The Perfect Murder (2 page)

Now we have arrived to the very threshold of art. Now we are talking about murder worthy of the word. Now we are using the vocabulary of praise, and, obversely, we are calling the murder: ghastly, revolting, unseemly, base, foul, gross, vile, odious, loathful, execrable, abhorrent, fulsome, grisly, gruesome, grotesque, hideous, repulsive, horrid, repugnant, nauseating, sickening, or offensive. These words have heat in them because in the language of murder we must revile most what we like best. Now this is a crime worth committing, worth doing, and, judging from the details released by the police, we think it’s pretty good. I situate our man with the woodchipper at this level. The language implies premeditation, and certainly some creativity went into the means. We see some planning, some design, a scheme, and we like it. Our schoolmarm awards a B.

The next echelon lands us squarely in the realm of the artist. Our chroniclers are howling that our auteur is: heartless, pitiless, merciless, or ruthless. Although mass murderers rarely fit into any of the categories I have been discussing (again, volume is not often the source of art), the high honor of this level of achievement could arguably go to the fifteenth-century Baron Gilles de Rais. Not only was he a great patron of Joan of Arc’s campaigns and a champion of the theater (he converted many of his castles to public stages), the baron managed to convince others to practice his art for him. Gilles de Rais would actually stage his unique dramas, have them carried out by his servants, and sit back as an audience of
one.
He attended several hundred such productions—some say eight hundred—before the bishop of Nantes could no longer abide his indulgences, even from an aristocrat who underwrote the Crusades, and had him and nearly twenty of his stagehands burned at the stake. This kind of killer is no longer an amateur. He has committed a crime both rare and interesting. One that excites the public’s wits. He has slipped the tethers that bind any journeyman: mercy, pity, ruth. He has transcended the mundane and arrived at that critical plane the fifth-century literary critic Longinus recognized as true art: that which
transports
us. Welcome to the world of the imagination.

We grow giddy now, do we not? We are in the high ether of murder, breathing its thin but rare bouquet. We are now talking about gradations of genius, nuanced levels of novelty, visitations by the intoxicating afflatus. The headline writers know this and tell us not in words—because there are no words!—but in phrases suggesting that the mere reading of the account will effect in the reader an altered state. This is murder that chills one’s spine, stops one’s breath, curdles one’s blood, makes one’s flesh creep, stands one’s hair on end, makes one shudder, chills one’s bones, or makes one’s blood run cold. This is great art, inspiring ecstasy—literally
ex stasis
or “out of body.” Books will be written about this murderer—one must think of Jeffrey MacDonald—as surely as books have been written about Michelangelo or T. S. Eliot.

Finally we come to the vocabulary of highest praise. These are the words reserved for that artist who comes along perhaps only once a generation or a century. And we damn him with the fiercest words possible. I can think of only a few who merit this kind of praise. Jack the Ripper continues to fascinate on so many levels. To reread the accounts of his work is similar to the sensation of returning to the hyper-populated canvases of Hieronymous Bosch—each visit to the work reveals so many beautiful things we didn’t see last time. I also think of Leopold and Loeb, the two young men who sought to use our art to reveal the triumph of pure reason in a time of rampant irrationality. They killed a man for
no reason
whatsoever, only to prove that they could do it. That they didn’t get away with it because one of them dropped his eyeglasses doesn’t detract from their thinking. The entire concept is thoroughly original. Their motive was nothing at all. Perhaps the scientists are right when they tell us that there is nothing as beautiful as a vacuum. Yet, can we praise these men? These Homers and Mozarts of our art? No, we must rage and invoke the language of Hades: satanic, diabolical, hellish, infernal, fiendish, demoniacal, and (my favorite) Mephistophelean. We curse Satan when we mean to praise God! We stutter, “How diabolical!” when we wish to lick our wanton lips and purr, “How divine!”

Not only is the appraisal of murder cast in the language of euphemism, but the entire affair is appreciated at a safe remove. The mystery novel itself is nothing more than euphemism elevated to genre. The books are not about the murderer, but about the detective catching the murderer. The contemplation of murder is not unlike the viewing of an eclipse, I suppose. We must look upon it indirectly, we must see it through a series of mirrors or refractions. We are all Jasons peering into the face of the Gorgon by way of the looking glass. For the murder mystery, the mirror is the detective himself.

