The Problem of the Surly Servant

by Roberta Rogow

  “Perhaps you had best come forward with the information,” Dr. Doyle suggested.

  “I don’t want nothing to do with the police,” the assistant protested.

  “Better for you to come forward than for them to find you.” Dr. Doyle turned to leave, then turned back. “These undergraduates, the ones who asked Ingram to provide their wine. Did he ever mention their names? It might be useful to know who they are.”

  The assistant dug into his trousers pocket and produced a folded piece of paper and the stub of a pencil. “This is a list, what Ingram gave me last time he was here, not yesterday, but the day before.” He handed it to Dr. Doyle, who scanned it on both sides and returned it to its owner.

  “Most interesting. One more point: How did the wine get to the White Hart?”

  The assistant reddened. “That was my mistake. I put a basket with two bottles of sherry that was supposed to go to Merton next to the one meant for the White Hart, and their boy took ’em both before I could stop him.”

  Dr. Doyle smiled to himself. “Mr. Dodgson will be pleased to know that University wine usually stayed in the University,” he said. “But I don’t think you’d better try anything like that again. This time all’s well, but next time …?”

  The assistant nodded. “Mr. Snow’s all right,” he agreed. “And the shilling or two I got out of it weren’t enough to make the difference to my conscience.”

  Dr. Doyle turned to go again. He frowned to himself. Had he imagined it or was someone lurking behind him? He turned back to Mr. Snow, who had taken the order of the portly man in the black jacket and trousers and bowler hat worn by the custodians of the University colleges.

  “And have you made your selection, sir?” he asked Dr. Doyle.

  “I believe I shall take this.” Dr. Doyle pointed to the bottle Fred had offered. “I would be much obliged if you would send it to my rooms at the White Hart.” He handed Mr. Snow his visiting card and paid for the wine. “I only hope the management will not think that I disdain their selection,” he said with a smile. “I would have presented it to Mr. Dodgson, but he probably has a sample of this wine already.”

  Mr. Snow nodded. “This is a vintage much favored by the gentlemen of Christ Church. We are honored by the custom of many of the colleges,” he said expansively. “In addition, several Fellows and their clubs also purchase their wine from my stock.”

  “Really? I had no idea there were private clubs in Oxford,” Dr. Doyle said. “I was of the opinion that all the activities here centered around the colleges.”

  Mr. Snow gazed condescendingly upon the stranger, anxious to enlighten him as to the glories of Oxford. “There are several clubs not directly connected with the University,” he said. “For instance, there is Vincent’s, where certain gentlemen meet to discuss sporting events.”

  “My, my,” Dr. Doyle said. “I hadn’t thought of Oxford as a sporting place.”

  “Shows how much you know,” the assistant put in, to Mr. Snow’s evident displeasure. “We’ve got rugger, we’ve got cricket, we’ve got the boats and Eights Week …”

  “And for those who believe in keeping physically fit, there is the Oxford Gentleman’s Athletic Club,” Mr. Snow added, glaring at his assistant. “Sergeant-Major Howard is the proprietor. He has often ordered wine for young gentlemen to be served at private parties after their athletic exhibitions.”

  Dr. Doyle smiled under his mustache, and nodded affably. He had solved the problem of Mr. Dodgson’s missing wine. Now all he needed was to find the pawnbroker patronized by Ingram, and he would have solved two of the three problems set before him. He still had no idea who had murdered Ingram, or why, but he was sure the answer would come out as he delved into the unsavory servant’s past life.

  He stopped suddenly. Someone had just turned around to examine the contents of the next stall. Two undergraduates, notable for their dark students’ gowns, seemed preoccupied with the dead birds arranged neatly in a row, feathers and all, waiting for someone to take them home for dinner.

  Dr. Doyle frowned. What were undergraduates doing in the Covered Market? Surely young men would not be purchasing their own supplies when they had scouts to do it for them. As for the baked goods, pork pies, and hot potatoes, they could be had from vendors on the streets if youthful appetites had to be slaked with snacks in the middle of the morning. In the crowd in the market, black fustian gowns and tasseled caps were conspicuously absent. It was perfectly clear to Dr. Doyle that these two had to be following him!

