Murder as a Fine Art

10

In the Realm of Shadows



IN 1854 LONDON, a journalist who spent several years compiling a four-volume study, London Labour and the London Poor, estimated that “there are upwards of fifty thousand individuals, or about a fortieth part of the population of the metropolis getting their living on the streets.” Some pulled bones from rotting animal carcasses they came across and sold them to fertilizer makers. Others picked up dog shit, known as “pure,” and sold it to tanners, who used it in the chemical process of removing hair from leather. Crossing sweepers swept horseshit from street intersections so that well-to-do pedestrians could move from sidewalk to sidewalk without soiling their shoes. Street musicians, ragmen, umbrella menders, match sellers, organ grinders, patterers who delivered the dying speeches of famous men, these and hundreds of other vagrants and wanderers (“a separate race,” the journalist called them) filled the two thousand miles of London’s streets.

Another term for them would be beggars, and under the calmest of conditions, beggars attracted little attention. After all, to notice them might lead to a compulsion to give them money, but one couldn’t alleviate the condition of fifty thousand of them, not without becoming a beggar oneself, so it was wiser to pretend that they didn’t exist. Especially on this hellish night, when mobs roamed the streets searching for strangers and foreigners to punish for the terror that threatened the city, beggars received little attention. How could nonpersons be seen as a threat when they weren’t truly seen at all?

One such ragged nonperson limped unchallenged through London’s squalid East End. With the fog so thick, his shabby figure was even more invisible than usual as he navigated a labyrinth of dismal lanes. Hearing the gratifying roar of mobs in the distance, he reached a sagging building with a faded sign above its double doors: LIVERY STABLE. Barns for horses and vehicles were commonplace in London, where fifty thousand horses (their number matched that of beggars) were necessary for the carriages, cabs, coaches, carts, and omnibuses that crammed the city. Those vehicles would definitely cram the panicked streets tomorrow as even more people used any means they could find to escape from London.

The beggar knocked twice, once, and three times on a rickety side door, then stood close to a dusty window, allowing himself to be seen. Inside, a curtain was pulled away. A lantern was raised, illuminating the beggar’s features. The curtain was repositioned.

Someone freed a bolt and opened the door, providing only enough room for the beggar to slip through without revealing anything that was in the stable. Even if someone had managed to glimpse the interior, only the side of a stall would have been visible, certainly not the two vehicles that stood in a row before the locked double doors of the main entrance. A dark cloth concealed each vehicle.

After securing the door, the beggar (no longer limping) followed the man holding the lantern and joined two other men, who were seated on barrels.

“No need for me to ask if your mission was successful,” the man with the lantern told the beggar. “The frenzy out there is proof. After what’ll happen at the prison tonight, the panic will worsen.”

“Yes, the prison. Anthony always enjoys a challenge,” the beggar agreed. “But I wish I were there to do it in his place.”

“You had your own mission tonight,” the second man emphasized. “A more important one.”

“That depends on your viewpoint about what’s important.” The beggar walked toward the cloaked vehicles. “You made arrangements for the horses?”

“Yes. They’ll be ready whenever we need them.”

Raising a cloak, the beggar peered at one of the vehicles.

It was a hearse. The gloom emphasized its black exterior. Through a window along the hearse’s side, an open coffin was visible.

“Very nice.”

“The other hearse is in even better condition,” the third man said. “No one questioned us when we drove them here after we stole them.”

“Yes,” the beggar agreed. “Hearses can go almost anywhere and not be challenged.”


WITH A SCRAPE OF METAL, the jailer locked De Quincey’s cell. Becker studied the intense way Emily looked for a final time through the door’s peephole toward her father. Then he and Ryan accompanied her along the corridor, escorted by the jailer and the governor, whose girth nearly filled the corridor and whose slow movements required him to come last.

They entered the hub from which the five corridors radiated. With another scrape of metal, the jailer locked that door also. Through the bars in that door, Becker saw a rat scurry along the corridor.

“Miss De Quincey, we need to get you settled for the night,” Ryan said. “There’s a rooming house across the street. Relatives stay there when they visit prisoners. The rooms aren’t to the standard of the house where you’ve been living, but they are adequate.”

