Murder as a Fine Art

6

The Patron of Gravediggers



DARKNESS MERGED WITH THE THICKENING FOG. On the street outside the shop, the lights of police lanterns no longer zigzagged urgently. The investigation had reached its limits—no more neighbors to question, no more places to search.

Nonetheless the street was chaotic. As Ryan and Becker climbed down from the police wagon, they assessed the troubling circumstance that confronted them. Although most of the daytime crowd was gone, having retreated from whatever terrors the new night concealed, those who remained were drunk and made enough noise for a crowd ten times larger. They carried clubs, swords, and rifles. There was nothing Ryan could do about their weapons. In the absence of gun laws, even children could own firearms.

“How long will you stay and keep us safe?” a neighbor demanded from a constable outside the shop.

“As long as we’re investigating.”

“But how long? Tomorrow night?”

“Possibly,” the policeman replied.

“Possibly? What about next week? Will you be here then?”

“I’m not certain. A lot of streets aren’t being patrolled while we’re here. Soon we’ll need to get back to our districts.”

“My God, we’ll all be murdered unless we find the killer ourselves!”

Amid the clamor, Ryan noticed that the Opium-Eater and his daughter had climbed down from the police wagon without assistance. Despite his considerable efforts to dissuade her, De Quincey’s daughter had refused to be left behind while De Quincey had refused to go without her.

“I need to make certain that Father takes care of himself,” she had said, and to prove it she’d insisted that De Quincey eat several biscuits as the wagon transported them. “The state of his stomach is such that he eats as little as possible. This is his first food since breakfast.”

Ryan had never encountered a pair quite like them. At five feet ten inches, Ryan was taller than most people in 1854, a requirement for being a policeman. In contrast, De Quincey was shorter than the average height of five feet four inches, his thin frame making him seem even shorter, perhaps only five feet. Yet the Opium-Eater had a way of talking that was out of proportion to his size, making him fill the space he occupied.

As for the daughter, she was the most strong-minded female Ryan had ever met. Her “bloomer” style of dress indicated her independent attitude. While he reluctantly admitted that she was attractive, with pleasing features, blue eyes that matched her father’s, and smooth, brown hair pulled back behind her head, he barely controlled his exasperation when he told her, “You see how inconvenient it was for you to have insisted on coming with us. Now you’ll be forced to stand here in the cold with a constable to protect you from this rabble while we go inside.”

“And why, please tell, would I wish to remain out here in the cold?”

“You surely can’t come inside.”

“Why not? I’ve seen death before, especially my mother’s long, wasting illness.”

Ryan gave Becker a look that suggested, Maybe you can deal with her.

But before Becker could say anything, the Opium-Eater opened the door and stepped into the shop. Trying to stay in control, Ryan entered, moving ahead of him. The next thing, Emily was inside, followed by Becker.

Although the bodies had been removed, the room continued to have a foul odor. Ryan glanced back at Emily, concerned that she might faint. But although she looked pale and held a handkerchief to her nose, she surprised him by seeming more curious than horrified.

Becker closed the door and stopped the cold fog from drifting in.

“Apart from the absence of the bodies, is everything as the murderer left it?” De Quincey asked.

Or as you and an accomplice possibly left it? Ryan wondered. “No.”

“How is it different?” De Quincey continued.

“My purpose in agreeing to bring you here is to ask you questions, not the other way around,” Ryan informed him.

“But how is it different?” De Quincey indicated an open door to the left of the counter. “I see considerable dried blood on the hallway floor. There are contours as if the blood pooled around bodies. Where were they taken?”

“After an artist made detailed sketches, the remains were removed to the basement.”

De Quincey nodded. In 1854 London, there weren’t any funeral parlors. Corpses were kept at home until burial. Family members placed the body of a loved one on a bed, cleaned and dressed it, and made the corpse look as if it were sleeping. Sometimes a death mask was made, and with the advent of the daguerreotype process, photographs sometimes were taken. After that, friends were allowed to enter the bedroom and view the remains. The visitations might last five days until it became obvious that a coffin was required.

