Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  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 n
ot 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.

  Ther
e 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.”