At my signal Mr Chillip’s manservants began to break the door. The rotten wood splintered easily and we were soon inside. As I walked through the rooms, undecorated since my childhood, I relived the pains and pleasures of my youth. There were marks on the wallpaper where my mother’s pictures had hung and there was the old chair where Peggotty had sat sewing. I could feel tears prick my eyes as I made my way upstairs. There was no sound now and I knew Murdstone had heard us.
I stood silent on the landing and, after a few moments, I heard a scratching sound coming from my old bedroom. Mr Chillip and the servants were climbing the stairs behind me, but when I held my finger to my lips they froze like statues.
I crept across the landing and flung open the bedroom door. Then I stepped inside the dark, shuttered room and looked around. In this place I had been beaten and had bitten Murdstone’s hand until it bled before being imprisoned there for my crime. As my eyes adjusted to the gloom, I saw a figure crouched in the corner – just as I had crouched in terror all those years ago. “Murdstone,” I said, my voice trembling.
The figure looked up but it wasn’t Murdstone’s dark, handsome eyes that met mine. This was a very old man with long white locks and a bent body. I saw something in his face that looked like hope.
“Mr Bartholomew Barton, I presume,” I said as I helped him painfully to his feet.
Mr Barton was forgetful and confused but in body, according to Mr Chillip, he was well. We took him from the Rookery where he had been held prisoner for many years by Murdstone and his associates, his property purloined with the aid of the wretched lawyer, Mr Passnidge, kept alive only for his signature on various documents.
I found his reunion with his daughter Dorothea in the Chillips’ parlour particularly touching. Neither at first could believe their good fortune. Dorothea had long ago been told her father was dead and Murdstone had told Bartholomew that his daughter had no wish to see him as he was mad – a lunatic. I hated Murdstone then with all the strength of my childhood loathing for the man. Then I remembered that he might be out there somewhere, biding his time. I would not let him win.
With Chillip in attendance, I called upon Miss Murdstone, only to be told by her servant, Dawkins, that she had returned home from her visit to her brother’s devoted follower and, on discovering Mrs Murdstone’s absence, had driven off in the carriage, presumably in search of her errant sister-in-law.
I wondered afresh where Edward Murdstone could have gone. Had he had an inkling that his perfidy was about to be discovered and left without a word to his sister, a precaution lest she betray him by some accidental word or look? My own guess was that he had gone to London. He had had business dealings there in the past and it is easy for a man to lose himself in that great city.
There was nothing more we could do. We returned to the Chillip residence to find Dorothea with colour in her cheeks and a glow of contentment in her eyes as she sat with her father in the parlour, her white fingers touching his brown mottled hand. She looked up and gave me a nervous smile.
“There is still no word of your husband,” I said. “And your sister-in-law is not at home.”
She released her father’s hand gently and stood up. “Mr Copperfield, I must speak with you,” she said softly and led the way into the garden.
As we stood there beneath a tall oak tree, I saw that she was shaking. “Have no fear,” I said. “Now that the truth of his dealings is known, he will not dare come back to torment you further. I have no doubt that he killed his associate, Mr Passnidge, so if he returns, he will be arrested for murder and hang for it. You and your father are safe now.” I did not know if this was true but I was anxious to reassure her.
She put her hand on my sleeve. “I know where my husband is, Mr Copperfield.” She gazed beyond me into the middle distance. “He is the Divine Nature and the Divine Nature would never leave his followers. He always made this promise and I can assure you he has not broken it.”
I took hold of her hand. The poor woman was indeed deluded. “If you know where he is, please tell me. I would speak with him,” I said, humouring her. For I had no wish to see the man I had always suspected of bringing about my mother’s death unless it was to bring him to justice.
“Very well,” she whispered. “I will take you to him.”
We stood and faced the Divine Nature and the statue seemed to stare back at us, defiant. I glanced at Chillip and saw that he looked mildly alarmed. This was his first visit to the chapel.
