London in 1911 was a splendid place. It was the capitol of an empire where the sun never set and the wealth that poured into that city had created monumental buildings and splendid mansions. We rented one of those on Berkeley Square.
Neither Briggs, nor I, were young men. And I would never have had Aimee, if he hadn’t seduced Faith. So, it might sound obsessive to pursue a grudge over half a century. But it was time to draw a line under that account, once and for all. I had carried the emptiness of Faith’s betrayal since the day I’d learned of it and I had to know the reason why.
Briggs had been the son of the richest man in New Bedford. Now, his circumstances were greatly reduced. By the first decade of the twentieth century, electric lighting had replaced whale oil lamps and Mr. Rockefeller’s kind of oil was industry’s lubricant of choice. So, the whaling industry had long since hit its apogee.
Briggs was living alone. He owned a little rowhouse off Drury Lane, on Dryden Street, on the back side of Covent Garden. The Theater Royal and the opera house were nearby, and the Garden itself was always busy. So, he was probably enjoying the good life. But things had been on a constant downward spiral for him financially.
Every morning, he would take coffee at a little shop on Maiden Lane, just off the market. I’d watched him for a couple of days before I spoke to him. No, I didn’t plan to kill him. Too much water had flowed over the dam for that. And I had met and married the woman I was meant to be with. But Faith’s shade still demanded satisfaction.
I approached Briggs as he sat at a table outside the coffee house. To ensure privacy, he had dragged it into a corner behind a faux-marble pillar. It was shady and pleasant back there. Briggs was reading last night’s copy of the Daily Mail.
I had left Aimee at our residence. This was between me and my past. Aimee absolutely understood that. She had a few lurking specters of her own.
Briggs shoulders had a defeated slump as he lounged in his chair. It was like life was weighing him down. I remembered him as small and dapper, a real dandy. This man was obese. But he still wore the height of London fashion. It was threadbare, like it had been worn too many times. Perhaps it was his only outfit.
I felt myself slipping back to the way it was in the time that I’d pulled an oar. Briggs had never bullied me growing up. That would have been crazy. Since, I was a lot bigger and tougher than he was. But he had always treated me with contemptuous superiority.
He looked up startled and angry. How dare I intrude on his morning coffee. What he saw was a big and very rich gentleman; dressed in a bespoke brown silk Granville suit and vest, carrying an expensive walking cane. I was wearing a wide brimmed fedora, all the better to hide my face.
As I plopped down in the chair across from him, I said in a hail-fellow-well-met tone, “Hello Esau, it’s been a long time.” My familiarity puzzled him. I obviously knew him. But he had no idea who I was.
He said in an irritated voice, “I’m taking my morning coffee my good man. Why are you bothering me?”
I doffed my hat and leaned forward to look him directly in the eyes. I said in a menacing tone, “I wanted to talk to you about Faith Polk, you’d remember her as Faith Ivarsson.” Then I put the hat back on. I wanted to keep my face hidden.
Briggs finally recognized me. His first expression was horror. It was as if his worst nightmare had sprung up on a London street. I said, sociably, “No, I’m not here to kill you. I probably should. But I’ve led a happy life. I just want to hear the story.”
Then I gave him a look that disclosed my true feelings and added calmly, “It had better be truthful or I might reconsider.”
He sputtered, “How can I remember an incident that took place fifty years ago??!!”
I said ominously, “I’ve remembered it every day of my life. Now it’s time for you to lay those memories to rest for me. What happened between you and Faith?”
The old Esau Briggs was beginning to appear. He couldn’t help it. He was just too fundamentally narcissistic. He laughed and said, “It was simple.”
He paused to savor my look of pain, smirked and added, “I’d always wanted Faith. But she never had eyes for anybody but you. I was in Baltimore when I heard about the hurricane, and it gave me an idea. I knew you wouldn’t be back for a couple of years, even if your ship wasn’t in it. So, I made up a story.”
He stopped, grinned, and said with a wink, “Your mother didn’t believe me. But Faith did. It was like she expected something to happen to you. She told me that she had always known she’d lose you. She felt it, every time you sailed away. She said that she just loved you too much.”
That shot an excruciating thunderbolt of agony through me.
