The Dons and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

Perhaps it was the drink? I had consumed three pints of English ale. I do not know, but my thoughts filled with panic. I saw Ellen being dragged by her hair down a dark Oxford alleyway, thick twelfth-century stone walls rising on each side. I imagined her being beaten in the shadows by some dark phantom in a black cape. And I saw my Meggy naked in bed with some fat-backed bald man, her legs clasped hard around his pounding hips, her hands gripping tight the posts of the headboard.

  “Every person deserves the freedom to live his life,” Dickens was shouting to the crowd, “and that is what this fund supports for those artists in London whose lives have fallen upon hard times. We have all known hard times, haven’t we? So please give what you can to help our fellow artists through their hard times.”

  Dickens’s voice brought me back to reality and out of my fevered dreams. Upon returning to the table, he immediately bent down to one of those ubiquitous subscription cards and started writing intently.

  “I thought you already made your subscription, Charles,” I joked.

  “Oh no, Wilkie, that’s not it at all,” he replied, never looking up. “It is ‘hard times.’ A good title for these times, don’t you think, Wilkie? I just thought of it as I was speaking. ‘Hard Times.’ Perfect. It may well be the title of my next novel, Wilkie. It may well be.” He smiled gaily, folded the notecard, and placed it in his waistcoat pocket.

  Walking home through the London streets, Dickens was more animated than usual. I had seen him this way before. It was the anticipation of the chase.

  “Finally, tomorrow, we are off to Oxford, Wilkie.” He was excited.

  And I really did try to share his enthusiasm, but I must admit that I felt the same misgivings that I felt each time we embarked on a new adventure with Inspector Field. Dickens, who had no fear at all, always felt that we were off into a world of intrigue, adventure, and romance, something out of Sir Walter Scott, for God’s sake. As for me, I never seemed able to get over the fact that we were entering a realm of murder, violence, corruption, and deceit. Dickens thrived on these cases. They scared the living daylights out of me.

  A Good Irish Lass

  November 30, 1853—Morning

  We left for Oxford on the Saturday morning train in Sleepy Rob’s growler. The trip was swift and uneventful except for the hot cinders, which once again forced us to close up the windows of the coach and miss the passing scenery of the countryside. But it was a dreary, cloudy day and we spent most of the journey enclosed within our own thoughts. Dickens had brought along copy from Household Words to be read and edited, and he worked on that as the train sped us towards our destination.

  Rob left his growler in the livery barn at the Oxford railway station. Its shiny black presence had been deemed by Inspector Field as too conspicuous for the streets of Oxford. Rob was to be on call at any hour to liberate the growler from its dungeon at the railway station and transport us if the need arose. Dickens offered to get Rob a room in a boardinghouse near Christ Church, but that worthy insisted upon sleeping in his cab with the horses in the livery.

  “Never mind, guv,” Sleepy Rob insisted. “I’m more comfortable with the straw and the ’orses than I would be with some tribe o’ gorps in some boardin’ hestablishment.”

  On that note, leaving Rob in the stable, Dickens and I walked into the town. It took us about ten minutes to reach the Haymarket where it meets the High Street. As we climbed the cobblestoned incline of the Haymarket, I broke our trudging silence and demanded of Dickens our destination.

  “Oh, Wilkie, I know that Field would erupt if he knew, but I simply must see her. Good God, it has been three days!”

  That question answered, we proceeded straight on over the top and down St. Aldate’s into the front door of the Bulldog. Ellen was serving, but since the luncheon crowd had not yet arrived, she was loitering beside the tap talking with Irish Mike and some of his regular morning tapsters, all of whom seemed quite taken with her. I must admit, she looked quite fetching in her blue and white peasant blouse with its rather low neckline and her long hair pulled back into a large puffball over her neck.

  Dickens spotted her as soon as we got in the door, but he acted his part well and never let on. He went to one of the small tables against the wall and deposited himself on the cushioned bench facing the tavern. But then he did a curious thing. Getting up right away, as if he didn’t like his seat, he came around and took the straight-backed chair before I could sit down in it. Humouring him, I took the seat against the wall as he sat with his back to the room. It took me a moment to realize why he had done it. It was so that he could talk to her without being observed by the others in the room.

