Murder as a Fine Art

  At once the attacker lurched rather than lunged. He jerked forward, falling. Becker saw that De Quincey had grabbed the attacker’s ankles, tripping him.

  The attacker dropped, face forward, onto the floor. He cried out, trembled, and suddenly became still.

  Becker shook, straining to adjust to what had happened. De Quincey gasped for air, his throat red from the finger marks of the attacker.

  Cautiously, Becker turned the attacker onto his back. The spoon had been rammed all the way into the man’s head, the round part barely visible. The man’s expression was lifeless.

  “Can’t,” De Quincey murmured, “breathe.”

  Becker hurried to him. De Quincey had blood spattered on his face and his clothes, but as much as Becker could determine, the blood wasn’t his.

  “Take shallow breaths,” Becker told him. “Your throat’s swollen, but nothing’s broken, or else you wouldn’t be able to talk.”

  De Quincey nodded.

  “Take shallow breaths,” Becker repeated, “and let your throat relax. You’ll soon breathe normally.”

  “Was…?”

  “Don’t try to talk.”

  “… real?”

  Becker didn’t understand.

  “Was it real?” De Quincey sounded as if he were more afraid for his sanity than he was for his life. “Did it happen? It wasn’t the laudanum?”

  “It definitely happened,” Becker assured him.

  “Father!”

  Becker turned and saw Emily clinging to the bars at the end of the corridor.

  He ran to her as the jailer staggered from his office, rubbing the back of his neck.

  “I think we’ve been drugged,” Becker told them.

  Outside, footsteps charged toward the door. Accompanied by two guards, Ryan hurried in from the darkness.

  He wore his shapeless street clothes again, his cap covering most of his red hair. Bewildered, he looked at Becker’s slashed coat before he noticed the body in the corridor.

  “That’s the killer,” Becker said.

  DRUGGED,” the jailer confirmed. “Every prisoner and every guard who works in this building.”

  “The food?” Ryan asked.

  “Yes. What the outside guards ate wasn’t tampered with. Only in here,” the jailer elaborated. “We use civilians to prepare the food. One of them must have been bribed.”

  “The guard at the gate says the dead man claimed to have a message from Lord Palmerston,” Ryan said. “A sure way to get into the prison. We found the note in the governor’s office. All it says is ‘Treat the Opium-Eater as harshly as possible.’ The governor probably didn’t have a chance to read it before he was stabbed.”

  “Then the killer came to this building, saw that we were all asleep, found the key, and went to Mr. De Quincey’s cell,” Becker concluded. He drank coffee to help clear his mind from the drug. “I searched him, but he doesn’t have anything on his clothes to identify him.”

  “A message from Lord Palmerston?” Ryan sounded doubtful. “I know several people on Lord Palmerston’s staff, but I never saw this man before. Maybe a newspaper sketch artist can produce a good likeness of him. Possibly someone can identify him.”

  The group was in the room where Becker and Emily had fallen asleep. Emily sat with her father on the cot. The attacker’s blood remained on De Quincey’s face.

  “You haven’t explained the spoon,” the jailer noted with suspicion. “How did you get the spoon?”

  De Quincey seemed not to hear the question. He trembled from the effects of the fierce battle for his life.

  And from the cramps of laudanum withdrawal.

  “Emily, did you refill my flask?”

  “I never had the chance, Father. I never left the prison.”

  De Quincey shuddered.

  “Tell me how you got the spoon,” the jailer persisted.

  “I gave it to him,” Emily said.

  The jailer’s mouth hung open.

  “Inspector Ryan”—De Quincey’s voice was hoarse—“who knew I was being brought to this prison?”

  “For starters, all the newspaper reporters you saw when you arrived. Lord Palmerston spread the word far and wide. By late this afternoon, it was common knowledge. He wanted to make certain that people thought you were the main suspect and that you were off the streets.”

  “To make people feel safe.” After everything that had happened, De Quincey looked even smaller than usual, trembling on the cot.

  “That’s right.”

  “But now other murders have occurred.”

  “That’s what I came to tell you. Two sets of them,” Ryan said. “Eight people at a tavern, and three at a surgeon’s house.”

  “Not to mention the governor. Murders I obviously couldn’t have committed since I was imprisoned here. So there’s no reason to keep me locked away any longer.”

  “Lord Palmerston hasn’t given permission for that,” the jailer objected.

  “Yes, I expect at the moment he has numerous other things to occupy his attention,” De Quincey noted. “The riots that Inspector Ryan described, for example. Nonetheless, there’s no reason to keep me locked away any longer, and every reason to let me go.”

  “Such as?”

  “I need to study the murder scenes.”

  Emily raised her head in surprise. “What are you talking about, Father?”

  “Take me to the tavern, Inspector Ryan. I need to find what else the killer unwittingly told us about himself. Before something worse happens.”

  “But we don’t need to worry now,” Becker objected. “The killer’s lying in the corridor out there. It’s over.”

  “A killer is lying in that corridor. Yes. But the killer? No.”

  “What on earth makes you believe that?” Ryan demanded.

  “When he burst into my cell, he said something that’s too indelicate to repeat.”

