The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

  “Pray, Mr. Thurlow, give me a sight of that paper,” requested Dr. Johnson.

  “Dr. Johnson’s wish is my command,” said Thurlow with a bow: he had a particular regard for the burly philosopher.

  Dr. Johnson held the paper to the light, peering so close with his near-sighted eyes that his lashes almost brushed the surface.

  “Aye, sir, look close,” smiled Thurlow. “’Tis authentick, I assure you. I have particular reason to know.”

  “Then there’s no more to be said.”

  Thurlow took the paper, bowed, and withdrew.

  All along I had been conscious of another legal figure hovering near. Now I looked at him directly. He was hunched into a voluminous advocate’s gown, and topped by one of Mr. Tibbs’s largest wigs; but there was no missing those ice-blue eyes.

  “Captain Hart! You here?”

  “I had a mind to see the last of my widow,” he said sardonically. “I see she is in good hands.”

  “But to come here! Will you not be recognised, and detained, and put on the stand?”

  “What, Peers detain a Peer? No, sir. While the House sits, I cannot be summoned: and when it rises, all is over. Bellona may be easy; I shan’t peach. Adieu.”

  “Stay, sir—” But he was gone.

  After an hour, the Duchess of Kingsford returned to the hall with her head held high, and inquiry resumed. There was not much more harm Mistress Crannock could do. Sye was led once more to repeat: she saw them wedded, the sweet dears, and she signed the marriage lines, and that was the very paper now in Mr. Thurlow’s hand.

  “You say this is the paper? That is conclusive, I think. (smiling) You may cross-examine, Mr. Boswell.”

  Ann Crannock smiled at me, and I smiled back, as I began:

  Q. You say, Mistress Crannock, that you witnessed this marriage?

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. And then and there you signed the marriage lines?

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. On July 3, 1771?

  A. Yes, sir.

  Q. Think well, did you not set your hand to it at some subsequent date?

  A. No, sir.

  Q. Perhaps to oblige Mr. Eadwin Maynton?

  A. No, sir, certainly not. I saw them wedded, and signed forthwith.

  Q. Then I put it to you: How did you on July 3, 1771, set your hand to a piece of paper that was not made at the manufactory until the year 1774?

  Ann Crannock turned red, then pale, opened her mouth, but no sound came. “Can you make that good. Mr. Boswell?” demanded Thurlow.

  “Yes, sir, if I may call a witness, tho’ out of order.”

  “Aye, call him—let’s hear him—” the answer swept the Peers’ benches. Their Lordships cared nothing for order.

  “I call Dr. Samuel Johnson.”

  Dr. Johnson advanced and executed one of his stately obeisances.

  “You must know, my Lords and gentlemen,” he began, “that I have dealt with paper for half a century, and I have friends among the paper-makers. Paper, my Lords, is made by grinding up rag, and wetting it, and laying it to dry upon a grid of wires. Now he who has a mind to sign his work, twists his mark in wire and lays it in, for every wire leaves its impression, which is called a watermark. With such a mark, in the shape of an S, did my friend Sully the paper-maker sign the papers he made before the year ’74.

  “But in that year, my Lords, he took his son into partnership, and from thenceforth marked his paper with a double S. I took occasion this afternoon to confirm the date, 1774, from his own mouth. Now, my Lords, if you take this supposed document of 1771 (taking it in his hand) and hold it thus to the light, you may see in it the double S watermark: which, my Lords, proves this so-called conclusive evidence to be a forgery, and Ann Crannock a liar!”

  The paper passed from hand to hand, and the Lord began to seethe.

  “The Question! The Question!” was the cry. The clamour persisted, and did not cease until perforce the Lord High Steward arose, bared his head, and put the question:

  “Is the prisoner guilty of the felony whereof she stands indicted, or not guilty?”

  In a breathless hush, the first of the barons rose in his robes, Bellona lifted her chin. The young nobleman put his right hand upon his heart and pronounced clearly:

  “Not guilty, upon my honour!”

  So said each and every Peer:

  “Not guilty, upon my honour!”

  My client was acquitted!

  At her Grace’s desire, I had provided means whereby, at the trial’s end, come good fortune or ill, the Duchess might escape the press of the populace. A plain coach waited at a postern door, and thither, her white sattin and pearls muffled in a capuchin, my friend and I hurried her.

