“I noticed a particular couple because they came in late, halfway through the evening. The woman turned round once or twice and I could see her face quite clearly. She was wearing an Indian shawl and a bonnet with blue and purple feathers.”
“Very tasteful, I’m sure.”
“The man with her was big and broad shouldered, with black hair, side whiskers and a moustache. When the clowns were on, he had the loudest laugh of all. You could hear it over all the others, like a donkey braying. He had his arm round her most of the time.”
He paused and looked at me. The next words came out in a rush.
“She had a bag of whelks on her lap. He kept leaning over and taking one. And once she . . . she took a whelk out of the shell for him and held it out to him in her fingers and he took it between his lips, like feeding a parrot.”
“You sure it was whelks, not winkles?”
“It might have been winkles,” he admitted.
“And you recognized little Mrs Perkins?” I said.
He jumped back, eyes wide.
“How did you know?”
As well as surprise, there was annoyance at having his story spoiled. I glanced round and signalled to him to keep his voice down.
“I didn’t know about Astley’s but I guessed there was something going on,” I said.
“How?”
He didn’t believe me.
“The gloves. You were there that evening. You should have noticed too, since you’re so sharp-eyed.”
“I did notice. He picked her up about her gloves. Everybody heard.”
“That’s right. The gloves she said she’d found in the back of a drawer. He didn’t say anything at the time, but he knew all right. And she knew she’d given herself away.”
“But why shouldn’t she have found them in the back of a drawer?”
“You’re forgetting what Perkins did for a living before he came in here.”
“He was a shopkeeper.”
He stared at me as if I weren’t playing fair.
“Yes, but what sort of shopkeeper?” I said.
I watched his face as the answer came to him.
“A draper.”
“Exactly. A man who’ll have been dealing in ladies’ gloves six days a week for the past twenty years or so. Do you think he wouldn’t be able to tell the difference between a spanking new pair and a pair that had been lying around in the back of a drawer so long he’d forgotten them? He could have done it blindfold by the smell alone. And since he hadn’t bought them for her, some other man had or she wouldn’t have lied about them.”
“And she knew he’d guessed?”
“Yes. So she knew too there’d be hell to pay once he got out of the Marshalsea. That’s why she did it.”
“And all the time she was talking to the clergyman, her basket was out on the landing with the rat poison already in the curry.”
“That’s right, prepared by her own loving hands. And she had the cunning to go and get prayed over by Holy Joe so that anybody coming up and down that staircase would come under suspicion and muddy the waters nicely if people started investigating.”
“Yes,” he said. “I’d worked out that part of it.”
Which might even have been true. It sounded like the truth. He said nothing for a while, staring down out of the window.
“You said if people started investigating . . .”
“Which they won’t,” I said. “What’s one debtor, more or less? I daresay they’ll go through the motions, but they don’t know what we know.”
You wouldn’t catch me talking to the law and I knew nobody would take any notice of Glue Boy.
“So she’ll get away with it?”
“Women usually do,” I said.
Watts and Natty were looking in our direction, curious because we’d had our heads together so long.
“But if people think my father did it . . .”
“Don’t worry about that. I’ll put the word round where it matters.”
He blew his cheeks out in a sigh of relief, gone back to being boyish again.
“And what will happen about Mr Shipham and the money?”
“Oh, that.” I had inside information again and had intended to hang on to it a bit longer because it hurts me to have to give people their stakes back. Still, he had a right to know.
“That’s off, for this year at any rate. He and the governor have decided to declare the race null and void, so the two hundred pounds is going to widows and orphans.”
“Oh,” he said.
Then he went across to his father’s room and that was it.
Not long afterwards his father had a bit of good luck and got out anyway. I didn’t expect to set eyes on Glue Boy again, but as it happened I did. It was ten years or so later, Epsom Downs on Derby Day. There he was, walking around with his hat, cane and watch-chain, quite the young dandy. He wasn’t taking any notice of the horses, just strolling about looking at people. Then our eyes met and he flinched, as if seeing me had taken him back where he didn’t want to go. He recovered quickly. When I reintroduced myself I noticed that the smell coming off him these days was one of Floris’s best, with spices and a hint of cedarwood. We talked about the weather and the crowds and didn’t mention the Marshal-sea. He said he was surprised I’d recognized him from all that time back, only he didn’t sound really surprised, as if being recognized was his due. I hardly did, I said, him having turned out so smart. It was the eyes that had it. I’d have recognized them anywhere out of ten thousand.
