She stretched her arms over her head and splayed her naked form before me. “Am I not inspiration enough for your poet’s soul?”
“Of course you aren’t,” I said. “My flesh yearns for you, but my mind needs to get twisted.” I placed the drugged sugar cube upon a slotted silver spoon and balanced the spoon over the rim of one of the glasses. I had a decanter of cool, fresh water, and I let it trickle over the cube so that the sugar and laudanum slowly dissolved and mixed with the absinthe.
This ritual, sacred to a certain, discerning sort of drunk, is called la louche. The water turns the emerald liqueur a pale, milky color, and it is said, as well, to release the mystical properties of the star anise and wormwood from which the absinthe is brewed. If one wishes merely to get drunk, absinthe served neat will oblige; its alcoholic content is nearly twice that of most other spirits. But absinthe, properly louched, is a different kind of experience. It fucks with your soul. Especially when you mix it with laudanum.
“Drink this, and you’ll understand,” I said as I gave her the glass.
“You are a wicked and dangerous man, if I may say so, Lord Byron, and I fear your influence will bring me unto ruin.”
“Ruin comes whether we court it or whether we cower,” I said. “We must sin while we can so that when ruin finds us, we deserve it.” In my head, Mad Jack’s voice: Mortality is only for the foolish and the poor.
I mixed a second glass, and we sat naked in the near dark, holding our green sacraments, staring at each other.
“To ruin, then, Lord Byron,” Noreen said, and we partook. Then I kissed her. She tasted of sugar and of the anise in the absinthe; like licorice candy. Her lips quivered with some fevered urgency as she pressed them against mine. Her heart fluttered beneath my caressing hand. That much is clear in my memory, though the rest slips into haze.
Rationality, I think, is the enemy of romance. It grounds one in one’s flesh and anchors one to the earth. This sad condition is inevitably fatal, and its devastating effects can be delayed only by the regular consumption of powerful intoxicants. I know writers who never partake; who put pen to paper in a state of stony sobriety. They’re terrible. Banal.
Whatever would happen afterward, my dim and shifting memories of that night assure me that what transpired between us was transcendent; the kind of awed experience that language can merely describe, but can’t fully communicate.
In that flickering lamplight with Noreen, I forgot about the murders and about my debts. I forgot my academic troubles and my clubfoot. I forgot about Olivia and about Sedgewyck and even about Violet. We tangled and disentangled, we merged and separated. Flowers bloomed from the wall and exploded into clouds of butterflies. But our idyll could not be prolonged: our elegiac now turned into a grim later; the echoes of Mad Jack’s voice grew louder, until his fury was like thunder; a storm raging inside my skull: Disappointment. Deformed. Vrykolakas. Ought to drown you in the river.
Menacing shadows undulated just beyond the reach of the lamplight, and one of them took corporeal form and lunged at us.
I think I remember Noreen screaming, and I remember scrambling amongst the tangled sheets, my hands seeming to belong to some other person as they searched for my pistol. I remember kicking out at some unseen assailant with my desiccated right foot, and failing to find purchase. But my hands found what they sought, and I brandished the sidearm. I remember taking aim, squeezing. The gunshot reverberating. A sound like galloping hooves.
The room flashed white, and time slowed until everything hung still, a macabre tableau. The woman, pale and petrified with fear, and insensible from drugs. The monster looming. And between them, the poet, gnashing his teeth and firing his gun. The dull gray ball hung, spinning in midair, floated lazily past its target, and melted away. And then the frozen enemy became liquid, and moved with preternatural speed. My weapon was discharged and spent, and the thing was upon me.
Its face was blurry, and its form seemed to stretch and melt away as I swung my fists at it. For a moment, I was sure it bore my father’s visage, but then the features distorted again and the attacker became unrecognizable to me.
Another pistol was somewhere nearby, but I couldn’t remember where. I had a knife, but it was on the floor with Noreen’s undergarments. So very, very far away. And the Professor was locked in his study. I could hear him bellowing and scratching at his door, but he couldn’t help me.