“The killer has been following Father and me. For all I know, he is watching the entrance to the prison from a room in that very house. I do not feel safe with that arrangement. I feel perfectly safe here, however.”

“A woman has never stayed here as a visitor,” the governor objected. “We aren’t equipped to accommodate—”

Emily scanned the rooms that were situated between the radiating corridors. “I see a cot in this office.”

“Yes, the guards take naps there when they have a rest period,” the jailer explained. “However—”

“If it’s good enough for a guard, it is good enough for me.”

“But we have no appropriate sanitary facilities for a lady,” the governor protested.

“Are you referring to a privy?”

Becker was amused that the governor’s face turned red with embarrassment, just as he himself had blushed when first hearing Emily speak so frankly.

“Well, miss, I, uh—”

“The alternative is that I might have my throat slit in the rooming house across the street. With that as an option, I believe that the privy here is suitable.”

“But a guard would need to be assigned to you,” the jailer objected, “and the prison is understaffed.”

“You won’t need to use a guard,” Becker offered. “I’ll stay with Miss De Quincey.”

“Highly, highly irregular.”

“But preferable to what the newspapers will say, and what Lord Palmerston will say, if I’m murdered because of negligence,” Emily noted.

“This gives me a headache,” Ryan said. “Deal with it, Becker. I need to get back to the investigation.”

He opened a door and stepped onto the fog-obscured path that led to the prison’s exit.

In that distraction, before the governor and the jailer had the chance to say another word, Emily entered the office and sat on the cot. She gave the sense that she had taken possession of it.

“Very well. I have important matters to attend to,” the governor said. “We shall see how you enjoy a night in a prison.”

“And I must supervise the distribution of the evening meal,” the jailer said. “We shall see how you enjoy being alone here.”

“She won’t be alone,” Becker reminded them.

As the governor and the jailer departed through the door that Ryan had used, closing it more loudly than they needed to, Becker followed Emily into the office.

The room was small and cold, illuminated by a solitary gas lamp hanging from the ceiling. Other than the cot, the only furniture was a battered desk and chair. Truncheons and restraints hung on the walls.

On the cot, Emily’s back was rigid. She pulled her coat tighter around her shoulders.

“The governor was right,” Becker said.

Emily didn’t look at him.

“This isn’t a proper place for you,” Becker continued.

“Wherever Father is, I belong.”

“Loyalty to a parent is admirable.”

“And?”

“And?”

Now Emily did look at him. “I get the impression that you intend to add a qualification, such as ‘But loyalty can be taken too far.’ ”

“No. Not at all. Loyalty to a parent is admirable.” Becker sat behind the desk.

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Emily considered him. “You have nothing further to say on the subject?”

“Not a word.”

“You surprise me, Constable Becker.”

The outside door suddenly opened. The jailer entered from the cold, bringing three other guards who pushed carts upon which metal bowls were arranged.

“Still here, I see,” the jailer said. “Here’s your evening meal. I trust you’ll find it to your liking.”

He set two bowls on the table. Seeming amused by something, the jailer left the room and unlocked a door in one of the corridors so that the guards could distribute the food.

The bowls had several dents from having been roughly handled for a long time. When Becker looked into them, he understood why the jailer had seemed amused.

Each bowl contained a meager potato. An inch of soapy-looking broth surrounded it. Flecks of what might have been meat floated in the broth.

“I need to determine if Father can tolerate the food,” Emily said.

She stood and came over to the table, where she assessed the contents of the bowls.

“This is what the prisoners normally receive,” Becker apologized.

“But this is perfect!”

“It is?”

“Father’s stomach can’t tolerate much more than this. Even so, I need to taste it to be certain it’s bland enough.” Emily looked on either side of the bowl. “The jailer forgot to leave utensils.”

“Actually,” Becker said, “he didn’t forget. For security reasons, the prisoners aren’t given spoons or forks and certainly not knives.”

“They eat with their hands?”

“They raise the bowl to their lips and pour the food into their mouths.”

Emily nodded and picked up one of the bowls.

“What are you doing?”

“There’s no other way.”

“Wait. I have something that might help. Please turn your head away.”

“But—”

“Please,” Becker repeated. “I need to do something that might offend you.”

Emily started to say something more but relented and looked to the side.

