Portman accepted the handful of manuscripts and gathered up more from Basset’s desk. ‘I’ll go over these myself,’ he stated. ‘Levin, you’ve gone overboard on this, but I’m sure it was with the best intentions. Now, send Miss Harvey in to me with the typed manuscripts.’
‘Then we are going to press?’ Levin asked, a worried frown marring the marble perfection of his features. ‘It may seem callous, but the distributors and subscribers will be unhappy if we are late with their issues.’
‘In that case, I’ll have to go over the copy,’ Portman reminded him. ‘Mr Roberts, have you a cover illustration ready?’
‘I was working on one,’ the lanky artist said, flipping over another sheet on his sketchpad. ‘Only the room upstairs was so cold, I couldn’t do anything yesterday.’ He scowled at Levin, who pointedly refused to look back at him.
Miss Harvey had left Mrs Peterson to sniffle into Howarth’s shoulder. Now she trotted in with the pile of typed sheets. ‘Here are the manuscripts,’ she said. ‘You may look them over before they go down to the compositors.’
Levin was still picking up papers, while Portman went on. ‘I have no idea what Sammy was planning to put into this week’s issue. He usually went over things with me at our Wednesday meetings, but of course, he never got to tea yesterday. I only hope we have enough material. David could fill in almost anything if I decided not to use a piece, but now he’s gone … what are we to do?’ Mr Portman looked helplessly at the pile of papers scattered over the floor of the office.
Miss Harvey took over. ‘Perhaps I can help,’ she said sweetly, taking the manuscripts from Levin’s shaking hands and placing them on the desk. ‘I used to assist my father in preparing his articles, proofreading, and so on.’
‘I could not ask you to remain here.’ Mr Portman protested, ‘What about your mother?’
‘I can send a note to my mother, explaining why I am detained,’ Miss Harvey said, taking off her hat and gloves. ‘My goodness, what an odd desk! It has drawers on both sides!’
Portman looked at the battered relic. ‘Yes, that’s the desk Sammy and I worked at when we started Youth’s Companion. It’s a partner’s desk, you see, so that one of us would work on one side, and one at the other. Now, let’s clear away some of this stuff and make a start. Levin, has Hannegan come over from the Penny Press?’
‘I believe there are five men and the apprentice boy in the printing room,’ Levin said. ‘They refuse to work unless there is a fire.’
‘Then get them one!’ Portman snapped out. ‘Put it in one of those iron barrels we use for ink. And tell them that O’Casey’s being held at Bow Street, but there is a solicitor working for him paid for by the Portman Penny Press. We take care of our own,’ he admonished the secretary.
‘Before all this gets started, I want a word with each of you,’ Calloway said ominously.
‘Should I call in my solicitor?’ Howarth asked half-jocularly.
A double knock at the office door interrupted him. A helmeted constable poked his head in.
‘Sorry to bother you, Inspector MacRae, sir,’ he said, ‘but it’s started again. There’s a gang of toughs out of Whitechapel come into the Strand, and they’ve called out the Force to protect the shops.’
MacRae said something under his breath that made Miss Harvey’s cheeks redden. Calloway supressed a grin.
‘You ’avin’ this ’ere riot on your ’ands,’ Inspector Calloway said officiously, ‘per’aps I can get on wif these statements. And then we can put our ’eads together, and see wot we makes of ’em.’
MacRae glared around the room, his eyes lingering on Mr Dodgson and Dr Doyle. ‘None of you is to leave London until you have given your statements to Inspector Calloway,’ he ordered.
‘Oh, we shall all be here,’ Portman assured him. ‘We’ve a magazine to put out!’
CHAPTER 16
Inspector MacRae was on the horns of the proverbial dilemma. On the one hand, he had all the suspects in the Basset murder case lined up, ready for questioning, with the possibility of winding that knotty problem up neatly before the coroner’s inquest; on the other hand, his primary objective in Fleet Street had been the control of the dissatisfied workers rampaging through the streets. The idea of leaving the all-important interviews to the likes of Inspector Calloway galled him, but duty, in the form of Constable Ramsbotham, called him away from the murder to protect the West End from the mob.
He frowned at the constable. ‘Who else is out there?’
‘There’s a squad come in from Kensington. Shops in Southwark and the East End are boarding up, and there’s word on the streets that the Militia is to be called up,’ the constable reported.
