‘Someday,’ Portman warned him, ‘you will get into trouble, and no one will be able to get you out.’
Wilde waved impending doom away with an expressive gesture. ‘Here we are,’ he announced. ‘Nicky, do you happen to have a drink for me at the Press Club?’
‘Oscar,’ Portman said sternly, ‘you are going home. Right now!’
Wilde pouted like a sulky schoolboy. His mentor was not to be mollified. As soon as Mr Dodgson and Dr Doyle had descended from the carriage, Oscar Wilde was thrust back into it, and the coachman was given his instructions.
The carriage disappeared into the falling snow, and Mr Portman ushered his two guests into the Press Club, passing through a row of six stout porters in green coats, each armed with a large and knobby cudgel, prepared to defend the building from the rioters, most of whom had already been arrested and removed from St James’s.
Mr Portman noted the battered appearance of the leader of the pack, a six-foot specimen with a spendid pair of military side whiskers, who opened the door to the Press Club with a flourish.
‘There’s word that the Fenians and the Socialists are behind the ruckus,’ this individual informed his master.
‘And I see you have been active on our behalf,’ Portman noted. ‘I hope you gave as good as you got.’
‘That we did!’ The door was opened, and Mr Portman led the way into the anteroom, where they were relieved of their hats and outer wraps by a butler of the most superior sort, who had to keep reminding himself that in this establishment being a member of the Fourth Estate did not automatically exclude a person from the title of ‘gentleman’.
‘Have two rooms prepared, Norwich,’ Portman instructed him. ‘And send up something hot for late supper, eh?’
‘There is a good broth tonight, sir,’ Norwich said, as the footman bore the muddy coats off to be brushed. ‘And, if I may say so, a beefsteak.’
‘Beefsteak? At this hour?’ Mr Dodgson consulted his watch, then the large clock ticking in the hallway.
‘Er … for the gentleman’s eye,’ the butler hinted.
Dr Doyle grinned, and touched his bruised face. ‘A raw beefsteak compress is the accepted treatment for a black eye,’ he admitted, ‘but I think I would prefer it internally rather than externally. And cooked, if you please.’ But by this time, Norwich had left for the kitchen, and Dr Doyle’s request went unheard.
Mr Portman was eager to show off his latest toy, a small elevator that would take them to the top floor, where he kept his personal apartment. ‘I’ve installed a small generator in the basement,’ he confided. ‘And I have had the electric light put in, as well as the telephone. I want the Press Club to be modern, not like those old fogies down the street. Some of those fellows still have the outside offices, simply because their grandfathers did. No, Mr Dodgson, this is the nineteenth century, and we must move ahead!’
‘Does that include modern presses and the new American machinery for setting type?’ Dr Doyle asked. ‘I read of it in the Illustrated London News. According to the information I received, the machine can replace three typesetters and can set the type faster and more neatly than the human hand. I don’t think O’Casey and his crew will be pleased with that.’
Portman nodded. ‘It is true, sir, that modern methods often leave some men jobless, but on the other hand, those who are willing to learn the new techniques will find themselves more in demand. It’s a devil’s bargain, to be sure, but one must move forward, Dr Doyle!’
‘You, at least, seem to be most forward-looking,’ Mr Dodgson observed, as he took in the private sitting room. Here William Morris had been given a free hand. The walls were covered with dark green wallpaper, picked out with a gold floral design. The chairs were straight-legged, simple, and unadorned, set around a small table. Two upholstered chairs in dark green and gold matched a chesterfield, set in front of a tiled fireplace with a green-veined, white marble mantelpiece. There were no extraneous ornaments, no whatnots or small tables covered with photographs, no stuffed animals leering down from the walls. Instead, Mr Portman had hung a few paintings that seemed to be mere dabs of colour against the wallpaper. Only by standing back and observing did the impressions resolve into shapes of flowers.
‘I see you have a painting by Mr Whistler,’ Mr Dodgson observed, noting at least one painter he could identify on the walls. ‘And this is by Mr Turner, is it not?’
‘Yes, indeed,’ Mr Portman said with pride. ‘And I picked these up in Paris last summer. What do you think, sir?’