My mind wasn’t working, and the room had lost all sense of proportion. The nightmare engulfed me. I punched at it, but my arms seemed feeble, and its body was like stone. Something like a brick hit the back of my head, and I stopped resisting. My fingers wriggled, but they were limp and boneless; unable to grip. I could manage no further retaliation. Strong hands clamped around my neck, and I awaited the bite, but instead, the thing took hold of my head and covered my nose and mouth. I realized I was to be smothered like Violet Tower, and when I attempted to take air, a stink like that of some strong liquor filled my nostrils. I tried to open my mouth, but the thing held it shut. I couldn’t get loose from the monster’s grip and I couldn’t escape the chemical scent.
I realized then that I’d forgotten to scream. Joe Murray might have heard the gunshot, but I’d drunkenly discharged pistols before in my rooms on several occasions. He would ignore the sound. I looked over at the girl and saw her pale, stunned, rubbing with druggy confusion at her eyes. I wanted to tell her to shout for help, but I couldn’t speak.
Great waves of darkness surged around me, and I plunged into them.
As I fell, I could feel the vrykolakas all around me, long needle-fangs clacking together and leathery bat-wings beating in the darkness. I looked for Mad Jack among them, but I could not find him. He had abandoned me.
Chapter 29
The freshness of the face, and the wetness of the lip with blood, are the never-failing signs of a Vampire. The stories told in Hungary and Greece of these foul feeders are singular, and some of them most incredibly attested.
—Lord Byron, from a footnote to The Giaour
My mind condensed from its evaporated state a few minutes before I managed to lift my eyelids. My mouth was cracked and arid, and the thick ruin of my tongue was stuck to the inside of my cheek. The bedsheet was tangled around my legs, but I felt unforgiving hardwood against my chest and stiffness in my neck, and guessed I’d spent most of the night on the floor. Blood throbbed in my temples. Beneath my face was something metal that stank of burnt powder: the pistol. The air was heavy and tasted like copper. I summoned all my strength and lifted my swollen, preposterous head. It wobbled upon its narrow stalk, and I let it slide back to the floor. I pressed a hand against the back of my skull to stop the room from spinning. My fingers came away sticky. I peeled my eyes open, and I was staring at a cheap pair of men’s shoes with fat ankles sticking out of them.
“Lord Byron,” said Fielding Dingle, “I am placing you under arrest for the murders of Felicity Whippleby, Cyrus Pendleton, Jerome and Violet Tower, their two minor children, Leif Sedgewyck, and Noreen Lime.”
“Sedgewyck’s not dead,” I said, sitting up and leaning against the bed. “He left town.”
“He did not. He was all over the street in front of the Modest Proposal. He left in a stagecoach after your fight, but somebody brought him back in a couple of burlap bags.”
Dingle reached up into the pile of shredded flesh and meat that had been Noreen, and found a man’s severed hand among the slimy coils of her unraveled guts. The thing was gray-white like the belly of a day-old fish, but the skin and fat had been flayed off the fourth finger, so that a familiar betrothal ring could be jammed down onto it.
“Somebody left a bit of him here as well,” he added, holding the foul thing close to my face. “Mr. Sedgewyck, as you know, planned to propose marriage to Olivia Wright. I spoke to her, and she told me of your objection to their union.”
“Yes,” I said. “Sedgewyck intended to forsake his betrothed, Felicity Whippleby, to marry Olivia.”
“They also saw him return to the tavern after I left.”
“Your whereabouts during the hours after the fight cannot be verified.”
“I was here, making love to Noreen.”
“That would be a convenient alibi, if only she were able to confirm it.”
I could not even recognize her face in the mess that had been made of her; the vampire had bashed her head to mush with something heavy. Some part of me believed I’d seen my father in the opium haze of the previous night. Some part hoped to Christ I hadn’t. And some part knew that Mad Jack could not have been the killer, because he was dead and buried in a pauper’s grave, somewhere in France.
