Bucket's List

by Gary Blackwood

  FOUR

  Since its publication ten years ago, Mr Dickens’ tale A Christmas Carol has become something of an institution. It has gone through at least two dozen printings and nearly as many dramatic productions – most of them tending toward the melodramatic, actually, but wildly popular despite that. Or perhaps because of it. One might assume that its success would have made Mr Dickens a wealthy man – and in fact he is quite comfortable, but it’s no thanks to A Christmas Carol, which costs nearly as much to print as it does to buy. Though Mr Dickens is an artist, he is also a man of business, and he’s determined to wring a decent profit from his creation.

  ‘I’ve decided that the best way of accomplishing that,’ he says, ‘is to produce my own dramatic version of the story.’ He holds up both hands, as if expecting Charley to make some objection. ‘But! Not in the form of a play. I will present it as a reading. Oh god, you’re thinking, not another of those endless, monotonous recitations that have you wishing you’d stayed home, or the author had, or better yet that someone would garrote him before he can read another sentence, nay, another word.’

  ‘I wasn’t thinking that.’

  ‘Well, you should have been. In any case, my presentation will be far more than just a reading. It will be an interpretation, a realization, complete with sound effects and a variety of voices – all of them provided by me, of course. Bong, bong, bong! Clank, clank! Dreadful apparition! Why do you trouble me? Well, you get the idea. My first engagement is at the Birmingham Town Hall on the twenty-seventh.’

  ‘And you want a bodyguard, in case you’re threatened with garrotting.’

  Though Charley is only jesting, Mr Dickens nods in agreement. ‘Something like that.’ He rises and paces back and forth on the small amount of floor not taken up by the desk. There is a long hiatus before he speaks again, but Charley is a patient man. He takes out his notebook and jots down the details of the reading. At last Mr Dickens says, ‘Have you ever seen an actress named Julia Fairweather?’

  Charley makes a note of the name. ‘I have, at the Adelphi. Quite a stunner, as I recall.’ Though he doesn’t say so, he recalls a lot more than that about her: her honey-like voice, how gracefully she moved, how spirited she was, how seductive, how amusing. For weeks afterward, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. And now she’s back.

  ‘Oh, yes,’ says Mr Dickens. ‘She’s also quite clever and ambitious. A year or so ago, she formed her own company, which performed at the Royalty Theatre. She asked me to review one of their plays for the papers, and I was happy to do so – that is, until I actually saw the thing. I don’t recall the title or in fact anything else about it except that it was utterly dismal, as were most of the actors. Even the presence of the lovely Miss Fairweather couldn’t salvage it. Well, she played the part of a consumptive beggar or some such, dressed in rags, with matted hair and dark circles around her eyes; you would scarcely have recognized her.

  ‘I tried to find something to praise about the production, but the best I could do was to say that it was blessedly short. Only later did I learn the reason for that: the male lead muffed his lines and they ended up skipping over most of one act. Well, two days after my review appeared, the show closed, and shortly afterward the company dissolved. Miss Fairweather has never forgiven me. The word in theatre circles is that she means to take her revenge by sabotaging my show somehow.’

  ‘And you want me to stop her.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Mr Dickens takes out his wallet, an enormous, bulging affair of buff leather. Unless he also uses it to carry cigars or spare handkerchiefs, it must contain at least a dozen banknotes. ‘I’ll give you an advance, and I’ll tack on a bonus if you manage the feat without her creating a scene – she is an actress, after all. What’s your usual retainer?’

  ‘Fifteen bob a day, plus expenses. But see here, I don’t want your money. You’re letting me use your character’s name; that’s worth far more to me. Just give me a couple of crowns for train fare, and we’ll call it even.’

  ‘Nonsense.’ He thrusts three one-pound notes into Charley’s hand. ‘There’s your advance. If you can’t think of anything else to do with it, buy Jane a Christmas present.’

  ‘Well … thank you. I’ll do my best to keep your Miss Fairweather under wraps.’

  ‘Good. You’d best be on your guard, though, Charley. As I say, she’s a very clever lady, and she’s used to getting her way, by whatever means necessary.’

