Chapter 10
To Mrs Sonia Thomson 12 October 1888 Was I ever without malice? You may be surprised to learn that, until recent times, this was not a question to which I gave any thought. But now, as I write this account for you, dear lady, I feel compelled to ask it of myself. And I think the answer would have to be 'no'. I have always been wicked.
That is the honest truth and I never lie. Well, let me quickly qualify that. In this account of my experiences, I will tell the complete truth. I will not fabricate. All I write here is reality as I perceived it. I can promise nothing more.
But first we have to accept that there are many types of wickedness, do we not? There is the wickedness of those prosaic characters who stalk the nightmares of the innocent: the lumpen men, damaged or dull-witted individuals without finesse, devoid of any higher agenda. I would never put myself into that category, for I constitute a blend of wickedness with talent… great talent. It was only when I fully realised the extent and depth of that talent that I was able to channel my wickedness, and through this combination achieve greatness. But more of this later. Let me instead tell you the story of how I came to my great revelations, and how they secured for me my place in history.
Hemel Hempstead where I was born, William Sandler, on 10 August 1867, is a modest market town, genteel and pretty, and my parents' house, set among cornfields just beyond the jurisdiction of the town council, was a comfortable place in which to be raised.
It would be churlish of me to complain about the situation of my home, though everything else about it was bad.
The house was called Fellwick Manor. Built by my grandfather in the 1820s, it was a vast, boxy affair with too many windows, each a different shape and size from the rest. The architect appeared deliberately to have forsaken any of the Georgian taste for symmetry and proportion. It had ungainly, overbearing gables and a broad, squat porch. The bricks were too dark, the woodwork too light, and, to top it all off, a huge phallus of a chimney reared up from the back of the property above the kitchen. The house was set in three acres of prime Home Counties countryside, which was really its one saving grace. Otherwise, it was a typical monstrosity, built to impress, the thoroughly vainglorious trophy of a successful member of the mercantile class.
And my grandfather was certainly successful. He had been spat out of his mother's womb, the tenth of eleven children. All the others had wallowed in poverty, died young and vanished utterly from history. My father would never talk about any of his paternal relatives. He disowned them, just as my grandfather had done.
My father, Gordon Sandler, was a textbook example of the spoiled son of new money. Grandfather did all the work, made the fortune, and then his only son, my dear father, lived off it his entire life. Father was a husk of a man, tall and bone-thin, his face almost skeletal. He looked terrifying, even to me, his only son. I had only ever known him to be completely bald. He had black, piercing eyes, set too far back in his bony skull, and a black handlebar moustache. That was probably his only nod to fashion, yet it was an affectation to which he was entirely unsuited. My mother, Mary, was buxom, her hair perpetually scraped up in a tight bun. As a young woman she might have achieved an average prettiness, but the image I retain of her in my mind is all fleshy jowls and billowing black dresses. She scared me more than my father did.
Ours was an extremely religious household, though I myself could never understand what my parents saw to admire in God. My father was a lay preacher. With the fortune inherited from his father he had no need to make an honest crust: a full loaf was already provided. Instead, he gave himself over to the service of the Lord. Mother was equally pious, throwing herself into good works, helping the poorest of the local community – you can imagine the sort of thing.
There was no form of religious imagery displayed in our house. My parents were Calvinistic Methodists, a relatively new sect at that time. The only artistic expression of their religious fervour that they sanctioned was a tiny painting of Christ which hung in the parlour. In the hall, close to the front door, they displayed a framed letter from Reverend Griffith Jones, founder of the Order. According to family legend, my great-great-grand-father was Jones's right-hand man. Jones, I believe, had a lot to answer for.
My parents recognised quite early on that I was not inspired by the Holy Spirit in the way that they were. Indeed, I was a difficult child in almost every respect, and grew worse as each year passed. This was partly because of my own peculiar nature, but exacerbated by the fact that my parents responded to my stubborn, uncompromising personality in only one, rather unimaginative way – they regularly beat me to within an inch of my life.
It became something of a ritual. After committing an offence, no matter how minor, I would be summoned to my father's study. This was a very dark room on the ground floor, leading off the hall and facing south across the front garden, with a view of the road to Hemel Hempstead. However, I only knew this last couple of facts from my understanding of the geography of the house, for the curtains were always kept drawn in my father's study.
The walls were panelled with oak and the only illumination in the entire room came from a couple of gas mantles: one close to the door, and another, larger one, above Father's desk. The room was boiling hot in summer and freezing cold in winter. I often wondered how the bastard could ever do anything in his 'study', and then I would wonder what he needed a study for. He was not learning anything, he did not seem to work. All he ever did was read that damn book – you know the one I mean – in two parts, 'Old' and 'New'.
So, to the study I would be marched. Once I was inside, Mother would stand back against the door while Father questioned me. When I was very young, four or five, I would put up arguments in that infantile way. I would protest my innocence, try to offer mitigating circumstances. But after a time I grew to realise this was utterly futile because, no matter what I said, the outcome was always the same. Mother would lead me to the desk and I would be forced to bend over it with my trousers pulled down. She would pin my head to the desk top with her left hand and hold down my shoulders with the other. She always kept a crimson handkerchief tucked up her sleeve – the only concession to colour in her entire wardrobe. She wore black from head to toe, but that square of crimson cloth was concealed up her left sleeve. As she pinned me to the desk top, I could always see that handkerchief, clearly and close to. Then my father would take his cane from the cupboard next to the door. I would hear it 'whoosh' through the air as he got the measure of it, and then the pain would slam into me like a steam engine. Afterwards we would pray together and I would be embraced and finally led from the room. 'There,' my mother would say as we crossed the hall, 'your soul will feel better now, William.'
I spent an inordinate amount of time alone. My parents did not like me mixing with the town children, and when I was not at my dame school I would sit in my room, staring out of the window, or walk through the fields and woods near the house. I was particularly fond of sitting by the river not far from the end of our huge, rambling garden. On my walks, I only rarely saw anyone else, and if I did encounter a group of children from school, they always ignored me.
I was eleven when I committed my first truly evil act. Up to that time I had been content messing around with small rodents and native reptiles. I liked to kill the creatures slowly, inventing new and evermore imaginative ways to do so. My favourite had been the time I crucified a rat which I caught under the bridge. I had devised a special trap which I laid with great care. The creature struggled to free itself from a net I had hooked up that was triggered to fall when the rat entered a small hole in the wall close to the waterline. Taking care to avoid the beast's sharp teeth, I managed to slip a cord around its neck. Later I ripped out its teeth using a pair of pliers I had stolen from my father's kit. The cross I had already prepared. I had even written a tiny INRI on a piece of wood tacked to the top of it.