Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  Men rushed to join him. Packages of opium bricks flew through the air.

  “I got one!” a guard yelled, cutting the tip off a burning fuse.

  “Two others went into these stacks!”

  Coughing, the guards hurled opium packages into aisles.

  “Here!”

  “This one spread to more fuses!”

  “Hurry!”

  “Found one!”

  “Another!”

  The guards raced from stack to stack, frantically pulling away packages.

  Ryan found another fuse and cut off its tip. His legs wavered.

  “The last one went under this stack!” someone yelled. “We’ll never get to it in time!”

  “Run!”

  As the men charged past Ryan, someone grabbed him, shoving him toward the door. The explosion lifted him and threw him outside. He landed hard on gravel, rolling from the force of the blast. Walls disintegrated, wood and burlap and opium bricks erupting, the force flipping him, so stunning him that he barely realized he was falling off the edge of a dock.

  BROOKLINE FORCED HIMSELF to ignore the pain in his chest. Working his strong legs, climbing a slope toward the base of a wall, he told himself that the wound couldn’t be serious. Otherwise, he wouldn’t be able to run as fast as he was. The bullet had struck the right side of his chest. He was wearing a heavy overcoat, a business coat, and a waistcoat. They had absorbed some of the force. The bullet hadn’t penetrated deeply. He was certain of it.

  With the wind chasing the usual fog, the light from stars and a half moon guided him. He reached the bottom of the wall and found a ladder on the dirt. The British East India Company guards used it to peer over the wall and throw rocks if they had information about thieves massing out there.

  His ribs hurt when he raised the ladder and clambered up, but his breathing was deep, and he told himself that the pain came from bruises. The tops of the poles that formed the wall had been sharpened, with broken glass wedged between the points. Hearing loud voices behind him, men chasing him, he gripped two of the sharpened posts and raised a boot to step on the broken glass. A point snagged on his trouser leg, tearing the cloth. As he shifted to the other side, he pushed the ladder away and heard it crash on the ground.

  “What’s that?” someone yelled.

  He dangled from the outside of the wall. Here the distance to the ground was greater, a trench having been dug.

  Something popped in his chest. He literally heard a popping sound, and at once agony surged through him. He released his hands and dropped. Although he was prepared for the shock of landing, he nonetheless gasped when his knees bent and he lost his balance, toppling sideways.

  The angry voices reached the opposite side of the wall. With effort, Brookline came to his feet, ran across the ditch, and squirmed up its slope. Pain gripped his right knee when he climbed over a rail fence and reached East India Dock Road.

  From his high perspective, he saw the warehouse and the ship basin. Flames showed through an open warehouse door.

  Straight ahead was the vague outline of the city. He broke into an awkward run, adjusting his balance and speed to compensate for the pain in his knee.

  And the pain in his chest. After something had popped in it, the pain was now deep.

  The explosion knocked him to the ground. Flames and debris erupted from the warehouse, fire and smoke shooting up. His ears, which had been ringing from the numerous shots in the enclosed space of the warehouse, now rang more severely.

  Only one explosion.

  There should have been ten. The force of the multiple blasts should have been strong enough to level not only the warehouse, which it hadn’t, but also other buildings in the area. It should have thrown so many burning chunks of wood into the air that a rain of fire would now be falling around him. The wind should have carried a fury of sparks into the city. On the northern side of East India Dock Road, buildings should be starting to burn. Ahead, roofs should be smoldering.

  In pain, he saw lanterns wavering as men raced up from the docks. He reached an intersection in which five roads led to many directions. He went south, reasoning that his pursuers would not expect him to go back toward the river. A signpost told him that this was Church Street. Close by, he had killed his mother and the former soldier, then set fire to their riverfront shack.

  He passed the church where he’d learned to read. A passage he’d been taught from The Book of Common Prayer flashed through his mind.

  If we say we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.

  Wrong, Brookline thought. I have no sin.

  Opium is the sin.

  England is the sin.

  The Opium-Eater is the sin.

  My father is the sin.

  Stumbling more than running, he reached the southern end of Church Street. Again, five streets formed an intersection, leading to various parts of the compass. Police clackers sounded alarms, but they were distant, to the north, probably on East India Dock Road. His tactic was confusing his pursuers, and this five-street intersection would confuse them even more.

  He chose west, struggling along a street that he recognized from his youth: Broad Street. As the flames from the warehouse threw sparks into the wind, his heart swelled with hope that the great fire would happen.

  He reached another intersection, another place to confuse his pursuers. Now Broad Street changed its name, and even without a signpost, he couldn’t possibly have failed to recognize it. It was the one place in London that he knew better than any other, better than the Opium-Eater knew Oxford Street.

