Murder As A Fine Art Part 6

The turmoil shifted toward an alley, the crowd chasing a desperate shadow. Someone swung a club and barely missed the fugitive's head.

Ryan charged after them. Sensing someone next to him, he glanced that way and reacted with amazement.

"Becker?"

WEARING A CLEAN UNIFORM, Becker kept pace with Ryan despite the tightness of the st.i.tches and bandages under his clothes. "I came back as soon as I could."

"You should be resting."

"And miss the chance for you to teach me?"

Ahead, the mob surged into the alley.

"He found a broken bottle!" someone screamed. "My eyes! He slashed my eyes! G.o.d help me, I can't see!"

More people squeezed into the alley.

"I can't breathe!" someone moaned.

Ryan strained to pull them away.

Becker did the same. Fifteen years younger than Ryan, taller, with broader shoulders, he yanked men out of the alley, throwing them onto the cobblestones.

The odor of alcohol was overwhelming.

"Move!" Ryan ordered.

But the mob was like a wall.

To the left, Ryan saw light through an open door, a heavy woman gaping out.

"There!" he told Becker.

They rushed past the woman and found themselves in one of the many taverns in the area. Charging past benches and a counter, they entered a corridor and reached a storage room on the right.

"The window!" Ryan yelled.

Becker ran around beer kegs and tugged up the window. Outside, the noise of shouts and curses was overwhelming. Ryan brought a lantern to the window, piercing the outside gloom enough to reveal the fugitive swinging a broken bottle at the mob. Faces were bleeding. In fright, the pursuers now strained desperately to retreat from the broken bottle, colliding with those behind them.

Becker's long arms stretched through the window and seized the fugitive's shoulders, pulling him inside. Out there, two men grabbed the fugitive's legs.

The fugitive screamed as if he were being torn apart.

Ryan set the lantern on a table and grabbed a broom from a corner. With the pointed end, he thrust out the window toward the men clutching the fugitive's legs. He aimed toward their chins, jabbing, striking so hard that a man cried out and grabbed his face. Ryan lunged the broom at the other face, and with a wail, the men out there released the fugitive's legs.

Suddenly freed from resistance, Becker lurched backward, pulling the fugitive into the room, the two men falling onto the floor.

"Get away!" the captive shouted, swinging the broken bottle.

Ryan grabbed his arm and twisted until, with a scream, the man dropped the bottle, its jagged points shattering. Becker pulled handcuffs from his equipment belt, their new spring-loaded design holding the clasps in place as he used a key to lock them.

"I didn't do anything!" the man screamed.

"We'll find the truth of that soon enough," Ryan said, trying to catch his breath. "How did blood get on your coat?"

"They d.a.m.ned near killed me. That's how it got on my coat." The man's lips were swollen and mangled.

"If you pa.s.sed out from alcohol and you weren't hiding," Becker said, "they did you a favor."

"How the h.e.l.l do you figure that?"

"The night's so cold you might have froze to death."

"Some favor. Freezing to death or getting beat to death."

"You can thank us for stopping that from happening."

"Where were you drinking?" Ryan asked, impressed by Becker's effort to make the prisoner trust him.

"A lot of places."

"What's the name of the last one? When did you leave?"

"I don't remember." The man reeked of gin.

"Keep him here until he's sober enough for us to question him," Ryan told the patrolmen who'd joined them.

Still breathing hard, he and Becker went to the front room, where Commissioner Mayne waited in the tavern, looking much older than his fifty-eight years. His skin seemed to recede behind the sideburns that hemmed his jaw.

Outside, the loud noises of a scuffle filled the street, constables shouting, striking with their truncheons to disperse the mob.

"This is only starting," Mayne said gravely.

"We can hope the gin will put them to sleep," Ryan offered.

"No, this will become worse. I know from experience. The mallet and the initials on it. I-"

The commissioner suddenly stopped as he looked at the heavyset woman who helped to manage the tavern. A red-faced man who seemed to be her husband came in and stood next to her.

"I need to speak with you," Mayne told Ryan, pointedly ignoring Becker's presence. "In private."

The tavernkeepers obviously thought it strange that the commissioner paid attention to a red-haired Irish ruffian instead of a uniformed patrolman.

"Constable Becker is my a.s.sistant," Ryan said. "He needs to know everything."

