Part 8 (1/2)

He found himself doubly frustrated-first, by the arched hood at the head of the cradle, which he beat into a ruin with his mallet; and secondly, by the gathering of the blankets and the pillows about the baby's head. The free play of his blows had thus been baffled, and he therefore finished the scene by applying his razor to the throat of the little innocent, after which, as though he had become confused by the spectacle of his own atrocities, he busied himself by piling the clothes elaborately over the child's corpse.

”It's the same as what we found.”

”Two,” Ryan suddenly said.

”What?”

”Williams committed two sets of killings.” Ryan turned a page to find more horrors: the slaughter of the tavernkeeper, his wife, and the servant twelve days later.

”The tavernkeeper's name,” Becker said.

”What about it?”

Becker pointed at a line in the book. ”John Williamson.”

”So?” Ryan asked.

”The killer's name was John Williams. In the second set of murders, the victim's name was John Williamson.”

Ryan looked at him in confusion.

”John Williams. John Williamson. As if they were in the same family,” Becker said, ”like a father killing his son.”

”That has to be a coincidence,” Ryan told him. ”The commissioner would have mentioned if the killer was related to the victim. Besides, the parallel doesn't work. Williams was young enough to be the tavernkeeper's son, not his father. Thinking that way doesn't make sense. The point is, look at the detail with which the Opium-Eater describes the murders.”

The housemaid was caught on her knees before the fire-grate, which she had been polis.h.i.+ng. That part of her task was finished, and she pa.s.sed on to filling the grate with wood and coals at the very moment when the murderer entered. Mrs. Williamson had not seen him, from the accident of standing with her back to the door. Before he was observed, he had stunned and prostrated her with a shattering blow on the back of her head. This blow, inflicted by a crow-bar, smashed in the hinder part of her skull. She fell, and by the noise of her fall, roused the attention of the servant, who uttered a cry, but before she could repeat it, the murderer descended on her with his uplifted instrument upon her head, crus.h.i.+ng the skull inwards upon the brain. Both women were irrecoverably destroyed, so that further outrages were needless, and yet the murderer proceeded instantly to cut the throats of each. The servant, from her kneeling posture, had presented her head pa.s.sively to blows, after which the miscreant had but to bend her head backward so as to expose her throat.

”It's as if I'm in the room,” Becker murmured. ”Forty-three years after the murders, and the Opium-Eater writes about them as if they happened yesterday.”

”He describes the blood with glee.” Ryan grabbed the book and quickly stood. ”We need to talk with him.”

A voice asked, ”Who? De Quincey?” Footsteps rumbled down the stairs, preceding the elderly clerk, who held a hymnbook and was dressed to go to church.

”He was here on Sat.u.r.day, you told us?” Becker asked.

”In that chair over there. Wasn't comfortable. His forehead gleamed with sweat. Even sitting, he kept moving his feet up and down. Probably needed laudanum. But his daughter brought him cups of tea, and he answered questions from customers, and I must say I sold plenty of books. Are you planning to buy the one you mutilated, by the way?”

”A discount for police business.”

”Who said anything about a discount?”

Ryan put half the price on the desk. ”Do you know where he went?”

”Well, I know he lives in Edinburgh.”

”All the way to Scotland? No!”

”But I got the impression that for the next week he and his daughter were remaining here in London.”

”Where?” Ryan demanded.

”I have no idea. Unlike the police”-the old man gave Ryan's shabby appearance a disparaging look-”I don't ask people their personal business. Perhaps his publisher would know.”

”Where do we find his publisher?”

”The address is in the book for which you demanded a discount. But if you need to talk to the Opium-Eater anytime soon, I don't think the address will help you.”

”Why?”

”The publisher's in Edinburgh, also.”

RYAN AND BECKER hurried from the bookstore and climbed onto the police wagon.

”Waterloo Bridge train station,” Ryan told the driver.

As they sped away, people walking toward St. Paul's Cathedral looked with disapproval toward Ryan's rough clothes, seeming convinced that he'd been arrested.

”De Quincey wrote about two sets of murders,” Becker said.

Ryan reacted as if Becker had stated the obvious. ”Yes, there were two sets of Ratcliffe Highway killings. What's your point?”

”Do you suppose there'll be another set of murders?”

As the wagon came to Waterloo Bridge, buildings gave way to the open expanse of the river with its steamboats, barges, and skiffs adding wakes to the surging waves.

Becker noticed that Ryan looked down at the wagon's floor rather than at the wide, powerful water. The detective's grip was tight on the side of the wagon. Only when the wagon arrived on the other side and the river was behind them did Ryan relax his grip and look up from the floor of the wagon.

”Are you all right?” Becker asked.

”What makes you think I'm not?”

”Crossing the river seemed to bother you.”

”Murders are what bother me.”

They reached the arches that supported the Waterloo Bridge train station and ran into its ma.s.sive structure.

Ryan could remember when railroads hadn't existed. The first one-from Liverpool to Manchester-had been built in 1830, when he was sixteen. Before then, most transportation had been via horse-driven coach, which-as Commissioner Mayne had noted-could proceed as fast as ten miles per hour, although only the mail coaches, with their system of horse relays, could maintain that pace. Now, with railroads crisscrossing the nation, it was possible to travel at a once-inconceivable sixty miles per hour.

For the system to function, however, arriving and departing trains needed to maintain a strict schedule. The result was a profound change in the way communities thought of time and distance. Prior to the railroad, a village in northwestern England might have had its clocks set at ten minutes after seven while a village a hundred miles away might have had its clocks set for twenty minutes later. The discrepancy couldn't be noticed when someone traveling via a horse-driven coach required more than ten hours to go from one village to the other.

But now, with trains speeding across that hundred miles in one hour and forty minutes, the difference between the clocks in those two villages was significant. If similar differences existed in every community, a coordinated schedule would have been impossible. Using the measurement of time as determined by the Royal Greenwich Observatory in London, every railroad clock (and soon every other timepiece throughout England) was set for the same hour and minute, in what became known as Railroad Time.

Amazingly, information could travel even faster than pa.s.sengers on a train, crossing hundreds of miles not only in a few hours but in an astounding few seconds, because as the railroads spread, telegraph lines were erected next to them. The click-click-click of operators' keys relayed messages with what had once been impossible speed.

In the train station's telegraph office, Ryan told the operator to send a message to James Hogg Publisher at 4 Nicolson Street, Edinburgh, Scotland, the address inside the book.

People at risk. Send London address for Thomas De Quincey at once.

”You make it sound as if De Quincey's in danger,” Becker said.