Murder as a Fine Art

11

The Dark Interpreter



THE FOG WAS WORSE than the night before, the soot particles in greater quantity, sticking to skin and clothing. Ryan had managed to find a wagon with a cover, shielding De Quincey, Emily, Becker, and himself as a constable drove them toward the tavern. But apart from the shelter that the canvas walls and roof provided, Ryan would have preferred to see the smothering fog and try to guess the cause of possibly threatening shadows moving within it.

The faint lantern hanging under the canvas revealed that De Quincey continued to tremble. Now that he’d washed the attacker’s blood from his face, it was clear that he was alarmingly pale.

“Are you all right?” Ryan asked.

“Thank you, yes. I have suffered through this before.”

“You’ve been attacked before? You needed to fight for your life before?”

“The attack did in fact happen?” De Quincey asked Becker again.

“Most definitely.”

“I can tolerate anything if I have my medicine.” De Quincey hugged himself.

“Why do you insist on calling it medicine?” Becker asked.

“Without it, my facial pains and stomach disorders would be intolerable.”

“Worse than you’re feeling now?”

“Sometimes I can reduce the quantity until I finally discontinue it.” De Quincey’s voice wavered. “But the pains worsen, like rats tearing at my stomach, and eventually I can’t resist the need.”

“Could the pains be caused by the body’s craving for the drug?” Ryan asked. “Perhaps if you became accustomed to not having the drug, the pains would go away.”

“How I wish that were the case.”

Becker felt pressure next to him and realized that Emily, still groggy, had fallen asleep with her head against his shoulder. Neither her father nor Ryan seemed to think that the situation was unsuitable, so he continued to provide support for her.

“My mind demands it more than my body,” De Quincey continued, as if talking helped to distract him from his need. “Our minds have doors.”

“Doors?” Ryan asked in confusion.

“Opening them, I discovered thoughts and emotions that controlled me but that I didn’t know I possessed. Unfortunately, self-knowledge can turn out to be a nightmare. Too many nights, I dream about a coach driver who turns into a crocodile.”

“Thoughts that control you but that you don’t know you possess? A crocodile?” Ryan shook his head from side to side. “For a moment, I almost seemed to follow what you said.”

“My friend Coleridge was a well-known opium-eater.”

“I have heard such, although I confess I have not read his poems,” Ryan said.

De Quincey lapsed into a singsong way of speaking that made Becker fear De Quincey had lost his mind. His words seemed to refer to hallucinations.


The shadow of the dome of pleasure



Floated midway on the waves;



Where was heard the mingled measure



From the fountain and the caves.



It was a miracle of rare device,



A sunny pleasure dome with caves of ice!

“That is Coleridge,” De Quincey concluded. “From ‘Kubla Khan.’ ”

“It rhymes insistently.”

“Indeed it does.” De Quincey hugged himself and trembled.

“It has a child’s rhythm.”

“That also. Coleridge uses childlike rhyme and rhythm to make you feel that you are under opium’s spell. In fact, he was under its spell when he wrote his poetry. But as much as it helped him create beauty, it destroyed his health. He tried desperately to gain his freedom, but it isn’t easy to leave the pleasure dome.”

Shouts made the wagon stop. Bodies jostled the sides, shaking Emily awake.

“What’s that noise?” she murmured.

“Inspector, you’d better get out here!” the driver yelled.

Becker and Ryan jumped hurriedly down, confronted by shadows storming from the fog.

A shrouded streetlamp revealed men holding swords, knives, rifles, and clubs.

“What’s your business here?” one of the men demanded.

“I could ask you the same,” Ryan answered.

“But we know who we are, and you’re a stranger.”

“We’re police officers.”

“Look like beggars to me.” The smell of gin wafted from the man. “The bloke next to you has a coat that’s almost in rags.” The reference was to the knife slashes that De Quincey’s attacker had inflicted on Becker’s garment.

“And blood!” another man shouted, pointing.

One of the knife slashes had nicked Becker’s chest, the blood now dried.

“Still has the victims’ blood on ’im.”

“It’s my own blood,” Becker told them. “I’m an off-duty constable. This is Inspector Ryan. If you want to see a uniform, look at the driver.”

