The Best British Mysteries 3 - [Anthology]

by Edited by Maxim Jakubowski

  ‘You mean the abominable sin of sodomy!’ I gasped.

  Pasero groaned.

  ‘Really,’ Marx chided me. ‘We are trying to understand the social circumstances of this case.’

  ‘Understand gross and unnatural vices?’ I retorted.

  ‘My dear Engels,’ my colleague went on, ‘I would have thought that you, as the author of The Origin of the Family, might have a more scientific curiosity concerning this problem.’

  ‘And encompass human perversion as part of my thesis?’ I demanded.

  ‘If you have both quite finished!’ Pasero declared boldly, his voice suddenly becoming clear and emphatic. ‘I am a man of action, I have little time for your analysis. You theoreticians, you have no idea what real rebellion is! We were revolutionaries of the heart, ours was the sedation of desire.’

  Marx saw that I was about to make a reply to this and glared to me to keep quiet.

  ‘We had so many plans for our liberation. Utopian ideas maybe, but we both dreamt of a world where we could be free. When we were alone there was no servant and no master but equal souls, true comrades joined together in love. But she!’ he seethed through gritted teeth. ‘She ruined everything!’

  ‘How?’ asked Marx.

  ‘That Cardew woman’s designs upon poor young Beckworth were for securing herself a social position. She preyed upon his sensitive nature and his vulnerability. When she discovered where his affections really lay she tried to insist upon my dismissal. She threatened to expose His Lordship to open scandal if he did not honour his promise to elevate her to her long-desired status as Lady Beckworth. On the night of his death she had sent him a hateful letter and a green carnation.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Marx interjected. ‘What is the significance of that flower?’

  ‘It is a symbol of our condemned nature. She wanted him to know that she knew the truth about him. He was utterly distraught, at his very wits’ end. He had so much to lose. We argued, we had drunk much and taken laudanum in an attempt to quell our anxiety. We ended up fighting and in a struggle Beckworth slipped at the top of the stairs and fell to his death.’

  Just then came a loud banging on the front door of the squalid den. There was a chorus of groans as the pitiful wrecks roused themselves from their berths. The game-playing Malays stood up and started jabbering at each other. After two or more heavy thuds the door was broken down and a shrill whistle pierced the night air.

  ‘Police!’ a voice called out as a group of uniformed men, with a plain-clothed man at their head, stormed into the smoke-filled room.

  ‘Gentlemen,’ the leader hailed us. ‘I thought you might lead us to the quarry.’

  It was Inspector Bucket of the Detective.

  ‘But where...?’ he went on.

  We looked to Pasero’s bunk. In the commotion he had slipped out of the den through a back way.

  ‘I’ve men posted outside,’ said Bucket. ‘He won’t get far.’

  We rushed out into the cold air. A figure could be seen making its way to the dockside.

  ‘There he goes, then. And get on, my lads!’ called Bucket to his men.

  But it was myself and Marx that were closest to him as he reached the edge of the slippery quayside. He looked at us for a second, panting like a hunted animal, his breath steaming into the night. He gave a defiant laugh, then dropped out of sight. There was a muffled splash. As we reached the waterside we saw him flounder in the dank waters below. He struggled awhile, his body protesting against its fate, though there seemed a strange tranquillity in his countenance, as if his mind had already given up the ghost. The policemen arrived and made an attempt to drag him out of the dock with a boat-hook. But by the time he had been fished out of the dirty water he was quite cold and dead.

  We gave our statement to the affable Inspector Bucket, whose curious forefinger wagged with increasing agitation at our strange testimonies. The ‘Case of the Ten Lords a-Leaping’ was, as they say, closed, and it seemed likely that the inquest into the death of the last Lord Beckworth would record a verdict of accidental death. A perturbing conclusion perhaps, but I must confess that our minds were reeling at the unfolding of events over the last few days. My friend’s great intelligence seemed particularly vexed at all these provocations of meaning; confounded, even.

  ‘Struggle,’ he murmured to me as we made out way back to his lodgings as the dawn broke. ‘It’s all struggle.’

  * * * *

  A week later I was much relieved, when I met with my colleague as he came out of the British Museum, to see that he had been coaxed back to his great work after this strange diversion. A curious-looking young man was with him who bore an intense expression on his countenance, and wore some kind of tweed hunting-cap on his head. After the briefest of formalities the young fellow left us.

  ‘Who was that?’ I asked Marx.

  ‘Oh, a student, or, rather, he had just left university with prodigious talents and is unsure of how, exactly, to apply them. Very much like myself when I was his age,’ Marx mused. ‘He has lodgings in Montague Street and is using the Reading Room to develop methods of analysis. He feels sure that a scientific approach to criminology is to be his vocation. I told him of the Beckworth case and he was most interested. I believe he wants to pursue a career as a detective.’

  ‘As a police officer?’

  ‘No, as a civilian.’

  ‘What a peculiar notion,’ I commented.

  ‘Yes, it’s a pity that such a gifted mind cannot be persuaded to apply itself to our cause but I’m afraid he’s utterly unpoliticised.’

