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.
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.