Murder as a Fine Art

by David Morrell

  “I admit to killing no one on Monday night either. But if five or eleven or even hundreds die to save millions from lifelong misery, those casualties are heroes. If you are truly my mother, you can tell me how much you and I and Samuel managed to earn each day, you as a mudlark searching the riverbank for chunks of coal, Samuel and I collecting ashes?”

  “All of us? If we were lucky? Two shillings a day.” Margaret almost reached him.

  “Perhaps fourteen shillings a week. Not even a pound. Not enough to eat properly and live in a room without rats. When I returned from India, I received sixteen hundred pounds from a landowner who wanted to be an officer in the army. Did you know, Mother, that most officers in the military don’t earn their rank? They purchase it from a retiring officer. And this twit landowner was happy to pay me sixteen hundred pounds to take my place as a colonel. Sixteen hundred pounds for being a killer. If you are indeed my mother, you can tell me what I received at the church every Sunday when I went there to learn to read.”

  “A cookie.”

  “Until then, I was lucky to taste the crumbs of a cookie. When I worked for the dustman, collecting ashes from the houses of the rich, I saw things I never dreamed existed. Some homes had eight and ten rooms, any of which was larger than the shack that you and I and Samuel were forced to share. I saw splendid clothing, so new and expensive that I thought I must be dreaming. I saw more food consumed in one day than the three of us managed to find in a week. How many millions in England suffer the way you and I did, Mother? When I look at Lord Palmerston and his wealthy, powerful, arrogant friends, when I see their greed and their indifference to the poor, I feel a rage that it takes all my effort to keep under control.”

  “But you didn’t control it.”

  Margaret reached him.

  Determined to help in every possible way, I remained behind her. A cold shock swept through me as Margaret suddenly raised her fists and struck her son. Too short to reach his face, she directed her blows toward his chest. Right, left, right, left. The solid thumps of the impacts were surprising, given that they came from an elderly woman. In a frenzy, she kept striking him. As her fists hammered, the effort brought such forceful breaths from her mouth that I feared she would collapse.

  Brookline showed no pain, even when she pounded at his wound. Despite the injury that slicked his coat with blood, his only reaction was to stand straighter. His arms at his sides, he merely braced himself and absorbed his mother’s blows.

  I ran to her, desperate to tug her away before Brookline might harm her.

  Instead he grabbed me. With his arm around my throat, I dangled against his chest, struggling to breathe. At once he dropped me to my feet, appearing to demonstrate that he could have easily injured me if he desired.

  Again, I tugged to get Margaret away from him. Becker was suddenly next to me. Seeing that Brookline no longer threatened me, Becker gripped Margaret’s other arm, but despite both our efforts, she continued flailing at her son.

  “I see the heroic constable is here,” Brookline noted. “Maybe you too will one day receive medals, Becker, but I assure you the medals will come faster if you kill people.”

  The old woman kept struggling as we dragged her toward the grocer’s shop.

  “Don’t claim you kill for the wretches who live here!” Margaret screamed. “Tonight you almost murdered them!”

  “If the revolution came, their children would be better for it,” Brookline insisted. “They would thank me.”

  “You’re filth!” Spit flew from Margaret’s lips.

  “Men like Lord Palmerston are the filth. The quicker they and their way of life are exterminated, the sooner this country will be free of suffering.”

  “Colonel,” Father yelled, “thank you for not harming my daughter.”

  Turning, I saw Father emerge from the shop.

  “Who’s there?” Brookline demanded. “The Opium-Eater?”

  Father showed himself in the moonlight. “Despite my gratitude, I’m afraid I must object that you’re not being entirely truthful with us.”

  “You little shit,” Brookline said.

  “I am thin, not little.”

  “Everything is a joke to you. Opium. Violence. It all has the same amusement to you. ‘If once a man indulges in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing,’ ” Brookline quoted with contempt, “ ‘and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin to some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.’ ”

  “You flatter me by quoting my work so accurately.”

  “You are the true filth to which my mother referred. Your praise of opium and violence caused far more deaths than those for which I admit to being responsible.”

  In the distance, the alarm bells of fire wagons filled the night. Father glanced in that direction.

  I followed his gaze. To the east I saw a glow above where I had been told the British East India Company docks were located. Sparks rose from the glow. The wind sped the sparks across the sky, propelling them toward me, like a swarm of fiery insects. But the grotesque fireworks kept fading as they neared me, extinguished by the wind as much as blown by it.

  When I looked again at Father, he was a step closer to Brookline.