  “For you to feel such, it must indeed be indelicate,” Emily said. “But I don’t intend to leave.”

  “Very well. He called me a clever little shit.”

  “Some might not disagree,” the jailer said.

  “Specifically, the sentence was ‘He warned me you’re a clever little shit.’ ”

  “ ‘He warned me’?” Ryan asked.

  “Someone gave instructions to this man. Whoever that other person is, now that he has replicated the original murders, he’ll feel free to create his own masterpieces.”

  11

  The Dark Interpreter

  THE FOG WAS WORSE than the night before, the soot particles in greater quantity, sticking to skin and clothing. Ryan had managed to find a wagon with a cover, shielding De Quincey, Emily, Becker, and himself as a constable drove them toward the tavern. But apart from the shelter that the canvas walls and roof provided, Ryan would have preferred to see the smothering fog and try to guess the cause of possibly threatening shadows moving within it.

  The faint lantern hanging under the canvas revealed that De Quincey continued to tremble. Now that he’d washed the attacker’s blood from his face, it was clear that he was alarmingly pale.

  “Are you all right?” Ryan asked.

  “Thank you, yes. I have suffered through this before.”

  “You’ve been attacked before? You needed to fight for your life before?”

  “The attack did in fact happen?” De Quincey asked Becker again.

  “Most definitely.”

  “I can tolerate anything if I have my medicine.” De Quincey hugged himself.

  “Why do you insist on calling it medicine?” Becker asked.

  “Without it, my facial pains and stomach disorders would be intolerable.”

  “Worse than you’re feeling now?”

  “Sometimes I can reduce the quantity until I finally discontinue it.” De Quincey’s voice wavered. “But the pains worsen, like rats tearing at my stomach, and eventually I can’t resist the need.”

  “Could the pains be caused by the body’s craving for the drug
?” Ryan asked. “Perhaps if you became accustomed to not having the drug, the pains would go away.”

  “How I wish that were the case.”

  Becker felt pressure next to him and realized that Emily, still groggy, had fallen asleep with her head against his shoulder. Neither her father nor Ryan seemed to think that the situation was unsuitable, so he continued to provide support for her.

  “My mind demands it more than my body,” De Quincey continued, as if talking helped to distract him from his need. “Our minds have doors.”

  “Doors?” Ryan asked in confusion.

  “Opening them, I discovered thoughts and emotions that controlled me but that I didn’t know I possessed. Unfortunately, self-knowledge can turn out to be a nightmare. Too many nights, I dream about a coach driver who turns into a crocodile.”

  “Thoughts that control you but that you don’t know you possess? A crocodile?” Ryan shook his head from side to side. “For a moment, I almost seemed to follow what you said.”

  “My friend Coleridge was a well-known opium-eater.”

  “I have heard such, although I confess I have not read his poems,” Ryan said.

  De Quincey lapsed into a singsong way of speaking that made Becker fear De Quincey had lost his mind. His words seemed to refer to hallucinations.

  The shadow of the dome of pleasure

  Floated midway on the waves;

  Where was heard the mingled measure

  From the fountain and the caves.

  It was a miracle of rare device,

  A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

  “That is Coleridge,” De Quincey concluded. “From ‘Kubla Khan.’ ”

  “It rhymes insistently.”

  “Indeed it does.” De Quincey hugged himself and trembled.

  “It has a child’s rhythm.”

  “That also. Coleridge uses childlike rhyme and rhythm to make you feel that you are under opium’s spell. In fact, he was under its spell when he wrote his poetry. But as much as it helped him create beauty, it destroyed his health. He tried desperately to gain his freedom, but it isn’t easy to leave the pleasure dome.”

  Shouts made the wagon stop. Bodies jostled the sides, shaking Emily awake.

  “What’s that noise?” she murmured.

  “Inspector, you’d better get out here!” the driver yelled.

  Becker and Ryan jumped hurriedly down, confronted by shadows storming from the fog.

  A shrouded streetlamp revealed men holding swords, knives, rifles, and clubs.

  “What’s your business here?” one of the men demanded.

  “I could ask you the same,” Ryan answered.

  “But we know who we are, and you’re a stranger.”

  “We’re police officers.”

  “Look like beggars to me.” The smell of gin wafted from the man. “The bloke next to you has a coat that’s almost in rags.” The reference was to the knife slashes that De Quincey’s attacker had inflicted on Becker’s garment.

  “And blood!” another man shouted, pointing.

  One of the knife slashes had nicked Becker’s chest, the blood now dried.

  “Still has the victims’ blood on ’im.”

  “It’s my own blood,” Becker told them. “I’m an off-duty constable. This is Inspector Ryan. If you want to see a uniform, look at the driver.”

  “Yes, the driver’s wearin’ a constable’s uniform, but so was the killer when he slaughtered fifteen poor souls in a tavern. People first thought he was a sailor, but it turned out he was a constable. Dressed as a sergeant.”

  “Not fifteen victims in a tavern,” Ryan insisted. “Eight.”

  “And six people in a surgeon’s office!”

  “Three,” Becker corrected him.