Few people, actually, care about the detective. We care only about the murderer. But conscience still has a queer—albeit, these days, tenuous—grip on the average citizen. Tradition holds that we cannot call ourselves members of the society of proper men and women
and
openly enjoy the genius of a murderer. So we express our appreciation for the cunning of the detective. We admire the gumshoe’s street smarts, the tidiness of deductive reasoning, and the easy pathways of the cruciverbalist’s mind. These are the means to glimpse the superior concoctions of the killer. But isn’t it all an elaborate disguise? To return to the beginning (more or less), who cares for Sherlock Holmes when he sits alone in his study, mainlining cocaine and knocking off monographs on tobacco ashes? It is Professor Moriarty who continually excites our imaginations. He is always the genius, address unknown, lurking in the shadows of London’s foggy alleys.

It may seem that what I am pursuing is nothing more than the perfect murder. But consider how mundane even that modest aspiration actually is. The perfect murder, as defined by the amateurs and the dilettantes of crime, is nothing more than a murder after which the killer doesn’t get caught. That is too easy. A simple reading of FBI statistics reveals that an overwhelming number of murders go unsolved. Perfect murders are
easy,
in fact easier in some way than the flawed variety. Who cannot plunge a dagger into a stranger’s neck and live out a life unmolested? Who cannot poison a close relative—without motive—and remain beyond suspicion? That is a poltroon’s game, played every day, and perfunctorily. No, what I seek is not the perfect murder, but the perfect masterpiece. I wish to commit a crime so beautiful in construction and so ingenious in practice that it aspires to the condition of art. I want a murder baroque in concept and rich in detail. When it is all done, I will spend the autumn of my life writing my memoirs and will instruct my estate to publish the book after my own death. This account—laying out both theory and practice—will stand as my contribution to the reintroduction of murder to the muses. My book will explain everything in such detail that scholars will pore over it with the same care they spend ferreting out the recondite allusions of
Ulysses
or parsing the extraordinary syntax of a Marcel Proust or a Henry James.

In the quattrocento, the great Italian masters practiced their art on a modest piece of cloth stretched by four boards. They prayed for the chance to take on the greatest canvas of all—the cathedral. Inside a great duomo, they hoped to tell a great story through the multitude of painterly techniques learned on the smaller fields. They were the cathedral builders, still recognized today for the forethought, artisanship, and genius that went into their opus magnum. I too wish to build a monument more lasting than bronze or stone—a cathedral of such scope and detail that everyone will recognize it as genius and as art.

If you are interested in my idea (and I assume that you are), I must now tell you of myself and of my circumstances. I was a child of common birth who, as politicians love to say, “rose above my circumstances.” I am a man of education, an alleged businessman, and I am extremely rich. My wealth, however, comes not from my tedious little company but almost entirely from my wife. But, because of the way things have fallen out, I have access to enormous sums of money. I mention this only to liberate your own thinking. Should your solution to my problem require vast amounts of capital, travel, preparation, or research, I am amply provided for, and can easily arrange it.

I studied to be a doctor once but was able to marry my way out of such a godforsaken profession. I only mention this because you should be aware that any proposal that makes use of medicines and other concoctions will have to deal with the fact that I am not unaware of certain remedies and poisons. Any pharmacological solution will have to deal with the fact that I long prepared to master the craft. But, then, this is America, who isn’t comfortable in a drugstore?

My house is a three-story affair. My wife and I sleep in separate bedrooms—hers on the third floor and mine on the second. We have a maid who comes Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. And both of us make use of a chauffeur, whose sympathies tend toward my own.

My wife? Well, the less said the better. To know anyone is to empathize with them, isn’t that true? But you must know the basics, I suppose. She is a woman of excessive appetites whether at the table, in bed, in society, or in the stores. She is attractive, middle-aged, and is given to outrageous manipulation. I could go into the details of how she received all her father’s money (leaving her two sisters in the cruel position in which I once found myself: forced to marry money rather than make it), but it is a story so familiar that it is the concept behind a thousand books. Her current obsession is the cause of my grief and of my inspiration. She is having an affair with my best friend, and neither suspects that I know.