  Dr. Doyle continued his trek through the Covered Market, dodging around stout farmwomen in old-fashioned full skirts and bonnets, until he found another stand, this one filled with fresh spring vegetables. Once more Dr. Doyle stopped and peered around.

  There they were again! The same two undergraduates, he was sure of it! One was taller than he, very fair, with a particularly classic profile. The other was shorter and darker than his friend. Dr. Doyle was now certain that he had seen them before. They had been among the undergraduates in Tom Quad when Inspector Truscott had conducted his preliminary investigation, and they had been hanging about the mortuary this morning.

  The market was laid out in a pattern of stands, around a central aisle. Dr. Doyle ducked into one stall and out the other side. From there he dodged around a pair of men haggling over a brace of rabbits, slipped around another stall holding jars of home-bottled preserves, and edged through a party of country folk come to gawk at the big town and sell their produce at the same time.

  By now he was behind the two undergraduates, who were looking for him in the growing crowds.

  “This won’t do, Nev,” the shorter one said. “We’ve lost him.”

  “Damn him!” the taller man spat out. “What’s he want at Snow’s anyway?”

  “I daresay he’s following the trail of our sherry. I could have told you it was pinched from the Senior Common Room stock.” Chatsworth shrugged philosophically. “Ingram’s price was far too low.”

  “What?” Farlow gasped.

  “Of course it would be,” Chatsworth told him. “Trouble with you, Nev, is that you don’t know what things cost until the bill comes due, and then you don’t like it.”

  “Just because my mother’s a cit doesn’t make me one, Minnie. I’m not a blasted merchant!”

  Chatsworth regarded his friend sympathetically. “Can’t get around it, Nev,” he said. “You’ve told me often enough about your mater’s brother, the one who manufactures glass. Now I’m quite reconciled to my mater’s fortune, even if it did come from cotton mills. If it don’t bother my pater, why should it bother me? You really ought to be kinder to your uncle. Glass is a very necessary commodity. Look at this market …”

  “Blast my uncle and his blasted glass!” Farlow’s exploded. “Where’s that blasted Scotsman?”

  “Can’t find him in this scrum,” Chatsworth said. “I say, Nev, let’s get out of here and go to Vincent’s. We can pick up the news and find out if anyone knows anything abut Ingram. Maybe Burlingame will be in, and we can quiz him about Eights Week.”

  “Is that all you can think of, Minnie?” Farlow regarded his faithful friend with exasperated amusement.

  “Well, we can’t do anyone any good here, and we’ve lost the Scotsman, so we might as well go somewhere else,” Chatsworth decided.

  Dr. Doyle listened to this conversation from his position behind one of the iron pillars next to the pair. He thought quickly. Vincent’s was the club that had recommended Ingram to Christ Church in the first place. Vincent’s was a sporting club, and Ingram had been empoyed by a club in London. There might be a connection, and if there was, Dr. Doyle was determined to find it.

  He caught a glimpse of himself, reflected in the glass case of the cheesemonger’s stall. His hand flew to the mustache that adorned his upper lip. No disguising that, he thought. But there were other ways to change one’s appearance. He stuffed his deerstalker into the pocket of his jacket and beckoned a youth who was hawking cloth
caps. A few pennies got him a dashing black and white houndstooth check object, which he adjusted to a rakish tilt over his red hair. He opened his shirt and removed his collar, so that he looked slightly disheveled. Thus disguised, he followed the two undergraduates out of the Covered Market and back to the High. The prey had become the pursuer, and he could not be satisfied until he found out just what they were doing.

  Chapter 14

  Dr. Doyle followed the two undergraduates as they made their way through the Covered Market back to High Street. Who are they? he wondered. And what do they want with me?

  He frowned in thought. His surly expression, combined with his scruffy and disheveled clothing, made the assorted shoppers in the Covered Market edge away from him. Someone who stalked through the market in a cloth cap, without a collar, scowling, was clearly up to no good. The uniformed constable on duty near the door stepped forward, ready to act if this uncouth stranger should decide to help himself to someone else’s pocketbook.

