Riot Most Uncouth (16 page)

But there's no point in defending myself. Because of my investigative omission, I knew very little of Felicity Whippleby, and I needed more information to write about the events surrounding her death. I'd hoped the girl's father might provide me with some anecdote; some story about a sweet or precocious child that would become maudlin when placed opposite a depiction of the horrific details of her demise. If I could not fully convey my own visceral alarm on the page, perhaps I could instill in the reader some of Lord Whippleby's gnawing sense of loss.

But seeing the wreck that Whippleby became helped me realize that the story was never about his daughter, and I had portrayed her as unimportant because she never really had been important. The story I needed to tell about the Cambridge murders was about me and about my father, and about the choice I made.

My instinct that my narrative was incomplete had brought me to Whippleby, but the problem was not with the beginning of my tale, but rather, the ending. There was no new information for me to uncover in Whippleby's dirty London rooms. I'd come, instead, for some measure of redemption.

I'd spent years pondering the things I did over the course of those few days when I was nineteen, things I'd never spoken of to anyone. It was no coincidence that I had begun writing about what happened at Cambridge when my personal fortunes were at their nadir and my reputation was in tatters. I would not continue to lie, not to the world, not to Whippleby and not to myself. I would tell this man my secret and, thereby, atone for the wrongs I had committed and the scheme in which I had been a participant.

Doing so would endanger me, perhaps. And it certainly meant that my planned exile from England would no longer be voluntary. But that was fine. I was done with lies and I was done with the rainy, squalid islands of Britain and the small-minded people who dwelt on them. Redemption seemed a worthwhile goal, and there was a whole unspoiled Continent to explore.

“There's no mystery to unravel,” I told Whippleby. “I know which investigator was false, and I know whose interests he served. And I know who really killed your daughter.”

Whippleby wet his lips with his tongue and leaned toward me. His eyes bulged, and his hands quivered.

I told him everything.

 

Chapter 21

She walks in Beauty, like the night

Of cloudless climes and starry skies;

And all that's best of dark and bright

Meet in her aspect and her eyes:

Thus mellow'd to that tender light

Which Heaven to gaudy day denies.

—
Lord Byron,
“She Walks in Beauty”

After arranging to release the bear into Joe Murray's custody, I accompanied Angus and Knifing to the scene of the latest atrocity. The place was familiar to me; it was the residence of Professor Tower and his family. Indeed, Professor Tower was the first person I encountered upon our arrival there, though I did not immediately recognize him. I typically identify people by their faces, you see, and Tower was missing his.

“I didn't even know a face could come off like that,” said Angus as he stared at the grinning skull, which was a wet yellowish-brown color with patches of red flesh still clinging to it. The rough and messy surface was quite unlike the smooth, polished interior of my Jolly Friar, but having drunk from that vessel on so many occasions, it turned my stomach to see a human skull in its natural state.

Angus had said there was not just one killing, but rather, “a massacre.” This was not the only body here to be examined. Though I was feverishly trying to imagine some circumstance by which my paramour had escaped her husband's fate, I felt a near compulsion to fall to my knees and wail with anguish. I restrained myself, however, and maintained a bearing that suggested no emotion more intense than mild curiosity. Neither my interests nor her memory would be well served by the revelation of our indiscretions.

“The face is less than an eighth of an inch thick, and it's only stuck to the bone with soft, mobile tissues,” Knifing was saying. “All you need to loosen it up and get underneath is an incision along the hairline or beneath the jaw. If you can work your fingers into that, the whole thing will rip away with a good pull, especially if you've practiced the movement.”

“Why do you know this?” I asked. What I was thinking was:
One requires only a sturdy ax, a large pot of boiling water, and a strong stomach.

“Knowledge of anatomy and other modern sciences are crucial to my profession,” Knifing said. “I've participated in a number of autopsies. And in my former life as a soldier, I learned exactly how deep my own face went.”

“You were cut all the way to the bone?” Angus asked.

“There is a notch, a groove in the skull beneath my scar. With only a bit more pressure, the wound would have been lethal.”

