Chapter 1
Whilome in Albion’s isle there dwelt a youth,
Who ne in virtue’s ways did take delight;
But spent his days in riot most uncouth,
And vexed with mirth the drowsy ear of Night.
Ah, me! in sooth he was a shameless wight,
Sore given to revel and ungodly glee;
Few earthly things found favour in his sight
Save concubines and carnal companie,
And flaunting wassailers of high and low degree.
—Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, canto 1
A poet must have a keen eye for details and for feelings; for subtext and for innuendo. This same set of skills is also essential if one hopes to have any success at the pursuit and capture of murderers. The 1807 publication ofHours of Idleness, my first collection of verses, cemented my reputation as the greatest poet ever to have lived. It therefore stood to reason that I also was the world’s greatest criminal investigator.
That autumn, I was bored with my studies at Trinity College and feeling quite restless. So I was intrigued and a little annoyed when my butler, Joe Murray, informed me as I enjoyed an otherwise-pleasant champagne breakfast that a young woman named Miss Felicity Whippleby had been butchered in her Cambridge rooms. She was said to have been a quiet and well-mannered girl, and nobody could fathom what she might have done to bring such a fate upon herself.
Murder was a rare thing in Cambridge, and mystery was unheard of. I had no doubt Felicity Whippleby’s name would soon be upon the lips of every local gossip and rumormonger, people whose time would have been better spent talking about me. I resolved to put my first-rate intellect to work capturing her killer. Such a diversion would burnish my notoriety and provide a good excuse to avoid attending classes. Anyway, Cambridge was large enough to support the misdeeds of only one villain. I would not be upstaged on my own territory by a knife-wielding interloper.
So, I roused my cohabitant, the Professor, from his hibernatory slumber, and after finishing off two bottles of Veuve Clicquot, we began canvassing the neighborhood, looking for the murderer. The air was crisp and fresh, and a stiff wind was blowing through the narrow streets, a welcome respite from the summer’s merciless heat. I would have found the weather invigorating, but I was animated that morning by something much more sinister than the apple-scented blush of early October in a leafy college town; I’d been awake for fifty hours, and I’d spent most of it drinking. I was, thus, in a state of near delirium. The Professor was better rested and had his wits about him, but grouchiness was intrinsic to his nature.
Our manhunt quickly turned up a suspect; as we wandered about near the scene of the murder, I noticed a shabby fellow staring at us with crazed, bulging eyes. My keen senses could not be fooled; something was out of place with this character.
“Do you have a problem?” I asked. He was taller than I, and broader through the shoulders, but I was younger and had become a skilled brawler during my years at boarding school. Still, if this confrontation devolved into fisticuffs, he might have been able to get the better of me, as I was not fully in command of my faculties. Fortunately, I was accompanied by the Professor, whose presence was sufficient to deter most evildoers.
“Perhaps it’s not my place to say,” said the suspicious man. His jacket was ill fitting and threadbare around the elbows. Unless he was the killer, he was nobody important.
“Perhaps it’s not,” I agreed.
“It’s just that there appears to be a rather large bear behind you.” He shrank away from the Professor.
I scowled at him. “Don’t you think I know that?”
He shuffled his feet and avoided meeting my accusatory gaze; a sign of guilt. Inconclusive, though. His behavior could merely indicate that he was intimidated by my estimable presence. Even if he didn’t know who I was, he must have known by observing my dress, which was only fashionably disheveled, and my carriage, which was just a little wobbly, that I was a quality sort. I was also uncommonly handsome, and my raw sexual magnetism had a tendency to frighten or confuse lesser men.
“I don’t mean to be impertinent, sir,” he said, his voice quavering. “But why is there a large bear behind you?”
“He’s shy,” I said. “He doesn’t like you.” I had little patience for the suspicious man’s hyperbole and histrionics. The Professor was of ordinary size for his genus. “I don’t like you much myself,” I added.
The man gurgled a little and tugged at his shirt collar. “I apologize, then, to the both of you. I’ll be going now.”
But I grabbed hold of his lapels to stop him. He had given himself away; for even a novice practitioner of the art of detection knows that murderers are terrified of bears.
“You’re not going anywhere,” I said. His clothes were stiff with filth and dried sweat, and when I shook him, I must have loosed the stink he held close to his body. It erupted forth, like a brown fog rolling off a rancid moor; a stench so powerful, it had a taste. I gagged and tried to hold my breath. I didn’t quite manage it, but I did hold on to the killer. I’d always wondered if evil had an odor. As the murderer’s filth laid siege to my poor nose, I knew it did.
The Professor growled and licked his paw, pleased with my display of prowess. He had the benefit of vast and subtle reasoning capacities as well as an ursine olfactory mechanism, a tool far more precise than the nose of a man. He must have long ago deduced that this miscreant slaughtered that poor girl.
“Why did you do it, you foul blackguard?” I wheezed. “Why did you kill her?”
