Murder as a Fine Art

3

The Opium-Eater



THE COLOR OF LAUDANUM IS RUBY. It is a liquid that consists of 90 percent alcohol and 10 percent opium. Its taste is bitter. A Swiss-German alchemist invented it in the 1500s when he discovered that opium dissolved more effectively in alcohol than in water. His version included crushed pearls and gold leaves. In the 1660s, an English physician refined the formula, removed impurities such as the crushed pearls and the gold leaves, and prescribed it as a medicine for headaches as well as stomach, bowel, and nervous disorders. By the Victorian era, laudanum was so widely used as a pain reducer that virtually every household owned a bottle. Considering that opium’s derivatives include morphine and heroin, laudanum’s reputation as a pain reducer was well founded. Toothache, gout, diarrhea, tuberculosis, and cancer were only some of the ailments that laudanum manufacturers such as Batley’s Sedative Solution, McMunn’s Elixir, and Mother Bailey’s Quieting Syrup claimed to alleviate. Women used laudanum to relieve menstrual cramps. Colicky babies were given it.

The concept of physical addiction was unknown in the 1850s. While a few physicians noted that prolonged use of laudanum could possibly produce a dependency, most people viewed an overfondness for laudanum as merely a habit, a failure of willpower that could easily be overcome by the typical Victorian virtues of discipline and character. As a consequence, the distribution of laudanum was unregulated by the law. It could be purchased readily and cheaply from any neighborhood druggist. But since no medical prescription was required, it could also be purchased from grocers, butchers, tailors, street merchants, tavern keepers, and even rent collectors. The recommended dosage—only as necessary for symptoms—was twenty-five drops, a third of a teaspoon, not to be used for prolonged periods of time. But many Victorians exceeded these suggestions and were indeed physically dependent on it, although the constraints of Victorian society discouraged anyone from confessing to what was considered a failure of fortitude.

It’s impossible to determine precisely how many Victorians were dependent on the drug, but since millions used it on a daily basis, the number must have been considerable. The pallor of many women in the middle and upper classes, their frequent lack of appetite, their tendency to faint and to spend considerable time alone in dark rooms, the ornate patterns of overupholstered and overfurnished rooms, the persistently closed, thick draperies—these are evidence of a national dependency that the restraints of Victorian society discouraged anyone from discussing.

Thomas De Quincey made no secret of his dependency, however. During the 1820s he became the most notorious author in England because he was brazen enough to document his habit in a scandalous, national best seller, Confessions of an English Opium-Eater. In it, De Quincey described an incident in 1804 when he went to a pharmacy to buy a small quantity of laudanum to subdue persistent “pains of the head and face”—his first experience with the drug. At that time, he was a nineteen-year-old student at Oxford University, and his facial pains were probably the consequence of the nervous pressure that he felt as a young man without finances amid well-to-do students in the intense university environment. For nine years, he gradually increased the amount and frequency of his laudanum intake until by 1813 he was able to control his compulsion only for brief periods and with great effort. At the height of his dependency, his daily consumption increased from a third of a teaspoon to an astonishing sixteen-ounce decanter. One ounce would be lethal to anyone not accustomed to the opiate.

In spite of laudanum, or perhaps because of it, De Quincey wrote some of the most brilliant essays of the 1800s, particularly “The English Mail-Coach” and “On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth,” a staple of Shakespeare criticism. His recollections of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and other literary figures with whom he was friends are irreplaceable. But he was unable to write fast enough to support his wife and eight children. Constantly owing money, he often fled his lodgings, pursued by numerous bill collectors.

An irate landlord once held him prisoner in a lodging house for a year, forcing him to keep writing in order to pay his considerable debt. The room became “snowed up” with paper, as De Quincey put it. “Not a square inch on the table to set a cup upon, no track from the door to the fireplace.” He finally managed to escape by asking his publisher to smuggle laxative salts to him among the writing materials that the publisher sent. So constipating are the effects of opium that De Quincey sometimes couldn’t relieve his bowels for as long as five days. But not this time. Overdosing on the laxative salts, he spent several days in the single privy that served the lodging house in which he was imprisoned. The tenants complained so greatly that the landlord reluctantly allowed De Quincey to leave.

