by R. N. Morris
Quinn threw the empty tin on to his desk and looked down on it with some contempt. He congratulated himself on triumphing over the cigarettes. He had finished them. But he had no intention – no desire – of buying a second tin and turning his experiment into a habit. Even so, he allowed himself to enjoy an exquisite stab of regret. He was aware of a sense of loss to which he was not wholly reconciled.
‘I further regret to say that my enquiries at Willett’s the chandler’s have drawn a blank.’ Macadam took out from his waistcoat pocket a photograph of Henry Fetherstonhaugh that had come to light at the house in Adelaide Road. With a nod from Quinn, he pinned it on to the wall. ‘Fetherstonhaugh is not the toff who bought the rope. He was absolutely certain of that, I am afraid, sir.’ With a disconsolate expression, Macadam inhaled once more on his cigarette, coughed and sat down at his desk.
It was not long before the small attic room was filled with a heady fug.
‘Shall I open the window, sir?’ wondered Macadam.
‘I order you not to,’ said Quinn.
Inchball sniggered briefly. Quinn’s answering groan seemed weighted with reproach.
All three men fell back into silence and directed their gaze towards the wall.
The map Quinn was using was Bacon’s Large-Scale Ordnance. It had Charing Cross as the centre of London with concentric circles spreading out at half-mile intervals. As Quinn squinted through the shifting swirls of smoke, it seemed that these circles began to radiate, as if they were ripples thrown out by a pebble breaking the surface of a pond.
Now he had the impression that the circles had somehow become detached from the map. He visualized them radiating out beyond the confines of the map, extending over the whole wall. He felt that if he wished to, he would be able to move them at will.
It would not be too hard, he imagined, to shift the concentric circles so that they radiated out from the black X that marked the Panther Club on Pall Mall. This was about an inch to the left of Charing Cross, the mapmaker’s chosen centre of London.
He did not attempt to do it. There was no need. What the strange perceptual distortion had suggested to him was the idea of the Panther Club as the centre of the case. The Xs of the other locations were points on various orbital rings around it, the planets to its sun. He understood now why the line connecting the points was not exactly straight: the planets in a solar system are never in complete alignment.
Of course, there was no strong evidential link between the Panther Club and the crimes. He ran through the chain of connection in his mind: flakes of tobacco from Set cigarettes had been found on the first victim, indeed on all the victims it was now confirmed; the Panther Club had a large regular order for that brand of cigarettes with one particular tobacconist’s. It could be said that the lead that had taken Quinn to the Panther Club was as tenuous as the wisps of smoke swirling around his head.
Quinn knew that Set cigarettes were available at many other outlets in London; he had instigated enquiries, through external resources, at every establishment on Inchball’s original list of Featherly’s customers. So far, from that list, the only link with Jimmy Neville that had come to light was with the Panther Club: Henry Fetherstonhaugh – or Fanshaw, as they were used to thinking of him – was on the list of members.
The fact remained that Fetherstonhaugh had drugged and tied up Inchball, and followed that up by disappearing. All of which suggested that he had some reason to avoid contact with the police. That did not make him the murderer, of course. Indeed, the chandler’s insistence that his unusually upper-class customer was not Fetherstonhaugh argued somewhat in his favour; as did Cale’s opinion concerning the rope used on Inchball.
Nonetheless, Fetherstonhaugh was certainly someone Quinn was interested in talking to. And his interest in Fetherstonhaugh only served to strengthen his interest in the Panther Club.
Since returning to the department, Quinn had checked the list of Panther Club members again. It did not surprise him to find the Marquess of Roachford among them. He thought back to the first time he had seen Pinky, after Count Erdélyi’s lecture at the Royal Ethnological Society. Sir Michael Esslyn had also been there, another member of the Panther Club.
He had to admit that he was disappointed not to find Count Erdélyi listed. But perhaps that would have been too much to hope for. And even if he had found the Hungarian’s name there, it still proved nothing.
The only grounds he had for visiting the club again – even possibly for raiding it – was Fetherstonhaugh’s disappearance. Given what Quinn knew about the Panther Club, it was not inconceivable that Fetherstonhaugh would be welcome there, no matter what crimes he might have committed outside its precincts.
But whether Fetherstonhaugh would risk going there was another question. On the one hand, he could not have known that the club was under suspicion or that his name had been linked to it. And a gentleman might very well look upon his club as a place of refuge, a sanctuary. On the other hand, would it not be preferable for a fugitive from the law to isolate himself entirely from all human contact? To seek out the company even of friends and fellow club members was to increase the chance of betrayal.
But Quinn believed he knew enough about how these clubs operated to understand that it would be possible for a man to go to ground in one. He remembered, too, what the major domo had said about the tradition of wearing masks at the Panther Club.
Quinn’s concentration was disturbed by a sudden fit of coughing from Macadam. ‘I beg you, let me open a window!’ cried the sergeant, red in the face.
‘Very well, Macadam. If you insist.’
A draught of fresh air began to disperse the clouds of smoke.
Inchball gave a shudder. ‘No. It’s no good.’
‘What?’ said Quinn.
‘I was looking at them inscriptions.’
