“I don’t hold with such hocuspocus, sir,” muttered the graterface man stubbornly.
“Did you kill him, fellow?”
“No, sir, not I.”
“Then touch, or stand accused.”
The old carpenter shrugged, and touched. Again nothing happened.
“And you, Murdoch, touch.”
The man with the second sight rolled his deep eyes wildly.
“Touch his brow—here—” My friend’s hand swept back the disordered wig from the dead man’s forehead, and Murdoch put a shaking hand to the pallid flesh.
I started. Did I see a trickle of liquid blood glisten at the dead man’s temple? In another instant the trickle became a crimson stream, that dripped upon the floor. In the dead silence we heard the red drops fall.
The man Murdoch snatched away his hand. The palm shewed red. His eyes darted left and right, seeking egress, and found none. Suddenly he made a mightly leap, caught at a dangling rope, swarmed over Hecate’s chariot, and so up into the flies.
“There’s your man, Davy,” said Dr. Johnson.
“You’ll never catch Murdoch,” said old Maggs, looking up, “for at the Havannah he was the smartest fore-topman in the fleet—until Captain Benton fastened on him. I never knew what it was he knew about Murdoch, but it was worth his life, I knew that. The Captain was always talking about Execution Dock—a great jest, he thought it.”
“You might have told us, when murder was done.”
“Me split on an old shipmate?”
“Thanky, Ned,” said a sardonic voice from the heavens.
“And besides, I owed Captain Benton a trifle myself.”
“Perhaps you helped?”
“Nobody helped,” said the voice from above, “so now come and get me—if you can!”
The actors scattered. Benny drew his Marie gently to shelter. The King’s Grenadiers moved in. A couple of red-coated heroes rode precariously in pursuit, levitated on Hecate’s cloud. Our quarry swung higher, into the dead dark of the upper flies. As we stared upward, momentarily baffled, suddenly a heavy counterpoise plummetted to the planking, narrowly missing a third red-coat. From the upward regions a savage laugh resounded. Cursing, the red-coat up with his musket and fired point-blank at the sound. Fate winged his ball. Down through the gunpowder reek the murderer plunged, and lay still at the foot of his master’s bier.
As we passed under Temple Bar on our homeward way, I spoke with exultation:
“I must note this evening’s work in my journal, for confirmation of the strange and oft-doubted fact, that at the murderer’s touch the dead man bleeds.”
JOHNSON: Pray, Mr. Boswell, clear your mind of superstition. You were all hummed. The dead man did not bleed, no more than any actor in a stage battle, when he claps to his face a sponge of red paint which he has previously fastened in his palm.
BOSWELL: Yet I saw the murderer’s palm red with blood.
JOHNSON: No, sir, with rose-pink, from painting faces. Well, well, ’twas enough, that when I squeezed my sponge, the murderer saw the red stream flow, and his conscience drove him to flight. The wicked flee when no man pursueth.
BOSWELL: Pray, how were you so certain of Murdoch, sir?
JOHNSON: Nay, sir, what is certainty? Of Bow-Street, Tyburn-gallows certainty there was some little dearth. Had I been certain, would I have put the others to so horrid a test, as to touch the cold corpse?
BOSWELL: Yet you were certain enough, to put Murdoch alone to the test of blood that seemed to flow.
JOHNSON: That is so, sir; I had Murdoch in my eye, for he alone, as the death trap rose, stood by, ready to retract the deadly blade as soon as its work was done.
BOSWELL: I muse why he risked retracting it.
JOHNSON: Because, sir, if the trap jammed, immediate detection would ensue, before he could make good his escape. He did not then know the doors were all guarded, and escape impossible. When he was turned back with his empty ale can, he must have been in terror, having heard the dying man, grown wise top late, denouncing him by name.
BOSWELL: Surely the Captain cried “Murder!”
JOHNSON: No, sir, “Murdoch!” The man himself said it: “He called me, and I failed him.”
BOSWELL: What drove the fellow to so bloody a deed?
JOHNSON: The Captain’s blind folly, holding him in fear, ever taunting him with Execution Dock, where so many pirates hang in chains.
