Michael Dibdin - A Rich Full Death

The flash in question was lightning, and it awoke me out of a profound slumber, with a confused impression of being at sea. I seemed to see an open companion-way, the hatches banging back and forth in a high wind, and a stretch of slippery deck beyond, with squalls of rain driving across it-memories dredged up from those years when my father sent me out on the schooners plying across the gulf to Nova Scotia, to make a man of me. As if to confirm the illusion, the thunder sounded out like ripping calico when a sail splits.

I sat bolt upright, and found myself in a strange bed. On the other side of the room the windows lay swinging open in the wind gusting around the house. The air was filled with the fresh damp smell of rain, and with the sound of it pelting down. Then, suddenly, I made out some sort of shape moving in the darkness. Terror gripped my heart! It had all been too smooth, too convenient and easy. The woman’s tales had been lies, just like the man’s! I had been decoyed to that house- his house-to be made away with!

Then the lightning-as bodiless as moonlight, though far intenser than the sun-suffused the scene again, and I saw that the figure was Beatrice, as naked as Eve. The torrential rain blowing in through the window, which she had gone to shut, had sprayed her shoulders and bosom, and the skin gleamed like polished bronze. It was the most erotic image I had ever seen, and all my fears were swept away as I sprang from the bed and rushed towards her, and found her in the darkness, and embraced her repeatedly.

She did plan it, though! She all but admitted as much the next morning as we sat over our coffee. But not for Browning-for herself! She is in love with me, Prescott. Imagine it-Robert Browning’s chosen mistress in love with me! She scorns him, and calls me a real man-as indeed I am with her.

She does not of course expect me to marry her. Rather I am to replace her previous protector-who will be politely instructed to discontinue his visits forthwith, as his attentions are no longer desired.

‘He will ask why,’ Beatrice pointed out.

Then tell him!’

‘He will ask your name.’

Tell him!’

‘It’s strange! I thought you were his friend.’

‘So did I, once,’ I replied grimly. But I did not feel grim-on the contrary, I awaited the outcome with the liveliest interest.

So much for this part of my tale. Meanwhile events elsewhere were moving rapidly towards their astonishing climax yesterday.

Last Wednesday morning readers of the local news-sheet were startled by a headline in thunderous capitals, reading ‘TERRIBLE DEATH OF AN UNKNOWN WRETCH!!!’ Here, roughly Englished, is the story which appeared underneath:

‘It is early. Sol has not yet shaken his locks above the snowy Apennines, nor will not do so for many hours to come. The city slumbers; each burgher, of whatever rank or station, dreaming of the madcap merrymaking and joyful japes in store at Carnival-tide. The streets are silent, save for the steady reassuring sound of the watchman going his rounds, ever-vigilant in defence of the lives and property of his fellow-citizens.

‘As he makes his way along Via di Calimala, near the Old Market, this upright servant of the people perceives a pleasant odour-a perfume redolent of joyful hours around the familial board after Sunday mass, the roast sizzling on the fire. But the zealous watchman straightway thrusts this deceitful vision aside: at hand is a humble palace, once cradle to many generations of Florentines, but which has stood untenanted since Arno in his anger rose two lustra since.

‘Wherefore then this olfactory ignis fatuus, this fata morgana of the nostrils, this fragrant will-o’-the wisp? Such is the question which leaps to the alert constable’s mind, and without an instant’s delay or a single thought for his own safety the intrepid one irrupts into the edifice-ignoring, in his single-minded dedication to Duty, the directive affixed to its walls by our enlightened civic authorities, warning the citizenry of the perils attendant upon any such ingression.

‘Within, the darkness is of Cimmerian intensity-a very abyss of impenetrable obscurity which threatens to extinguish by its overwhelming preponderance the feeble rays of the watch’s lantern.

‘But stay! What is this other light? What this weird luminance which seems to emanate from the very walls themselves? And what, ah God! say, what is that fiery portal gaping there like the very maw of our Dante’s celebrated Inferno?

‘What a terrible scene! A citizen of Lucca, sure, would straightway turn and fly from such an awful apparition! Never would a faint-hearted Siennese or braggart Pistoian have stood his ground-nay, though it were broad daylight and they in five or ten, as one would they have turned and fled!!

‘No daylight here. No cheering companions. It is the witching-hour, when hell-hags roam. Our man is all alone. But in his breast there beats a Florentine heart!!! Unmoved, he boldly advances upon the terrific vision-which shrinks-dwindles-fades before his unquailing orbs, into another horror, no less ghastly for being of this world. Too much so!

Within the wall he discovers a capacious oven, relic of those happier times when the fruits of Ceres were elaborated here for distribution to the populace. Once again a fire glows within, as when the baker plied his life-sustaining art.

‘But what dreadful sight is this? With what unnatural cargo is the oven now freighted? Not with bread, nor yet a fragrant pot of beans, but with a HUMAN BODY!!!! An unrecognisable and loathsome mass of carbonised flesh and bone! Whose unconsumed extremities appear more frightful still by contrast with the ruin of the rest!’

It was in fact by those ‘unconsumed extremities’-which included a large hand sporting several unusual rings, one of them bearing the seal of his Church-that the authorities succeeded in identifying the victim, the Reverend Urizen K. Tinker.

The unfortunate ecclesiastic was apparently lured to his death by means of a note which his wife-for, unlikely as it may seem, Tinker proved to possess an uxorial appendage-told the police had been delivered to their rooms at about ten o’clock the previous evening, but which had subsequently been burned by its recipient. Tinker had then left home, without tendering any explanation to his wife, who in turn had not dared request one.

The official theory at present appears to be that Tinker was murdered late on Tuesday night, presumably by the author of the note: there is no indication of his identity, nor of the motive for the crime-the public prints made no mention of any puzzling inscription having been found at the scene, so there was no reason to think that it formed a part of the series of which only Browning and I were as yet aware.

The assassin is supposed to have attempted to conceal the outrage by incinerating the corpse in a disused baker’s oven- which, however, does not explain why he failed to take the elementary precaution of removing the highly distinctive rings his victim was wearing. Indeed, it seems more likely that one hand had been left dangling out of the oven precisely so that Tinker’s identity mould be established. But in that case why was any attempt made to burn the body at all? The thing appeared a fathomless mystery.

I had not seen or heard from Browning since the Friday night when I had crouched in the darkness at the head of the stairs outside Beatrice’s rooms, praying that he would not catch sight of me. However, the morning following the discovery of Tinker’s corpse I received the following note:

Dear Booth,

Heureka! The secret of the inscriptions is mine! Eleven o’clock tomorrow morning, at the gate to the Boboli Gdns. ‘Recover hope, all ye who enter!’