The Problem of the Evil Editor

by Roberta Rogow

Miss Harvey looked surprised but resumed her seat. Whatever call of nature would take her out of the room would simply have to wait. When Mr Dodgson spoke, it behoved her to listen.

  ‘Mr Portman, last night you requested that I discover what had happened to your dear friend Samuel Basset,’ the scholar went on, as Miss Harvey’s brows went up in a quizzical stare. ‘I have a certain hypothesis to put before you all. To do that, I must have present all who were in the offices of Youth’s Companion yesterday.’

  ‘That excludes me,’ Wilde said with a wave of his hand.

  ‘On the contrary, Mr Wilde. You have a certain knack for observation,’ Mr Dodgson told him. ‘And you were in the office for a small time.’

  ‘May I also be excused?’ Levin asked. He had sat silent during dinner, conscious of his ambiguous place at the table.

  ‘Oh no,’ Mr Dodgson said, at his most professorial. ‘Mr Levin, I insist that you remain here until I have finished. Your testimony will be most necessary before this business is finished.’

  Levin sank into his seat, his dark eyes fixed on Mr Dodgson’s face.

  Mr Dodgson took a deep breath and turned to Mr Portman. ‘Last night there were two deaths,’ he stated. ‘One was that of Mr Samuel Basset. The other was that of Mr David Peterson. Both were perpetrated by the same person.’

  ‘Are you certain?’ Monteverde asked. ‘I thought that policeman said that David had been set upon by the mob last night.’

  ‘That is what we were supposed to think,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘But as I shall demonstrate, that is not the case.

  ‘Mr Basset had been upset when Dr Doyle and I saw him. He had been very unjust to Mr Wilde …’

  Wilde waved his hand in dismissal. ‘It was only to be expected,’ he said grandly. ‘I shall soon find a position, one way or another.’

  ‘… and to my friend Dr Doyle,’ Mr Dodgson ignored the interruption. ‘He dismissed Miss Potter’s work out of hand. He also insulted his own staff and revealed that he had stolen an idea from his chief writer, who was one of his few friends from youth. One would think that Mr Basset would have had more sense.’

  Mr Dodgson took a sip from his water glass and continued. ‘As I understand it, Mr Basset left the offices at four forty-five to attend his regular meeting with Mr Portman, leaving Mr Levin to lock up.’

  ‘That is correct,’ Levin said.

  ‘But you took it upon yourself to allow the rest of the staff to leave an hour early,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘Considering that you had just been, as Mr Howarth said, sacked, was that not somewhat presumptuous?’

  ‘Mr Peterson had told me that he’d see me right,’ Levin protested.

  ‘Ah yes, Mr Peterson.’ Mr Dodgson sighed. ‘He had gone up the stairs to Mr Roberts’s attic studio to look over the illustrations for the next issue. Mr Howarth was downstairs.’ He tactfully did not say why. ‘Mr Monteverde was also upstairs at his own desk. You, Miss Harvey, were alone in the office.’

  ‘Yes, I was.’ Miss Harvey looked around as the rest of them stared at her. ‘Well, I couldn’t very well leave until I had my money,’ she exclaimed.

  ‘Indeed. Now, I must ask you a very important question, Miss Harvey. What did you hear while you were alone in that office?’ Mr Dodgson’s eyes were no longer those of a mild gentleman who delighted little girls. He was now the churchman, the deacon, ferreting out sin.

  Miss Harvey thought hard. ‘I heard Mr Levin and Mr Basset going down the stairs,’ she said carefully. ‘Then I heard the noise in the street. That man shouting about something … you could scarcely miss it. And people shouting back at him.’

  ‘Hyndman,’ Dr Doyle said, with a nod. ‘Inciting the likes of O’Casey to riot and rebellion.’

  ‘And what else?’ Mr Dodgson persisted.

  Miss Harvey frowned in concentration. ‘It’s hard to tell,’ she said at last. ‘Between the wind outside, and that man, and the crowd …’ she ended in confusion. ‘I thought I heard some sort of argument, but I couldn’t tell you whether it came from outside or inside the building.’

