“I am only hoping to be twelfth man, sir.”
The bright eyes twinkled. “You may be more if you are known to have bowled me out during net practice,” he said. “But if we have the sacrilege to the statue, and the dye in the water, it does appear that someone wants to make the Gradgrinds ridiculous at best and uneasy at worst. And the violation of the cricket pitch – as we will make clear to those constables I see even now awaiting our presence – suggests a very sick mind indeed. As I said, I fear its possessor may stop at nothing short of murder!”
The constables’ inspection of the pitch was cut short by a sudden downpour, which had the effect of making the pitch look as brilliant as a circus girl’s skirt, red and blue curlicues of colour on a dark velvet ground. It also soaked the practice area, so it was clear that there would be no glory in the nets for William that night. The great man frowned and growled at the constables, but more, thought William, as if he were dissatisfied with something else.
At last, tugging on his beard of beards, the doctor said slowly, “William – I trust you allow me to call you by your Christian name rather than by the excruciating conglomeration of syllables that form your surname? – William, you tell me that the children of Bitzer families are very poor, and cannot even look forward to the treat of a cricket match?”
“All too often they cannot afford a bat and ball with which to play, let alone the entrance fee to watch others,” the young man said.
“Then they would not be able to afford any other entertainment?” WG bit his lower lip.
William allowed himself a sad smile. “We are lucky enough to have a circus that makes Coketown its permanent base, sir. And on a show night, you may see a row of the seats of badly patched breeches as the wearers peer through slits in the tent wall.”
“Can’t even afford a farthing for a circus?”
William shook his head.
“And certainly not for a penny bun to cheer the evening along? I am a doctor, William, and I would prefer youngsters to eat good apples rather than penny buns. But I do realize that a treat must involve some sticky comestible, or it is not a treat at all. William, if you undertake to provide the ragamuffins, male and female, I will provide entrance to the circus and the requisite refreshments. No, no thanks – off on your business. We will meet at – what time does this circus of yours start?”
William flushed with embarrassment on the circus peo pie’s behalf. “When they manage to assemble sufficient paying people to constitute an audience, sir.”
Grace consulted a great turnip of a watch. “Then let it be constituted for seven-thirty this evening.”
The tent was crammed by seven-fifteen but, knowing that anticipation would add to the audience’s enjoyment, the ringmaster refused to let the performance begin until seven thirty-five. Imagine the terror at the sight of the great wild beasts close enough to touch, and the amazement as acrobats flew through the air! Imagine the delight as clowns threw custard pies or buckets of water at each other, and girls on horseback pirouetted and dispensed paper flowers to the onlookers! Imagine the disbelief as the Indian walked over hot coals, and a thin-faced man threw a stick that curved in the arena and returned to his hand!
William was as thrilled as the rest, and turned, laughing, to thank his host. But their benefactor was frowning, deep in apparently unpleasant thought. Halfway through the entertainment, he got to his feet, motioning William outside.
“William, what colour are the girls’ dresses?”
“Red and blue, sir.”
“A familiar red and blue?”
“All too familiar, now you come to mention it.”
“And with what do the unfortunate clowns gather up the evidence of the elephants’ parade?”
“A spade.” William saw the drift of the great man’s questions. “But you cannot think that any of the circus folk would desecrate anything pertaining to the late Mr Gradgrind! They became his friends – they saved his son’s life!”
“And how did they do that?”
“Tom was a wanted man. They managed to prevent his capture and ensured that he was sent to the colonies, where, it is said, he died.”
“Is said!” Grace looked excited. “And how old would he be?”
“Somewhat younger than Miss Louisa, sir. That is to say, in his fifties or sixties.”
“That cock won’t fight, then,” Grace muttered. “And yet – and yet – Tell me, where does this Miss Louisa live?”
“Close at hand, sir, since she always loved the circus. At Rose Cottage – down there.” William pointed down the lane, to a picturesque dwelling from which a curl of smoke rose through the evening light.