Becker lifted his right trouser leg. Exposing his bare skin, he removed a knife from a scabbard strapped above his ankle, a strategy learned from Ryan.

“You can look now. It’s clean,” he assured her, setting the knife on the table.

Emily maintained her composure, as if she expected every man to have a knife hidden under a pant leg.

After cutting the potato, she hesitantly chewed a slice, pronouncing, “The most perfectly tasteless potato I ever ate. Ideal for Father’s stomach.”

“In that case, I’ll tell the jailer to send your compliments to the cook.”

Emily delighted him by smiling. “This ordeal could have been worse for you. At least I don’t wear any of those hooped-dress horrors that would have impeded you and Inspector Ryan.”

“What you wear is called a bloomer, is that correct?”

“Named after a woman who championed this mode of dress. Unfortunately she’s in a minority. Constable Becker, do you believe it’s immodest for a woman to show the motion of her legs?”

“Immodest?” Becker felt heat in his face, which surprised him because he believed that he had become immune to being embarrassed by her. “I…”

“If so,” Emily continued, “why is it not immodest for men to show the movement of their legs?”

“I, uh, never thought about it.”

“How much do your clothes weigh?”

“My clothes.” Becker felt more heat in his face. “Uh… this time of year, perhaps eight pounds.”

“And how much do you estimate the clothes of a fashionable lady weigh, a woman with a hooped dress?”

“She would wear more garments than I do, certainly. Perhaps ten pounds?”

“No.”

“Fifteen?”

“No.”

“Twenty? Surely not more than twenty-five.”

“Thirty-seven pounds.”

Becker was too surprised to respond.

“The hoops that swell the underside of the dress are made from heavy whale teeth,” Emily explained. “New models will be made from metal, which is even heavier. Several layers of cloth cover the hoops, the outside of which is flounced with twenty yards of satin. Imagine what it would feel like to carry twenty yards of satin all day. But of course, since a hooped dress sways, it’s in danger of exposing a woman’s legs, so several layers of undergarments are required. Meanwhile, similar layers of cloth are necessary above the waist so that the upper part of the dress won’t seem flimsy compared to the bulk of the lower part of the dress. If you carried a thirty-seven-pound weight while going about your duties, I expect that you would become tired.”

“Just thinking about it makes me tired.”

“What is your waist size, Constable Becker?”

By now, she couldn’t say anything that fazed him. “Thirty-six.”

“Some idiot decided that the ideal waist size for a woman is eighteen inches. To accomplish that, a rigid corset is required, with tightly secured stays. I refuse to submit to that torture. Add the strangulation at the waist to the thirty-seven pounds of clothing, and it isn’t at all surprising that many women faint. And yet they look askance at me, even though I’m the one who has freedom to move and breathe. Why are you smiling, Constable Becker?”

“If I may be forward…”

“Since I am, I don’t know why you shouldn’t be.”

“I enjoy hearing you speak.”

“Eat your potato, Constable Becker.”


WHAT BECKER DIDN’T KNOW, or the governor or the jailer or Ryan, was that Emily and her father had a secret.

After having arranged De Quincey’s hammock in his cell, Emily had told him, “Good night, Father.” She had embraced him, holding him for a long time. Simultaneously she had whispered something in his ear. Then she had pulled back, her voice unsteady. “Rest as well as you can. I shall see you in the morning.”

What she had whispered, her voice so low that De Quincey had barely heard it next to his ear, was “I brought this from the pleasure gardens, Father. It’s the best I could do.”

Simultaneously, using a hand that couldn’t be seen by the four men waiting at the door, Emily had inserted an object into De Quincey’s coat pocket.

He had concealed his surprise as she was led away.

Hearing his door being locked and the harsh echo of footsteps receding along the corridor, De Quincey waited, not daring to remove whatever the object was, lest the jailer be lurking outside the locked door, watching through the peephole.

He had once spent a day in a pauper’s prison. That experience had been almost more than he could bear, even though the cell had been larger than this one and books had been allowed to him. Here, he faced only despair.

The cell’s table and chair occupied a significant part of the compact area, along with the hammock and the wooden box on the wall. Two paces in either direction would take him to the walls. The solitary tiny window had bars and was the only source of light. As the fog thickened beyond the soot-covered pane, the cell appeared to become even smaller.

