The Fine Art of Murder

by Tony Bulmer

  Again the General snorted derisively, staring past the girl at the painting of Lucretzia Sfarzoso, admiring the cut of her gown, the glow of the golden crucifix hanging low around her neck, seeing once again that the girl in the painting had a soft smile of satisfaction curling at the edges of her mouth.

  The General lay back in bed, naked to the waist, calm, relaxed, contemplating the manners of a far distant age.

  “The footsteps grow louder my Lord!” The girl was clutching the robe to her breast now, with building panic.

  The General lay immobile, when he spoke he spoke quietly, his voice sharp and calm, his words finely and crisply enunciated, “Calm your self mademoiselle, it is only my wife.”

  “Your wife! But we will be discovered! Have you no sense of propriety?”

  “Propriety is not a quality that my wife is familiar with. And, I dear lady, couldn’t give a damn either way.”

  The door handle rattled violently, followed in short order by a fusillade of blows bouncing hard against the wooden exterior.

  The General sniffed, scratched the edge of his jaw lightly and said, “You better let her in, before she gets mad.”

  “But she sounds mad already monsieur General—most inconsolably mad—and who knows how she might vent her passions.”

  “You are quite right—perhaps you should climb out of the window, make your escape across the roof.”

  “Surely you jest. I would most certainly fall to my death—what a horrible shameful fate that would be.”

  “I think, perhaps Mademoiselle, that your understanding of horror and shame are limited by your closeted and rather bourgeois existence to date.”

  “How dare you talk to me so?”

  General Bonaparte leapt out of bed, as though propelled by a cannon. He grasped Elisabeth de Vaudey roughly by the shoulder and sent her spinning to the floor. She shrieked in protest and tried to scrabble under the bed, still clutching the robe to her breast, sadly oblivious, as she scuttled on her hands and knees that her curvaceous rear-end was protruding upwards, naked and vulnerable.

  Striding purposefully to the door, General Bonaparte unlocked and threw it wide, and there he stood, hands on hips, towering in the doorway like a Pharaoh’s curse.

  THE FINE ART OF MURDER 28

  Joséphine Bonaparte roared past her husband, like a savage whirlwind, her face flush with a passion so furious it bordered on mania.

  “Where is the little whore—I know she is here!”

  Elisabeth de Vaudey let out an involuntary shriek of fear, from her poorly concealed hiding place, a mistimed reaction that served only to draw the furious ire of her lover’s wife.

  Joséphine raged across the room, her eyes wild with vengeful fury. There was no time to absorb the adulterous scene, the passion in her veins was too powerful to allow rational thought—she raced to the large baroque dresser that languished darkly beneath the painting of Lucretzia Sfarzoso and snatched up the blue vase china vase that stood there. Without hesitation, Joséphine swung the vase high above her head and threw it with all the power she could muster—it sailed through the air, with the grace of a Venetian acrobat, heading directly for the hunched figure of Mlle de Vaudey, as she cowered beside the mattress, her fingers clutching fearfully at the soiled bed sheets. The vase impacted the floor next to the girl with impressive force. The wafer thin porcelain exploded, cutting the air like shrapnel.

  Elisabeth de Vaudey let out a hysterical shriek and rose, panic stricken and naked to her feet. Dancing over the shards of broken porcelain, she made a break for the door. It was a gambit doomed to failure, almost as soon as it had been made, for Joséphine Bonaparte, was a woman with a keen eye and ready ability for conflict, she also possessed a fearsome ability for brawling, acquired in the Carmes prison, during the years of Robespierre’s terror. And as young Mme de Vaudey attempted to bolt for freedom down the narrow staircase, Joséphine dived forwards, grabbing the young woman firmly by the hair, and raking at her face with sharp, viciously pointed nails.

  The women fell to the floor in an unseemly tangle, spitting and squawking, and clawing and raging, rolling over and over on the hard polished floorboards, as the object of their affections towered over them, his expression silent, unforgiving.