Although Becker couldn't have expected that, he hid his surprise.

"A constable as an a.s.sistant?" The commissioner still didn't look at Becker. "Isn't that a bit irregular?"

"Well, as you indicated, there'll be pressure from Lord Palmerston to solve this in a hurry and avoid a panic. We want to a.s.sure people I had access to every resource. If you can tolerate going back to the shop, no one will overhear us there."

"Except the dead," the commissioner murmured.

THE MAN FROM THE Ill.u.s.trated London News was drinking from a flask when they came in. He showed no embarra.s.sment at having been discovered.

"I don't believe this is a job for me. When I couldn't tolerate being in here any longer, I went outside and tried to sketch the riot, but-"

"For G.o.d's sake, don't put anything in the newspaper about a riot," the commissioner pleaded.

"Don't worry about me. I could hardly see anything in the fog, let alone draw it. But I counted at least two dozen reporters out there, so you can bet you'll be reading about a riot on top of what happened here tonight."

The commissioner groaned. "I'll be hearing from Lord Palmerston for certain."

"Things got so rough out there I came back to this d.a.m.ned place."

The odor of blood remained strong.

"Definitely not a job for me."

"Perhaps more to drink," Ryan suggested.

"A lot more to drink. If I didn't need the money..."

"We can use some time in here alone," Ryan said. "The street's quiet now. Perhaps some fresh air will help. Or the tavern down the street."

"Some time in here alone? You're welcome to as much of it as you want." The ill.u.s.trator quickly went outside and closed the door.

Commissioner Mayne stared toward the counter behind which the unseen but impossible-to-ignore presence of the shopkeeper's body made the room feel small.

"The initials on the mallet. Are you certain they're J. P.?"

"Absolutely," Ryan answered.

"I was only fifteen, but I remember how frightened I was. How frightened my mother was."

"Frightened?" Becker asked.

"My father never admitted to feeling threatened by anything, but I could sense that he was frightened also."

"I don't understand," Ryan said.

"You're both too young to have been alive then. Day after day, I read everything about them in every newspaper I could find."

"Them?"

"The Ratcliffe Highway murders."

As Ryan and Becker frowned in confusion, the commissioner explained.

Sat.u.r.day, 7 December 1811 The events of that night caused a wave of terror throughout England that had never been equaled. Ratcliffe Highway derived its name not from rats but from a red sandstone cliff that dropped toward the Thames, but in 1811, there were plenty of rats nonetheless, and the desperation a.s.sociated with squalor.

One of every eight buildings in the area was a tavern. Gambling was commonplace. Prost.i.tutes populated every corner. Theft was so widespread that a fortresslike wall needed to be constructed between Ratcliffe Highway and the London docks.

Shortly before midnight, a linen merchant, Timothy Marr, asked his apprentice, James Gowen, to help him close the shop, which had remained open to accommodate sailors newly arrived in port with money they were eager to spend. Marr sent his servant, Margaret Jewell, to pay a bakery bill and bring back fresh oysters, a cheap, common food that didn't need to be cooked. But Margaret discovered that the bakery was closed, as was every place that sold oysters. Disappointed, she returned to the shop, only to find that the door was bolted. As she knocked repeatedly, she attracted the attention of a night watchman making his rounds as well as a neighbor whose late supper had been disturbed by the noise.

The neighbor crawled over a shared fence, entered through an unlocked back door, proceeded along a corridor, and discovered the body of the apprentice. The young man's head had been bashed in. Gore covered the walls. The neighbor stepped shakily farther into the shop and gaped at Mrs. Marr sprawled near the front door. Her head had been smashed repeatedly, portions of her brain leaking out. Terrified, the neighbor freed the bolt on the front door. A crowd rushed in, knocking him aside. Among them was Margaret Jewell, who looked behind the shop's counter, saw the battered corpse of Timothy Marr, and screamed.

But the horrific discoveries were only beginning. Close inspection revealed that Marr, his wife, and his apprentice all had their throats slit. In Marr's case, the cut was so deep that his neck bone could be seen. In a back room, the searchers found a shattered cradle and an infant whose head had been pounded, its throat cut the same as the others.

NO MONEY WAS STOLEN from Marr's cashbox," Commissioner Mayne said. "In a bedroom, a ship carpenter's mallet with the initials J. P. was discovered. Its striking surface was matted with blood and hair."