Dr Grace might have been a big man, but he was remarkably fit and very swift on his feet. William was hard put to catch up with him, but the smell of smoke leant wings to his heels. In Coketown there were always plenty of people ready to join a pursuit, and though no one could have explained the nature of their urgent errand many were already crying, “Stop thief!” or “Murder!” as Rose Cottage came in sight. In the event neither was entirely apposite, but it was true that a window hung open on bent hinges and that flames were biting hungrily into the thatch.
“On my shoulders, William!” Grace cried in a mighty voice. “And get into that room!”
William did as he was told, hardly understanding even yet the urgency in his mentor’s voice. He was met by the sight of Miss Louisa, apparently dead upon her bed.
With a superhuman effort, he heaved himself into her bedchamber and, driven by the ever louder crackle of burning straw, seized her, dropping her body without ceremony into the waiting arms of the good doctor. He perched on the windowsill, waiting anxiously for the good people of the town to find a ladder for him to climb down or a strong blanket for him to jump into. As for the Coketown Fire Brigade, that had been summoned, and he could see the horse pulling the tender four streets away.
From his vantage point, he could also see but one person running away from the fire, and not towards it, a man who in his effort to escape the notice of the mob curved in and out of alleyways but always heading towards the circus, just as the boomerang had returned to the Antipodean’s hand. Even as William’s eyes filled with wild surmise, even as he pointed to the bolting form, his ears caught the sound of a dreadful creaking. The roof would fall in at any moment!
No ladder! No blanket! And the fire appliance still a whole street away!
William jumped, hoping and praying for a safe landing.
But it was not to be.
The great man was the very first to visit William in the Gradgrind Infirmary, where he and his broken legs were anchored to the bed.
Dr Grace checked his pulse, laid a professional hand on his brow to check for fever, wiggled the exposed toes. At last he declared, “You’re doing very well, my lad. What’s more, you can congratulate yourself on saving Miss Louisa’s life.”
“She lives, sir?”
“She does indeed. She had been choked into unconsciousness by our foul miscreant, who hoped that everyone would believe that she had died in an accidental house fire – a fire, it goes without saying, he himself had started. Did I not tell you that a man capable of digging up a cricket pitch was capable of anything?”
William helped himself to one of the grapes Dr Grace had placed beside his bed. “But what made you react so quickly, sir?”
WG found a chair and settled himself on to it, looking for all the world like a coconut on an egg-cup. He spread a ham of a hand and counted off each point on his fingers. “You pointed directly at something, William, before your fall, something or someone. You certainly pointed in the direction of the circus tent. Now, at the circus, we find a man who is agile, and what demands more agility than shinning up a tent pole? We find a man who has access to dyes of various hues, and how else do the circus women fettle up their clothes than with commercial dyes? We find a man with a spade. We find a man whom everyone assumes will stay in the tent for the remainder of the performance
but is able to sneak out and speedily return. But most of all we find a man with a grudge, however misplaced.”
“A man with a grudge?” William repeated stupidly.
“A man with a grudge,” Dr Grace replied firmly. “A man whose father committed a terrible crime, allowing someone else to take the blame for it, but who always bore a grudge against those he had wronged. A man whose father may have died with his sister’s name on his lips but whose father had never done other than covet her riches and blame her for the discovery of his crimes. A man, in other words, William, whose mind was poisoned. Although he was brought up in Australia, part of our glorious cricket-loving empire, he still plotted the very word he inscribed on your cricket pitch – revenge.”
William blinked. “But who?”
“Did you see the man with the boomerang? That polished piece of wood, William, that apparently returned at its thrower’s behest. I have visited Australia, my boy—”
“Indeed, sir – in ‘73, ‘74! I read about your adventures in the papers, sir.”
WG looked a touch embarrassed. “And I must confess I nearly killed my cousin with one of the damned things. Apparently they appear nowhere else. Where else should the younger Mr Gradgrind have been sent, except to Australia?”
