Part 7 (2/2)

”The Opium-Eater went on and on about them. The bloodiest thing I ever read. Gave me nightmares. He piled on so many gruesome details, it's like he was there.”

5.

The Sublimity of Murder.

DURING THE 1300S, Paternoster Row acquired its name because monks could be heard chanting the Pater Noster, or Our Father, in nearby St. Paul's Cathedral. In that century, stores there sold religious texts and rosaries. But by 1854, the street was the center of London's publis.h.i.+ng world. At 6 A.M. (according to the bells at the cathedral, telling the faithful to waken and prepare for church services), Ryan and Becker descended from a police wagon.

In early light, a breeze chased the fog and allowed them to study the mult.i.tude of bookshops on each side of the street. Many were owned by publishers who, during business hours, placed stalls on the street to promote their various offerings. But 6 A.M. on a Sunday morning was hardly the start of business hours, so Ryan and Becker pounded on various doors in the hope that someone lived on the premises.

An elderly man raised an upper window and leaned out sleepily. ”What's all the noise?”

”Do you work here?” Ryan yelled up.

”Yes. Go away.” The old man started to close the window.

”Police. We need to talk to you.”

”Police?” Although the old man seemed impressed, it took a while before he managed to come downstairs and open the door. He wore nightclothes, including a cap. His white beard curved into his sunken cheeks.

”Those bells are loud enough without you hammering,” he complained. Fumbling to put on his spectacles, he clearly wondered what a uniformed policeman was doing with a ruffian whose red hair wasn't quite concealed by a newspaperboy's cap.

”The Opium-Eater,” Ryan said.

”Thomas De Quincey?” Ignoring Ryan and his shabby clothes, the clerk spoke to Constable Becker. ”Yes, what about him? You won't find him here. Sat.u.r.day was the time to talk to him.”

”We're looking for books that he wrote,” Ryan said.

The clerk kept directing his attention toward Becker and his uniform. ”They've been selling briskly. I have only a few left.”

”We need to read them,” Ryan said.

The clerk continued to ignore him, telling Becker, ”We're not open on Sunday. But come back after church. I'll make an exception for a constable.”

”We need to read them now.”

Ryan pa.s.sed him, entering the shop.

THE LEATHER-BOUND VOLUME had pages that needed to be cut. Becker hid his surprise when Ryan raised a trouser cuff, pulled a knife from a scabbard strapped to his leg, and slit the book's pages.

”Be careful how you do that,” the clerk objected. ”Customers are particular about how their book pages are cut. Constable, since when do you let prisoners carry knives?”

”He's not a prisoner. He's Detective Inspector Ryan.”

”Irish.” The old man nodded as if his suspicions were confirmed.

”Tell us about 'On Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts,' ” Ryan said.

”Seems like you'd know more about that subject than I would.”

Ryan stared at him so directly that the old man raised his hands in surrender.

”If you mean De Quincey's essays...”

”Plural? De Quincey wrote more than one essay about murder?” Ryan asked.

”Three. All in that book you're trying to destroy. De Quincey does enjoy his murders.”

”Murders?”

”After he wrote Confessions of an English Opium-Eater, he promised his next book would be called Confessions of a Murderer.”

The two police officers gaped.

”But instead of a book about killing, he wrote three essays about it,” the clerk said, opening the book to show them.

Astonished, Ryan and Becker read about a men's club where lectures were delivered about the great murders of history. The lectures were called the Williams Lectures, after John Williams, the man accused of the Ratcliffe Highway multiple killings.

”My G.o.d, look at how De Quincey praises the murders,” Ryan said. ” 'The sublimest that ever were committed. The blaze of his genius absolutely dazzled.' ”

”And here.” Becker quoted in amazement: ” 'The most superb of the century. Neither ever was, or will be surpa.s.sed. Genius. All other murders look pale by the deep crimson of his.' ”

”De Quincey sounds insane.”

Ryan and Becker discovered that De Quincey's latest essay about murder had been published only a month previously. In it, the Opium-Eater described Williams's two killing sprees for fifty astoundingly blood-filled pages-murders that by 1854 had occurred forty-three years earlier and yet were presented with a vividness that gave the impression the killings had happened the previous night.

Williams forced his way through the crowded streets, bound on business. To say was to do. And this night he had said to himself that he would execute a design which he had already sketched and which, when finished, was destined on the following day to strike consternation into the mighty heart of London. He quitted his lodgings on this dark errand about eleven o'clock P.M., not that he meant to begin so soon, but he needed to reconnoiter. He carried his tools closely b.u.t.toned up under his loose roomy coat.

Ryan pointed at the next page. ”Marr kept his shop open until midnight. Williams hid in the shadows across the street. The female servant left on an errand. The watchman came by and helped Marr put up the window shutters. Then...”

Williams waited for the sound of the watchman's retreating steps; waited perhaps for thirty seconds; but when that danger was past, the next danger was that Marr would lock the door. One turn of the key, and he would have been locked out. In therefore, he bolted, and by a dexterous movement of his left hand turned the key, without letting Marr perceive this fatal stratagem.

”His left hand. How does De Quincey know Williams used his left hand?” Becker wondered.

Having reached the counter, he asked Marr for a pair of unbleached cotton socks.

”Unbleached socks? How does he know that? Only the victim and the killer were in the room.”

The arrangement had become familiar to the murderer. In order to reach down the particular parcel, Marr would find it requisite to face round to the rear and at the same moment to raise his eyes and his hands to a level eighteen inches above his head.

”Eighteen inches? How can De Quincey be that precise?” Ryan exclaimed.

This movement placed him in the most disadvantageous possible position with regard to the murderer who now, at the instant that the back of Marr's head was exposed, suddenly from below his large coat, unslung the heavy s.h.i.+p-carpenter's mallet and with one solitary blow so thoroughly stunned his victim as to leave him incapable of resistance.

”It's the same as what happened last night, complete with the unbleached socks we found on the floor. The shopkeeper must have been reaching for them,” Becker said. ”Look at this about the baby.”

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