Summon Up the Blood (33 page)

Quinn’s voice was peculiarly devoid of humour. ‘Naturally. I am not in the habit of talking about things of which I have no knowledge.’

His remark provoked a sceptical chorus, led by Sir Michael.

‘Now, now!’

‘Steady on!’

‘Surely not!’

‘But you mean to say?’

‘I mean to say precisely what I said,’ cut in Quinn emphatically. ‘It is not as easy as you think to kill someone.’

‘Be careful, my friend. If I did not know you better, I would think you were confessing to murder.’ The warning came from Sir Michael. He watched Silas Quinn closely, with an intensity of expression that mirrored Quinn’s own. The trace of a smile curled on Sir Michael’s lips, like a snake finding repose on the branch of a tree.

Quinn did not smile. ‘But you do not know me at all,’ he observed, with a cold insistence on the factual.

Sir Michael indicated their surroundings with a sweeping hand gesture. His meaning seemed to be that Quinn’s presence in the Panther Club told him everything he needed to know.

‘So you have . . .? Murdered?’ Was there a glimmer of respect in Pinky’s tone, or was it perhaps an unseemly relish? Beneath his domino mask, his face flushed its usual deep colour. One eye had a glassy shine over it, his monocle held in place behind the mask.

Quinn considered for a while before replying, ‘I have certainly given it a great deal of thought.’

‘Ah, I see,’ said Sir Michael, a hint of disappointment entering his voice. ‘You are a theoretician of murder, rather than a practitioner?’

‘Why is it you people always seek to rephrase what I have said in words that are not my own? Can you not see that you will inevitably distort my meaning?’ The heat of Quinn’s response was disproportionate, and therefore prompted a stir of disapproval. Perhaps he had revealed himself to be something less than a gentleman.

‘My dear fellow, I am only trying to understand you better.’

‘Is my meaning not clear enough? What is it about what I have said that you do not understand?
It is not as easy as you think to kill someone.
’

‘But none of us has suggested that it is easy!’ pointed out Harry Lennox, with a nervous laugh. He cast about to see how his remark had gone down with his fellows.

‘And it is not so much what you have said as the manner in which you said it that gives rise to consternation,’ said Count Lázár Erdélyi. ‘It is almost as if you are defending the practice of murder on a point of honour.’

‘Perhaps I am.’

‘Well, I am not an exemplary moralist myself, but I rather think you should not.’

‘Even to conceive of killing someone, and then to formulate a plan for how one may put the intention into action . . . that in itself requires . . .’ Quinn broke off, searching for the right word. ‘Character,’ he settled for at last. ‘But to go through with it! To turn the intention into an act! That is something beyond character – that is evidence of a superhuman greatness!’

‘My dear fellow, you will have to do better than that,’ said Sir Michael wearily. ‘The crime of murder is rather more commonplace than you suggest. And even some quite unexceptionable people have proven themselves capable of it. Downtrodden husbands and uppity wives. Members of the lower orders are particular prone to it – all it takes is a few drams of strong liquor for them to overcome whatever minuscule scruples they might have had in the first place. Why, even the middle classes have indulged in it on occasion.’

‘All these people whom you so dismiss have proven themselves gods.’

‘Oh, now you really are going too far!’ objected Lord Marjoribanks. His mouth twitched into an uneasy smirk, as his eyes flashed nervously about.

‘Have you ever tried to kill someone?’ demanded Quinn in response. ‘I mean you yourself, with your own hands, as it were?’ Quinn held his hands in front of his face, and examined the splayed fingers with a look of horror.

‘Have
you
?’

A violent spasm convulsed Silas Quinn. He looked into the young lord’s eyes as if into a deep abyss into which he was in danger of falling. ‘Yes, of course.’

At that moment there was a sound like a gun being discharged. Everyone, except for Quinn, jumped in their seats, startled. When they realized it was simply a coal exploding in the grate, laughter released the tension they were feeling. Quinn alone remained serious. His face had a dejected cast to it. ‘I failed,’ he said.

‘You failed?’ said Pinky, absent-mindedly turning from the flaring fire which had distracted them all from Quinn’s last utterance. ‘At what?’