Mr Dodgson cleared his throat. His opinion of the French paintings was clearly not that of his host, and he did not want to be so uncivil as to disagree with him.
He was saved from that embarrassment by the arrival of Norwich and the footman with a steaming tureen of broth, a fresh loaf of bread, a round of Stilton cheese, pats of butter, and a pot of hot tea. On a separate platter was the raw beefsteak, meant to be applied to Dr Doyle’s rapidly swelling eye. The tray was deposited on the stark wooden table, and the butler was dismissed.
‘We’ll serve ourselves, Norwich,’ Mr Portman told him. The butler retreated, reserving his opinion of those who would usurp the position of their servants for his private journals, into which he regularly inscribed all such thoughts.
Once the butler and footman had withdrawn, Portman was able to get to the point.
‘If you do not mind,’ Mr Dodgson told him, ‘I do not speak while I eat. It leads to choking.’
‘Then I will speak while you eat,’ Portman said, as Dr Doyle broke off a piece of the loaf and munched hungrily and Mr Dodgson spooned up his broth as if each mouthful were liquid gold. ‘I had no idea that you were in London at all, but when Oscar told me that you had been present at Sammy’s death, I realized that you, of all people, could best discover who killed him.’
Mr Dodgson swallowed carefully, took a sip of tea, and asked, ‘Why? What do you know of me that would make you think that I could undertake such a task as to uncover a murderer?’
Portman smiled and said, ‘Lord Richard Marbury is one of our members, by virtue of his articles and tracts. He has told me how useful you were last summer when his daughter was abducted.’
‘But that was quite different,’ Mr Dodgson protested. ‘The child had been placed in my care. It was my duty to see her returned to her parents.’
‘And in this case, you were present when Sammy died,’ Portman countered. ‘You were on the street.’
‘There were any number of people on the street,’ Mr Dodgson objected. ‘Including, I might add, Inspector MacRae.’
Mr Portman helped himself to a piece of cheese. ‘I do not think that any of them killed poor old Sammy. What I want you to do is to act as a … consultant. You would only have to discover the facts of the case and lay them before the police. It would then be up to this MacRae, or the fellow from the City of London, to act on what you tell them.’
Mr Dodgson considered the proposal. ‘It would be interesting,’ he said finally. ‘And I suppose I do owe something to Mr Basset. The difficulty will be in narrowing down the field of suspects.’
‘You agree that it was neither O’Casey nor Wilde?’ Dr Doyle asked around a mouthful of bread and cheese.
‘I refuse to believe that Oscar Wilde could kill anyone,’ Portman stated. ‘As for the printer, if, as you seem to think, Sammy was stabbed, it is most unlikely that he would do it. Bashing someone on the head is more O’Casey’s style, especially if there was drink taken.’
‘It would seem,’ Mr Dodgson said slowly, ‘that if we eliminate the impossible, that is, Wilde and O’Casey and the people on the street, we must deal with what is left, however improbable. In other words, unpleasant as it may be, one of the staff at Youth’s Companion must have killed Mr Basset.’
Mr Portman nodded. ‘And that is why I would much prefer a private inquiry to a police investigation,’ he said with a sigh. ‘Inspector MacRae now seems satisfied that Sammy was killed by O’Casey and will look no furt
her, but I don’t like the idea of having a murderer on my magazine. If one of those men knifed Sammy, I want him exposed, removed, and hanged!’ Portman’s voice raised to a shout.
Mr Dodgson regarded his host with a look of concern. ‘Were you and Mr Basset very close friends?’
Portman took a deep breath and lowered his voice. ‘Sammy and I met in school. Winchester, it was. My father had begun to rise in the world, although his fortune was not what it was to become, and he thought it would do the family good if I received the benefit of a first-class education. Eton and Harrow were out of the question, but Winchester was acceptable, and I was accepted … but not by the rest of the students, if you take my meaning. The son of a bookseller, however wealthy, was not to be considered the equal of the sons of country squires and clergymen. I was very lonely until Sammy came along on a scholarship from some maternal relations. His father’s family were, let us say, not interested in acknowledging him, and he never talked about them.’
‘But you hit it off?’ Dr Doyle adjusted the raw steak and focussed the other eye on Mr Portman.
