A Rich Full Death

by Michael Dibdin

  ‘And what about the writing on the villa wall? The word “pig”-is that some comment on Purdy’s gulosity?’

  ‘Taken in conjunction with the manner in which the victim will die, I think there can be not the slightest doubt of that. It appears to be a classic case of poetic justice, of the punishment fitting the crime. But what disturbs me is the fact that the writing was in Florentine dialect-the word was “ciacco,” not “porco”.’

  ‘Are we then dealing with a Florentine murderer? A native? Perhaps some vendetta against the foreign community is intended.’

  ‘Perhaps. But do not forget the letter you received last night. That was certainly not written by an Italian, and yet it obliquely foretold the tragedy at Purdy’s villa, brought us out to witness its effects, and-most strikingly-linked it to the deaths of Mrs Eakin and DeVere. Now if the attack on Purdy was, as I have suggested, a cold-blooded murder, then it brings the number of such crimes to three; and the number three, you will recall, accompanied the word scrawled at the scene of that attack. In short, a pattern begins to emerge-a pattern which I suspect we may equate with that “more ambitious criminal project whose full scope and extent is only beginning to become apparent” mentioned in the letter.’

  I suggested that the simplest way of verifying this hypothesis would be to inspect the scenes of the other two crimes which had occurred, and see whether some sort of inscription was not also to be found there-and as it transpired that this was precisely what was in Browning’s mind, we set off without more ado.

  12

  As we passed the end of Via Dante Aligheri I thought once again of the strange scene the night before, which the horrors at Purdy’s villa had then thrust out of my memory. Of one thing I was sure: Browning’s tale of charitable visits had been a shift devised on the spur of the moment to forestall further questions. But why? What is the secret of that house in the meanest area of town, which he visits with such regularity? More and more I am convinced that it is connected in some way with that secret of his which continues to stand between us, despite the superficial familiarity we have resumed as a result of his interest in these murders. I must find it out, and soon! Perhaps if I do so, and then confront him with my knowledge of the truth, then I can exorcise this ghost which, till then, must continue to haunt our friendship.

  At length we reached the south end of the Ponte Vecchio, and Browning immediately flung out his hand, pointing.

  Took!’

  I could as yet see nothing beyond a white blur on the undressed stone wall outside the house where a few days before the crowd had gathered at the news of a death. But as we drew nearer to the spot I made out the following writing, scrawled up in white chalk on the wall, as at Purdy’s:

  ‘“Argenti”-silverware,’ mused Browning. ‘What possible significance can that have?’

  ‘It might be a reference to DeVere’s well-known mania for collecting,’ I suggested.

  Browning looked happier.

  That’s very true. Bravo! I had not thought of that. Yes, indeed. This man had a weakness for objets d’art, for precious trinkets. That, then, was his “crime”, as greed was Purdy’s. Are we dealing with a secret society I wonder? Some nasty little terrorist sect who find Mazzini grown too tepid, the Carbonari too moderate, and mean to hack their way to Liberty with a dagger? But then what of the number? Three for Purdy, but five for DeVere. So much for our theory about that’

  I had no idea to suggest, other than to walk up to Bellosguardo, and see whether the inscription at the scene of the first crime-assuming there were one-might not resolve the mystery.

  As we walked along, I tried to turn the conversation to something more inspiring than the murky business in hand — in short, to Browning’s own work-and mentioned one of the poems in the volume I had purchased. The verse is entided ‘Porphyria’s Lover’, and is yet another example of that strain which I so strongly deprecate in Browning’s work. If I chose to mention it, it was because the story closely resembles his theory about the manner in which Isabel Eakin was murdered.

  The poem-as so often in those pieces where Browning exhibits the darker side of his nature-is narrated in the first person, and is set on an evening just like that of Isabel’s death, with rain and a high wind. But the position here is reversed; it is the woman, Porphyria, who comes to call upon her lover, who is waiting not in a villa but a humble cottage, situated not upon a hill-top but beside a lake. The inversion is so complete, so striking, as to form an exact mirror-image of the real event.