  The vicious bedroom conflict could only end with one victor. Madame Bonaparte had the advantage of age, experience and a well-boned constitution to her advantage, attributes that the petite charms of Mlle de Vaudey just could not match, and in the short brutal minutes that followed Joséphine Bonaparte quickly had the upper hand. Joséphine sat heavily on her rival, pinning her to the floor, using her knees to hold her prey down she, clutched at the girls neck with murderous fingers.

  The girl choked and gasped for breath. Black tears of fear washing over her cheeks, as pathetic gurgling notes of supplication jerked from her darkening lips. Joséphine tightened her grip, causing Mme de Vaudey to clutch her attackers wrists, with feeble fingers, in a desperate bid to allay the ever tightening pressure, that was slowly, every so slowly, absolving her of life.

  All the while, the General stood silent, hands on hips absorbing the scene. He had killed many men in his career—seen them writhe and kick and cough blood as they struggled through their final desperate seconds of life. He had seen men killed too, many, many men, often in desperate, gruesome and unspeakable circumstances, but he had never seen a woman kill another woman before. The scene held a certain unsavory fascination, like a carnival novelty act, bizarre and unintentionally comedic. The General was not given to displays of merriment, but if there was ever a moment that warranted laughter, this was it. As he watched his wife strangle the life out of young mademoiselle de Vaudey, he wondered idly, how his spoiled little socialite would feel after she had made her first kill—indubitably it would be her first kill, unless she had been keeping secrets even darker than her sordid love life… Would she be consumed by guilt, or perhaps the illicit rush of sin would appeal to her, perhaps she would find pleasure in the act of murder and seek to repeat the experience? Madame Joséphine was a woman of easy addictions after all. The alternative—his wife would be totally, utterly, and quite thoroughly destroyed by the experience. Now that thought the General was an idea that appealed to him.

  General Bonaparte twisted his lips thoughtfully. He would have to live with the psychological consequences of his wife’s guilt of course—would such a burden be worthwhile? Perhaps the gift of murder was too cruel a punishment for his wife’s infidelities? Perhaps murder would destroy her so completely, that he too would be consumed by the burden of her crime? The General moved towards the bed with light, surefooted steps and took up his sword. He pulled the glistening saber from its sheath, in a fast fluid motion. “Unhand her Joséphine, the girl draws close to death.”

  Joséphine looked up at the General now, her eyes wide with unleashed passion, “you think that I care—you think I care about anything anymore?”

  “You will care about whatever I tell you madam and like it!” growled the General menacingly. “Now take your hands away from the girl’s throat, or I will cut you.”

  “You would protect the life of this hussy above that of your wife? Then you most love her and if you love her, what kind of life is left for me to live?”

  The General moved forward with quick steps and delivered Joséphine a kick to the shoulder that sent her sprawling. Mlle de Vaudey, released from her attackers merciless clutches, withed and choked and coughed as she took in great gasps of life giving air.

  Joséphine edged backwards across the bedroom floor, her posterior polishing the floorboards as she went, “How could you screw this jezebel in our marital bed…have you no sense of propriety whatsoever?”

  The General sniffed, and waved the point of his sword carelessly in his wife’s direction, the keen and merciless edge of the blade glittered cold in the afternoon light, as it cut into the dead air that hung between them.

  “My dear Joséphine, I find your objections to this meaningless assi
gnation somewhat puzzling, given your own infidelities.” The General squeezed out a tight smile, “Tell me my dear, when you were carrying on with your lovers during my absence, did you use this very room for your unchaste liaisons? Or perhaps some other love nest?”

  “You have no right to speak to me in such a disrespectful manner,” sulked Joséphine.

  The General nodded, his black eyes hooded with contempt. “I can understand why you would want to hook your loins around that insufferable little lothario Hippolyte Charles, the uniform of the Hussars is a very fetching one after all, but Vicomte de Barras—you surprise me madam, I thought you had left such aspirational liaisons in the past, or perhaps you are hedging your bets?”

