Murder As A Fine Art Part 7

The commissioner paused after the Irish reference, seeming to take for granted that Ryan would understand the terror.

"Strangers hid and were blamed for hiding. Every window was shuttered. Watchmen were hired to guard houses and then were suspected of being the killer. As the mail coaches transported the newspapers to every community throughout the land, the panic multiplied. Isolated villages armed themselves, convinced that the killer would flee London and pa.s.s through their area, leaving more bodies in his wake. I remember being frightened when I overheard one of my father's friends tell him, 'We are no longer safe in our beds.' I read that in London people hurried to churches to beg G.o.d for their lives, only to find notices nailed to doors that warned, among us are monsters."

"Monsters," Ryan said.

"Imagine everyone's relief when an anonymous source directed investigators to a young merchant seaman, John Williams, who had recently returned from a long voyage and whose tendency to get into fights had attracted attention."

"John Williams?" Becker asked, puzzled.

"That's right. He rented a room at a boardinghouse a short walk from both murder scenes. A s.h.i.+p's carpenter had previously stayed there and left a box of tools. Those tools included a mallet with the carpenter's initials J. P. stamped by a nail into its top."

"J. P. The initials on the mallet we found tonight," Ryan said.

"You can understand why I'm troubled. The mallet was familiar to the boardinghouse's owner. He identified it as the same mallet that was found at the scene of the first murders. The night of the second murders, Williams was reported to have acted strangely when he returned to the boardinghouse after news about the killings spread. Someone remembered blood on his clothing, which he claimed was due to a fight in a tavern.

"Williams was detained and spent Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and Boxing Day in Coldbath Fields Prison, where he waited to be questioned after the holiday. But when the magistrates reconvened and spectators squeezed into the court, expecting to see the presumed killer being brought in for questioning, word arrived that prison guards had discovered Williams dead in his cell."

"Dead?" Becker asked in surprise.

"A suicide. A pole extended across the top of his cell. The jailers used it to air out bedding. Williams had been allowed to keep his clothes and had tied a handkerchief around the pole, hanging himself. But more horrors were yet to come."

"That's difficult to imagine," Ryan said.

"The authorities concluded that Williams's suicide was the same as a confession. A public hanging normally demonstrated what happened to monsters. But that wasn't possible in this case, so instead, on New Year's Eve day, his body was placed on a horse-drawn cart. A slanted platform allowed his corpse to be fully in view. The mallet was put into a slot to the left of his head. The ripping chisel lay behind his head. Opposite the mallet, to the right of his head, another object was placed into a slot, soon to have a major role in the ceremony.

"Spectators gathered as the cart was led along Ratcliffe Highway. Numerous politicians walked before and after it, wanting to be seen by the crowd. The procession came to a halt at Marr's shop, where the first four murders had occurred. The cart was positioned so that Williams's corpse appeared to view the scene of his inhuman acts. After ten minutes, the cart was led to the tavern where the second set of murders had occurred. Twenty thousand people lined the streets, watching the procession. They were strangely silent as if stunned by the sanity-threatening crimes that Williams had committed. The only outburst came from a coachman who leapt down and lashed the corpse several times across the face."

Ryan's cheek twitched.

"The cart halted a final time at the crossroads of Cannon and Cable streets. Paving stones were torn up. A hole was dug. Williams's body was dumped into it. The object that had been put in a slot opposite the mallet was pulled out. It was a stake."

"What?" Ryan asked.

"A man acting as the equivalent of an executioner jumped into the hole and pounded the stake through Williams's heart. Unslaked lime was thrown onto the corpse. Dirt followed. The paving stones were hammered back into place. When I heard about this, I asked my father why they used a stake. He told me it was an old superst.i.tion, that the stake was the only way to prevent an evil spirit from returning to commit more unspeakable crimes."

"And the crossroads?" Becker wondered.

"Another superst.i.tion. If, despite the stake, the ghost of the monster somehow returned, it would be trapped forever, unable to choose which of the four roads to take. At first, the replaced paving stones were uneven enough that travelers could tell where the monster was buried and avoid the contamination of driving over his grave. But gradually the stones became level with the others. Over the years, people forgot where Williams was buried or that he was buried there at all."

"I go through that crossroads often," Ryan said. "I never realized."

