Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  Emily rushed to open the door.

  “No,” De Quincey said. “I can’t leave.”

  “What?”

  “Not until I see what’s here.”

  “But we need to take Joey to Dr. Snow!” Emily told him.

  “We don’t have time for this!” Becker insisted. “The boy will die!”

  “Emily, go with Becker! You can help Joey more than you can help me!” De Quincey saw a knife on the floor, the one that Becker had lent Joey. He picked it up.

  “Even with that knife, you don’t have a chance against Brookline!” Becker insisted.

  “And we don’t have a chance to stop him if all three of us run to Dr. Snow. This house needs to be searched! Go! I promise I’ll be there soon!”

  Joey moaned in Becker’s arms.

  “Can’t wait,” Becker warned.

  Emily stared at Joey, then at De Quincey.

  “Emily, if you insist on staying, I’ll be forced to leave to keep you from danger! What Joey did for us will be wasted!”

  “There’s no time!” Becker hurried down the steps, carrying the small, bleeding figure.

  Emily kept staring at De Quincey. She turned toward Becker running along the street.

  “I love you, Father.”

  She raced after Becker and the boy.

  SILENCE GATHERED IN THE HOUSE. The only sound De Quincey became aware of was the fearful agitation of his heart. When he shut the door, the thick draperies in the rooms to his right and left allowed hardly any sunlight to enter. The knife in his hands didn’t give him confidence. Trying to steady his tremors, he took out his laudanum bottle and drank deeply.

  As the heat of the opium sank to his stomach, it intensified his senses. Shadows appeared less dense. The rattle of a carriage passing outside sounded next to him, as if the door wasn’t closed. He turned toward a candle and a box of matches that he had earlier noticed on the floor against the wall. In his youth, the only way to light a candle had been by using flint and steel to deposit sparks into straw in a tinderbox. The newly invented matches, known as lucifers, still seemed unreal to him, able to produce a flame simply by being scraped against a rough surface. Early forms of matches had created a sulfurous odor of rotten eggs, a defect that was now eliminated. But when De Quincey struck the match, the distinctive rotten-egg smell of older-style matches made him pull back his head.

  In a rush, he lit the candle and blew out the match.

  Have I been poisoned?

  Holding his breath, he waited for dizziness and nausea to afflict him. But with each long instant, his only dizziness seemed to be the consequence of fear. Gradually he inhaled and felt steadier.

  Is the stench intended to warn Brookline that someone entered and used one of the matches to light a candle?

  If so, the tactic was doubly effective because the candle had an odor also. The best candles, made from beeswax, exuded a fragrance while the worst, made of tallow, stank of animal fat. These candles were almost as foul-smelling as the match. Why? Brookline’s income was sufficient for him to afford candles and matches without a stench. Why had he refused to acquire them?

  As the candle illuminated the area around him, De Quincey’s unsteady hand caused the flame to waver. He peered toward the room on the right. The last time he’d been in this house was fifty-two years earlier, but it seemed that nothing had changed. The room he entered had been as empty of furniture then as it was now. In those long-ago, despairing winter months, he had slept on the cold floor, the nervous twitching of his legs constantly waking him.

  The floor was even more filthy now. Grains of soot littered it. At the far end, the soot showed round outlines where objects had sat, perhaps what the servants in the neighboring residences had noticed being removed, covered with blankets.

  On guard against more traps, De Quincey returned to the hallway and entered the opposite room, which a half century earlier had been an office for the mysterious man who had maintained several such offices throughout the city, constantly shifting his premises. Here the man had worked on legal documents for a few furtive hours each morning, sometimes eating pastries, the crumbs from which he’d allowed De Quincey to savor.

  A straight-backed wooden chair was next to a small table on which sat a chimney lamp. A stack of books rose from the floor next to the table, books that looked unnervingly familiar.

  De Quincey set down the knife, removed the glass chimney from the lamp, and lifted the lamp so that he could more easily bring the candle to the wick.

