The Dons and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “Oh yes, quite,” Field answered as he too climbed in. “Gentlemen only go to Lime’ouse for one thing, and the Chinee usually see to it that they stay safe so they can come back.”

  “The smoke?” Dickens asked.

  “That’s it,” Field replied.

  And with that, Rogers shut us into the coach, climbed up on the box, clicked his whip out over the pair’s ears, and we were off.

  * * *

  *Collins’s placing of this phrase in quotation marks signals a direct reference to a series of four articles under that title written by Charles Dickens, which appeared in Household Words in August to October of 1850.

  The Telltale Cravat

  November 25, 1853—Evening

  Field’s police coach carried us rapidly out of the West End. We struck out of Wellington Street and crossed the Strand, rolled along Fleet Street past the Royal Courts of Justice and down Ludgate Hill towards St. Paul’s, but at the bottom of the hill Rogers swerved the horses sharply towards the river and we pulled up beneath the stone hulk of Blackfriars Bridge.

  As we rode through the fog-choked city, Dickens pressed Field for more information about the murder.

  “How was this gentleman killed?” Dickens began.

  “Shot with a revolver, from in front, close in, we think. The bullet seems to ’ave gone clear through ’im.”

  “That is odd. Would a Chinaman use a pistol? Do Chinamen even own pistols?”

  “You’re absolutely right.” Field grinned at Dickens’s solemn deductive concentration. “The Chinee tend more toward sharp knives and throats slit from behind.”

  “Do you think it was a robbery?” Dickens plunged ahead with his detectiving, undeterred by Field’s amusement. “You said there was not a piece of identification upon the corpse.”

  “Nothing. Not a purse, nor even a stray card or scrap of foolscap.”

  “Were there signs of a scuffle, of violence before the shot was fired?” To my great surprise, that was my voice asking.

  “None at all,” Field answered. “That is what is so strange. It is as if someone just walked up and shot ’im, then cleaned out ’is pockets after. Most of London’s strong-armers don’t operate that way at all.”

  “It might well have been someone he knew.” Dickens was not really addressing either Field or me, but rather just musing aloud. “Shot at close range from in front.”

  “Per’aps,” Field affirmed Dickens’s reasoning, “but in this beastly fog someone could be upon you before you even saw them.”

  It was on that pronouncement that our coach pulled up on the river embankment.

  We disembarked at the head of a wide river stair, at the bottom of which waited a Thames River Police longboat with four burly constables at the oars. It obviously had been placed at Inspector Field’s disposal by one of his counterparts on the River Police.

  The fog hung over the river like a shroud as we pushed off from those wide stone stairs. As we picked up speed downriver under the rhythmic beating of the oars, the skeleton of the new iron railway bridge protruded out of the fog as if its limbs were hung on the city’s enormous gibbet.

  We landed at a tumbledown dock somewhere and quickly went ashore like buccaneers.

  In three steps out of the boat we were swallowed up by the fog. Nonetheless, Field and Rogers were able to lead us through a succession of narrow streets between cobbled-together shacks and crumbling tenements directly to the corpse. It lay on its back in the middle of a dark alleyway with a blood-encrusted hole right through its heart. It looked as if it might simply be sleeping, but on closer inspection it was, indeed, quite dead. Every time I saw a corpse (and since becoming associated with Field we had seen quite a few), I could not help but think how its stillness, its coldness, attested to the terrible fragility of our lives.

  Two of Field’s constables presided over the body, and though the thick fog effectually veiled us from sight, one had a sense that eyes were upon us, watching, suspicious of these buccaneers from the river who had invaded their domain. But though the night was dark, in his sharp brown hat that shadowed his sharp detective’s eyes, Field’s gaze cut through that fog the way those new railways slice through the English countryside.

  “There’s our body, gentlemen.” Field pointed straight ahead with his exceedingly sharp forefinger as we approached.

  Field went to his knee beside the corpse, and Dickens immediately followed suit right on Field’s shoulder as if he were some kind of perching tropical bird. Having little choice in the matter, I circled round and, much to my distaste, went to my own knee on the other side of the corpse opposite Dickens and Field. Serjeant Rogers was momentarily off talking to the constables who had been standing guard, so the three of us were alone with the unfortunate dead man.

