The Deeds of the Disturber - Elizabeth Peters [103]
The reader may well ask, however, why I consented to allow the children to view these dreadful scenes. The answer is simple: I did not. The viewing rooms were crowded, not only with people but with their voluminous garments, and a small child could easily conceal himself among the sweeping skirts and heavy coats. Ramses was the first to steal away. When his absence was noted, Percy was quick to suggest an explanation.
‘I expect he has gone to see the Chamber of Horrors, Aunt Amelia. I will find him, shall I?’
Without waiting for an answer, he slid away.
‘I will go after them, Emerson,’ I said. ‘Do you stay here with Violet – and show her the tableau of Her Gracious Majesty, Prince Albert, and their lovely children.’
But Violet tugged at her uncle’s hand. ‘I want to see the dead people, Uncle Radcliffe.’
‘Violet, my dear,’ I began.
‘She has seen them before, Amelia,’ Emerson said, letting the little tyrant draw him away. ‘The bloodthirstiness of innocent children is a perfectly natural thing, you know; I have often observed it, and cannot understand why so-called modern authorities refuse to admit it.’
I knew why Emerson was so agreeable. Like myself, he had often wondered whether his son’s interest in mummies and ancient bones was a sign of some deep, dangerous mental disturbance. Finding the same quality in supposedly normal children like Percy and Violet reassured him.
‘Well, I do not approve, Emerson, but if you insist, I must of course submit.’
‘Bah,’ said Emerson. ‘You want to see the Chamber of Horrors too.’
The boys had immediately discovered the most gruesome of all the exhibits; their mutual antipathy for once in abeyance, they stood side by side contemplating the ‘Celebrated Murderers.’
A recently added figure was that of Neill Cream, who had been hanged for administering strychnine, rightfully called the most agonizing of poisons, to a series of unfortunate fallen women. His crossed eyes and large ginger moustache, his bald head and sinister leer composed a countenance so hideous one wondered why any woman, fallen or upright, would accept any substance whatever from his hand.
‘Come away from that, Ramses,’ I exclaimed.
Holding Violet by the hand, Emerson joined Percy before the effigy of Dr Pritchard. This reprobate had betrayed not only his physician’s calling but his marital commitments by subjecting his wife to the slow torture of poisoning with tartar emetic. (He had also polished off his mother-in-law, presumably because she had become suspicious of her daughter’s unusual symptoms.) We must all agree that there is something extraordinarily vile about the crime of uxoricide; and Pritchard was surely one of the most cold-blooded hypocrites in the annals of crime, for he had not only shared his wife’s bed throughout her illness, and held her in his arms as she perished, but he had also insisted that her coffin be opened so that he might embrace her for the last time.
‘Surely,’ I remarked to Emerson, ‘there is no more infamous example of a Judas kiss than when that villain, his face wet with crocodile tears, pressed his lips to the cold lips of the woman he had foully slain, betraying the tenderest of all human ties.’
It would have been difficult to disagree with this statement; but Emerson was in a perverse mood that day. ‘Pritchard had his points,’ he remarked. ‘I find it difficult to wholly