“Yes, the driver’s wearin’ a constable’s uniform, but so was the killer when he slaughtered fifteen poor souls in a tavern. People first thought he was a sailor, but it turned out he was a constable. Dressed as a sergeant.”

“Not fifteen victims in a tavern,” Ryan insisted. “Eight.”

“And six people in a surgeon’s office!”

“Three,” Becker corrected him.

“How would you be so certain unless you was there! Uniform, my arse. The killer was disguised as a policeman, so how can we believe a stranger wearin’ a uniform?”

“Look, this other bloke has red hair peekin’ under his cap!”

“Irish!”

“Wait! I’ll show you my badge!” Ryan reached into his coat.

“He’s goin’ for a knife!”

“Get ’im!”

The mob charged, pinning Ryan and Becker against the wagon. The impact knocked Becker’s teeth together. A club struck his shoulder.

Ryan groaned.

Abruptly a woman screamed.

A man attacking Ryan swung toward the fog. “Who’s that?”

“Help!” the woman shrieked.

“Where?”

“There!”

“Help! He attacked me!”

Astonished, Becker saw a woman stumble from the fog. Her bonnet hung from her neck. Her coat was torn open, the top part of her dress ripped.

The woman was Emily.

“He grabbed me! He tried to—”

“Where?”

“Down that alley! A policeman! He ripped my dress! He tried to—”

“Let’s go! The bastard’s gettin’ away!”

The mob raged past Ryan and Becker, disappearing into the fog toward where Emily pointed.

“Hurry,” Becker told her, helping her into the wagon.

Under the canvas roof, Becker heard Ryan jump up next to the driver. “Get out of here fast.”

As the wagon jostled rapidly over the cobblestones, Emily fumbled to secure the top of her dress and to close her coat.

“Well done,” Becker told her.

“It was all I could think of.” Working to catch her breath, Emily adjusted her bonnet.

“And if that didn’t distract them,” De Quincey indicated, “this was the other plan.”

De Quincey had taken the lantern from its hook in the wagon and held it as if to throw it from the wagon.

“The crash when it landed and the explosion of flames might have confused them enough for you to escape into the fog.”

“But what about the two of you? The mob would have turned on you.”

“A short, elderly man and a young woman?” De Quincey shrugged. “We were prepared to claim to be your prisoners. Not even drunkards would have thought we were dangerous.”

“But you are,” Becker said, studying them with admiration. “You’re two of the most dangerous people I ever met.”


THE RUMBLE OF THE MOB in front of the tavern made Ryan tell the driver to stop. After Becker, De Quincey, and Emily dismounted from the wagon, he asked two constables to escort them through the crowd.

But the crowd had little respect for constables and made way with barely controlled hostility.

“Brilliant,” De Quincey murmured.

“What are you talking about?” Ryan asked.

“First, the killer tricked them into attacking every sailor they could find. Then he made them believe that a policeman, any policeman, is the killer. They trust no one and suspect everyone. Brilliant.”

“Forgive me if I don’t share your enthusiasm.”

The group reached the tavern, where two nervous constables stood guard.

“Glad you’re here, Inspector.”

“Yes, it appears you can use plenty of help.”

“For certain, there aren’t enough of us,” the other policeman agreed.

Ryan turned to Emily. “There are eight corpses inside. I can’t leave you out here with this mob. Tell me what to do with you.”

“I’ll shield my eyes. Constable Becker can lead me to a corner where I’ll look away from the room.”

“There’s an odor.”

“I can bear it if you can.”

“The conversation will be disagreeable.”

“More disagreeable than the conversations I’ve already heard? That is difficult to imagine.”

“Becker…”

“I’ll take care of her.”

The group entered the tavern.

There was indeed an odor. Of bodily fluids and the beginning of decay.

As Becker escorted Emily to a table on the right, Ryan gestured for De Quincey to offer his opinions.

But De Quincey barely looked at the carnage. He walked deeper into the tavern, sidestepped blood, and reached the entrance that led behind the counter. He seemed oblivious to the tavernkeeper slumped forward as if asleep. His total attention was devoted to the shelves behind the counter.

“It’s here. I know it is.”

He scanned bottles of gin and wine. He searched behind rows of glasses. He stooped, inspecting the area around the beer kegs.

“It must be.”