After a religious ceremony at the deceased’s home, the coffin was transported via a horse-drawn hearse to a cemetery, but London’s rapid growth put a strain on burial capacity. Cemeteries designed for three thousand burials were forced to accommodate as many as eighty thousand, eventually piling ten, twelve, and even fifteen caskets on top of one another. As the bottom caskets disintegrated, cemetery workers helped the process by digging down and jumping on the remains to compact them so that additional caskets could be placed on top.

New cemeteries were located miles from the center of London, with the result that a horse-drawn funeral procession would take most of the day for the body to arrive at its resting place. But only a month earlier, in November, an innovation had occurred with the construction of the London Necropolis Railway Station. A funeral procession could now board a special train that transported mourners and the coffin to the recently created Brookwood cemetery, twenty-five miles away. After the interment, the train would then bring the mourners back to London, all in a previously impossible single day’s round trip.


AN ABRUPT NOISE INTERRUPTED De Quincey’s questions. It came from the rear of the building, not the creak of beams shrinking in the cold but of footsteps climbing stairs.

Becker stepped in front of Emily, his hand over the truncheon on his belt.

A shadow lengthened in the corridor, reaching the top of the basement stairs.

Becker heard Emily inhale with apprehension.

At once a figure approached them, stepping around the dried blood on the hallway floor.

Becker recognized the man he’d discovered pounding on the door the previous night in an effort to deliver a blanket to his sick niece. This was also the man who’d led the mob’s assault on the stranger who the mob had believed was the killer.

The burly man frowned toward the group before him. His hair was unkempt. Dried tears streaked the grime on his beard-stubbled cheeks.

Seeing strangers, he tensed until he focused on Becker’s uniform. “I’m Jonathan’s brother.”

“This is Detective Inspector Ryan,” Becker said.

The brother nodded. “I saw you earlier.”

“In the fracas. Yes.”

“The constable outside said it was all right for me to come in.”

“It is,” Ryan agreed.

“Did the best I could for ’em. Poor Jonathan. Never should’ve come here from Manchester. None of us should’ve. I set up trestles and planks in the basement. Put ’em on the planks. Tried to make ’em look natural, I did, but God help ’em…” The man’s voice wavered. “After what the bugger did to ’em… excuse me, miss… how can I possibly make ’em look natural? The undertaker wants sixteen pounds for ’em for the funeral. Says I need white coffins for the two children. The baby…” Fresh tears welled from his eyes. “Even the baby costs for a funeral. And where will I find sixteen pounds? Ruined I am. The bugger destroyed Jonathan and his family, and now I’m ruined too.”

Snot mixed with his tears. He shook his head in despair.

Emily surprised Becker by saying, “I’m sorry.”

She further surprised Becker—and Ryan and especially the grieving man—by crossing the room and touching the man’s arm. The only person who didn’t look surprised was De Quincey.

“My heart goes out to you,” she said.

The man blinked, unaccustomed to kind words. “Thank you, miss.”

“Mr….?”

“Hayworth.”

“Mr. Hayworth, when did you sleep last?”

“A few hours here and there. Hasn’t been time. Truth is, my mind won’t allow me.”

“And when did you eat last? I can smell that you’ve been drinking alcohol.”

“Apologies, miss. With the shock of everything, I…”

“No need to apologize. But when did you eat last?”

“Maybe this morning.”

“Do you live around here?”

“Five minutes.”

“Do you have a family?”

The man wiped at his face. “My missus and a little boy.”

“Detective Inspector Ryan will arrange for someone to escort you home.”

Ryan blinked.

“Mr. Hayworth, I’m giving you strict orders to let your family know that you’re all right,” Emily continued.

“Strict orders?”

“Yes. Your wife and son must be worried sick. What’s more, given what’s happened, they must be afraid. They depend on your safety.”

“You’re right, miss,” the man told her sheepishly.

“I want you to go home immediately and eat something. Then I want you to rest your head. Even if you can’t sleep, lying down will do you good. The man who escorts you to your home will tell me where it is. I’ll go there when I have the opportunity. If I discover that you haven’t followed my orders, I shall be displeased, and you do not wish that.”

“No, miss. I promise, miss.”

Ryan give Becker a subtle nod.