“But the Indian, the African—” The young man’s mind was reeling.
“– speak so little English it is not worth mentioning. No, William, rest assured; we have the right man – Thomas Gradgrind the Third, as our American cousins would call him.”
William’s eyes widened. “A third Thomas Gradgrind? Our benefactor’s grandson – Miss Louisa’s own nephew?”
“Exactly so.”
“But how was he apprehended?”
“Not without a struggle, believe me. The constabulary tried to set their dogs on him, but he turned his aboriginal instrument on the nearest hound, causing it to expire on the instant. We had stalemate, William. But – like you, my boy! – I am no slouch with what is a potentially lethal missile myself. A cricket ball, hurled at a man’s temple, could kill him. And I was determined that he should be taken alive. At last, in desperation, I grabbed a custard pie from one of the clowns and hurled it with all my might at his face. It did him no lasting harm, but rendered him temporarily blind. As he scraped the pie shards from his face, the constabulary did the rest. He is in police custody as we speak. Indeed, he has confessed all.”
“And what will happen to him?” William asked.
WG pulled his long beard, now making him look like an Old Testament prophet. “I cannot say whether he will serve the prison sentence he deserves. I have doubts as to his sanity, and Miss Louisa is notably soft-hearted.”
“But he has committed a serious crime – she might have died!” And William could not forbear to think of his lower limbs.
“It is of that that I have managed to persuade her. I believe a dear friend of hers has endowed a hospital for the criminally insane—”
“Indeed. The Cissie Mildmay Home. The patients are encouraged to make music and paint and grow flowers and I know not what else.”
“Excellent. Exactly what he needs. So all’s well that ends well, eh, my boy?”
William tried hard to nod positively. But he was scarcely more than a youth, after all, and though he was delighted that the miscreant would cause no more problems about Coke-town, he had indeed problems of his own. Not only would he not be twelfth man in the match he had so long dreamed of, it was possible that he would never play again. Involuntarily, he let his eyes drift towards his legs.
“Well, well,” Grace said, with the sort of smile that William had seen on his lips when he had proposed the treat for the Bitzer children, “suppose that the moment you are deemed fit to travel you come down with me to London. Agnes would enjoy looking after you, and I could take you to a few matches. How would that be?”
William knew he must protest. “My studies, sir—”
“Forget them for a while. Remember what that ringmaster says, William: people must be amused.”
Tom Wasp and the Swell Mob
Amy Myers
Dickens’s next novel was Little Dorrit, which began to appear in monthly parts from December 1855. Its title, which bears some resemblance to Little Nell in The Old Curiosity Shop, does indeed refer to an angelic young girl in somewhat similar straits. This is Amy Dorrit who had been born in the Marshalsea Prison where her father, William, is the longest serving debtor. Dorrit eventually wins his freedom through an unexpected inheritance but discovers that money is not the answer to everything. Dickens was clearly exploring episodes from his childhood and his father’s own incarceration in the Marshalsea.
Amy Myers uses the London of the street urchins to illuminate the background for Little Dorrit. The story is filled with the street vernacular of the day, most of which is self-explanatory. The phrase “the Swell Mob”, used to be used by the poor about the rich, but over time it came to be used of pickpockets and others who dressed fashionably in order to rob the well-to-do. By dressing well it helped them escape detection. Amy Myers is probably best known for her stories featuring the Edwardian sleuthing chef Auguste Didier which began with Murder in Pug’s Parlour (1986), but she has also been developing a series featuring an East London chimney sweep, Tom Wasp. Several stories will be found in her collection Murder, ‘Orrible Murder (2006), whilst the first novel in the series is Tom Wasp and the Murdered Stunner (2007).
Wasp! Come ’ere!”
