Murder As A Fine Art Part 40

But another minute pa.s.sed-and then two.

"We're bound to be noticed, just standing here staring at the door," Becker said.

At once the door budged, only a little, so tiny a movement that De Quincey needed to ask his companions, "Do you see that? Is it real?"

"Yes, it's real, Father."

They s.h.i.+fted toward the steps in front of the door.

The door opened slightly more.

"Joey?" Becker asked.

A hand appeared at the edge of the door. The hand was covered with soot.

De Quincey started up the steps. "Joey?"

As the door opened wider, a figure staggered into view. Rags and face were dark with soot, except for Joey's eyes, the whites of which bulged with pain, and except for Joey's left shoulder, which was crimson with blood.

"Joey!" Emily raced up the stairs.

Entering, she grabbed the boy, holding him up, as De Quincey closed the door and Becker looked around warily, on guard against a threat.

"What's this in his shoulder?" Emily exclaimed.

As she and De Quincey lowered the boy to the floor, they were forced to set him sideways because a foot-long shaft projected from where his shoulder met his neck. The tip had barbs. The rear had feathers.

"From a crossbow," Becker said. "If he'd been taller, it would have struck him full in the back, just about where a man's heart would be."

Continuing to scan the area, Becker focused on the stairs, the middle section of which was obscured by thick shadows.

Joey moaned.

"We need to stop the bleeding!" Emily cried.

Becker crept up the side of the stairs, keeping close to the banister. His weight pressed a stair down. Something clicked under the stairs. Wary, Becker stooped and found a hole in the wood between one stair and another, a hole large enough for a crossbow to fire.

"Here," Becker said. "A trap. There are probably others. Be careful what you touch."

"He'll bleed to death," Emily said.

"You heard me mention Dr. Snow." Becker jumped to the bottom of the stairs. "He lives the next street over, on Frith Street. Ryan sent me to him on Sat.u.r.day night."

Becker scooped up the boy as if he weighed nothing. "Quickly. Before Brookline comes back."

Emily rushed to open the door.

"No," De Quincey said. "I can't leave."

"What?"

"Not until I see what's here."

"But we need to take Joey to Dr. Snow!" Emily told him.

"We don't have time for this!" Becker insisted. "The boy will die!"

"Emily, go with Becker! You can help Joey more than you can help me!" De Quincey saw a knife on the floor, the one that Becker had lent Joey. He picked it up.

"Even with that knife, you don't have a chance against Brookline!" Becker insisted.

"And we don't have a chance to stop him if all three of us run to Dr. Snow. This house needs to be searched! Go! I promise I'll be there soon!"

Joey moaned in Becker's arms.

"Can't wait," Becker warned.

Emily stared at Joey, then at De Quincey.

"Emily, if you insist on staying, I'll be forced to leave to keep you from danger! What Joey did for us will be wasted!"

"There's no time!" Becker hurried down the steps, carrying the small, bleeding figure.

Emily kept staring at De Quincey. She turned toward Becker running along the street.

"I love you, Father."

She raced after Becker and the boy.

SILENCE GATHERED IN THE HOUSE. The only sound De Quincey became aware of was the fearful agitation of his heart. When he shut the door, the thick draperies in the rooms to his right and left allowed hardly any sunlight to enter. The knife in his hands didn't give him confidence. Trying to steady his tremors, he took out his laudanum bottle and drank deeply.

As the heat of the opium sank to his stomach, it intensified his senses. Shadows appeared less dense. The rattle of a carriage pa.s.sing outside sounded next to him, as if the door wasn't closed. He turned toward a candle and a box of matches that he had earlier noticed on the floor against the wall. In his youth, the only way to light a candle had been by using flint and steel to deposit sparks into straw in a tinderbox. The newly invented matches, known as lucifers, still seemed unreal to him, able to produce a flame simply by being sc.r.a.ped against a rough surface. Early forms of matches had created a sulfurous odor of rotten eggs, a defect that was now eliminated. But when De Quincey struck the match, the distinctive rotten-egg smell of older-style matches made him pull back his head.

In a rush, he lit the candle and blew out the match.

Have I been poisoned?

Holding his breath, he waited for dizziness and nausea to afflict him. But with each long instant, his only dizziness seemed to be the consequence of fear. Gradually he inhaled and felt steadier.

Is the stench intended to warn Brookline that someone entered and used one of the matches to light a candle?

If so, the tactic was doubly effective because the candle had an odor also. The best candles, made from beeswax, exuded a fragrance while the worst, made of tallow, stank of animal fat. These candles were almost as foul-smelling as the match. Why? Brookline's income was sufficient for him to afford candles and matches without a stench. Why had he refused to acquire them?

As the candle illuminated the area around him, De Quincey's unsteady hand caused the flame to waver. He peered toward the room on the right. The last time he'd been in this house was fifty-two years earlier, but it seemed that nothing had changed. The room he entered had been as empty of furniture then as it was now. In those long-ago, despairing winter months, he had slept on the cold floor, the nervous twitching of his legs constantly waking him.

The floor was even more filthy now. Grains of soot littered it. At the far end, the soot showed round outlines where objects had sat, perhaps what the servants in the neighboring residences had noticed being removed, covered with blankets.