Dorothea knelt with her eyes closed as if in prayer. I touched her shoulder and she flinched. “Where is he?” I asked as gently as I could.
She stood up and approached the Divine Nature, her eyes fixed on the image. She put both hands on the altar and knelt again, as though she was worshipping her husband. Then, to my surprise, she slowly raised the blue velvet cloth that covered the altar to reveal something beneath. An oilcloth enveloping a shape the size of a man. An unpleasant odour suddenly filled the chapel, wafting from the direction of the altar. I had smelt something like it before. The odour of death.
It was Mr Chillip who moved first. He rushed to the altar and ushered Dorothea away gently, placing her into my care before putting a handkerchief to his face and unfolding the oilcloth. I knew what he would find there but it still shocked me to look upon the dead face of Edward Murdstone.
Dorothea’s body was shaking as I led her outside and we walked until we reached a stone bench beneath a willow tree. “Please tell me all.” I sensed she wished to make a confession. That was why she’d led us there.
She sat there, her pale hand clutching mine, her eyes cast downwards as she spoke. “I was driven beyond endurance. A wife is the property of her husband but I had no inkling of . . .” A tear ran down her cheek. “And when he took my father into his power . . .”
“How did he . . .?
“When my father became ill, my husband took him to a house he owned, claiming he would be cared for there until he recovered. But instead he kept him as a prisoner and pacified him with laudanum, as he did me. I was told he was dead but all the time he was a prisoner. Edward had this . . . creature – a lawyer from Lowestoft. Of late I have pretended to take my medicine and poured it away. On the night the lawyer came I crept downstairs and listened at the door. I heard them talking of my father, the old man at the Rookery. When the lawyer left I followed him.”
“With a cloak over your nightgown. You were mistaken for a ghost.”
She continued as though she hadn’t heard me. “I challenged him, pleaded with him to tell me if there was hope that my father wasn’t dead, but he refused to answer. He backed away from me in fright and fell into the water and drowned. I was frightened so I returned to the house. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“And your husband?”
“He had discovered my absence and he was waiting for me. He took me to the chapel . . . said I should be punished for defying The Divine Nature. He forced me to kneel and he . . . he raised his stick to strike me. Then something miraculous happened. He fell to the ground as though God had struck him down. A judgment.”
“A seizure, perhaps.”
“A judgment. I dragged his body beneath the altar and covered him in an oilcloth I found there. It took all my strength.”
“Why didn’t you tell your sister-in-law he was dead?”
She thought for a few moments. “I confess I enjoyed seeing her distress. She and her brother had brought me such misery and I wished her to have a taste of it.” She looked away. “I am very wicked to have such unholy thoughts.”
I put my hand on hers. “I too suffered under the Murdstones in my youth. Murdstone beat me once and I bit him for his pains.”
She gave a weak smile.
“As his widow, the house is now yours. You have come into your rightful inheritance. You can care for your father and . . .”
I was interrupted by a shout from Mr Chillip. He stood some way off and beckoned me. I begged Dorothea to excuse me and joined my
old friend in the chapel, covering my nose with my sleeve.
He uncovered Murdstone’s body. His dead eyes stared at me and his lips were drawn up into a familiar snarl – one I had seen so many years before when he had beaten my young body to break me like a dog.
The good doctor was about to point something out to me but, at that moment, I heard the sound of galloping hooves. As I ran outside I saw a carriage clattering up the drive. It was Miss Murdstone, returned to receive the grim news she had been dreading.
When she saw me running towards her, she stopped the carriage. And as soon as I’d acquainted her with the truth, she dashed to the chapel and cradled her brother’s dead, stinking body in her arms, howling like an animal in pain.
Edward Murdstone’s funeral was a colourful event. A dozen women – followers of the Divine Nature, deprived of their master – were sobbing and wailing in a most unseemly manner. Jane Murdstone, black-veiled like some great crow, was dignified in comparison. I was the only mourner who had not been a devotee. I felt out of place in such a gathering.