  With a shock of recognition, he looked to his left, and even in shadows, he realized that he limped past New Gravel Lane. There, at number 81, amid pathetic shops that sold to sailors, had stood the King’s Arms tavern, where his father had committed his second set of murders, cracking the heads and slitting the throats of John Williamson, his wife, and their servant.

  John Williams.

  John Williamson.

  John Williams.

  John Williamson.

  Before Brookline had joined the army, the last thing he’d done was go to Marr’s shop and then the King’s Arms tavern. He had stepped inside each establishment. He had stood where he imagined his father had stood, where his father had killed.

  When he had returned from India, to which his father had sailed many times as a merchant seaman, the first thing he had done after twenty years was to go to Marr’s shop and stand inside it.

  Then he had gone to the King’s Arms on New Gravel Lane, but to his dismay, the tavern had no longer existed. A huge, gloomy wall now occupied that western side of the street, protecting the area where the docks had been extended.

  “When did this happen?” he had demanded of a passerby, who looked at him with fear and hurried on.

  He had rushed south to Cinnamon Street. Drenched with sweat from running, he had leaned against a lamppost with relief when he discovered that the Pear Tree rooming house, where his father had slept after he killed the Marrs and the Williamsons—

  John Williams.

  John Willamson.

  —still existed. That first night after having returned from India, Brookline had managed to rent the same room that his father had rented. For all he knew, he had slept on the very same bed that his father had used.

  Now the high wall that had replaced the King’s Tavern loomed in the darkness as Brookline stumbled past it, continuing west. Sparks drifted over him. People in the neighborhood had heard the explosion, some of them braving the night to leave their dwellings and investigate. When they saw the sparks strike walls, they desperately swatted them out.

  The pain in his right knee made him wince every time he put pressure on it. What tortured him, though, was his chest. Under his overcoat, his business coat, and his waistcoat, he felt liquid against his skin, and he didn’t believe it was sweat from his effort. The bullet might have penetrated a little deeper than he tried to assure himself.

 
Passing isolated streetlamps, he counted the numbers on the buildings to his left: 55, 49, 43, 37. And there up ahead was 29 Ratcliffe Highway.

  Continuing the Journal of Emily De Quincey

  In the gloom of the grocer’s shop, as I sat next to Margaret, holding her aged hands, I heard Father poking among objects on the shelves. With a murmur of triumph, he uncorked a bottle and drank from it.

  “If that’s wine, I’d enjoy a sip to ward off the chill,” Commissioner Mayne said.

  “It isn’t wine,” Father told him.

  “Then what is it?”

  “Medicine.”

  “Medicine?”

  “Laudanum,” Becker explained.

  “Dear heaven,” Commissioner Mayne said.

  The air seemed to tighten. I both felt and heard something rumble to the east. The window vibrated.

  “What was that?” Margaret exclaimed.

  “An explosion,” Becker answered.

  Margaret jumped to her feet, about to rush to the door.

  “No.” I blocked her way. “We mustn’t be seen.”

  “Ryan failed,” the commissioner said.

  “Perhaps not,” Father replied. “In the house on Greek Street, the floor had several impressions from gunpowder kegs, but we heard only one explosion.”

  “One explosion might be enough.”

  Becker concealed himself beside the window, peering out. “Sparks in the sky,” he reported. “Blowing from the east. But perhaps not enough to ignite the citywide fire that I assume Brookline intended.”

  “It would take only a few strong blazes,” Mayne noted. “This wind would spread the flames quickly.”

  I felt Margaret sobbing next to me as the wind blew dust past the window.

  “De Quincey, perhaps you’re wrong that he’ll come here,” the commissioner suggested. “There’ll be a lot of commotion at the docks. Brookline will be under pressure to leave the area.”

  “There is no such thing as forgetting,” Father emphasized. “Brookline is a creature obsessed about his past. He might not know that he intends to return here, but I have no doubt that if he is able, he will come to what used to be Marr’s shop.”

  “ ‘He might not know that he intends to return here’?” Mayne frowned. “What are you talking about?”

  “Another thought to make you dizzy,” Becker answered. “Mr. De Quincey persuaded me that sometimes we do things without knowing why.”

  “Such as why I allowed you to convince me to spend the night here when I could be helping to organize the hunt,” the commissioner said.

  The shop became silent again, except for the occasional sound of Father uncorking the laudanum bottle and drinking from it.

  “I need to leave,” Mayne finally declared. “Lord Palmerston will demand my resignation if he learns I’m associating with you rather than attending to my duties.”

  “It’s imperative that you stay,” Father insisted in the darkness. “Lord Palmerston won’t believe us, but he’ll listen to you.”