  Joséphine gave her husband a poisonous stare, “What about you, dear husband, and your Egyptian whore, did you think I would not hear about that?”

  The General advanced slowly, making experimental cuts in the air with his saber as though swatting invisible flies. As he reached the centre of the room he paused momentarily, took a look at mademoiselle de Vaudey who’s choking had subsided somewhat. She caught his gaze, and let out a frightened whimper, like a puppy who has been cruelly treated. The General pursed his lips, and pointed towards the door with his sword, “Get out,” he said.

  Mlle de Vaudey needed no further bidding, no sooner had the General issued his command, than she scrabbled forwards across the floor, with all possible haste, gathering up whatever items of clothing she could salvage on the way. She rapidly disappeared out of the half open door without a single word of farewell. The General gave a derisive snort and turned back to his wife, who had used the distraction as an opportunity to slink back further, away from her husband’s sword. At last, her retreat found the wall at her back and slowly she edged to her feet, her eyes hot with contempt.

  “Pauline Fourès, everyone knows her name, even those dogs in the British Press are laughing at you, they call your mistress the new Cleopatra—the wife of a junior officer no less—how shameful for you my dear husband, that you should be reduced to seeking favors from the wives of common soldiers.”

  “Being married to you madam means I am no stranger to shame—it would seem that you revel in disgrace. I have given you everything: wealth, fame, social position, and my undying love, what more could I have given you madam?”

  “Perhaps you could have graced our marriage with your presence. Did you think I would spend those long, unfulfilling years of absence wringing my hands with chaste despair?”

  “Think of your duty to your husband madam. If you had showed as much dedication to me as you have done to your public whoring, none of these problems would be upon us.” General Bonaparte drew closer now, the point of his sword circling his wife’s heart.

  “I gave you everything damn you,” hissed Joséphine. “I gave you respectability, when everyone you knew had you marked as a maverick outsider; I sang your praises in the places that mattered, you think your ascendancy is down to chance, monsieur General, I ask you what more could I have given you?”

  “A child! An heir! But we both know that can never happen. Do you think I would have married you if I had known of your barren womb?”

  “You vicious bastard, you married me for position. You married me because you thought I had wealth, what kind of man does that make you?

  “A man of ambition my dear.”

  “To hell with you and your ambition.”

  The General smiled, He stuck the sharpened point of his sword into his wife’s shoulder until a thin trickle of blood ran over the blade and down over her porcelain skin. Her face twisted in pain but she refused to cry out. She drew a sharp breath, turned her head away from her tormentor, as the pain of the cold steel flooded through her.

  THE FINE ART OF MURDER 29

  Pinned hard against the wall of their bedroom, General Bonaparte held his wife on the point of his sword. How had it come to this—a marriage of such hope and promise? The thought gave him pause, as the faint, desperate hope of reconciliation, collided with the incontrovertible reality that he had gone far beyond the point where the fleeting happiness of the past could be salvaged.

  “Kill me, whispered Joséphine, her tone derisive. “If you have the guts kill me, and if you haven’t got the guts, kill yourself, because if you don’t you will know for every waking second of your pathetic life that Napoleon Bonaparte, the great hero of the French people was nothing more than an abject failure as a husband and a human being.”

  The General pulled the blade out of his wife’s shoulder, slapped her lightly on the cheek with the flat edge of the sword, staining her face with blood. “You think I wouldn’t kill you?” he said in a dead voice. “You think for a moment you wouldn’t be dead already if it suited my purposes Madame?”

  Joséphine swallowed, stared into the dead black eyes of the man who was her husband, knowing that the words he spoke were the truth. She felt fear rising above the anger now. Her shoulder ached, a horrible dead metallic pain that surged through every synapse in her body. There was no refuge from her husband’s cruelty she could see that now. She had made a miscalculation, a horrible, horrible miscalculation and now she was at the mercy of a man of death—a man who excelled in the cold art of retribution.