“Mortality is for the foolish and the poor,” I said, because the recitation had become almost a reflex. “Decay is a consequence of individual failure. A man ought to control his destiny, and not be victim to circumstance.”

Knifing's dark eye narrowed, but his white one seemed to widen. “Those are the words of a man who has never experienced the horrors of modern warfare. Wedged into an infantry formation, there's no place to run when musket balls fall upon you like hailstones, and there's little one can do to evade a shot from a cannon. I've seen plenty cut down in battle; braver and better men than you. Their sacrifice was no failure, and nobody living has a right to call them fools.”

“Can I feel it?” Angus asked.

“Feel what?” said Knifing.

“The groove in your face.”

It was interesting to see Knifing's features register surprise. His dead eye seemed to bulge a little, and his mouth sort of dropped open, as if he intended to speak but had forgotten how to form words. Knifing's entire persona seemed to be structured around anticipating everything in advance, and he clearly hadn't expected Angus to want to palpate his face. Of course, whoever gave him the scar and took his eye probably also surprised him a little bit. “Is there something permissive about my manner or demeanor that might possibly make you think that's an appropriate thing to ask?”

“I don't know,” said Angus. “I thought, perhaps, we were becoming friends.”

“If I've said or done anything to cause you to believe that, you have my sincerest apologies,” Knifing said.

The killer had not been very interested in the blood of Professor Tower, apparently; as most of it was smeared on the walls and emptied onto the floor around the body, which had been positioned at the head of the table in the dining room with a white cloth napkin folded in its lap.

“He was seated here at the table when he died?” Angus asked.

“I think not. Note the cuts and gashes across the left forearm and the knuckles of the right hand,” Knifing said.

“He's ripped up so badly, I didn't think those were special,” Angus said.

“Those happened when he tried to defend his vitals from a knife-wielding attacker,” I said. “During the years before I inherited Newstead, my mother and I lived in Aberdeen, a city rife with drunks and brawlers. Knife fights are not uncommon when Scotsmen get to drinking, and I've seen such wounds before.”

“Very good, Lord Byron,” Knifing said. He bent forward, leaning on his umbrella, and squinted at a mashed-down bit of blood-soaked carpet next to the body. “The body was dragged in here, and posed in this seat.”

“To what purpose?” Angus asked.

Knifing waved his hand; the kind of elegant gesture certain people can make to demonstrate that they don't know something, but don't really care. “Perhaps it's some private ritual of the killer's, or perhaps it's merely some sort of theatrical flourish, for the benefit of anyone who discovers these bodies,” he said. “Or maybe it's some specific sort of message to me or to Dingle. Or even to Lord Byron.”

“Why would it be a message to me?” I asked.

“Fielding Dingle can be relied upon to be the last person to learn of anything, so if he is aware that you have entangled yourself in this unpleasantness, you can be certain the killer knows, as well.”

I stepped back and took a careful look at my surroundings. I had walked through this room a number of times during my secret trysts with Violet, but I had never noticed that this dining table was virtually identical to the one in my residence. It seemed a shocking coincidence, until I remembered that I'd purchased my furniture locally. In a town as small as Cambridge, it was not unlikely that both Tower and I would patronize the same carpenter.

However, if Knifing was correct, and this scene was a message to me, then the killer must have been inside my home to have seen my furniture and learned of the coincidence. Leif Sedgewyck had seen my table, but how could he have connected me to the Towers? Another theory was gnawing at the back of my mind; the theory that had attracted me to the scene of Felicity Whippleby's murder in the first place: blood-draining was the mark of the vampire. And the suspect likeliest to have left me a message was Mad Jack.

My unease must have been plain upon my face, because Knifing said: “You're getting exactly what you wanted right now. You decided to involve yourself and I can see that you're only just realizing what it is in which you've become involved. I hope you're enjoying the experience.”

He followed the trail of blood to the heavy door of the bedroom. He found it unlocked, and pushed it open.

“Oh dear,” said Angus as we entered.