  “He might not listen. Remember, I’ll be asking him to turn against his chief of security, the man who supposedly saved his life yesterday.”

  “Father,” I said, “someone is outside.”

  The shop became eerily still.

  Beyond the window, a figure had materialized, a tall man who stood with his back to us, studying what used to be Marr’s shop.

  “Where John Williams stood forty-three years ago,” Margaret moaned. “He watched me shut the door and go down the dark street.”

  I kept my hands on Margaret’s arms, restraining her from sudden motion, as our group shifted toward the window.

  With his back to us, the tall man’s silhouette moved into the middle of the street. He limped. His hands were raised to the right side of his chest, as if he were injured.

  “Have you prepared yourself, Margaret?” Father asked.

  “I had a lifetime to prepare myself.”

  Beyond the window, the tall man leaned to the right, pain seeming to make him favor that side.

  Even though I saw the man only from behind, the intensity with which he stared at what had been Marr’s shop was palpable.

  To the east, police clackers sounded.

  The man cocked his head in their direction, bracing himself to depart.

  Father opened the door, calling out, “John Williams?”

  The man spun toward the door.

  “Is it you, John Williams?” Father asked.

  “Who speaks to me?” Moonlight revealed dark liquid glistening on the right side of the man’s coat.

  “John Williams, yes, I’d recognize you anywhere.”

  “You confuse me with someone else.”

  “Impossible.”

  Down the street, from darkness between lampposts, a woman called, “John Williams!”

  Another voice joined hers. “John Williams!”

  And another. “John Williams!”

  “Who are you?” the figure demanded.

  In the opposite direction, a woman yelled, “John Williamson!”

  And others. “John Williamson!”

  The cries of the women shifted back and forth, alternating names.

  “John Williams!”

  “John Williamson!”

  Abruptly all the voices changed. As one, the women shrieked, “The son of John Williams! You’re the son of John Williams!”

  Brookline broke into an urgent limp, heading to the west, toward the Tower of London, the demarcation between the wretchedness of the East End and the better part of the city.

  But at once he lurched to a halt as a line of constables appeared, filling the street from one side to the other, walking toward him, aiming their lanterns. Father had instructed them to stay in hiding until the women began their chorus.

  Brookline pivoted in the opposite direction, and there a line of constables appeared also, from one side of the street to the other. They, too, aimed their lanterns as they walked toward him, trapping him.

  “John Williams! John Williamson! The son of John Williams!” the women shouted.

  Unnervingly, the voices stopped.

  The constables stopped also. The only movement was the wind.

  Within the dark shop, Father turned toward Margaret. “Do you remember what we require of you?”

  “How can I possibly forget? Step away. I have things to say to my son.”

  I released Margaret’s arms.

  She walked through the shadowy doorway.

  I followed. Knowing that Margaret would not have been there if I hadn’t insisted, I felt a grave obligation to help her in any way I could.

  “Robert?” she called.

  Brookline spun toward her, on guard.

  “Robert?” she repeated, appearing on the street.

  “Who calls me that?”

  “Your mother.”

  Brookline stepped back, as though the wind had pushed him.

  “No. My mother died a long time ago. In a fire.”

  “Samuel died.” Margaret walked slowly toward him, each footfall communicating her emotional agony. “But I survived.”

  Brookline took another step back. “This is a deceit.”

  “Despite my wound, I managed to crawl away.”

  “You are lying.”

  “The fire burned my face. Can you see the scar, Robert? Here on my left cheek. Every day, the scar reminds me of the puke that was John Williams and the filth that he and I brought into the world. Every day I pray for God’s hand to come down and crush me.”

  “Don’t call me ‘filth’!”

  “I wish I had never been born so that I could never have given birth to you.”

  “You’re not my mother. No mother could speak to a son that way.”

  “Who else would know that you tortured animals under the docks?”

  “No.”

  “You tied their paws to stakes and put muzzles over their jaws.”

  “A child doesn’t know what he does or why he does it.
I made amends. The world will be better because of me.”

  Margaret stepped closer. “By killing?”

  “For twenty years in India, my orders were to kill. I was given promotions and medals for acts that would have caused me to be hanged here in England. Don’t talk to me about killing. Killing is wrong only if you look at it in a particular way.”

  “You have lost your reason.”

  “Then England has lost its reason!”

  “What about the five people you slaughtered on Saturday night, two of them women and two of them children?”

  “I admit to killing no one on Saturday night. But I killed many women and children in India and was praised. My commanders said it was necessary for the empire. They really meant that it was necessary for rich men to become richer because of the opium trade.”

  “And what about the people you slaughtered on Monday night? They had nothing to do with the opium trade.”