BOSWELL: Nay, sir, how much jeopardy attaches to so old a crime?
JOHNSON: None, sir. You know it. I know it. But did Murdoch know it, when every day the Captain assured him otherwise?
BOSWELL: Then ’twas Murdoch who unbuttoned the foil and misfired the machine?
JOHNSON: It might be so; but I think rather that ’twas such fortuitous mishaps, failing, that gave him hope of freedom and set him contriving a death trap that should not fail. So he ordered the stool affixed; he came early to test—or tamper with—the Banquo trap; he saw his wicked work succeed—
BOSWELL: And save for Dr. Sam: Johnson, he must have escaped scot-free. But your little “tragedy of blood” did the fellow’s business. After your strictures upon players, I scarce thought to see you turn play-actor yourself; but ’twas a comedy well thought on.
JOHNSON: You may say so, Bozzy, having thought on it.
BOSWELL: I, sir?
JOHNSON: Yes, you, sir, naming the Persian Tales; of which my favourite has ever been, that of the groom who enjoyed the Sultana.
BOSWELL: What of him, sir?
JOHNSON: When the suspected grooms were paraded and a test proposed, he alone shirked it, and thus, like Murdoch, was detected by his own fears. By this we may see (he concluded sententiously) that the man of letters can always overcome the gross fellow by the ampler furnishing of his mind!
As we turned into Bolt Court under a starlit sky, the bells of St. Clement Danes chimed the hour, and the giants of St. Dunstan’s pealed in reply. “Eleven of the clock,” sang out the watch in Fleet Street, “and all’s we-e-ell!”
[Actors regard Macbeth as an unlucky play. Garrick’s last Macbeth was not so unlucky as I have painted it. Barring murder, however, I have depicted the performance exactly the way it would have taken place in 1776, as to costume, make-up, scenery, lighting, machinery, the trap doors in the stage floor, and so on. It is interesting that two of the three traps were named for their use in Macbeth, for the appearance of Banquo’s ghost and the witches’ cauldron respectively. The third, the long down-stage grave trap, was of course named for its use, depressed only slightly, for the grave of Ophelia in Hamlet.
The actors of the Drury Lane company are named and described as they were, all except Captain Bensley, the hero of the taking of Havana, who, since he was not in reality the victim of the Banquo trap, appears here as Captain Benton. All the stage lore that I amassed to write the life of Sarah Siddons, who made her London debut at Drury Lane in 1775, has been drawn on for this story.
The Mohawk Chief who went to the play (and much interested Boswell) was the famous Thayen-danegea, or Joseph Brant. Indian chiefs, it seems, did indeed think it prudent while in England to put on a warm suit of clothes before donning war paint and feathers.]
Buy The Exploits of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector Now!
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
For help and encouragement I have many people to thank:
My regretted friends and mentors Ellery Queen (Frederic Dannay) and Lewis M. Knapp.
Eleanor Sullivan, editor and friend
Librarians Kee DeBoer, George Fagan, Ellsworth Mason
Generous helpers Frank Krutzke, Ellen and Vincent O’Brien, Dorothy and Paul Thompson.
British Friends Stella and Geoffrey Ward, Charlotte and Denis Plimmer, Margot Bronner.
And always my husband, George S. McCue, upon whose wide learning, critical judgment and penetrating insights I depend.
Lillian de la Torre
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Lillian de la Torre (1902–1993) was born in New
York City. She received a bachelor’s degree from the College of New Rochelle and master’s degrees from Columbia University and Radcliffe College, and she taught in the English department at Colorado College for twenty-seven years. De la Torre wrote numerous books; short stories for Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine; reviews for the New York Times Book Review; poetry; and plays, including one produced for Alfred Hitchcock’s television series. In her first book, Elizabeth Is Missing (1945), she refuted twelve theories on the disappearance of a maidservant near the Tower of London in 1753, and then offered her own answer. Her series of historical detective stories about Dr. Samuel Johnson and James Boswell comprise her most popular fiction. De la Torre served as the 1979 president of the Mystery Writers of America.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 1985 by Lillian de la Torre
Cover design by Jamie Keenan
ISBN 978-1-5040-4455-4
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The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector Page 19