MacRae swore under his breath again. He looked at Mrs Peterson, who had stopped screaming and was now crying silently into Mr Howarth’s shoulder. He regarded the dandified Mr Monteverde and the slovenly Mr Roberts and decided that Mr Levin was the least obnoxious of the lot. Finally, he looked through the open door at Mr Portman, who was by now checking the typewritten pages, with Miss Harvey hovering at his shoulder.
‘Ahem!’ MacRae coughed loudly to get Portman’s attention. ‘I have been called away on an emergency….’
‘More Fenian rioters?’ Calloway asked sarcastically.
‘Rioters, yes. Fenians, perhaps. But whatever they may be, they must not be allowed to repeat last night’s offences.’ MacRae settled his bowler hat firmly on his head. ‘Inspector Calloway, you are in charge here. You will take down these people’s statements and bring them to me at Scotland Yard.’
‘And then wot?’ Calloway asked, gleefully relishing MacRae’s discomfort at having to leave the scene of an investigation in any hands but those of Scotland Yard.
‘And then we shall have more information.’ MacRae braced himself for the cold, buttoning his long overcoat tightly about his throat, and followed the constable down the stairs, forgetting the bloodstains in his haste to get back to the riot.
‘I’m glad he’s out of the way,’ Portman said, rubbing his hands together. He beckoned the two writers and the artist into the room, leaving Mrs Peterson to the tender mercies of Mr Levin and the constable left on duty in the anteroom.
Mr Dodgson drifted out of the office, leaving the Youth’s Companion staff to their conference. He beckoned Dr Doyle to his side and murmured, ‘One usually finds that murder is done for money, but in this case, there seems to be no monetary motive. I am at a loss to understand why the man was killed.’
‘There are other motives,’ Dr Doyle suggested. ‘Passion, for instance.’
‘But Mr Basset had no wife, no sweetheart, and, apparently, no private life at all,’ Mr Dodgson complained.
Inspector Calloway did not waste time on idle rumination. He barked at Levin, ‘Where’s this ’ere room wot I’m supposed to ’ave fer interviewin’?’
‘Up these stairs.’ Levin led the way up a flight of stairs, lit by the feeble rays that found their way through the skylight above them, to the second storey, where the staff writers of Youth’s Companion were supposed to court their muses, to provide the youth of England, Scotland, Wales, and the Colonies with entertainment and enlightenment in equal portions.
It was almost a duplicate of the floor below in reverse, in that the smaller room was the one just above Mr Basset’s sanctum, while the larger room was the one that contained two desks instead of one. Clearly, it was Mr Peterson, the chief writer, who was given the larger windows and the view of Fleet Street below, whereas the other two men had to share a fireplace and a view of the paved yard behind the building, which included the shed used by the watchman and the convenience used by the staff.
Mr Dodgson looked over the room and shivered involuntarily. The small fires that had been laid in the two fireplaces that corresponded to the ones in Mr Levin’s and Mr Basset’s offices had only just started to warm the barnlike room. There was frost on the inner surfaces of the windows, which lacked curtains to block the draught that whistled through th
e minute gaps in the ancient window frames. The furniture consisted of mismatched desks and chairs, corkboards to which illustrations and notices had been affixed with pins, and a large and libellous caricature of the late Mr Basset that had been used as a darts’ target. Mr Dodgson peered into the second, private office and found that Mr Peterson had been allowed the luxury of a scrap of carpet under his chair and a fireplace of his own. Otherwise, the chief writer shared the privations of the other two.
Dr Doyle stepped over to the nearest gas jet and lit it. The lamp flared, augmenting the watery sunshine filtering through the windows.
‘I can see why Mr Peterson felt ill-used,’ Dr Doyle commented. ‘It would be difficult to write of sunny African climes in this icebox!’
Mr Dodgson sat in the chair vacated by the late David Peterson and proceeded to pick up and read every item on the surface of the desk. There were many scraps of paper with cryptic notes; newspaper cuttings of strange occurrences and quaint old sayings; odd drawings and diagrams; handwritten stories, much corrected; letters from young subscribers to Youth’s Companion requesting information about some character or another in a story.
‘ ’Ere! Wot d’ye think yer doin’?’ Calloway demanded, while Mr Dodgson continued his search of Mr Peterson’s desk. ‘Yer muckin’ about wif evidence!’
‘What are we looking for?’ Dr Doyle asked, after watching Mr Dodgson put the papers into separate piles.
‘I’m not sure,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘But Mr Basset was killed with something long, thin, and sharp. Where is it?’