On guard against more traps, De Quincey returned to the hallway and entered the opposite room, which a half century earlier had been an office for the mysterious man who had maintained several such offices throughout the city, constantly s.h.i.+fting his premises. Here the man had worked on legal doc.u.ments for a few furtive hours each morning, sometimes eating pastries, the crumbs from which he'd allowed De Quincey to savor.

A straight-backed wooden chair was next to a small table on which sat a chimney lamp. A stack of books rose from the floor next to the table, books that looked unnervingly familiar.

De Quincey set down the knife, removed the gla.s.s chimney from the lamp, and lifted the lamp so that he could more easily bring the candle to the wick.

He froze as the candle's flame wavered toward the wick. The sensation was literally of freezing.

A trap, Becker had warned. There are probably others. Be careful what you touch.

The wick on the lamp was so new that it looked totally white.

The lamp seemed heavier than it ought to be. It didn't make the sound of coal oil slos.h.i.+ng in it. Nor did it have a coal-oil odor.

Carefully, De Quincey lowered the lamp onto the table. He set the candle on the floor and unscrewed the cap on the side of the lamp, opening the channel into which coal oil could be added.

Sweat oozed from his brow when he inserted his finger into the channel and touched a granular substance. Some of it stuck to his skin when he removed his finger from the channel. He saw black specks similar to those he had noticed on the floor in the opposite room.

He dropped a speck onto the candle's flame. The speck flashed in a miniature explosion.

Gunpowder.

The lamp was a bomb.

Moving as quickly as he could without extinguis.h.i.+ng the candle, he returned to the first room, picked up a speck of the substance on the floor, and dropped it onto the flame. Again the speck flashed.

De Quincey suddenly realized that the round outlines on the dirty floor had been made by kegs, one of which had a small leak.

Gunpowder.

Urgency overcame fear as he returned to the second room and studied the unnervingly familiar books.

Sickened, he confirmed that he had written all of them. On shelves behind the chair, more books were stacked-all by him-along with countless magazines that contained articles he had written. The collection was more complete than De Quincey's own. Brookline possessed a copy of every book, magazine, and newspaper that contained De Quincey's work.

He opened the books, astonished by how tattered the pages looked from compulsive readings. Every page had underscored lines. Foul comments were written in the margins. The little s.h.i.+t appeared frequently.

The most frequent execrations were next to the numerous times De Quincey had written about Brookline's father, the genius of John Williams's murders, his brilliant butchery, the sublimity of his blood-spattered achievements.

Mocks killing and death, Brookline had written. He needs to be shown reality.

De Quincey's Confessions of an English Opium-Eater was bountifully underlined also, with exclamation marks in the margins.

How many people died from laudanum overdoses because of him? Brookline seemed to shout at the bottom of a page.

De Quincey felt nauseous.

How many thousands died in India and China because of opium? How many have I myself killed because of opium and the British East India Company?

But which of us, the Opium-Eater or I, is the greater killer? Brookline demanded in angry handwriting that obscured an entire page.

"Did all these people die in the past few days because of me?" De Quincey murmured. His words echoed in what felt like a tomb.

Now he knew why Brookline had chosen to rent this house.

In his mind, he connects me with his father and himself. To him, we're all killers, De Quincey realized.

He vomited.

The horror of his discovery was sharpened by his urgent awareness that Brookline might return at any moment. Wiping bile from his mouth, he overcame his shock and picked up the knife. Aware of his rapid breathing, he proceeded through the two remaining rooms on this floor but found nothing that appeared significant.

Staying close to the banister, avoiding the hole where the crossbow was hidden under the murky stairs, he climbed to the next floor. His footfalls on the creaky wood were magnified, increasing his tension. Four other rooms-two in front and two in back-awaited him.

One room had its door closed.

Avoiding it, he searched the other rooms and found them empty. He climbed the stairs to the small servants' quarters on the next floor. Aside from footprints made by soot-presumably Joey's-nothing was evident. The house was as abandoned as it had been fifty-two years earlier.

But what about the closed door on the middle level, the only closed room in the house?

Fearful, De Quincey descended to it. Wary of other traps, he tried the doork.n.o.b, hoping that it would be locked.

But the k.n.o.b turned.

He stepped to the side and thrust the door open. If another weapon such as a crossbow was aimed at the doorway, it couldn't harm him.

Nothing happened.

He peered around the doorjamb and saw that an undraped, small, barred window added light to what was a spa.r.s.ely furnished bedroom. The window was on his right, facing the street. A wardrobe stood across from him. To his left, in place of a bed, he saw a military cot.

Entering, he noticed crumpled newspapers on the floor. His right boot brushed against one, creating a papery clatter.

Inspecting the door, De Quincey saw an inside bolt.

So Brookline secures the door when he goes to bed, but even with that, he feels the need for the crumpled newspapers to warn him about intruders. Does he wake from nightmares?

Why didn't he lock the door now? To lure someone in? Where's the trap?

De Quincey proceeded toward the cot, which was of a sort that Brookline had probably used in India. A blanket and a small pillow were on it.

De Quincey looked under the cot.

The s.p.a.ce was empty.

About to turn toward the wardrobe, he wondered if something might be hidden under the blanket, but when he cautiously raised it, he found only a sheet.

When he raised the sheet, he found dried bloodstains on the cot.

The stains were thick.

Lord in heaven, what happened here?

Uneasy, De Quincey approached the wardrobe. As he had done with the bedroom door, he stepped to the side before grasping the wardrobe's handle.