“I’ll take care of it,” Becker said. “One of the constables will escort Mr. Hayworth home.”

“Thank you,” Emily said to Becker and Ryan.

“Thank you, miss.” Hayworth sniffled, wiping his sleeve across his face.

“And we’ll give some thought to how your funeral expenses might be alleviated,” Emily added. “But right now, your priorities are your family, food, and rest.”

Hayworth nodded. Hope mixing with exhaustion, he sniffled again and allowed Becker to lead him from the shop.


WE’LL GIVE SOME THOUGHT to alleviating his funeral expenses?” Ryan asked Emily as Becker returned and closed the door against the cold fog.

“Yes. I’m confident that a solution will come to us,” Emily replied.

“Us?” Ryan asked. “The Metropolitan Police can’t assume that obligation.”

“Manchester,” De Quincey interrupted. “The victim was from Manchester. The family’s name is Hayworth.”

“That’s what he told us. Why?” Ryan asked. “You look as if you think those details are important.”

“Perhaps. May I see the sketches of the bodies?”

“You’re still asking questions instead of answering them. How do you know so much about the original Ratcliffe Highway murders? What age were you in eighteen eleven?”

“Twenty-six. Old enough to have the strength to commit the murders, if not the size. Your next question should be, Where was I during that December night forty-three years ago?”

“Precisely.”

“I was in Grasmere in the Lake District, residing in William Wordsworth’s former home, Dove Cottage. At that time, it was a several-days’ journey to London via coach, although I suppose I could have managed it if I were desperate to slaughter a family on Ratcliffe Highway. However, I would have been missed because at the time I was engaged in a much-protracted disagreement with William and his family over shrubbery that I chose to have ripped from their former garden. William’s wife, Mary, and his sister, Dorothy, were much displeased. Believe me, they would have noted my absence. William and Dorothy have joined the majority, God bless them. But Mary is still alive and assembling new editions of her husband’s poetry. I am not certain where she resides, but perhaps she still remembers the rancor of that December.”

“Since you’re both asking and answering the questions, what should my next question be?”

Becker noted that Ryan didn’t sound frustrated any longer. The detective had found a way to make De Quincey cooperate.

“The one with which you started. How do I know the details of the original murders? Because I researched them, Inspector Ryan. I was so impressed by the paralyzing effect the murders had on the nation that I accumulated copies of every newspaper with even the slightest information about them. The panic of those days was exceptional and widely reported. You’ll find the newspapers in one of the many lodgings for which I do my best to pay rent in order to store things. Unfortunately I can’t recall which of those lodgings they’re in.”

“Lothian Street in Edinburgh, Father,” Emily said.

“Are you sure, Emily?”

“You asked me to fetch them from there when you were writing your third murder essay.”

“Thank you, Emily.” De Quincey turned toward Ryan. “May I see the sketches of the bodies now?”

“They’re at the end of the counter.”

De Quincey drank from his laudanum flask, making Ryan raise his eyes in disgust.

De Quincey then proceeded to the counter and examined one sketch after another.

Becker expected a reaction of horror, but instead the short man displayed only intense concentration.

When he finished, his voice was filled with sadness. “From lightning and tempest; from plague, pestilence, and famine; from battle and murder, and from sudden death, Good Lord, deliver us.”

“Excuse me?” Ryan asked.

“It’s a prayer from the general petition of the English Church,” De Quincey explained. “Odd how the Church considers sudden death to be worse than pestilence and famine. Julius Caesar viewed it in a different light. The night before his assassination, he happened to be asked what he considered to be the best mode of death. He replied, ‘That which is most sudden.’ He meant a death that would cause neither pain nor terror. Interesting that the English Church prefers a lingering death in which pain tortures the victim, giving him time to settle not only with God but with the grocer.”

Becker had never heard anyone speak this way. The Opium-Eater’s strange thoughts made his mind spin. “Well, the shopkeeper didn’t feel terror. From the looks of things, he didn’t know what hit him.”

“Yes.” De Quincey pointed at one of the sketches. “It appears that he was struck twice from behind before his throat was slit.” Significantly, De Quincey didn’t apologize to his daughter, seeming to take for granted that she had heard conversations of this sort before. “He wouldn’t have known what was done to him. Nor the infant. But the wife, the servant, and the young girl were struck from in front. They saw what was coming. They definitely felt terror.”

