Murder As A Fine Art Part 32

"I do not wish to be reminded of that."

"Perhaps if your son hadn't been so eager to get away from you, he would still be alive."

"You keep bringing my family into this."

The coach thumped over a hole in the road. The impact jostled them.

It also aggravated the grip of the handcuffs on De Quincey's wrists.

"When I pulled you into the coach," Brookline said, "I felt something in your coat pocket."

"I have nothing." De Quincey was very conscious of the key that Emily had put into his coat. His heart cramped.

"But you do. I felt it." Brookline reached toward his coat. "Surely you don't believe you can sneak something into prison."

De Quincey held his breath, trying not to betray his apprehension.

"And look at this," Brookline announced victoriously.

He yanked the flask from De Quincey's pocket and shook it, listening to the liquid inside. "Could this be cough medicine, or perhaps some brandy to ward off the night's chill? Let us investigate."

Brookline unscrewed the cap, sniffed the contents, and grimaced. "Why am I not surprised that it's laudanum?"

He unlatched the window and threw the flask into the street. "Even mixed with alcohol, its odor is disgusting."

In the dark, the flask clattered across paving stones.

"That's where filth belongs. In the gutter."

"You're familiar with the odor of opium, Colonel?"

"The lime used to process it reminds me of the quicklime that is dumped into ma.s.s graves. In both warehouses and battlefields, I encountered the deathly odor of lime almost every day of my many years in India. When I arrived there, I was eighteen, the same age as your son who fled to India to avoid you."

"Perhaps you were fleeing your own father."

"If you are trying to bait me, you won't succeed," Brookline said. "My father has no relevance. I never knew him. My mother lived with a former soldier. He never complained about the military, so after he died in an accident, I decided to give his former profession a try. In India, I was trained by a sergeant who explained about the British East India Company and the opium trade. The sergeant said that if he caught any of us using opium, he would break our bones before he killed us. He called it the devil."

"He was right."

"That is not the impression you give in your Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. You praise the drug for increasing your awareness. You claim that music becomes more intense, for example, almost as if you can see what you're hearing."

"Yes. But as I make clear in my book, the effect lessens with each taking. An increasing amount must be ingested in order to achieve the same effect. Soon, ma.s.sive amounts are necessary merely to feel normal. Attempting to reduce the quant.i.ty produces unbearable pain, as if rats tear at the interior of my stomach."

"You should have emphasized that in your Confessions," Brookline directed.

"I believe that I did."

"The sergeant who warned me about opium owned a copy of your book. He made all his trainees read it so that we would understand the devil. In fact, he ordered me to read your foul confessions to those soldiers who could not read. I read it so often that I memorized your offensive text. But he was mistaken to order us to read it. Your book is an encouragement to use opium rather than a caution."

"That was not my intention."

"How many people became its slave because of you, do you suppose? How many people did you trap in h.e.l.l?"

"I can easily ask the reverse. How many people took my advice to stay away from the drug once they understood its false attraction? There is no way to know either answer."

"In India and China, every battle I fought, every person I killed, was because of opium. Over the centuries, hundreds of thousands died in conflicts because of it. Millions of people in China were corrupted by it. In England itself, how many slaves to opium are there?"

"Again, there is no way to determine that number."

"But with laudanum available on every street corner and in every home, with almost every child being given it for coughs or even for crying, there must be hundreds of thousands, perhaps millions, who require it without realizing the hold it has on them, do you agree?"

"Logic would say so."

"Fainthearted women who seldom leave their homes and keep the draperies closed and surround themselves with a swirl of patterns in their shadowy sitting rooms-do they not seem to be under the influence of the drug? Laborers, merchants, bankers, members of Parliament, members of every stratum of society-they too must be under the influence?"

"An argument can be made that you are correct."

"An influence that you encourage."

"No."

"My disgust for your opium-eating Confessions led me to investigate the rest of your vile work."

"I'm impressed. Some editors complained that I myself should have read my essays before submitting them."

"Everything is a joke to you. Not content with advocating opium abuse, you praised the Ratcliffe Highway killer, John Williams. 'All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his,' you said. You described Williams as an artist."

"Yes."

"The Ratcliffe Highway murders were 'the sublimest that were ever committed,' you said."

"Those are indeed my words."

" 'The most superb of the century,' you described them."

"Your research is thorough."

"Extremely so."

" 'Obsessive' is the word that comes to mind."

"Opium abuse, killing, and death are not things to be mocked. In Coldbath Fields Prison, I shall demonstrate that truth to you."

Brookline lurched as the coach struck another hole in the road.

De Quincey had been praying that it would happen again. He had primed his reflexes, knowing that this might be his only opportunity. He had thought it through carefully, antic.i.p.ating precisely what needed to be done.

As the impact jolted Brookline and the other man, De Quincey lunged toward the door.