  He froze as the candle’s flame wavered toward the wick. The sensation was literally of freezing.

  A trap, Becker had warned. There are probably others. Be careful what you touch.

  The wick on the lamp was so new that it looked totally white.

  The lamp seemed heavier than it ought to be. It didn’t make the sound of coal oil sloshing in it. Nor did it have a coal-oil odor.

  Carefully, De Quincey lowered the lamp onto the table. He set the candle on the floor and unscrewed the cap on the side of the lamp, opening the channel into which coal oil could be added.

  Sweat oozed from his brow when he inserted his finger into the channel and touched a granular substance. Some of it stuck to his skin when he removed his finger from the channel. He saw black specks similar to those he had noticed on the floor in the opposite room.

  He dropped a speck onto the candle’s flame. The speck flashed in a miniature explosion.

  Gunpowder.

  The lamp was a bomb.

  Moving as quickly as he could without extinguishing the candle, he returned to the first room, picked up a speck of the substance on the floor, and dropped it onto the flame. Again the speck flashed.

  De Quincey suddenly realized that the round outlines on the dirty floor had been made by kegs, one of which had a small leak.

  Gunpowder.

  Urgency overcame fear as he returned to the second room and studied the unnervingly familiar books.

  Sickened, he confirmed that he had written all of them. On shelves behind the chair, more books were stacked—all by him—along with countless magazines that contained articles he had written. The collection was more complete than De Quincey’s own. Brookline possessed a copy of every book, magazine, and newspaper that contained De Quincey’s work.

  He opened the books, astonished by how tattered the pages looked from compulsive readings. Every page had underscored lines. Foul comments were written in the margins. The little shit appeared frequently.

  The most frequent execrations were next to the numerous times De Quincey had written about Brookline’s father, the genius of John Williams’s murders, his brilliant butchery, the sublimity of his blood-spattered achievements.

  Mocks killing and death, Brookline had written. He needs to be shown reality.

  De Quincey’s Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was bountifully underlined also, with exclamation marks in the margins.

  How many people died from laudanum overdoses because of him? Brookline seemed to shout at the bottom of a page.

  De Quincey felt nauseous.

  How many thousands died in India and China because of opium? How many have I myself killed because of opium and the British East India Company?

  But which of us, the Opium-Eater or I, is the greater killer? Brookline demanded in angry handwriting that obscured an entire page.

  “Did all these people die in the past few days because of me?” De Quincey murmured. His words echoed in what felt like a tomb.

  Now he knew why Brookline had chosen to rent this house.

  In his mind, he connects me with his father and himself. To him, we’re all killers, De Quincey realized.

  He vomited.

  The horror of his discovery was sharpened by his urgent awareness that Brookline might return at any moment. Wiping bile from his mouth, he overcame his shock and picked up the knife. Aware of his rapid breathing, he proceeded through the two remaining rooms on this floor but found nothing that appeared signi
ficant.

  Staying close to the banister, avoiding the hole where the crossbow was hidden under the murky stairs, he climbed to the next floor. His footfalls on the creaky wood were magnified, increasing his tension. Four other rooms—two in front and two in back—awaited him.

  One room had its door closed.

  Avoiding it, he searched the other rooms and found them empty. He climbed the stairs to the small servants’ quarters on the next floor. Aside from footprints made by soot—presumably Joey’s—nothing was evident. The house was as abandoned as it had been fifty-two years earlier.

  But what about the closed door on the middle level, the only closed room in the house?

  Fearful, De Quincey descended to it. Wary of other traps, he tried the doorknob, hoping that it would be locked.

  But the knob turned.

  He stepped to the side and thrust the door open. If another weapon such as a crossbow was aimed at the doorway, it couldn’t harm him.

  Nothing happened.

  He peered around the doorjamb and saw that an undraped, small, barred window added light to what was a sparsely furnished bedroom. The window was on his right, facing the street. A wardrobe stood across from him. To his left, in place of a bed, he saw a military cot.