The Three-legged Cat of Great Clatterden
Mary Reed and Eric Mayer
John Dickens was able to pay off his debt when he inherited some money following the death of his mother in April 1824. For a while young Charles continued to work at the blacking factory but his father, re-employed by the Admiralty, soon sent his son back to school. Poor health allowed John Dickens to retire on a small pension in January 1825 and he now revealed new skills as a parliamentary reporter. Income improved and the family moved to neighbouring Somers Town living, for a while, in the same house where Mary Shelley (the author of Frankenstein) had been born.
Charles left school in 1827 and worked as an office boy at one firm of solicitors and then as a clerk at another, but it was not long before he became a legal reporter, keeping track of events in the old probate courts known collectively as the Doctors’ Commons. In March 1832 he followed his father as a parliamentary reporter and, two years later, thanks to his uncle, John Barrow, Dickens secured a job as a political reporter for the Morning Chronicle, then a close rival to The Times. By now Dickens had already sold several short stories, starting with “Dinner at Poplar Walk” (Monthly Magazine, December 1833). This, and others, all appeared anonymously, but proved popular and in order to stake an identity Dickens adopted the alias “Boz” in August 1834. The “sketches” were subsequently collected together as Dickens’s first book, Sketches by Boz, published in February 1836.
Soon after, Dickens began work on The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club, which was issued in monthly parts from April 1836. Reception of the book was cool to begin with, because Dickens was limited to writing episodes around sporting pictures by Robert Seymour, but after Seymour’s suicide Dickens had a free hand and the series took off. By its conclusion in November 1837 each monthly instalment was selling 40,000 copies. Dickens was famous.
The Pickwick Papers follows the various adventures of members of the Pickwick Club in their sporting and romantic entanglements. Pickwick is often called in to help resolve some romantic problem or another, and that’s no different in the following story, a hitherto unreported adventure of the Pickwickians.
Mary Reed and Eric Mayer are best known for their series featuring John the Eunuch, set at the time of the Emperor Justinian. The series began with One for Sorrow in 1999 and has now reached Six for Gold (2005) with more in the works.
In Which The Intrepid Mr Pickwick and Mr Tupman Journey To Kent, View An Unusual Antiquity, And
Assist Mr Stephen Rooksbee Of That Parish In Solving A Mystery
Samuel Pickwick’s merry eyes twinkled behind his moon-shaped spectacles as he applied the great engine of his intellect to deciphering the words spilling in an anguished and passionate torrent from the lips of his rotund friend Tracy Tupman.
As ever, it was a matter to do with one of the fair sex, a preoccupation with whom being both the susceptible Mr Tupman’s glory and his bane.
“You say she went to visit her aunt and ran afoul of a three-legged cat,” said Mr Pickwick. “Does this ferocious feline belong to the aunt?”
“It’s not that sort of cat!” Mr Tupman drew from the pocket of his waistcoat a linen handkerchief, with which he proceeded to mop his brow. The Goswell Street rooms occupied by his companion had grown exceedingly warm, the heat of midsummer being augmented by both the fiery passions of Mr Tupman and the workings of Mr Pickwick’s gigantic intellect. “It’s a hill figure such as the White Horse of Uffington,” he went on.
“Enormous depictions that can be seen for miles? Made by the lifting off the turf to exposure the chalky soil below? They can be thousands of years old!” remarked the learned Mr Pickwick, who could have added considerably more to his description.