Forty-three years earlier, John Williams had been found dead in a cell much like this, De Quincey remembered. He was certain that the killer’s determination to replicate the slaughters of forty-three years earlier would lead him to replicate other elements from that period. In particular, De Quincey was convinced that the killer would make sure that the suspected perpetrator of the current murders would die in a cell in this prison just as Williams had died here. The killer’s obsession with De Quincey’s writings reinforced that certainty.

He’ll come for me, De Quincey thought. What I told the governor is true—it’s much easier to break into a prison than to break out of it. Sometime tonight, he’ll attempt to kill me in a manner similar to the way John Williams died. But how can I protect myself in one of the smallest rooms I’ve ever been in?

With only a few steps, he reached the door. In the continuing silence of the corridor, he listened for any sound that would indicate the presence of someone watching through the peephole. After a long time, he tested the door and found that it was indeed locked.

Only then did he remove the mysterious object that Emily had stealthily inserted into his coat pocket.

The object was an iron spoon. It was one of those used to stir the tea that the police had provided for the prostitutes who taunted him at Vauxhall Gardens. Tea had been provided for Emily also. She had known that Ryan intended to arrest him. How desperate her thoughts must have been, how carefully she must have looked around, making certain that no one saw her steal the spoon.

What she hoped that he might accomplish with the spoon was another matter. As she said, “It’s the best I could do.” But it at least was something.

De Quincey tensed as he heard a door being unlocked at the end of the corridor. Footsteps were accompanied by the sound of objects banging together, bowls, he soon learned, one of which was shoved through a slot in his door.

Through that slot and the peephole, he could see the yellow flame of gas fixtures positioned along the corridor. That meager light through the two apertures was barely sufficient for him to see that the metal bowl contained broth and a boiled potato with its skin on.

His distress made his stomach cramp with greater pain, but he knew that he couldn’t expect to survive the night if he didn’t attempt to build his strength, so he carried the bowl to the shadowy table and sat on the chair, listening to guards deliver food to the rest of the prisoners.

He waited until the noises stopped and the door at the end of the corridor was again locked.

Not surprisingly, no eating utensils were provided. But thanks to Emily, he had a spoon, although he suspected that this was not the reason she thought he might need it. Mindful of his uncertain digestion, he scraped off the potato’s skin. Hesitant, he raised a chunk of the potato to his mouth. He tried to insert it and chew it. He really did. But his stomach protested too much, its pain insistent from the need for laudanum. At last, he returned the piece of potato to the bowl.

He looked at the hammock that Emily had prepared for him, a thin mattress and blanket on it. What alternative did he have except to crawl onto it and cover himself with the blanket to keep from shivering as cold gathered in the stone walls of the cell?

After all, where could he possibly hide to elude the killer? Under the table? His short, thin body would fit under there. He would even have space to pull in the chair some of the way. Scrunched throughout the night, his muscles would protest, but that was better than being strangled. If he hid his bowl of potato and broth in the slop pail, it would appear that the room had never been occupied.

Nonetheless, would the killer be deceived? One of laudanum’s gifts was the ability to see outside himself, and the perspective that now came to the Opium-Eater was that of the killer standing in the open doorway. The yellow light from the gas fixtures in the corridor would stream weakly into the room, dispelling the shadows sufficiently to reveal the empty hammock. A glance to the right and left would disclose that the corners were empty. That would leave only one place for someone to hide. The killer would lunge under the table and…

Helpless and afraid, De Quincey sought to use the strange focus that laudanum provided.

There are many realities, he thought desperately. View the cell from the killer’s perspective. There must be a better place for me to hide.


OUTSIDE COLDBATH FIELDS PRISON, a messenger emerged from the fog and walked along misnamed Mount Pleasant Street toward the barred entrance. To the southeast, from the direction of the docks, a commotion filled the night. For the sound to travel a distance in the fog, its cause must have been extreme, and the messenger knew that it indeed was. Mobs roamed the streets, hunting for sailors. Three had already been killed, two others beaten badly. Still others had been captured and were being interrogated by thugs. Those who rented beds in rooming houses had locked themselves inside, securing shutters over windows shattered by rocks. A group of twenty had taken shelter in a warehouse at the docks, arming themselves to withstand an assault. Constables who formerly were assigned to guard the streets were now straining to control the mobs.