Desperation made De Quincey move faster, his short figure pacing back and forth behind the counter. Only his shoulders and head showed above it. He barely glanced down to make sure that he didn’t step in blood.

“Where in God’s name…? There!”

Like an animal that had found its prey, he pounced toward a shelf under the far end of the counter. He disappeared from Ryan’s view. Then he rose, holding a decanter filled with ruby-colored liquid. He grabbed a wineglass and filled it with the liquid. Hand shaking, he raised the liquid to his lips, fearful that he might spill some of it, and took a deep swallow.

Another.

A third.

Ryan watched in shock. A stranger might have thought that De Quincey was drinking wine, but Ryan had no doubt that this was laudanum. One swallow would have made most people unconscious. Two swallows would have killed them. But De Quincey had just consumed three, and now he drank a fourth, finishing the glass!

De Quincey stood as if paralyzed behind the counter. His empty gaze was directed past corpses drooped over a table, centering on the fireplace in the back corner, where chunks of coal smoldered.

But De Quincey didn’t appear to see that fireplace. Instead his blue eyes seemed to stare at something far away. They became blank.

The moment lengthened.

“Father?” Emily asked from the front corner, her back turned to the room, unable to see him. “You are very quiet. Are you all right?”

“I’m fine now, Emily.”

“Father…”

“Really, I’m fine.”

But despite his assurance, De Quincey continued staring intensely at something far away in the fireplace.

At once his eyes gained focus. Darkness in them lightened. His face became less pale. His forehead acquired a glistening sheen.

He stopped shaking.

He breathed.

“Inspector Ryan, I don’t suppose you’ve read Immanuel Kant.”

The statement was so surprising, seeming to come out of nowhere, that Ryan needed a moment before reacting. “That’s correct.” Pride made him refrain from adding, I never heard of him.

De Quincey breathed again and slowly withdrew his gaze from the fireplace.

He set down the empty glass and surveyed the room as if seeing the corpses for the first time.

“Yes, that’s understandable. Since Kant wrote in German, his works can be difficult to find in London. I translated several of his essays. I shall send you some. May I touch the corpses?”

As with so much of what De Quincey said, the request suddenly seemed to be the most normal in the world. “If you think it’s necessary.”

“I do.”

De Quincey stepped toward the tavernkeeper slumped over the counter.

“If not for the blood, it would seem that he had worked too many hours or else had overindulged on gin and fallen asleep.”

“That is the appearance,” Ryan agreed.

“Until I attempt to rouse him.”

De Quincey grasped the sides of the tavernkeeper’s head and lifted, exposing a neck that had been so torn open by the ripping chisel on the counter that the larynx was exposed. Bone grated.

“Oh…”

“Yes,” Ryan said. “Oh.”

De Quincey pulled the body back a little farther, inspecting the tavernkeeper’s apron, which covered his chest to his neck. Formerly white, it was splattered with blood.

“The pattern is impressive. If it’s possible to create art by randomly throwing paint or in this case blood at a canvas, this is a fine example.”

“You are deranged,” Ryan decided.

De Quincey seemed not to have heard. “The ripping chisel on the counter has blood on its hook. A similar weapon was used in the second Ratcliffe Highway murders. The killer left it behind forty-three years ago just as he did now.”

“Yes, you mention that in ‘Murder as a Fine Art.’ Again, the killer used your essay as his guide.”

“Emily, does this conversation distress you?” De Quincey asked.

“I would prefer to be at home in Edinburgh,” she answered with her back to him, her voice rebounding into the room.

“I, too, my dear. I can’t wait to return home and resume avoiding debt collectors. They no longer seem a pack of Furies. Would a handkerchief soaked with wine help to conceal the odor if you breathed through it?”

“Anything would help, Father.”

De Quincey pulled a handkerchief from a pocket, found an open bottle of wine, soaked the cloth, and offered it to Ryan.

“I’ll get it,” Becker said. He came over and took the handkerchief back to Emily.

Staring toward the corner wall, she raised the handkerchief to her face. Her voice was muffled. “Thank you.”

“To return to Kant,” De Quincey said.

“By all means.” Ryan sighed. “It’s not as if we have anything more important to consider.”

“The philosopher raised the question of whether reality exists objectively or whether it is a subjective projection of our thoughts.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea of what you mean.”