“And your point is…?” Ryan asked.

“Was any money taken?”

“No.”

“If the motive wasn’t profit, what else could it have been?” De Quincey wondered. “Revenge? On whom? The shopkeeper? It’s a poor revenge when the victim doesn’t know he’s being punished. Revenge on the wife because she rejected the advances of the killer in an earlier encounter? Perhaps. But then why kill the servant, the young girl, and the infant? The wife wouldn’t have seen her children being killed. She wouldn’t have experienced the maximum torment. Could the servant have been the true victim? If so, why did the killer then brutalize the infant?”

“These questions already occurred to us,” Ryan said impatiently.

“Sometimes our minds trick us into seeing things in a way that they aren’t.”

“I haven’t the faintest idea what you’re talking about.”

“Father, explain about the Indian emperor and the coach,” Emily suggested.

“Thank you, Emily. An excellent example.”

“The Indian emperor and the coach?” Ryan raised his hands in frustration. “Can we please confine the conversation to the murders?”

“That’s precisely what I’m doing. A British diplomat once gave a coach to an Indian emperor. The coach had a high roof with four seats inside and an outside forward seat for the driver. It was ornate to the point of magnificence, but at that time, coaches didn’t exist in India, and after the official departed, the emperor didn’t know what to make of the gift. What he did know was that his exalted stature required him to be above everyone, so he and his advisers climbed to the top of the coach, where the emperor sat in the precarious throne of the driver’s seat. Meanwhile the driver, whose status was so low that he didn’t deserve to be seen, climbed into the coach and threaded the reins through a hole he created beneath the driver’s seat. In that position, unable to view where he was going, the driver urged the horses forward. At first, the emperor enjoyed the excitement of the violent ride, but after he was tossed this way and that for a sufficient length of time, he ordered the driver to stop. Not wishing to appear undignified, he smiled as he was helped to the ground, after which the coach was put away and never seen again.”

“And what is the point of that story?” Ryan demanded.

“We see things from a perspective that we take for granted, such as the emperor thinking that the driver’s seat was preferable because it was high. But what if our perspective is incorrect? Looking at the scene of these murders, what we think is one thing might be something else entirely. The bodies have been removed. What else has been changed?”

“All the doors were closed,” Becker responded, the first he’d spoken in a while.

“Who discovered the bodies?”

“I did,” Becker added. “I came upon the brother pounding on the front door. It was locked, so I climbed a wall and came in through the back.”

“Where you saw…?”

“The mother and the young girl on the floor in the hallway.”

“Then you…?”

“Opened that door”—Becker indicated the doorway next to the counter—“entered the shop, and found the body behind the counter.”

“And after that?”

“I opened the doors to the kitchen and the bedroom and discovered the other bodies.”

“The killer didn’t achieve his full design.”

“I don’t understand,” Ryan said, exhaustion straining his voice.

“In my essay about the fine art of murder, I refer to pity and terror as the ultimate goals. We feel pity for the victims. But who feels the terror? The shopkeeper didn’t. The infant didn’t. Yes, the wife, the servant, and the young girl felt terror, but only for the briefest of moments as they gaped at the mallet coming toward them. Constable Becker, what time did you reach the shop as you made your rounds?”

“Ten fifteen, the same as every other night.”

“The reliability of every constable’s schedule. I assume that the killer would have known your schedule and intended to wait until ten twenty before he unlocked the front door and stepped outside into the darkness. He couldn’t have known that the brother would arrive and interfere with the plan. In the normal order of things, the next day someone would have wondered where the shopkeeper and his family were. That person would have knocked on the door, found it unlocked, and entered. The odor and the blood spatters would have led to the discovery of what lay behind the counter. Horrified, the person would have run for help. More people would now have entered the shop, and with each door they opened, further horrors would have greeted them, until the spectacle achieved its maximum effect with the opening of the final door and the discovery of the slaughtered infant.”

De Quincey walked toward the doorway that led to the rear of the building.

