The Dons and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

“Irish Mike was blackmailin’ ’im for service, for formin’ the conspiracy and plantin’ the seeds of violence in ’is fellow Dons.”

  Field possessed everyone’s attention now.

  “You see,” Field went on, “Mike needed someone to lead this conspiracy against the Queen and the P.M. Mike was in no position to control the plot. Oxford Dons would never follow a mere publican. But they would listen to one of their own. Ackroyd was perfect for ’im. ’Ee was an expert on gunpowder plots.”

  “So Ackroyd, to keep his drug addiction quiet,” Dodgson ruminated aloud, “became Irish Mike’s familiar, his Mephistopheles.”*

  “’Is who?” Rogers forthrightly displayed his ignorance.

  “Ackroyd became Irish Mike’s voice and created the conspiracy of Dons,” Dodgson explained.

  “That’s it.” Field thumped the table.

  “But why then did Irish Mike kill Ackroyd?” Dickens followed the logical track of the story. “I presume it was Irish Mike who did it?”

  “Yes, of course it was,” Field concurred without hesitation. “Mike took the train to London and shot Ackroyd in the street in Lime’ouse ’Ole.”

  “But why?” Dickens pressed.

  “The original plan was not to ’urt the Queen at all, just send an explosive message to ’er. It was the Turkish War and the greed of Empire that Ackroyd used as the ’ook. The Queen visits Oxford at least once a year. Irish Mike ’ad been cultivatin’ the political Dons for years, waitin’ for ’is chance. When they showed their anti-monarchy stripes, ’ee planted the seeds in their drunken minds that they ought to stage some protest during the Queen’s visit. But then ’ee raised the stakes in the game. ’Ee forced Ackroyd to pursue the harmless bomb plan to throw a scare into the Queen and to draw attention to their message about the Turkish-Russian War.” Field paused for breath and a sip of Dodgson’s pungent punch.

  “And the Dons went for it?” Dickens, exhibiting his usual impatience, pressed Field to continue his narrative.

  “Yes, they did,” Field answered, “as long as no one was goin’ to be ’urt and no one would know they did it.”

  “But that still does not explain why Irish Mike had to go to London and shoot Ackroyd.” Dickens’s curiosity was brimming over.

  “Because Mike, who controlled Ackroyd, changed the plan in the late stages. ’Ee wanted Ackroyd and Stadler the chemist to actually blow up the Queen.”

  As evidenced by the moment of hushed silence all around the room, the very idea of bringing harm to Queen Victoria was still a hard pill for any of us to swallow.

  “When Ackroyd balked at assassinating the Queen, and then later the P.M. as well, Irish Mike killed him.”

  “Why did Irish Mike rifle Ackroyd’s rooms in college?” Dodgson’s curiosity took its turn.

  “’Ee didn’t. ’Ee sent Jack Bathgate to do that one,” Field answered. “’Ee controlled them all. ’Ee was blackmailin’ all of them. ’Ee threatened to make an issue of Bathgate and Squonce’s Sodomite ways. Barnet for ’is liaisons with all manner of women in the college boat’ouse. Stadler for ’is affection for young boys. Bathgate was the one who smoked the little cigars. ’Ee tossed Ackroyd’s rooms. We found the missing pages from the appointments book in Bathgate’s rooms and Bathgate confessed to all of it once we got ’is nose repaired from gettin’ it in the face with whatever you blokes ’it ’im with,” and Field chuckled pleasantly at that last.

  “But that’s not all we found in Squonce and Bathgate’s rooms,” Serjeant Rogers added his tuppence to his master’s narrative.

  “Oh yes,” Field continued with a frown at Rogers’s unsolicited prompting, “we found all manner of papers. Designs for the bomb, street maps. A complete ’istory of the conspiracy. Manifestoes to appear after the bombing. It was all there. Some of it verging on madness, I’d say.”

  “If it was madness,” Dickens became philosophical, “then Mike always served it up with a smile.”

  “Yes,” Field thumped the table, “that was where I went all wrong in this case. ’Ee was right in front of me all the time and I never saw ’im.”

  “None of us suspected him,” Dodgson commiserated.

  “But I should ’ave,” Field flagellated himself. “’Ee knew that Miss Ternan was one of ours. ’Ee knew why Charles and Wilkie were ’ere in Oxford. ’Ee knew when we started gettin’ close to the Dons’ plot.”

  “So that is why he attacked Ellen in the street that night?” Dickens saw the light for all of us.