“That’s so. This one’s known as the Three-legged Cat of Great Clatterden. I stayed in the village inn on my journey and told its proprietor I’d bring my learned colleague – you, Mr Pickwick – to investigate this interesting antiquity. But all such thoughts were driven out of my mind when I arose the next morning to find the innkeeper’s sister was gone. He told me she’d left to visit her aunt, but then word came on the next coach that she had never arrived. It greatly pains me to think of the tender words his sister and I had exchanged only the day before.”
“Try not to distress yourself, my dear Tupman,” Mr Pickwick replied. “I admit the hill figure is of enormous scientific interest, but what makes you suppose this cat is involved in her disappearance?”
“Because of what the boy told me. A mercenary little ruffian who answers to the name of Herbie. He seemed to reside in the stable, and was forever wanting to clean my boots or carry my portmanteau or escort me on a tour of the village – which consists of a single street, mark you – and all for a price. Naturally I declined his offer. He had the sort of face suggesting a character that will inevitably lead him to wear a hemp rope for a cravat.”
Mr Pickwick tut-tutted at this sad intelligence, and then interjected several sagacious observations concerning the wisdom of frugality, the recounting of which would turn this simple tale into a philosophical treatise, and finally asked his distraught friend to provide as much detail as possible concerning the mysterious event.
“I suspect the boy overheard what passed between myself and the innkeeper,” Mr Tupman said. “When I rushed out to catch the London coach, the boy was lounging at the door smirking at me. Naturally I demanded what it was he found so humorous, considering the dire circumstances. He remained silent. ‘Has the cat got your tongue?’ I remonstrated.”
“ ‘It’s not my tongue the cat’s got,’ he replied. ‘It’s her tongue, and all the rest of her besides. It must be. Because last night, just when that big fat moon was scratching its belly on the tops of the pine trees, I seen her climbing the hillside all by herself, climbing up to the field where that three-legged cat was lying in wait.’ ”
Around the gently curving road across undulating countryside the commercial chariot thundered on, the sound of its rumbling wheels punctuated by sharp cracks of the whip. By the time it came to a halt at the inn door, the elderly proprietor was waiting on the step.
Readers, had we been the skylarks about whom Mr Shelley has written so tenderly, and were we wheeling over ripening corn or meadows dotted with placid cows, and in addition were such birds blessed with the power of speech accorded to mankind, we might have formed an avian chorus to announce the coach with as deep a chorus of joy as sang in the bosom of Stephen Rooksbee, landlord of the Trout and Basket Inn, for he knew heat and summer dust worked up a thirst in horse and traveler alike, and he stood ready to slake both.
In a fashion reminiscent of an eager collie, albeit one grizzled and somewhat rheumatic in the hind legs, Mr Rooksbee herded the new arrivals inside his hostelry. He smiled and nodded at each guest. But did a cloud pass across his face as the two esteemed gentlemen from the Pickwick Club descended from the coach? Surely not, for when had the jolly countenance of Mr Pickwick presaged anything but fair weather?
Mr Rooksbee settled his charges in the bar parlor, a low-beamed room filled by the comforts of settles, round tables, a wide fireplace, and not least, after a long coach journey, the comfort of not being constantly jostled by ruts in the road.
Mr Rooksbee approached the table where sat his visitors from London. “‘tis a pleasure to see you again, Mr Tup-man,” he remarked in a sorrowful tone which revealed to the sensitive perceptions of Mr Pickwick something of the anguish the old man had succeeded in concealing from his less discerning guests. “And your friend . . . certainly it is not that scientific gentleman you told me about?”
“Certainly it is,” replied Mr Tupman. “You see before you none other than Mr Samuel Pickwick, an observer of human nature, a scholar of vast knowledge, a living compendium of the most interesting and astonishing facts, and just the man to unravel the mystery of what has befallen your dear sister Alice.”
At this Mr Rooksbee took heart and brightened somewhat. “Then he’s only come to look for Alice?”
“I know you told me not to trouble myself with the matter,” Mr Tupman continued, “but how could a man in whose chest there yet beats a heart abandon a maid so fair? There is no further news of your sister?”