‘We had common interests. We both enjoyed a good book and devoured anything by Mr Dickens or Thackeray. We both liked swimming and hated horses; we both longed to get away from England and explore the rest of the world. I remember how the two of us read the reports from Burton and Speke about their discoveries in Africa, and how we planned that as soon as we finished our schooling we should run away together.’ He stopped, then added, ‘Do not misunderstand me, gentlemen. It often happens, you know, that young men develop friendships – deeply passionate friendships – that may or may not be carried forward in later life.’
Mr Dodgson nodded sagely. He had seen much the same sort of friendships among undergraduates in his years at Oxford. ‘So you were Mr Basset’s friend at school,’ he summed it up. ‘And afterward?’
‘I went on to university,’ Portman said. ‘Cambridge, not Oxford, Mr Dodgson. My father was busy turning out small volumes through the Portman Penny Press that could be sold for under a shilling to workers. He had a stable of writers, who could turn out exciting tales or useful manuals for workers. What he needed were editors, who could take the manuscripts and make them up into readable material that could be printed and sold in the thousands, if not the millions. I asked him to take on Sammy, and Sammy came into the Portman Penny Press. He wasn’t all that innovative a writer himself, but he knew how to make a good story better, and that got him moved into an editor’s seat.’
Mr Dodgson’s face twisted in a grimace. ‘The Portman Penny Press!’ he uttered in tones of the utmost loathing.
Mr Portman lifted his chin in a gesture of defiance. ‘Do not scoff, sir, at the Portman Penny Press. What with the new education laws and the national schools, literacy is on the rise. A workingman or a shopgirl deserves a good yarn to make life a little more exciting as much as anyone in Mayfair or Belgravia does. And remember, many of our titles are educational as well as entertaining. In fact, that’s why Sammy and I were sent to Africa in the first place.’
‘Really?’ Dr Doyle took another cup of tea and removed the beefsteak from his eye.
‘That was my father’s idea. We would go to Africa, once the trail had been blazed, and write a series of books about our adventures, aiming them at young boys, you see.’
Mr Dodgson was fascinated. ‘And did you have adventures?’
Mr Portman smiled to himself. ‘Oh yes, we certainly did. We were attacked by native tribesmen, we were lost for a month in the bush country until some missionary chap found us and dragged us back to the Nairobi settlement, we shot all sorts of animals, and drew pictures of more, and on the boat home Sammy came up with the idea of publishing a magazine for boys. You see,’ Portman explained, ‘Sammy thought that if we could catch the boys when they were young, they would become readers for life, and what better to read than the books from Portman Penny Press?’
‘What indeed,’ Mr Dodgson echoed faintly.
‘So your father put up the money for Youth’s Companion?’ Dr Doyle asked.
‘He offered me the use of the old building, since he’d planned to move to larger quarters, farther down Fleet Street,’ Portman explained. ‘I’d come into some money when I turned twenty-one, and I put it into Youth’s Companion. The old treadle-run presses were still there, since my father was installing the motor presses in the new building, but I had to come up with the salaries for staff, furnishings, and so forth.’
Mr Dodgson frowned to himself. ‘And what did Mr Basset offer to the new enterprise?’
Mr Portman cleared his throat, embarrassed to discuss such a mundane matter as money. ‘Sammy was to do all the writing, and I was to find the subscribers. Then he and I were to share and share alike in any profits the magazine made. Of course, for the first two years, there weren’t any profits. We were sharing digs then, so I footed the bills for our living expenses; but after the third year, we were out of the red, and Sammy insisted on paying me back every penny I’d advanced. He was a fanatic about getting into debt. I’ve often wondered if there was some story attached to it, something that he could not discuss, not even with me.’
‘Well, that explains one thing,’ Dr Doyle said. ‘He had every reason to curtail expenses if it meant more money in his pocket and kept him out of debtors’ prison. Had he no other interests? No other friends but yourself?’
Portman’s embarrassment deepened. ‘Of late, Sammy and I had grown apart,’ he confessed. ‘I came into some more money, from one of my mother’s relations. Once I started the Press Club, I had little time for Sammy. He ran Youth’s Companion, and I let him get on with it.’
