by R. N. Morris
‘But Pinky could not possibly be the murderer!’ objected Count Erdélyi.
‘Perhaps not,’ said Quinn. ‘But do you perhaps remember a youth called Algernon Foxe?’
‘Algie? I say, there’s no need to bring Algie up.’
‘He killed himself, did he not?’
‘I think you will find that the inquest delivered a verdict of death by misadventure.’
‘Shot himself while on a hunting party.’
‘The gun went off unexpectedly.’
‘He separated from the rest of the party. There was the sound of gunshot. They found him in a secluded spot, hidden behind a wall, hunched over his gun, dead.’
‘No one knows for certain what happened. We are dishonouring his memory if we assume it to be suicide.’
‘His friends spoke of him as a young man of great promise and exceptional beauty. They also spoke of an older man who pressured him into a sexual relationship and then abandoned him.’
Pinky’s nostrils twitched as if they had just been assailed by an unpleasant odour.
‘Be careful, my friend. You have overstepped the mark. This is dangerous slander,’ warned Sir Michael on the Marquess’s behalf. Pinky himself remained tight-lipped; his characteristic colour drained from his face.
‘Besides,’ continued Count Erdélyi, ‘the unfortunate youth’s death hardly amounts to murder.’
‘Perhaps not. But hours after Foxe’s death, this gentleman was seen enjoying the company of a young estate worker of rugged physique.’
‘I needed consoling!’
‘Please, do not misunderstand me. I do not say this to condemn you. And it goes without saying that I would not repeat any of this to anyone other than ourselves. This is all, as it were, between friends.’
‘You have not mentioned me yet,’ said Harry Lennox uneasily. ‘I have the feeling I know you. Have we met before?’
‘Now now,’ intervened Sir Michael. ‘The rules of the club forbid you from even asking such a question.’
‘But are you not curious to know how this fellow knows so much about us all?’ protested Lennox.
‘Everything that I have said is in the public domain,’ said Quinn. ‘Are you capable of murder? Perhaps not. But you are certainly capable of profiting from it. Which therefore gives you a motive for perpetrating it, or at least encouraging it. Perhaps it is absurd to suggest that you would commit murder in order to sell newspapers. However, you cannot escape the charge that newspapers like yours have created an atmosphere in which a man may achieve a degree of fame by pursuing such a course.’
‘If that is all you have to accuse me of, then it is not very much.’
‘Let me say again, I am not here to accuse but applaud. This is the Panther Club, after all.’
‘Perhaps you are the murderer!’ cried Count Erdélyi, turning on Quinn with vindictive glee. ‘Yes, you are the – what was it? – the Exsanguinist!’
‘I wondered who would be the first to suggest that.’
‘I was recently in Vienna,’ continued Count Erdélyi, turning to his companions delightedly, ‘where I attended a series of interesting talks given by a noted specialist in dream interpretation.’ He turned back to Quinn. ‘I cannot help wondering what he would make of that dream you told us earlier.’
‘Was it Doctor Freud?’ asked Sir Michael. ‘I rather fear that he sees phalluses everywhere.’
‘How wonderful,’ said Pinky, licking his lips.
‘It was a disciple of Freud’s,’ admitted Count Erdélyi. ‘And from what I understand of Freud’s theories, our friend’s dream suggests the repression of homosexual desire. Indeed, as you suggest, Ezzelino, the razor can be seen as standing for his phallus. He creates a wound in the other student’s neck, which is to be interpreted as a surrogate vagina. The meaning is clear: that he wished to have sexual relations with the boy and not his landlady’s daughter. The words spoken by the wound make this explicit. And the outpouring of blood is nothing less than an ecstatic ejaculation, which is transferred to the murdered youth, rather than experienced directly by the dreamer. None of this could be admitted by his conflicted psyche. In fact, to suppress the desire, he kills the object of his desire. But only in his dream. He failed to do so in real life. Hence his remark about not finding peace until he has tracked down and killed his erstwhile rival. Is it not conceivable that the crimes of the Exsanguinist are in some way playing out that intention? But instead of finding and killing the one he loved – who would by now have aged somewhat – he is repeatedly obliterating the idea of him as he once was, in the form of other youths.’
