‘Is that all?’ Wilde made a noise that might have been a snort of disgust or a suppressed giggle.
‘It is no laughing matter, Mr Wilde,’ Mr Dodgson reproved him in the tones used to correct obstreperous undergraduates. ‘Inspector MacRae of Scotland Yard, who has charge of the case, apparently knows you, or knows of you, and has taken you into dislike. Mr Levin, Mr Basset’s assistant, blurted out that you had been in the office that day and had had words with Mr Basset that had led to Mr Basset, in effect, throwing you out of the premises.’
‘But that does not mean that I wanted to kill him,’ Wilde said. ‘He refused me employment. So have a number of other people. If I were to bash in the head of every man who refused me employment, I would be the greatest murderer since Bluebeard. What evidence does this Inspector MacRae have that I was anywhere near Fleet Street at the time … When did all this assaulting and battering take place?’
Mr Dodgson consulted his pocket watch. ‘It was just on five o’clock he said. ‘And it is now nearly eight.’
‘Is that Christ Church Time or Greenwich Time?’ Wilde asked innocently.
‘It is London time,’ Mr Dodgson said severely.
‘Surely, you have not been here for three hours!’ Dr Doyle exclaimed.
‘Has it really been that long?’ Wilde said innocently. ‘My dear fellows, it was snowing!’
‘It still is,’ Dr Doyle muttered.
‘Well, what would you have me to do?’ Wilde looked around at his audience. ‘Shall I make a dash for the Continent? Fly, all is discovered?’
‘You might consider going home,’ Mr Dodgson told him.
‘Of course. Anyone who knows me will tell these meddling police-men that if you wish to find me, you should look for me anyplace but at home.’ He took a sip from his wineglass, then said, ‘It really doesn’t matter. Your Inspector MacRae can get as many warrants as he likes. I have been here from four-thirty onwards, as these fine lads can tell you. Isn’t that right, boys?’
There was a chorus of assent from around the table.
‘So you see, Mr Dodgson, it was very kind of you to take the trouble to warn me of impending doom, but it was quite unnecessary. I have an alibi that will stand up in any court in the land.’ Wilde gestured towards his entourage.
‘Nevertheless, Mr Wilde, I strongly suggest that you make yourself scarce until this matter is resolved,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘Now, I have done my duty. You have been warned.’
‘Oh, warning me does no good. I always give into temptation,’ Wilde replied with an expressive shrug.
Mr Dodgson stood up and bowed stiffly. ‘In that case, Mr Wilde, I will leave you to dine with your friends.’
‘But won’t you join us?’ Wilde smiled winningly at the older man. ‘There’s plenty of room.’
Mr Dodgson looked over the company and shook his head. ‘I thank you, but no. My friend Dr Doyle must catch his train. His wife will be worried about him,’ he added, with emphasis on the word ‘wife’.
The intended rebuke went unheeded. Mr Dodgson looked about him for his hat. The young man whose seat he had usurped retrieved the unfashionable high black hat from the floor and handed it to Mr Dodgson along with the Irish knit scarf.
Wilde fingered the scarf with a quizzical look. ‘Is this yours, Mr Dodgson? It’s not at all your style. Do you have an Irish servant at Christ Church?’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Mr Dodgson’s voice rose shrilly.
‘I meant this scarf,’ Wilde said. ‘Where did you get it? To my knowledge, they are not made for sale. They are given to a loved one, to protect him from evil.’
‘This was found on the person of Mr Samuel Basset,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘I am of the opinion that the one who dropped it might well be the one who struck him in the street. It is, as you have noted, of Irish manufacture.’
‘This was never made by a machine,’ Wilde corrected him. ‘It was knitted by hand to the ancient Celtic pattern. It is an art that is becoming scarcer as the machine takes over the task of the skilled worker.’ Wilde’s air of flippancy left him as he examined the scarf carefully.
‘Observe!’ Wilde pointed to the scarf. ‘There are slight imperfections in the thread, which is undyed. As I said, this sort of scarf is not made for sale. You cannot obtain one in a shop. Only a female member of the family, a mother or sister—’
‘Or a wife,’ Dr Doyle put in.
