“For a little bloke, you sure have nerve.”
“Fifty years ago, during my time on these streets, it was the custom that our group had territory within which we worked. I could beg from the Hyde Park end of Oxford Street to the corner of Bond Street. South to Grosvenor and north to Wigmore. But if I crossed from that area, I transgressed on another group’s territory, and the consequences could be severe.”
“It’s the same now,” a beggar agreed. “We have our spots. We don’t compete. Live and let live.”
“You would do me an important service. In fact, you would do London and England itself a service if you communicated with the neighboring groups and requested that they in turn communicate with their neighboring groups.”
“What for?”
“I’m looking for a man. He’s a retired military officer. He served twenty years in India and was celebrated for his combat achievements. He is in his early forties, unusually tall, with attractive features that are nonetheless unsettling because they do not reveal his thoughts or emotions. He is clean-shaven. He has light brown, curly hair. He walks with an extreme military bearing. He dresses with the elegance suitable to the man who controls security for the home secretary.”
“Lord Palmerston? You do know Lord Cupid?”
“I met Lord Palmerston only once. That was last night, and the experience was disagreeable. The man I wish to know about is named Colonel Brookline.”
“What do you want to know?”
“The location of Brookline’s lodging, his whereabouts, his habits, anything that anyone can learn.”
“To help England, you said? England ain’t helped us much lately. What do we get for doing this?”
“The relief of knowing that he won’t murder you in your sleep.”
“Well and good, but I’m just as afraid of dyin’ from starvation.”
“I guarantee that everyone who helps me find Colonel Brookline will receive a plentiful supply of food.”
“Without a pence in your pocket, I don’t see how you can guarantee a blasted thing,” a man complained.
“Lord Palmerston will arrange for the food.”
“The man who wants you in jail? You expect us to believe that?”
“I promise that Lord Palmerston will overflow with generosity when shown the evil that hides next to him. Joey, since you now wear presentable clothes, you’re the best person to sit on a bench in Green Park and watch Lord Palmerston’s mansion on Piccadilly. Colonel Brookline will arrive there today. Probably several times. The description I gave you and the stern look in Brookline’s eyes are unmistakable. Remember he is tall, with an extreme military bearing. He does not have facial hair, unlike the mutton-chopped politicians and bureaucrats who visit Lord Palmerston. His hair is curly.”
“And what am I supposed to do if I see him?”
“Follow him. Then instruct a fellow knight of the street to come here and report to this gentleman who offered me the use of his platform.”
“My word, you’re makin’ us into detectives,” a beggar said with a toothless grin.
“Heroes,” De Quincey corrected him.
ON A USUAL TUESDAY MORNING, Oxford Street would have been crammed with vehicles and pedestrians as well as various mongers with their coffee, pastry, and oyster carts. But on this particular Tuesday, traffic was half of what it normally would have been as the terror of years earlier was repeated.
The city’s five dozen newspapers had printed extra copies of special editions but couldn’t keep up with the demand. Rumors spread rapidly that more murders had been committed than were reported in the newspapers, some of them in neighborhoods of distinction. It was widely assumed that, after the governor of Coldbath Fields Prison had been killed, all the criminals had escaped with the purpose of violating London. The roads from the city were packed with coaches as the wealthy departed to their country estates. The railroad stations were crammed with anyone who could afford a ticket.
Thus any observers studying Oxford Street in the hope of seeing a short, thin man of sixty-nine years had reason to believe that the absence of the street’s normal chaos would make him more noticeable.
That there would be observers, De Quincey had no doubt. The previous night, he had told Emily, in Brookline’s presence, that she would find him where he listened to the music. Brookline couldn’t know what that meant. But perhaps Emily wouldn’t know, either. De Quincey could only pray that she would remember when he had taken her to Oxford Street on Sunday and shown her the corner where he and Ann had listened to the barrel organ. But meanwhile Colonel Brookline would send men to every place in London where he and Emily were likely to reunite. Oxford Street—so important in De Quincey’s past—would be at the top of the list.