The force of the wheel coming out of the hole knocked Brookline against the back of his seat. He grabbed for De Quincey too late. The Opium-Eater was already out the door, jumping into the darkness.

The force of coming off the moving vehicle threw him off-balance. He nearly toppled forward and smashed his face on the paving stones. But he managed to keep his balance, straightened, and ran panicked into the swirling fog. His direction was to the right.

Brookline shouted.

Boots landed hard on the street. Three sets: Brookline, the interior guard, and the man riding with the driver. As long as they made noise, the sounds that he himself made would be undetectable.

Brookline seemed to read his thoughts and yelled, "Quiet!"

Behind the Opium-Eater, the night became silent. Meanwhile his hurried bootsteps echoed.

"That way!"

De Quincey ran harder. The long strides of the tall men would soon close the distance he had managed to gain. Despite his age, fear gave him strength, as did his habit of walking thousands of miles a year. His only hope was to race back along Piccadilly in the direction of Lord Palmerston's mansion.

Green Park lay across from it. If he could reach that park, its gra.s.s would m.u.f.fle the sound of his boots.

A lamppost suddenly loomed. Heart thundering, De Quincey s.h.i.+fted to the side. His shoulder jolted past it, sending a shudder through him, making him groan. Again he was in darkness.

"I hear him! He's not far ahead!" Brookline shouted.

De Quincey ran faster. His lungs burned. His shoulder throbbed. His legs felt the strain of greater exertion.

Another lamppost loomed, but this time he avoided it. Abruptly an uneven paving stone tripped him. He landed and groaned, but his terror was greater than his pain, and he struggled upright, lurching onward into the fog.

"He's close!" Brookline yelled.

At once the sounds on the street changed. Until now, echoes had come from both right and left, indicating that there were buildings on each side. But now the echo came only from the right.

The expanse of the park must be on his left.

Or perhaps his panic had distorted his hearing. If he was wrong, he would crash into a building.

"I see a shadow moving!" Brookline shouted.

In one of the greatest acts of faith in his life, De Quincey darted to the left. Reaching out, he touched the spike-topped palings that enclosed the park. As he raced along them, he heard one of his pursuers slam into the palings and curse.

Running, De Quincey drew his hand painfully along the palings, searching for the gate. Where was it? Had he pa.s.sed it?

Bootsteps rushed closer.

De Quincey felt the gate. Frantically lifting the metal latch, he pushed and ran into the murky park. At the same moment, he heard the rush of a hand grab for him and miss.

The noises he made changed to silence as he veered to the right, leaving the stones of a path for the softness of gra.s.s.

The bootfalls behind him became silent also as Brookline and his two men entered the park. Or almost silent. The gra.s.s didn't entirely m.u.f.fle sounds. Occasional dead leaves crunched under De Quincey's soles.

"Over there!" Brookline shouted.

De Quincey was forced to run slower, to lessen the impact he made. Despite the night's cold, his lungs felt on fire, but he couldn't inhale fully to cool them, lest the noise of his harsh breathing indicate where he was.

He heard one of the men strike something.

"Watch out for the trees!" Brookline's voice warned.

De Quincey reduced his pace even more. After the illumination of Lord Palmerston's house, the street had seemed in total darkness, but in fact, the lampposts had provided a periodic hazy glow. Now in the park the darkness was absolute. The fog was a veil through which he groped, the range of his cramped arms limited by the painful handcuffs.

The throbbing in his shoulder intensified. His chin swelled from where he had fallen and injured it.

Surprising him, his hands touched tree bark. He moved around the trunk. His waist struck a bench.

"There!" Brookline's voice yelled.

What had been an urgent race was reduced to a tense walk. Behind him, someone sc.r.a.ped against leafless bushes.

To his left.

He veered to the right, all the while moving deeper into the park.

"Reach under the benches! He's small enough to hide there!" Brookline ordered. "And under bushes!"

Again, De Quincey's shackled hands scratched against a tree. He s.h.i.+fted around it, b.u.mped his head on a limb, and moved warily onward.

Abruptly he changed his mind. He couldn't allow himself to move so far from the street that he would be disoriented and walk in circles. It was essential that he go back to the street. His plan depended on that.

He returned to the tree, felt the limb that he had b.u.mped against, and stretched up to determine if he could reach a higher one.

Indeed he could.

"Spread out!" Brookline commanded.

De Quincey's urgent pulse swelled his veins as he made another act of faith and climbed onto the first limb. His shackled wrists had sufficient s.p.a.ce between them to allow him to grip the next limb and pull himself farther up.

His clothes brushed against the tree.

"There!" a man yelled.

Boots hurried quickly, crus.h.i.+ng leaves. Using their sound to cover his own, De Quincey pulled himself higher.

"I heard him!" Brookline's harsh voice came from below him. "Somewhere around here!"

Braced between a branch and the tree trunk, De Quincey held his breath.

Trouser legs brushed against each other.

"Stop and listen," Brookline said.

The park became quiet.