‘If you say so. Now, as to the owner. There are traces of dark powder in the threads of this scarf, and there is a distinct odour of printer’s ink. If I were asked, I would say that the owner of this scarf is a printer, Irish, and probably has red hair.’ Wilde indicated two tiny filaments caught in the fibres.
Dr Doyle whipped out the little magnifying glass that went with him everywhere. ‘You are quite right,’ he said. He looked at Wilde, then at the entourage, and decided he would never understand how a man with such acuity and such taste could desert a charming wife and cosy home in Chelsea for the dubious delights of the Café Royal.
‘If I were your Inspector MacRae, which thanks be to God I am not,’ Wilde said, ‘I would seek out an Irish printer with red hair and ask him what he was doing at five o’clock this evening.’
‘O’Casey!’ Dr Doyle exclaimed. ‘He was in Fleet Street, ranting against his employer.’
‘Then we must find him,’ Mr Dodgson decided. ‘I have warned you, Mr Wilde, and I only feel it fair to warn O’Casey of his fate. I am sorry, Mr Wilde, but I cannot dine with you tonight. I trust you will go home to your wife before the snow makes the roads impassable.’ He looked around the table and shuddered. ‘Boys,’ he muttered to himself, just loud enough to be heard. ‘I dislike boys intensely.’
‘Now that is a pity, Mr Dodgson,’ Wilde responded. ‘You are going to miss a good dinner, and I do like boys. Intensely!’
The laughter followed Mr Dodgson and Dr Doyle out of the restaurant door and back into the lobby.
‘What do we do now?’ Dr Doyle asked, almost wishing that Mr Dodgson had taken Wilde’s offer of dinner.
‘We find Mr O’Casey and return his scarf to him,’ Mr Dodgson said firmly. ‘And then we shall dine at the Holborn Hotel. It is far too late for you to get the train back to Portsmouth, even assuming that the trains are running at all. As for your room, do not worry about the charge. You were kind enough to provide for my lodging when I visited you in Southsea last year. I insist on returning the favour.’
This settled, the two men buttoned their coats and dived back into the snowy streets in search of the errant printer.
CHAPTER 9
Inspector MacRae had had a bad day.
He had reported for his shift that morning with every intention of ferreting out information on the Fenian miscreants who had bombed the offices of the Metropolitan Police some fifteen months previously. He felt sure that he was closing in on the gang. He had already made contact with several persons who swore they knew members of the Irish revolutionary societies that had been making their grievances known in newspapers, manifestos, and rabid speeches at Hyde Park Corner on Sunday afternoons.
One of his informants had shown him the handbills that were being spread around the docks and through the East End. ‘If the Poor Relief Bill don’t go through, we’re on the march!’ said the informant with the air of one determined to sacrifice himself for the Cause. Since MacRae had every reason to believe that the informant’s usual occupation involved removing objects from vacant houses while the owners were on holiday, he took the handbill to Scotland Yard, where he was called into the offices of Chief Inspector Warren.
‘What do you make of this?’ Warren had a selection of handbills on his desk, all calling for a meeting in Trafalgar Square at seven o’clock in the evening of that date.
‘Just the usual, sir. But it might be prudent to have some constables at the ready,’ MacRae said.
Warren, a veteran of more than one Indian skirmish on the Northern Frontier, nodded. ‘I don’t think this will amount to m
uch. There was no end of fuss about the Chartists back in my grandfather’s day, and they washed out with the rain, hahaha!’ He chortled gleefully, recalling how the revolutionary ardour of the mob had cooled in a violent rainstorm. ‘But perhaps you’d better take a squad out, just in case of trouble.’
Accordingly, MacRae had stationed twenty constables at intervals along the Strand, and had taken ten more to Fleet Street, where his mission to halt Irish terrorism had been sidetracked by the inconvenient death of one Samuel Basset, possibly at the hands of the Irishman Wilde.