  Unfortunately, Dickens was destined for disappointment. His Ellen picked up her tray as soon as we sat down and was going to come right over to serve us, but Irish Mike stopped her and came rushing over to serve us himself. He was only being the old friend and diligent publican, but I could see Dickens’s dismay at being cut off from close proximity to his love.

  “Wilkie, my boy, and”—lowering his voice—“Mister Dickens, faith an’ it’s good to see ya back in here again.”

  “Hello, Mike,” I greeted him.

  “Yes, Mike, it is good to be back in Oxford,” Dickens answered somewhat sharply, “but it has been a long trip on the train and Wilkie and I are very thirsty. Why don’t you send the barmaid over and we shall order some drinks.”

  “Oh, no need for that,” Irish Mike insisted, “it’ll be stout again, won’t it? Ye liked it well enough last time.” And not waiting for an answer, he blithely shouted, “Lass, two pints o’ the dark for these gents.”

  It seemed to take an eternity for Ellen Ternan to draw those two pints of Irish stout. But finally she arrived with the foaming glasses, and Dickens got his chance to look her in the face. Since Mike knew only that she was Field’s spy and not that she was also Dickens’s mistress, it was necessary for the two of them to keep up their act. Ellen did it much better than Dickens. When she arrived with the pints, he looked up at her like some moony country bumpkin.

  “Gentlemen, two pints.” Ellen was all business as she delivered our glasses to the table.

  “This is our new server, gents.” Irish Mike turned his back to the rest of the pub and tipped us a broad wink. “Her name is Elly—a good Irish lass, she is.”

  “Thank you, Elly,” Dickens said in a near whisper, hardly able to speak as he looked longingly up at her.

  “Yes, thank you, Elly.” Irish Mike dismissed her and Dickens’s face fell with an almost audible thud. Even Irish Mike could not help but notice Dickens’s reaction. “Yes, she is a pretty young thing, isn’t she?” he misinterpreted.

  Fortunately, we did not have to make small talk with Irish Mike for very long as the Bulldog rather quickly filled up with the luncheon mob eager for their meat pies and hard-boiled eggs, their mashed potatoes with peas. Neither Ellen nor Mike had any more time to talk, so Dickens and I finished our pints and got up to leave. As we were walking out the front door, Dickens turned to take one last look at his beloved Ellen and I also glanced back to follow the tableau. At that moment, I bumped flush into a workman coming through the door, and the impact spun both of us around.

  “Sorry, guv,” the man mumbled as he brushed past me.

  “Oh, my fault, sorry,” I graciously apologized in the direction of the man’s back as he moved away from me towards the tap. But that back looked familiar, and I had heard that particular voice before. It took me but a short second to place it. O my God! I thought. My right hand leapt in panic to the watch pocket of my waistcoat. Yes, it was Thompson, and my gold repeater was gone.

  The Telescope

  November 30, 1853—Afternoon

  Stunned, still poking at my watch pocket in disbelief, I followed Dickens out into the street.

  “That scoundrel has stolen my watch again,” I fumed. “I’m going back in to get it.” Not thinking, I turned and started for the door.

  Dickens yanked me back by my greatcoat li
ke a headmaster collaring an errant schoolboy. “You can’t do that, Wilkie.” It was all he could do to keep from laughing. “You will give it all away. Never mind for now. You know that Thompson will give it back. It is just a joke he enjoys playing on you. Take it in good humour.”

  Dickens may have found it funny. Thompson may have thought it a great joke. But I did not see any humour in it at all. The idea of Tally Ho Thompson sitting in that pub fingering my gold repeater and laughing to himself made me furious. It was, however, abundantly clear that there was nothing I could do. Still fuming, I followed Dickens down St. Aldate’s and into the Oxford Police Station in search of our conspiratorial familiars.

  The heavy constable with the unkempt muttonchops spreading across his face like Scottish gorse was sitting at his desk bothering over a pile of papers as if they were ancient hieroglyphics. This time, however, he recognized us immediately and jumped up with rather astounding dispatch for one so large and bulbous. “Young Reggie is expectin’ you gents,” he informed us even as he was scuttling off to find that Oxford worthy. In mere moments, young Constable Morse appeared, greeted us by name, and ushered us down the corridor, saying, “We ’ave been waiting to fill you in. We ’ave set up back ’ere.”

