Murder As A Fine Art Part 46

Margaret stepped closer. "By killing?"

"For twenty years in India, my orders were to kill. I was given promotions and medals for acts that would have caused me to be hanged here in England. Don't talk to me about killing. Killing is wrong only if you look at it in a particular way."

"You have lost your reason."

"Then England has lost its reason!"

"What about the five people you slaughtered on Sat.u.r.day night, two of them women and two of them children?"

"I admit to killing no one on Sat.u.r.day night. But I killed many women and children in India and was praised. My commanders said it was necessary for the empire. They really meant that it was necessary for rich men to become richer because of the opium trade."

"And what about the people you slaughtered on Monday night? They had nothing to do with the opium trade."

"I admit to killing no one on Monday night either. But if five or eleven or even hundreds die to save millions from lifelong misery, those casualties are heroes. If you are truly my mother, you can tell me how much you and I and Samuel managed to earn each day, you as a mudlark searching the riverbank for chunks of coal, Samuel and I collecting ashes?"

"All of us? If we were lucky? Two s.h.i.+llings a day." Margaret almost reached him.

"Perhaps fourteen s.h.i.+llings a week. Not even a pound. Not enough to eat properly and live in a room without rats. When I returned from India, I received sixteen hundred pounds from a landowner who wanted to be an officer in the army. Did you know, Mother, that most officers in the military don't earn their rank? They purchase it from a retiring officer. And this twit landowner was happy to pay me sixteen hundred pounds to take my place as a colonel. Sixteen hundred pounds for being a killer. If you are indeed my mother, you can tell me what I received at the church every Sunday when I went there to learn to read."

"A cookie."

"Until then, I was lucky to taste the crumbs of a cookie. When I worked for the dustman, collecting ashes from the houses of the rich, I saw things I never dreamed existed. Some homes had eight and ten rooms, any of which was larger than the shack that you and I and Samuel were forced to share. I saw splendid clothing, so new and expensive that I thought I must be dreaming. I saw more food consumed in one day than the three of us managed to find in a week. How many millions in England suffer the way you and I did, Mother? When I look at Lord Palmerston and his wealthy, powerful, arrogant friends, when I see their greed and their indifference to the poor, I feel a rage that it takes all my effort to keep under control."

"But you didn't control it."

Margaret reached him.

Determined to help in every possible way, I remained behind her. A cold shock swept through me as Margaret suddenly raised her fists and struck her son. Too short to reach his face, she directed her blows toward his chest. Right, left, right, left. The solid thumps of the impacts were surprising, given that they came from an elderly woman. In a frenzy, she kept striking him. As her fists hammered, the effort brought such forceful breaths from her mouth that I feared she would collapse.

Brookline showed no pain, even when she pounded at his wound. Despite the injury that slicked his coat with blood, his only reaction was to stand straighter. His arms at his sides, he merely braced himself and absorbed his mother's blows.

I ran to her, desperate to tug her away before Brookline might harm her.

Instead he grabbed me. With his arm around my throat, I dangled against his chest, struggling to breathe. At once he dropped me to my feet, appearing to demonstrate that he could have easily injured me if he desired.

Again, I tugged to get Margaret away from him. Becker was suddenly next to me. Seeing that Brookline no longer threatened me, Becker gripped Margaret's other arm, but despite both our efforts, she continued flailing at her son.

"I see the heroic constable is here," Brookline noted. "Maybe you too will one day receive medals, Becker, but I a.s.sure you the medals will come faster if you kill people."

The old woman kept struggling as we dragged her toward the grocer's shop.

"Don't claim you kill for the wretches who live here!" Margaret screamed. "Tonight you almost murdered them!"

"If the revolution came, their children would be better for it," Brookline insisted. "They would thank me."

"You're filth!" Spit flew from Margaret's lips.

"Men like Lord Palmerston are the filth. The quicker they and their way of life are exterminated, the sooner this country will be free of suffering."

"Colonel," Father yelled, "thank you for not harming my daughter."

Turning, I saw Father emerge from the shop.

"Who's there?" Brookline demanded. "The Opium-Eater?"

Father showed himself in the moonlight. "Despite my grat.i.tude, I'm afraid I must object that you're not being entirely truthful with us."

"You little s.h.i.+t," Brookline said.

"I am thin, not little."

"Everything is a joke to you. Opium. Violence. It all has the same amus.e.m.e.nt to you. 'If once a man indulges in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing,' " Brookline quoted with contempt, " 'and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begin upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin to some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time.' "

"You flatter me by quoting my work so accurately."

"You are the true filth to which my mother referred. Your praise of opium and violence caused far more deaths than those for which I admit to being responsible."

In the distance, the alarm bells of fire wagons filled the night. Father glanced in that direction.

I followed his gaze. To the east I saw a glow above where I had been told the British East India Company docks were located. Sparks rose from the glow. The wind sped the sparks across the sky, propelling them toward me, like a swarm of fiery insects. But the grotesque fireworks kept fading as they neared me, extinguished by the wind as much as blown by it.

When I looked again at Father, he was a step closer to Brookline.