  “That’s it,” Field thumped the deal table with his forefinger once again, “’ee felt she was ’earin’ too much, that we were gettin’ too close, and the visit of the Queen and the P.M. was only a few days away. ’Ee feared it was all goin’ to come out before ’ee got a chance for ’is revenge.”

  “But he killed Stadler, the Chemistry Don, on the same night that Ellen was attacked,” I refreshed all of their memories. “Why?”

  “Same two reasons,” Field leapt to his answer. He was really getting caught up in the telling of his story. “Same reason ’ee attacked Miss Ternan. Same reason ’ee killed Ackroyd. Stadler was talkin’ too much, in the pub, to you and Charles that night ’ee sat down with you. And Stadler was also gettin’ cold feet just as Ackroyd ’ad. But most important, Stadler ’ad the nitroglycerine and Irish Mike knew ’ee ’ad to ’ave that in order to blow anything up.”

  “Inspector Field?” Ellen Ternan’s soft voice startled all of us. It was so different from all of the contending voices that had so dominated this conversation thus far. “If Mike was my attacker, who was that other man who drove him off?”

  “That was ’Olmes’s man in the Mackintosh coat and the porkpie hat.” Field smiled at her in an almost fatherly way. “When ’ee saw Thompson ’ere gettin’ the worst of it from Irish Mike, ’ee stepped in. ’Olmes put ’im on the case right away after Ackroyd was shot to keep an eye on our investigation. That devious little sod could ’ave told us about ’im, but ’ee didn’t,” Field finished indignantly.

  “But how did Mike do it?” Ellen’s curiosity took over. “He was in the pub when I left that night, but then he was waiting for me in the dark of Blue Boar Street.”

  “’Ee took a shortcut through the Christ Church quadrangle. After you left, ’ee popped out the front door of the Bulldog and got through the Tom Tower gate without being seen.”

  “I cannot understand how he did that,” Dickens interrupted Field. “We were rushing down those steps at that very moment to follow Ellen. We saw her leave the pub through Dodgson’s telescope.”

  “Yes,” Field thought on it, “it must ’ave been close timin’ and it was the darkest of nights. You could only ’ave seen Miss Ternan in the telescope if she passed under a gas lamp in the street. You were lookin’ for ’er in the street lamps as she went up the street. You were payin’ no attention to the Bulldog, which was dark as pitch when Irish Mike came out. ’Ee must ’ave gotten through the Tom Tower gate before you three came rushin’ down the stairs.”

  “We d-d-did wake up the p-p-porter when we c-c-came d-d-down,” Dodgson offered. “I remember him c-c-coming out, rubbing his eyes.”

  “After Mike crossed the quadrangle, ’ee took that tunnel through the buildin’s,” Inspector Field picked up the narrative. “What is it called?” and he turned to Dodgson for verification.

  “The P-P-Peckwater P-P-Passage,” Dodgson supplied.

  “Yes, that’s it,” Field agreed. “That got ’im around in front of Miss Ternan. ’Ee was waitin’ for ’er to walk right into ’is little trap. And she did.”

  “Thank God for Tally Ho,” Ellen beamed at her saviour across the room, causing Thompson to tip her a wink and causing a sour twitch to begin at Dickens’s pursed mouth and spread tightly across his face. He wanted to be the only St. George in Ellen Ternan’s life.

  “Yes, that’s right. Thompson stopped the assault, for Mike did not want to rape you. ’Ee was out to strangle you dead. ’Ee did not want you ruinin’ ’is pla
ns.”

  “’Ee might still ’ave succeeded,” Thompson laughed, not really believing his own modesty, “if that bloke of ’Olmes ’adn’t come along.”

  “Oh, that was not chance,” Field corrected Thompson. “That one ’ad you all under surveillance the ’ole time. ’Ee stepped in only when ’ee saw ’ee ’ad to. ’Olmes told us all of that.”

  “Why was Holmes so involved in this whole affair?” Dickens asked Field.

  “’Is duty is to protect the Queen and the P.M. and whoever else of that lot needs protection. ’Ee is in charge of Whitehall security. ’Ee looks young, but they’ve given ’im a big job.”

  “So Irish Mike fails in his attempt to kill Ellen,” Dickens prompted Field, “and then he goes straight to Stadler’s rooms and murders him?”