  As there are no servants there, Porphyria sets about making a fire, after which she ‘from her form withdrew the dripping cloak and shawl, and laid her soiled gloves by, and let the damp hair fall’-no doubt these lines remind you, as they did me, of Isabel laid out on that cold marble tabletop. She sits beside her lover, who does not answer when she speaks to him. And so the woman does a very natural, womanly thing: ‘She put her arm about my waist, and made her smooth white shoulder bare, and all her yellow hair displaced, and, stooping, made my cheek lie there, and spread o’er all her yellow hair’.

  We now learn two very interesting things: that Porphyria has come secretly from a dinner party to visit her lover; and that although she loves him, she is not willing to make the final sacrifice, and break the presumably illustrious ties that make their love illicit: ‘She too weak, for all her heart’s endeavour, to set its struggling passion free from pride, and vainer ties dissever, and give herself to me for ever.’ At that moment, however, she loves him; ‘happy and proud’-for he too is proud! — ‘I knew Porphyria worshipped me.’

  What is he to do, her lover? He knows the moment will not, cannot last, for she must return to the realities of her dreary marriage, contracted for base motives, but which she has not the spirit, or the will-call it what you like-to break. ‘… I debated what to do. That moment she was mine, mine, fair, perfectly pure and good: I found a thing to do, and all her hair in one long yellow string I wound three times her little throat around, and strangled her.’

  Is that not disgusting? I find it so-or rather the total lack of any hint of censure on the poet’s part. To discuss these things so calmly, so coolly-well, it is beyond me. But there is worse to come, for what does the lover do now? Recoil in horror at the deed he has unthinkingly committed in an instant of frenzy he can never sufficiently regret?

  No! On the contrary, like the vilest fiend in existence, he glories in the dead body at his side-glories in it equally as it is a beautiful female body, and as it is dead, and therefore will-less, utterly passive and given up to him. What use he makes of his opportunity is left to the reader’s imagination, but so heated is the language Mr Browning employs that there can be little doubt as to what is intended: ‘As a shut bud that holds a bee I warily oped her lids: again laughed the blue (!) eyes … and I untightened next the tress … her cheek once more blushed bright beneath my burning kiss …’

  The almost hysterical alliteration in that last phrase could hardly be clearer in its implications, I think.

  But the vilest cut is saved for last, where the ‘lover’ seeks to possess not merely Porphyria’s body but her soul as well. For, all passion spent, he lays her head upon his shoulder-commenting upon how the situation is changed, for now he is dominant: ‘The smiling rosy little head, so glad it has its utmost will, that all it scorned at once is fled, and I, its love, am gained instead!’ In other words, the murderer claims that he was merely fulfilling his victim’s ‘darling one wish’ in killing her. He need not feel guilty! He has no motive for remorse! She wanted to be his, and now she is-for ever. The poem ends chillingly:

  And thus we sit together now,

  And all night long we have not stirred,

  And yet God has not said a word!

  To be sure, the piece has a certain power, but of what variety? If it is powerful, it is as a ‘penny dreadful’ is powerful, and what has that to do with Literature? Could the Shelley or the Keats Browning so admires have ever dreamt of penning such stuf
f?

  My purpose in mentioning it, however, as I said, was not to discuss its literary merits, but rather to elicit Browning’s views on the quite extraordinary parallels between this poem of his and the murder of Isabel Eakin.

  ‘I fear it is less interesting than you seem to think,’ my companion replied lightly when I drew his attention to the similarities. ‘Both, after all, are productions of the same mind.’

  I was stunned: for a moment I thought he was confessing to having murdered Isabel!

  ‘That poem was written some twenty years ago, in London,’ he went on. ‘Nevertheless, when confronted with the evidence that a murder had occurred at the villa-which is just in sight, by the way; look, over the wall there! — I at once dreamed up a theory woven from the same threads: the mad jealous lover alone with his faithful-faithless mistress in the isolated country house. A theory, I might add, which now shows every sign of having been as far removed from reality as the fantasies of poor Porphyria’s over-zealous lover.’