What Brookline couldn’t be aware of—what no one who hadn’t nearly starved to death there could be aware of—was its underside, the secret world that only beggars inhabited.
Anyone watching now saw those beggars emerge from their crannies. They looked at the day’s dismal prospects and proceeded with more than usual discouragement toward their corners. One of them was legless. The poor ragged devil transported himself on a small platform that had rollers under it. His head bowed, he used sticks to push at the paving stones of the sidewalk and move the platform along rather than abrade his hands on the stones.
EACH SEAM IN THE STONES sent a jolt through De Quincey’s knees. The pressure of his legs pinned under him made him wish that he had sipped from the laudanum flask before giving it to his new companions in the tunnel. Soon his craving for opium would intensify his pain. Already his head throbbed while sweat slicked his forehead, sweat caused by withdrawal, not by the exertion of moving the platform.
Logic suggested that anyone watching the street would need to remain stationary, pretending to wait for someone or read a newspaper or look in a shopwindow. De Quincey noticed several possibilities, but as he wheeled past one of them, he attracted only the slightest, dismissive attention. The lowest members of society were beneath anyone’s interest.
At another alley, De Quincey rolled the platform into shadows. Only when he was confident of not being observed did he dismount and carry the platform down steps. Making his way through deeper shadows, he reached another sequence of tunnels. Past a gap in a rusted barrier, he navigated what became a maze until he climbed steps and faced a cluster of shacks in a dismal courtyard.
A haggard woman peered out. “A customer this early, and he don’t look like he has two pence to rub together.”
Another haggard woman peered out. “Tell ’im we don’t do charities for beggars.”
“Good morning, dear ladies,” De Quincey announced. He tipped his shapeless cap. His smile brought pain to the scab on his chin. “How is the linen-lifting tribe this morning?”
“Save your foolishness. A shilling, or no Bob-in-the-Betty-box for you.”
“You misjudge my intentions, dear ladies.” De Quincey put his cap back on. “I’m here to pay a social visit. Would Doris and Melinda reside here?”
“Doris and Melinda? How do you know…?”
“Some gracious paladins of the streets suggested that I’d find them here.”
“The way you talk. I heard your voice before.”
“Indeed you did, my dear lady. At Vauxhall Gardens, yesterday morning.” De Quincey concealed his distress at the memory. “You all identified yourselves as Ann. My clothes were more presentable then.”
“Gorblimey, it’s the little man! What happened to you?”
“My fortunes have fallen since I encountered the same man who hired you to go to Vauxhall Gardens. Doris, I believe that is you.”
“The bugger promised each of us another sovereign. Swore he’d give ’em to us last night. Didn’t show up. We passed up customers while we waited.”
“I can arrange for you to receive the sovereigns he didn’t pay you.”
“And how would that happen?”
“Melinda, is that you? I recognize your charming voic
e.”
Melinda batted her eyelashes.
The other women laughed.
“Lord Palmerston himself will pay you the sovereigns,” De Quincey said.
“And you’d be pals with Lord Cupid, would you?”
“We are definitely acquainted. If you kind ladies can spare me a few moments, I hope I can persuade you to become my spies.”
15
An Effigy in Wax
MADAME TUSSAUD PREFERRED CORPSES. Living models, especially famous ones like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin, enjoyed the idea that their likenesses would achieve immortality, but when it came to practicalities, they complained about staying immobile for a considerable time while Tussaud made the casts from which she created her eerie wax impressions.
Corpses, on the other hand, displayed no impatience. During the French Revolution, Tussaud frequented morgues and looked for the separated heads of well-known victims of the Terror, making death masks of them. So skilled was she that revolutionaries compelled her to keep making wax models of prominent guillotine victims. Seeking a less dangerous environment, she toured Europe with her macabre collection and eventually settled in London, where she established her wax museum.