By 1854, De Quincey was sixty-nine years old. His wife was dead. So were three of his sons. His remaining children had dispersed to Ireland, India, and Brazil, with the exception of Emily, his last-born child. Twenty-one and the only daughter not yet attached, Emily assumed the responsibility of embarking on the unique adventure of watching over her brilliant, eccentric, and unpredictable father.


From the Journal of Emily De Quincey

Sunday, 10 December 1854



This morning, I discovered Father again pacing the back courtyard. Once more, he had wakened much earlier than I, probably before dawn. Last night, I am certain that I heard his footsteps creaking past the door to my room, descending the stairs so that he could roam the dark streets. He claims that this is the only way he can avoid indulging in laudanum—by distracting himself with the effort of walking as much as fifteen miles each day.

Father’s short stature emphasizes how thin he has become. I worry that his obsessive exercise will harm him more than help. The way he talks also worries me. Before we left our home in Edinburgh to journey here to London and promote his newly collected writings, his practice was to waken groggily no earlier than noon. For a long time, he refused to make the trip at all. Then abruptly he called it essential and surprised me by filling his hours with walking to prepare himself. Soon he wakened at nine. In a matter of weeks, he backed to eight o’clock, to seven, to six. On the train bound for London, he walked in place, his cheeks red from exertion.

“To avoid the laudanum,” he kept insisting, although I know that he hasn’t abandoned it entirely. Two decanters of the wretched liquid are among the clothes and books that he packed.

I was especially troubled when he said, “As my waking hour retreats from five to four to three, I fear that I am backing into yesterday.”

Yesterday, though, is what I am convinced he wants to back into. His journey to London seems about his past more than his collected writings—or perhaps the two are disturbingly intertwined.

Our income from Father’s work is too little for us to afford the splendid townhouse in which we are staying. A middle-aged woman who serves as maid and cook has been supplied to us as well. Father claims that he doesn’t know who pays the bills, and I believe him. Perhaps one of his old acquaintances secretly provided the means for us to make this journey, although I can’t imagine who, since so many of those acquaintances, Wordsworth and Coleridge, for example, have passed over, or as Father says, “have joined the majority,” since far more people died over the centuries than are currently alive.

Our lodging is near Russell Square, and after we arrived four days ago, Father puzzled me by asking me to walk with him before we unpacked. Within a few blocks, we reached the Square, where I was delighted to find a wonderful park in the middle of the tumultuous city. A breeze had chased the fog away. In what Father told me was rare December sunlight, he surveyed the grass and the bare trees, the intensity of his blue eyes indicating his memories.

“When I was seventeen,” he said, “I lived on the streets of London.”

I knew that, of course, because Father had included some of those terrible events in his Opium-Eater book.

“I lived on the streets for the entire winter,” he continued.

I knew this, too, but I have learned to let Father say what is on his mind.

“In those days, cows wandered this square. Many nights, a companion and I slept here, a rag that could barely be called a blanket wrapped around us. I’d been lucky enough to find an old bucket. When the udders on the cows were full, I did my best to milk one of them. The warmth of the milk helped us not to shiver.”

Father spoke without looking at me, his attention focused totally on his memories. “So much has changed. Coming from the train station, which didn’t exist then, I hardly recognized much of the city. There are so many places I need to see.”

His tone suggested that he didn’t want to see some of those places, even though he needed to.

“Ann,” he murmured.

My mother’s name was Margaret. Mine is Emily.

“Ann,” he repeated.


Remembering that conversation, I watched the intensity with which Father paced the back courtyard.

Our housekeeper, Mrs. Warden, stepped into the kitchen. She wore a solemn bonnet. A hymnbook was under her arm. Bread, butter, strawberry jam, and a pot of tea were on the table.

“I’ll be leaving for church now, Miss De Quincey. I suppose that you and your father will soon be going there also.”

Since our arrival, Mrs. Warden’s manner toward my father has been guarded while her tone toward me has been sympathetic, as if she believes I have a great many burdens.

“Yes. Church,” I responded, hoping that I didn’t sound as if I were lying.

