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Part one: "I'm a slave at your feet today..."
(bravura)
"Greedy Billy was a pirate;
Neither sailors, nor the pirates,
Did not like, however, Billy,
as his parents and his kids.
Yes! And Billy couldn't abate
His alligator’s appetite,
And there wasn’t a day that Billy
didn't get some pretty hits!.."*
The mysterious murder s in the times of Queen Victoria... How many brains have been heated by them again and again for many centuries, making the readers look into the milky shroud of dense mist fogged by the authors of detective novels about the fictional crimes, and in their search of the key turn to police archives which stored hundreds of volumes about just real crimes; those irrepressible ones who imagine themselves logics having perfectly acquired the art of deduction which overcomes well the capacities of the genial detective from Baker Street, 221B... The new sprung "Monsieur Bertillon" (mentioned by Doctor Mortimer in his talk with the legendary Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson and well known as those two above) has a name Julian Fellowes... And that time he decided to dot over the "I" in the mysterious and bloodcurdling crime which remained in the British criminal history as "The murder of Charles Bravo" or, simply, "The murder in Priory"...
All the heroes of that drama,
Form the pirate to the Master of sciences,
Will meet together near this yawner
Where Flint earthed with piasters the trunk.
The old map will start everything.
And finally, somebody will go west,
And the island which a sanitarium could be,
Will be the object of diabolical passions".*
"Hot water! Bring me some hot water for God's sake!" - this cry full of despair and pain (which made swoon from horror all the inhabitants of the elite Victorian mansion, both awaken and those who already have gone to bed) sounded at night of April, 21, 1876, and started a long and torturous agony which lasted from two to three days, in the opinion of experienced analytics, and finally terminated with the death of Charles Bravo – a young prosperous barrister, a man "pleasant in every sense", who have lived four brief but "unforgettable" months in an alliance with his rather rich, but "extremely splendid" wife...
And the beginning was so beautiful...
"My love, I'll lead you
Just to the edge of the Universe!
I'll give you a star!
Which, with its imperishable light,
Will shine on your way
To the Infinity..."**
Charles Delauney Turner was born in 1845; the son of Augustus Charles Turner and Mary Turner, took the surname Bravo fro, Joseph Bravo who adopted him. Charles became a barrister and, by the time of his marriage with Florence Ricardo, had mistress and an illegitimate daughter.
His rich wife Florance has been already married before upon Alexander Louis Ricardo, but she left him as the consequence of his endless adulteries and unrestrained alcoholism… Being married she had a love affair with a person much older than she - Dr James Manby Gully, a doctor who was practicing in the high society, was also married at this time and due to that reason has freed Florance (in literal sense - with his own hands) from their child conceived so recently...
Having come to know about all these "misfortunes of the poor", the society and the family have exposed her to cruel obstruction having prohibited to appear within its sight...
As you can see, it's not worth asking yourself, if these new-sprung bride and groom were "moral man and woman"...
Moreover, having administered the Sacrament of marriage in 1875 (four years after the death of the clapster alcoholic Ricardo) they probably decided to start a new "splendid" life completely devoid of the tearing remembrances about the past loves, of the reflections about the live ones and consciously lost offsprings, as well as of mutual twits, insults and greed...
Woes will take place, as pursuits,
Scuffles, blood, murders and fraud
Due to a mere scrap of that very paper.
Some plan is depicted on it.
The guilt belongs to MONEY! MONEY! MONEY!
The cradle of evil... Let me never see them!
They’ve come to take me... Thanks for your attention...
And now, probably, I will be killed..."*
The generosity of the spouses was hot and mutual and knew no reasonable limits...
From the very beginning of their joint life the spouse (not very young already) has firmly decided to keep to her "labour" savings, in which she was helped very much by the new English laws and, in particular, by the Married Women's Property Act 1870...
That met a resolute "greeting" from the part of Charles, who had his own opinions with regards to some novelties of caviller lawyers, in spite of his belonging to the judicial fraternity... While encouraging his spouse to further generosity, the happy husband did not neglected rare manhandling, imposition of forced conjugal pleasures, as well as passionate suggestions with the appeals to restrict wastes and connivances in respect of the assets for the moment not common...
"I dreamed to live my life in welfare,
But honour is not a bell-cow with the pirates.
They give you honour as a black mark,
Six grams of lead, and that’s all your fees..."*
It seems that here's the whole scheme of the conflict offered for representation by the authors of this documentary drama by BBC Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder...