Surprised by his sudden movement, Becker and Ryan followed as he entered the hallway, took a wide step around the dried blood, and peered into the kitchen.

“Teeth on the floor,” De Quincey commented. “Sublime.”

“You’re insane,” Ryan said.

“The coach and the Indian emperor,” De Quincey told him. “To understand what happened here, you need to pretend you’re the killer. If you’re disgusted, you won’t truly see. You need to admire the butchery as a masterpiece.”

“The laudanum has twisted you.”

“To the contrary, it allows me to see perfectly straight.”

Becker looked back to make sure that Emily wasn’t following. She remained in the shop, seeming to feel sorry for them.

De Quincey entered the kitchen and studied the mallet on the table. “May I pick it up?”

“By all means. I’d like to see how you manage it,” Ryan agreed.

The Opium-Eater assessed the matt of hair and dried blood on the striking surface. “Note how ungainly it is in my hand. Only someone large would feel comfortable with this.”

He inspected the top of the mallet, where the wooden handle was secured to a hole in the metal head. “And here are the initials punched with a nail into the metal. J. P. The same as on the original mallet. That mallet also had an imperfection on its striking surface, a zigzag pattern in the metal. May I scrape away some of the hair and dried blood?”

Ryan stared at him for several seconds.

“I’ll do it,” the detective said.

De Quincey showed no reaction when Ryan produced his knife from a scabbard under his right trouser leg.

Ryan gently picked at the hair and blood, taking care not to scratch the metal.

He frowned at what he uncovered. “A pattern like this?”

De Quincey’s blue eyes narrowed intensely.

“Yes. An imperfection that resembles a lightning bolt. Exactly the same. In all probability, this is the mallet that was used in the original killings.”

The kitchen became silent.

De Quincey pointed toward a white cloth on a chair. “What’s this?”

“A smock that the killer used to keep blood from spattering his clothes,” Ryan answered. “I made inquiries. It’s ordinary. No store clerk would remember who purchased it.”

De Quincey held it at arm’s length, studying the blood pattern on it. “Ordinary? No. You might not be able to find a clerk who remembers selling it, but the smock itself has a special purpose. It’s an artist’s smock.”

Now the kitchen seemed colder.

“Murder as a fine art,” Becker murmured.

“These killings were committed less for the pleasure of slaughtering the victims and more for the dramatic way they would be discovered. Forty-three years ago, the Ratcliffe Highway deaths spread a wave of terror throughout the country. But they were amateurish compared to these. Five corpses instead of four. Two children instead of one. An artistic arrangement of bodies. The same murder weapon. What an improvement!”

“Improvement?” Ryan asked in dismay.

“Tomorrow when the newspapers report what happened and the telegraph instantly spreads the news, the killer will receive the artistic satisfaction he craves. Pity and terror. Terror throughout England, even more than forty-three years ago. And as for pity, we’ll receive none from the killer when the next set of murders happens. We need to pity each other and hope that God pities us all.”

“The next set of murders?”

In the front room, Emily screamed.


AS THE SCREAM PERSISTED, Becker charged from the kitchen. Desperate to reach Emily, he raced down the hallway and into the shop, where he froze at what he encountered.

The rapid footsteps of Ryan and De Quincey joined him, those men also halting in astonishment at what they faced.

The door was open. Fog drifted in, hovering around a man whose features had the color and grain of mahogany. He was extremely tall—taller even than Becker. He wore an oddly shaped head cover, gray, that Becker took a moment to remember from a drawing he’d seen in a newspaper. A turban, he thought it was called. Despite the cold night, the newcomer’s only garments were a long, billowy shirt hanging over equally billowy trousers. Of Oriental design, they too were gray. Other than in the Illustrated London News, Becker had never seen anything like them. Apart from diplomats and military personnel stationed in India or other parts of the subcontinent, almost no one in England had ever encountered them.

Emily stood to the side of the shop, lowering her hands from her face. “I’m sorry. The door suddenly opened. When he appeared, I didn’t know what was happening. I’ve never seen…”

“A Malay,” De Quincey said.

“You know this man?” Ryan asked in amazement.

Outside, constables hurried through the fog to form a wall behind the exotic figure.