"Knowing that the terror had ended allowed me to sleep at last without worrying that Williams was outside in the dark," the commissioner told them.

"And had it ended? Were there any further murders?"

"No, there were not."

Something in the house made a creaking sound, as if a corpse had moved, but, of course, the noise could only be due to the cold night causing window joints to shrink. Nonetheless, Ryan, Becker, and Commissioner Mayne stared toward the closed door that led to the bodies in the hallway, the kitchen, and the bedroom.

"The murders here... do you think that someone found an old mallet and hammered the initials J. P. into it to draw attention to the parallel?" Becker asked. A troubling thought made him shake his head from side to side. "Or else... no, that's hardly possible."

"Say what's on your mind," Ryan told him. "If you're going to work with me, I don't want you holding back."

"Could this be the same mallet that was used in the original murders?"

The door opened, startling them.

The bearded artist for the Ill.u.s.trated London News stepped in.

"Is this yours?" he asked Ryan. He held a newspaperboy's cap in his hands. "One of the patrolmen found this. He thought it looked like one you lost."

"Yes. Thanks." Ryan pushed the cap down over his head, at last able to hide his red hair. "How long do newspapers keep old issues?"

"The Ill.u.s.trated has copies from eighteen forty-two, when it began."

"We're interested in eighteen eleven. And any ill.u.s.trations that might have been made of a weapon used in a crime that year."

"Weren't any drawings in newspapers back then. We were the first to use 'em. Crime? What crime?"

"The Ratcliffe Highway murders."

"Oh, right, them," the artist said matter-of-factly.

"You know about them?" the commissioner asked in surprise. "How? You're too young to have been alive in eighteen eleven."

"Sure. I read about them last week."

Becker's voice demonstrated as much surprise as the commissioner's. "You read about them?"

" 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.' "

"What in blazes are you talking about?" Ryan asked.

"The Opium-Eater. Thomas De Quincey."

"Everyone knows who the Opium-Eater is. What does Thomas De Quincey have to do with-"

"I sketched him on Friday for our newspaper. His collected works are being published. He's been talking to reporters so they'll write about him and get people to buy his books. Undignified, if you ask me. But when was the Opium-Eater dignified?"

"I still don't-"

" 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.' That's something else De Quincey wrote besides the opium-eating book. Since I'd drawn a sketch of him, I decided I'd read what all the fuss is about."

As if to make a point, the bearded man pulled out his flask and tilted it above his lips, finis.h.i.+ng its contents. "De Quincey didn't just write about being addicted to opium. This 'Fine Art' thing describes the Ratcliffe Highway murders."

"What?"

"The Opium-Eater went on and on about them. The bloodiest thing I ever read. Gave me nightmares. He piled on so many gruesome details, it's like he was there."

5.

The Sublimity of Murder.

DURING THE 1300S, Paternoster Row acquired its name because monks could be heard chanting the Pater Noster, or Our Father, in nearby St. Paul's Cathedral. In that century, stores there sold religious texts and rosaries. But by 1854, the street was the center of London's publis.h.i.+ng world. At 6 A.M. (according to the bells at the cathedral, telling the faithful to waken and prepare for church services), Ryan and Becker descended from a police wagon.

In early light, a breeze chased the fog and allowed them to study the mult.i.tude of bookshops on each side of the street. Many were owned by publishers who, during business hours, placed stalls on the street to promote their various offerings. But 6 A.M. on a Sunday morning was hardly the start of business hours, so Ryan and Becker pounded on various doors in the hope that someone lived on the premises.

An elderly man raised an upper window and leaned out sleepily. "What's all the noise?"

"Do you work here?" Ryan yelled up.

"Yes. Go away." The old man started to close the window.

"Police. We need to talk to you."

"Police?" Although the old man seemed impressed, it took a while before he managed to come downstairs and open the door. He wore nightclothes, including a cap. His white beard curved into his sunken cheeks.

"Those bells are loud enough without you hammering," he complained. Fumbling to put on his spectacles, he clearly wondered what a uniformed policeman was doing with a ruffian whose red hair wasn't quite concealed by a newspaperboy's cap.

"The Opium-Eater," Ryan said.