MacRae did not approve of Oscar Wilde. He had never met the man, had never heard him lecture, and knew only what he read in Punch about his affectations. However, he had heard from fellow officers that Wilde had been seen with dubious companions in the neighbourhood of the Café Royal and that, combined with his national origin, was enough for MacRae to put him on the list of possible suspects. As soon as the matter of the riot was dealt with, MacRae decided, he would get a warrant and arrest Oscar Wilde. It would not be difficult to find the man; if he were not at the Café Royal with his associates in crime, he would be at his house in Chelsea. Wilde could wait.
The riot could not. The ubiquitous handbills had been distributed around the barrows in Covent Garden and up and down Piccadilly, urging all good workers to join their brethren in Trafalgar Square in protesting the miserable wages paid to day labourers, and the heartless manner in which charity funds were doled out to the indigent. The poverty-stricken Londoners who could read spelled out the information to those who could not. One or two, then three or four, then in the dozens, they streamed out of the side streets and tangled alleys to join the mob in the Strand that had flowed out of the East End via Fleet Street.
No one had sent handbills to the ultra-exclusive enclaves of Belgravia and Mayfair. None of the inhabitants of the houses of the aristocracy or the merely rich would be informed that the poor were on the march demanding social justice in Trafalgar Square at seven o’clock in the evening. The veritable battalions of servants who ministered to the owners of the houses in Belgravia and Mayfair were not interested in protesting their lot, since they considered themselves lucky to be employed in such comfortable surroundings. None of the cooks, butlers, housekeepers, maids, grooms, valets, or kitchen slaveys would have taken the time to appear amongst the unwashed masses in Trafalgar Square, not on a Wednesday night and certainly not while it was snowing.
It was, therefore, a shock to the wealthy and well-dressed crowd descending on the West End theatres and restaurants for a night of amiable diversion to find a mob of poor and ill-dressed people barring their way on Oxford Street, Piccadilly, and the Strand. The result was chaos.
Men in corduroy trousers and patched jackets, women in flannel skirts and petticoats, children whose picturesque tatters masked very real hunger and cold collided with the well-dressed ladies and gentlemen draped in the best woollen suiting (if male) or fur and velvet (if female). Carriages were rocked back and forth, while horses reared and kicked in terror at such handling. Through it all the snow kept falling, making it difficult to tell friend from foe, except by the quality of their clothing.
The Press was well represented, with reporters marching along with the ragged workers, scribbling madly as they recorded the sights and sounds of combat for their morning readers. Was this to be the much-heralded and feared revolution preached by Herren, Marx and Engels? Would England suffer the same fate as France and be forced to endure a commune of the workers? The reporters shivered in their thin jackets or overcoats and huddled in doorways, peering at their notepads by the light of flickering gas jets that diffracted through the falling snow and gave an eerie glow to the proceedings. Sketch artists tried to capture the mood of the crowd in a quick drawing that would be sent for engraving in time for the morning editions.
The wooden blocks of the pavement were prised out of their places. Some enterprising soul had discovered a cache of bricks to be used in refacing the façade of one of the larger shops. These missiles were joyously seized and shaken fiercely by large rough hands bent on destruction of the status quo.
The fountain at Trafalgar Square was now the centre of the action. Henry Hyndman had taken his soapbox and joined his larger and rougher companion, John Burns, at one side of the square. They had been joined in leadership by the Irish printer, O’ Casey, who took up a position between the two official leaders of the Social Democratic Federation. Tom Mann, the perpetrator of the handbills from the Fair Trade League, found himself outnumbered and outshouted by the other three, who subverted what was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration with their calls for social action.
The ringing tones of Hyndman were echoed by the mellifluous Irish brogue of the printer, O’Casey, and the gruff Scottish bark of Burns.
‘My brothers, we must take back what is ours by right!’ Hyndman exhorted the crowd.
‘The gentlemen sit in their fine clubs, drinking wine and eating meat, while our children starve for a crust of bread!’ O’Casey roared out. ‘Their wives wear warm furs, while ours shiver in a shawl! Shall we allow it?’
‘Never!’ Hyndman glared at the printer, not willing to share the spotlight.
‘It’s the right of every man to be fed and clothed,’ Burns insisted.