Briggs was boasting now. He said, “Faith went into deep mourning. At first, she wouldn’t eat, and she slept constantly. It was like she wanted to die too. I kept coming over, bringing her food, holding her while she cried.”
He was getting into it, like he was reliving it, “I told her over-and-over that she had to let you go. That you were dead.”
His conceited grin was becoming nauseating as he added, “She would constantly ask me if I was sure. I swore on a stack of bibles that it was true. I was a factor and we knew those things. Your ship was one of the ones that was lost, and you were gone.”
He glanced at me amused. “Then one day, she was crying, and I was holding her. She looked up, just for reassurance I think, and I surprised her with a deep kiss. She resisted at first. But I knew that all of her pent-up feelings had to go someplace. Finally, she groaned and began kissing me back. That was the first time.”
He stared at me, taunting, “Her tits were just as beautiful as I imagined, like big soft pillows. And she was absolutely wild once I got her going. It was like she couldn’t get enough of it.” I knew Faith, she was both passionate and needy. She’d be insatiable once the line got crossed.
Briggs laughed and said, “I’d been enjoying her tight little cunny for a couple of months when she announced that we were going to have a baby. She was overjoyed.”
Could the pain get any worse?
Briggs finished his coffee and said dismissively, “Of course that wasn’t going to happen. She’d been fun for a while. But the thrill of conquest had already worn off. I was gone on the next ship to France.”
Then he added mockingly, “I hear she died having the kid.” He chuckled and said, “Serves her right. Women are just cunts.”
I was staring into Briggs’s smug face while he recounted my wife’s debasement. He was enjoying my look of pain and sorrow. It was the last thing he ever saw. The jury was back. The verdict was rendered. The penalty would be death.
Sword canes were popular in London prior to Bobby Peel’s Metropolitan police. They were the only way a gentleman could defend himself, short of openly carrying a blade. So, there were plenty of nice ones still available.
Mine was a beautiful lacquered piece, black with a big shiny brass knob. Hidden inside, firmly attached to the knob, was an ultra-thin, two-foot, razor sharp, tempered steel rapier. I had been covertly slipping it out, as I listened to Briggs boast about my wife’s ruin.
He had an instant to realize what was about to happen. His eyes filled with panic. I hissed with fifty-two years of pent-up hatred, “This is for Faith!!”
Then I used my fearsome strength to drive the blade up from underneath the coffee table and directly into his heart. The kill was silent and clean. There was no blood, just death. His look of dread vanished almost instantly, to be replaced by one of nothingness.
I secured Brigg’s corpse with my left hand, while I slipped the sword back into the wooden cane body with my right. Briggs deserved much worse. But that was all the justice I could administer under the circumstances. I prayed there was a hell.
Then I made a production of bidding Briggs’s carcass a fond adieu, just in case anybody was watching. People would eventually realize he was stone-cold dead. But by that point, I would be a phantom. The business with my past was concluded and the account had finally been closed.
I had mixed emotions as I strolled back to our place. The debt had been wiped out and I could spend my remaining days with my perfect friend and lover. Yet, I still had to wonder what my life would have been like if Esau Briggs had never been born.
Aimee was waiting with the guarded look that she had perfected in her former trade. I said simply, “He’s dead.” She asked the practical question, “Any witnesses?”
I shrugged and said, “Probably… But they only saw Briggs talking to a sport in a fedora, not a financial tycoon like me. He died too fast to make a fuss.” She said, “Any regrets?”
I said, “Only that I won’t live forever. Because, I have the world’s most wonderful woman to spend my life with. I have no misgivings about dispatching that son-of-a-bitch.”
She said, “What happens next?” I said, “Let’s do the grand tour, London, Paris, Berlin, Vienna, Rome. I want to stay in Europe until next spring.”
My canny wife got that familiar look. She knew I needed comforting. It was early afternoon. But Aimee reached over, took me by the hand and led me toward our bedroom. She wanted to make a salient point about our eternal partnership.
Her statement amounted to a couple of hours of unbridled passion. It was a wonder to me that a seventy-two-year-old man could perform like I did. But of course, anything is possible when your partner is as sensual as my incredible wife.