“He seems very religious,” Mrs. Warden continued with reluctant approval, “which, if you don’t mind me being honest, is not what I expected, given the ‘book’ he wrote.”

Father wrote many books over the years, but Mrs. Warden’s emphasis left no doubt which of them she meant.

“Yes, the book,” I said.

“I haven’t read it myself, of course.”

“Of course.”

Again, Father walked past the window, pacing the courtyard from corner to corner to corner to corner. His lean face was tense with exertion. His gaze was on something in his mind far beyond the courtyard wall. He fingered beads in his hands.

“I see how devoted he is to the rosary,” Mrs. Warden said. “Praying while walking improves both the soul and the body.”

The beads that Father clutched had sections of ten. One in each section was blue. The remaining nine were white.

“I haven’t met many Romans.” Mrs. Warden referred to Roman Catholics uncomfortably. “But I’m sure papists can be as religious as Church of Englanders.”

Father, in fact, belongs to the Church of England and often writes about the knotted mysteries of religion. As for the beads, I didn’t know how to explain them without rekindling her suspicions about him, so I merely nodded.

“Well, I’ll be off,” Mrs. Warden said.

“Thank you. Father says not to expect us until late.”

As Mrs. Warden turned to leave, she gave me a look that suggested, if I was indeed going to church, she did not approve of my costume. She herself wore a hooped dress with flounces that made it so wide she had difficulty squeezing through the doorway. I do not exaggerate that she seemed to have a birdcage under her dress. My own preference is for the clothing that Amelia Bloomer recently advocated—long comfortable pants that cuff at my ankles and are hidden beneath my naturally hanging dress. I do not understand the ridicule with which the newspapers greet this way of dressing, referring to the undertrousers as “bloomers,” but I would sooner be mocked for my clothing than be forced to restrict my movements for the sake of convention.

After Mrs. Warden closed the front door, Father came in from the courtyard, as if he had heard her depart. He set his beads on the table. He hadn’t worn a hat. His short brown hair—amazingly not grayed by age—glistened with perspiration, only some of which was from exercise. Much of it was no doubt caused by his need for laudanum.

“How far did you walk?” I asked.

“Only five miles.”

The beads weren’t at all a rosary but instead a system that Father uses to determine how far he proceeds in a small area. When we arrived at the house, he measured the distance along the courtyard’s four walls, which became the equivalent of one white bead. After he walked through nine white beads and a blue bead, he began a new set of ten. In this way, all he needed to do was keep a count of the blue beads and multiply them by ten as well as the distance. He claims this is simple, but when I try to explain this, most people grimace as if they have a sudden headache.

“Father, it’s time for tea,” I said.

“My stomach couldn’t possibly tolerate it, Emily. We must be going.”

“Tea,” I repeated.

“There are many places I need to visit.”

“Bread, butter, and jam,” I said.


Since we came to London, Father’s schedule has been occupied by interviews, to which I accompany him to make certain that he remembers to eat and drink. An American version of his collected works is now available along with four volumes of an ongoing British edition, which is one reason Father journeyed here—so that he could speak with booksellers as well as the Fleet Street magazines and newspapers.

It is undignified, but in truth, we need the money. As much as Father is addicted to laudanum, he is addicted to acquiring books. Over the years, no sooner did he cram one cottage with books than he rented another and another. Debts have accumulated to the point that I fear we will end in paupers’ court. This journey to London was indeed essential, although perhaps not in the sense that I believe Father secretly means.

His valiant attempt to earn income for us comes with its own cost. From his youth when one of his brothers bullied him, Father has endured painful difficulty relating to people. His stomach and other digestive organs are seldom at ease except when calmed by laudanum or when I am able to shield him. Now he is forced to greet the world and pretend to welcome it so that people will buy his writings and give him the means to retreat. His brave, humiliating efforts have been successful. Book buyers are eager to meet the infamous Opium-Eater, whose candid details about his drug habit are still a scandal thirty-three years after he first wrote about them.

Recently, Father also added a third installment to his horrid essay “On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts.” Although I am grateful that the added material promoted sales, I confess that the gruesome descriptions of killings are too shocking for me to finish. People ask if I am afraid to live with Father, given how violent he must be. I tell them that Father is the gentlest man in God’s creation, to which well-wishers give me skeptical looks, as if to say, “We know that you must lie because he is your father, but truly anyone who writes about murder so vividly and with so much blood must secretly be a violent man.”