  “I assure you, Colonel, that neither opium nor violence amuses me. Every day for the past fifty years, I have regretted the terrible moment when I first swallowed laudanum for my facial pains. As for violence, I write about it compulsively and with apparent humor because it horrifies me. Long ago I stared a mad dog in the face. The terrifying intensity in his eyes above the froth in his mouth so hypnotized me that I was unable to turn away.”

  “You compare me to a mad dog?” Brookline drew a knife.

  “Not at all. A mad dog knows nothing of what it does. You, on the other hand, are extremely aware of what you do, even though you aren’t aware of why you do it.”

  “You don’t make sense. The opium has addled your mind.”

  “To the contrary, it makes my mind clear.”

  In the distance, the alarm bells of the fire wagons gained in number and strength.

  “The sparks are receding,” Father noted. “The crisis is under control. You failed, Colonel, and if I may point out, you are standing in a large pool of blood. Should we send for a surgeon?”

  “I have endured worse injuries.”

  “To your body or to your mind?”

  “My mind? Do you insult me again?”

  When Brookline made a threatening motion toward Father, Becker stepped protectively forward, ready with his truncheon.

  “Constable,” Brookline warned, “even in my compromised condition, do you honestly think that you are a match for me? You might be stronger at the moment, but I have one quality that you lack entirely.”

  “And what would that be?” Becker demanded.

  “The willingness to inflict death without hesitation. Examine your soul. Are you prepared to cause as much damage to me as I am prepared, without pause or regret, to inflict upon you?”

  Becker didn’t reply.

  “You might wish to defend the Opium-Eater, God knows why, or the woman who calls herself my mother, or the Opium-Eater’s daughter,” Brookline said. “But nobility is not sufficient. You do not have the temperament or the training to be the kind of artist that England made me. Ryan already learned that lesson.”

  “Ryan?” Becker asked quickly. “What about him?”

  “His bullet is in me. But he did not have the resolve to finish what he began. I showed him what he lacked.”

  “You showed him what? Where is he?”

  “The last time I saw him, he was sprawled in his blood, devoting his attention to keeping his insides where they belong.”

  “You…!”

  “Becker!” Father shouted as the constable seemed about to attack Brookline. “Th
at’s what he wants! He’s baiting you! Don’t you understand him yet? To kill, he needs a motive he can justify!”

  Becker froze.

  “Very smart,” Brookline said. “The little shit saved your life.”

  “Colonel, the pool of blood at your feet is spreading. Are you sure you do not wish us to send for a surgeon?”

  “I suspect that a surgeon would not be of help.” Brookline wavered.

  “Instead of hanging yourself, as your father did, you choose to commit suicide by bleeding to death?”

  “The consequences of combat are honorable.”

  “Given the amount of blood that you are losing, the two of us do not have much time to arrive at the truth. Why do you flagellate yourself, Colonel?”

  “You dare talk of such things when women are present?”

  “They are about to hear worse. Answer my question. Why do you flagellate yourself?”

  “You are a sneak.”

  “I agree. Invading your bedroom was contemptible. Why do you—”

  “To punish myself for all the people I killed.”

  “Do you punish yourself for killing the former soldier with whom you and your mother lived? Do you punish yourself for attempting to kill your mother?”

  “It was a horrid thing to do. I was a child. I was confused and did not realize what I was doing.”

  “Do you punish yourself for all the people you killed in India because of the opium trade?”

  “I have nightmares about them.”

  “Perhaps a better word is ‘dreams.’ ”

  “Dreams?”

  “Of a particular sort.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “You know the type I mean. Despite our differences, we are both men and understand the consequences of certain dreams. We don’t need to embarrass the ladies by being explicit.”

  I was indeed embarrassed. Disturbingly so. This was a rare instance in which Father’s comments made heat rise to my cheeks.

  “Did you flagellate yourself after you killed those five people on Saturday night?”

  “As penance.”

  “Did you flagellate yourself after you killed those eight people in the tavern on Monday night and the three people in the surgeon’s house?”

  “To atone.”

  “I saw more than bloodstains on the cot in your bedroom.”

  Despite the wind and the bells of fire wagons in the distance, the street became unnaturally silent.

  “My bedroom?” Brookline asked.

  “You flagellate yourself to complete the arousal that killing stimulates in you. The evidence of that arousal was on your cot.”

  Brookline’s bellow so startled me that I took a step backward, as if I were being attacked.

  His roar reverberated toward the constables who waited in a line three shops away on each side of him. His cry of anguish rose to the sky, where the stars and a half moon impassively received it.

  His head was thrown back. His mouth gaped. His arms stretched toward the heavens.