In fact, some part of me knew that my belief that Mad Jack might be involved meant that I was crazy. And if I was crazy, I myself might have committed the murders. My recent habits had not been conducive to clear-mindedness or reliable recollection. I’d starved my body of food, deprived it of sleep, and filled it with drugs and liquor. I had no illusions that my grasp upon reality was anything other than tenuous. This had always been my intent, for reality was something I viewed with a measure of disdain. But it was possible that my purifying regimen had dredged up something ugly from some deep, primordial place within me.
“I have learned the Towers had a second servant girl, a maid who survived the attack on their home,” Dingle continued. “Were you aware of this fact?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“The girl has two young brothers in Wales, and she sends funds for their support. To earn their keep, she cleans for the Towers in the daytime and prostitutes herself at night.”
“Oh yes. I know that one,” I said, and my still-foggy brain forgot the grimness of the current situation long enough for me to smile at my recollection of the girl’s thighs.
“She knows you as well. She saw you coming and going from the Tower residence on multiple occasions. Why did you conceal your adultery with Violet Tower from me and Mr. Knifing?”
“I saw no need to share that private fact with you or anyone else.”
“Surely you’re aware that it seems pertinent in light of recent events?” Dingle gestured toward the remains of Noreen.
I didn’t know what to say, which was fine, since Knifing chose that moment to enter the room. He marched up to me and grabbed my face with his hands. He pinched my eyelid between his thumb and forefinger and stretched it open. Then he leaned close, as if to kiss me or to bite my throat. Instead, he sniffed at my lips.
“Ether,” he said. Then, to Dingle: “Someone drugged Byron. His servant, too.”
“What of it?” said Dingle. “Byron probably dosed himself on that foul stuff. He consumes every other manner of intoxicant.”
The laudanum and the absinthe were still sitting on the bedside table, and everyone was clearly aware of them. I wanted some of the laudanum, and I wondered if it was polite to offer it to my guests in these circumstances.
Instead, I asked: “Has Joe Murray been harmed?”
“He’ll recover,” said Knifing. He walked over to the bedroom window and examined it. “Dingle, this has been forced open from without.”
“This murder occurred inside a fourth-floor apartment,” said Dingle. “Is it your hypothesis that the killer flew in here?”
I thought of an inscription from one of my books; an image of the vrykolakas climbing the sheer wall of a castle, like a spider. I remembered certain legends that said the vampire could turn its body into mist and pass through the cracks beneath doors.
But I had to concede, a degenerate poet in a drug-frenzy seemed a likelier suspect.
“A man in good physical condition could scale the side of this building. The window-ledges are wide enough to stand upon, and the spaces between the bricks would serve as adequate handholds. I believe the killer gained access to Felicity Whippleby’s residence in precisely such a manner.” Knifing walked over to my bedroom window and threw it open. “Here upon the sill, there is a notch; a groove in the wood. I found similar damage to the window-frame at Felicity Whippleby’s rooming house. This sort of damage is consistent with someone lowering a large chamberpot or a similar vessel out of the window on the end of a rope; it’s how the killer took the blood.”
“So?” Dingle asked, his face blank and uncomprehending.
“So, the killer left this place via the window. Unlike Lord Byron, who, of course, is still here. Surely you’ve noticed that Noreen Lime was drained of blood. Where do you suppose that went?”
“Byron could have taken the blood someplace and returned after he’d got rid of it,” Dingle said.
“So you contend Byron killed the girl, drained her corpse, and lowered the blood out of his own window. Then he took the blood someplace and disposed of it, but left the disemboweled corpse in his bed. And afterward, he returned here, drugged himself with ether, hit himself over the head, and passed out on the floor. How does that make sense to you, Mr. Dingle?”
