The Art of Murder

Chapter 10

To Mrs Sonia Thomson 12 October 1888 Was I ever without malice? You may be surprised to learn that, until recent times, this was not a question to which I gave any thought. But now, as I write this account for you, dear lady, I feel compelled to ask it of myself. And I think the answer would have to be 'no'. I have always been wicked.

That is the honest truth and I never lie. Well, let me quickly qualify that. In this account of my experiences, I will tell the complete truth. I will not fabricate. All I write here is reality as I perceived it. I can promise nothing more.

But first we have to accept that there are many types of wickedness, do we not? There is the wickedness of those prosaic characters who stalk the nightmares of the innocent: the lumpen men, damaged or dull-witted individuals without finesse, devoid of any higher agenda. I would never put myself into that category, for I constitute a blend of wickedness with talent… great talent. It was only when I fully realised the extent and depth of that talent that I was able to channel my wickedness, and through this combination achieve greatness. But more of this later. Let me instead tell you the story of how I came to my great revelations, and how they secured for me my place in history.

Hemel Hempstead where I was born, William Sandler, on 10 August 1867, is a modest market town, genteel and pretty, and my parents' house, set among cornfields just beyond the jurisdiction of the town council, was a comfortable place in which to be raised.

It would be churlish of me to complain about the situation of my home, though everything else about it was bad.

The house was called Fellwick Manor. Built by my grandfather in the 1820s, it was a vast, boxy affair with too many windows, each a different shape and size from the rest. The architect appeared deliberately to have forsaken any of the Georgian taste for symmetry and proportion. It had ungainly, overbearing gables and a broad, squat porch. The bricks were too dark, the woodwork too light, and, to top it all off, a huge phallus of a chimney reared up from the back of the property above the kitchen. The house was set in three acres of prime Home Counties countryside, which was really its one saving grace. Otherwise, it was a typical monstrosity, built to impress, the thoroughly vainglorious trophy of a successful member of the mercantile class.

And my grandfather was certainly successful. He had been spat out of his mother's womb, the tenth of eleven children. All the others had wallowed in poverty, died young and vanished utterly from history. My father would never talk about any of his paternal relatives. He disowned them, just as my grandfather had done.

My father, Gordon Sandler, was a textbook example of the spoiled son of new money. Grandfather did all the work, made the fortune, and then his only son, my dear father, lived off it his entire life. Father was a husk of a man, tall and bone-thin, his face almost skeletal. He looked terrifying, even to me, his only son. I had only ever known him to be completely bald. He had black, piercing eyes, set too far back in his bony skull, and a black handlebar moustache. That was probably his only nod to fashion, yet it was an affectation to which he was entirely unsuited. My mother, Mary, was buxom, her hair perpetually scraped up in a tight bun. As a young woman she might have achieved an average prettiness, but the image I retain of her in my mind is all fleshy jowls and billowing black dresses. She scared me more than my father did.

Ours was an extremely religious household, though I myself could never understand what my parents saw to admire in God. My father was a lay preacher. With the fortune inherited from his father he had no need to make an honest crust: a full loaf was already provided. Instead, he gave himself over to the service of the Lord. Mother was equally pious, throwing herself into good works, helping the poorest of the local community – you can imagine the sort of thing.

There was no form of religious imagery displayed in our house. My parents were Calvinistic Methodists, a relatively new sect at that time. The only artistic expression of their religious fervour that they sanctioned was a tiny painting of Christ which hung in the parlour. In the hall, close to the front door, they displayed a framed letter from Reverend Griffith Jones, founder of the Order. According to family legend, my great-great-grand-father was Jones's right-hand man. Jones, I believe, had a lot to answer for.

My parents recognised quite early on that I was not inspired by the Holy Spirit in the way that they were. Indeed, I was a difficult child in almost every respect, and grew worse as each year passed. This was partly because of my own peculiar nature, but exacerbated by the fact that my parents responded to my stubborn, uncompromising personality in only one, rather unimaginative way – they regularly beat me to within an inch of my life.

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.

'Stop!' I shouted. 'It's too dangerous…' I saw the boy disappear into the darkness under the bridge and jumped down after him. I could feel fury at his selfishness mounting within me. I felt such intense hatred it drove me on. I thought nothing of the slippery stones underfoot.

My eyes adjusted quickly to the darkness. Here every sound was amplified, echoing around under the stone arch of the bridge. The place was rank with rotting vegetation and mould. 'Stop!' I shouted again, and my voice came echoing back to me. 'Come back.'

Then I heard a shrill cry, the sound of someone struggling to retain their balance… a loud splash.

I ran towards the sound and immediately saw the boy in the water. The river was deep here where the pillars had been excavated decades before. Fred's face was caught in a strip of light shining through the gloom between two metal struts close to the far side of the bridge. His eyes were wide with panic and he was floundering around in the water. The toy yacht appeared close to his shoulder and the string he had been holding a few seconds earlier was floating in the water, close to the edge of the rocks. I inched my way forward, taking great care with my footing, grasped the end of the string and pulled my yacht ashore.

'Help!' the boy screamed. I looked back and saw him struggling to keep his head above water. For a second he disappeared, then broke back through the surface and took a gulp of air. 'I can't… can't swim.'

I placed the boat carefully on one of the rocks and took two paces towards the water. A line of three black boulders ran from the edge of the shingle into the water. They were set about two feet apart. I knew I could clamber across them, I had done it before.

Fred was screaming now, overwhelmed with panic. His yells echoed around the stonework. I glanced over and saw him bobbing about still; he was kicking and moving his arms, trying to tread water, but he was tiring fast.

I reached the third stone. It was just a few feet away from the boy. I lowered myself into a crouch and leaned forward. I could see Fred's face more clearly now. His matted hair hung over his eyes. He was shaking his head and breathing fast. Then he saw me and held one hand above the water. I looked at his face and then at his hand. He seemed to realise my intent. For a second, there was answering viciousness in his eyes and his cheeks were sucked in, ready to denounce me. Then his expression changed. He fixed me with a look of despair… imploring, pleading.

I watched, not moving a muscle. I was transfixed, more excited than I had ever been in my life before. I could have reached out my hand and grabbed him, but I chose not to. I watched as the last vestige of strength left him and he slipped under the surface of the water.