‘You cannot just walk in off the street and demand to see Mr Purkess; he is a busy man!’ Mr Cope snapped, as long grey wisps of hair, normally drawn across his pate, became loosened and waved in the air in his agitation.
‘I wrote to him over a week ago, he will be expecting me. If you could just be so kind as to check his diary you will see my name there.’
‘I read all of Mr Purkess’s mail and I have no memory of your letter,’ Cope stormed, and I noticed with interest a thick blue vein drawing a line down the middle of his high forehead.
I looked around the room at the other gentlemen sat before their desks, preparing the next edition. Most continued with their work; however, more than a couple were observing the exchange between Mr Cope and myself with some amusement.
‘If you will not leave these offices immediately I will be forced to resort to other measures.’
‘And what would those measures entail?’ I asked calmly. ‘Fetching the owner of your newspaper downstairs to eject me? Do not allow me to delay you any longer.’
‘What I meant was that I would bring in an officer of law to remove you!’ he barked, pushing his way past me towards the entrance to the offices and reaching for the handle of the door. His exit was halted, however, as the door opened inwards and the large figure of Mr George Purkess himself bustled through. The other men within the office rose from their seats immediately.
‘Good Lord, Mr Cope, we are in a hurry!’ Purkess boomed. ‘What is the emergency that you should leave my offices in such a fluster?’
‘I was fetching a policeman, Mr Purkess. We have an intruder on the premises who has refused all reasonable demands to leave.’
I stepped between them, offering my hand. ‘Allow me to introduce myself, Mr Purkess. My name is Mr Samuel Weaver; you were expecting me, of course.’
Mr Purkess took my hand and met my gaze and, for the briefest of moments, there was an uneasy silence. The other workers remained standing, awaiting his response.
‘Weaver, you say? I can’t fully recall the name,’ he said, my hand held within his own firm grip. ‘Humour an old man with a poor memory and remind me of the nature of our business together?’
‘I am here to take employment with you,’ I responded. ‘There was an article in the Pall Mall Gazette, in which you stated that you only employed the best artists and writers. You want the best in word and picture – I am both and at your service.’
His eyes flicked from mine to Cope’s and I saw the eruption of a smile within him.
‘Do you mean to say that you have travelled across the country in search of a job based on a passing boastful aside to a hack writer from a rival paper?’ He laughed. ‘You must have something, boy, if only a misjudged sense of worth. Let us go upstairs to my office and you can continue to amuse and blind me with tales of your wonderful work.’ He released my hand, only to place his arm firmly around my shoulders to lead me to the stairs. ‘Mr Cope, have one of the lads sent out for coffee from Verrey’s for myself and this promising young gentleman.’
As I passed the now puce Cope, I allowed myself a sly smirk and made a vow to myself to engage in the sport of baiting this fine gentleman at every opportunity.
***
I thought of this first meeting as I made my way to Boston Place and the supposed murder scene. I was aggrieved to have taken on this job. I knew that it would be worth attending – every murder scene was – but I was angry at my incompetence in persuading Mr Purkess to allow me to indulge my obsessions. I had spent long years nurturing our relationship, but had not yet reached the point where he would fully bend to my will. This assignment almost felt like a punishment as a result, a punishment for daring to believe that I had the man under my control.
As I turned the corner of the street I immediately spied the house. There were two policemen stationed outside, rocking on their heels and looking for all the world as if they would rather be elsewhere.
‘Good afternoon, gentlemen!’ I called as I approached them. I immediately recognised the older of the two as he had been in attendance at many of my jobs over the past six years. ‘I hear there is some nastiness inside this fine house. Is it a sea of blood in there?’
Normally I would have expected a darkly comical response from the men, as they witnessed every imaginable horror on a daily basis. Today, however, there was no such reaction. They simply looked to each other nervously before opening the door and standing aside.
‘No jokes today, lad,’ the older policeman muttered as I passed, his mouth twitching edgily under his moustaches. ‘This is not one to make light of.’
I entered the gloom of the house, a silence blanketing my ears the moment I crossed the scarred stone of the threshold. The household itself was a three-storey tenement much the same as every other in the street. It had a foreboding edge to it though, which stroked the back of my neck with cold steel pins, as I walked through the dim light of the entrance hall.
A staircase ran up the left side of the hallway, each stair bare and wooden, worn and split in places. I took a glance upwards but saw only blackness in the upper landing.
‘This way,’ the policeman said, the sound of his voice shaking me from my thoughts. He gestured farther down the hallway towards a large wooden door ahead, closed and forbidding. My eyes shot from the door to the constable’s face and I could see that he would not be going any farther forward unless forced.
A surge of nervous energy erupted within my stomach. I always felt an edge of excitement when entering the scene of a killing. It was not necessarily bad; it was a necessary energy boost, a force to drive me on. This time, however, in this house, in this place of murder and death, the feeling was different somehow, not necessarily stronger but more urgent. I somehow knew that whatever lay within this room would not be a fit sight for human eyes.