  ‘Yes, well, so am I.’

  ‘Speaking of ways, I should be on mine; Mr Ollier has turned in a piece on pantomimes that’s going to need some major rewriting.’ He shakes his head. ‘It beats me how you can write about something as entertaining as a pantomime and be so deadly dull.’

  ‘Before you go, Mr Dickens, there’s an urgent matter that you may be able to help me with.’

  ‘Indeed?’ says Dickens eagerly. ‘What is it? Forgery? Murder?’

  ‘Worse. I haven’t the vaguest notion of what to get for my wife. Any suggestions?’

  The Great Man grimaces. ‘Oh, dear. I was about to ask you the same thing.’

  The rest of the morning and all of the afternoon are, like most every other morning and afternoon, totally devoid of clients. His only other visitor is Wink, the young ticket porter who is the most recent addition to Charley’s cadre of reformed criminals.

  When Charley made his acquaintance, the boy was only ten or so – he was so undernourished it was difficult to tell – but he had already perfected a slick con that involved delivering messages to self-important merchants and businessmen. Though the messages were entirely bogus, by the time the recipient realized this he had usually tipped the boy a ha’penny, at least. The beauty of the scheme was that the lad took the trouble to learn his target’s name beforehand and print it on the outside in admirable penmanship. He even sealed it with wax, thus giving himself more time for a clean getaway.

  Charley figured that so enterprising a lad deserved to be given a chance at a real job. He managed to obtain a license and badge for Wink, and got him work delivering authentic messages, documents, and packages. First, of course, Charley had delivered his own message to the boy: Cross me up, and I’ll make you sorry you were ever born.

  ‘If you’re back this way around teatime,’ he tells the boy now, ‘I may have something for you. In the meantime, would you fetch me a beef sandwich from somewhere?’ He forks over sixpence. When Wink returns with the provender, Charley says, ‘One more thing. Do you ever have call to deliver a package from a gentleman to a lady?’

  ‘Only all the time. P’tic’ly this time o’ year.’

  ‘Do you ever see what’s in them?’

  ‘Oh, aye. As often as not, the lady rips it open right afore your eyes.’

  ‘What sort of thing?’

  ‘Joolery, mostly. Sometimes a music box. A bird in a gold cage, oncet.’

  ‘Hmm. Those sound expensive.’

  ‘I believe it. A nice necklace or a bunch o’ pearls can fetch a guinea or two from a good fence. Last week, though, I delivered a fancy mull to a lady, and it couldn’t ’ave cost more’n a crown, but she seemed wery pleased wiv it.’

  ‘A mull?’

  ‘Some calls it a snuffbox.’

  ‘I’m afraid I don’t know many ladies who take snuff.’

  Wink laughs. ‘Oh, they don’t put snuff in ’em, Hinspector, just stuff. Pins, buttons, smelling salts, rooge, comfits, that sort of fing.’

  ‘You certainly seem to know a lot about the ladies, my boy. How old are you, again?’

  He lets out another laugh. ‘Old enough to like huggin’ ’em, young enough to get away wiv it.’

  While Charley eats his sandwich, he tries his hand at writing a new advertisement, something more – in Mr Dickens’ words – intriguing and exciting. He prints the words large, so he won’t have to use his spectacles, which are yet another reminder that he’s not getting any younger. It’s just as well that he has no clients, since the task occupies the entire aft
ernoon and two pipes of tobacco. Lucky thing he didn’t want to be a novelist; at this rate, a book would take him ten years to write, and even then it wouldn’t be worth reading.

  At some point, the fiddler in the flat below begins to play, which wouldn’t be so bad except that he’s practicing a music-hall tune, ‘The Dog’s Meat Man,’ and Charley can’t help humming along. By the time Wink returns, he’s managed to come up with nothing better than this:

  INSPECTOR BUCKET’s

  PRIVATE ENQUIRY AGENCY

  Twenty-five years policing experience.

  Six years Chief of the Detective Branch.

  No case too large or too small.

  All investigations conducted with the

  utmost discretion and confidentiality.