  Mr Dodgson nodded. ‘That is what I thought. Mr Basset was stabbed as he stood in the vestibule with the door open. The murderer was standing behind him with one of the knives taken from Mr Basset’s own desk.

  ‘The murderer did not know that he had not killed Mr Basset outright. He had to find a place for the knife, and he heard a sound behind him, so he placed it where he was certain no one would find it, to wit, on the lintel over the doorway.’

  ‘What? Up there?’ Portman exclaimed.

  ‘A most precarious spot,’ Mr Dodgson agreed. ‘Very much in the manner of Mr Poe, hiding it in plain sight, as it were.’

  ‘He’d have to be tall,’ Howarth said.

  ‘With long arms,’ Monteverde added, conscious that he and his friend were now excluded from the list of suspects. They stared at Roberts, who scowled back at them.

  ‘Yes. Well,’ Mr Dodgson sipped more water. ‘What our murderer did not know then was that someone was coming down the stairs at that moment. Mr David Peterson was returning to his own office to retrieve his outer wraps and perhaps, to, er …’

  ‘Have a snort,’ Howarth said. ‘Oh, well, it doesn’t matter now. The poor chap’s dead.’

  ‘He is indeed.’ Mr Dodgson sighed. ‘Because, you see, he did not realize what he had seen.’

  ‘Which was …?’ Howarth asked, intrigued.

  ‘The back of a tall man with his hand upon the lintel,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘It was not until much later, perhaps after he had had another drink or two, that he understood what that position must have meant. And, as ill-luck would have it, he met that very person, who had had an errand that brought him into the Strand, as he was making his way home. I can only surmise that Mr Peterson took the opportunity to twit the other man, indicating that he knew what had been done, and that he could identify Mr Basset’s murderer.’

  Portman’s expression became distinctly unfriendly. ‘So this murderer of yours bashed Peterson with a brick to keep him quiet?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘And now, Mr Levin, I think you should tell us the answer to Mr Basset’s question. ‘I know why you killed Mr Peterson. He had seen you with your hand on the upper lintel when you put the knife there. He taxed you with it in the Strand during the riot, and you hit him with whatever you found to hand. But Mr Basset had befriended you. He had dined with you. He had taken you out of the slums of Whitechapel and given you a position. Why did you kill him?’

  ‘I?’ Levin stood up on shaky legs and stared around the room. Howarth and Monteverde stared back. He got no more help from Roberts, while Miss Harvey’s expression was one of dismay tinged with horror.

  ‘Why should I kill him? He was my employer, nothing more!’

  ‘Nothing more?’ Mr Dodgson repeated. ‘When you were seen dining with him here at the Café Royal?’

  Wilde regarded Levin carefully. ‘Of course!’ Wilde looked around at Portman. ‘That’s where I saw him! You’re one of Ernie’s friends!’

  ‘I’m sure you’re mistaken.’ Levin edged closer to the door.

  ‘I seldom forget a face, especially not one so very handsome as yours.’ Wilde turned to the rest of the company. ‘I’d been dining with Whistler, and he pointed out Basset and this young fellow off in a corner, and made some remark about young sprouts and old shoots.’

  Roberts regarded Levin with contempt. ‘I turned him down,’ he said pointedly.

  Levin stood up, eyes blazing with fury. ‘It weren’t like that!’ It was a cry of anguish. ‘He said he would bring me into the business. ’E told me to wait, and wait, and wait … that ’e ’ad to be careful of ’ow we were seen together …’ Levin’s accent was pure Whitechapel by now. ‘ ’E told me ’e’d see me right, but ’e never did! ’E used me! And when I tried to do something on my own, ’e sacked me! Told me to clear out!’

  Levin approached Mr Portman, pleading with every step. ‘I put it to you, sir, what was I to do? I was facing
ruin! I couldn’t go back…. I wouldn’t go back to Petticoat Lane!’ He took another step and trod on Miss Harvey’s train.

  ‘Mr Levin, you are tearing my dress!’ Miss Harvey tried to pull her skirts aside.

  ‘Your dress! Take that for your dress, you …’ Levin’s voice rose to a shriek, as he roughly grabbed Miss Harvey by the shoulders and shook her violently. ‘You don’t belong here! Sammy wouldn’t never allow a female to take my place! Why didn’t you stay home where you belong!’ Miss Harvey shrieked as Levin threw her against the wall and stepped forward again.