Dingle didn’t seem to like what Knifing was implying. “I do not concern myself with trying to find sense in the conduct of madmen. Nor do I see any purpose to these deductive exercises you seem to enjoy so much. In my experience, when an investigator finds a practitioner of witchcraft in bed with a victim of a ritual murder, the difficult work is mostly done.”
“Have you ever found a practitioner of witchcraft in bed with a victim of ritual murder before?” Knifing asked.
“Not as such.”
“Then you have no experience to speak of, do you?”
“I don’t practice witchcraft,” I said.
“You have a cup made from a human skull,” Dingle said.
“What of it?” I asked. “You’ve got folds of loose flesh around your neck, but that doesn’t make you a turkey.”
He leapt at me like an obese jungle cat, with his fat fingers clawed to scratch me, or something. But he was very slow, and even with my head still foggy, I was easily nimble enough to step to his side. As he propelled himself past me, I gently tapped his head with my fist. He toppled sideways, tripped over the end of the bed, and landed facedown in Noreen’s uncoiled entrails, which broke open like overcooked sausages and filled the room with a horrific stink.
“Constable!” Dingle shouted as he floundered wetly in the remains of my paramour. Angus stepped into the room and looked with disapproval at Dingle, who was trying to climb up off the bed, making the mess there somewhat worse.
“Take Lord Byron into custody,” Dingle ordered. “If he resists, you may use deadly force.”
Angus didn’t do anything; he was waiting for direction from Knifing.
“Fielding, if you have any respect for me, as an investigator or as a colleague, I think you should delay your decision to arrest Lord Byron,” Knifing said. “There are too many facts that don’t fit neatly into the picture. We cannot, for example, place Byron at the scene of any of the murders at the times they were committed, and Byron was hosting a party in his residence, among two dozen witnesses, at the time Cyrus Pendleton was most likely killed.”
“Such esoteric points will hardly hold a court’s attention once I have shared the grisly details of these slayings.”
Some tiny change in Knifing’s features, the deepening of some crease or a slight twitch of an eyebrow, was the only demonstration of his boundless contempt for Dingle. “Recognition of esoteric points and their significance is instrumental to the craft of criminal investigation,” he said. “Any lay observer or volunteer watchman can document grisly details.”
The casual insult seemed to deflate Angus, but Dingle was uninterested in lectures, and did not seem to perceive the menace beneath Knifing’s gentle tone. “Will you throw public doubt upon my case?”
“Doing so would harm both our reputations,” Knifing said.
“You have more to lose than I.” Dingle seemed to real
ize, with some surprise, that he had the upper hand in this negotiation. He blinked with dumb astonishment.
“If you charge Lord Byron with the killings, I will not dispute your conclusions,” Knifing said. “But I will not testify in support of them either. If you do this, you will do it alone. I’ll have no part in such folly.”
“If he is convicted, I’ll have a place among the eminences of the field,” Dingle said.
“Once I am acquitted, I’ll see that you are stripped of your assets and your credibility, and that you die destitute and reviled,” I told him.
“Perhaps you shall,” said Fielding Dingle. “But first, you will wear shackles.”
Chapter 30
All earth was but one thought—and that was death,
Immediate and inglorious; and the pang
Of famine fed upon all entrails—men
Died, and their bones were tombless as their flesh;
The meagre by the meagre were devour’d
—Lord Byron, “Darkness”
Two secure carriages were parked on the thoroughfare in front of the Great Gate to the Great Court. Joe Murray had hired one of them to carry the Professor home to Newstead, where his calm demeanor and steadfast resolve would make him a fine companion for my mother during the difficult months that were surely ahead of us as I faced trial for murder.
Fielding Dingle had procured the second from a gentleman several towns over who was an acquaintance of Angus the Constable; a prison carriage, specially built for use in transporting criminals to remote courts to stand trial. It was a solid box constructed from thick planks of lumber, with only narrow slits near the roof to let in a little light and even less air. It was quite unlike other stagecoaches I’d hired, which usually had big open windows that offered riders access to cooling zephyrs and fine views of the countryside.
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