Story XIV: The Marquesan Tattoo

On the evening he murders his wife, a London timber merchant receives a mysterious portrait—a tale of Victorian horror in five parts.

A Delivery Post-Mortem

The evening he murdered his wife, Rowan Wanamaker made a brief appearance in the R— Club library to fashion an alibi, then retired to his quarters for supper. Word of her death would not reach Pall Mall until morning, allowing the London timber merchant time to prepare for the pantomime theatre of a constabulary's inquiries.

Wanamaker built a fortune importing teak and exotic hardwoods from French Polynesia, muscling his way to extravagant wealth through both enterprise and marriage. Plantation by plantation, and bride by bride – of whom there had now been three – the timber merchant grew to be as respectfully loathed in the R— Club’s smoking rooms as he was in the provincial offices of colonial governors. Club members murmured grimly that Wanamaker accumulated his fortune through “the snatch and the match.” His late wife, thirty years his junior, the daughter of a shrewd Merseyside shipbuilder, had been felled by both.

At eleven o’clock punctually, the gentleman s…