It is really wonderful and most interesting to pursue the successive steps of this monster, and to notice the absolute certainty with which the silent hieroglyphics of the case betray to us the whole process and movements of the bloody drama . . .
Postscript to On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts, Thomas de Quincey, 1853
Contents
ONE
TWO
THREE
FOUR
FIVE
SIX
SEVEN
EIGHT
NINE
TEN
ELEVEN
TWELVE
THIRTEEN
FOURTEEN
FIFTEEN
SIXTEEN
SEVENTEEN
EIGHTEEN
NINETEEN
TWENTY
TWENTY-ONE
TWENTY-TWO
TWENTY-THREE
TWENTY-FOUR
TWENTY-FIVE
TWENTY-SIX
TWENTY-SEVEN
TWENTY-EIGHT
TWENTY-NINE
THIRTY
ONE
Toll-collector Weeton stopped breathing and listened. His finger paused upon a sentence in the book before him. Had he heard the faintest clink of metal on stone?
He looked out through the window of the toll-house, but there was little to see. The broad span of Waterloo-bridge vanished into a swirling nimbus of yellow fog that quite swallowed it after just three lamps: a causeway into nothingness, sepulchral in its silence at that pre-dawn hour.
He exhaled. The sound must have been a chain echoing up from one of the yawning arches beneath. His finger resumed its dry whisper across the page, and he hoped against another suicide on his duty. Fog usually dissuaded the hopeless and unfortunate, for while it was fearful enough to leap into the dark waters, it was surely worse still to plunge blindly into embracing vapour.
The wall clock ticked its hollow wooden seconds as he read. The gaslamps hissed softly. The pages of the book turned.
Then the scream.
Short and sudden, it might have been a gull but for the single outraged note of horror that made it undoubtedly human: a scream of violent death.
Weeton folded the corner of the page with shaking hand and, taking his hat from its hook, stepped from the warmth of the toll-house out onto the bridge.
Cold, moist air settled immediately upon his skin as he inhaled the smoky night. He looked towards the Surrey side, but faced only that impenetrable density of riverine breath. All was silent again.
‘Hello there!’ he cried. ‘Is anyone out there? I am the toll-collector.’
His voice seemed a feeble thing – fragile and insignificant.
‘I say! Does anybody need help?’
Fog shifted lazily, suffocating the gaslamps with its sickly hue. Opacity swelled, revealing less, then more.
Then . . . was that a figure? A human form?
He strained to see. There had been legs, a head, perhaps an angular upraised elbow. Then nothing. And the figure had been moving oddly, jerkily – not exactly running, but animated in that manner reminiscent of a dog struck mortally by a cart and attempting an escape on shattered legs.
Coldness had now soaked through the toll-collector’s coat. The silence of the empty bridge was replaced by the thudding of blood in his ears.
‘I . . . I say! Is there anybody . . . ?’
A figure emerged from the body of the fog: stumbling, staggering, half falling. A man. His face was directed to the heavens, appearing to cry soundlessly with a gaping mouth. Both hands were about his throat.
Weeton stood immobile.
The figure, however, seemed insensible to the toll-collector before him and continued his hectic momentum until, finally, he sagged to his knees and toppled right there at the tollhouse door, rolling onto his back with a depleted groan.
Blood jumped from the fleshy wound at his neck. His hands were red with it. His shirt was blotched with it.
‘My G—! My G—!’ muttered Weeton, kneeling in compacted dung beside the fallen man. ‘What happened, sir? Did you see your attacker? Is he still on the bridge? I must ring the bell!’
He rushed inside the toll-house and came out with the hand bell, which he set clanging with a phrenzy born of terror. Would it carry through the bilious miasma of the fog? Would it bring the other toll-collector and constables? Or would it bring the killer himself – out there on the span – leading him to where his unfinished victim lay?
The wounded man twitched and gave a bubbling inarticulate gasp.