The widow was absent from the proceedings. She had returned to the house with her father and, with new-found boldness, she had ordered her sister-in-law to pack her bags and move to the Rookery – a neglected and miserable establishment.
Jane Murdstone made no move at the funeral to thank me for my efforts. Perhaps she had forgotten that I had come there at her behest. I put her omission down to grief.
I longed to return to Agnes and my work but Mr and Mrs Chillip begged me to stay the night after the funeral and travel back the next day. I accepted their kind invitation, for Mr Chillip had always been a favourite companion of mine in my youth and one of the few people who remembered my dear dead parents in life.
“David,” he said as we sat together after our evening meal. “There is a matter that concerns me.”
“What is that?” I asked the doctor as I sipped a warming glass of port.
He hesitated, a worried frown on his face. “As a doctor, I examined the body of Edward Murdstone and I observed marks which . . . which were not consistent with Mrs Murdstone’s story. The flesh was broken on his skull and there was . . . There was a mark on his arm that looked like the bite of some animal . . . or a human being. I fear I have done wrong to stay silent.”
There was a long silence. Then I spoke. “You suspect that it was not the Almighty who struck Murdstone down? You think that Mrs Murdstone took her own revenge for the wrongs done to her?” I thought for a few moments. “We never found the stick she claims he was about to use to beat her, did we?”
“No indeed, David. The point is, what do we do about our suspicions?”
I did not answer. My mind was filled with remembrances of my childhood, of the beatings I had received at the dead man’s hands, of his cold brutality and hypocrisy, of the time when I too had stopped my suffering with a hearty bite to his threatening hand. Edward Murdstone was dead and buried and in my heart I wished him to stay that way. The suffering had to end.
The next day I returned to Agnes and my home, praying, as I do now, that I would never hear the name Murdstone again.
I Encounter an Old Friend and a New Mystery
Derek Wilson
This is the second of our stories inspired by David Copperfield. Derek Wilson is a noted historian and biographer who has written books about Henry VIII, Charles I, Francis Drake and the Earl of Leicester. His mystery novels include the Tim Lacy series of art thrillers, starting with The Triarchs (1994), plus several historical mysteries, including a series about George Keene, who served as a spy for William Pitt at the time of the wars with France, and another about Nathaniel Gye, a Cambridge don with an interest in the supernatural.
Over the years I have come to regard the forenoon hours as those most conducive to work. Every morning after breakfast it has been my custom – religiously adhered to – to repair to my desk and to write until midday. The servants are under strict instructions not to disturb me. It was, therefore, with not a little annoyance that one February morning I heard a diffident tap at my study door. It opened to admit our maid bearing a silver salver.
“Begging your pardon, Sir,” said she, “but there is a gentleman called who says you’ll want to see him. I told him you don’t see no-one of a morning but he was most persistent and as mistress is out I didn’t know what I should do, so I put him in the drawing room and said I’d bring his card.” She proffered the tray and I picked up the visiting card.
The next instant I sprang to my feet in astonishment. There, elaborately engraved, I read the name Wilkins Micawber JP. Scarcely believing that our unannounced visitor could really be our old friend who, a dozen years previously had departed for the colonies vowing never to return, I rushed across the hallway and threw open the drawing-room door. And there he was – a little more rotund, his face of a duskier hue, his frame enclosed in a topcoat of elegant cut – but without doubt the same affable, ebullient Micawber whose fortunes had been so intimately linked with my own all those years ago. I took him warmly by the hand scarcely finding words to express my delight at seeing him.
“My dear Copperfield,” he responded, “dull would he be of soul who was not stirred to the very depths of his being by the warmth of that greeting. The cognizance that, years and oceans have not dimmed the esteem and – dare I say – the affection in which you were once so good as to hold your former indebted servant, instantly banishes from the memory the cruel wave and savage tempest through which it has been my lot to pass on my pilgrimage to these familiar haunts . . .”