Quinn followed Inchball’s slightly unfocused gaze. Enlarged photographs of the inscriptions from the latest three cigarette cases had been placed on the wall alongside the first. ‘Something about one of them seemed familiar. I had a feeling I’ve seen it before somewhere. It was just coming to me and then Macadam had to go and spoil it.’
‘Wasn’t my fault! I can hardly breathe in here!’
‘Which one was it?’
‘Nah. It’s gone. Completely gone.’
There was a knock at the door. Quinn sat up straight and wafted the smoke away from his face. ‘Come in.’ He was surprised to see the young artist Petter enter the room.
As before, Petter avoided looking Quinn in the eye, so assiduously that Quinn began to wonder whether he had acquired a facial disfigurement.
‘What can we do for you?’
‘Well, sir, begging your pardon, sir, but are you still wanting to go to the British Museum? Only you said you might want to go there with me. And it is Saturday tomorrow.’
Sergeant Inchball stirred. ‘What’s that you say? The British Museum. That queer what done for me . . . He said something about the British Museum. Said he liked to go there. Said he went there the day Jimmy Neville disappeared.’
‘I see.’
‘Do you think he would go there again, sir?’ asked Macadam.
The stub of Quinn’s cigarette was so hot it burnt his fingers. But he took one last draw from it before grinding it out in a tin ashtray. ‘There was something Tommy Venables said to me, about Fetherstonhaugh. About how he believed in some kind of brotherhood.’
‘Yes, that’s it! I remember something about a brotherhood too!’ cried Inchball.
‘The Greek and Roman galleries at the British Museum are a known haunt of inverts. The only reason Fetherstonhaugh might have for going there would be to communicate with other members of this brotherhood – perhaps to warn them of the danger that he believes is threatening them.’
‘So you think he might go there tomorrow when the place will be filled with queers?’ asked Inchball.
‘It’s true that there may be a higher than usual proportion of such individuals
at the British Museum tomorrow. I learnt from Venables that many renters are keeping off the streets. However, the need to earn their rent does not go away. Neither do the unspeakable urges experienced by gentlemen who ought to know better. It may be that both sides consider the British Museum in the afternoon to be a safe place to seek liaisons. If Fetherstonhaugh has not left the country, there’s a chance he might turn up there tomorrow.’
‘So . . . you do want me?’ said Petter glumly.
‘Do we want Petter?’ asked Quinn.
‘He’s not my type,’ said Inchball. He then frowned quizzically at the cigarette butt in his fingers before hurriedly stubbing it out.
‘It may be beneficial to have him along,’ said Quinn. ‘He knows the conventions of the place. Given what Macadam has told us about the rope, we must face the possibility that Fetherstonhaugh is not the murderer, after all. He may, however, be able to lead us to him. If Fetherstonhaugh does put in an appearance, and attempts to make contact with anyone, Petter may be able to tell us if that individual had any connection with Jimmy Neville.’
‘If this and may that!’ cried Inchball impatiently. ‘Face it, man, you’ve got nothing. You’re chasing shadows!’
Quinn was taken aback, but he understood Inchball’s frustration. ‘Do you have any better suggestions, Sergeant?’
Inchball hung his head despondently. ‘If only I could remember . . .’
The four men turned to consider the prints of the inscriptions that were pinned to the wall.
Quinn was aware of a sudden nervous agitation on the part of Petter. He was glancing repeatedly from the wall to Quinn, almost – uncharacteristically – meeting his gaze.
‘What is it, Petter?’
‘It’s just that one there . . . I’m sure I read it in a book.’
‘I knew it!’ said Quinn. ‘Which one are you talking about?’
‘That one. Suffering is one very long moment. It’s the first line, you see. That’s why I remember it. I’m sure it’s the first line.’
‘Yes, man. The first line of what?’
‘Of De Profundis, by Oscar Wilde.’
‘That’s it!’ cried Inchball. ‘That’s what I read in the queer’s scrapbook. Them were the very words. De Perfumis. Petter’s right.’
‘De Profundis,’ corrected Quinn quietly. ‘D.P. Do you have a copy?’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Petter.
Quinn rose from his seat in a burst of energy. ‘Is it here, at the Yard? Can you get it now?’
‘No. It’s at my lodgings. In Streatham.’
‘Sergeant Macadam, will you take Mr Petter to his lodgings.’
‘In the Ford?’ asked Macadam hopefully.
‘Of course. We must waste no time getting to the bottom of this.’ Quinn picked up the Set tin from his desk and flipped it open. Even though he knew there were no cigarettes left, he felt a strange disappointment to have its emptiness confirmed.
Ellipses
It was a slight volume, almost weightless in his hands. Indeed, he felt that there should be more to it. After all, he hoped it contained the solution to the case, which ought to have increased its substance and mass.
When he first felt its blue cloth hardcover, he was reluctant to open it. He acknowledged the possibility that he had set too much store by what this book might hold for him. While it was unopened, its potential to provide a solution was untested, and therefore intact. Once he began to examine its contents, he would have to confront the prospect of finding nothing; of failure, in other words.
Meanwhile, the book seemed to possess a talismanic power, and for the time being that was enough for Quinn.