  ‘Was the piece based upon an account of an actual crime?’ I enquired.

  ‘Not at all. I dreamed it all up.’

  ‘How remarkable.’

  ‘Do I remark a note of disapproval in your voice, Mr Booth?’

  I hesitated. Should I risk making my criticisms known to Browning? If I decided to do so, it was not out of any wish to match wits with one so far superior to me in the matters under discussion-for what do my opinions matter? — but rather with that thought again in the back of mind that I might one day be Robert Browning’s Boswell. In that case, I will have to be more than merely sycophantic, agreeable and easy: half the good things of Johnson’s we have exist only because Boswell provoked him so, worrying epigrams out of him like a sow rooting for truffles.

  ‘I confess there is an element of perversity in the poem which I find troubling. I understand, of course, that it is intended as a character sketch of an imaginary personage. But there is a sense in which the poem seems to dwell gratuitously upon morbid elements-to take, almost, a kind of pleasure in them. Do you really think that Literature should concern itself with such matters?’

  ‘You pose very large questions, Mr Booth. Tell me-what do you think Literature should concern itself with?’

  I did not much care for him turning thus on me, in the Socratic manner, but I was ready for him.

  ‘With the True and the Beautiful which Keats said were one and the same.’

  Browning shot me a keen look.

  ‘Bravo. Any friend of John Keats is a friend of mine. But the problem with his famous definition-which, incidentally, I most fervently believe to be as true as it is beautiful-is that like all great truths it balances perilously above an abyss of nonsense, where most of those who quote it quite lose their heads. What did Keats mean? That there is a class of things which we call true because they take after their ideal parent, and which you may recognise by their pretty features? Because in that case he was talking nonsense-and cloying, feeble, wishy-washy nonsense at that.

  ‘But I believe he was saying something much stronger and stranger. I believe Keats meant that Truth is Beauty: that anything-literally anything-is beautiful, provided only that we are forced to recognise it-at gunpoint, or pen-point! — as true. In that moment of recognition the foullest passions, the most loathsome cruelties, the dreariest depths of a madman’s soul, assume the quality we call Beauty. Not because they cease to be evil, but because they tell us about what it means to be human — about ourselves.

  ‘Porphyria’s lover was mad, of course, but what lover is completely sane? He treated his mistress as a chattel without a soul, a mere object he could dispose of to suit his whims, but do not thousands of husbands treat their wives in exactly the same way? “Aye, but they do not kill them!” you say. I agree-not openly, at any rate, although some might consider a nice quick strangulation merciful compared with the lingering torments of many a conventional marriage. But what matters if the actor rants and raves and overplays his part so long as the things he says are things we have said to ourselves in our innermost hearts, so long as we recognise them as true?

  ‘And that is the only kind of beauty that interests me any longer, Mr Booth. The lyric flights, the exquisite figures, the memorable and the mighty line-all that I renounce to my wife, who as everyone agrees is so much better at them than I. All I claim is my right to sweat away over my ugly little misshapen lump of Truth. And what better place to start than with this grotesque affair we are engaged on? But I fear we are going to be disappointed, for there is no inscription here, so far as I can see.’

  We had arrived at the gates of the villa, locked now with a sturdy chain. No inscription was visible on the wall outside the grounds, and since there was no sign of life in the lodge, and no one answered our shouts, there was no way of gaining entrance. It appeared that our journey had been in vain.

  We would have gone back then, had I not ventured to suggest that it might be worth our while to inspect the rear of the property as well-and there, on the locked wooden gate leading into the garden, we found the following:

  At Purdy’s both the number and the word seemed immediately significant, while at DeVere’s the number had puzzled us but the word seemed to make at least a muffled kind of sense. We had therefore hoped for much from the third inscription, and now all our hopes were dashed. Riminese, I should explain, is the adjective applied to persons or things appertaining to the town of Rimini, in Romagna on the Adriatic coast over a hundred miles away. What conceivable connection there could be between this place and the death of Isabel Eakin-to say nothing of the significance of the number two-is a question which appears totally insoluble.