  Confidentiality? Is that an actual word, or did he just make it up? He doesn’t want to seem a nincompoop, but neither does he want to sound like a professor of law. Well, it’s not exactly intriguing or exciting, but at least it sounds as if he knows his way around. And perhaps the reader will find the prospect of hiring the original of Inspector Bucket exciting enough. As an afterthought, he adds, Reasonable rates. Though he’s hoping to attract at least a few wealthy clients, he’s found that it’s the people with the most money who are the most reluctant to part with it.

  He makes four copies of the advertisement – three for the newspapers, one for Mr Dickens’ magazine – and gives them to Wink, along with enough money to pay the papers and then some. ‘Keep whatever is left over for yourself, lad.’

  ‘Y’know, Hinspector, you could put these in a postbox; they’d get there almost as quick.’

  ‘I know, but I don’t trust the Royal Mail. Besides, you need something to do, to keep you out of trouble.’

  ‘T’anks.’ Wink tips his cap and, grinning, juggles the coins in one hand. ‘I’ll eat well t’night.’

  ‘Just make sure it’s good food you buy, and not gin.’ You’d think that a boy of eleven or twelve would have no interest in liquor, but Charley has seen too much evidence to the contrary. And after all, Wink had a good teacher; his mother drank herself to death.

  ‘I will, Hinspector, I promise.’

  Charley doesn’t bother reminding the boy that he’s no longer an inspector. How can he, when he’s just reclaimed the title?

  When four o’clock comes and there’s still no sign of a client, he shuts up shop and sets out in search of a suitable present for Jane. Of course, he’ll have to find something for the mother as well, or he’ll never hear the end of it.

  It’s a tricky task, buying things for those two. When Mr Munge, his wife’s first husband, passed away so conveniently only a few years into their marriage, he left her well provided for; she’s never divulged an exact figure, but Charley has deduced that it’s somewhere in the neighborhood of £500 a year – more than twice what he earned as a detective inspector. As a result, her interpretation of the phrase ‘living within one’s means’ is considerably different from Charley’s.

  Before he and Jane tied the knot, Charley made it clear that he wouldn’t accept a grey groat from her, that in fact he would contribute his share toward the rental and upkeep of her house, which might be tolerably roomy and pleasant if it weren’t for the overabundance of easy chairs and squab sofas and tables and chiffoniers and carpets and drapes and doilies and knick-knacks.

  At first, he welcomed the comforts offered by Jane and her home, after years spent surrounded by bachelors in the spartan confines of the Holborn station house. She was a decade older than he was – sedate, conservative, almost motherly, and at the time that appealed to him. Her place was like a refuge from the hard, harsh world of the streets. Nowadays, he can bear it for only an hour or two before he feels as though he’s suffocating.

  It’s difficult to know what to give a person who has so much already, and at the same time avoid running himself into debt. Though Charley prides himself on his ability to fit in almost anywhere – aside from his wife’s home, that is – he’s always felt out of place in the fancier shops, even when he’s there in an official capacity, to investigate a break-in or apprehend a thief. He’s more comfortable in the markets and the pawnshops – the legitimate ones, not the dolly shops whose goods are mostly ill gotten. Often a pawnbroker in the right neighborhood will have the same quality of merchandise as the stores, at a fraction of the price. And if he boxes it up and wraps it nicely and lies a little, his wife and her mother will be none the wiser.

  Though Mr Popper, who owns the pawnshop in Elizabeth Street, is a Hebrew, he is as keen to capitalize on the Christmas season as any grocer or gift emporium. His front window is practically aglow with gilded geegaws that some swain gave to his sweetheart when their love was young and strong; when it grew old and infirm, the memories provided by the object were less important than the ready cash it provided.

  And there in the front is an array of elegant enameled snuffboxes. Though Charley feels a bit sheepish having to rely on the advice of a ticket porter, Wink’s idea is better than any he’s come up with. For a mere half a crown, he walks away with two of the nicer boxes; one is hand-painted with flowers – no better than Rosa could do, really – the other is printed with a scene of Eliza crossing the ice, from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, one of his wife’s favorite books. Mr Popper would gladly have given him the boxes; after all, Charley once broke up a gang of demanders who were extorting protection money from Popper and other local merchants. Charley has always preferred, though, that people display their gratitude not in the guise of gifts or money, but in the form of information and favors, and the policy has proven very profitable.