Dr Doyle glanced at Mr Dodgson, then asked the one question no one had dared ask. ‘What about Mr Basset’s private life? Did he have any, um, particular friend? A lady, perhaps? Had he no companions, no one with whom he might have quarrelled …?’
Portman sighed. ‘You must understand something,’ he said finally. ‘When we were younger, Sammy and I were very close. Especially in Africa. But we move on, gentlemen. Sammy and I were drifting apart, and perhaps it was my own fault. I do tend to get enthusiasms!’
‘That is quite understandable,’ Mr Dodgson said.
‘And then I moved out of our digs and took up my flat here,’ Portman went on, ‘so I couldn’t tell you who Sammy was seeing. We had tea once a week to discuss matters concerning Youth ’s Companion, but aside from that …’ He paused and frowned to himself. ‘I saw him at the Café Royal with a good-looking lad once and took him to task about it. He explained to me that he’d been given a good start by my father and me, and he felt it his duty to do the same for other poor chaps. I accepted that at face value and never questioned him again.’
Mr Dodgson laid his spoon aside and poured a cup of tea. ‘If, as we suspect, one of the staff at the magazine is the culprit, we must examine their backgrounds closely,’ he said. ‘How were they hired? Did you or Mr Basset make the selection? How long have these persons been there?’
Portman thought it over. ‘David Peterson was one of my father’s writers at the Portman Penny Press,’ he said at last. ‘He brought in the other two, Monteverde and Howarth. There’s an artist, too, I think….’
‘Roberts,’ Dr Doyle said helpfully.
‘That’s the chap. Sammy saw some of his work in a shop and asked about it. He was doing comic valentines, Christmas cards, that sort of thing. Sammy thought he’d do well for us and gave him the position of staff artist.’
‘He seems to be somewhat, um, temperamental,’ Mr Dodgson remarked.
Portman shrugged. ‘Well, he’s an artist, after all. I believe he is trying his hand at oils. Sammy mentioned something of the sort to me, but he seemed to think that Roberts was not quite up to it and that he had best remain as he was. I accepted his judgement.’
‘The staff worked well together, as far as you know?’ Mr Dodgson asked.
‘As far as I knew. Of course, Sammy would never bother me with petty offic
e squabbles.’ Portman’s frown deepened. ‘I’d hate to think of any of them being so vicious as to stab poor old Sammy in the back. What sort of a man does that?’
‘Or a woman,’ Dr Doyle put in.
‘Eh?’ Portman stared at the young doctor.
‘I’ll have to see the wound, but a very determined young woman, particularly one who is strong and muscular, could have inserted the knife,’ Dr Doyle continued. ‘There were two young women in the office that day, a Miss Helen Harvey and a Miss Potter. Mr Basset was unpleasant to both of them.’
‘I do not think Mr Basset was killed because he was unpleasant,’ Mr Dodgson said firmly. ‘There must have been some other, compelling reason that would drive a man into such a frenzy that he would resort to so evil a deed.’
‘Then … why?’ Portman asked, his face a mask of confusion.
‘Why indeed,’ Mr Dodgson echoed. ‘Exactly what Mr Basset asked. Why?’
‘What did he mean by that?’ Portman was more confused than ever.
‘When I know that,’ Mr Dodgson said, ‘then I shall know who killed him. Until then, I believe I shall take your offer of a room for the night. Dr Doyle, I suggest you do the same. By tomorrow morning, things will appear much clearer.’
All over London, lights were being turned out. Only the press rooms of Fleet Street were lit, grinding out the morning editions that would inform the good citizens of the riot in Trafalgar Square. Until those editions reached the newsstands, most of London would remain in ignorance of those momentous events.
In the Ristorante Monteverde in Saffron Hill, Roberto Monteverde regaled his family with the description of the shocking death of Samuel Basset and wondered whether this meant that he would be able to rise to the chief writer’s chair.
In his bed-sitting room in Pimlico, Winslow Howarth patted his little corgi and wondered if he could convince the new editor to let him write more and edit less.
In an attic studio in Bloomsbury, Edgar Roberts looked over the sketches he had made and hoped that Miss Helen Harvey would sit for him as Queen Mab.
The Problem of the Evil Editor Page 12