‘Sir? Do not despair – help will be with us shortly. What is your name? Can you speak? Can you tell me who did this to you?’
The man’s eyes, staring madly, turned upon his inquisitor with an unfathomable yearning. A weak rasp came forth: more a gargle from the severed throat than a word.
Weeton leaned closer: ‘I . . . I cannot hear you, sir . . . O, where are the constables! Where is our help?’
Again, the victim made his appeal and the toll-collector moved his head lower to hear. The scent of fresh blood dizzied him and he felt hot breath on his ear: sounds that seemed to diminish down and down a tunnel into blackness.
‘Sir? Sir! Do not die . . . help will be here shortly . . .’
But the man was dead – chest unmoving, eyes open, the gash in his neck steaming still in the cold night air.
Weeton felt that he was kneeling in blood. He stood on shaky legs to support himself against the toll-house and again urged the bell’s clamour, now for his own salvation.
Footsteps echoed strangely from the Surrey side. He raised the bell as a weapon above his head, ready to strike if necessary.
But it was the form of toll-collector Wilkins who was released from the groping folds of the fog and who ran to where his colleague stood.
‘Weeton – what is going on?’ he panted. ‘Is it another suicide? O! What a horrible sight . . . !’
‘Did you pass anyone as you came over, Wilkins?’
‘I did not see a soul, but I could barely see my own feet. Perhaps in the pedestrian recesses . . .’
‘When did this man cross through your barrier?’
‘There has been only one in the last hour. It must be he. Yes – it looks like the one, only he wore a top hat before.’
‘Are you sure nobody came after this man? I believe there may be a murderer out on the bridge.’
‘I am quite sure, Weeton. Nobody came after him, and only one about forty minutes before that.’
‘A coster sort, pushing a barrow?’
‘Yes, that’s right.’
‘He passed through my barrier some time past, and I have admitted nobody since.’
‘So there is nobody else on the bridge.’
‘Perhaps. Where are the cursed constables tonight? We might be victims ourselves.’
‘“Murderer”, you said? How can it be so if there is no one out there? Do you not recall the man who shot himself some months past? This fellow must have cut his own throat.’
‘I heard a scream – a scream of terror. The suicides do not scream that way. They go silently into the river, as you well know.’
‘I heard no scream, Weeton.’
‘Well, I heard it clearly enough and I will never forget it.’
‘If there truly has been a murder, we should inform the Bridge Company. And you should not allow any constables onto the scene. Do you not recall Mr Blackthorne’s recent instructions on that matter? He was quite specific.’
‘Yes, you are right. Will you go and wake Mr Blackthorne while I see to any constables that arrive?’
‘I should not leave my barrier unmanned . . . A
nd if there is a murderer about, as you say, I may run into his arms . . .’
‘You have already left your barrier . . . and you will be in even deeper water if Mr Blackthorne first hears of this through the newspapers.’
‘D— you, Weeton! I will go – but I will tell him you sent me.’
‘Just go!’
Wilkins pursed his lips at the dead body on the ground between them, shook his head, and bustled through the Middlesex barrier into a city that was still little more than a dirtily illuminated cloudscape.
It is, of course, the nature of the London fog to descend and liquesce at its own whim. Merely two hours later, Waterloo-bridge presented an entirely different scene. The body of the victim had been removed from its position by the toll-house, and dawn was a flicker in the eastern sky. The full span was again visible across the Thames.
And what a melancholy scene it was in its glistening grey emptiness. The broad avenue was quite immense when seen devoid of pedestrians and traffic, for all passage had now been barred and the thoroughfare closed by the Bridge Company. At each end, a growing chaos of goods wagons, costermongers and river workers let forth a murmur of imprecations at the situation. Meanwhile, Blackfriars and Westminster bridges began to fill with an excess of humanity.