The messenger banged the knocker on the prison’s entrance.

A peephole opened, a guard demanding, “State your business.”

“I have a message from the home secretary. It demands immediate attention from your governor.” The messenger held up an envelope, a gas lamp over the entrance revealing the envelope’s official wax seal.

“The governor’s asleep.”

“The document concerns the Opium-Eater. I was instructed to deliver it now. Lord Palmerston is waiting for the answer.”

Uncertain, the guard kept staring through the peephole.

“I strongly suggest that you wake the governor,” the messenger said, “or else tomorrow you might find yourself employed as a dustman rather than a prison guard.”

Another moment’s hesitation. Then…

“Wait here.”

The peephole closed.

Well, of course, I’m going to wait here, the messenger thought. Since he didn’t let me in, where the hell else am I going to wait?

In the distance, the outcry of the mob persisted. Several screams rose above the babble.

After counting to thirty, the messenger raised his hand to bang on the entrance a second time. Before he could do that, however, the heavy lock scraped, and the entrance swung open.

“The governor is waiting for you.”

“Good.”

“I’ll show you the way.”

“I already know it. Right through here.”

The messenger nodded in curt greeting to two other guards on duty near the entrance. He turned toward the bleak structure on the left and opened the door.

Wearing a robe over his nightclothes, the governor sat behind his desk. The office was cold, the fire having been allowed to dwindle. Closed draperies did little to keep out the chill. The governor leaned close to the only heat source, a lamp on the desk, which revealed that his normally puffy face was even more so because he’d been suddenly wakened.

“From Lord Palmerston?” the governor asked nervously.

“Yes. About the Opium-Eater.”

The messenger closed the door, crossed the office, and handed the sealed envelope across the desk.

The governor used a letter opener to break the seal. As he removed the folded document, he absently told the messenger, “You may sit.”

“Thank you, but I’ve been instructed to return promptly to assure Lord Palmerston that his orders are being followed.”

“At this institution, Lord Palmerston’s orders are always followed.”

“He appreciates obedience.”

As the governor read the document, the messenger plunged the letter opener into his throat, destroying the governor’s larynx, making it impossible for him to cry out. While the governor struggled for air, choking on his blood, the messenger went to what resembled an accountant’s ledger on a side table.

The ledger contained a diagram of the prison, with notes indicating which prisoner was in which cell.

By the time the messenger gained the information he wanted, the governor had toppled forward onto the desk, his weight pushing the letter opener farther through his throat, its tip projecting from the back of his neck.

The messenger opened the door only wide enough for him to step outside, preventing the guard from viewing the office.

The yellow fog drifted around them.

“The governor has gone back to bed. He wants me to speak to the Opium-Eater,” the messenger said.

“I’ll take you to the jailer.”

“Thanks. Sorry if I sounded officious at the entrance. Lord Palmerston is a difficult man to please, not that you heard it from me. Sometimes when he doesn’t like the messages I bring back, he blames me instead of the sender.”

“The governor isn’t much better.”

Their footsteps sounded along the cobblestone path. A lamp above the hub’s entrance gradually became visible.

The guard unlocked the door. “What’s all the noise from the river?”

“Several riots.”

“What?”

“The killer slaughtered eleven more people tonight, including a surgeon and a constable.”

“A surgeon? A constable? Then nobody is safe.”

“The mobs think a sailor did it.”

“But isn’t the Opium-Eater the killer?”

“Seems not. The mobs are grabbing every sailor they can find.”

“Lord save us.”

And Lord save you, the messenger thought, if you don’t follow the suggestion I’m about to make.

“I know what to do from here. The jailer’s just behind this door. Better get back to the gate in case the mobs come in this direction.”

“You’re sure you can find your way back to the entrance?”

“Returning, all I need to do is follow this path.”

The guard hesitated.

The messenger prepared to kill him. “Better hurry to the gate in case there’s trouble. It sounds as if one of the mobs is almost here.”

The young man rushed through the fog.

When the messenger could no longer hear the guard’s urgently retreating footsteps, he opened the door to the hub.


INSIDE, THE YELLOW flames from gas fixtures showed the barred doors to the radiating corridors. The flames also showed the open doors to four rooms situated between the corridors.

