Mr. Dodgson headed toward the corner suite that he had held for the past fifteen years, four rooms that looked out on St. Aldgates from the northeast corner of Tom Quad, where he had settled into a comfortable sort of domesticity. His rooms, provided by Christ Church, were cleaned at regular intervals by one scout or another. He took his breakfast in his room, his meager luncheon wherever he found himself, his tea in the Senior Common Room, and his dinner in Hall, unless, as on this particular evening, he had arranged to give a private dinner party. His duties no longer included active instruction, although he occasionally obliged a colleague by lecturing on logic and mathematics. It could be said that the Reverend Mr. Charles Lutwidge Dodgson led an easy life, in good health and spirits, with few physical ailments and less mental stress than the average householder in England.
Nevertheless, Mr. Dodgson fretted over this meeting with the young man from Portsmouth. Their last encounter had been hectic, to say the least, involving a labor riot, a violent fall of snow, and several deaths. He had not had time to do much more than encourage the nephew of his old friend, Dicky Doyle, in his literary endeavors. Since then, Dr. Doyle had informed him that he had written something quite new, something that he wished to show Mr. Dodgson before sending it off to his usual publishers. Mr. Dodgson sincerely hoped that this time he would not be embroiled in some nasty police matter, as had happened every time he and Dr. Doyle had met since their first encounter the previous August. It would be pleasant to show the young man and his charming wife the glories of Oxford without the interference of murder and mayhem.
Meanwhile, there was the problem before him. Several solutions presented themselves, but only one would be the correct one. Mr. Dodgson loped across the quad, a tall black figure against the gray stones, yet another of the Great Monuments of Oxford.
At the same time, the object of his thoughts was moving toward Oxford on the afternoon train. The railway had come relatively late to Oxford, over the objections of those who preferred to keep the lure of the fleshpots of London out of the way of susceptible undergraduates and even more susceptible dons. Nevertheless, the Town would have its railway station, and the Town got it, albeit as far away as was legally possible from the colleges that clustered around High Street, Broad Street, and St. Giles.
Dr. Doyle, the muscular young doctor from Southsea, peered out the window of their compartment as the train slowed down at the Oxford railway station. His blue eyes sparkled; his red hair and mustache fairly crackled with delight. “I can’t tell you how much I am looking forward to this,” Dr. Doyle enthused.
Touie, his sweetly pretty wife, sensibly refrained from reminding her husband that he had been telling her exactly that ever since the decision had been made to break their journey north at Oxford for a day.
“It will give me the opportunity to see the scene at firsthand,” he assured her. “I’ve already thought of several scenes to set in the Oxford country.”
“I’m sure you will be inspired, Arthur. Do you have the portmanteau?” Touie took over, as her husband continued to wax rhapsodically about their destination.
“I’ll be doing a bit of walking about, but you can shop for something for the Ma’am.” Dr. Doyle made sure he had his portfolio, with its precious manuscript, tucked under his arm.
“Your mother is so self-sufficient, Arthur. It is difficult to buy something for her.” Touie gathered up her shawl, a small reticule, and a larger net bag that held her husband’s newspaper and two books they had brought with them to while away the time spent on the train. Her husband opened the door to their compartment.
Dr. Doyle continued to chatter as he handed his wife onto the platform. “Not to worry, Touie. She likes books, of course, and Oxford is full of quaint shops. And you will like the Cathedral.” He looked about him. “Where is my hat?”
“On your head, Arthur.”
“Where is my manuscript?”
“Under your arm,” Touie pointed out. “And I do hope Mr. Dodgson will find the time to read your new story. I think it is quite the best thing you have ever done.”
Dr. Doyle shifted the bulky portfolio from his right arm to his left, so that he might carry the portmanteau that held their modest wardrobes for the trip. “This is going to be wonderful!” Dr. Doyle crowed.
Touie sincerely hoped that Oxford would live up to her volatile husband’s expectations and that all would go well. She was not particularly looking forward to their final destination. The Ma’am, as Arthur called his mother, could be prickly, and there had been some sort of distress about his father. Touie kept her fears to herself and followed her husband to the platform.
