel Brookline continued to act is if Father were not in the room. “While the Opium-Eater pretended to be a student at Oxford, most of the time he appears to have actually been in London in the company of radicals. He had a fascination with atheism.”

  “Atheism?” Father repeated indignantly.

  Colonel Brookline turned on Father, for the first time acknowledging his presence. “Do you deny your familiarity with Rachel Lee, the notorious atheis
t?”

  “She was a guest at my mother’s house.”

  “Which tells us about the dubious nature of your home environment,” Brookline noted.

  “Leave my mother out of this.”

  “While you posed as a student at Oxford, you made contact with Rachel Lee during the infamous trial in which she accused two Oxford students of abducting and attempting to rape her. Their own testimony indicated that she had gone willingly with them in an effort to leave her husband and engage in a ménage à trois. The trial came to a startling conclusion when she was asked to give testimony on a Bible but she refused on the grounds that she did not believe in God. The proceedings were immediately halted, the students exonerated. These are the sorts of dangerous people with whom you enjoy collaborating.

  “Your association with the poets Wordsworth and Coleridge is even more suspect. You followed them to the Lake District, a well-known radical enclave. There, Coleridge created a socially disruptive newspaper to which you pledged both money and enflaming articles. You assisted Wordsworth in publishing a pamphlet that was libelous in its attack of Parliament. Wordsworth’s disruptive praise of the common man—farmers and milkmaids and so forth—impressed you to the point that you showed your contempt for the structure of society by descending beneath your station and actually marrying a milkmaid.”

  “My dear departed wife was not a milkmaid.” Father’s expression became rigid.

  “Call her what you will, her father was the most extreme radical in the Lake District, constantly urging the overthrow of the gentry.” Brookline’s accusations rushed on. “You have frequently been sought by law-enforcement officials. You often assumed aliases and concealed your numerous addresses, sometimes having as many as six lodgings at one time.”

  “Because of debts, I changed my name and moved frequently to avoid bill collectors.”

  “Or were you avoiding Home Office agents assigned to keep track of your rebellious activities?” Brookline demanded. “You wrote aggravating essays for both conservative and liberal magazines, urging both sides to extremes.”

  “To pay my bills, I worked for whoever wanted my services. The editors encouraged me to be reactionary.”

  “In one case, your invectives contributed to a lethal argument between the editors of two magazines. In a duel, one of the editors was mortally shot. No doubt you hoped that both of them would be killed and that the resultant outrage would lead to more violence.”

  “You twist things.”

  “It is your mind that twists things. You advocated the immoderate use of laudanum.”

  “I described my own experience as a caution to others.”

  “You also indulged in a drug called ‘bang.’ ”

  “Bang?” Lord Palmerston sounded baffled.

  “Otherwise known as hashish, Your Lordship, from which the word ‘assassin’ is derived.”

  “Good heavens.”

  “During the Crusades, fanatical Muslims smoked it before their murderous attacks on English officers, Your Lordship.”

  “No! Hashish encourages an appetite, not violence,” Father insisted.

  “Violence. Yes, you praised extreme violence in several of your essays, revealing your obsession with John Williams and the original Ratcliffe Highway murders. You called Williams a genius.”

  “An attempt to be humorous.”

  “The many people who were murdered recently are not amused. Through drugs, violence, and radical views, you persistently advocated the overthrow of the aristocracy. Now your obsession with violence has impelled you to encourage accomplices to re-create the original Ratcliffe Highway murders in an effort to destabilize London. I have proof, Your Lordship.”

  Brookline raised an item from the documents on the table. “In one of former inspector Ryan’s few helpful acts, he arranged for a newspaper artist to sketch the face of the dead man at Coldbath Fields Prison. The man gained access to the prison by claiming to be a messenger from you, Your Lordship.”

  “From me? But I sent no one to that prison,” Palmerston replied in confusion.

  “He had a message in an envelope with your seal on it.”

  “Impossible.”