  Quickly she mounted the step and slipped inside. Suddenly she screamed. Inside the coach a man awaited us. Captain Aurelius Hart in his blue coat lounged there at his ease.

  “Nay, sweet wife, my wife no more,” he murmured softly, “do not shun me, for now that you are decreed to be another man’s widow, I mean to woo you anew. I have prepared a small victory feast at my lodgings, and I hope your friends will do us the honour of partaking of it with us.”

  “Victory!” breathed Bellona as the coach moved us off. “How could you be so sure of victory?”

  “Because,” said Dr. Johnson, “he brought it about. Am I not right, sir?”

  “Why, sir, as to that—”

  “As to that, sir, there is no need to prevaricate. I learned this afternoon from Sully the paper-maker that a seafaring man resembling Captain Hart had been at him last week to learn about papers, and had carried away a sheet of the double S kind. It is clear that it was you, sir, who foisted upon Eadwin Maynton the forgery that, being exposed, defeated him.”

  All this while the coach was carrying us onward. In the shadowy interior, Captain Hart frankly grinned.

  “’Twas easy, sir. Mr. Eadwin was eager, and quite without scruple, and why should he doubt a paper that came from the hands of the wronged husband? How could he guess that I had carefully contrived it to ruin his cause?”

  “It was a bad cause,” said Dr. Johnson, “and he is well paid for his lack of scruple.”

  “But, Captain Hart,” I put in, “how could you be sure that we would detect the forgery and proclaim it?”

  “To make sure, I muffled up and ventured into the lobby. I was prepared to slip a billet into Mr. Boswell’s pocket; but when I saw Dr. Johnson studying the watermark, I knew that I need not interfere further.”

  We were at the door. Captain Hart lifted down the lady, and with his arm around her guided her up the stair. She yielded mutely, as in a daze.

  In the withdrawing room a pleasing cold regale awaited us, but Dr. Johnson was in no hurry to go to table. There was still something on his mind.

  “Then, sir, before we break bread, satisfy me of one more thing. How came Ann Crannock to say the handwriting was hers?”

  “Because, sir,” said Captain Hart with a self-satisfied look, “it was so like her own. I find I have a pretty turn for forgery.”

  “That I can believe, sir. But where did you find an exemplar to fashion your forgery after?”

  “Why, sir, I—” The Captain darted a glance from face to face. “You are keen, sir. There could only be one document to forge after—and here it is (producing a folded paper from his pocket). Behold the true charter of my happiness!”

  I regarded it thunderstruck. A little faded as to ink, a little frayed at the edges, there lay before us a marriage certificate in due form, between Miss Bellona Chamleigh, spinster, and Captain Aurelius Hart, bachelor, drawn up in the Reverend Mr. Amys’s wavering hand, and attested by Sophie Hammer and Ann Crannock, July 3, 1771!

  “So, Madam,” growled Dr. Johnson, “you were guilty after all!”

  “Oh, no, sir! ’Twas no marriage, for the Captain was recalled to his ship, and sailed for the Jamaica station, without—without—”

  “Without making you in deed and in truth my own,” smiled
Captain Hart.

  At this specimen of legal reasoning, Dr. Johnson shook his head in bafflement, the bigamous Duchess looked as innocent as possible, and Captain Hart laughed aloud.

  “’Twas an unfortunate omission,” he said, “whence flow all our uneasinesses, and I shall rectify it this night, my Countess consenting. What do you say, my dear?”

  For the first time the Duchess looked directly at him. In spite of herself she blushed, and the tiny pox mark beside her lips deepened in a smile.

  “Why, Aurelius, since you have saved me from branding or worse, what can I say but yes?”

  “Then at last,” cried the Captain, embracing her, “you shall be well and truly bedded, and so farewell to the Duchess of Kingsford!”

  It seemed the moment to withdraw. As we descended, we heard them laughing together.

  “Never look so put about, Bozzy,” murmured Dr. Johnson on the stair. “You have won your case; justice, tho’irregularly, is done; the malignancy of Eadwin Maynton has been defeated; and as to the two above—they deserve each other.”

  [The Dutchess of Kingston was tried for bigamy by her Peers in April, 1778. The trial was just such a Roman holiday as I have depicted, and Boswell was there to see it. What impressed him most was the towering coiffures of the ladies. The Peers did not impress him. He had in fact argued the Douglas cause before them not long before.