The doors were open. In the first room, the jailer was slumped over his desk. In the second, a guard was similarly slumped. In the third, a big man in street clothes lay unconscious across a desk while the Opium-Eater’s daughter slept on a cot.

The fourth room was empty, the prison’s efficient, secure design requiring no other personnel to be on night duty here.

Each man had a bowl in front of him. While the guards’ food was of better quality than that of the prisoners, all of it was prepared in the prison’s kitchen, and all the food brought to the hub and the radiating corridors, whether to prisoners or guards, had been drugged by someone who worked in the kitchen and owed the messenger a great favor.

The sight of the Opium-Eater’s daughter and her escort was unexpected but convenient.

The messenger removed a ring of keys from the drugged jailer’s waist. He unlocked the door to the middle corridor and proceeded past the quiet cells. He found a door on the right whose number matched the entry in the governor’s ledger that indicated where the Opium-Eater was being held.

He unlocked that door. It could be opened only outward. The gaslight in the corridor cast his shadow into the cramped cell.

The light was sufficient to reveal that the cell appeared unoccupied.

The messenger frowned. Had he made a mistake when he’d examined the governor’s ledger? Perhaps he’d misread the number next to the Opium-Eater’s name. No. The messenger didn’t make mistakes. It was far more likely that the governor had made a mistake when he wrote the entry.

Remaining just outside the doorway, the messenger peered in toward the corner on the right. No one. He peered in toward the corner on the left. No one was there either.

He slowly entered the shadowy room. At the opposite end, the hammock hung against a wall, its thin mattress and its blanket upright within it, awaiting a new prisoner. The messenger directed his attention toward the table. Its chair was slightly askew, as if making room for someone under there. Ready to complete his mission, he yanked back the chair and lunged under the table.

His hands grabbed air.

There wasn’t an empty bowl on the table. Only a Bible.

The governor wrote the wrong number! the messenger inwardly bellowed. Now I need to go from cell to bloody cell!

He returned to the corridor and closed the door so that his view of the corridor would not be impeded. Arbitrarily, he chose the cell on the right. He unlocked the door and stepped into the fetid confinement, which smelled of night soil in the pail that served as a chamber pot. An empty bowl on the table showed that the cell’s occupant had eaten the drugged food. A large man—too large to be the Opium-Eater—snored on a hammock.

Blast it.

The messenger proceeded to the next cell and the cell after that. In each case, the Opium-Eater was not the occupant.

How much time do I have before the guard who escorted me here comes looking for me? I can’t search every cell in all five corridors! That’ll take hours!


THE OPIUM-EATER SLOWLY released his breath after the intruder abandoned the cell and closed the door. He was hidden in the only place available.

In desperation, he’d concealed the bowl of potato and broth in the pail that served as a privy. He’d pulled the chair partway from under the table, making it look as if he might be under there.

Detecting a sound at the far end of the corridor, he’d removed the blanket and mattress from the hammock. Fear shooting through him, he’d unhooked one end of the hammock and pulled it across to hook it to the other end, folding the hammock so that it hung against the wall the way it had been positioned when he had arrived. In a rush, he’d set the mattress upright inside the folded hammock and placed the rolled blanket on top of it—again as they’d been positioned when he’d entered.

Hearing footsteps in the corridor, he’d squirmed fearfully behind the upright mattress. Squeezed into the corner behind it and the hammock, his short, thin body blended with the shadows.

To all appearances, the cell had not been assigned a prisoner.

Or so he prayed the intruder would conclude.

He strained not to breathe as the intruder surveyed the room, grabbed under the table, noted the absence of a food bowl, and decided that the cell was empty. Further sounds indicated the door being closed and an adjacent door being unlocked. Then another door. Then the door after that. The intruder made no attempt to muffle the sound of his impatient footsteps

The Opium-Eater didn’t understand. Why wasn’t the intruder afraid of waking the prisoners whose cells he invaded? Were they so trained not to talk to anyone that they wouldn’t dare cry out even if someone burst into their cells in the middle of the night? Was it possible for the prisoners to be cowed so severely?

Or could there be another explanation? Could the prisoners have been…

The dark suspicion strengthened.

Drugged?

The Opium-Eater thought of the potato in the bowl that he had hidden in the slop pail.