Although customers claimed that they went to Madame Tussaud’s to see the dignified portrayals of notable personages such as Sir Walter Scott, the probability was that what they really wanted to see was the museum’s Chamber of Horrors. For an extra sixpence, they could gaze at what appeared to be the bloodied heads of Robespierre, King Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette. Visitors could decide if she was as beautiful as rumor suggested. They could also view wax effigies of notorious criminals depicted in the midst of their gruesome crimes.
The location of the wax museum was only a half mile north of Oxford Street, on the west side of Baker Street. There, a hansom cab stopped, and a clean-shaven man with curly hair, a stern look, and an extreme military bearing walked into the museum. Earlier, he had sent an operative to pay for the museum to be closed. When he showed a special ticket that his operative had purchased for him, an employee allowed him to enter.
Brookline did not linger to appreciate the eerily lifelike wax models of various admirable personages, such as Lord Nelson. Instead he verified that no one else was in the building and then made his way toward the rear of the museum, where the Chamber of Horrors was located. Rumors had reached him about a new exhibit that had opened after the murders on Saturday night—or rather had reopened, for this exhibit had been one of Madame Tussaud’s most popular attractions when she toured through England many years earlier.
Brookline had seen it when he was young, before he joined the military. In fact, he had gone back to see it many times, although he had never been able to adjust to it any more than he had been able to restrain himself from returning to it again and again.
A plaque said:
JOHN WILLIAMS IN THE MIDST OF HIS FIRST
RATCLIFFE HIGHWAY MURDERS
(SATURDAY, 7 DECEMBER 1811)
“THE SUBLIMEST IN THEIR EXCELLENCE THAT
EVER WERE COMMITTED.”
OPIUM-EATER THOMAS DE QUINCEY,
“ON MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE
FINE ARTS”
Brookline stared at the scene, which was so vividly three-dimensional that, if not for a rope barrier, he could have walked within it. Before him was an inferior shop. Lanterns cast shadows, creating an ominous atmosphere. A woman lay on the floor, her head bashed in. A young man sprawled farther away, his head bashed in as well. Blood was everywhere. A savage man was suspended in the motion of swinging a ship carpenter’s mallet at someone slumped over a counter, behind which blood-spattered linen and socks were stacked on shelves.
Brookline knew that the scene wasn’t portrayed correctly. Forty-three years earlier, the victim, Timothy Marr, had collapsed behind the counter. Similarly, a shattered cradle was visible beyond the dead shop assistant, a hint of a baby’s bloodied head protruding from beneath a blanket. But in reality, the cradle and the baby could not have been visible from the shop. That particular murder had occurred in a back room.
Those inaccuracies weren’t important, however. What mattered was the face of the murderer, who was viewed in profile as though he had turned for a satisfied look at his victims on the floor before he resumed his raging assault on Timothy Marr.
Madame Tussaud had not been able to see John Williams’s corpse after he used a handkerchief to hang himself in Coldbath Fields Prison. Instead she had relied on a sketch that an artist had made of Williams’s left profile shortly after he was taken down.
The sketch was not part of Tussaud’s exhibit, but Brookline didn’t need to have it there in order to know that the profile of the wax model before him was faithful to the artist’s rendering.
Brookline knew this because he had found a copy of the sketch when he was young. He had kept it in a pocket, eventually wearing it out and needing to acquire another. He had studied it relentlessly, determined to learn its secrets. What kind of man had John Williams been?
What kind of man had his father been?
His mother, a coal scavenger along the river, had carried him on her back while she worked. They had lived in a shack near the docks, along with three other desperate women. As he grew older, he couldn’t help noticing that she often wept in the middle of the night, concealing an anguish that she refused to explain, no matter how often he asked her what was the matter.