The man’s eyes jerked around in their sockets, looking for a route of egress. But he was stuck between me and the bear, and there would be no escape. “I’ve got no idea what you’re talking about,” he said.
Less able explorers of the dark corners of the human heart might have been convinced by the killer’s display of confusion, but I didn’t believe him, and the Professor didn’t either. So I twisted the man’s stinky arm. Hard. Behind his back. He started to struggle, but the Professor growled again, and the man went limp. I drew the pistol I carried in my waistcoat and pressed it against my captive’s jaw, in case he had any ideas about resisting. Thus threatened, he became quite docile and allowed me to lead him back to the rooming house where the volunteer constable of Cambridge was guarding the murder scene.
The officer’s broad face swelled and reddened. “I still can’t let you examine Miss Whippleby’s room or the body, Lord Byron,” he said, smoothing his homemade uniform over the expanse of his belly. “I don’t care how important you think you are.”
This place had, of course, been the first stop in our investigation, but the constable did not permit us to hunt for clues. The house matron had dispatched a rider to carry news of the tragedy to the girl’s father in London, and Lord Whippleby would surely send a professional man hunter to run down the killer. The scene and the corpse would be preserved, untouched, awaiting such expert examination.
It would be waiting, however, for a while. It was an hour’s ride on a fast horse to the nearest station on the semaphore line, and it would take at least another hour to transmit the message to London. If fog obscured visibility between stations, relay riders would have to carry the news instead, extending the journey.
Once word of the tragedy reached the girl’s father, he’d need another hour, or perhaps even two, to make the necessary arrangements to get an investigator on the road. A fast rider could clear the fifty miles between London and Cambridge in under four hours, including a stop to change horses, but the investigator likely would not be an expert equestrian. Also, he’d be hauling his equipment or his belongings, so he’d hire a coach, which would take quite a bit longer. Meanwhile, the killer’s trail would grow cold.
I’d tried to explain that I was the world’s greatest poet and the Professor was a noted expert, but the constable, quite unmoved by our impressive credentials, was loath to permit a drunk and a bear to root around the premises. No matter. I’d solved the case regardless.
“I have captured your killer,” I announced. “This man did it.” I threw the culprit down at the constable’s feet. “Take him away and hang him, or do whatever it is you people do.”
“Please,” said the murderer to the constable. “This gentleman is quite mad, and he reeks of drink.”
“You’re the one who reeks,” I countered.
The constable scratched the stubble on his chin with a long, yellow fingernail. “This is no killer. He is only Mr. Collins, the wheelwright.”
The Professor sighed. We had both grown accustomed to dealing with our intellectual inferiors, but idiocy was tiresome nonetheless. “He is Mr. Collins, the murderer,” I said. “People are rarely only one thing. Wheelwrights can also be murderers.”
The constable didn’t look convinced. “But I’ve known Mr. Collins for near to twenty years. He goes to my church. Decent-enough fellow. Family man.”
I nodded. “Very well. You can tax his children to pay for his hanging, then.”
“I didn’t do nothing, Angus,” said Collins the Murderer.
“He’ll confess easy enough when the Professor interrogates him,” I said.
Collins wailed.
“That doesn’t seem like a good idea at all,” said the constable. “When Whippleby’s man arrives, he’ll sort everything out.”
“What are you going to do, then, with this criminal?” I asked.
Angus gave my suspect a dismissive wave with his fleshy hand. “You move on along, Mr. Collins. Send me best to the missus.”
Collins scurried off, probably to kill some more people.
“The mistake you’ve made today is very grave,” I told Angus.
“I don’t think Mr. Collins is the murderer. If I had to make a guess, I’d be inclined to blame Mr. Leif Sedgewyck.”
The name was familiar. “Sedgewyck is a student at the College,” I said. “What’s he got to do with this?”
“He was a frequent companion of the dead girl’s; a man who might have married her. I spoke to him earlier this morning.”
“Why do you think he did it?”
Angus started to say something, and then stopped, and paused to rub the loose flesh beneath his chin. “I’m sorry for wagging my tongue; I oughtn’t have. I’m only an amateur constable,” he said. “I’m just fine at running off rowdies from a pub, and I can patrol the streets well enough, but unless it’s pretty obvious, I really don’t have any way of knowing who has done a murder. That’s why a professional is coming.”
“You’re keeping something from me,” I said.
“Nothing that’s really any of your business, Lord Byron. Why don’t you go home? I think I got things squared until the man from London gets here.” He kept his voice low and soothing, but he was obviously relishing this rare opportunity to pretend to be a figure of some importance. I didn’t appreciate his condescension. “You should head back to your rooms and write some more of them pretty poems. I quite enjoyed Hours of Idleness.”
Maybe he was right, and I ought to have just gone home. But I rarely do the things I ought.
Copyright © 2015 by Daniel Friedman