Today being Father’s first day of leisure, he and I walked to the nearby British Museum. The area was deserted, everyone attending church, which is why Father chose this time to go onto the streets. The museum was closed, but Father would probably have been too preoccupied to go inside, regardless.

The cold breeze continued to chase the fog. Father stared at the museum’s dramatic forecourt, his jaw muscles flexing with his need for laudanum.

“This didn’t exist the last time I was in London,” he told me. “For twenty-five years, it was the largest construction area in all of Europe, but I never saw it.”

The enormous building made me feel small and vulnerable.

“The cuneiform tablets of Assyria are in there,” Father continued, his tone mournful. “So is the Rosetta stone. Keys to translating the past. But who can translate the ruins in our memories?”

People say that Father has an odd way of speaking, but to me, it is the other way around. Most people are so boring that they lull me nearly to sleep. I do not always understand Father, but I have never found him other than stimulating, even when he exasperates me. Perhaps that is why, at the age of twenty-one, I have not yet found a gentleman with whom I can imagine spending as many years as I have spent with Father.

We hired a cab and went to all the landmarks that had been constructed in the decades since he was away: Buckingham Palace, Belgrade Square, Trafalgar Square, the National Gallery, and the new Houses of Parliament.

But we never stepped out of the cab, and we never lingered. Even though Father was seated, his feet moved as if he were nervously walking. I had the impression that he selected our destinations at random. Eventually I realized that all the places we had seen had been a postponement, that we were finally proceeding toward what Father needed to see and yet did not want to.


The cab let us off at Marble Arch, which Father told me is an imitation of the Arch of Constantine in Rome. It apparently was originally white but now is gray from the city’s perpetual soot. As a carriage went through the large central opening, we entered a small pedestrian arch on the left. From a room, a policeman nodded to us.

“This, too, didn’t exist,” Father said.

Behind us was the expanse of Hyde Park. Church services having ended, carriages came and went. Families with warm coats strolled among the trees. But Father’s attention was directed ahead of us toward Oxford Street.

“This street was a colder, harsher place back then,” he recalled, leading me along it.

Shops and businesses filled each side. The commercial heart of the city, closed for Sunday, seemed unnaturally silent.

“When I was seventeen and lived on the streets,” Father said.

He directed a long look toward steps in front of a shop.

“For five months, most of them in the winter.”

He studied a bakery, as if seeing it from long ago.

“It was mostly here. On Oxford Street. Look at that bakery. When I was starving, how I dreamed about bakeries. Did I ever tell you about the skeleton?”

Coming from Father, the morbid question didn’t seem unusual. “Skeleton?”

“At the Manchester Grammar School that I attended. A surgeon associated with it had a skeleton hanging in his room. The story was that it came from a notorious highwayman. In those days, before the railroads, highwaymen posed a constant menace. This one had been hanged, and the surgeon had paid the executioner to give him the body since executions were one of the few legal ways for medical students to acquire a corpse for dissection. But it turned out that in the haste with which the executioner cut the body from the scaffold, the highwayman hadn’t quite expired. So the surgeon and his medical students slipped a scalpel into him, made sure that the highwayman had drawn his last breath, and then dissected him. Eventually what was left of the corpse was boiled in lye until only the skeleton remained.”

Father’s disturbing comments didn’t surprise me, although I was grateful that no passerby was close enough to hear.

“The way I felt about that wretched skeleton was the way I felt about the school,” Father continued. “The man who taught me Latin and Greek resented how quickly those subjects came to me compared to the difficulty with which he had learned them. His resentment eventually turned to anger and then to physical cruelty. In the end, I begged my guardians to release me from the horrors of that school.”

Father’s own father, a traveling merchant whom he almost never saw, had died from consumption when Father was seven. The will stipulated that four guardians would manage Father’s life, but they fulfilled their duties so poorly that his education was infrequent and incompetent.

