Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  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.”

  12

  The Education of an Artist

  THE ARTIST OF DEATH locked his bedroom door and placed crumpled newspapers on the floor. Anyone who improbably gained access to the room would brush against those papers. The noise would prompt the artist to roll from his cot while drawing a knife from a sheath strapped to his arm.

  The cot was identical to one he had used in India. After enduring his nightly penance, he lay on the cot and hoped that he would not suffer his usual nightmares. Although the bedroom had a fireplace, he never burned anything in it, wanting winter’s chill to be another penance, just as he never opened windows during summer’s sultry nights, refusing to allow a breeze to cool his sweat.

  India’s mountains had been bitterly, bone-achingly cold, while its lowlands had been oppressively, smotheringly hot.

  Twenty years of cold and heat.

  Of death.

  Of the British East India Company.

  “Two hundred years it’s been here,” a sergeant had told the artist’s unit when they arrived in Calcutta in 1830. “The British East India Company claims its profit comes from shipping tea, silk, and spices back home. And the niter that’s the main ingredient in saltpeter. Can’t have an empire without saltpeter. You!” The sergeant challenged one of the new arrivals. “What’s it used for?”

  “My mother used it for pickling, Sergeant.”

  “You idiot, pickles don’t make an empire great. Saltpeter along with sulfur and powdered charcoal gives you what?”

  “Gunpowder, Sergeant,” the artist of death volunteered, standing at attention under the furnace of the sun.

  He was eighteen. He had been in the army from when, as a tall twelve-year-old, he had walked into a London enlistment center and claimed to be
fourteen. That had made him eligible for what was called boy service, first as a courier and later as a hospital helper. He preferred the hospital because while he hurried bandages to male nurses or took away slop pails, he had the chance to study the pain of injured soldiers. At the age of seventeen, he had officially become part of the regiment, but the daily routine of marches and maintenance had bored him after the fascination of the agony he saw in the hospital. Because enlistment was for a minimum of twenty-one years, the only way the artist could leave the army was by deserting, but given that the police were already looking for him, he didn’t see any point in having the army search for him also. When news spread that the regiment was sailing to India, the artist pretended to share the concern of others about yellow fever and murderous natives, but in truth the prospects made him feel overjoyed.

  “Gunpowder. Yes. Very good, laddie.” The sergeant looked at the artist of death as if he meant the compliment. His sun-browned and -creased face suggested that the sergeant had been in India forever. The cynical tone with which he delivered the briefing implied that he’d given it more times than he cared to recall.

  “Gunpowder,” the sergeant emphasized. “The empire can’t very well carry on its wars unless it has saltpeter to make gunpowder, right? And India has the greatest reserves of saltpeter ingredients on the planet.”

  The sun was so fierce that as the artist of death stood at attention with the other arrivals, he stopped sweating. His vision paled. Spots wavered before his eyes.

  “But saltpeter, tea, silk, and spices aren’t why we’re here to help the British East India Company do business, laddies. The reason we’re here is this little beauty.”

  The sergeant held up a pale bulb. “This is the head of a poppy plant.”

  He used a knife to cut the bulb. “And this white fluid seeping out is called opium. It dries to a brown color. When it’s powdered, you can smoke it, eat it, drink it, or inhale it to make you think you’re in the clouds. I don’t doubt one day somebody’ll figure out how to stick it directly into your veins. But if you value your life, do not—I repeat do not—ever—use this stuff. Not because it can kill you if you take too much, and too much is only a little. No, if I catch you using this devil, I’ll be the one who kills you. I can’t depend on someone whose mind drifts into the clouds. The natives hate us. If they get the chance, they’ll turn against us. When the shooting starts, I want to know that the men I’m fighting with are focused on their business and not on swirling dervishes. Do I make myself clear? You! What did I just say?”