He never learned how her path crossed that of a retired army sergeant, Samuel Brookline, or how the three of them came to live in a somewhat better shack near the docks. The former soldier, a veteran of the Battle of Waterloo, worked for a dustman, collecting coal ashes in a donkey cart, taking them to a warehouse near the docks. After the ashes were sifted in case they contained saleable objects that had mistakenly been discarded, they were sold to factories that made fertilizer or bricks.
Eventually the former soldier found a job for him with the dustman, and soon everyone thought of him as Brookline’s son, just as his mother referred to herself as Mrs. Brookline even though they weren’t married. But she always seemed sorrowful, and she continued weeping in the middle of the night.
One day he learned why. He and his mother were walking near the docks when a woman asked, “Margaret, good heavens, is that you?”
His mother kept walking, urging him along.
“Margaret? It is you. Margaret Jewell.”
While his mother’s first name was Margaret, she had always told him that her last name was Brody before she met the former soldier and took his name.
The woman caught up to his mother and asked, “What’s wrong? Margaret, don’t you recognize me? I’m Nancy. I used to work in the shop three doors down from Marr.”
“Maybe I look like someone else,” his mother said brusquely. “I don’t know who Marr was. I’m sure I never saw you before.”
“The Ratcliffe Highway murders. I would’ve sworn. You’re really not Margaret? Sorry. I must’ve made a mistake. Really, I would’ve sworn.”
The woman left them. The boy and his mother continued along the street.
“The Ratcliffe Highway murders?” the boy asked.
“Nothing to concern you,” his mother told him.
But there was something in her eyes, a haunted look that made him resolve to learn what the Ratcliffe Highway murders were and who Margaret Jewell was.
One evening, he took a detour when he returned from the dustman’s warehouse. He went to Ratcliffe Highway, asked about the murders, and was shocked to learn the details. Although they were eleven years in the past, their terror remained vivid to those who had lived in the neighborhood.
“Mother,” he asked one evening when he found her alone in the shack, weeping, “did that woman the other day truly recognize you? Are you Margaret Jewell?”
His mother looked frightened then, as if he had accused her instead of asked her.
“Did you work for the Marr family that was murdered?”
&nb
sp; Her look of fright changed to one of horror.
“Did you know John Williams? People say that they knew him in the neighborhood and that he sometimes came into the shop.”
His mother screamed.
The former soldier rushed into the shack but couldn’t calm her.
“What happened?”
“I just asked her about the Ratcliffe Highway murders,” the boy said.
“Why would you ask about them?”
“Someone mentioned them. I was curious.”
“I worked on the docks back then,” the former soldier told him. “You can’t imagine how terrified everybody felt. Twelve days later, they happened again.”
His mother put her hands to her face.
“What’s troubling you, Margaret?” the former soldier asked. “Did you know someone who was killed in those murders?”
A few days later, the boy made another detour after working at the dustman’s warehouse. He returned to Ratcliffe Highway, asked more questions, and was directed to the King’s Arms tavern, where the second murders had occurred.
A printed copy of a sketch was displayed inside one of the tavern’s windows for people going past to read. The sketch showed a man in left profile, with curly hair, a high forehead, a sharp nose, and a strong chin. A name was under the sketch, but the boy had not learned to read.
An announcement was next to the sketch, but the boy couldn’t read that, either.
“Sir,” he asked a man walking past, “would you please tell me what this says?”
The man had ordinary clothes and was not of sufficient standing to be called “sir,” but the boy had learned that pretending to be polite could produce rewards, such as a piece of bread, when he visited households to gather coal ashes. The boy also paid the man a compliment by assuming he could read.
“Of course, boy. The words under this sketch give the name John Williams. A vicious sort he was, as the words on this other piece of paper tell us.”
The man drew a finger along the window and the poster beyond it. “ ‘On this site, 19 December 1811, the infamous murderer John Williams slaughtered tavernkeeper John Williamson, his wife, and a servant girl.’ Poor form, using the murders to attract customers to the tavern.”