  ‘The youth of today,’ I sighed.

  ‘Yes. Though he is a committed materialist. It’s just that he is content to analyse human behaviour and interactions without a desire to change them. Though I must confess that I can now see the fascination in uncovering evidence, interpreting disclosures and clues. One could get lost in the deduction of class and society. He is working on a puzzle presented to him by a high-born friend of his from college, a superstitious observance of an ancient family known as the “Musgrave Ritual”. It is a litany of questions and answers that have no apparent meaning but —’

  ‘Marx!’ I barked at him.

  He stared at me in shock for a second then his face broke into a broad grin.

  ‘No more of this amateur sleuthing,’ I reproached him. ‘There’s work to be done.’

  ‘You’re quite right, my dear Engels,’ he assured me, patting the thick sheaf of notes he had been making for the next part of Capital. ‘We’ve the greater crime to solve.’

  <>

  * * * *

  Martin Edwards

  The House of the Red Candle

  To the end of his days, Charles Dickens forbade all talk about the slaying of Thaddeus Whiteacre. The macabre features of the tragedy - murder by an invisible hand; the stabbing of a bound man in a room both locked and barred; the vanishing without trace of a beautiful young woman - were meat and drink to any imaginative mind. Wilkie Collins reflected more than once that he might have woven a triple-decker novel of sensation from the events of that dreadful night, but he knew that publication was impossible. Dickens would treat any attempt to fabricate fiction from the crime as a betrayal, an act of treachery he could never forgive.

  Dickens said it himself: The case must never be solved.

  His logic was impeccable; so was his generosity of heart. Even after Dickens’s death, Collins honoured his friend’s wishes and kept the secret safe. But he also kept notes, and enough time has passed to permit the truth to be revealed. Upon the jottings in Collins’s private records is based this account of the murder at the House of the Red Candle.

  * * * *

  A crowded tavern on the corner of a Greenwich alleyway, a stone’s throw from the river. At the bar, voices were raised in argument about a wager on a prizefight and a group of potbellied draymen carolled a bawdy song about a mermaid and a bosun. The air was thick with smoke and the stale stench of beer. Separate
from the throng, two men sat at a table in the corner, quenching their thirsts.

  The elder, a middle-sized man in his late thirties, rocked back and forth on his stool, his whole being seemingly taut with tension, barely suppressed. His companion, bespectacled and with a bulging forehead, fiddled with his extravagant turquoise shirt pin while stealing glances at his companion. Once or twice he was about to speak, but something in the other’s demeanour caused him to hold his tongue. At length he could contain his curiosity no longer.

  ‘Tell me one thing, my dear fellow. Why here?’

  Charles Dickens swung to face his friend, yet when he spoke, he sounded as cautious as a poker player with a troublesome hand of cards. ‘Is the Rope and Anchor not to your taste, then, Wilkie?’

  ‘Well, it’s hardly as comfortable as the Cock Tavern. Besides, it’s uncommon enough for our nightly roamings to take us south of the river, and you gave the impression of coming here with a purpose.’ He winced as a couple of drunken slatterns shrieked with mocking laughter. The object of their scorn was a woman with a scarred cheek who crouched anxiously by the door, as if yearning for the arrival of a friendly face. ‘And the company is hardly select! All this way on an evening thick with fog! Frankly, I expected you to have rather more pleasurable company in mind.’

  ‘My dear Wilkie,’ Dickens said, baring his teeth in a wicked smile. ‘Who is to say that I have not?’

  ‘Then why be such an oyster? I cannot fathom what has got into you tonight You have been behaving very oddly, you know. When I talked about Boulogne, you didn’t seem to be paying the slightest attention.’

  ‘Then I apologize,’ Dickens said swiftly. ‘May I thank you for your patience.’

  Collins was not easily mollified. ‘Even when you mentioned your jaunt with Inspector Field the other night,’ he complained, ‘it was as if your mind was elsewhere. May I finally be allowed to know what lies in store for us during the remainder of the evening?’

  Dickens pushed his glass to one side with a sweep of the hand as though, after wrestling with an intractable dilemma, he had at last made up his mind. ‘Very well. I shall enlighten you. Our destination lies at the end of this very street.’

  Collins frowned. ‘By the river?’

  ‘Yes.’ Dickens took a deep breath. ‘You cannot miss it. There is a fiery glow in the window of the last house in the row. In these parts, people call it the House of the Red Candle?’

  ‘Ah!’ Collins’s eyes widened in understanding. ‘I take it that the name speaks for itself?’

  ‘Indeed. Unsubtle, but you and I have agreed in the past that even the most refined taste can have too much of subtlety.’

  ‘Quite.’ Collins chuckled. ‘So you favored a change from the houses of Haymarket and Regent Street?’

  ‘Even from those of Soho and the East End,’ Dickens said quietly.

  ‘A writer must indulge in a little necessary research!’ Collins laughed, his cheeks reddening with excitement. ‘Whatever strange resorts it takes him to. Do you recall telling me about your experiences at Margate, years ago? Margate, of all places!’