  “How would you be so certain unless you was there! Uniform, my arse. The killer was disguised as a policeman, so how can we believe a stranger wearin’ a uniform?”

  “Look, this other bloke has red hair peekin’ under his cap!”

  “Irish!”

  “Wait! I’ll show you my badge!” Ryan reached into his coat.

  “He’s goin’ for a knife!”

  “Get ’im!”

  The mob charged, pinning Ryan and Becker against the wagon. The impact knocked Becker’s teeth together. A club struck his shoulder.

  Ryan groaned.

  Abruptly a woman screamed.

  A man attacking Ryan swung toward the fog. “Who’s that?”

  “Help!” the woman shrieked.

  “Where?”

  “There!”

  “Help! He attacked me!”

  Astonished, Becker saw a woman stumble from the fog. Her bonnet hung from her neck. Her coat was torn open, the top part of her dress ripped.

  The woman was Emily.

  “He grabbed me! He tried to—”

  “Where?”

  “Down that alley! A policeman! He ripped my dress! He tried to—”

  “Let’s go! The bastard’s gettin’ away!”

  The mob raged past Ryan and Becker, disappearing into the fog toward where Emily pointed.

  “Hurry,” Becker told her, helping her into the wagon.

  Under the canvas roof, Becker heard Ryan jump up next to the driver. “Get out of here fast.”

  As the wagon jostled rapidly over the cobblestones, Emily fumbled to secure the top of her dress and to close her coat.

  “Well done,” Becker told her.

  “It was all I could think of.” Working to catch her breath, Emily adjusted her bonnet.

  “And if that didn’t distract them,” De Quincey indicated, “this was the other plan.”

  De Quincey had taken the lantern from its hook in the wagon and held it as if to throw it from the wagon.

  “The crash when it landed and the explosion of flames might have confused them enough for you to escape into the fog.”

  “But what about the two of you? The mob would have turned on you.”

  “A short, elderly man and a young woman?” De Quincey shrugged. “We were prepared to claim to be your prisoners. Not even drunkards would have thought we were dangerous.”

  “But you are,” Becker said, studying them with admiration. “You’re two of the most dangerous people I ever met.”

  THE RUMBLE OF THE MOB in front of the tavern made Ryan tell the driver to stop. After Becker, De Quincey, and Emily dismounted from the wagon, he asked two constables to escort them through the crowd.

  But the crowd had little respect for constables and made way with barely controlled hostility.

  “Brilliant,” De Quincey murmured.

  “What are you talking about?” Ryan asked.

  “First, the killer tricked them into attacking every sailor they could find. Then he made them believe that a policeman, any policeman, is the killer. They trust no one and suspect everyone. Brilliant.”

  “Forgive me if I don’t share your enthusiasm.”

  The group reached the tavern, where two nervous constables stood guard.

  “Glad you’re here, Inspector.”

  “Yes, it appears you can use plenty of help.”

  “For certain, there aren’t enough of us,” the other policeman agreed.

  Ryan turned to Emily. “There are eight corpses inside. I can’t leave you out here with this mob. Tell me what to do with you.”

  “I’ll shield my eyes. Constable Becker can lead me to a corner where I’ll look away from the room.”

  “There’s an odor.”

  “I can bear it if you can.”

  “The conversation will be disagreeable.”

  “More disagreeable than the conversations I’ve already heard? That is difficult to imagine.”

  “Becker…”

  “I’ll take care of her.”

  The group entered the tavern.

  There was indeed an odor. Of bodily fluids and the beginning of decay.

  As Becker escorted Emily to a table on the right, Ryan gestured for De Quincey to offer
his opinions.

  But De Quincey barely looked at the carnage. He walked deeper into the tavern, sidestepped blood, and reached the entrance that led behind the counter. He seemed oblivious to the tavernkeeper slumped forward as if asleep. His total attention was devoted to the shelves behind the counter.

  “It’s here. I know it is.”

  He scanned bottles of gin and wine. He searched behind rows of glasses. He stooped, inspecting the area around the beer kegs.

  “It must be.”

  Desperation made De Quincey move faster, his short figure pacing back and forth behind the counter. Only his shoulders and head showed above it. He barely glanced down to make sure that he didn’t step in blood.

  “Where in God’s name…? There!”

  Like an animal that had found its prey, he pounced toward a shelf under the far end of the counter. He disappeared from Ryan’s view. Then he rose, holding a decanter filled with ruby-colored liquid. He grabbed a wineglass and filled it with the liquid. Hand shaking, he raised the liquid to his lips, fearful that he might spill some of it, and took a deep swallow.

  Another.

  A third.

  Ryan watched in shock. A stranger might have thought that De Quincey was drinking wine, but Ryan had no doubt that this was laudanum. One swallow would have made most people unconscious. Two swallows would have killed them. But De Quincey had just consumed three, and now he drank a fourth, finishing the glass!

  De Quincey stood as if paralyzed behind the counter. His empty gaze was directed past corpses drooped over a table, centering on the fireplace in the back corner, where chunks of coal smoldered.

  But De Quincey didn’t appear to see that fireplace. Instead his blue eyes seemed to stare at something far away. They became blank.