My sweet Violet had been killed and drained in the same manner as Felicity Whippleby. We found her naked body in the bedroom, hung by the feet from a knotted linen sheet, which was affixed to one of the four high posts of the canopy bed. I tried not to think about how I had cavorted there with her the previous afternoon, and instead concentrated on keeping my expression blank to prevent my face from betraying our affair to Knifing. I wanted to take her down, to cover her, to offer her whatever protection I still could. But the revelation of our indiscretions together would only taint her memory, and it certainly wouldn't be the best thing in the world for me and my standing in the community. I did nothing.

But my heart pounded in my chest, and my pulse fluttered in my throat. Feverish sweat began to pour from my forehead and my armpits, though the room was quite cool. I mopped my brow with my shirtsleeve and hoped my reaction to the sight of the corpse had escaped Knifing's notice.

The idea that Violet could be ripped out of the world seemed a direct rebuttal to the sentiment I had shared with her the previous day. How could life be imbued with purpose if someone like Violet could be unceremoniously and arbitrarily unmade? My guts twisted within me, and I nearly swooned. This, I realized, was the intrusion of disorder Knifing had told me his clients hired him to rectify. He was right; looking at that still, dangling form, I wanted order and I wanted certainty and I wanted vengeance.

Knifing's stony expression didn't change when he saw the dead woman, and he did not seem to acknowledge her at all. He seemed more interested in a splatter of blood and bits of bone on the wall, near the doorway. He spotted a small hole bored into the plaster, and then, without commenting about Violet, returned to the dining room to look at her husband's corpse again.

Using the point of his umbrella, Knifing pushed Tower forward, so the corpse slumped onto the table. The back of the skull was a tangled mess of hair and bone and flesh and brains.

“A pistol shot, at close range,” he said.

“He was shot in the back of the head?” I asked.

“Don't be preposterous,” Knifing said with a dry chuckle.

He lifted Tower's mangled head up by the ears and tilted it backward. Stinking red-and-gray pulp poured out of the gunshot wound, but Knifing paid no attention to it, except to make sure none got on his boots.

He pointed to a round, red wound beneath the jaw. “The bullet went in here, and out the back,” he said. “Entrance wounds are typically smaller than exits. You'll find a pistol load embedded in the wall of the bedroom.”

He went back into the bedroom and knelt down, grunting softly as he bent his aged knees. He found a tear in the rug and rubbed it with his fingers.

“With more luck, these poor people might have survived, and solved our mystery for us,” he said. “Professor Tower struggled with the intruder, and had the better of him, for a while.”

“How can you tell?” I asked.

“The same way the Comanche can read the trail to learn where the buffalo herd he's been tracking was attacked by wolves,” Knifing said. “The brains on the wall are at a level with a man's chest, so Tower must not have been standing when he was shot. The track of the bullet is angled upward, and the entrance wound is beneath the chin. The killer must have fired the lethal shot while lying on his back, with Tower kneeling over him. The killer entered the bedchamber from the dining room with a knife or a dagger, and attempted to attack the victims. The husband resisted, and stripped away the weapon.” He toed the rip in the carpeting with his boot, and I realized the blade must have fallen there. Knifing continued: “Tower wrestled the attacker to the floor, but the killer got a hand free, and drew a gun.” He shook his head sadly at how close Tower had come to eluding his grisly fate.

Angus approached the wall and stuck his finger in the bullet hole to verify that it was, indeed, angled upward. “That all makes sense,” he said. “And the evidence corroborates each supposition. It's really quite amazing, Mr. Knifing.”

“I know I am,” Knifing said, “but I wonder how the assailant gained access to the residence in the first place.” He retraced his steps out of the bedroom, past Professor Tower's body in the dining room, and back to the front entryway. He scratched the loose, wrinkled flesh that connected his chin to his neck as he examined the bolt on the door, which looked ordinary. Then he opened an adjacent coat-closet, and the limp body of the Towers' domestic maid fell into his arms. Knifing examined her and showed us the dark purple bruises around her throat.