In point of fact, Waterloo-bridge was not completely unpopulated. People at both ends were able to see a diminutive solitary figure at its centre behaving in a most eccentric manner. First he knelt, examining the roadway. Then he walked to the parapet, peering down into the turbid waters. Then he went into some of the recesses beside the pedestrian walkway, vanishing for a few moments as he searched within. In between these studies, he seemed to pause to write in a small book.
Even from a distance of some hundreds of yards, the figure presented a singular appearance. He wore a rather shapeless russet cap that sat in strange juxtaposition to a good suit of rough tweed. Although he moved with the relative agility of one not much beyond forty years, he nevertheless wore an oddly anachronistic salt-and-pepper beard shaped into a point. On his hands were some particularly fine black kidskin gloves that he had not removed, despite his foraging around the dirty masonry.
His name was Eldritch Batchem.
After he had completed his perambulations about the centre of the bridge, he walked back towards the Middlesex toll-house, pausing occasionally along the way to bend and examine some small detail invisible to the massing crowds. Whenever he did so, there was a palpable lull, as if that soiled mote between his leathern fingers were the vital clue that would solve the crime and open the thoroughfare.
Meanwhile, the aforementioned Mr Blackthorne, resplendent in a dark wool surtout and beaver-skin top hat, waited at the Middlesex barrier with his jaw set in consternation. As Bridge Controller for the Waterloo Bridge Company, he considered it his bridge, no matter what the burghers of the City might have to say on the matter. He might close it if he liked, and any crime committed thereupon was his to investigate, preferably with all expedience so that no taint of infamy or satirical allusion – ‘A penny toll and your throat cut!’ – could further infect it.
Finally, the investigator arrived at the barrier, where he cast an enigmatic glance over the crowds observing him. He might almost have been searching the dozens of faces for one he knew, but he was interrupted in his scrutiny by the approach of his employer.
‘Mr Batchem – I am pleased to meet you,’ said Mr Blackthorne, extending a hand. ‘I am sorry I could not be here for your arrival earlier, and the toll-keeper told me that I should not approach you during your work.’
‘I will not shake hands if you do not mind, Mr Blackthorne.’
The voice was undistinctive, carrying no particular accent or timbre, though the odd pointed beard seemed to lend his words an affable air. His mouth may have smiled, but a lady would have noticed that his eyes did not as he kept his hands by his sides.
‘O, I . . . I apologize, Mr Batchem. Do you have evidence there in your hand?’
‘Perhaps, perhaps. You were quite right not to approach me, of course. The scene of the crime is critical in its purity and must remain unpolluted for the investigator to do his work. Had you come to me, you might have stepped upon a clue and obliterated that single fragile fibre of truth.’
‘A clue, you say? Have you got to the bottom of this case already? I had heard that you have quite a prodigious—’
‘The investigator does not blunder into a solution, sir. He gathers all of the evidence and examines it through a fine lens until the minutest detail is revealed.’
‘So you have discovered some clues out on the bridge?’
‘There is a quantity of blood. The morning precipitation has diluted it somewhat, but I believe I have identified where the incident took place.’
‘The “incident”? You do not call it murder, Mr Batchem?’
‘I make no judgement at this juncture. I must talk to the toll-collector who witnessed the dying man and further cogitate upon my findings.’
‘But have you found a weapon, or evidence of another person on the bridge? Perhaps you can tell me at least this?’
Eldritch Batchem stroked the point of his beard, either in thought or irritation. ‘I found no weapon, but this means nothing. You know my methods, sir. You will receive a full report on my findings later today. Then I trust I will receive my payment.’
‘Of course. But perhaps you will tell me whether I may now open the bridge. Have you completed your investigation upon the road and walkways?’
‘I have. You may.’
‘I thank you, and I look forward to that report.’
Mr Blackthorne made to shake Eldritch Batchem’s hand once more, but instead withdrew it with a curt nod and turned his attention to the mêlée waiting at the barriers.