However, Michael, passing Charles Bravo through himself and impersonating an ambiguous, contradictory and disputable person on the screen, turns everything upside-down, mixing cards, confusing accents imposed upon by the narration, discrediting both the hypothesis put forward by the contemporaries of Charles himself who undertook a futile quest, and the versions put forward by the everpresent Julian Fellowes who arrives in the most unsuitable moments...
Watching after the young man during his first visits to the rich widow doesn't leave any doubts in his carnal interest in the object, as well as in recognition of her certain superiority, as of the person wiser in common life and having extraordinary brains... His enjoys the thoughts about the future marriage not only from the point of view of material interest.
"You are my angel... You're my ideal...
My star... my berry... fingerling...
Your teeth are pearls, your lips are coral...
As well as nice are breasts and smile...
I've never met the girls like this...
Let's rectify this fault..."***
Charles looks at Florance as " the cat at the bacon”, and even... Oh, God! God!.. smacks his lips anticipating "Pastures of Heaven", putting out the tongue at us... Doubtless, he sees the widow as the lady worthful in all senses... and the marriage, certainly, rather advantageous...
Peer their first talk, and you’ll be convinced that it goes like this...
But grannies, convincing their granddaughters "never show to boyfriends their whole asses", are sadly right...
And Florance, having decided, at one of the following rendezvous, to disclose the background of her personal past in all its homeliness (including the details of her relations with a friend of the family of venerable age and loss of the child conceived with him), to the person who had already made an offer of marriage, suffers defeat with the loss of all the past privileges granted to her...
Everything changes ones and for all without presumption and the possibility of the notice of appeal...
Ladies and gentlemen... please no pathetic words about male largeness and the necessity of forgiving a neighbors of yours...
Those were the times of the Victorian morality and puritan ethics (or vice versa... what's the difference)... And that which was allowed to the patrons of this life - to men-"jovi", was in no way allowed (or non licet) to "bovi"-women...
We see the fossils of the Charles's face... gypsum grounding... a lump of marble with hardly cut off pieces...
Breasts and hips of Mrs. Ricardo, mixed in the mind with a solid capital and luxurious mansion which looks so much like a little sparkling kingdom...
Australian millions in exchange for male ambitions squeezed with pins...
Having promised to himself future compensation for all inconveniences passed now, Charles bodes to Florance the forgiveness of past pecadillos and cloudless happiness, on condition of non-admittance of mistakes in future...
Oh, why... why didn't he tell, as our compatriot prince Andrey Bolkonsky (the hero of the novel "War and Piece" by Lev Tolstoy) did, the phrase true in its rationality: "Someone may forgive the fallen woman... But I didn't say that I could forgive..."
They would have been living long and happy and, possibly, would have died on the same day and at the same hour without having then minimum suspense about that...
"Is seemed to us we reached the goal,
With having launch into eternity in passing many souls,
And all who was left whole
Will get an outstanding jackpot..."*
Part two: "With juce of cursed hebona in the vial..."
(severing)
But, we’ve talked away or "sung away"... and we should yet run there and back, to uncrown all suggested non-substantiated versions and, having reached the end of the sad story about Charles Bravo, to know a little bit more that we were offered...
The version: "Suicide..."
Put forward by the companion Mrs. Cox, who declared at the quest that, once when they remained alone with Charles, he confessed to her to have drunk poison...
And what about "The little kingdom"?.. Flush with this sparkling islet shines through each word and each glance of the young man, when he promises to his friend to show him all the miracles of that which belongs to him...
A part of the realized dream, which should anyhow materialize itself in the full scale... And as for the means, he’ll find them, having remembered all his legal and medical experience...
No, ladies and gentlemen, such persons as that appearing to us impersonated by Michael, won't lay hands on themselves, and, as for tormenting the proper body, they have no intention - never and not at any price...
Well... if only to some cobblestone which over and over again happens under the feet... But that has nothing to do with himself...
However, Mrs. Cox herself didn’t insisted too much on the given version, having forwarded all the suspects towards the ex-lover of her friend Doctor Gully, who, allegedly, has politely provided her with a bottle with "the medicine" named "Antimony" for Florance...
The version: "SELF-poisoning by mistake"...
Not more noteworthy and faithworthy, than the first one... is based on the fact that, before going to bed, to calm toothache which often troubled the future Deceased at night, he took opium powder...
The substance in appearance (especially at low-light and with dark glass) is extremely similar with antimony (stibium) kept in the house bins of Priority in green vials, again quire similar at the first glance...
But, our friend Charles, judging from his behaviour being demonstrated to us on the screen, is a pedantic person, attentive to any comma which separates pounds from cents in the bills; a person who is in a hurry under no circumstances and who falls into a rage or fury only when it may be useful to himself...