  We all stared down at the body. It seemed an ordinary enough corpse. The man was generously bearded, bespectacled, and very white in death. Once one sees that sickly white pallor for the first time, one never needs any other test to prove that a fellow human being has departed this life. This dead man was dressed in a staid, rather well-tailored dark blue suit and vest, a grey soft cambric shirt with a detachable white button collar, and a rather bright blue cravat. He was, indeed, a rather dapper corpse, as if he had gotten himself up in his best clothes to come out on this bitter night and be murdered.

  “Why, he’s an Oxford man!” I heard my own voice speaking out. “Christ Church. Not my college, but I’d know it anywhere.”

  Both Field and Dickens gaped at me in surprise at this confident revelation. But Inspector Field quickly collected himself. He seemed about to interrogate me when a curious thing happened.

  A young, rather portly man materialized out of the fog and stood over us as we knelt by the corpse. This man was escorted by the ever efficient Serjeant Rogers.

  “Sorry, sir, but ’ee insisted, sir,” Rogers rushed his excuses in before this newcomer could explain himself and his interruption of our deliberation over the corpse. “’Ee said ’ee was ’Ome Office, ’ee did.”

  “’Ome Office?” Field looked up questioningly at this stout apparition in his quite official-looking dark suit, high beaver hat, and pointed umbrella.

  “Yes. Holmes, Mycroft Holmes,” the young man introduced himself, and extended his hand to Inspector Field, who in the meanwhile had risen to his feet to confront this intruder, “and I am, indeed, a member of the Home Office.”

  “Field,” and he gave the young man’s hand a shake. “William Field, Bow Street Station, Protectives,” he identified himself and, ever utterly direct, posed the question that stood at attention in all of our minds: “What brings ye ’ere on this bitter night?”

  This Holmes was indeed a rather young man, no more than twenty-three or -four, I think. He was a rotund, rosy personage, built upon the model of Humpty Dumpty, but he was very composed for such an ingenue and did not in the least flinch at Field’s directness.

  “One of my men was apprised of this unfortunate affair this afternoon by the River Police, much, I presume, in the same manner that you, Inspector Field, were called in,” Mr. Holmes politely explained. “Since the Home Office presently has an interest in this Oriental section of our city, this rather untypical murder of a white man down here caught my attention.”

  “It did?” Field answered rather dully. I observed that the formidable Inspector, for one of the few times in my experience of him, seemed at sea and did not quite know how to proceed.

  “Yes.” Young Holmes, sensing Field’s rising suspicions, immediately set out to reassure the policeman. “But I do not mean to intrude in any way upon your investigation of this terrible murder. I simply wish to observe, to share in any insight you might have into the affair.”

  “Might I ask why?” Dickens stepped in since Field still did not seem to have his wits about him in the face of this rather superior yet surpassingly polite young representative of the British Empire.

  “And you are, sir?” Holmes turned equally politely to Di
ckens.

  Dickens, in turn, was a bit taken aback at not being immediately recognized: “Why, Charles Dickens.”

  Now it was young Mr. Mycroft Holmes’s turn to be surprised and unprepared, even slightly embarrassed.

  “Charles Dickens, why, yes, of course. I certainly should have recognized you, sir, but I did not expect, you see, I mean, here, in Limehouse Hole…” young Holmes hemmed and hawed. “My great pleasure, Mr. Dickens, to make your acquaintance sir,” our startled young public servant stammered to his end.

  This whole exchange put a completely new complexion upon this rather unlikely meeting of three such separate minds in the fog. It certainly clarified for me why Field so carefully nurtured Dickens’s friendship. Having someone as famous as Dickens at his side gave Inspector Field a credibility and power over anyone who might momentarily feel that he held the upper hand.

  Young Holmes pumped Dickens’s hand ardently, meanwhile mumbling all manner of compliments of the “I have read all of your books” sort. Dickens’s presence seemed to have overthrown this young literary-minded government official’s officious mastery of the situation. Dickens and Field exchanged a quick but significant look. Field gave Dickens a quick nod, which I interpreted as permission to proceed.