‘Am I to enter alone?’ I asked, more in desperate hope than expectation.
‘The Inspector said you have twenty minutes,’ he replied, shaking his head. ‘I have been in once and I will not return unless ordered.’ He removed his helmet and drew his handkerchief across his forehead. ‘It is not… a good place. It is not for lingering.’
I ran my tongue around the inside of my dry mouth and forced myself to swallow, hoping to push downwards the ball of fear which had become lodged within my throat.
‘Very well,’ I murmured and walked slowly down the hall. As I reached the door I noticed that the dark green paint upon it had blistered and bubbled as if it had withstood a dangerous heat from within, creating a web of cracks and fine splits in the woodwork. I took a brief moment to brush my hand over the door lightly, almost expecting to feel the sting of heat upon it. It was cold.
I reached down towards the door handle, my hand touching cold brass, and I flinched as I felt a tremor in the metal. I thought it to be a vibration from within the room but soon realised that the tremor came from my own hand. I gripped the handle hard and pushed downwards, opening the door.
As it opened the first sensation which struck me was an acrid metallic odour. The sheer weight and force of the emanation filled my nostrils and barged its way to the back of my throat, its thickness causing me to retch somewhat. I instinctively withdrew my handkerchief from my coat pocket and covered my mouth and nose to prevent further assault. A noise from behind caused me to turn; the constable was exiting through the front door. I caught a final glimpse of his back as he scurried away. The door slammed behind him. I was alone.
I had been to many places of death and horror, and each had a similar feel, a silence that I had become almost inured to. This house, however, placed within me a sense of true terror. Stepping through the doorway and into the stench, I took in the scene before me.
There were few lights in the room, no more than a couple of candles of various sizes and colours lighted along the skirting and upon the mantelpiece. The small yellow flames struggled to survive, flickering in the darkness and giving off a dim smoky light. The mantelpiece itself sat above
a large and dominating fireplace of once-white marble. The wax from the candles, red and cream coloured, had run down onto the shelf and begun to drip onto the hearth, creating stalactites which resembled teeth surrounding the maw of a cold, black opening.
It was to the far side of the room that my eyes were drawn, for that was where the bodies lay, the bodies of twelve young women, the soles of their feet pointing at me.
The women were placed in a line across the bare-boarded floor. Each one had been carefully positioned, their arms lying at their sides, hands outstretched, palms upturned. I noticed then that through their wrists and ankles were struck large nails, the type used in railways, each one driven hard through sinew and bone. Each thick spike sealed its victim to the wooden floor beneath and I wondered whether the women had been alive and conscious when the spikes were hammered home.
Their expressions were impassive and unemotional; one would almost think them merely sleeping, the lids of their eyes being closed in rest. It was clear, however, that this was not the case, for the rest of their poor bodies told a different tale. Each wore roughly sewn, grey cotton skirts, coarse to the touch, yet their upper halves, although unclothed, were decorated in a fashion. The bare arms of each of the bodies carried upon them patterned carvings.
The blade used had been sharp beyond compare; each cut upon their bodies was intricate and clinical, creating symbols and patterns upon their pale canvas. Beautiful lines of red painted their soft skin, and I wondered at the time it had taken to create them and whether the girls had watched as their torturer had made his mark upon them.
I did not rest my gaze upon these pictures for too long, for of all parts of these poor young women that attracted my eyes, it was their torsos which were most gruesomely entrancing.
The same sharp blade, used to such dramatic effect upon their arms, had delivered to each a long and deep incision from the base of their pale throats to the navel. I prayed that these cuts were made after death; anyone enduring such butchery whilst living would have suffered unimaginable pain.
I stepped closer to the bodies, edging nearer to those poor souls. The skin of their chests had been peeled back to the edges of the body on each girl. The precision of the cuts showed that this had been done with the utmost care, love even. Within each chest cavity I saw that the breastbone had been sawn neatly down the middle, the ribs pulled apart exposing the vital organs of each woman.
The flicker of the candles brushed light across the wall which rose behind their heads and it was then that I saw the picture painted upon its surface. It was the head of a stag. I moved closer still, admiring the simplicity of the work, despite the expression within the stag’s eyes, one of vehemence and dark brutality.
It was as I studied the stag’s face that I realised with horror that it was the women, laid eviscerated upon the floor, who had provided the ‘paint’ for this creation.
The head, although large in itself, was given the appearance of greater size by the outgrowing antlers which sprouted from the upper sides above the ears and stretched like long fingers out towards the outer walls and ceiling. It gave the stag the appearance of a tree, its branches reaching desperately out to heaven.
My eyes followed the branches and it is with the greatest of terror that I reached the end point of one of these tendrils. For upon the wall at the tip of this painted antler was a heart, a human heart nailed to the wall with a large spike like those which had impaled the hands and feet of the young women upon the dusty wooden floor.
I stepped back in shock, and it was only then that my eyes took in a full view of the painting upon the wall. For there was not just one but twelve hearts nailed to this grotesquerie, twelve human hearts, each belonging to one of the poor women lying at my feet.