“One guardian in particular refused. He wanted absolute obedience from me, the same as the teacher did, and this I would not give. So I ran away. I couldn’t go to my mother. She would merely have turned me over to the guardians. So I borrowed a little money from a family friend who sympathized with my desperation. For a time, I stayed at various farms in Wales, but eventually, as my meager funds lessened, I tried my luck here in London. It nearly killed me.”

The breeze no longer chased the fog. A haze developed, limiting visibility to only a block. The cold deepened, making me grateful that I wore a warm coat.

Father walked onward, gazing at the stoops and shuttered windows of various shops, seeming to know them extremely well.

“My few coins meant that I could eat only once a day—tea with bread and butter. Soon I didn’t have money even for that. I begged, but the city has a great many beggars. If not for a man with a house nearby on Greek Street, I don’t know which would have killed me first: the elements or starvation. The man was associated with money lending and shadier elements of the legal profession. His name was Brunell, but he also called himself Brown. He kept on the move to prevent his enemies from catching him. Every night, he slept in a different part of London. In the morning, he went to the house I mentioned, and in the afternoon, he went somewhere else. The house was unoccupied so much that it was at risk of being vandalized, so when I came to him in an effort to borrow money, something about me made him offer a bargain. He allowed me to find shelter there at night in exchange for causing considerable noise if someone tried to break in.

“The house was shabby. Except for the room in which he kept his papers, there wasn’t a stick of furniture. At night, without candles, it was frightfully dark. I tried to sleep on the bare floor, shivering while I listened to the rats. Their numerous claws scratched across the floors. My illness and hunger, not to mention my festering dreams, allowed me only a kind of dog’s sleep in which I could hear myself moaning. My nerves set my muscles to twitching and my legs kicking, constantly waking me.

“Fortunately Brunell or Brown or whatever his real name was enjoyed talking about Greek and Latin literature. Each morning, when he came to the house with pastries for his breakfast, he allowed me to eat crumbs while we discussed the Odyssey or the Aeneid. Otherwise, my only food consisted of scraps I begged during daylight from indifferent people on the busy streets. I would have perished if not for a girl who took pity on me, even though she herself deserved all the pity in the world.

“Her name was Ann.”


The name came unexpectedly, as if a bell had rung at an unanticipated moment. The cold deepened. I gripped my coat closer around me and was grateful when Father resumed walking along Oxford Street. The fog crept nearer. Visibility was now only three-quarters of a block.

“Ann was sixteen years old,” Father said. “She was what might be called a peripatetic woman.”

“You have never shielded me,” I replied. “Say what you mean.”

Father nonetheless hesitated. “A streetwalker. Ann’s poverty had been imposed upon her because of a legal disagreement regarding money that she inherited from her parents. But others found ways to intercept the bequest, and Ann never received the money. Throughout those winter months, she suffered from a cough, but she treated me as if I were more sickly. I often walked with her on Oxford Street or rested with her under the shelter of porticoes. She defended me against watchmen who attempted to drive me off steps where I tried to rest and regain my strength.”

Father’s eyes again assumed that far-away look. He stopped and pointed down at where we stood.

“Our only amusement was to wait for the organ grinder to wheel his instrument onto this corner. The player always pretended that the organ weighed three times more than it actually did. When he turned the crank, he strained his face and breathed with difficulty, making it seem that turning the crank was the hardest job in the world. Ann and I held hands while we listened to the music. People sometimes dropped coins in a cup attached to the organ, and from the way the player expressed his thanks, you’d have thought he’d been given a fortune instead of the smallest coins anyone could spare. For us, those meager coins would indeed have been a fortune. But without food, at least we had music, and I never fail to hear an organ that doesn’t remind me of those evenings, standing near the old oil lamp that used to be here, putting my arm around Ann.”

Father drew a breath, forcing himself to continue. “One evening when I felt more than usually faint, I asked Ann to take me onto a side street. There, as we sat on the steps of a house, I suddenly grew worse. I’d been leaning my head against her breast. At once I slipped from her arms and fell. Ann cried out in alarm and ran toward Oxford Street. In less time than I could imagine, she returned with a glass of seasoned wine. It was exactly the right thing to bring. My empty stomach could not have tolerated food. The stimulant gave me enough energy that I was able to sit up. Ann had no reason to expect that I would ever reimburse her, and yet she bought that wine when she barely had enough money to sustain her own needs.