  Dr. Doyle’s attention was entirely focused on the two gowned undergraduates ahead of him. They, in turn, strolled out of the market and onto the High, feeling frustrated.

  “Do you really think we should go to Vincent’s at this hour?” Farlow complained. “No one will be there.”

  “Burlingame will,” Chatsworth said, with a knowing look and a decided nod of the head. “And Bob will be at the bar. He knows everything that goes on in town. He’ll know what the police are up to before they even know it themselves.”

  Farlow shrugged. “At least we can get a decent drink,” he said.

  “And then,” Chatsworth told him, “we can go to the sergeant-major, and you can work off some of that steam. You’re ready to blow up like a volcano, Nev!”

  Farlow patted his classmate on the shoulder. “Minnie, what would I do without you?”

  Chatsworth grinned. “You’d have to write your own essays for one thing,” he countered. The two headed toward the bridge but turned off into a small street of shops. Dr. Doyle followed at a discreet distance as they entered a door marked only by a brass plate that announced that the premises was Vincent’s. There the two undergraduates were let in by a porter, who scanned the street carefully and glared at the interloper.

  “This is a private club,” the porter informed Dr. Doyle, who backed away, looking properly disappointed.

  “So that is Vincent’s,” Dr. Doyle said to himself. His eye was drawn to the shop on the ground floor of the building. A large sign proclaimed that the establishment was owned by one H. Vincent, who would provide cartes de visite, advertising circulars, tracts, newsletters, or any other printed matter on request. Samples of Mr. Vincent’s handiwork were displayed in the window of the shop, so that the prospective customer could see for himself the quality of the product.

  Dr. Doyle pulled the much-folded sheet of paper out of his pocket. Ingram had used one side to make his abstruse calculations. On the other was a copy of the verses that were being used to threaten Miss Cahill.

  Dr. Doyle compared the type on the paper to the sample in the window. The typeface matched, and there was more … There it was! A telltale nick in one of the serifs of a t. It appeared on every page of the samples hung out by Mr. Vincent, and it was on the page from Ingram’s room. Dr. Doyle was now convinced that this shop was the one that had printed the offensive material that had been sent to Lady Margaret Hall.

  Dr. Doyle considered how to proceed. Surely, no reputable printer would have allowed material of this sort to come under his presses, if for no other reason than that there might be repercussions if it became known that he would provide such stuff … unless he had a clientele that already knew of his products and would shield him from any embarrassment. If, as Dr. Doyle suspected, the premises upstairs was being used as a private club by noble persons connected with the University, then the printer downstairs would have virtual immunity. The events of the previous summer had shown Dr. Doyle how far the gentry would go to preserve their right to indulge in the vices they denied the lower orders.

  In that case, Dr. Doyle decided, I might try to persuade this fellow to print something of mine. He used the window as a mirror. Do I look sufficiently furtive, he wondered. How does a pornographic writer look anyway? Mr. Wilde’s writing has been condemned as pornography, and he looks quite dashing and not at all criminal.

  Dr. Doyle gave his hair another ruffle and decided that he looked sufficiently outrageous. He opened the door and entered the shop.

  The tinkle of a bell over the door announced his arrival. A large, ink-stained man, whose fair hair was covered with a paper cap and whose striped shirt and corduroy trousers were protected from flying ink by a canvas apron, emerged from the back of the shop. From the sounds of the machinery clanking away, and the strong odor of ink, the presses were running at Vincent’s.

  “Mr. Vincent, I presume?” Dr. Doyle asked.

  “Yes, that is my name, and this is my shop.” The printer regarded his potential customer with the look of one who has summed up the customer and found him wanting. “May I help you?”

  “I was wondering …,” Dr. Doyle began. He took a deep breath and tried to organize his thoughts.

  Vincent tried to help him out. “Did you want something printed?” he asked, with a scornful twist of his lips that seemed to deny that anyone who looked like that could read, let alone write something worth setting into type.

  “Ah … yes, that is it. I wanted you to print something for me.” Dr. Doyle put on what he hoped was a lascivious leer. “I’ve written a little piece, you know, with, ah … illustrations.”