  Unsuitably for fiction, the Duchess of Kingston was fifty-five years old, she weighed fourteen stone, and, wearing the proper mourning garb, she looked to the spectators like “a bale of bombazine.” Furthermore, she was found guilty, escaping the branding-iron by “pleading her clergy,” that is, by maintaining she could read and write, which by an antiquated legalism got her off. Her full story is told in Elizabeth Mavor’s The Virgn Mistress (New York, Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1964).

  Johnson’s seraglio, which opens my story, came under discussion during the Scotch visit, and Boswell’s japes on the subject got him a sharp reprimand. Boswell always had a secret yen to keep a harem himself.]

  Turn the page to continue reading from the Dr. Sam Johnson Mysteries

  THE KIDNAPP’D EARL

  “Detector of crime and chicane I may be, sir; but,” said Dr. Sam: Johnson in his resonant emphatick voice, “but, sir, I am no catchpoll!”

  We sat at our ease over breakfast in Dr. Sam: Johnson’s snug chambers in Inner Temple Lane. The apartment we sat in was equipped with furnishings that were like their proprietor, old but stout. On the plain walnut-tree table our repast was set out, to which Dr. Johnson had done full justice, having imbibed fully thirteen cups of tea. His chair pushed back, he sat now, in his plain snuff-coloured full-skirted coat, his old-fashioned square-toed shoes without buckles, his little brown scratch-wig perched exiguously above his strong-cut countenance with its look of an antient statue, replete, gently smiling.

  How I rejoiced to be here, on such comfortable terms with the Great Cham of Literature! I had but recently come up to London, an eager Scots lad of twenty-two, my heart set on winning my way into the friendship of this famous man whose noble writings I so much admired; and lo! here I sat at his breakfast table!

  Nay more, not a month since I had been privileged to observe in Bayfield Court the workings of his mighty intellect in an affair of triple murder locked in. To this event I now alluded.

  BOSWELL: You may be no catchpoll, sir, yet you handed over the Bayfield Court murderer to the watch.

  JOHNSON: Yes, sir, I did so. If murder is done, as it were, under my nose, then the killer must pay, and I will see that he is detected. The puzzle engages the intellect, the solution calls upon the ingenuity; but the killer, by his unhappy fate, touches the heart. It is no light matter.

  But, sir, (he went on) I take no delight in affairs of blood. To look into deeds of violence is to look into the heart of human misery. It gives an awful solemn warning: There but for the grace of GOD goes Sam: Johnson; but it does not raise my curiosity nor afford me amusement as do lesser deeds of eccentricity and chicanery.

  But most of all, sir, it is my pleasure to right wrongs. The world is full of chicanery, some of it harmless, but too much of it designed to cheat the hapless. Such chicanery I will detect and baffle if I can.

  BOSWELL: Then, sir, you must feel strongly drawn to the plight of the Kidnapped Earl.

  JOHNSON: Why, sir, I have seen some such catch-phrase bandied about in the publick prints, but as to its meaning I am not instructed.

  BOSWELL: The Kidnapped Earl, sir, as I read by the papers, is the rightful Earl of Angleby, who was kidnapped as a boy by his wicked Uncle Richard, and shipped to the Colonies for a bond-slave, that his uncle, the next heir, might slip into the Earldom; which he has done, and enjoys it till now undisturbed. Is not that a tale of chicanery indeed?

  JOHNSON: It is so, sir, but on whose part?

  BOSWELL: Why, sir, wicked Uncle Richard.

  JOHNSON: May be, sir. Or maybe not. There have been false claimants before now. Let the courts decide between them.

  Certain people of importance arriving at this moment, no more was said of the Kidnapped Earl for that time.

  It was ever thus at No. 1 Inner Temple Lane. Rarely did I have him to myself. He seemed to be considered as a kind of publick oracle, whom everybody thought they had the right to visit and consult.

  Thus it fell out that one midday in June, as we sat in converse together, Frank Barber, his Jamaican black boy, announced a trio of visitors, who presented themselves thus:

  “Your servant, Mr. Johnson, Dougal MacArcher, advocate, yours to command.” The speaker executed a ceremonious obeisance, a wiry personage of middle stature, clad in modish gold-laced sage-coloured brocade, his green eyes alert under tawny brows, his composed countenance lent a touch of the whimsical by a definitely turned-up nose.

