Michael White - The Art of Murder

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.

But I did not consider killing animals, in whatever fashion, as actually being evil. That description I reserve for what happened one stiflingly hot day in August 1878. I remember it very clearly. It was the eleventh day of the month, and a day after my eleventh birthday. I had been down by the river. I was allowed to walk around the fields and copses far more freely now. I still rarely met another soul and still never talked to anyone, but I did have the sense of being allowed a little more independence by my godly parents.

On this particular day, I had been playing with a toy yacht I had been given for my birthday. I was trailing it through the current, secured to a long length of string. The boat had a single white sail that caught the breeze and propelled it through the murky brown water.

I was startled by the boy’s sudden appearance at my shoulder. The first I heard of him was his voice.

‘Lovely boat,’ he said.

I whirled round, eyes wide with surprise, and he jumped back, equally startled by my reaction. I looked him up and down. He was tall — a head above me at least. I guessed he was about fourteen. He wore his sandy hair long, flopping into his eyes. He had a narrow face, almost ferret-like, and looked undernourished. He was one of the wretches from the poor end of town, I surmised, no doubt a recipient of my darling mother’s charity.

I turned back to the water and concentrated on guiding the boat to the rushes at the bank side.

‘Can I’ave a go?’ the boy asked.

I ignored him.

‘Can I?’ he repeated, and stepped forward, tapping me on the shoulder.

I caught his ripe smell, a blend of sweat and soot, and felt a ripple of anger and disgust pass through me. I have always hated anyone touching me.

I turned to him and forced a weak smile. Then — I don’t know why I did this — I handed him the end of the string. He clasped it in filthy fingers and beamed at me. ‘Thanks.’

‘What’s your name?’ I asked him.

‘Fred.’

‘Well, Fred, you know what to do?’

‘’Course. Fink I’m stupid? Nuffin to it. Just ’old the string and let the current carry it.’ He took a couple of steps to the river’s edge and we watched as the little yacht glided through the water. There was a narrow track beside the river and we trotted along it as the boat sailed on.

After a few minutes Fred seemed to have had enough. He stopped and leaned forward, taking deep breaths. He ran his free hand over his forehead and I could see he was sweating profusely. ‘Blimey, it’s ’ot,’ he said, and lowered himself to the ground close to the track. Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small glass bottle and took a long draught from it.

I sat down beside him and he handed me the bottle. ‘Blackberry juice. Made it meself earlier.’

I shook my head. ‘No, thank you.’

‘Suit yourself.’ He took another mouthful and returned the bottle to his pocket. ‘So where you from then?’ he asked, turning back to me and squinting against the ferocious afternoon sunlight.

‘I live up there,’ I replied, and pointed back towards Fellwick Manor. We could just see the dark outline of the house.

‘What? That bloody big place?’

‘Yes.’

‘Blimey, your parents must be fucking rich.’

I had never heard that word before. Had no idea what ‘fucking’ meant. I nodded. ‘I suppose they are.’

‘I’m just up ’ere for the day. From ’ackney. You know it?’

I nodded.

‘Bloody ’orrible place. I love it ’ere, though.’

I looked away across the water. When I turned back, the boy had stood up and was running beside the river close to the bridge, clutching my boat to his chest.

‘Don’t launch it there!’ I called. ‘The current will take it under the bridge.’

‘Let’s go under with it,’ he shouted back, still running.

‘No, the rocks are too slippery. Keep the boat out this side. Take it over there.’ I pointed towards the riverbank further along to our right.

Fred ignored me. Suddenly putting on a spurt, he leaped off the track and on to the patch of shingle leading under the bridge. A second or two later he had launched the boat. The current snatched it quickly and it was soon halfway across the river.