‘It is an interesting theory,’ said Quinn. He took out from his pocket a silver cigarette case. He opened the cigarette case and offered it around the company, allowing the inscription on the inside of the lid to be clearly seen:
The danger was half the excitement.
D.P.
Quinn noted the reactions of the men as they accepted a cigarette from him.
‘Ah dear, dear Oscar,’ said Pinky affectionately.
Sir Michael’s ‘Oh’ was disapproving, as if he had borne witness to a lamentable breach of protocol.
‘Like feasting with panthers,’ said Count Erdélyi, completing the quote.
Harry Lennox frowned in confusion at the words. ‘What is that?’
‘It’s a quote from a compatriot of yours, Oscar Wilde,’ said Sir Michael. ‘Of course, much as I admire Wilde, I cannot approve of him. Except when I am here, of course.’
The only one of the group who did not make a comment on the inscription was Lord Tobias Marjoribanks, who also declined to take a cigarette. His brows drew together in deep consternation. He rose slowly to his feet. ‘Who are you?’
‘Your nemesis.’
‘That won’t do.’ Marjoribanks’ voice rose to a whine. ‘I don’t believe in all that superstitious rot. There is no universal law that says a man must have a nemesis.’
‘Are there any universal laws at all, I wonder? Other than, that which is realized is right? Or, the only sin is shallowness.’
‘I cannot stay here talking to you. I have important work to do.’
‘And all I ask is to be able to help you in it. To learn from you. Every great artist is a teacher. And you are a great artist. I will be Ruskin to your Turner. I will explain you to the world.’
‘I don’t need you.’ And with that, Marjoribanks dashed from the room.
Quinn took out a Set cigarette and lit it before bowing to the assembly and calmly taking his leave.
The Exsanguination
He found Fetherstonhaugh on the floor of the landing, hunched against the wall near the entrance to the reading room. His domino mask was off. He was bleeding from a deep gash in his right cheek. Quinn crouched down and peered into the wound. ‘That’s nasty,’ he said at last.
‘I tried to stop him. Möbius. I didn’t realize he had a razor. He lashed out at me.’ The words came in a rush, as if the wound had released a torrent of speech as well as blood. There was an excited, enlivened glint in Fetherstonhaugh’s eye.
‘That was very foolish of you. However, you will live. We may take it that had he wished to kill you, he would have done so.’
Fetherstonhaugh almost seemed disappointed.
‘I will get someone to take care of you. In the meantime, I must go after him.’
‘Do it for the Brotherhood,’ panted Fetherstonhaugh, the shock of the attack convulsing his body.
Quinn sprang to his feet and turned, just as the sound of panicked shouting reached him from the foyer below. He ran down the stairs to discover that the door to Bertie’s cage had been opened and Bertie was prowling the foyer with a languid feline curiosity. Club members and servants scattered ahead of her, pushing one another out of the way and slamming doors in the faces of those behind them.
The panther seemed unperturbed by the commotion. She turned to Quinn and lifted her head to sniff the air. She was standing between him and the door, blocking his way
out. Then suddenly she must have caught the scent of something that interested her far more than he did. She padded past him, gathering speed until she was bounding up the stairs. He realized too late what was drawing her.
Fetherstonhaugh’s screams confirmed it. She had smelled blood.
Quinn chased up the stairs.
He found her pinning the man down with her front paws on his chest. She had her jaws around his face and shook his head as a domestic cat would shake a morsel of meat.
Quinn withdrew his revolver from its holster. He moved quickly, thrusting the muzzle against the side of the animal’s head as he squeezed the trigger. The force of the shot threw Bertie’s head to one side, as well as converting much of it to a spray of bloody matter. A sudden intensification of screaming suggested that the separation of teeth from his face had not been without pain for Fetherstonhaugh. He was slumped over completely now. In places, his face looked like raw minced meat.
Quinn felt for a pulse.
He looked up and saw a number of the club’s servants surrounding him nervously. ‘He is alive. Help him.’