‘Then let’s get fed and clothed!’ someone in the crowd shouted out. There was the sound of heavy boots on the bricks of the pavement, and the sucking sound of mud underfoot as the newly fallen snow was transformed into slush by the press of feet. A whoop and a tinkle of glass set off a chain of similar sounds. Those shops that were not shuttered were being looted.
‘Do not be distracted, my brothers!’ Hyndman shouted, waving his arms. No one paid him the least attention. The crowd had seen the shops in the West End, their glass windows barely concealed by wooden shutters. There were goods for the taking, and taken they were!
Once started, the looting grew in intensity. Market women squabbled over ready-made shirts on display in shopwindows. Longshoremen discovered the wine shops and began sampling their wares. The broken glass made for painful going for the barefoot children scrambling amongst the debris for whatever they could find. One child was pushed out of the way, while a larger adult grabbed at the luscious fruit in the shopwindow of a luxurious greengrocery. The sounds of fists on flesh were added to those of breaking wood and glass. Over all, the snow whirled and spun, giving a magical air to the scene.
‘No! No!’ Hyndman screamed into the crowd. It was no use. Neither the Fair Trade League nor the Social Democratic Federation could stop the mob any more than the blue-coated Metropolitan Police could. The London mob was a force to be reckoned with, as elemental as the wind and the snow, and just as controllable.
Inspector MacRae watched with horrified fascination as the orderly protest disintegrated into a full-blown riot. His twenty men were clearly no match for the multitude now thronging the Strand, let alone the others in Trafalgar Square. He beckoned one of the constables to his side.
‘Send to Bow Street, Constable. We’ll need some reinforcements.’
‘Aye,’ the constable said, casting an eye over the crowd. ‘And a Black Maria as well.’
‘On your way,’ MacRae ordered. He wiped the snow off his spectacles and tried to assess the situation. He had not expected the violence, in spite of what his informant had told him. After the vote in the House, it was only to be expected that the more vocal elements of the Irish and radical (to MacRae, they were synonymous) communities would take to the soapboxes and air their grievances. It was their right as Englishmen to do so, although MacRae wished they had chosen a more clement evening to vent their feelings.
What they did not have the right to do, and would not be allowed to continue doing, was to put their fierce and fighting words into action. This so-called political meeting had crossed the line into criminal activity, and MacRae sent another message to Scotland Yard for more constables to be stationed in Piccadilly and Regent Street. It was becoming obvious to MacR
ae that the police vans had better be alerted as well. There would be arrests, many arrests, and the Bow Street Police Station would have to be ready to hold them against the morning magistrate’s court sessions.
One of the ragged youngsters pulled at the inspector’s long coat. ‘Hoy! Copper!’
‘What’s amiss? What do you want?’ MacRae turned to look at the boy.
‘There’s a dead ’un back there yonder.’ The boy’s eyes were huge in his blackened face.
‘What do you say?’ Inspector MacRae tried to peer through the falling snow to see if the reinforcements from Kensington had arrived yet.
‘ ’E’s lyin’ there in ‘is gore,’ the boy said, quoting one of the more vivid terms used by the Press.
‘Where? Show me!’ MacRae motioned the nearest constable, a tall stalwart with the brass number of the Bow Street Station on his helmet. ‘Come with me, Constable. Boy, where is this body?’
The boy shoved his way against the press of people, dodged several stones, and found the alleyway where the body of the late David Peterson lay.
‘Nasty way to die,’ commented the constable.
MacRae frowned. ‘Any way’s nasty, Constable. This changes everything. There’s murder done here, and someone’s going to pay for it.’
‘What shall we do with ’im?’ the constable wanted to know.
‘You stay with him until the ambulance can take him over to Bart’s,’ MacRae decided.
‘And how are we to find who flung the stone that knocked this poor chap on the head?’ the constable asked. ‘Which of ’em will say, “I done it”?’
‘We haul ’em all in and sort ’em out later,’ MacRae declared. ‘Constable, have you a good, loud voice?’
‘I’ve got a bass that’s the pride of Zion Chapel,’ the constable confided.
‘Then, my lad, you get to do the honours.’ MacRae fumbled in his coat and drew out a much-folded paper. ‘You read that, and do it properly.’
The Problem of the Evil Editor Page 9