  Dickens shrugged. ‘At the seaside there are conveniences of all kinds.’

  ‘And you knew where they lived! Very well, tell me about this House of the Red Candle. Come on, spare me no shocking detail!’

  ‘Later,’ Dickens said. ‘I have no wish to spoil your anticipation.’

  Collins belched. ‘Really, I must complain. You should have mentioned this an hour ago. I would have been more abstemious if only I had realised the nature of the entertainment you had up your sleeve. You old rascal! I wondered why you were wearing such a mysterious expression and only taking ladylike sips from your glass!’

  Suddenly Dickens leaned across the table and stabbed a forefinger toward his companion’s heart. ‘Tonight, Wilkie, tonight of all nights, whatever happens, I beg you to repose your trust completely in me. Do you understand?’

  His massive forehead wrinkling in bewilderment, Collins exclaimed, ‘Why, my dear fellow!’

  ‘I must have your word on this, Wilkie. Can I rely upon you?’

  A light dawned in the younger man’s eyes. ‘Oh, I think I understand! Go on, then, you rascal! What is her name?’

  Contriving a sly grin, Dickens said, ‘Ah, Wilkie, you are always too sharp for me.’

  ‘Go on, then! Her name?’

  ‘Very well. Her name is Bella.’

  ‘Splendid! And is she as pretty as her name?’

  ‘She is beautiful,’ Dickens said softly.

  ‘Ah! I do believe you are smitten. Now, don’t forget you are a married man, Charles, old fellow. How long have you known this - Bella?’

  ‘I have answered quite enough questions for the moment,’ Dickens retorted, springing to his feet. ‘Come, it is time for us to be away.’

  Outside it was bitterly cold and fog was rolling in from the Thames, smothering the dim light from the sparse lamps. As Dickens led the way down the cobbled street at his customary brisk trot, Collins heard the restless scurrying of unseen rats. He knew this to be a part of the city where life was as cheap as the women, but he found the temptation of the unknown irresistible. Like Dickens, he always felt intensely alive during their late-night wanderings in dark and disreputable streets and alleyways. One never knew what might happen. For a writer - for any man with red blood in his veins - that shiver of uncertainty was delicious.

  Just before they reached the river, they paused in front of the last house. A red candle burned in the ground-floor window, its flickering light the only colour in a world of grey. The curtains at all the other windows were drawn.

  Dickens tugged at the bellpull beside the front door, but at first there was no response. Collins shivered and rubbed his hands together.

  ‘I shall be glad when I am warmed up!’

  ‘Patience, Wilkie, patience. I promise you one thing. You will not readily forget tonight.’

  Collins was still chuckling when the door creaked open. A small and very fat woman peered out at them. Her hair was a deep and unnatural shade of red - Collins surmised that she wore a wig - and perched on her nose were spectacles with lenses so thick that they distorted the shape of her porcine eyes.

  ‘What d’ you want?’ Her voice was as sharp as a hatchet.

  ‘Mrs Jugg? Splendid!’ Dickens greeted her with gusto. ‘My friend and I have been given to understand that you have a young lady lodging with you by the name of Bella?’

  ‘What if I do?’ The woman had several chins, and each of them wobbled truculently as she spoke.

  ‘Well, the two of us are eager to make her acquaintance.’

  ‘Bella’s a lady,’ the harridan hissed. ‘A proper lady. She has very expensive tastes.’

  ‘Expensive and exotic, I understand,’ Dickens murmured.

  ‘There’s no one like her. If you’ve been recommended...’

  ‘We have.’

  ‘Then you’ll know what I mean.’

  Dickens glanced over his shoulder, making sure that he was not observed by prying eyes. They could hear the rowdy harpies, presumably tired of baiting the sad woman with the scar, spilling out of the tavern in search of better entertainment. In the distance hooves clattered, but the fog was a shroud, and anything farther than five yards away was invisible. Satisfied, he put his hand inside his coat and extracted a wallet, from which he made a fan of banknotes.

  ‘My friend and I are not without means.’

  The woman took a step toward them, as though keen to check that the money was not counterfeit. Collins caught the whiff of gin on her breath as she grinned, showing damaged and discoloured teeth.

  ‘Well, you look like respectable sorts. Proper gentlemen. I have to be careful, y’know. Come with me.’

  She shuffled back inside, the two men following over the threshold and into a long and narrow passageway. The air reeked of damp and rotting timber. She led them into a cramped front room where a slim scarlet candle in a dish burned on the window-si
ll.

  ‘So you both want to visit Bella at the same time?’ she asked with a leer.

  ‘You read our minds, Mrs Jugg.’ Dickens contrived to step backward onto Collins’s toes, stifling his companion’s gasp of surprise as he passed a handful of banknotes to the brothel keeper.

  The woman’s myopic gaze feasted on the notes for a few seconds before she secreted them among the folds of her grubby but capacious dress. ‘That’s very generous, sir. Very generous indeed. You’ll both be wanting to stay the night here, I take it?’