  And set up indeed they had. Inspector Field and Serjeant Rogers were waiting in the small surgery room where we had laid out our stiff friend Ackroyd only four days before. Young Morse had arranged for the corpse to be preserved in a nearby icehouse. Field had commandeered the room to serve as his base of operations for this Oxford investigation. The surgery table upon which the corpse had been laid was now pushed against the wall and had become Field’s worktable, all cluttered with scraps of paper, dirty teacups, and various evidence specimens of the case. Leaning against the wall atop that table and all written upon in chalk was a large, black, square slate. Young Morse had evidently somehow cashiered some distressed wooden chairs, which comprised the rest of the furnishings of the room.

  Without the pleasantry of any sort of greeting, Field, upon our entrance, looked up from his contemplation of the accumulated clues and growled, “We expected you somewhat earlier.”

  “We stopped at the Bulldog on the way,” Dickens confessed. “I was just curious to see that all was going well with Ellen.”

  A cloud began to form on Field’s brow.

  “Oh, all is going quite well,” I groused. “Thompson has already stolen my gold watch.”

  Field, who had been about to scold Dickens and me for breaking his rules, looked at Rogers.

  Rogers looked at Field.

  Suddenly they both broke into knowing laughter and Field took a sixpence from his pocket and handed it over to Rogers in obvious payment of a bet.

  “’Ee said ’ee’d do it first day you wos in town,” Rogers gloated, flipping the coin tauntingly in the air, “and ’ee wos as good as ’is word, ’ee wos.”

  Dickens breathed freely in relief that he had escaped Field’s reprimand, and all I could do was glower darkly at the two of them who were having so much fun at my expense.

  When the hilarity subsided, Morse and Field spent the next hour telling us what they had discovered in the two days since the investigation had been moved to Oxford. In fact, most of their narrative was comprised of information that young Morse had been gathering since that first day when we had delivered the corpse to him. It seems he had been virtually living in the dead man’s rifled rooms, reconstructing order out of chaos, piecing together a scenario of what had happened there, and why.

  “Constable Morse is quite the detective,” Field openly praised his young protégé, as Rogers sourly looked on. “’Ee ’as done a deal of work on ’is own while waitin’ for us to arrive. Tell them, Morse. ’Ee’s all but took up residence in the dead Don’s rooms.”

  “Yes, the rooms,” young Morse began. “Since we broke in that day, I ’ave spent some time there. In fact, I ’ave been sleepin’ there.”

  “Tell them why,” Field interjected like a proud father placing his son atop the piano to perform (as Dickens once told me his father used to do).

  “For several reasons,” young Morse carried on.

  Serjeant Rogers looked as if he wanted to stuff a large cork down the young policeman’s throat.

  “For one thing, I wanted to ensure that whoever tossed the rooms did not return and disturb them further. I also ’oped to be there if anyone tried to get in, because he would most likely be our culprit. For another thing, I wanted to search the parlour room more closely and work with the things that ’ad been tossed, not bein’ disturbed or ’avin to carry it all back to the station and then ’avin’ Inspector Field want to look at it back ’ere in the room where it was first found and where it rightly belonged.”

  Stopping for breath, young Morse gave Field a chance to nod his approval.

  Serjeant Rogers tossed his head in disgust as if he wished that young Morse had been murdered in his sleep in the dead man’s rooms.

  “Bein’ there, right in the room, really ’elped, I think,” Morse was in dead earnest, “because I’d just sit there in the room with the gas lamps on and try to see where the things on the floor ’ad been before they was thrown on the floor. I’d close my eyes and try to see things fallin’ off the desk and off the shelves and off the bookcases.”

  “Could you see the one who wos doin’ it?” Rogers muttered sarcastically.