  Poor Browning! For the second time in forty-eight hours his theories had collapsed about him in shreds. He had nothing to say, but his features expressed very clearly his mood-one of despondency amounting almost to despair. He plainly had no wish for company now, and in a gruff tone announced that he was going off on a long walk to endeavour to think the whole matter through again.

  Well, I shall close now, having no more news to tell you. As I was walking back to my dwelling I chanced to meet the young woman called Beatrice, who used to be poor Isabel’s maid. I had not seen her since that memorable night at the villa, when the police official Talenti bullied her so over Browning’s supposed connection with her late mistress; and there was no reason why I should have noticed her now, or why, having noticed her, I should have stopped, or, having stopped, should have spoken. There was, I say, no reason why I should have done these things, and every reason (you may think) why I should not-but I make too much of it. She gave me a glance as I passed-I must have looked at her too, for she is an attractive girl, as I said-and they have a way of looking at you, these Italian girls, quite different from their Bostonian sisters, as if they know very well what is in your thoughts; so that even though these may in fact have been utterly pure and prosaic, they straight away turn in quite another direction.

  But this is mere nonsense and rambling. All I meant to say was that I stopped, she addressed me and I responded, and we talked for a few minutes about this and that-about nothing, really. We certainly did not mention any of the matters which have occupied my attention in these letters-the nearest we came to it was when I asked if she had been successful in finding alternative employment, and she replied that Mr Eakin’s parting provision to her had been so ungenerous that she had been obliged to seek a position immediately, and had just found one with an English family.

  At length the conversation became desultory, and we parted. Unfortunately I happened to look round almost immediately afterwards, and was most embarrassed to discover that Beatrice had also turned, so that she caught me apparently staring after her. But she did not seem at all put out, but simply smiled. For a moment I thought she was going to say something, but in the end she turned away. There was of course nothing to say. It just now occurs to me that I should have asked her about the writing on the wall at the villa-perhaps she could have throw
n some light on the meaning of that word ‘Riminese’. If only I could find some way of discovering where she lives or works, I might yet be able to do so. I will give the matter some thought.

  Ever most affectionately yours

  Booth

  P.S.

  A note has just this moment been delivered, inviting me to a ‘spiritualist gathering’ to be held tomorrow evening at the house of Miss Edith Chauncey, a noted ‘medium’. The purpose of the event, it seems, is to attempt to make contact with Isabel’s spirit, and a group of her closest acquaintances here in Florence have been invited to participate.

  Now between the two of us, I am inclined to think this spiritualism a great nonsense; but as it is a sine qua non of social acceptability in at least some of the most important and sought-after households in Florence, I have been careful to keep my views to myself — unlike Mr Browning, who is a great heretic where the spirit world is concerned, loudly proclaiming it all to be a fraud, its practitioners charlatans and their followers credulous dupes (this despite the fact that his wife is prominent amongst the latter). The result is that I pass for a lukewarm believer, ripe for total conversion to the cause, and it is no doubt to this that I owe my invitation.

  I was at first inclined to refuse, for the idea seems to me to be in rather poor taste. But on second thoughts it occurred to me that I should go-if only to see who else has been invited. Who were Isabel’s other close friends in Florence? Is it not possible that her murderer is to be found among them? Yes, I think upon the whole that I shall go.

  13

  17th Feb.

  My dear Prescott,

  The above date will be sufficient to indicate that there has been no respite in the storm of events which continues to rage here. Three days, as you see, have yielded enough for another lengthy letter-and yet everything can be traced back in one way or another to the ‘seance’ to which I was invited by Edith Chauncey, our leading practitioner of the spiritualist art.