‘At killing.’ Quinn felt the tremor of duplicity cross his face. If it was true that he had once failed at killing, his critics might say that he had certainly made up for it since. But he had always drawn a distinction between the deaths that regrettably occurred in the course of his investigations and the wanton crimes perpetrated by the cold-blooded murderers he hunted. Besides, for now it suited his purposes to appear inept at the art of killing. It flattered his audience – in particular the man he believed to be the killer.

Once again, all eyes were on Quinn. No one spoke. There was the sense that he had said something interesting. They wanted him to go on.

‘It happened many years ago. I was a student at the time, of medicine, at Middlesex Hospital. I never completed my studies. It was said that I became ill, that I suffered a breakdown. Perhaps that is the truth. I don’t know anything about that. I boarded in a lodging house in Camden. And it was there that I met the man I determined to kill. He was a fellow student, and he was everything I was not. Handsome, well-liked, athletic. But superficial – a man of surface, a glib, empty man. A bubble of a man. Surely it should not have been so hard to pop him?

Quinn mimed a slight stabbing action, as if he was pushing a pin into a balloon. As he told his story, he became increasingly lost in the past he was recounting. It was almost as if he was no longer telling it for his audience, but because he was driven by the need to confess.

‘The landlady had a daughter. My enemy had an easy way with the opposite sex and charmed the girl into an affectionate relationship. But I saw what he was really like. I could not allow him to . . . I loved her, you see, genuinely – not like he did. My love for her was total, absolute, pure and deep. There was no one else for me. And so, I decided that the only solution to my problem was to eliminate my rival. But I tell you, it is not as easy as you think to kill someone.’ There was a despairing intensity to Quinn’s voice as he scanned his listeners, as if searching for sympathy.

‘Did you try awfully hard?’ Pinky’s mocking tone prompted a round of sniggers.

Quinn was oblivious. Whatever purpose he had had in telling the story seemed forgotten. The story demanded to be told, and this audience, of strangers and suspects, was as good as any. ‘First I had to decide upon the place where I would kill him – the scene of the crime, as it were. I did not want to do it at the lodging house. That would incriminate me too much. I needed to pick a neutral place, one not associated with me at all, and yet it had to be somewhere I could entice him to. It had to be a lonely spot, nowhere overlooked. And I had to be sure that I would not be interrupted. I decided to write a note in her name, in which she promised to give herself to him completely if he would meet her on the towpath, beneath the bridge near Camden Lock after dark. In her name, I commanded him to destroy the note once he had read it and to say nothing of the assignation to anyone.’

Quinn’s voice took on a note of cold cunning. Certainly, his narration had started as a performance, a simulation. But he had gone beyond that now. He felt again all the raw emotions that had unhinged him all those years ago: the bitterness, the hatred and the grief.

‘My medical studies were not so far advanced that I had learnt how to ease suffering or cure disease. But I had learnt enough to know how to inflict a fatal wound quickly and efficiently. My plan was to cut his throat with a barber’s razor and then push him off the towpath into the canal. The body would inevitably be found, but there would be nothing linking me to it. No one knew of my love for the landlady’s daughter, not even the object of that love herself. It would be assumed that he was the victim of a violent robbery that had gone too far.’

‘And so, how did this melodrama play out?’ asked Harry Lennox, the newspaperman in him eager for detail.

The question had the effect of reminding Quinn where he was. He took in his audience as if he was surprised to see them there. But his voice was calmer now, for the moment, at least.

‘As I think you can guess, I could not go through with it . . . as soon as I heard his voice, calling out to her in the dark, instead of the hatred I thought I would feel – I . . . I felt only horror. Horror at what I was about to do. I imagined the blade of the razor touching his throat. In my imagination, the skin of his throat was impossibly resistant. I could not make the blade cut through it. It was like thick leather. I imagined pressing the blade hard against the leathery skin, but the blade would not penetrate. I threw the razor into the canal and ran.’

‘A lucky escape, for you as much as him,’ said Sir Michael.