"But..." Becker hesitated, his thoughts in disorder. "That's what happened here, except that two children were killed, not one."

The commissioner seemed not to notice that Becker had violated protocol by speaking before Detective Inspector Ryan did.

Ryan now spoke. "Ratcliffe Highway is only a quarter mile away. Sat.u.r.day, December seventh, eighteen hundred and eleven, you said."

"Forty-three years ago," the commissioner murmured.

"Today's December tenth, not the seventh, but these murders happened on Sat.u.r.day night, too, so it's nearly the same."

Mayne nodded. "I was raised in Dublin. My father was a judge in Ireland."

Ryan hadn't realized that Mayne was Irish like himself and had removed nearly all traces of his accent, the same as Ryan.

"In those days, before the railway, London's newspapers and magazines were sent via mail coach. Thanks to improved roads, they traveled at an amazing ten miles an hour," Mayne explained. "As word about the savage murders spread relentlessly, so did the terrified reactions to them. When the mail coaches reached the port at Holyhead, their contents were transferred to packet boats that sailed to Dublin. Before steam, the boats were at the mercy of the wind and storms. Sometimes it took two days for the boats to cross the Irish Sea. My father had political aspirations. The London news was important to him. Reports about the Ratcliffe Highway murders reached him five days after the butchery occurred."

The building with its five corpses seemed to contract.

"Within my father's memory, within anyone's memory, so many people had never been murdered at once," the commissioner continued. "Yes, a highwayman might shoot a traveler at night. Someone pa.s.sing an alley might be dragged in and stabbed for his purse. A drunken brawl in a tavern might end in someone being beaten to death. But no one could remember three adults killed together, and the child! An infant! All murdered so violently.

"The news spread from town to town, gathering strength as local newspapers reprinted the details. No one could imagine what sort of lunatic was responsible. Receiving the newspapers five days after the murders, my father told a business acquaintance who visited our house that by then the murderer could have traveled almost anywhere. Indeed, the killer might very well have been on the packet boat that brought the news to Ireland. The killer might even be in Dublin itself. Then my father realized that I was listening at the door and closed it."

The house of death felt colder. The commissioner looked at Ryan and Becker with terrible distress.

"People were afraid to leave their homes. They suspected every stranger. I heard of a wealthy woman who had locks installed on doors within doors in her house. Everyone was certain that every sound in the night was made by the murderer coming for them. Only gradually did the panic subside. But it quickly returned with greater force when twelve days after the first ma.s.s killing, there was another."

"What?" Ryan asked in amazement. "Another? Twelve days later?"

"Only a half mile from Marr's shop. Again in the Ratcliffe Highway area."

THIS TIME, it happened on a Thursday," the commissioner said. "A week before Christmas. A man named John Williamson owned a tavern. A customer hurried toward it just after closing time, hoping to get a pail of beer, when he heard someone shout, 'Murder!' The cry came from a half-naked man who hung from an upper window, suspended by bedsheets tied together.

"The half-naked man was a lodger in the tavern. He fell toward the street, where a night watchman caught him. As the lodger kept shouting, the watchman pounded on the locked front door while a crowd quickly gathered. They pried up a hatch in the sidewalk where beer kegs were delivered. When they charged into the bas.e.m.e.nt, they found Williamson's body. His head had been bashed in by a blood-covered ripping chisel that lay next to him. His throat was slit. His right thumb had been slashed almost completely off, apparently when he tried to defend himself.

"When the crowd ran upstairs into the kitchen, they found Williamson's wife in a pool of blood, her head pounded in, her throat slit also. A servant girl lay near her, similarly mutilated. The lodger who'd escaped reported that he'd heard a loud noise and crept downstairs from his room to investigate. Close to the bottom, he'd peered into the kitchen and seen a man near Mrs. Williamson's body. Dreading any sound he might make, the lodger had crept back up the stairs and tied sheets together to climb from the window.

"News of the slaughter spread everywhere. Fire bells clanged. Men grabbed pistols and swords, swarming through the streets, hunting anyone who seemed even remotely suspicious. One volunteer chased a man he believed was the killer but who was innocent and who pulled out a pistol, blowing off the volunteer's face. Anyone who was foreign, particularly Irish, was a.s.sumed to be guilty."