The persons like him always remember where they put or stand the temporarily left object, in order to find it just in the same place later... And never doubt if it still is the same object...
Never mix up anything... Never lose or forget anything...
Than also bears danger...
Indeed, if somebody's attentive hand substitutes the vial of green glass with the opium powder with the similar vial with quite content the victim of assurance of the proper impeccability may pour it into the water jug, not having called in question the correctness of the proper deed...
And just the last supposition allows your obedient servants (i.e. us) to tend to version number three. Villainous murder or "Poor Hamlet's father...", which has at her disposal three main suspected persons:
Florance Bravo... the wife...
tired of endless greed, cavils, reproaches, requests to satisfy any wishes of the dear husband and to give him what she was sometime giving to Doctor Gully with such pleasure...
of of beating, inevitably following manifestations of her so-called “obstinacy, improper behaviour, refractoriness, unwillingness to yield and to place finally at his disposal all the means which she possessed...
of endless flashes of jealousy, motivated and not, and of other small humiliations which gave Charles unexplainable delight...
The companion of Florance, Mrs. Cox, a rather close acquaintance of Charles's parents...
living in the house belonging to him, having no proper means of living and, thus, constantly scared of being deported from the warmed up residence for any offence invented by him... The fear, and even more tiresome fear because it was warmed up by Charles every day...
tremulously... with love similar to the flush of a cat holding a mouse by tail and having the possibility, at its discretion, to plunge it with the head, say, into the milk pot and, after it half-way chokes, to draw it out on the surface still alive...
The groom George Griffiths...
Not long before fired by the explosive Charles for not having shown enough respect to the Master, having at the same time expressed too obvious esteem to Doctor Gully...
All three suspected have had too enough means for carrying out the misdeed, for not to use them...
"And that's all, no more Bill.
His greed has killed Bill.
He lays on the silt bottom, having done nothing in his life...
Greed is worse than a cholera.
Greed kills the filibuster.
Repeat with us, sirs,
The of this song refrain..."*
In this mysterious case, there is one strange accent more, which less of all speaks in favour of the opinion that "few persons in the world are worth death in such tortures..." even if he was greedy, scanty, capricious, rather rough with the others... in a word, practically insupportable...
Let's name him: "I'll lead you to the edge of the Universe..."
Charles Bravo has not provided any explanations about his state and the circumstances prior to that, to his physicians in charge, which caused suspects that the victim had something to hide… Really, the auxiliary hypothesis is that he, probably, tried to poison his spouse (chronically upset during the whole time of new marriage) with small dozes of antimony for the purpose of possession of her whole estate after her death...
But, how strange... We see the person who passionately wants to have a legitimate heir...
Who needs not so much a woman for delight, but the vessel... the means for carrying the continuator of the Bravo family, who will become the heir of all that his father will be able to preserve and to increase... The man who is proud of the pregnancy of his wife and is waiting for successful coming of his first child into the world...
There's something behind this wish... Which will forever remain there... offshoot... which we'll never come to know...
And what else you can see watching Charles?..
His tenderness and sincerity towards his friend...
his fluttering attitude towards the opinion of his mother and this certainty that it is the only one correct...
his sickly irritancy when only the name of the former Florence's lover is mentioned...
his request to Doctor Gully to leave immediately the city, in order Nobody and Never could remind him of the past of his wife which again and again blot the reputation of Bravo...
his consciousness of the fact that everybody knows about her fall and that wounds his pride, causing during the day and at night the need for endless and unconscious revenge...
So the intention of the screenplay comes into contradiction with the sincerity of impersonation... It's interesting and amusing... because you absolutely don't know and are even not trying to divine: "What will Michael prepare for you the next time?"... But you have no doubts that will be his one more personal miracle...
Julian Fellowes Investigates: A Most Mysterious Murder was the pilot issue of the BBC... The genial investigator of Victorian crimes appear in the final scene with the phrase which needs no comments:
"Charles Bravo killed Charles Bravo"..."It's wonderful... surely, there's always "a sting in the tail"...
His wife and son, according to his own evidence, told him that he has mistaken...
We join them...
And you?
"One, two, three, four, five,
Greedy day by day,
One, two, three, four, five,
Isn't he a crock?
One, two, three, four, five,
If you will be greedy,
One, two, three, four, five,
You'll destroy yourself..."*
* song from russian animated film "Treasure Island"
lyrics N.Olev and A.Balagin
** song from russian animated film "I give you a star..."
*** song from film "An Ordinary Miracle"