Dr. Doyle eyed the various vehicles lined up before them as they left the railway station. How should they approach their host? Should they take the omnibus? Should he hire one of the bath chairs for Touie, to be pushed along by one of the lugubrious chairmen, while he walked beside it?
“We shall go in style,” he decided, imperiously beckoning a cab. “The White Hart,” he ordered. He grinned happily at his wife. The Great Oxford Adventure had officially begun!
Chapter 2
What do we do now?”
The Big Question hung almost visibly over the two young men now lounging after an ample luncheon served in their upper-story rooms on the west side of Tom Quad, overlooking St. Aldgates.
Lord Nevil Farlow, the ostensible host, was a tall young man, with biceps well developed from three years of rowing, long legs that were needed on the cricket field, and a head hard enough to sustain various knocks and falls from horses during hunting season. His fair hair was worn short, as if to announce to the world that he was no Aesthete but a Hearty, one of those who achieved more acclaim on the playing field than in his tutor’s study. In the course of time he would be the fifth Viscount Berwick, inheriting whatever his eccentric father had left of a once sizeable fortune. One would think that such a young man would have no cares, but his blue eyes were troubled as he stared out the window that faced St. Aldgates.
His guest sprawled on a well-sprung armchair and added to the smoky atmosphere that wafted through the open windows into the May air outside. Lord Herman Chatsworth, the youngest son of the Marquis of Digby (dubbed Minimum, or Minnie), was short, dark, and wiry, with a deceptively dim expression that was belied by the acute intelligence behind his eyes. He made an expansive gesture with his cigar, as if summing up their long friendship that had begun as schoolboys at Eton and carried on through three years at Christ Church.
“What’s the good of all this Latin and Greek when it don’t get you anywhere?” Chatsworth declaimed, with a wave of his cheroot. “I say, Nev, what are we supposed to do when we get our degrees and go forth into the world? I don’t suppose you’d want to follow in your pater’s footsteps and find a place at Court?”
Farlow emitted something between a snort and a laugh. “I’d only be in the way at Marlborough House. I’m a big enough embarrassment to the Mater as it is, a great lad like me, and she still playing the soubrette.” He gloomily contemplated the photograph of his mother, dressed to the nines for a party or ball, propped up on the mantelpiece and sniffed his indignation. “As for Her Majesty, she wants no part of anyone or anything connected with HRH. I’d do better if I were a great hairy Highlander with a braw, braw kiltie. Or perhaps one of those Indians she’s taken to carting about with her. What about you, Minnie? Thinking of standing for Parliament? That’s where most younger sons wind up these days.”
“I leave that to my brothers,” Chatsworth said with a shrug. “Michael’s got his seat in the Lords, and Minor’s working with the Home Secretary. Can’t have two of us in the House. Makes for confusion.” He took another pull at his cheroot and blew a smoke ring. “Of course there’s that ranch in America. I rather liked that last summer. You should have come with me, Nev.”
“All the way to some godforsaken prairie to look at a lot of cows?” Farlow drew on his cigar and with an air of desperation let out a stream of smoke. “I was just think
ing …”
“Don’t do that, Nev. Bad for the brain.” Young Mr. Chatsworth blew another perfect smoke ring. It was his greatest, and some thought his only, talent. “Of course, we could get a flat in London, find a man, and see some life. It’s the least they’d expect of us after three years of slaving away here.”
“That takes money,” Farlow said pettishly. “At least you’ve got the cows.”
“Only the income, Nev, and it’s not all that much.” Chatsworth tried to mollify his leader. “I can’t help it if the Mater’s brother emigrated. Not a bad chap, Uncle Badcock. Chip off the old block, I’m told. Went out with no more than a pocketful of dollars and wound up with the ranch and the cows. He told me I could come back anytime I liked.” Chatsworth grinned and waved his cheroot gleefully. “You don’t need Latin or Greek in Wyoming.”