  Entering, he noticed crumpled newspapers on the floor. His right boot brushed against one, creating a papery clatter.

  Inspecting the door, De Quincey saw an inside bolt.

  So Brookline secures the door when he goes to bed, but even with that, he feels the need for the crumpled newspapers to warn him about intruders. Does he wake from nightmares?

  Why didn’t he lock the door now? To lure someone in? Where’s the trap?

  De Quincey proceeded toward the cot, which was of a sort that Brookline had probably used in India. A blanket and a small pillow were on it.

  De Quincey looked under the cot.

  The space was empty.

  About to turn toward the wardrobe, he wondered if something might be hidden under the blanket, but when he cautiously raised it, he found only a sheet.

  When he raised the sheet, he found dried bloodstains on the cot.

  The stains were thick.

  Lord in heaven, what happened here?

  Uneasy, De Quincey approached the wardrobe. As he had done with the bedroom door, he stepped to the side before grasping the wardrobe’s handle.

  He pulled and flinched as something shot from the wardrobe, embedding itself in the wall near the doorway: a shaft from another crossbow. Sweat now soaked his underarms as he stepped from the side and faced the wardrobe’s contents.

  He saw a colonel’s uniform. One pair of formal evening clothes. One set of gray trousers, a black waistcoat, and a black knee-long coat, the standard business clothes that respectable Londoners wore.

  A shelf revealed a colonel’s hat and a collapsible top hat.

  A drawer revealed two pairs of underclothes, two ties, two shirts, and one pair of dress gloves.

  De Quincey doubted that anyone else in Brookline’s lofty position lived so austerely. The room felt like a monk’s cell.

  I don’t dare stay any longer.

  But as De Quincey stepped from the bedroom, he couldn’t resist looking back and focusing on the space above the wardrobe.

  The rush of his heartbeat made him feel sicker.

  The wardrobe’s top was much taller than he was. There wasn’t a chair on which to stand. He set down the candle and the knife. He jumped, gripped the top of the wardrobe, and pulled himself up. His arms in pain, he looked over the top and almost let go, so startled was he by what he found.

  He was staring at a three-stranded whip with dried blood on it.

  He released one hand and managed to grab the whip before he dropped to the floor.

  Each night, Brookline flagellated himself.

  De Quincey now suspected that the malodorous match and candle weren’t intended as a warning that someone had been in the house. Rather, their stench was a deliberate displeasure, just as the straight-backed wooden chair would become painful during the many hours that Brookline spent obsessively reading De Quincey’s work.

  A monk’s cell indeed.

  A monk devoted to hell.

  De Quincey pulled everything off the cot so that the bloodstains were fully exposed. He dropped the whip onto them, wanting Brookline to have no doubt that this secret had been uncovered.

  Despite De Quincey’s urgency, he remembered to keep to the side of the stairs in case there were further traps.

  At the bottom level, he studied Joey’s blood on the floor. He stared at the vomit that he himself had left on the floor. Yes, Brookline would definitely know that visitors had been here.

  He ran to the stack of books and tore out the page that began his Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. He took a pencil from the table and wrote,

  The Opium-Eater came to call and regrets that you weren’t at home.

  He put the page on the stairs, where it would certainly be noticed. All that remained was to blow out the candle and free the bolt.

  As he pulled the door open, someone towered over him.

  LIKE MOST PHYSICIANS in 1854, Dr. Snow had his office in his home. Running with the boy in his arms, Becker came around a corner one block to the west and charged up the steps of the building on Frith Street to which he’d been taken on Saturday night.

  Holding Joey, he fumbled with the doorknob and felt a hand surge past his, opening the door. The hand belonged to Emily, who had raced here with him, her free-moving dress giving her more speed than he believed possible for a woman.

  They hurried across a vestibule and reached another door, which Emily quickly opened, allowing Becker to rush in.