The intruder proceeded angrily from cell to cell, not caring how much noise he made.

Squeezed into the corner behind the folded hammock, the Opium-Eater allowed himself to breathe more freely as the sounds went farther and farther from him.

The corridor lapsed into silence.

The Opium-Eater strained to listen. The silence deepened.

The cell door banged open.

The intruder stepped furiously inside.

“It took me a while to wonder why this door was locked if the cell was empty. There’s no need to lock a cell that doesn’t contain a prisoner.”

The intruder closed the door, blocking the exit.

“He warned me you’re a clever little shit.”

He?

The Opium-Eater flinched as the intruder charged toward the folded hammock, yanked away the upright mattress, and lunged into the corner. The Opium-Eater gasped as the attacker grabbed him, lifted him, and slammed him against the wall.

The impact took his breath away.

But people do not submit to die quietly. They run, they kick, and they bite. Panicked, he did much of that now. The intruder was tall. Suspended in the air against the wall, the Opium-Eater felt his boots against the intruder’s knees.

He kicked those knees repeatedly. Right, left, right, left. Despite his age, his legs had the strength of walking thousands of miles a year. He kicked fiercely, frantically, striking the intruder’s groin.

With a roar, the intruder slammed him harder against the wall. The impact of the Opium-Eater’s head against stone sent a flare through his mind. Abruptly the flare dimmed, and he feared he was going to pass out.

He managed to turn his head and sink his teeth into the intruder’s right hand, which held him off the ground, squeezing his throat. Biting, he felt the attacker’s blood spurt into his mouth. He gnawed deeper, twisting his head from side to side. As his teeth tore flesh from the intruder’s hand, blood dribbled from his lips.

The intruder threw him to the floor. The crack of his body against it stunned him and made him feel that the cell was spinning. But his desperation to live was greater than his pain. When the attacker reached down, he rolled. As small as the cell was for him, it was even smaller for a man as big as the intruder, with almost no room to maneuver. On the floor, the Opium-Eater squirmed this way and that, evading the intruder’s arms. When he banged against the slop pail, he grasped its handle and swung it, bashing it against the intruder’s face.

He swung the pail a second time, but the attacker grabbed it and hurled it away. On his back, the Opium-Eater pushed from the attacker’s hands. He felt the chair behind him and tried to use it as a shield, but the attacker grabbed it and hurled it away also.

The Opium-Eater kicked at shins and knees in a frenzy, but the attacker only exhaled in rage and dragged him back toward the folded hammock.

“I can’t hang you in here the way John Williams died. No overhead pipe. But I can do this.”

Using one large hand to press the Opium-Eater against the floor, the attacker pulled the blanket toward them.

The Opium-Eater writhed and kicked and felt the attacker add the weight of his knee onto his chest. It became almost impossible to breathe. He opened his mouth to draw in more air.

And gagged as the attacker shoved a corner of the blanket between his lips.

Terrified, he flailed, desperate to get free, to push away the attacker’s hands and spit out the portion of blanket. But the attacker pressed his knee harder onto his chest. Struggling for air, the Opium-Eater reflexively opened his mouth wider and gagged as the attacker shoved another section of the blanket into it.

Past his tongue. Into the top of his throat.

Dry and dusty, the blanket absorbed all the moisture in his mouth. His lungs convulsed. His stomach propelled bile toward his mouth, but the wedge of blanket deflected the bile into his lungs.

His heart pounded with such frantic force that he feared it would burst. In the greatest frenzy of his life, he felt the shadows of the cell become darker.

His arms weakened. His sight narrowed. The attacker shoved even more of the blanket into his mouth, cramming it down his throat.

At once he had a floating sensation, a dream state overtaking him, much like the effect of opium. As a child, he’d had a persistent nightmare about a lion threatening him. In the nightmare, he’d been so frightened that paralysis seized him. He’d been tempted to lie down before the lion in the hope that the lion would spare him if he acquiesced.

As his mind dimmed and his chest heaved with less force, he thought that it would be so easy to lie down in front of the lion now.

So peaceful to surrender.

No!

He groped in his coat pocket. Rage filling him, he clutched the spoon Emily had given him.

In fury, he gripped the round end of the spoon and thrust its handle up with all his remaining strength.

