Part 36 (2/2)
Another haggard woman peered out. ”Tell 'im we don't do charities for beggars.”
”Good morning, dear ladies,” De Quincey announced. He tipped his shapeless cap. His smile brought pain to the scab on his chin. ”How is the linen-lifting tribe this morning?”
”Save your foolishness. A s.h.i.+lling, or no Bob-in-the-Betty-box for you.”
”You misjudge my intentions, dear ladies.” De Quincey put his cap back on. ”I'm here to pay a social visit. Would Doris and Melinda reside here?”
”Doris and Melinda? How do you know...?”
”Some gracious paladins of the streets suggested that I'd find them here.”
”The way you talk. I heard your voice before.”
”Indeed you did, my dear lady. At Vauxhall Gardens, yesterday morning.” De Quincey concealed his distress at the memory. ”You all identified yourselves as Ann. My clothes were more presentable then.”
”Gorblimey, it's the little man! What happened to you?”
”My fortunes have fallen since I encountered the same man who hired you to go to Vauxhall Gardens. Doris, I believe that is you.”
”The b.u.g.g.e.r promised each of us another sovereign. Swore he'd give 'em to us last night. Didn't show up. We pa.s.sed up customers while we waited.”
”I can arrange for you to receive the sovereigns he didn't pay you.”
”And how would that happen?”
”Melinda, is that you? I recognize your charming voice.”
Melinda batted her eyelashes.
The other women laughed.
”Lord Palmerston himself will pay you the sovereigns,” De Quincey said.
”And you'd be pals with Lord Cupid, would you?”
”We are definitely acquainted. If you kind ladies can spare me a few moments, I hope I can persuade you to become my spies.”
15.
An Effigy in Wax.
MADAME TUSSAUD PREFERRED CORPSES. Living models, especially famous ones like Voltaire, Rousseau, and Benjamin Franklin, enjoyed the idea that their likenesses would achieve immortality, but when it came to practicalities, they complained about staying immobile for a considerable time while Tussaud made the casts from which she created her eerie wax impressions.
Corpses, on the other hand, displayed no impatience. During the French Revolution, Tussaud frequented morgues and looked for the separated heads of well-known victims of the Terror, making death masks of them. So skilled was she that revolutionaries compelled her to keep making wax models of prominent guillotine victims. Seeking a less dangerous environment, she toured Europe with her macabre collection and eventually settled in London, where she established her wax museum.
Although customers claimed that they went to Madame Tussaud's to see the dignified portrayals of notable personages such as Sir Walter Scott, the probability was that what they really wanted to see was the museum's Chamber of Horrors. For an extra sixpence, they could gaze at what appeared to be the bloodied heads of Robespierre, King Louis XVI, and Marie Antoinette. Visitors could decide if she was as beautiful as rumor suggested. They could also view wax effigies of notorious criminals depicted in the midst of their gruesome crimes.
The location of the wax museum was only a half mile north of Oxford Street, on the west side of Baker Street. There, a hansom cab stopped, and a clean-shaven man with curly hair, a stern look, and an extreme military bearing walked into the museum. Earlier, he had sent an operative to pay for the museum to be closed. When he showed a special ticket that his operative had purchased for him, an employee allowed him to enter.
Brookline did not linger to appreciate the eerily lifelike wax models of various admirable personages, such as Lord Nelson. Instead he verified that no one else was in the building and then made his way toward the rear of the museum, where the Chamber of Horrors was located. Rumors had reached him about a new exhibit that had opened after the murders on Sat.u.r.day night-or rather had reopened, for this exhibit had been one of Madame Tussaud's most popular attractions when she toured through England many years earlier.
Brookline had seen it when he was young, before he joined the military. In fact, he had gone back to see it many times, although he had never been able to adjust to it any more than he had been able to restrain himself from returning to it again and again.
A plaque said:.
JOHN WILLIAMS IN THE MIDST OF HIS FIRST.
RATCLIFFE HIGHWAY MURDERS.
(SAt.u.r.dAY, 7 DECEMBER 1811).
”THE SUBLIMEST IN THEIR EXCELLENCE THAT
EVER WERE COMMITTED.”
OPIUM-EATER THOMAS DE QUINCEY,.
”ON MURDER CONSIDERED AS ONE OF THE
FINE ARTS”
Brookline stared at the scene, which was so vividly three-dimensional that, if not for a rope barrier, he could have walked within it. Before him was an inferior shop. Lanterns cast shadows, creating an ominous atmosphere. A woman lay on the floor, her head bashed in. A young man sprawled farther away, his head bashed in as well. Blood was everywhere. A savage man was suspended in the motion of swinging a s.h.i.+p carpenter's mallet at someone slumped over a counter, behind which blood-spattered linen and socks were stacked on shelves.
Brookline knew that the scene wasn't portrayed correctly. Forty-three years earlier, the victim, Timothy Marr, had collapsed behind the counter. Similarly, a shattered cradle was visible beyond the dead shop a.s.sistant, a hint of a baby's bloodied head protruding from beneath a blanket. But in reality, the cradle and the baby could not have been visible from the shop. That particular murder had occurred in a back room.
Those inaccuracies weren't important, however. What mattered was the face of the murderer, who was viewed in profile as though he had turned for a satisfied look at his victims on the floor before he resumed his raging a.s.sault on Timothy Marr.
Madame Tussaud had not been able to see John Williams's corpse after he used a handkerchief to hang himself in Coldbath Fields Prison. Instead she had relied on a sketch that an artist had made of Williams's left profile shortly after he was taken down.
The sketch was not part of Tussaud's exhibit, but Brookline didn't need to have it there in order to know that the profile of the wax model before him was faithful to the artist's rendering.
Brookline knew this because he had found a copy of the sketch when he was young. He had kept it in a pocket, eventually wearing it out and needing to acquire another. He had studied it relentlessly, determined to learn its secrets. What kind of man had John Williams been?
What kind of man had his father been?
His mother, a coal scavenger along the river, had carried him on her back while she worked. They had lived in a shack near the docks, along with three other desperate women. As he grew older, he couldn't help noticing that she often wept in the middle of the night, concealing an anguish that she refused to explain, no matter how often he asked her what was the matter.
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