"I a.s.sure you, Colonel, that neither opium nor violence amuses me. Every day for the past fifty years, I have regretted the terrible moment when I first swallowed laudanum for my facial pains. As for violence, I write about it compulsively and with apparent humor because it horrifies me. Long ago I stared a mad dog in the face. The terrifying intensity in his eyes above the froth in his mouth so hypnotized me that I was unable to turn away."

"You compare me to a mad dog?" Brookline drew a knife.

"Not at all. A mad dog knows nothing of what it does. You, on the other hand, are extremely aware of what you do, even though you aren't aware of why you do it."

"You don't make sense. The opium has addled your mind."

"To the contrary, it makes my mind clear."

In the distance, the alarm bells of the fire wagons gained in number and strength.

"The sparks are receding," Father noted. "The crisis is under control. You failed, Colonel, and if I may point out, you are standing in a large pool of blood. Should we send for a surgeon?"

"I have endured worse injuries."

"To your body or to your mind?"

"My mind? Do you insult me again?"

When Brookline made a threatening motion toward Father, Becker stepped protectively forward, ready with his truncheon.

"Constable," Brookline warned, "even in my compromised condition, do you honestly think that you are a match for me? You might be stronger at the moment, but I have one quality that you lack entirely."

"And what would that be?" Becker demanded.

"The willingness to inflict death without hesitation. Examine your soul. Are you prepared to cause as much damage to me as I am prepared, without pause or regret, to inflict upon you?"

Becker didn't reply.

"You might wish to defend the Opium-Eater, G.o.d knows why, or the woman who calls herself my mother, or the Opium-Eater's daughter," Brookline said. "But n.o.bility is not sufficient. You do not have the temperament or the training to be the kind of artist that England made me. Ryan already learned that lesson."

"Ryan?" Becker asked quickly. "What about him?"

"His bullet is in me. But he did not have the resolve to finish what he began. I showed him what he lacked."

"You showed him what? Where is he?"

"The last time I saw him, he was sprawled in his blood, devoting his attention to keeping his insides where they belong."

"You...!"

"Becker!" Father shouted as the constable seemed about to attack Brookline. "That's what he wants! He's baiting you! Don't you understand him yet? To kill, he needs a motive he can justify!"

Becker froze.

"Very smart," Brookline said. "The little s.h.i.+t saved your life."

"Colonel, the pool of blood at your feet is spreading. Are you sure you do not wish us to send for a surgeon?"

"I suspect that a surgeon would not be of help." Brookline wavered.

"Instead of hanging yourself, as your father did, you choose to commit suicide by bleeding to death?"

"The consequences of combat are honorable."

"Given the amount of blood that you are losing, the two of us do not have much time to arrive at the truth. Why do you flagellate yourself, Colonel?"

"You dare talk of such things when women are present?"

"They are about to hear worse. Answer my question. Why do you flagellate yourself?"

"You are a sneak."

"I agree. Invading your bedroom was contemptible. Why do you-"

"To punish myself for all the people I killed."

"Do you punish yourself for killing the former soldier with whom you and your mother lived? Do you punish yourself for attempting to kill your mother?"

"It was a horrid thing to do. I was a child. I was confused and did not realize what I was doing."

"Do you punish yourself for all the people you killed in India because of the opium trade?"

"I have nightmares about them."

"Perhaps a better word is 'dreams.' "

"Dreams?"

"Of a particular sort."

"I don't understand."

"You know the type I mean. Despite our differences, we are both men and understand the consequences of certain dreams. We don't need to embarra.s.s the ladies by being explicit."

I was indeed embarra.s.sed. Disturbingly so. This was a rare instance in which Father's comments made heat rise to my cheeks.

"Did you flagellate yourself after you killed those five people on Sat.u.r.day night?"

"As penance."

"Did you flagellate yourself after you killed those eight people in the tavern on Monday night and the three people in the surgeon's house?"

"To atone."

"I saw more than bloodstains on the cot in your bedroom."

Despite the wind and the bells of fire wagons in the distance, the street became unnaturally silent.

"My bedroom?" Brookline asked.

"You flagellate yourself to complete the arousal that killing stimulates in you. The evidence of that arousal was on your cot."

Brookline's bellow so startled me that I took a step backward, as if I were being attacked.

His roar reverberated toward the constables who waited in a line three shops away on each side of him. His cry of anguish rose to the sky, where the stars and a half moon impa.s.sively received it.

His head was thrown back. His mouth gaped. His arms stretched toward the heavens.

Slowly, his cry diminished. As he lowered his arms and head, his shoulders heaved with a profound exhale that might have been a sob. One of Father's books is called Suspiria de Profundis, a sigh from the depths. That was what I heard: the most racking sigh that I imagined could ever come from the depths of a human being.

Brookline turned away. In a daze, he shuffled along the street, trailing blood.

Father kept pace with him. "You kill because you enjoy it. Everything else is a lie that an alien part of you repeated until you believed it."

The line of constables who waited in that direction stepped toward Brookline as he approached. They prepared to secure him with handcuffs.

"Shackles are not required," Father told them. "He doesn't intend to escape. It's obvious where he is going. Let him proceed."

They parted, allowing him through but staying with him.

The streetwalkers whose help Father had enlisted emerged from hiding places along the street. Their haggard features and windblown rags reminded me of drawings of banshees.

"Doris!" Father called. "Melinda! Is this the man who promised you an additional sovereign?"