“How often I think of the speed with which Fortune’s wheel can turn. A few days after Ann brought me the wine, I was begging on Albemarle Street. A gentleman who knew my family happened to walk past and recognized me. At first, he thought he’d made a mistake, so shocked was he by my condition. I answered his many questions, explaining that if he told my mother, she would alert my guardians and they would force me back to that wretched school from which I would again escape. He heard the strain in my voice and promised not to betray my confidence. The next day he presented me with a ten-pound bank note, a sum that I could not imagine.

“When the man in whose house I took shelter at night learned about my ten pounds, he demanded three of them. I asked him to let Ann stay there also, but he warned that he’d throw me out if I brought a streetwalker inside. I used some of the remaining money—five shillings—to buy food for Ann and me. I spent fifteen shillings (I recall how it pained me to count it out) on clothes that would help me implement a plan that my benefactor had suggested. At the Manchester school, I’d made friends with a boy whose wealthy father admired students with a talent for Latin and Greek.

“I determined to go to my friend, who was now at Eton, and persuade him to take me to his father, in the hopes of receiving help. With that in mind, I gave Ann two pounds, not only for food but for medicines to treat her cough. At six o’clock on a dark winter evening, she and I walked hand in hand toward Piccadilly. It was my intention to catch the mail coach for Eton.

“We went through a part of London that no longer exists. I promised her that she would share in any good fortune I met, that I would never forsake her. I told her I loved her, that as much as I didn’t wish to leave her I was filled with hope for our future. Ann, however, was overcome with sorrow. When I said good-bye and kissed her, she put her arms around my neck and wept.

“I expected to return in a week. The plan had been, in eight nights, at six o’clock, Ann would wait for me near the bottom of Great Titchfield Street, our customary rendezvous. But my efforts at Eton turned out to be so frustrating and time-consuming that it was many months before I was able to return to London.

“At six o’clock, I rushed to the bottom of Great Titchfield Street. I waited and waited. Ann did not arrive. The next night, I waited. Ann still did not arrive. The next night and the night after were the same. During the day, I went to Ann’s meager lodgings, but none of the streetwalkers who lived there had seen her. Somebody said that the landlord had treated her so badly that she’d been forced to go elsewhere. When I went to other lodgings where streetwalkers stayed, this new group didn’t know me. They considered my recently purchased clothes and decided that I was a gentleman in search of a companion. They offered themselves in Ann’s place. Others suspected that I might have something to do with the law or that I was searching for someone who had robbed me. They wouldn’t talk to me.

“Day and night, I searched Oxford Street. I spread my search to all the neighboring streets. I waited at our favorite spot near the organ grinder. But with no success. After so many months, Ann had perhaps despaired of my promises and would never return to our rendezvous. Perhaps I passed within a few feet of her but never knew it in the crowded labyrinth of the streets where a few feet can be the equivalent of miles. Or perhaps, in my absence, Ann had succumbed to her dreadful cough. Although I grieved deeply at that possibility, I took comfort in knowing that if Ann had indeed been taken to her grave, at least she would no longer be a victim.

“In the end, my quest to improve my prospects required me to board another mail coach. Over the years, whenever I returned to London, I never failed to go to Great Titchfield Street at six o’clock. Ann was never there. I always looked for her on whatever other street I happened to be, but she was never there, either.”

Father’s voice echoed in the fog, the yellow of which had now thickened enough that I could see only five shops away from me.

“I need to ask you something,” Father said.

“When haven’t we been able to discuss any topic? What do you need to ask?” I wondered.

Father continued with difficulty. “Does it trouble you that, at one time, the closest person to me in the world was a streetwalker?”

I considered my answer. “If it is a choice between remaining alive and surrendering one’s virtue, I can understand the path that Ann was forced to take.”

“Does it trouble you that I speak about Ann as if she could have been your mother?”

“All of this happened fifty-two years ago. Mother has been dead for fifteen of those years. It is no dishonor to Mother that you cared for a woman long before you and she were married. What are you leading to?”

“Leading to?”