I obliged. With Dolly Dunks, this was advisable, even though the crumbling chimneys of the Tabard Inn were not my first choice for work. It’s said that pilgrims once gathered in the old part of the tavern before they set off to Canterbury. If they’d seen it today with its rotting stairs and galleries, they’d have been even more glad to leave. Even my old Smart’s cleaning machine is afraid to go up those flues. The brush comes out at the top – if at all – with a sigh of relief. But with Dolly you don’t say no. It’s more a case of forget about your threepence and have a plateful of yesterday’s dog’s dinner in payment.
“There?” I asked hopefully, looking at the newer part of the inn on the right of the yard – newer meaning only a hundred or two years old.
Dolly ignored this question. “You come with me. I got pigmen here.”
That was nothing unusual at the Tabard, but the police seldom required a chimney sweep. Not my place to question Dolly, though, so I followed her broad figure and dirty red petticoat trailing through the yard. Hobbling over the cobbles behind her, I was too busy avoiding the wagons and delivery men to wonder where we were off to, until we went past the old part of the inn and through the passageway to the rear yard, which services the stables and some tumbledown dwelling houses for Dolly’s workers. She was heading for the old hop warehouse at the far end, and I could see a young pigman, looking most imposing in his swallowtail coat and top hat, with his rattle at the ready in case I tried to rush him.
“What’s ’e want?” he asked suspiciously as we reached him.
“Friend of ’ers,” Dolly replied, brushing him out of the way like a bluebottle and marching inside.
Hers? What was going on here, I wondered, as the smell of dried hops greeted me.
And then I saw her, lying on a pile of hop pockets, eyes staring upwards, her tongue forced out, and her lovely face all bluish-purple and blood-stained. There was no mistaking her, no mistaking little Alice Dear. Someone had strangled her and left her here like so much unwanted rubbish.
I felt my eyes misty, then the salt of tears mixing with the soot.
“Why come to my place to get herself done in?” I heard Dolly say at my side, sounding most aggrieved.
I heard the pigman talking to her about one of these new detective plainclothes gentlemen on his way to deal with it. I let them get on with it. I had plenty to think about.
Top of the list was how I was going to tell Mr Dickens.
I usually visit Mr Charles Dickens to clean his study chimneys in Tavistock House. The firs
t time was late in 1851. He’d just moved in, and was not pleased to see me. As I came through the door with my tuggy cloth, he clutched his head, demanding to know when he was ever going to get a moment’s peace to write again. Another workman, he shrieked. Papers had flown everywhere as he leapt up from his writing table, knocking over a pile in his agitation. In the process of helping him to pick them up I had received no thanks, owing to the sooty marks my fingers left, but suddenly he gazed at me, threw back his head and laughed.
“A sweep,” said he. “There should be a wedding. By heavens, Bleak House. My Ada shall marry Richard.”
It is now May 1855 and I have been his regular sweep ever since. He took the news of Alice’s death badly, although he had only known her just over three months. He grew very pale and sat for a long time staring out into the garden beyond, while I fixed my eyes on the knick-knacks on the writing table beside him. At last he said: “I need her, Tom. She was my inspiration. How can it be that she has died?”
“She was murdered, sir.”
He gave a sort of groan, then jumped up again and gripped my hand. “It was through no fault of hers, Tom. Did you know that her father was thrust most cruelly into the old Marshalsea prison for debt? And when it closed, was the fair light of London to see him again? No, he was sent to the King’s Bench gaol. Had it not been for Alice he would have died many years since. Did you know that poor child sold flowers in the markets to earn a meagre pittance to keep her father alive?”
“No, sir,” I said truthfully.
“She was an angel, that child.”
“She was twenty-two, sir,” I ventured.
He brushed this aside. “A child at heart. An innocent. And a mere child when she struggled to earn a crust or two for her father in the Marshalsea. Was she not an angel, Tom?”
“God sees into all our hearts, sir,” was all I could say.
“He does, He does. The pure in heart shine out as His chosen ones. Was she not an example to us all?”
A question I could answer with sad truth. “She was, sir.”
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 36