  Mr Portman rose to defend himself. Roberts and Monteverde tried to block Levin’s path, while Howarth ran to help Miss Harvey. The room seemed to be too small to hold all the people in it as Levin dodged around the table, scattering chairs in his wake, trying to find the exit in a room that suddenly had none.

  Dr Doyle was caught between the desire to chase the criminal and the necessity of performing his duty as a physician. He bent over Miss Harvey, gently touching her temple where it had connected with the wainscoting of the wall, while Mr Dodgson tried to make sense of this descent into melodrama.

  Howarth and Monteverde moved in on Levin from opposite sides of the table. For a moment there was a confused tussle as the two shorter men tried to hold on to the taller one. Then Levin shook them off, wrenched the door open, and bolted down the hall.

  ‘I’ll get him!’ Roberts shouted, loping down the hall after Levin.

  Dr Doyle made a quick assessment of the situation. ‘Miss Harvey is not badly hurt,’ he pronounced. ‘She appears to be more shaken than bruised.’

  Mr Dodgson looked thoroughly shaken as well. ‘I blame myself,’ he whispered.

  ‘Nonsense,’ Portman told him. ‘None of us suspected that Levin, of all people …’

  ‘I suspected him,’ Mr Dodgson said miserably.

  ‘He can’t have got far,’ Monteverde said. ‘Eddie’s after him.’

  ‘I think you had best send for your carriage, Mr Portman, and get Miss Harvey home to her mother,’ Dr Doyle decided.

  ‘But what about Levin?’ Portman protested.

  ‘Your Mr Roberts has already gone after him,’ Mr Dodgson said. ‘Mr Monteverde, Mr Howarth, please help Dr Doyle take Miss Harvey downstairs.’

  ‘And what will you do, Mr Dodgson?’ Mr Portman interrupted this flow of instructions.

  ‘I shall consider where Mr Levin might find refuge and inform the police so that they may capture him before that unhappy young man kills someone else.’

  CHAPTER 25

  When he ran out of the room, Levin tried to get his bearings. The private rooms of the Café Royal were on the third storey, along a corridor that led to the grand staircase at one end.

  Levin looked down the corridor, seeing nothing but closed doors and electric light fixtures. Behind him he could hear the rest of the party tripping over chairs and each other in their haste to get to him. Ahead of him lay freedom … but where?

  For a moment he forgot about escape in his indignation at the treachery of the woman. Helen Harvey! It was just as his mother had told him. Women were no good! He had only meant to be kind, to make the magazine better, and see what it had got him! That little minx! Trying to take his position with Nicky Portman, doing his work! He never should have let her into the office, Levin thought. It was all of a piece! Just because he wanted to improve himself, get out of Whitechapel, away from the crowd that hung about the doors of the Café Royal …

  He looked about, his eyes darting here and there. Somewhere along this corridor was a private stair, used by the staff as they brought food up and took away the dirty dishes. He knew all about it, had even used it once or twice before Sammy Basset had taken him in…. Ha! Taken him in! If he had the time, he would laugh about that. Basset had taken him in all right; made him into a drudge, used him, and not given him the position he’d been promised. Oh, there had been a few perks, a new suit or two, and a dinner at the Café Royal, but what of that? He could have had that if he’d stayed with Bert and Ern and the rest of that lot.

  He had wanted more. He had wanted to rise, to be respectable, to be deferred to, like Sammy Basset. He had wanted authority, power even. Sammy wouldn’t let him do anything, not read contributions or ask for them, not even correct the proofs. Sammy had the power, and Levin wanted it; and when he tried to take what he deserved, what did he get? The sack! Thrown out after all he’d done!

  Levin heard the door open behind him. He looked back and saw Eddie Roberts, his face set in lines of grim determination, hands ready to wring the neck of one Andrew Levin.

  Levin sought some hiding place, trying each door in the corridor. Two doors were locked. No parties in those rooms tonight. Levin thought. He opened two more doors. One room held a man and a woman in a fond embrace; the woman shrieked, the man swore loudly, and Levin backed away. Another held two men too busy to notice an intruder. Levin closed the door quickly and quietly, breathing hard and trying to forget that he might have been in the same position at one time.