‘But why could I not go through with it? It was not compassion. I still hated him. I still wanted him dead. That night, I dreamt of killing him. I was able to accomplish in my dreams what I had not managed to do in reality. The preternaturally sharp blade cut through his skin effortlessly. The blood spurted out from his neck. What a great sense of release and joy I felt, as it drenched me! A sense of ecstasy, almost. The blood gushed in an endless spray from his neck and filled the canal. Still he stood there, spraying blood from his wound. The canal ran with crimson liquid, the level of which continued to rise, until it flooded out and lapped around my feet. I looked in horror at the boy I had killed – for he was just a boy and in fact now seemed younger than ever – and saw that he was both dead and not dead at the same time. The life had gone from his eyes, but he continued to stand upright, and was even able to move his limbs, though lifelessly like an automaton. Suddenly, the wound in his neck stopped spurting blood and to my horror I saw the sides of the gaping flesh part. A terrible dread gripped my heart. I knew that the wound was about to speak to me, as indeed it did. Its sides opened like the lips of a mouth. “You killed me because you love
me
, not
her
”, it said to me.’

‘Good heavens!’

‘I awoke from that vile dream and leapt raving from my bed. I ran through the lodging house screaming – and naked, it must be said. I fell into a faint outside the door of my hated rival. When I came to, I was in a hospital bed.’ Quinn hung his head, as if in shame. ‘I did not find peace then and I have not found it since. Sometimes it occurs to me that the only way I will ever find peace is if I hunt him down and kill him.’

‘But why are you telling us all this?’ Count Erdélyi yawned to show that he was not really interested in a reply.

There was a manic gleam to Quinn’s eyes as he lifted his head and confronted each of them, one by one. ‘Because I believe each and every one of you is capable of the very thing I am not.’

‘Really?’ said Sir Michael, raising an eyebrow when you might have expected him to cry out in outrage. ‘You take us for a gang of murderers?’

Quinn felt calmer, once again in control, as he turned on Sir Michael. ‘Did you not draft a memorandum that advised the use of baton charges against striking workers? This policy was responsible for the deaths of two workers in the Dublin Lock-Out.’

Sir Michael turned his head to one side sceptically but said nothing.

‘Indeed, I rather think it is true to say that the cost in human lives is always your last consideration when it comes to shaping government policy. If there was a war, you would not hesitate to produce the documentation necessary to send millions to their deaths.’

‘It’s not my remit.’

‘But if it were, you would.’

Lord Marjoribanks’ mouth twitched. ‘I don’t think I could kill anyone, any more than you could, old fellow,’ he protested.

‘Does the name Sophie Armstrong not mean anything to you? She was once a young actress of promise.’

‘What has she got to do with anything?’

‘Did you never wonder what became of her?’

‘She . . . I severed all contact with her.’

‘Yes, after she told you that she was carrying your child.’

‘I gave her money.’

‘For a certain illegal operation . . .’

‘What of it?’

‘Is that not murder, in your eyes?’

‘It is unfortunate, but not murder.’

‘And what of
her
death – Sophie’s death – from an infection contracted during the operation?’

‘I knew nothing of that. I feel awful, now that you have told me about it. But you cannot say it’s murder.’

‘Did you not put her in contact with the quack who performed the operation?’

‘I . . .?’

‘And did you not know that there were rumours about women who had died as a result of his ministrations? Did you not know that he was a drunk and a drug-fiend? Had you not seen the filthy premises in which he carried out his work? You caused her death as certainly as if you had pointed a gun at her head and pulled the trigger.’

‘What choice did I have?’

‘Please, there is no need to justify yourself to me! Don’t you see, I admire you for what you were capable of doing! I merely want you to face up to what you are!’

‘But I did not want her dead. That was not my intention.’

‘You wanted her out of your life. You had ambitions. Was it not the case that in those days you dreamt of being an artist? Her continuing existence with some brat of a child could only have been an encumbrance to you. Her death was more than convenient, it was necessary – to the duty that you owed your Art. A pity then, that you put aside all such aspirations and turned instead to other distractions.’

‘I discovered that I had no talent. It was better that I did so before wasting my life entirely.’

‘That must have been painful for you. But the passage of time numbs the pain, does it not? Particularly when assisted by an opium habit. It was, after all, in a Limehouse opium den that you met the doctor concerned.’