As Lord Marjoribanks burst out of the Panther Club, he was accosted by a young man wrapped in a shimmering silk scarf.
‘You’re just the feller I was looking for,’ said Tommy Venables.
‘What do you mean by that?’
‘Tall, good-lookin’. Wearin’ a mask.’ Venables let out a burst of coarse laughter.
Marjoribanks showed him the bloodied razor in his hand.
‘Cut yerself shavin’, didyer? Y’ought to be more careful.’
‘Aren’t you afraid of me?’
‘Nah. I seen you with Pinky. If I were you, I’d put that away before a bobby sees it.’
Marjoribanks folded the blade away and pocketed it. ‘Of course – Pinky. He knows all the queer lowlife.’
‘There’s no need to take that attitude.’
‘Aren’t you the renter who was trying to blackmail him?’
‘Simple misunderstanding. All cleared up now.’
‘The vampire.’
‘I don’ know wha’ you mean.’
‘You’re like the scum that destroyed Oscar. You pull everything down to your own level. Nothing fine or beautiful is possible while there are louts like you in the world.’
‘If you’re talking about Oscar Wilde, you should hear the tales some of the old ’uns tell. Nothing fine or beautiful about what he liked to get up to.’
‘I don’t have time for this.’
‘Let me get you a taxi then.’ Venables threw up his hand and whistled. ‘It’s the least I can do.’
A taxi pulled up with remarkable speed, as if the driver had been waiting for Venables’ signal. Venables opened the rear door for Marjoribanks and then followed him in.
‘What are you doing? I didn’t invite you into my taxi.’
‘Where to, sir?’ asked the driver.
‘I thought you and me could go somewhere nice,’ said Venables.
‘It doesn’t work like that. I choose who goes with me. I am not chosen.’
‘Tonight’s different.’
‘So where to, then?’ came from the front.
‘Very well,’ said Marjoribanks. ‘Limehouse.’
Venables smiled. ‘Limehouse? Blimey! I thought we’d go to yours.’
‘I keep a residence in Limehouse. For evenings such as this.’
The taxi lurched forwards and stalled. The driver cursed. ‘Beggin’ your pardon, gentlemen. I shall have to get out and start her up.’
‘Don’t mind us,’ said Venables. ‘Take all the time you need.’
But the hand he put up to Marjoribanks’ cheek was brushed roughly away.
When Quinn came out of the club he saw Macadam at the front of the taxi, readying himself to crank the starter; at least, that was what he was pretending to do. In fact, he was keeping an eye out for his guv’nor.
‘You managed to get a taxi, I see.’
‘Yes. Requisitioned it for the night from a pal of mine. It’s a Unic. French model. Takes a bit of getting used to after the Ford.’
‘We are fortunate you have so many pals, Macadam.’
Macadam raised his hands and formed circles with his fingers which he held over his goggles. ‘You’ve got a mask on, sir.’
‘Does he still wear his?’
‘Yes, sir. Black one.’
‘Then I will keep on this one.’ What this meant, of course, was that Quinn had not retrieved his bowler. Perhaps it was for the best.
Quinn moved round to the far side of the taxi and got in, sandwiching Marjoribanks between himself and Neville.
‘What’s this?’ cried Marjoribanks. ‘You?’
‘You left Phaedo in a bad way back there.’
‘Anything is permitted at the Panther Club. He knows that. He will have no complaints.’
‘If he lives.’
The taxi’s engine rattled into life.
Macadam got back in. ‘Sorry for the delay, gentlemen. Ah, I see you have gained an additional friend. Still Limehouse, is it?’
‘Limehouse?’ said Quinn. ‘Of course.’
The vehicle pulled away.
Quinn thought back to the beginning of the case, when Macadam had driven him east to Shadwell Police Station. He looked at Marjoribanks’ masked face. His attention focused on the other man’s mouth, which fell away weakly on one side. ‘You were the beggar who laughed at me.’
‘Perhaps,’ said Marjoribanks. ‘I sometimes don a costume, in order to move among the locals without arousing suspicion.’