  “I present my young friends: Lady Lalage Fitzcharles, the Duke’s daughter of Westermark—”

  The Duke’s daughter dimpled and dropped a curtsey. I observed her dark curls simply dressed, her direct hazel eyes full of life and fire, her short upper lip quirked in a smile, and I longed to be a knight-errant for her.

  Her knight-errant was already making his bow, a tall young man wearing his blond curls simply tied at the nape, whose far-seeing blue eyes and comely features were given distinction by a superbly high Roman nose.

  “—and my friend James Ansley, who would be Earl of Angleby if right would take place.”

  The Kidnapped Earl! I listened with all my ears as he burst impetuously into speech.

  “Knowing, Mr. Johnson, your wisdom and willingness to help, I make bold to enlist your aid.”

  “You shall have it, sir. Pray be seated and let me know the nature of your difficulty.”

  Frank set out chairs, and reluctantly withdrew. James Ansley took up his tale.

  ANSLEY: In a word, my difficulty is this: Am I a bastard?

  JOHNSON: Nay, sir, how can I tell? Let us have your story in order.

  ANSLEY: Then thus it is. I was born at Dalmain in County Wexford, so much is certain. My father, Lord Eltham, was next heir to the old Earl of Angleby, and my mother was Moll Barfield, the Duke’s daughter of Bredingham. At birth I was put out to nurse to Jiggy Landry the kitchen maid. I never knew my mother, for my father, who was a captious man, put her to the door before I came home from Jiggy.

  JOHNSON: Put her to the door!

  MACARCHER: For adultery, he said. Thence flow our difficulties.

  ANSLEY: Well, sir, at four I was brought home from Jiggy’s, and bred up in the great house. My father made much of me, bragging it about that I was his true-born son and next heir to the Earldom. I had a little hat with a feather, and a fine pony named Hannover, and lived in clover. But all too soon my fortunes changed. My father went up to Dublin, and took a mistress, who did not fancy me, and so worked upon him, that I was soon turned out of doors to fend for myself in the streets.

  LADY LALAGE: Alack, inhuman father!

  ANSLEY (smiling): I slept
under bulks and in doorways, I cadged my scram where I could. ‘Twas not a bad life for a sturdy gossoon. But then my father died, thoughtlessly as he had lived, and made no provision for me. My Uncle Richard at once seized his goods and his papers, and smoothly slipped into his estate. But it irked him to see me ragged in the streets, and hear people muttering that he had stolen my birthright, so he put his rapparees on my trail, and in short, one day they cornered me and hustled me aboard ship for America, there to be sold as a bond-slave. I was fourteen years in servitude, often running away, as often brought back to serve a lengthened term. But at last I got clear away, and made for the port. There I found His Majesty’s fireship Dragon fitting for sea, and ‘listed aboard her. Oh, sir, we did prodigies at the taking of the Havannah! But a shipmate knew me for old Angleby’s heir, and hailed me as the new Earl. The officers took up my cause, fitted me out, obtained my discharge, and shipped me home to wrest my Earldom from my wicked uncle.

  JOHNSON: One foremast hand against the world! What could you hope for?

  ANSLEY: At first I was all at sea. My kinfolk would not countenance me. But by the goodness of Providence I found a friend to support me, a man of law, a man of substance, named Dougal MacArcher. Behold, sir, the best friend a man ever had!

  MACARCHER (smiling): Never deserved a man more! Well, sir, we have matters in hand. We have gathered witnesses in Ireland, Jiggy Landry and the rest, who were to the fore at milady’s lying-in, we have even the pandours who kidnapped the lad, to say it was done at his wicked uncle’s bidding.

  JOHNSON: What says wicken uncle to all this?

  MACARCHER: He says the lad is only his brother’s bastard by the kitchen wench, and he did him a service, forsooth, in sending him to America and thus saving him from the gallows in Dublin! BOSWELL (hotly): A mighty service truly!

  MACARCHER: And meanwhile he goes about to do away with him.

  JOHNSON: Do away with him!

  MACARCHER: He sets on him blunderbusmen and assassins. He rides him down with his coach and six. At Newmarket race-meeting the juggernaut coachman pursues him all over the course—