Soon, the rattle of carts and the subdued pedestrian chatter of early morning was flowing as normal past the toll-house, observing with morbid attraction the remaining blood of the dead man, itself soon carried on hooves and wheels and soles into the streets of Lambeth or along the Strand until all trace of it was obliterated in the relentless commerce of the city.
In the toll-house, meanwhile, toll-keeper Weeton allowed his daytime replacement to take position at the barrier and awaited his interview with the investigator. Presently, Eldritch Batchem entered the small space and appeared to scrutinize all that he saw with a comprehensive sweep of the eyes before extracting his notebook and turning his gaze upon Weeton, whose hands had barely stopped shaking since the victim had first emerged from the fog.
‘You need not be afraid,’ said Eldritch Batchem, his voice sounding somehow distorted in the confines of the toll-house. He had not taken off his russet cap or his gloves. ‘I will ask you only a few questions – the same that I have asked the other toll-collector.’
‘Very well, sir. But if I shiver, it is on account of the terrible occurrence rather than through fear.’
‘Indeed, though I am sure you have seen death before on this structure. You must have seen your share of suicides.’
‘I have seen them drop – yes, sir. But there is a piteousness in their deaths. They go willing to their ends. This man was not ready to die. I . . . I saw it in his eyes.’
‘Let us not speak of such fanciful things. One may see whatever one likes in a man’s eyes. If I point out a man to you as a thief, a thief is what you see – no matter what his eyes tell you.’
Weeton looked into the eyes of his interlocutor and saw only unblinking attention. ‘I cannot agree. I saw—’
‘Yes, let us discuss what you saw, and what you heard. An investigator must know every small detail in order to solve a case. You have said to others that you heard a metallic clink shortly before the scream – is that correct?’
‘That is so.’
‘Have you heard such clinking sounds before during your duty?’
‘The fog is a trickster, sir. One might hear a cough from across the bridge as if it were by one’s side – or one might fail to hear
a fellow shouting. I thought it came from the bridge, but it may have come from the river: mooring chains, perhaps, beneath the arches.’
‘Inconclusive.’ Eldritch Batchem noted the comment in his book and underlined it. ‘What of the victim’s utterances after he fell?’
‘No words, sir. Just noises: breathing, groaning, cries of pain. I could barely hear anything at all, even in the silence at that hour.’
‘Was there anything in his hands as he fell?’
‘Nothing, sir. They were bloodied. I believe he lost his hat on the bridge, for Wilkins said he admitted a fellow wearing a hat.’
‘Indeed? Are you sure it was he: the same fellow admitted by Wilkins?’
‘I . . . I thought there was no other man on the bridge.’
‘I have not said so.’ Eldritch Batchem smiled and again stroked the end of his beard as if catching his interrogatee in a falsehood.
‘I believe he was the same. There could be no other.’
‘Very well.’ A further line entered the notebook. ‘May I see your hands? Both sides. Thank you.’
‘They are still shaking from the shock of it, sir. Why do you ask?’
‘To see if there is blood on them, or on your shirt cuffs.’
‘I am not sure what you—’
‘No matter. Did you look in the gentleman’s pockets once he had expired?’
‘Certainly not! What are you suggesting?’
‘Nothing at all. I am asking a simple question for which I require an answer.’
‘I did not, and the Bridge Company can speak for my good character if anyone maintains anything to the contrary. Am I a suspect in your investigation, Mr Batchem?’
‘In any investigation, one does not limit oneself to whom one suspects. The evidence is the silent witness and it alone is to be understood. You were the last to see the man alive, is that right?’
‘I and the murderer.’
‘You will not speak of murder to anyone once you leave this place. It is not for you to decide. I am the one in possession of all information – not you. Now, look at this earring I found in a recess. Do you recognize it?’
‘How would I? I do not examine the ears of every person who passes through my barrier each day. As long as the toll is correct—’
The Thieves' Labyrinth (Albert Newsome 3) Page 1