  “I asked why you, and the Home Office, are so interested in this affair?” Dickens’s question tugged young Mr. Holmes back to his official reserve, which had momentarily melted in the heat of his admiration for Dickens’s art.

  “I am sorry, gentlemen,” young Holmes regained his formality by tugging down on the tips of his vest beneath his waistcoat and thus stiffening his whole posture, “but I am not yet at liberty to say what the Home Office’s interest in Limehouse Hole is. All I can say is that it might, possibly, sometime in the future, involve matters of national security.”

  “So,” and Field now had regained his power it seemed, “you wants to sit in on this murder case, and you wants me to tell you all I come to know about it, but you won’t even tell me why?”

  “Precisely,” and young Holmes favored us all with a radiant smile.

  “Bloody ’ell,” Field cursed softly as he turned to Dickens and me, “sounds like we ’ave no choice at all in the matter.”

  Young Holmes did not say anything right away, just smiled benignly around at all of us, even Serjeant Rogers. “Please go on with your investigation,” he finally prompted us, breaking the awkward silence. “I am sorry to intrude. I will only observe and listen, I assure you.”

  “Where were we?” Dickens was the first to go back down to his knee beside the corpse.

  “Wilkie, you said ’ee was an Oxford man.” Field also resumed his position at ground level.

  “Yes,” I answered eagerly, forgetting all about young Mr. Holmes’s eavesdropping presence, “he’s wearing a college necktie, a Christ Church cravat,” and I went to my knee and extracted the cravat out from beneath the corpse’s bloody vest. “See,” and I showed it to Dickens and Field. “It is the Christ Church College emblem, the Tom Tower,” and I pointed out with my finger the arrangement of little gold towers on the royal blue fabric.

  “Wot’s a Tom Tower?” Field asked.

  “It is one of the gatehouse towers at Christ Church College, built by Sir Christopher Wren.”

  A blank look had invaded Dickens’s face, for though he was one of the greatest men of letters of our age he was embarrassingly unschooled, had never been a university man, had left the regimen of formal education at the tender age of twelve years.

  “It is Henry the Eighth’s college,” I was enjoying being the center of their attention. “We just call it ‘the House.’ It is one of the most prestigious and certainly the best endowed of all the new colleges at Oxford.”

  “New colleges?” From the look upon Dickens’s face, he was asking out of genuine curiosity.

  “Oh yes,” I lectured on. “The oldest Oxford colleges—Trinity, Balliol, Magdalen—go all the way back to the twelfth century, when the French threw all of the English scholars out of the University of Paris.”

  “’Ow do you know all of this?” Field interjected.

  “I was at Oxford for almost two years before I came up to the city. Can’t say I studied very much of anything while I was there, but I frequented a hard lot of public houses, and attended a goodly number of college parties, and went punting on sunny afternoons, and got to know a great many people.”

  “What do you mean, this Christ Church is one of the new colleges?” Dickens was still puzzled. “How many colleges are there, anyway?”

  “Oh, dozens. Each college has its own quadrangle, its own Dons, its own library. They are like little walled cities. I lived at Brasenose College. Ah, they were a group of revellers, known for it, in fact. Stout fellows all.”

  “Do you know this man, perchance?” Field interrupted my digressive excursion down the memory lane of my misbegotten youth. “Look closely at ’im,” he commanded.

  I did as I was so brusquely directed, but the man was dead and exceedingly white, and I am not sure if my eyes were capable of actually seeing a living human being within that waxy corpse.

  “No, I do not think so,” I stammered. “He looks familiar, but I…in this light…him like that…I just do not know,” and I stood up away from the corpse, shrugging my hands out to my sides. It was when I stood up that I noticed that our mysterious friend from the Home Office, young Holmes, was gone. “Where did he go?” I asked no one in particular.

  “’Ee’s gone,” Serjeant Rogers exclaimed vehemently as if some street criminal he had taken into custody had escaped. It was as if the man had just disappeared into the fog. Rogers had been standing right next to him as we worked at the body and still had not seen him go.