He—that is, the man who has set upon my head the horns of the cuckold—is no innocent. But then, what man is when it comes to such matters? He simply chose not to think with his head or his heart. He succumbed to the oldest temptation. For our purposes, let us call this man Blazes Boylan. What can I tell you of this poor slob? That he is a businessman, that he is divorced, that he was once my best friend? I am resisting the desire to paint him as a fool. Even though he is, although no more a fool than most of the members of our wretched sex. Blazes was born to all the comforts and privileges life in this country offers a man willing to learn to read. He has made a considerable fortune.

But, in America, becoming rich requires only the concentration of one’s mind and the suspension of one’s morals. Like so many men, Blazes suffers from an unidentified ennui. It is a sense of boredom that has suffused his character so profoundly and so serenely that he thinks having an affair is an act of danger and triumph. As I said, he is an average man.

I saw Blazes at the club the other day. He tried desperately to keep up the appearance of our friendship. He didn’t do nearly as good a job as I did. We were sitting in the parlor drinking coffee. I replaced my cup gingerly atop my saucer and grunted, in the way we men are supposed to do, “So, my bachelor friend, getting any these days?” Were this a movie, no doubt the hapless Blazes would knock his cup onto the floor. But this is real life, and, as I said, Blazes is only as foolish as most men. He grunted right back, in the way we men are supposed to do, “Wish I were!” But his eyes—it’s always the eyes—tightened ever so gently at the corners, revealing the unexpected horror of this conversation. My eyes lit up sweet and boyish, as if we had just finished chucking each other on the shoulder. My eyes are my most precious asset.

All of this is beginning to sound rather familiar, isn’t it? Why shouldn’t it? I would not be writing you if I could give this familiar story an extraordinary ending. As it is, this story is tediously ordinary. It is up to you to raise it to the status of Homer with an unordinary finale. As a framework for that ending, I fancy that my wife should be the recipient of your respective talents, that I should wind up free, and that the unthinking Blazes should find himself in the dock incapable of presenting a convincing alibi against the ample evidence so painstakingly discovered by the police detectives.

Moreover, this evidence must be so compelling that it completely refutes the police’s well-founded, initial suspicion of me. That would be a story worth telling.

There is one other detail you should know. Unlike my wife, Blazes is a fellow of specific and timely habits. Yet in one habit, they are both flawlessly punctual. At 5:00
p.m.
every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, he leaves his office to walk home. At the same hour, my wife leaves to take her afternoon constitutional. They meet at a nearby inn, share a drink in the bar, and leave separately by 5:30
p.m
. They both arrive a few minutes later, entering separately again (she first, he second) and meeting in Room 1507. At 6:30
p.m
., they both exit separately (he first, she second). By 7:00
p.m
., like clockwork, she is back at our house, seated and ready to dine with me.

It is I who, day after day, must look across the supper table at a face one might think is flushed with romance. But in fact it is the glow of another joy, the great pleasure of the practical joke, the bliss of the secret well kept, the happiness of the rug merchant hoodwinking a tourist at the bazaar. She fancies that I sit like a boob at my end of the table, oblivious to the last hour of humiliations. I do nothing to make her think otherwise.

In that regard, we are very much the same person. She bears me no ill will, actually. In some perverse manner (one that only comes with this kind of money), she loves me in the way that I love her. Were I to confront her with her cruelties, she would insist that she meant none of it. And she would be telling the truth. This is but a game to her. I am simply the other player. She wishes to play her game with no one but me. And I her. I only wish to change the game.

Now you ask, can I pull this off? Am I capable of arranging the most complicated, artful murder of the century and carrying it out with dash and elan? Of course. I am a man after my own wife’s heart. Moreover, I am a man. What man is not schooled in the labyrinthine complexities of mendacity? What man cannot lie and maintain the mask of wounded candor? We men have such extensive practice. We lie so often in our lives. Every time a man utters the words “I love you,” he carries forth one of the most enduring lies of the human situation. That, I submit, is proof enough of my ability. Otherwise, I urge you to reread this letter.