  “Have you now.” Vincent didn’t seem too surprised. Oxford was full of people who had written little pieces, with or without illustrations. Some of them might even come to H. Vincent to set a small run of their poems, to be distributed to doting relatives or admiring friends.

  “Yes, with illustrations,” Dr. Doyle repeated. “And I was told you would print my little, um, piece, at a reasonable rate.” He leaned against the high counter and winked.

  Vincent was not impressed. “That depends, sir, on the nature of the writing, and the nature of the illustrations,” he said. “I know a very good man who can do your zinc facsimile, as it is called, for drawings, but that will cost you an extra sixpence the hundred.”

  “But these are photographs,” Dr. Doyle protested. “Of the highest quality, I assure you.”

  Vincent frowned. “I don’t suppose you could provide the negative, could you?”

  Dr. Doyle shook his head. “These are very, ah, special photographs, you understand. The, ah, persons in them are, ah, very …” He left the sentence dangling, daring the printer to provide the appropriate adjectives.

  Vincent’s expression changed from scornful to disapproving. “Now that sort of printing may cost extra,” Vincent said slowly. “I wonder that you came here, seeing as how I never laid eyes on you before, and I daresay I know most of the literary gentlemen in Oxford.” He crossed his brawny arms over his broad chest with the air of one who has had his share of brawls and come out the winner.

  “I’m just passing through, you might say,” Dr. Doyle told him. “Visiting a literary gentleman connected with Christ Church, in fact. Do you know Mr. Dodgson?”

  “Mr. Dodgson does not use this shop,” Vincent said grudgingly, “but he is known in Oxford. He writes mathematical books, does he not?”

  “And fairy tales for children,” Dr. Doyle reminded him.

  “Does he now?” Vincent looked Dr. Doyle up and down. “And where did you hear that I might print the sort of thing that you have in mind?” He glowered in righteous wrath, leaving no doubt as to his opinion of the putative work in question.

  “I must have been mistaken then because I felt sure that this page came from this shop.” Dr. Doyle produced the page he had removed from Ingram’s rooms. “As you can see, sir, there is at with a small nick in the serif. It appears somewhere on every page you have set in your samples, and here it is again on
this page. It is not uncommon for one letter in the font to be damaged, and it is hardly noticeable without a magnifying glass, but it is there nonetheless.” Dr. Doyle fumbled for his ever-present lens and beckoned the printer over to examine the offending letter.

  Vincent’s truculence ebbed as he studied the evidence. “Very well,” he admitted. “I did print up that piece. I had my doubts when I read it over, but the man who ordered it was from the University, and he told me it was for one of the gentlemen at Christ Church. All about some Greek lady poet of bygone years, he said. Sounded odd to me, but I printed it up as it stood.”

  “How many copies?” Dr. Doyle asked.

  “Fifty, and I charged him well for ’em,” Vincent replied. “Rum order, I thought, for a piece like that.”

  Dr. Doyle shrugged. “I suppose there is not much of a market for this sort of thing here in Oxford,” he said.

  Vincent grinned suddenly. “I don’t say there is and I don’t say there ain’t,” he commented. “But the po-faced chap who placed the order swore it was for one of the students.” Vincent shook his head. “Were it not for the fancy French and Latin in it, I’d have swore it was the sort of thing I do not print as a rule, but being as how the order was from one of the members upstairs …”He gestured at the ceiling.

  “French and Latin?” Dr. Doyle’s eyebrows went up. “Are you familiar with those languages?”

  The printer’s affability vanished again in outraged dignity. “I may not know those tongues, sir, but I know some words and the look of ’em. And it being but one page, I thought it was for a joke, like, some student rag. The young gentlemen will have their jokes; and if they want to put ’em into print, who am I to deny ’em?” Vincent shrugged eloquently, expressing his opinion of the wealthy young men who could afford to spend several pounds to have only a few copies made of salacious material.

  “Indeed.” Dr. Doyle smiled ruefully. “I suppose I had better look for another printer to provide my little, um, piece.”