  Slowly, his cry diminished. As he lowered his arms and head, his shoulders heaved with a profound exhale that might have been a sob. One of Father’s books is called Suspiria de Profundis, a sigh from the depths. That was what I heard: the most racking sigh that I imagined could ever come from the depths of a human being.

  Brookline turned away. In a daze, he shuffled along the street, trailing blood.

  Father kept pace with him. “You kill because you enjoy it. Everything else is a lie that an alien part of you repeated until you believed it.”

  The line of constables who waited in that direction stepped toward Brookline as he approached. They prepared to secure him with handcuffs.

  “Shackles are not required,” Father told them. “He doesn’t intend to escape. It’s obvious where he is going. Let him proceed.”

  They parted, allowing him through but staying with him.

  The streetwalkers whose help Father had enlisted emerged from hiding places along the street. Their haggard features and windblown rags reminded me of drawings of banshees.

  “Doris!” Father called. “Melinda! Is this the man who promised you an additional sovereign?”

  “He dressed different and wore a yellowish beard, but he’s the same size, and I’d recognize his voice anywhere,” Doris responded.

  “Colonel, does your concern for the poor extend to paying these kind ladies the additional fee that you promised them for antagonizing me at Vauxhall Gardens?”

  Brookline stumbled on, staring at something far beyond the shadowy street. Margaret and I followed. So did Becker and Commissioner Mayne. So did the constables and the streetwalkers, who kept pace with Brookline.

  Father walked directly behind him.

  “Colonel, what happened to your concern for the poor? If you have any honor, you will keep your promise to these ladies.”

  Staring straight ahead, Brookline fumbled in his coat and pulled out his pockets, dropping coins onto the cobblestones. Their copper, silver, and gold made different metallic sounds as they landed and rolled.

  The streetwalkers raced for the coins, fighting for them.

  With his outturned pockets blown by the wind, Brookline reached a signpost that said Cannon Street. He staggered to the north past dismal buildings that seemed about to collapse. The constables and the rest of us stayed with him.

  “What about Ann?” Father asked. “Do you have information about her?”

  “Who?”

  “Ann! You brought me to London, claiming you had information about her!”

  “For all I know, the slut died from consumption after you abandoned her.”

  “I didn’t abandon her! Tell me! Do you have anything at all to report?”

  “How could a prostitute with consumption have possibly survived? For most of your life, she’s been rotting in a pauper’s grave. You’re a fool.”

  I was close enough to see the emptiness that seized Father’s face. The last vestige of his youth slipped away. His skin shrank around his cheeks. His eyes receded with hopelessness. A moan escaped him—or perhaps it was a sob, rising from the depths of his broken heart.

  A wretched-looking woman stepped from a decaying structure and stared in fear at us. A sickly thin man appeared behind her.

  Speechless, they followed Brookline, seeming to sense what was happening.

  Other pathetic men and women emerged from bleak doorways, frowned at Brookline, and joined the horrid procession.

  Soon dozens of people were with us, then a hundred, then two hundred, their footsteps scraping on the cobblestones.

  Brookline reached a large intersection. A sign on a wall said Cable Street. Abruptly I remembered something that Father had written. Chilled, I understood that Brookline had taken the route by which his father’s body had been brought here forty-three years earlier.

  The procession halted as Brookline wavered toward the middle of the crossroads. The lanterns of the constables illuminated him. He scanned the crowd that filled the intersection, although his faraway gaze made it seem that he couldn’t see us.

  Again he exhaled an immense sigh from his depths.

  He fumbled to pull something from beneath his coat.

  “Stay back!” Becker warned us. “It might be a weapon!”

  Brookline’s knees bent. His tall body didn’t drop as much as it collapsed. He landed face downward on the stones.

  He trembled, then lay still.

  Hushed, the crowd stepped forward, surrounding him at a careful distance.

  “Cannon and Cable streets,” Commissioner Mayne said. “Somewhere under this crossroads, under these paving stones, John Williams is buried.”

  “Not somewhere,” Father told him. “Here. I’m certain Brookline knew the exact spot where his father’s bones rest.”

  “Emily and Margaret, look away.” Becker stooped warily to turn Brookline onto his back.

  But we didn’t turn away. Normal emotions had deserted me. I was so numbed
that I didn’t flinch or feel nauseous when I saw the knife that Brookline had pulled from beneath his coat and slid between his ribs when he landed.

  As when Brookline had wailed toward the sky, his mouth was open in anguish.

  “He was already dying, and yet he felt the compulsion to use the knife. It’s not precisely a stake through his heart,” Father said. “But I imagine Brookline intended it to be the same as what ultimately happened to his father. Margaret, I’m sorry.”