“You will.”

De Quincey made his way along the counter and moved around it into the room. He examined the two dead customers who were propped across the counter.

He turned toward the table near the fireplace, where three more customers and a barmaid were slumped as if asleep. A plate of blood-specked bread and cheese was next to them. He pulled back the barmaid’s head and assessed the blood on her previously white apron. He moved toward the final corpse, a constable, who lay across another table, a teacup in his hand.

“Magnificent. Weary customers in a tavern at the end of the day. Their elixir has made them so peaceful that they fell asleep. The blood is a discordant element, but art should have contrast. And of course there’s the further discordant element of what I discovered when I lifted their heads. No longer the neat slits created by a razor. Now the damage amounts to mutilation. Extreme violence beneath apparent peace. A fine art.”

Ryan muttered something indelicate, adding, “You haven’t said anything that will help me catch the madman who did this.”

“You think a madman did this, Inspector Ryan?”

“That’s obvious. No money was taken. The violence was unthinkable.”

“My brother William was so unmanageable that my parents sent him away to live at a private school.”

“I don’t see the relevance. The laudanum has made you incoherent.”

“After my father’s early death, my mother brought William home to Manchester in the hopes that he had improved. Her hopes were ill-founded. He was a restless bully, constantly inventing new preposterous schemes in which the rest of us were forced to participate. He gave nonsensical lectures to which we had to submit. He compelled us to perform in plays that featured violence he inflicted on us. He invented imaginary countries that he and I separately controlled, but he was always expanding his country until he overran mine and destroyed it. He tortured cats by tying sheets to them and throwing them off the roof to see if he could make a parachute. I lived in fear every day.”

“What does this have to do with—”

“Eventually William’s violent behavior became so extreme that my mother again sent him off. I have seldom felt more liberated than the day he was put in a carriage and taken away. I have often wondered what horrid crimes he might have committed if he hadn’t died from typhus when he was sixteen.”

De Quincey turned from the corpses and faced Ryan. “An odd thing occurred almost at the same moment that my brother was taken away to London. A dog ran to our closed front gate. Then it ran along the edge of the property. Curious about the animal’s unusual appearance, I followed its progress. A brook formed the boundary of our property—a good thing because the water prevented the dog from attacking me. I looked searchingly into its eyes and observed that they were glazed as in a dream but at the same time suffused with a watery discharge, while its mouth was covered with masses of white foam.”

“The dog was mad,” Ryan concluded.

“Precisely. A rabid dog’s hatred of water is all that prevented it from attacking me. Some men came running along the road in pursuit of the dog. It raced ahead of them, but eventually the men returned, saying that they had caught it and killed it. I learned later that the dog had bitten two horses in the village and that one of them succumbed to rabies. Inspector, do you believe that a madman killed these people, a rabid human, responding to irresistible, uncontrollable impulses?”

“How else can so much violence be explained?” Ryan demanded.

“If the killer’s impulses were uncontrolled, how do you account for the careful arrangement of the bodies? On Saturday night, he hid the corpses behind a counter or behind doors so that whoever discovered them would receive a series of shocking revelations. In this case, he practiced concealment in another fashion, by making the corpses appear to be asleep, their slumping posture hiding the terrible disfigurement to their throats, providing a surprise for each viewer who looks closer. Even though a constable stood watch beneath a streetlamp outside, the murderer risked taking the time to arrange his artwork. These are not the acts of an uncontrolled man.”

“For a change, I follow your logic.”

“Immanuel Kant asked the question, Does reality exist objectively, or is it a subjective projection of our thoughts?”

“And again you’ve lost me.”

“Inspector Ryan, when you look at the stars, where are they in relation to you?”

“Excuse me?”

“Are they above you, for example?”

“Of course.”

“But the earth is a globe, is it not? London is not at the northern pole. It is located approximately one third down the sphere. We stand more or less sideways. The force of gravity keeps us from spinning off into space.”

Ryan looked as if he had another headache. “Yes, the earth is a globe, so logically we do stand sideways on it. But it always appears that we’re on the top.”

“Inspector, I don’t believe that Kant himself could have been so eloquent. It does in fact appear that we are on top of the earth, even though we are on its side. We act upon assumptions that control our view of reality, even though reality might be quite different. Tell me what it would feel like if you were at the bottom of the earth, gazing at the stars.”