  “No doubt a forgery. The message inside turned out to be of no importance, merely a trick to gain entrance. Here is the sketch, Your Lordship. Certain grotesque aspects of his death have been eliminated in an attempt to achieve an ordinary likeness. Do you recognize this man?”

  Palmerston held the sketch near a candelabrum on the table. “He didn’t work for me. I’ve never seen this man in my life.”

  “Although he didn’t work for you, you have in fact seen him, Your Lordship.”

  “I don’t—”

  “Granted, you saw him only fleetingly as I pushed you to the floor of your coach. This is the man who tried to assassinate you this afternoon.”

  “What?”

  “The man who tried to kill you is the same man who attempted to rescue the Opium-Eater from prison. I strongly suspect that this isn’t the Opium-Eater’s only accomplice. With Your Lordship’s permission, I think it would be appropriate to question the Opium-Eater in a persuasive manner after he is readmitted to prison.”

  Anger so controlled me that I raised my voice in defense of Father. “Persuasive manner. You can’t be serious. Torture an old man?”

  “No one used the word ‘torture.’ The British government does not torture prisoners,” Brookline said.

  “Then perhaps it’s the British military who does the torturing, Colonel.”

  Brookline gave me the harshest glare I ever received. “I don’t understand why this woman is allowed to be here. She doesn’t serve our purpose, except to show by her scandalous clothing the contempt that she and her father have for the standards of society. Not only is the bloomer dress immodest by revealing the outline of her legs, but it is also synonymous with a notorious female activist who campaigns for the disruption of society by advocating the right of women to vote.”

  “Immodest?” Father said angrily. “First, you insult my mother.”

  “I merely state facts.”

  “Next you insult my dead wife.”

  “The daughter of an agitator.”

  “Now you insult my daughter.”

  “Don’t try to distract us from our purpose.”

  “Which is to torture an old man!” I protested.

  “Old?” Brookline scoffed. “Your Lordship, the Opium-Eater uses his age to deceive those who might otherwise suspect him. In the past few days, he demonstrated more nimbleness than most men twenty years younger than he is.”

  “I am thirsty,” Father announced.

  “What?”

  Father went to a table in the corner and chose one of the half-full champagne glasses.

  He swallowed its contents in one gulp.

  My companions Ryan and Becker were accustomed to seeing this behavior, but Lord Palmerston and Colonel Brookline opened their mouths in astonishment.

  Father selected a second half-full champagne glass and swallowed its contents as well. He looked around for a third.

  “We’ll see how insolent you are in Coldbath Fields Prison when you reveal the names of your accomplices,” Brookline said.

  Father turned toward Palmerston. “Your Lordship, the man you should be searching for is a British soldier who spent considerable time in the Orient. He learned the languages of that region sufficiently to be able to give instructions to a Malay. He became an expert in disguises there. He has extensive experience with killing.”

  “This is a laudanum fantasy, Your Lordship. British soldiers do not kill English civilians,” Brookline objected.

  “Are you suggesting that they kill only Oriental civilians?” Father asked him.

  “Don’t be impertinent.”

  “Only someone with extensive combat experience could have accomplished the recent skillful slaughters,” Father elaborated. “Someone who was trained, someone who has done it many times.”

  “Outrageous
! British soldiers are not madmen!” Lord Palmerston protested. “If we suspect British soldiers, there’ll be no end of it. Your description could apply even to Colonel Brookline.”

  “Indeed it could.” Father stared at Brookline. “Did you serve in India, Colonel?”

  “This is another of the Opium-Eater’s attempts to undermine society, Your Lordship. Through his accomplices, first he persuades the populace to believe that the killer is a sailor, with the consequence that many sailors were attacked and work at the docks has halted. Then he convinces the mob that the killer is a constable, with the consequence that several policemen have been assaulted and faith in law enforcement has been eroded. Now he attempts to draw suspicion toward the military. By the time he’s finished making accusations, no one will be above suspicion. Next, he’ll claim that you’re the killer, Your Lordship.” Brookline turned toward our group. “Former constable Becker.” He put the emphasis on “former.”