  She did not cry out, despite the pain in her tortured shoulder—despite knowing that her life had been irrevocably damaged, beyond the cut of husband’s sword. She did not stare into her wounded shoulder either, although her eyes longed to see the wound. Pride, and an inner strength, that welled up from deep within, gave her the power she needed to overcome the moment. Instinctively Joséphine knew that if she showed any sign of weakness her husband would vanquish her completely.

  She reached out, brushing aside her husband’s sword with the back of her hand.

  His black eyes cut into her.

  She stared at him, unblinking, knowing that the power of her words was burning into him, eating away at his corrupt and depraved soul, causing him to grow weaker by the second. She watched the point of the raised sword, quiver, then bow. She allowed a twitch of contempt to pass fleetingly across her lips. All at once the sword snapped back to her throat, a fresh passion ignited in the eyes of her husband. She pressed her hands back against the wall in a sign of supplication then edged sideways.

  As she inched away, the deadly point of the sword circled, menacingly over her face and neck. Joséphine struggled to suppress the building panic as it raged through her veins, but she was powerless in its grasp. As the fear and helplessness powered up through her body, she found herself unable to catch her breath. Her pulse raced out of control. She tried to suppress the terror, but it was no use, hot nauseating waves of fear, crashed through her head until she felt as though she must surely faint.

  The General lunged with the sword, a savage cut so close to her face she could feel the pain of the air as it whistled past. Her fingers edged slowly, fearfully along the wall in the vain hope she might pull herself from this mad scenario, like a dreamer reaching for the safety of a morning that would never come.

  Again the blade passed by her face and again and again. On the final pass the hard sharp edge of the blade cut deep into the baroque dresser that stood against the wall. She saw with horror how deeply the blade sank into the wood, the hard, dark flesh riven open by the brutal impact.

  Perhaps he was going to kill her after all. In a world driven wrong by graft and the pitiless scourge of revolutionary fervor, who would think to ask about her fate? If General Napoleon Bonaparte, First Consul of the Republic of France could murder his own wife, who would dare stand against him and call him a murderer?

  Joséphine edged further sideways, holding ready for any chance of freedom she could snatch, but her husband kept her corralled with busy cuts of the sword, forcing her first one way, then the other, as if undecided as to how he might finish her. Then, as she edged once more to the bedroom door, she saw her husbands black eyes dance away from her for a fleeting moment, glancing instead at something on the wall behi
nd her—the painting, of course the painting. She reached out quickly, her fingers skating across the wall behind her, and making contact with the hard gilded edge of the decorative picture frame. She hooked her fingers under the edge of the painting, and wrenched it free of the wall, in a deft, fluid motion. The frame cut through the air and caught her husband hard on the side of the head, causing him to drop his guard and stagger sideways towards the bedroom door.

  Now, as vile curses roiled from his lips he blocked her only escape route. He dabbed at his wounded head then examined his tremulous fingers, so that he might see whether the impact had drawn blood.

  Joséphine’s eyes danced forwards quickly, towards the floor. The painting lay face down on the rug. She snatched it up without hesitation, and held it before her, like a shield.

  He didn’t need to say anything—she could tell by his eyes he was suddenly afraid. Not afraid of his brutish actions, afraid rather, that the precious painting of the Italian whore he had stolen from the Doge of Venice might be damaged in some way.

  “You care more about this wretched painting than you do about me, don’t you?” shouted Joséphine.

  “Put it down, that painting is three hundred years old,” snapped the General, his voice heavy with menace.

  Joséphine circled across the room, “You want it, get on your knees and beg me for it,”

  “I am damned if I will,” roared the General. “You will place the painting gently on the bed and step away from it at once, Madame.”

  “Your demands make me fearful sir,” taunted Joséphine. “Perhaps I will drop your precious painting on the floor—who knows what will happen to it then?”

  “Should you do such a thing, you will face consequences too horrible to contemplate.”

  “What will you do husband, draw blood from my fragile body once again?”