  Dr. Snow and a male patient looked up in surprise.

  Snow was in his early forties with a thin face and dark sideburns that framed his narrow jawline. His eyes were intense. His hair had receded, making his forehead seem unusually high.

  His patient was well dressed, middle-aged, and portly, with a full beard.

  They sat on opposite sides of Snow’s desk.

  “What the devil?” the patient exclaimed as both men sprang to their feet.

  “This boy needs help,” Becker said.

  “He’s filthy,” the patient protested.

  “He’s been shot with a crossbow.”

  “The beggar was probably trying to break into someone’s home. Dr. Snow, look at the blood he’s dripping on your floor.”

  “There’s a surgeon ten blocks over,” Snow informed his unexpected visitors.

  “The boy needs help now,” Becker told him.

  “But I’m not a surgeon any longer. I’m a physician.”

  Becker understood. Physicians stood at the top of the rigidly stratified medical world. They never touched their patients but instead listened to them describe symptoms and then recommended drugs supplied by chemists with whom the physicians had a financial arrangement. In this way, physicians did not receive money directly from their patients and were not considered to be “in trade,” an activity distasteful to the upper class.

  Below physicians were surgeons, who lacked social status because they dealt with all the gore that humans were subject to. Even worse than touching patients, they received money directly from the people to whom they administered. A physician was called “doctor” while a surgeon was referred to as “mister.” A physician could be presented at the queen’s court. A surgeon could not.

  “You’re telling me you won’t help this boy?” Becker demanded.

  The well-dressed patient reacted with shock at the idea that his physician might actually lay hands on someone, a bleeding soot-covered beggar, no less.

  “What I’m telling you is, it’s a job for a surgeon,” Snow replied, looking disturbed as more blood dripped on the floor.

  “Dr. Snow, shall I step outside and summon a constable?” the patient suggested indignantly.

  “Thank you, Sir Herbert, but—”

  Becker almo
st shouted that he was a constable but then realized that he couldn’t say that any longer.

  “You acted as a surgeon to me on Saturday night,” Becker reminded him.

  “You did what?” Sir Herbert exclaimed.

  “You disinfected my wounds and closed them. Why can’t you do the same for this boy?”

  “You actually closed wounds?” Sir Herbert asked in dismay.

  “I did it as a favor to Detective Inspector Ryan,” Snow replied. “He helped me locate the source of the recent cholera epidemic. I felt I owed him a courtesy. Yes, I was a surgeon years ago, but I progressed.”

  “This is nonsense,” Emily interrupted. “You,” she told Sir Herbert, “please leave.”

  “Pray tell on what authority do you—”

  “Leave,” Emily repeated, escorting the portly man to the door. “You have no purpose here. You are disruptive.”

  “But—”

  Emily had him in the vestibule now and was opening the outside door. “If you’re not careful, some of the blood from the boy will touch your clothes.”

  “Blood on my clothes? Where?”

  “Good day.” Emily pushed him outside and shut the door firmly. “Dr. Snow, do you still have your surgeon’s instruments?” she asked as she marched back into the office.

  “In that cabinet. But I have no intention of—”

  “You might not, but I have every intention. Constable Becker, set the boy on this desk. Help me remove his clothing.”

  “You can’t barge into my office and assume control,” Snow told her.

  Instead of paying attention to him, Emily was already tugging off Joey’s filthy, blood-soaked coat.

  “I assume that the first step is to clean the boy so that we can determine the extent of his injuries. Dr. Snow, where is your kitchen? We need hot water. Please instruct someone to bring it. Becker, in the meantime, help me pull the projectile from his shoulder.”

  “No, no, no,” Snow objected. “The feathers on one end or the barbs at the other will make the wound larger.”

  “Then what should I do?”

  “The shaft needs to be cut to remove either the feathers or the tip. Then the shaft should be cleansed with ammonia before it is pulled through the wound.”