“For a month, you’ve been hiding something. Is Ann the reason you agreed to come to London?”

Father looked away.

I didn’t relent. “Initially you were strong in your refusal to come here to promote your writings. Your laudanum and your reluctance to relate to strangers were a sufficient explanation. But then one day you abruptly changed your mind, reduced your laudanum intake, and said that it was essential for you to journey here.”

“Yes. After the message I received in the mail.”

“Message?”

The fog was now four shops away.

“You wondered how we came to have the benefit of the fine house where we’re staying,” Father told me.

“Yes, and you answered that you didn’t know.”

“That is true. I didn’t—and still don’t. The offer was part of the same message. The person who sent the letter didn’t sign it. But the documents for the rental of the house and the hire of Mrs. Warden turned out to be authentic. I didn’t tell you the rest of it because I couldn’t bring myself to relive the darkness of those days. I make a habit of saying that no one can ever truly forget, but in fact, I deluded myself into trying to do just that—to forget.”

“You said you didn’t tell me the rest of it. Father, what do you mean?”

He drew a breath, then revealed what he’d been holding inside. “The message I received told me that if I came to London, I would learn what happened to Ann.”


The statement was so surprising that for a moment I couldn’t speak. I stepped closer. “Learn what happened to Ann? Have you? We’ve been in London four days. Has the person contacted you?”

“No. It remains as large a mystery as the day I received the letter. I thought perhaps that as I traveled throughout the city, speaking to booksellers and newspaper writers, someone would approach me in the crowd and suggest that we have a private word.”

“Why would someone go to the expense of leasing a house for us but not bother to contact you about his reasons for bringing you here?”

“I have no idea. Those days were the worst of my life. And the best. Because of Ann. If things had been different, she might have been your mother.”

“And it was that difficult for you to tell me?”

“Perhaps we have not in fact been able to talk about every topic,” Father replied.

“That will change.”

“Yes,” Father granted.

The fog swirled, its chill deepening. I held my coat tighter.

“Let’s return to the house,” Father decided.

“In this fog, how can we possibly find it?”

“The one street in the world I know without fail is Oxford Street. Don’t worry, Emily. We shall make our way home.”

As a carriage clattered past us, Father led me onward through the fog.

We were on the left side of the street. When we came to a major intersecting street, Father said, “If I’m right, this should be Tottenham Court Road. There. See the sign on the wall. Yes, Tottenham Court Road. We’ll go this way. In my youth, I would stand here and imagine walking all the way to where the buildings ended and the trees of the countryside began.”

Unable to see anything around us, we continued along Tottenham Court Road and then took a side street and another. Father’s earlier reference to the labyrinths of London seemed apt. He had said, “Don’t worry.” In truth, I never worry, except about Father.

We walked for what seemed to be a mile. Most women in their hooped skirts wouldn’t have been able to go even a couple of blocks. But my “bloomers,” as the newspapers disparagingly call them, give me freedom.

We reached what Father said was Great Russell Street, and soon, on another street, he assured me, “We’re almost there.”

But two figures loomed in the fog.

Father inhaled sharply.

The figures—two men, I saw now—were tall.

As the fog swirled, they blocked our way.

“Are you the people I’ve been waiting for?” Father asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Ann.”

“Ann? Who’s Ann?”

“If you don’t know who Ann is, step aside,” Father ordered.

When they didn’t, Father shifted to move around them.

But the men changed their positions and again blocked our way. Their features were haggard, unshaven.

“Damn you, step aside!” Father demanded.

The first man’s shapeless clothes resembled those of a street ruffian. The other man had a strange hat. I calculated which way Father and I might need to run.

“I have no money!” Father told them. “Do what you wish to me, but let my daughter go into the house!”

“I’m not leaving without you, Father!”

“Are you the Opium-Eater?” the ruffian demanded.

“What?”

“Thomas De Quincey?”

“What possible business could—”

“I’m Detective Inspector Ryan. This is Constable Becker.”

As the fog parted slightly, I saw that the second man’s strangely shaped hat was actually a policeman’s helmet and that he wore a constable’s uniform.

But the ruffian was in charge. “I need to ask you to come with us to Scotland Yard.”