Dr Doyle frowned. ‘The murderer could have taken it outside and dropped it into the snow,’ he suggested.
‘But Mr Basset was ahead of him in the stairwell, and the rest of the staff were about to descend,’ Mr Dodgson objected. ‘He could not have gone down the stairs and thrown the weapon out of the door because Mr Basset was in the way.’
‘I see,’ Dr Doyle said slowly. ‘Then the dagger, or whatever it was, must still be in this building, for the murderer would have had no time to remove it.’
‘So it would seem,’ Mr Dodgson said absently, scanning Mr Peterson’s manuscripts. ‘Mr Peterson wrote a clear, neat hand. Very useful when editing manuscripts; printers are notorious for getting things wrong. There was a certain scholar at the House who had written a paper on a subject in which he mentioned the Sixth Commandment. The printer left a word out, and the text of his sermon read, “Thou shalt commit adultery”. The result was not what had been intended.’ Mr Dodgson chuckled at his friend’s discomfort and went on reading.
Dr Doyle peered into the second room. ‘These must be Mr Howarth’s and Mr Monteverde’s desks,’ he said. ‘Which is which?’
One was meticulously tidy, with pens lined up in the inkwell, pencils sharpened to a point, a blotter neatly lined up with the edge of the desk, and three manuscripts crossed one over the other. The other desk was a welter of paper, pens, newspaper cuttings, picture postcards of exotic shores, and paper wrappings that smelled strongly of fish.
Mr Dodgson had finished with Mr Peterson’s desk and now came into the second room. ‘Mr Howarth is quite tidy in his dress,’ Mr Dodgson noted. ‘Whereas Mr Monteverde’s hair is worn long, his trousers need pressing, and he has a stain on his very dashing waistcoat. I suspect that Mr Howarth’s is the tidy desk, and Mr Monteverde is the one who has the desk nearest the back window.’
Inspector Calloway had mounted the stairs and was now making himself at home in the writers’ office. ‘I’ll take the tidy one then,’ Inspector Calloway decided, sinking into Mr Howarth’s chair, which creaked ominously under his bulk.
‘What were they working on, I wonder, when they were driven downstairs by the cold?’ Dr Doyle asked, not expecting an answer.
‘Mr Peterson appears to have been writing a continuation of the adventures of Robinson Crusoe,’ Mr Dodgson told him. ‘Not quite in the style of Defoe, but certainly readable and moderately entertaining. I expect Mr Basset would have insisted that certain geographical facts be inserted into the narrative, but otherwise, I find it unexceptionable.’
‘It certainly would fit Mr Basset’s criteria for his magazine,’ Dr Doyle agreed. He checked the topmost item on Mr Howarth’s desk. ‘I see Mr Howarth has been to the theatre. This is a scenario for a Christmas pantomime.’
‘But that is not what we are looking for,’ Mr Dodgson reminded him. ‘Nor is this.’ He offered a small bottle clearly marked BRANDY to Inspector Calloway.
‘For medicinal use, I suppose,’ Inspector Calloway commented.
‘Or to stimulate the brain cells,’ Dr Doyle responded. ‘Do you suppose the murderer hid the weapon up here?’ Dr Doyle probed into Mr Howarth’s desk and came up with a packet of biscuits and a corkscrew.
‘It is possible, but not probable,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘For if the murder was done between the time Mr Levin told the staff they could leave and the time they all gathered in his office, none of the staff could have left without the others seeing him.’
‘What about that artist, Edgar Roberts?’ Dr Doyle pointed out. ‘Granted, none of the writers could have left early without the others seeing him, but the artist works up the stairs in the garret. He could easily have nipped down the stairs, stabbed Mr Basset, put the knife somewhere, and nipped back up to Levin’s office. He’s a long-legged chap and looks very fit. What’s more,’ Dr Doyle warmed to his subject, ‘he’s got a nasty temper, and Basset had gone out of his way to be provoking.’
‘Quite so,’ Mr Dodgson said. He would have said more, but Inspector Calloway was now settled, with a sheet of Mr Howarth’s writing paper and a sharpened pencil in his hand.
‘Since you are ’ere, gentlemen,’ Calloway said, scowling fiercely at the other two, ‘you can give me yer statements. ’Ow did you come to be ’ere yesterday?’
Mr Dodgson said testily, ‘I have already told you that I am the Reverend Mr Charles Lutwidge Dodgson of Oxford. I was here yesterday on business….’
‘Wot business?’