  “Not right away, we don’t think. We think that when Thompson and ’Olmes’s man and then you all came chargin’ up, that drove ’im off. Then ’ee ’id some place in the quad, waitin’ for it all to die down. That’s most likely when ’ee decided to solve ’is other problem. You see, ’ee killed Stadler with Stadler’s own kitchen knife. ’Ee wasn’t plannin’ to kill ’im because ’ee didn’t bring ’is own weapon along. ’Ee was afraid that Stadler in ’is drunkenness would talk too much and give the ’ole plot away. ’Ee ’ad seen Stadler sittin’ at the table with all of you,” Field nodded at Dickens, Dodgson and me, “and ’ee didn’t like the way it looked.”

  “Is that why he had Squonce and Bathgate kidnap us?” Dickens was truly caught up in all of this revelation.

  “You were gettin’ too close, and it was the day before the Queen and the P.M.’s visit, and ’ee was afraid you would ruin it all. ’Ee ’ad already killed two people. ’Ee ad to get you out of the way so that ’ee could explode ’is bombs without interference.”

  “But why d-d-did he murder Wherry Squonce?” Dodgson’s curiosity loosed one more arrow in Field’s direction.

  “Per’aps out of blind anger, per’aps out of fear of exposure. ’Ee would ’ave killed Miss Ternan too, if ’is plan to blow up the P.M. had succeeded.”

  “What do you mean, blind anger?” Dickens questioned that curious conclusion.

  “We think, ’Olmes and me, that ’ee wanted to blow them both up, but ’ee saw all of us come runnin’ up to the Queen’s carriage wavin’ our arms and ’ee knew that you two,” and he cast a quick look at Dickens and me, “’ad escaped Squonce and Bathgate’s custody and were out to ruin ’is plot.”

  “So he was angry at Squonce and Bathgate for their failure t-t-to k-k-keep us p-p-prisoner?” Dodgson was trying to follow it all.

  “Per’aps. Who knows?” Field made it clear that he was only speculating. “We think ’ee was ’idin’ in the abandoned boat’ouse waitin’ to throw a nitroglycerine bomb at the Queen’s carriage when we ruined ’is plan. So ’ee fled the boat’ouse and came back to the Bulldog where ’ee ’ad left Miss Ternan in charge. Then ’ee took ’er,” and Field turned to Miss Ternan, who wobbled her head in the affirmative, “and forced ’er to go to Squonce’s digs in Balliol College. Miss Ternan was locked in the entrance hall cupboard while Irish Mike talked to—I should say murdered—Squonce. Then ’ee took Miss Ternan with ’im to carry out the second ’alf of ’is plan, against the P.M.”

  “Why did he not murder Ellen as well?” Dickens asked in a voice that was almost trembling with emotion.

  “’Olmes thought ’ee was using ’er for a sort of disguise; the happy couple, that sort of thing. Per’aps ’ee thought no one would pay attention to ’im if she was ’is companion. Per’aps, per’aps, who knows ’ow ’is mind was racin’?”

  “Well, all’s well that ends well.” Dodgson raised his glass to Inspector Field. “Well d-d-done, sir!” he toasted him.

  But Field was determined to have the last word.

  “Thank you, but I take no joy in bringin’ this one to the gallows. These Irish troubles destroyed ’is ’ole life—first ’is child, then ’is wife—turned ’im mad with grief and ’ate. No, sir, no, I will take no joy in his dance with Jack Ketch.”

  We were all a bit surprised at this outburst on Field’s part. He was never a man of strong feelings on the outside.

  One final—call it “historical”—event, put a full stop upon this strange case of the Oxford Christmas Plot (as we came to call it in ensuing years). Dodgson set up his photographic contraption and took all of our portraits.

  Thompson and Sleepy Rob refused his invitation for quite different reasons: Thompson to preserve his mysteriousness, I am sure; Rob out of simple fear of the machine. But young Morse, thinking it all a great lark, and Ellen, smiling sweetly, both sat for Dodgson. Then Dickens forcefully suggested that he, Field, and I all be taken together. Dodgson sat us all down on his loveseat, Dickens in the middle (where else?), and disappeared beneath the black cloth of his spindly machine.

  With a hiss, and a flash, and a puff of smoke, Dodgson made us all immortal. Charles’s photograph was taken many times in the years that followed this Oxford affair, but to this day I think that this is the only photograph of him and Inspector Field together.