  “That’s an odd duck, that is,” Field muttered.

  “Good riddance to him, I would say,” Dickens shrewdly said what he thought Inspector Field wanted to hear, I am sure.

  “Nothing more we can do ’ere,” Field put the top on it. “Let’s get out of this damp. Rogers, clean up this mess,” and he gestured negligently down at that poor dead soul; “we’ll be at the Lord Gordon Arms.”

  The Lord Gordon Arms

  November 25, 1853—Late Evening

  Ever since we had made our acquaintance with Field more than three years before, the Lord Gordon Arms, a quite cozy public house sequestered in Maiden Lane just off the south end of Covent Garden market, within close walking distance of the Bow Street Police Station, had been our place of refuge from the beastly vagaries of the London weather. This night, the warm hearth and the sumptuously stuffed chairs around the Lord Gordon’s stout oak tables provided an exceptionally welcome refuge. In other words, I was, as I am sure Dickens and Field were as well, chilled to the bone when we arrived. But in the Lord Gordon, Field was finally ready to talk, and Dickens, as ever, was all ears.

  Yet, for once, much to my satisfaction, it was to me that Inspector Field wanted to talk, and to me that he addressed his remarks, without the slightest need for Charles’s presence.

  “Wilkie,” he began, “’ow can we find out who this dead Oxford bloke is?”

  I thought on that a moment, and then a gas lamp went on in my brain.

  “I know just the fellow,” I exclaimed eagerly.

  Field reacted with a stiff poke of his ferocious forefinger to the crow’s foot at the side of his right eye. Dickens smiled in grim patience, waiting, I am positive, for his opening to enter the dialogue.

  “And who might that be?” Field prompted.

  “Old Dodo.” I had to grin as I said it, and I thoroughly enjoyed the momentarily startled looks on their faces as I pronounced that eccentric name.

  “Dodo?” Dickens sourly repeated, as if questioning the efficacy of ever asking an idiot like me a serious question about the science of detection.

  “Oh yes, Old Dodo,” I grinned with maddening relish.

  “Who is ’ee?” Field barked. “And ’ow old is ’ee?”

  “Oh, not old at al
l,” I laughed, though Field’s tone was a clear signal that I was to get on with it, “rather young, actually. Only now in his early twenties. Quite a prodigy really. Only seventeen years old when he first came up to Oxford. I was a fully corrupted twenty-four before I got there. One did not need to be a genius to see that he really was a genius.”

  “That is all well and good,” Field prodded me, “but who is ’ee?”

  “Dodgson. Charlie Dodgson. A strange bird, he is. That’s why all of us, the Oxford literary fellows, called him Old Dodo.”

  “And why is ’ee our man?” Field sipped at his gin even as he was finishing his question, much more relaxed now that I was well underway.

  “Because he’s Christ Church, that’s why,” I answered as if it was the most obvious thing in the world. “He’s a Teaching Fellow at the House. He will soon be a Don, I’ll wager. Mathematics. He lives right in that very Tom Tower that is emblazoned on our dead man’s cravat.”

  “And ’ow do you know this Dodgson?” Field pressed, with just the slightest hint in his voice of the skepticism that had momentarily flooded Dickens’s face.

  “Charlie Dodgson is really a good fellow,” I assured them. “There was a whole group of us. We called ourselves the Ill Literates. All writers. Mostly poetry. Well, Charlie Dodgson was one of us. If you were as sharp a poet at Oxford as Charlie, it made no difference how old you were.”

  “I thought he was in Mathematics?” Dickens interrupted, trying to take a bit of my stage, I am sure.

  “Yes, he is, but Charlie Dodgson is so brilliant that he can do anything. He writes poetry, he paints, he looks at the stars through a telescope in his window. But he is a regular fellow. He likes his pints. We would meet many a night in the taverns around Oxford to drink and laugh and talk about the latest books and read our latest poems. The King’s Arms. The Turf behind New College. The Bulldog right across St. Aldate’s from Dodo’s rooms in the Tom Tower.” I had been carried away like a punt on the Thames with the nostalgia of it all.