“Never doubt it, Mr Micawber. Never doubt it,” I rejoined. “Why, to see you again – and looking so . . . prosperous – is a joy I never expected to experience in this world.”
At that moment Agnes entered, followed by the maid bearing a tray with glasses and a steaming jug of punch. As the liquid was poured my wife echoed my greeting and it was she who broached the questions which were uppermost in both our minds.
“What brings you back to England, dear Mr Micawber? Are your family with you?”
A look of deep melancholy pervaded his features. “I can report that all the Micawber offspring are so well settled in their various avocations that it would have been no kindness to inflict upon them the long return journey to Albion. However,” he added, his voice assuming a sombre tone, “I have also to report that their mother, she who has been the architect of our domestic happiness and the buttress of my life, has preceded us all to a better world.”
I commiserated with him and indicated, what was no less than the truth, that I could not conceive of Mr Micawber without Mrs Micawber. I, who was no stranger to grief, yet found it difficult to understand the degree of loss this stalwart gentleman must be experiencing. She whose unshakeable faith had been his only support through so many ordeals was no more. It occurred to me that this return to the scenes of those trials might be some attempt to recapture associations and revivify memories. I was soon to discover that this was but part of Micawber’s motivation.
We, of course, pressed our old friend to stay under our roof for just as long as he had a mind to do so, an offer he accepted with his accustomed effusive display of gratitude. It was as he and I sat before a blazing hearth that evening with glasses of mulled wine after dinner, Agnes having made the excuse of domestic responsibilities in order to leave us alone, that Micawber sat forward in his chair and announced in almost conspiratorial tones, “My dear Copperfield, you were kind enough earlier to enquire as to the reason for my return to Albion’s wave-tossed shore. I fear that my response was less than candid – No, I will not say that I lacked candour, for transparency, I like to feel, has always been a mark of Wilkins Micawber Esquire. If my narrative was lacking in some particulars it was delicacy that placed a turnkey on my lips. There are certain events which I forbear to broach within the hearing of Mrs Copperfield.”
I was instantly alarmed, fearing that Mr Micawber had not entirely shaken off the Micawber of old with his propensity fo
r getting into difficulties. “My dear friend,” said I, “If some trouble has befallen you . . .”
He held up his hand. “No, indeed. Indeed no, Mr Copperfield. Ever since those friends, than which no man ever had better, set our feet upon the broad path of opportunity these twelve years since the clan Micawber has prospered.” He paused, staring into the fire’s crimson heart. “There are, sadly, those who do not share such good fortune even in that land where fortune so abundantly suckles her eager brood.” He took out his notecase and from it extracted a small square of card, with dog-eared corners. He passed it across and I found myself looking at a studio portrait of a lady seated on a chaise longue with her husband and three small children ranged around her. The sitters projected an air of serene domestic contentment.
“A handsome family,” I observed. “Who are they?”
Micawber took the photograph and gazed upon it for several moments with an expression of mingled sadness and anger. “Handsome, indeed, and happy and industrious and deserving of the good fortune that domiciled with them for many years before the shadow of a great evil fell across their path.”
“What evil?” I enquired.
“Murder most foul,” Micawber replied in a voice little above a whisper. He sat back in the chair, eyes raised towards the glow of the gas lamp.
“Jed Gringlade – that is the name of this paterfamilias – was a hard-working, honest, conscientious, young man, employed by a firm of chandlers at West India Dock. To the noble enterprise of a highly esteemed proprietor Gringlade brought the dedication and vigour of youth. He rose steadily in the estimation of his employer and was, within a few years, that employer’s right-hand-man of business. He had also captured the affections of the estimable merchant’s daughter, Emily. In due time the two were united in that blessed state of which you and I, Mr Copperfield, have received ample proof. All this was some seven years ago and, for five of those years, no one, I venture to suggest, could have been happier than Mr and Mrs Gringlade and the three little Gringlades with which their union was blessed.”
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 27