  * * *

  *Dickens’s comment on the phenomenon of blackmail is quite a perceptive one and demonstrates his social acuity. In the Victorian age, anyone in a socially visible position of trust, such as an academic, and especially an Oxford Don, was extremely vulnerable to blackmail. Opium addiction would be an offense against the high public morality of the Victorian age. Ackroyd would surely have lost his position, thus his identity and livelihood, if it had come out. Silence was a valuable commodity in the capitalist economy of the Victorian age, and it was regularly bought and sold as a means of mediating between one’s role in that very public and proper society and one’s private life.

  *Dodgson is referring to Satan’s representative devil, who barters for the soul of Dr. Faustus in Marlowe’s famous play.

  Two Christmases

  December 25, 1871

  When I went to visit Dickens’s Ellen last Christmas, the Christmas after Dickens’s death, those brown and faded photographs were sitting in lovely shell frames on her mantelpiece. Ellen’s picture showed a smart and smiling young woman, gazing confidently into Dodgson’s camera. The other showed the three of us—Field, Dickens in the middle, myself—staring rather stiffly at the camera as if we were poachers stopped in our tracks by some gamekeeper’s blunderbuss. The two photographs sitting side by side overlooking our meagre little Christmas celebration made the three of us look like suitors to Ellen Ternan’s beauty; made me remember how much in love we all were at the time: Dickens with his Ellen, me with my Meggy, Field with the chase and the mystery and the detective life.

  I remembered how, when we all returned from Oxford, Meggy was so glad to see me.

  “Oh Wilkie, I missed you.” She pressed me to her capacious bosoms. Later, after she had ardently made me feel quite at home again, as we were dressing, she smiled mischievously and announced, “I’ve got a little surprise for you.”

  She led me into our darkened parlour, which we had bypassed in our rush to the bedroom, and lit a gas lamp. As the light grew and spread throughout the room, it revealed a quite magical scene. The whole room, from the mantel over the hearth to the velvet wing chair to the tall candlesticks to the loveseat to the deal table to the sideboard to the very doorway in which we stood, was draped and hung and wound and garnished with all manner of Christmas greenery, pine branches, and holly sprigs, cones and boughs and twists of berried branches. The Christ Child rested in state in his manger on the sideboard as the Three Wise Men peered out of a forest of pine boughs in wonder.

  And in the very centre of the room, all green and fresh and innocent, sat a lovely little Christmas tree. All around it on the floor were marshalled brightly coloured ornaments, most made of paper, some of tin and glass.

  “I cut them out myself, Wilkie,” my Meggy was so proud of her surprise, “except for a few that I saw in some shop windows and just couldn’t
resist,” and she picked up a silver angel and waved it in front of my awestruck face.

  I was truly speechless. Irish Meg had turned our modest rooms into a Christmas wonderland.

  “Oh Wilkie, I’ve always wanted to ’ave a real Christmas. I’ve never ’ad one, livin’ on the streets as I was before you took me up. It’s going to be a real Christmas this year, Wilkie, just like a real family. We’ll have Charles and Ellen in, and Tally Ho Thompson and Inspector Field and Serjeant Rogers, and Sleepy Rob the cabman, and we’ll serve a wassail punch and cinnamon buns.” She was carried away with her enthusiasm for it all. “Say something, Wilkie,” she laughed, with her eyes sparkling. “Isn’t it beautiful? Won’t it be a great lark?”

  One could not help but be carried away by her excitement.

  “It is truly wonderful and amazing.” I clasped her in my arms and swung her around the room. “Yes, yes, we shall do just that. We shall have a Christmas party to end all Christmas parties.”

  And that is exactly what we did. We all celebrated Christmas together, albeit two days early since Dickens, naturally, had to spend Christmas at Broadstairs with his family. We laughed and sang and my Meggy importuned Ellen Ternan to tell her every detail of her adventure as a barmaid in the employ of a murderer in Oxford. Ellen told it all vividly, and Dickens and Field, magnanimous in the spirit of the season, graciously acquiesced to her lively version of the story.

  “Never ever shall you be placed in that sort of jeopardy again.” Dickens attempted to usurp the last word when she had brought the whole story of our adventures in Oxford to an end.

  “Actually, I rather enjoyed working in that pub,” Ellen rebuffed him coquettishly. “The gents were quite attentive,” she teased. “It was not at all a bad way to serve Queen and Country.”

  As I sat in Ellen’s tiny parlour that sad Christmas after Charles’s death, I remembered that glorious Christmas party so long ago. I thought of mentioning it, but I did not. She has her own memories and I have mine.