  “Yes, I could,” Morse replied, deadly serious, “in a manner of speakin’. I could see ’im movin’ about the room, and where ’ee went and what ’ee did. ’Ee came in all excited, knockin’ the books off the bookcases and the trinkets off the knick-knack shelves, but then ’ee settled down and tossed the desk because things from the desk, stationery, paperweights, were on top of the books and the broken glass of the plates and figurines. ’Ee must ’ave found what ’ee was seekin’ because then I think ’ee sat down in Ackroyd’s armchair and lit ’is cigar. I think ’ee was readin’ Ackroyd’s little black appointments book, which ’ee found in the middle drawer of the desk because the side drawers were not tossed at all. When ’ee got done readin’ it, ’ee tore it up, and threw the scraps on the floor in front of the chair then put his cigar out by grinding it into the rug with his boot.”

  “Pity you could not see his face,” Dickens chuckled. “You seem to have seen everything else.”

  “It is, indeed, an interestin’ way of remaking the scene of a crime or whatever ’appened in that room,” Field complimented the young constable yet again. “A way of readin’ the room that we could all learn from,” and Field shot a quick glance at Serjeant Rogers, whose lips were stretched tight with jealousy.

  “I wish I could ’ave seen ’is face,” young Morse replied to Dickens eagerly. “That would certainly make our job much easier, wouldn’t it, Inspector?” he asked, turning back to Field.

  “The mind and imagination can take us a long way in the solvin’ of a murder,” Field agreed, “but finally it only ends when you can look the murderer in the eye and ’ee somehow shows you that ’ee is the one. Then you ’ave got ’im. When I caught up with the famous Mister Manning in Scotland, ’ee took one look at me and knew it was all up. ’Ee broke down like a spaved ’orse.”*

  “But what it seems Constable Morse’s ruminations have accomplished,” Dickens led us out of the realm of detective philosophy, “is to emphasize the importance of the remains of our friend Ackroyd’s appointments book.”

  “Exactly!” Field thumped his forefinger down on his makeshift worktable. “And Morse ’as done a smashing job with that one, too.”

  Rogers scowled darkly.

  We all turned to Morse.

  “I put it all back together,” he began, actually a bit embarrassed by all the attention he was receiving, “and it’s all there, except for one page. ’Ee dated each page before ’ee wrote down who ’ee was meetin’ that day,” Morse explained, “but November 24, the day before ’ee was murdered, isn’t there. I put all the other torn-up pages back together, but Nove
mber 24 is gone.”

  Dickens and I looked at each other, not immediately realizing what that meant.

  “Whoever tossed the room, probably whoever killed Ackroyd,” Field spoke softly, “took that page away with ’im.”

  “Because ’is, the killer’s own name, was on it,” Rogers declared brightly.

  “Exactly.” Field tapped the table again for punctuation.

  “And perhaps even why ’ee and Ackroyd were meetin’,” Morse added. “Ackroyd frequently made a short note in the book concerning what business was to be transacted.”

  “Tell them about this Stadler,” Field prompted.

  “The little book was not a total loss because that page was missin’. Or at least I ’ope that is the case. The missin’ page, November 24, was a Thursday, so I looked at the notations for the other Thursdays that month and for October as well. Not every Thursday, but most Thursdays, and Tuesdays as well it seems, Ackroyd was meeting with Stadler, the Chemistry Don, in the late afternoon, four, half four. There were a few short notations: ‘Build,’ ‘Work, Pub,’ ‘Work on project.’ There is a good chance that Ackroyd and Stadler worked together on something that Thursday afternoon before they went to the Bulldog and got in their big argument with the others.” And, for a moment, young Morse rested his case, as the Old Bailey lawyers would put it.

  “Fine. ’Ee seems to ’ave reserved Tuesdays and Thursdays for workin’ on some project with this Stadler,” Field summed up, “but what would bring together a History Don and a Chemistry Don?” He looked around to see if we had an answer. None forthcoming, he nodded back to young Morse, who continued.

  “I also interviewed the college porter. ’Ee showed me the gatebook. ’Ee writes down everyone who comes into college and who they are visitin’, but since Stadler is a Christ Church Don, ’ee would just be waved through. I looked at the notations for the twenty-fourth and no one came a-vistin’ Ackroyd. I asked about the twenty-sixth as well, the day the room was probably tossed, and nobody came in for Ackroyd that day, either.