Something popped. Warm, thick liquid streamed onto his fist as the spoon’s handle rammed into what he suddenly realized was the attacker’s left eye.

The attacker stiffened.

Screamed.

Shoving with all his remaining might, the Opium-Eater thrust the spoon’s handle deeper into the man’s eye.

Wailing, the attacker raised his hands to his face.

The Opium-Eater shoved him, hearing an impact as the attacker’s head struck the wooden box on the wall.

The Opium-Eater struggled to pull the blanket from his mouth. He tugged and tugged. Dear God, how was it possible for so much of the blanket to have been crammed into his mouth? Abruptly the thing was out of him. He drew a frantic breath, but his stomach kept heaving, and bile kept rising, burning in his throat.

He twisted his head and vomited.

The attacker crawled toward him. The Opium-Eater kicked, feeling his boot shove the spoon deeper into the man’s eye socket.

Delirious, he rolled. He struck the wall and used it to grope to his feet. The attacker grabbed his ankle. The Opium-Eater kicked his hand away and staggered toward the door. Behind him, the attacker struggled upright.

The Opium-Eater shoved the door open and was almost blinded by what would normally have been faint gaslight. Dizzy, he heard the attacker charging toward him. He stumbled into the hall, slammed the door, and struck the attacker’s face.

With one hand against the wall, he staggered along the corridor.

Behind him, the cell door crashed open.

He strained to move faster toward the hub at the end of the corridor.

Footsteps lurched after him.

He struggled to increase speed.

A hand grabbed his shoulder.


BECKER SLUMPED ACROSS THE DESK in the office in the hub. The last thing he remembered was that Emily complained of drowsiness and set down the knife he’d lent her to eat the potato.

“It’s been a long, stressful day,” he had told her. “I’ll go into the next room so you can sleep.”

But as Emily rose from the desk and lay on the cot, he felt drowsy also. He set down the potato he’d been eating and made an effort to stand from the desk, but his knees had no strength, and he felt his eyelids flickering shut.

Gradually he became aware that his head was on the table. He had a vague sense that a lot of time had passed. He strained to open his eyes and saw his right hand in front of him. Blurred, it held the potato he’d been forcing himself to eat.

Metal clattered, as if a pail had been thrown. A wooden object struck a wall—perhaps a chair. But the noises were distant, as if in a dream.

A scream brought Becker’s eyes fully open, it too from a distance but definitely not in a dream.

Dizzy, he raised his head. Beyond the desk, Emily lay on the cot.

The sounds of a frantic struggle echoed beyond the room. A door banged. Footsteps stumbled along a corridor. The door banged again, other footsteps stumbling along the corridor.

Legs unsteady, Becker managed to stand. He didn’t understand why the jailer wasn’t responding to the sounds. Where was the other guard who watched the corridors at night?

A cry of pain made him grab his knife from the table. Light-headed, he stepped from the room and turned toward the middle corridor.

What he saw made him waver in confusion. De Quincey was out of his cell. A huge man, with blood on his face, pressed De Quincey against the wall and squeezed his throat.

“Hey!” Becker managed to shout.

The tall man kept choking De Quincey. The contrast between the tiny man and the large attacker was grotesque, like a giant choking a child.

“Stop!” Becker yelled.

The door to the corridor was ajar. With increasing strength in his legs, Becker stepped through. The shock of what was happening cleared the fog from his mind. He ran along the corridor and rammed the butt end of his knife against the attacker’s skull.

The blow should have knocked the attacker unconscious. Instead, the man merely turned in fury and startled Becker with the discovery that something protruded from his left eye socket. God in heaven, it looked like a spoon. Gore dripped from the socket.

The man released his hands from De Quincey’s throat, dropping him to the floor in a heap. With an intense glare in his remaining eye, he reached under his coat. The next instant, he thrust a hand toward Becker. The hand held something that glinted, and Becker ducked back in time to realize that the object was a knife. The blade slashed across Becker’s chest, slicing his coat, nicking his skin. He lurched farther back as the attacker spun the knife so that its glint resembled a furiously pivoting wheel. The movement was too fast for Becker to follow. All he could do was keep stumbling away from the terrifying blur, moving just fast enough that pieces of his coat parted but not his skin.

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.”