‘Literary b-business.’ Mr Dodgson’s stammer began to manifest itself, never a good sign.
Dr Doyle stepped in. ‘May I speak for us, sir?’
Mr Dodgson nodded mutely. Dr Doyle tried to explain. ‘Mr Dodgson is a well-known author under another name—’
‘A halias, hey?’ Clearly Inspector Calloway was not impressed with literary eminence.
‘Under the name of Lewis Carroll, Mr Dodgson sent some items to this publication,’ Dr Doyle persisted. ‘And because I, too, have written some short stories, he asked me to join him in calling on Mr Basset. Mr Basset was not accommodating, and we left at four o’clock. We did not see Mr Basset again until the gentleman was already dying. So you see, Inspector, Mr Basset’s death was none of our doing.’
‘Then wot’s yer interest in it?’ Calloway demanded.
‘Mr Portman asked me to assist the p-police, as I have d-done once before,’ Mr Dodgson sputtered.
‘Oh, did ’e?’ Calloway’s voice could have cut glass. ‘Well, Mr Dodgson, or ’ooever yer are, the perlice can do wifout yer interference or yer assistance. Get off and let us do our job!’
With a wave of his hand, Calloway shooed the two of them out and called, ‘Next!’
Mr Dodgson was shaking with rage when Dr Doyle and he were left on the landing of the stairwell. ‘How d-dare he!’ he gasped out. ‘I thought Inspector MacRae was d-dense, but next to this … this …’ Words failed him. ‘Inspector MacRae is willing to admit to being wrong. This C-Calloway p-person is imp-possible! He is convinced that he can discover who killed Mr Basset by himself and refuses assistance when it is offered.’
‘In that case, we will have to uncover the murderer ourselves, as Mr Portman has requested,’ Dr Doyle said.
‘And to do that, we must examine the entire premises,’ Mr Dodgson insisted, taking a deep breath to recover his composure.
Once again they mounted the stairs. Edgar Roberts’s studio had been the attic when the house was n
ew. It was now a single bare room, with one tall table for layouts and another for sketching. Engraving equipment had been laid out on a long shelf against the inside wall, where jars of acids, metal plates, and fine tools were lined up, together with zinc pans for washing the plates and buckets of water for final rinsing. The two fireplaces were empty. Apparently, no one had thought to lay coals for a fire for the staff artist.
Mr Dodgson eyed the room with approval. ‘Mr Roberts knows his craft,’ he said. He looked over the sketches laid out over the wooden blocks. In a larger establishment there would have been a battery of underlings, each responsible for a section of the final piece. Here, Mr Roberts was clearly in sole charge of the woodcuts.
Mr Dodgson looked over the sketchbooks that had been left on the large table. Mr Roberts’s pen had a wicked edge to it. Here were Mr Peterson’s features attached to a porcine body. Mr Monteverde appeared as a dandified billy goat, while the late Mr Samuel Basset had a devil’s horns and tail. Even Mr Dodgson’s features fluttered out of the sketchbook, adorned with the ears and whiskers of the White Rabbit.
One face seemed to recur, an elfin creature, with a tip-tilted nose and pointed ears, who looked familiar somehow. Only when he saw the same face under a flat tam-o’-shanter (made of a mushroom cap), did Dr Doyle recognize Miss Helen Harvey as the sprite.
He pointed this out to Mr Dodgson, who nodded and said, ‘It would be interesting to know whether Mr Roberts and Miss Harvey met before and under what circumstances.’
‘He might have known her father,’ Dr Doyle said, as Mr Dodgson proceeded to count Mr Roberts’s wood-cutting tools.
‘True,’ Mr Dodgson agreed. ‘The late Mr Harvey seems to have made his mark in the artistic world. This is very vexing. All Mr Roberts’s tools are here.’
‘You would hardly expect a man to use one of his own knives if he’s going to stab someone in the back,’ Dr Doyle said, as he led Mr Dodgson back down the stairs. ‘Although, if this is a crime of passion, one might use any tool that came to hand.’
‘How very melodramatic,’ Mr Dodgson murmured. ‘But you may be right, Dr Doyle. I am a dry old bachelor, and passion is not an emotion that is known to me. I do not feel comfortable with it. What is more, I cannot find anyone who felt such an emotion towards Samuel Basset. His best friend was lukewarm towards him, he had no wife or sweetheart, his staff treated him with disrespect and contempt, when they were not in actual conflict with him. He left little money—’
The Problem of the Evil Editor Page 17