Farlow grimaced. “There you are, Minnie. He’s made you the offer. All I’ve got is a pater who’s thrown every penny we have over the card table, a mater who’s no better than she should be, and a great pile of a house with leaks in every room. Last time I was home the Mater had drawn up a list of likely candidates for title of the future Lady Berwick, each one more ghastly than the next. There’s a new crop of Americans coming over this summer, each with a doting papa and an ambitious mama, and a bucketful of dollars.”
“Americans aren’t all that bad,” Chatsworth said. “They’re rather nice, when you get to know them.”
“Of course, you’re a younger son,” Farlow retorted. “You’re not on the marriage market. I’m an heir, which makes me fair game for the matchmaking mamas. My revered parents have let Berwick Place for the summer to a party consisting of Mrs. Wilfred Whyte and her three daughters, her cousin, and some woman they hired to be their chaperon. Meanwhile, the Mater and Pater traipse off to Deauville in attendance to HRH. No thought for me, of course. I’m under orders to play host to this bevy of American beauties and pick one of them to refurbish the family fortunes.” He swallowed the rest of his wine as if he had just taken the cup offered to Socrates.
“Steady on, Nev!” Chatsworth exclaimed.
“It’s enough to make one take to crime!” Farlow exploded.
His follower was truly alarmed. “Nev, you can’t! A gentleman can’t be a criminal.”
“Why not?” Farlow turned to his companion. “From what I can tell, the founder of my noble family tree got his fortune by piracy back in Good Queen Bess’s time, which is simply robbery on the high seas.”
“Well, you can’t do it now,” Chatsworth objected. “The navy’s dead set against piracy, and highway robbery is not very profitable, not even in Wyoming. They hanged a chap while I was there. Very nasty, I assure you. Burglary? Ha! I can just see you creeping about in a jersey and mask. Besides, even if you did steal things, what would you do with the, um, loot? It’s not as if you could pop things into pawn every day. Someone would rumble you, and there you are.”
“Where are you?” Farlow asked, his attention turned once more to the activities in St. Aldgates, where a fellow in a plaid Balbriggan coat had just got off a cab and was handing a woman down, presumably to enter the White Hart.
“In prison,” Chatsworth snapped back. “I don’t think it’s very pleasant.”
“There are other crimes,” Farlow said. “Blackmail, for instance.”
Before Chatsworth could counter this, another student burst into the room.
“Has anyone seen my studs?” Gregory Martin demanded, his eyes blinking behind wire-rimmed spectacles, his sandy hair on end, and his round face red with the effort to keep his temper.
“What makes you think they’re here, Greg?” Farlow asked.
“It would be just like you, Nev. You’d take them for a rag and think it was fun to watch me fuss.” Young Mr. Martin gestured at his open collar, visible under his short student’s gown. “I’ve got a tutorial in fifteen minutes, and old Duckworth is that particular about dress. I’m nearly finished, and I do want to come out ahead with the Duck.”
“Don’t see why you even bother,” Chatsworth said, blowing another smoke ring. “You’re being ordained at the end of summer, with a nice living set up for you, whether you get a First or not.”
“That isn’t the point,” Martin told his friend, as he fussed with his collar. “If one is going to do something, one should do it as well as one can.”
Chatsworth made a rude noise. “You’re not a parson yet, so don’t preach at us. What did you do with your own studs?”
“I thought I left them in my shirt, but they’re gone. They were rather nice, too, pearls from my mother’s wedding necklace. Are you chaps sure you haven’t seen them?” Martin peered through his spectacles at the assortment of oddities on Farlow’s desk. His thick fingers poked through a wooden box that contained several stickpins, a gold watch fob, and various mismatched shirt studs.
“You could ask Ingram. He knows everything,” Chatsworth put in.
“Ingram’s not about, and I need those studs,” Martin objected.
“Oh, take mine, and be off to your tutorial.” Farlow rummaged in the box and found several round objects to be inserted into the shirtfront.
“And what’s this about blackmail?” Mr. Martin struggled with the studs, until Chatsworth took pity on him and fastened the recalcitrant shirtfront into place.
“Oh, Nev here thought he might give it a go, although who he’d blackmail I don’t know,” Chatsworth said carelessly.