“‘Fraid not, sir. I’m fair flummoxed, and that’s a fact. We’ve looked everywhere, we have. I’ve even had the boy searching around the village and the fields and the hills. Yes, even the hill at the back of my inn, which is too much of a climb to ask of refined gentlemen such as yourselves and especially in this weather. Nor would the thorns respect your tights, sirs.”
Mr Pickwick thanked him for his consideration.
“And is Herbie back yet?” inquired Mr Tupman, his hand moving protectively toward the pocket where he kept his purse.
“I haven’t seen him since this morning,” replied Mr Rooks-bee. “He must still be out searching, but if you need your boots polished or any small service of that sort, I’m sure he’ll be back soon. Now, if you two gentleman will be staying the night, I suspect I’ll be able to find a chop or two for dinner, along with some vegetables and how about a nice bit of goat’s milk cheese? I’ll have my girl bring you something to eat right away.”
The innkeeper bustled off, not neglecting to take orders from his other guests on his way to the kitchen.
“It’s most inconvenient the boy not being here, but we must bear it as best we can,” remarked Mr Pickwick.
“Yes, indeed. When we see him we can question him further about seeing Alice walking up toward the cat.”
“Really I was thinking about how dusty my boots were,” said Mr Pickwick, his keen eyes taking in every detail of the crowded room. A man so versed in the wonders of nature could not help but notice how the walls were partially concealed by – for one could not honestly say decorated with – badly executed watercolors depicting horses the like of which were never seen in equine circles, along with formless blobs – perhaps tittlebats, perhaps weasels – and sundry other portraits whose originals, if these were faithfully rendered, would have populated the dreams of anyone unfortunate to see them in the flesh.
“It would be better if they had a painting of the three-legged cat figure, don’t you think?”
The speaker was a youngish man seated at the table nearest the corner where the Pickwickians were ensconced. His hair and coat were black, his nose was a sharp point, and he was as thin as a scrivener’s pen. He introduced himself as Edward Clarke, tutor to the son of a minor member of the nobility.
; “Why do you say that, sir?” wondered Mr Pickwick.
“Because most of our fellow guests are here to see the cat. It’s quite the local attraction, particularly among the unlearned and superstitious.”
“You are familiar with Great Clatterden?” Mr Pickwick asked.
Mr Clarke admitted that he passed through the village now and then.
The astute Mr Pickwick would not have neglected to inquire further except that they were interrupted by the arrival of the sizzling chops.
It is the sad task of the writers to report that the chops were a disappointment and the vegetables watery and few, although the serving girl, dressed in a shapeless black garment topped with a sacking apron and who could not have brightened more than twenty summers, caught Mr Tup-man’s romantic eye, even though his heart remained the captive of one who was sadly absent.
The cheese however was excellent and our two adventurers did it full justice. As the parlor began to empty, Mr Tupman leaned forward and whispered to Mr Pickwick, “I am sure you have noticed we were not the only diners to find our victuals lacking. Not a soul has finished his meal.”
Mr Pickwick immediately saw that this was true of their neighbor the tutor, who stood up, leaving a small side dish untouched.
The tutor noticed the direction of the learned man’s sharp, inquisitive gaze. “That’s what they call the cat’s bit,” he explained. “Nearly everyone buys a bit for the cat. Supposed to be good luck. Certainly it’s good luck for those who will eat it when we’re gone. There’s no end to the tales . . . but I need to be off. When he heard I would be passing through Great Clatterden my employer insisted I toss a penny to the cat as the moon rises. It’s reputed to have quite a different effect than pouring a libation at dawn. All humbug, of course. Comes from a lack of education.”
As Mr Clarke left, the serving girl returned. She had enlivened her dark outfit by the device of a red kerchief around her neck and simpered as she poured cider from a large stone jug.
“Are you fine gentlemen here for the scouring?” she asked. ‘“Tis Midsummer’s Day tomorrow. Everyone helps to clean our hill figure, you know, pull up any weeds that’s sprouted on it. There’s a meal afterwards, with a bonfire and dancing far into the night.” The saucy lass accompanied this pronouncement with a look at Mr Tupman which caused the poor man’s cheeks and every last one of his chins to turn red.
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 3