And so he let his gaze, and his touch, swim across the small stretch of aquamarine, as if he would find the solutions he was looking for there. The gilt detailing stamped on the front cover snagged his attention: beneath the title and author’s name, a bird stretched out its wings, behind the bars of a cage.
At last he opened the book up, greedily inhaling the scent of pages and dust that escaped, as if that were the secret he was looking for.
He lingered over the publisher’s advertisement in the front of the book, before turning to the preface. The type was set large, with few words to a line, and few lines to a page. Quinn began to read:
For a long time considerable curiosity has been expressed concerning the manuscript of De Profundis, which was known to be in my possession, the author having mentioned its existence to many other friends.
Further on, the writer of the preface, Robert Ross, had inserted a letter from Oscar Wilde concerning his instructions for publication. It began:
I don’t defend my conduct. I explain it.
Quinn wondered if this was the murderer’s intention in quoting from De Profundis.
Oscar Wilde’s letter to Ross ended with a sentimental image:
On the other side of the prison wall there are some poor black soot-besmirched trees which are just breaking out into buds of an almost shrill green. I know quite well what they are going through. They are finding expression.
Again Quinn tried to relate this to the murderer’s intentions. Was he not also, through his crimes, finding expression? There was another sentence earlier in Wilde’s letter:
I need not remind you that mere expression is to an artist the supreme and only mode of life.
Did the murderer consider himself to be an artist, therefore?
And so Quinn came to the first line of the De Profundis itself, the words which Petter had identified in the inscription. As they appeared in the book, they were preceded by three points of ellipsis:
. . . SUFFERING is one very long moment.
Naturally, all Quinn could think about was what had been omitted from the text. This was the instinct of the detective: the solution, always, was in what was withheld. He turned the pages quickly and saw that the text was littered with such marks of ellipsis throughout. Turning back to the frontispiece, he could find no acknowledgement that the text had been abridged. Nor was there any indication in Wilde’s note to Ross that he wished for sections of his work to be excised before publication.
Quinn turned back to the beginning. Whatever had been taken out, those six words remained, the six words that were so close to the heart of a murderer that he chose to have them engraved on an object left in the pocket of one of his victims:
Suffering is one very long moment.
In the passage from which these words were taken, Wilde was evidently referring to a prisoner’s experience of time. But the killer’s meaning was not necessarily the same as Wilde’s.
But it was interesting to Quinn to see where Wilde took the idea. He spoke of time circling ‘round one centre of pain’. Given the crimes perpetrated on the four young men, this was a telling phrase.
Did the murderer in some way seek to suspend time through these atrocities? To create centres of pain around which time would circle, without ever moving forward? In Wilde, time’s immobility was presented as a negative concept. He spoke of ‘each dreadful day in the very minutest detail like its brother’. But if one read the words without any empathy for the experience that lay behind them, could they be taken as some kind of instructional handbook, a guide to harnessing eternity? Or to put it another way, to achieving immortality?
No doubt it required the reader to invest Wilde’s metaphors with a literal truth; to consider him more than just a disgraced writer: a god, or at the very least a prophet; and to look upon his literary self-justifications as holy writ. And to the question ‘What kind of man would do that?’ there was no meaningful answer other than ‘a madman’.
Quinn continued reading. It was not long before he came upon a phrase that reinforced his interpretation, which at the same time brought to mind one of the other inscriptions:
For us there is only one season, the season of sorrow.
The inscription he had in mind had said:
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground.
Quinn read on. Within a few p
ages, he had found the phrase itself. His heart beat violently as he read and reread the passage in which it occurred:
. . . sorrow is the most sensitive of all created things. There is nothing that stirs in the whole world of thought to which sorrow does not vibrate in terrible and exquisite pulsation. The thin, beaten-out leaf of tremulous gold that chronicles the direction of forces the eye cannot see is in comparison coarse. It is a wound that bleeds when any hand but the hand of love touches it, and even then must bleed again, though not in pain.
Where there is sorrow there is holy ground. Some day people will realize what that means. They will know nothing of life until they do . . .
That brief passage filled almost an entire page of the book. Quinn was able to tear through the pages in little over an hour. He was not reading it for Wilde’s meaning, but for the murderer’s. In particular, he was looking for the passages from which the other two inscriptions were taken.
He did not find them. He was forced to concede that To be entirely free and Seek entrance to the House of Pain! were not taken from De Profundis. At any rate, they were not present in the edition he had before him.
He turned to the front of the book, where he discovered that this was the eleventh edition, printed in 1908; the first edition was dated 1905. Some matter had undoubtedly been omitted, presumably on the grounds of public decency or for legal reasons. But how had the murderer had access to such material?
Quinn laid down the book. The empty Set tin was still on his desk. He regretted sharing his last few cigarettes with Inchball and Macadam. A Set cigarette was just what he needed, given what was required of him now: to imagine that he was the murderer, reading the book for passages that would inspire or affirm his sanguinary course.
As he read, he noted down passages that struck him.
Sorrow, then, and all that it teaches one, is my new world.
. . . the lessons hidden in the heart of pain.