“It can’t be.” De Quincey kept staring. “After so many years.”

“Then you do recognize him?”

“No.”

Baffled, Ryan turned to the newcomer. “What do you want? How did you get past the constables outside?”

“We heard a shout down the street, like someone being attacked, Inspector,” a policeman said.

“But while they ran to investigate, I stayed,” another policeman said. “I wasn’t twenty feet away. He couldn’t have passed me.”

“Of course he could,” De Quincey said. “He’s a Malay.”

“What do you want?” Ryan repeated to the newcomer.

The only response was a puzzled narrowing of the intruder’s dark eyes.

“What are you doing here?” Ryan insisted.

The man shook his head in confusion.

“I don’t think he understands English,” Becker said.

“The Malay I met many years ago didn’t understand English, either,” De Quincey said.

“Many years ago?” Ryan asked.

“A man who looked like this man once came to my home in the Lake District,” De Quincey explained. “His sudden appearance was astonishing. It was as if he’d arrived from the moon. I tried Latin and Greek, with no effect. When communication failed, he lay down on my kitchen floor and slept. After an hour, he rose abruptly and walked down the road, vanishing into the countryside. The experience was so unreal I had many dreams about him. But that was so long ago, he can’t possibly be the same man.”

“… omas,” the man said.

“What’s he trying to say?” Becker wondered.

“… omas… incey.” The Malay seemed to have memorized words without understanding them.

“Thomas?” the Opium-Eater asked. “De Quincey? Is that what you mean to say?” He pointed toward himself. “Thomas De Quincey?”

The Malay nodded. “… incey.” He reached under his shirt.

Becker quickly stepped forward and grabbed the Malay’s hand, making certain that he wasn’t withdrawing a weapon. Instead what the Malay produced was an envelope.

De Quincey grabbed it and tore it open. As he read the message, his face became pale.

“What is it, Father?” Emily asked.

His hand trembling, De Quincey gave her the piece of paper.

Emily read the message aloud, her voice becoming as unsteady as her father’s hand.


To learn what happened to Ann, to find her, come to Vauxhall Gardens at eleven tomorrow morning.


“Ann?” Ryan asked. “You mentioned that name when we met you returning to your house. Who’s she?”

“My lost youth.”

“What?”

“There is no such thing as forgetting.” Although De Quincey stared at the note in Emily’s hand, his blue eyes seemed to focus on something far away. “When I was seventeen and starving on the streets of London, I fell in love with a streetwalker.”

Ryan and Becker looked amazed by De Quincey’s frankness. They weren’t shocked only by his reference to a prostitute—and in front of his daughter. Almost equally surprising was that he expressed an emotion as personal as love. Candor of this sort, especially in public, was unimaginable.

“I promised to meet Ann at a certain hour on a certain street, but unavoidable circumstances prevented me from being there.”

Haunted, De Quincey pulled out his laudanum flask, taking a long swallow from it.

“When I finally managed to arrive on a later day, Ann wasn’t waiting, and I never saw her again, no matter how many years I spent searching for her. I never would have come to London now if I hadn’t been promised that I’d be told what happened to her.”

“Who promised you this?” Ryan demanded.

“I have no idea, but he also arranged for the rent of the townhouse where Emily and I are staying. I was lured here to be connected with the killings. Am I the murderer’s audience? For certain, he’s been following me.”

“Following you?”

“How else could he have known I was here tonight so that he could send the Malay to deliver the message? And then there’s the matter that he chose a victim who came from Manchester and whose last name was Hayworth.”

“You thought that was important earlier, but you didn’t tell us why,” Becker said.

“I was raised near Manchester. My family home was called Greenhay.”

“Greenhay. Hayworth. It’s a coincidence,” Ryan told him.

“No.”

“You’re seriously suggesting that the killer chose the shop owner as his victim because you both came from Manchester and his name is similar to that of your family home?”

“It’s not a coincidence that these killings occurred a month after my latest publication. Detail by detail, they match what I wrote in the postscript to ‘Murder as a Fine Art.’ To make the association with me more perfect, the killer selected a victim with echoes to me. He connects me with his crimes. God help me, how else does he plan to involve me in his butchery?”