"Thomas De Quincey?" Ignoring Ryan and his shabby clothes, the clerk spoke to Constable Becker. "Yes, what about him? You won't find him here. Sat.u.r.day was the time to talk to him."

"We're looking for books that he wrote," Ryan said.

The clerk kept directing his attention toward Becker and his uniform. "They've been selling briskly. I have only a few left."

"We need to read them," Ryan said.

The clerk continued to ignore him, telling Becker, "We're not open on Sunday. But come back after church. I'll make an exception for a constable."

"We need to read them now."

Ryan pa.s.sed him, entering the shop.

THE LEATHER-BOUND VOLUME had pages that needed to be cut. Becker hid his surprise when Ryan raised a trouser cuff, pulled a knife from a scabbard strapped to his leg, and slit the book's pages.

"Be careful how you do that," the clerk objected. "Customers are particular about how their book pages are cut. Constable, since when do you let prisoners carry knives?"

"He's not a prisoner. He's Detective Inspector Ryan."

"Irish." The old man nodded as if his suspicions were confirmed.

"Tell us about 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,' " Ryan said.

"Seems like you'd know more about that subject than I would."

Ryan stared at him so directly that the old man raised his hands in surrender.

"If you mean De Quincey's essays..."

"Plural? De Quincey wrote more than one essay about murder?" Ryan asked.

"Three. All in that book you're trying to destroy. De Quincey does enjoy his murders."

"Murders?"

"After he wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, he promised his next book would be called Confessions of a Murderer."

The two police officers gaped.

"But instead of a book about killing, he wrote three essays about it," the clerk said, opening the book to show them.

Astonished, Ryan and Becker read about a men's club where lectures were delivered about the great murders of history. The lectures were called the Williams Lectures, after John Williams, the man accused of the Ratcliffe Highway multiple killings.

"My G.o.d, look at how De Quincey praises the murders," Ryan said. " 'The sublimest that ever were committed. The blaze of his genius absolutely dazzled.' "

"And here." Becker quoted in amazement: " 'The most superb of the century. Neither ever was, or will be surpa.s.sed. Genius. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his.' "

"De Quincey sounds insane."

Ryan and Becker discovered that De Quincey's latest essay about murder had been published only a month previously. In it, the Opium-Eater described Williams's two killing sprees for fifty astoundingly blood-filled pages-murders that by 1854 had occurred forty-three years earlier and yet were presented with a vividness that gave the impression the killings had happened the previous night.

Williams forced his way through the crowded streets, bound on business. To say was to do. And this night he had said to himself that he would execute a design which he had already sketched and which, when finished, was destined on the following day to strike consternation into the mighty heart of London. He quitted his lodgings on this dark errand about eleven o'clock P.M., not that he meant to begin so soon, but he needed to reconnoiter. He carried his tools closely b.u.t.toned up under his loose roomy coat.

Ryan pointed at the next page. "Marr kept his shop open until midnight. Williams hid in the shadows across the street. The female servant left on an errand. The watchman came by and helped Marr put up the window shutters. Then..."

Williams waited for the sound of the watchman's retreating steps; waited perhaps for thirty seconds; but when that danger was past, the next danger was that Marr would lock the door. One turn of the key, and he would have been locked out. In therefore, he bolted, and by a dexterous movement of his left hand turned the key, without letting Marr perceive this fatal stratagem.

"His left hand. How does De Quincey know Williams used his left hand?" Becker wondered.

Having reached the counter, he asked Marr for a pair of unbleached cotton socks.

"Unbleached socks? How does he know that? Only the victim and the killer were in the room."

The arrangement had become familiar to the murderer. In order to reach down the particular parcel, Marr would find it requisite to face round to the rear and at the same moment to raise his eyes and his hands to a level eighteen inches above his head.

"Eighteen inches? How can De Quincey be that precise?" Ryan exclaimed.

This movement placed him in the most disadvantageous possible position with regard to the murderer who now, at the instant that the back of Marr's head was exposed, suddenly from below his large coat, unslung the heavy s.h.i.+p-carpenter's mallet and with one solitary blow so thoroughly stunned his victim as to leave him incapable of resistance.

"It's the same as what happened last night, complete with the unbleached socks we found on the floor. The shopkeeper must have been reaching for them," Becker said. "Look at this about the baby."