Martin’s face grew stern. “Now see here, Nev, that’s too much,” he protested. “Blackmail’s a rotter’s game. Even if I weren’t going into Orders, I’d have to cut you dead if I found out that you’d been doing that sort of thing.”
“Oh, Nev didn’t really mean it, did you?” Chatsworth finished his task and brushed Martin’s shoulders off with a final pat.
Farlow smiled. It changed his whole face. Instead of looking like a sulky child, he looked like something Raphael might have painted. “Of course I didn’t,” he said. “Besides, as Minnie said, who would I blackmail? You have to know something that someone else doesn’t want known, and everyone I know who might be blackmailed is unimpeachable.”
“True,” Chatsworth agreed. “You can’t demand money for telling something that isn’t really a secret, can you? I mean, everyone knows that your lovely mama was on the stage, so that’s out. And as for your father’s friends, well the Marlborough House set is—”
Martin cut him off. “That is neither here nor there. If I hear of any more such nonsense from you lot, I’ll do worse than cut you. I … I won’t row with you. Then where will you be, eh?” With that Parthian shot, the future clergyman clattered down the stairs, leaving his friends to their cigars once more.
“He’s right, you know,” Chatsworth said. “Blackmail’s no game for a gentleman. What’s more, you won’t get anything by it. No one here’s got enough of the ready to make blackmail pay. Although …”
“Yes?” Farlow glanced at him. “What do you know, Minnie?”
Chatsworth suddenly regretted having started something he might not be able to stop. “There’s old Dodgson. He must have made something from those books of his.”
“If you’re going to trot out that old stuff about him making sheep’s eyes at the Liddell girls, that’s ancient history.” Farlow sniffed. “He used to escort them about, take them on the river, that sort of thing; but that was when they were children.”
“My brother Michael said that when he was a Fresher there was some sort of to-do about a squib someone wrote about Mrs. Liddell and poor old Dodgson,” Chatsworth said. “The Dean didn’t like it and everyone who wrote it was rusticated. But there’s something better than that.” His dark eyes gleamed with mischief.
Farlow’s eyebrows rose. “What’s the old boy been up to?”
“He’s a jailbird,” Chatsworth said, with a gleeful grin.
“What!” Farlow exclaimed.
“My brother Minor had to bail him out of Bow Street back in February when
he went to London and didn’t come back for three days.” Chatsworth chortled happily. “According to my brother, he’d been caught up in all that fuss in Trafalgar Square, got picked up as a rioter, and had to be got out. Minor couldn’t stop going on about it.”
“And he wouldn’t like Dean Liddell to know about that, would he?” Farlow said meditatively.
“But it would be a nasty thing to do to the poor old chap,” Chatsworth said after a moment’s thought. “And he was my brother Michael’s tutor … no, we can’t,” he finished, stubbing out the remains of his cheroot. “I’m sorry, Nevil, but Greg’s right. Blackmail’s not the thing, and we can’t do it. I tell you what, let’s get the boat out and get a practice in before the river gets too crowded.”
“You go on,” Farlow said. “I’ve still got this Latin to finish. I say, as soon as Greg’s finished with the Duck, get him and the others over to the boathouse, and we’ll get in some time before dinner. And if you see Ingram, get him in here to take this stuff away.”
He waved at the table, still strewn with the remains of luncheon. Chatsworth strolled out, leaving Farlow to his Latin dictionary.
Farlow’s beautiful brow furrowed in thought as he considered his financial difficulties again. He sighed mightily.
His labors were interrupted by a tap at his door. “Come!”
A tall man in the black coat, white shirt, and bowler hat worn by the scouts and stewards of Christ Church hovered in the doorway. “I’ve done those errands of yours,” he said gruffly. “I suppose you want me to clear away now.”
“If you would be so kind,” Farlow said, with biting sarcasm.
“And you may be interested in knowing that I have spoken to certain gentlemen regarding certain other matters.” Ingram’s long face grew longer. “I greatly fear, sir, that they are becoming insistent. The debt is owed and it must be paid.”
The Problem of the Spiteful Spiritualist Page 33