  Mrs Bramble or Rosa will do a far better job of wrapping the snuffboxes than he could hope to, and the Seminary for Young Ladies isn’t far off. He’s anxious to talk to Rosa again, anyway; perhaps she’s recalled something more about the stiff-necked man, or is more willing to share what she knows already.

  When he rings the bell, it takes Mrs Bramble an unusually long time to answer. When she finally does open the door, she scarcely looks like herself. Normally, no matter what the hour, she is impeccably coiffed, carefully made up, smiling in a warm and welcoming way – unless, of course, you’ve done something to displease her. But now she looks disheveled, distracted, distraught.

  ‘Charley!’ She grips his arm with a trembling hand. ‘I’m so glad you’re here! How did you find out?’

  Charley clasps her other hand in both of his. ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what you mean. Has something happened?’

  ‘It’s Rosa,’ says Mrs Bramble, her voice breaking. ‘She’s drownded.’

  FIVE

  Charley feels rather as though he, too, is drowning; he clutches Mrs Bramble’s hand so hard that she cries out. He releases her at once and steadies himself against the door frame. He’s dealt with dozens of deaths in his long career, yet none has ever hit him with such force, but for the pitiful passing of that six-year-old watch thief, so long ago. ‘How did it happen?’ he asks weakly. ‘And where?’

  ‘Hyde Park. She – she went off the bridge. The Rescue Society is calling it suicide, but I don’t believe it for a minute.’

  ‘Nor do I. It makes no sense. She was in fine spirits when I left her. Is there going to be a crowner’s quest?’

  ‘Tomorrow, at the Society’s infirmary.’

  ‘They’re the ones that pulled her out?’

  ‘Yes. She had nothing on her to identify her; no one would’ve even known who she was except that one of the Society fellows spoke up and admitted that he knew her.’

  ‘He was a customer, you mean?’ The detective in Charley is starting to push past the shock and pain, like a copper pushing aside the crowd at a crime scene and taking charge. ‘Has he been here lately?’

  ‘No. Not for months.’

  ‘Rosa mentioned that she had a customer yesterday afternoon, one that frightened her. Did you know him?’

  Mrs Bramble gives him a puzzled look. ‘The stiff-necked fellow? He said he was a frien
d of yours. I wouldn’t have let him in otherwise.’

  ‘He’s no friend of mine. Did he say what his name was?’

  ‘I made him write it down, like I always do, so I have a record.’ She consults the guest book on the hall table. ‘Nick Necktie?’ She makes a disgusted hissing sound. ‘There’s a made-up name if I ever heard one.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter; I know who he is. Did he put an address?’

  ‘4 Whitehall Place.’

  Charley shakes his head and sighs.

  ‘Is that made up, too?’

  ‘No. It’s the address of Scotland Yard.’ Charley rubs his hands over his face wearily. For the past year, he’s been itching for a case to solve, and now that he’s got one, he’d give anything to have it otherwise. ‘Does her daughter know yet?’

  Mrs Bramble nods sadly. ‘I brought Audrey here; one of the girls is looking after her.’

  ‘Well. I’ll attend the inquest and see what I can find out. If this Nick fellow turns up again, you let me know right away.’

  ‘Done. I’ll make sure he sticks around till you come, too.’

  ‘Don’t put yourself or the girls in any danger.’

  ‘If he’s the one that did for Rosa, it’s him that’ll be in danger.’

  Charley sleeps at the office again. He can’t bear to face his wife and her mother. Not that they’d demand to know where he’s been or what he’s been up to, or anything of that nature. They long ago lost what little interest they may have had in his affairs, either the policing sort or the amorous sort. He just knows that, if he spends any length of time right now in their smug, sheltered, superior world, he’s sure to say or do something he’ll be sorry for.

  Though they would have regarded Rosa with contempt, it should be the other way round. They have none of her admirable qualities – her warmth, her good humor, her talents. But they are the privileged; no one will ever have to fish one of them out of the cold waters of the Serpentine.