‘You should have worn it when you went shopping for rope,’ said Quinn. Marjoribanks started in his seat.
The taxi headed east along the Strand and on to Fleet Street. Silas Quinn settled back. Marjoribanks seemed little inclined to talk, and so Quinn began a speculative monologue, trusting that Marjoribanks would interrupt him whenever he got a detail wrong:
‘When did it begin – the pain? When you weaned yourself off opium? How courageous an act that was, to let the pain back into your life? But oh, the toll that it must have taken on you. Not only did you allow yourself to suffer physical agonies once more, there were the memories too. Everything that had been numbed and buried in the years of addiction, now came rushing back into life.
‘And with your emergence from opium addiction came the realization of your loss. Your art! Utterly sacrificed! And for what? It all started when Sophie Armstrong fell pregnant with your child. You needed her out of the way, her and her unborn brat. No one could blame you for that. But fate had saved up a savage irony for you. Once you had accomplished your goal, you discovered you were no longer able to create. Your talent had deserted you. Such is the perversity of genius! Tell me, when was all this? Seventeen, eighteen years ago? It’s interesting to reflect – is it not? – that if the foetus had been allowed to go to full term and the child had been born – a boy, was it not, or so the quack who aborted him informed you – he would have been about the age of Jimmy Neville the day you bled him. Was it that unborn child you killed then, and killed again, repeatedly, with the three other victims? The child who had drained the life from your art . . . now you set yourself to drain the life from him.’
A groan of suffering was Marjoribanks’ only answer.
‘If art was your great ideal, then Oscar Wilde – the man who had attempted to turn his life into a work of art – was your hero. Somehow in the person of Jimmy Neville, the unborn child who had destroyed your creative impulses was merged with the shabby renters and the upper-class homosexual lover who had destroyed Oscar. And the pain, the pain that you had felt on ending your addiction – suddenly you found relief from it. As the blade went into Jimmy Neville’s throat, and his pain began, your pain eased. The techniques you had taught yourself practising on cats came into their own.’
‘I have allowed you to spout your slanderous lies,’ said Marjoribanks through clenched teeth. ‘But I have admitted nothing.’
‘Lies? Why
deny your genius? Remember, whatever is realized is right. You took that as your moral as well as your artistic code. What else was it that Oscar Wilde said? “To deny one’s own experiences is to put a lie into the lips of one’s own life. It is no less than a denial of the soul.” Do not deny your soul, I beg you!’
‘What do you want from me?’ The question was wrung out from deep within Marjoribanks. It seemed that at that moment he was afraid of Quinn.
Quinn remained silent for the rest of the journey.
They left the main road behind, and with it any street lighting. The moon shivered above, as white as a bone.
The beams of the taxi’s headlights severed the darkness, calling into being the desolate landscape of the area, the endless brick fields, dotted with ghostly ruins, like giant bottles half-buried in the ground. The acrid aftertaste of chemical processes hung in the air.
It seemed impossible that any human being could live here. The empty factories and looming chimneys that flashed momentarily into vision were themselves the residents, wraithlike and retiring.
Marjoribanks directed Macadam into a street of grim houses, some with broken windows, others boarded up. The taxi juddered to a stop with a small explosion, behind the looming shape of a parked motor van.
‘Is that what you used to transport the bodies?’ asked Quinn. ‘It was your intention to place them in locations that would mock the foundations of the Empire, was it not?’
‘You are wrong about that,’ said Marjoribanks quietly. ‘Quite wrong. The purpose was to fortify. To strengthen the country’s institutions for what is to come.’
The house appeared to be derelict. It no longer had its original front door, but instead was secured by a crude board, roughly hinged and fastened with a massive padlock. Marjoribanks struggled with the key and swung the board open. He gestured for Quinn and Venables to enter first.
They stepped into an impenetrable blackness. It seemed to hold within it invisible fingers that groped their faces and probed their eyes. It held something else too: a foul and pervasive stench.
There was the scrape and flare of a match. Marjoribanks lit a lantern. Then he pulled the board closed, and secured it from inside with the same padlock.