I stood for what seemed like an age, trying to take in all that was before me. This was partly because of the pure cold horror of it all, but also so that I could memorise it fully.
Whatever brief sketches I made at this stage would never be the final product delivered to the offices in the Strand. Often the pictures that made their way onto the covers were different. I did not dramatically change anything that I saw; however, there would be some degree of artistic licence to enhance and where possible make clearer that which my eye had observed. I prided myself on truth and loyalty within my work, but I was also aware of the need for clarity and the expression of feeling which I wished to draw from the reader. If I could inspire horror, fear, anger or loathing, then this was success in my eyes; more importantly it was success in the eyes of Mr Purkess, who knew the impact I was able to strike upon those who had paid their penny for a gruesome story.
Almost panicked, I pulled my sketchbook from the satchel at my side and immediately scribbled as much as I could, as if it were liable to disappear from my gaze at any moment. I became lost, my mind becoming one with the paper as the fine tip of my pencil began sketching all before me.
At most scenes that I attended I would make maybe a dozen different sketches; varying angles of the bodies, close-ups to show particularly grievous wounds and even, when provided with such information by the attending police, a vision from my own imagination of the situation which had brought about the death. This could be in the form of a cruel, violent man plunging his knife towards his cowering wife, or perhaps a group of children’s arms outstretched from a window and surrounded by the flames of their home as their desperate parents attempted to re-enter the building.
For this room, however, this place of abject terror and unimaginable suffering, I found myself almost crazed by the images in front of me and the machinations that they created within my mind.
I was so immersed within my task that I did not notice a presence in the room behind me; in fact, I had no notion of how long it had been there.
The large hand, which fell suddenly upon my shoulder, caused me to jump in such alarm that I tumbled from my crouched position and fell forwards onto the bloodied floor.
As I hit the ground, I rolled over to look up to the owner of the hand, seeing a face illuminated briefly before the candles blew out in the room.
I was plunged into a terrible darkness.
3
The Ghost Village
During my fifteenth year I saw my first man die.
This may, of course, not be such a shocking revelation to the average person; people die in their thousands every day. However, the nature of my experience and its effect upon me would perhaps not sit lightly upon the minds of normal men. I feel, though, that a knowledge of the nature of this event will afford a better understanding of the type of man that I am and of the elements which make up the more complex areas of my personality.
I had always had a love of drawing and of creating illustrations primarily for myself to enjoy. My interests and aspirations, however, were not in the fine arts, in painting and suchlike; it was not for me to spend long hours in a studio, delicately using oil paints to create beautiful images of the world from a distance. No, it was about documenting the brutalities and realities of life as they happened before me. This may not be thought of by those in respectable society as art, but for me it was art in its purest form, showing the world in all of its ugly splendour.
Aligned with this skill in graphic depiction was my burning interest in the macabre – those dark areas of life which are feared, so often ignored, but which live in the most shadowy recesses of the minds of us all.
My father, a liberally minded man by most accounts despite his age, supported my interest, supplied me with the materials required and allowed me time away from my studies to venture into the city from the rectory where we lived on the outskirts of York.
I became a common if unusual sight on the streets, often sitting upon the cobbles at the side of the road, pencil in hand and drawing life as it unfolded around me. It was in these days that I loved my art; I was quickly able to capture the world, be it an altercation between two street traders or the poor and crippled begging for alms from a passing gentleman or lad
y.
On the aforementioned day, when I had not long reached the age of fourteen, I had been filled with a sense of foolish bravery and had strayed from Stonegate and St Peter’s – the main streets that I normally frequented – and walked towards the River Ouse, hoping to see the boats which ferried goods in and out of the city.
It was a fresh November morning and, as I reached Lendal Bridge to look out across the river, I espied the large factory on the other side. All thoughts of river men now forgotten, I strode across the bridge with purpose and straight through the wrought-iron gates towards the main building. I had not thought of what I would say if challenged regarding my trespass, but it was of no matter to me. I wished to see what lay within and perhaps even sketch the men at work in the factory. To my surprise I was not challenged in the slightest and managed to wander freely into a great room where men and women carried out their labour, packing boxes ready to be loaded onto the boats on the river; it was a relative hive of action and I found their sense of purpose almost entrancing to observe. It was only when a voice came from behind me that I shook myself from my awe.
‘You’ll be delivering a message will you, lad?’ I turned to see a broad man standing over me, his arms folded resolutely, his eye accusing.
‘Why, yes, sir,’ I answered, finding that the lie fell smoothly from my mouth. ‘I have a note regarding an order. I was told to give it to the store’s manager. Could you tell me where I might find him?’
He looked me up and down, his gaze finally resting upon the satchel at my side. It could have passed for a delivery boy’s bag.
‘You want to go up those stairs,’ he said, pointing to the other side of the room. ‘Follow the gangway into the boiling room and keep going. The stores are through the door at the end.’
Domini Mortum Page 3