“In that event…” Ryan looked uncomfortable. “By your logic, I would be upside down, dangling by my feet, staring…” The inspector swallowed. “Down.”

“With all of vast space below you, stretching toward infinity.”

“The thought makes me dizzy.”

“As does the true reality before us. We encounter violence of this magnitude and we are tempted to react automatically by stating that only a madman could have done this. Someone irrational, uncontrolled, obeying savage impulses. But what we see does not match that idea. Eight people in one room. The killer dispatches them before any of the victims, even the constable, has a chance to fight back.”

De Quincey gestured toward the murder scene.

“The constable was nearest the door as the killer entered, so this man needed to be dealt with first, then the three men at the table near the fireplace, then the barmaid, then the two customers at the counter, and finally the tavernkeeper behind it.”

De Quincey walked through the room and pretended to swing a murder weapon toward each victim.

“How many seconds did I require to do that, Inspector?”

“Perhaps ten.”

“But it must have been done in far less time than that. Otherwise at least one of the victims would have been able to shout for help. These murders were committed rapidly and without hesitation. With artistry and precision. There is only one way to become this adept. With practice. This was not the killer’s first experience with inflicting death.”

“You’re telling me he did this before, and not just on Saturday night?”

“To accomplish this task, he must have killed many people many times before.”

“Impossible. Surely I would have heard. Even if the crimes were committed far from London, news about the atrocities would have spread.”

“The news did spread. You read about these deaths every day in the newspapers, except that they aren’t referred to as crimes.”

“Becker, does any of this make sense to you?” Ryan demanded. “Multiple murders that aren’t called crimes?”

“The killings aren’t even called murders,” De Quincey elaborated.

“Becker?” Ryan pleaded.

“I have a suspicion where he’s going.”

“And?”

“I don’t want to follow his logic. It’s unthinkable.”

“That’s my point,” De Quincey continued. “By definition, what is unthinkable isn’t part of our reality. Inspector, your assumptions about what is possible prevent you from accurately seeing the reality before you.”

Becker interrupted, walking toward Ryan. “Remember the bootprints behind the shop? They didn’t have hobnails, suggesting that the murderer was someone of education and means, not a laborer. The expensive razor suggested the same thing.”

“I proposed that idea to Lord Palmerston,” Ryan insisted. “He thoroughly rejected it. He told me that a man of education and means couldn’t possibly be capable of savagery.”

“Lord Palmerston is wrong, of course,” De Quincey said. “It happens every day.”

“Not that I’m aware of,” Ryan objected. “Bankers, owners of corporations, and members of Parliament do not go about bashing heads and gashing throats.”

“Perhaps metaphorically they do,” De Quincey said.

“What?”

“Never mind. I agree. These murders weren’t committed by a banker, an owner of a corporation, or a member of Parliament. But imagine a context in which killings are not called murders.”

“Perhaps if I swallowed some of that laudanum, I would understand.”

“The killer is practiced at his art. He has killed many times before. He is comfortable using disguises. He speaks a language that the Malay who delivered the message last night would understand. Those pieces of information narrow the range of suspects considerably.”

“The Malay. You’re suggesting that the killer has been to the Orient and speaks some of its languages?”

“Yes.”

“Experience in disguises suggests a criminal,” Ryan continued.

“Or someone who wishes to blend with criminals and defeat them. You, for example, dress in disguise”—De Quincey indicated Ryan’s shapeless, common clothes—“in order to blend with lower elements.”

“I should be looking for a detective who worked in the Orient?” Ryan asked in confusion.

“Not a detective. In the Orient, who else serves as a law enforcer? In India, for example, where cults are notorious for their disguises?”

Ryan looked baffled. But then as his thoughts seemed to click together, his eyes displayed sudden clarity.

“A soldier.”

“Yes. A soldier. A man trained to kill without hesitation. A man who had many opportunities to practice his craft in the Orient, learning some of its languages. But when he killed, it wasn’t called a crime. It was called heroism. And he wasn’t just any soldier. The man we’re looking for had duties that required disguises.”

“A soldier.” Ryan sounded breathless. “I do indeed feel like I’m dangling by my feet from the bottom of the earth.”