  Levin headed for the grand staircase, then backed away. Roberts must have summoned reinforcements. Two large and muscular waiters had mounted the staircase at the end of the hall, cutting off Levin’s escape. Roberts was closing in, and the Scottish doctor, Doyle, had come out of the room and was heading towards them. Levin thrust a hand out…. Aha! The service stairs! He bolted through the door set into the woodwork of the hallway, papered over, and nearly invisible to any but those who had free access to the back passages of the Café Royal.

  Behind him, Roberts shouted, ‘He’s here!’

  Monteverde and Howarth followed Roberts and Levin down the service stairs. Dr Doyle joined the chase, leaving his patient in the hands of Mr Dodgson and Mr Portman.

  The stairs wound down behind the dining rooms, leading into the kitchens, where the cooking stoves were full and the chefs were concocting the delectable dishes for which the Café Royal was famous. The room was full of steam and fury, bubbling out of pots and chefs in equal measure. The table in the middle of the room held the remains of vegetables, scraps of meat, even odds and ends of pastry shells and fruit. Tables near the swinging doors that led into the public dining rooms held trays full of covered dishes, waiting to be delivered to the tables of the celebrated diners at the Café Royal.

  Levin’s arrival went unnoticed at first in the hurly-burly of the kitchen. Sous-chefs were working madly, waiters were dashing here and there, while assistants were waving various implements, and the master chef swore loudly at all of them. There was a veritable babel of epithets when Levin burst into the kitchen, thrashing his arms madly, with the rest of the Youth’s Companion staff in hot pursuit.

  Levin dodged here and there, scattering the kitchen staff in his panic. He blundered against a table where one of the underlings was chopping vegetables, sending a cascade of greenery on to the floor and under the feet of his pursuers. He dodged around a table filled with elaborate pastry, crashed into a waiter bringing in a load of dishes, and fairly flew into the dining-room.

  The rest of the Youth’s Companion staff followed Levin through the kitchen, sliding on the remains of lettuce and spinach, splashing through the ruined pastries and stumbling over the broken crockery, muttering apologies as their progress was marked with crashes of chinaware, clashes of pans, and loud curses in three languages.

  Levin’s departure from the kitchen had led into the Grill Room. The hum of conversation was disturbed by the entrance of one overwrought young man being chased by four more, all of them spattered by whipped cream, vegetables, and béchamel sauce.

  Levin dodged around the tables as Monteverde and Howarth tried to corner him. Waiters converged upon him from three corners of the room, but Levin wriggled around them, leaving Monteverde and Howarth to apologize to the diners whose dinners they had interrupted. The elegant Mr Whistler shouted in exasperation as the chase interrupted one of his best witticisms. Two young men from the provinces yelled, ‘Tally-ho!’
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  Dr Doyle yelled out, ‘He’s getting away!’ and pointed at the door to the lobby. Dr Doyle and Mr Roberts charged after Levin, past the affronted headwaiter and into the lobby. ‘Stop him!’ Dr Doyle gasped out, waving madly at the doorman, who put himself directly in the path of the fugitive.

  Levin looked wildly about the lobby, breathing hard. A gentleman in the dress uniform of Her Majesty’s Navy and his highly painted female friend were being let into the Café Royal just as two gentle-men in evening dress and two ladies in cloaks were trying to leave. Levin sized up the situation, while Dr Doyle and his cohorts regrouped. Then Levin dashed for the door as the naval gentleman removed his cape.

  Levin was caught in the folds of the cape. The doorman struggled to seize him, while the naval officer yanked at the enveloping cape. Levin writhed out of the cape and wriggled into the revolving door, leaving the naval officer to air his nautical vocabulary and the doorman to face the pursuers.

  ‘Call the police,’ Dr Doyle gasped out, as Mr Roberts and the rest tried to manoeuvre their way outside, where the crowd waited on Regent Street.

  ‘ ’Ere, wot’s the matter?’ someone asked, as Levin dashed past.

  ‘Stop him!’ Dr Doyle called out, as he emerged from the revolving door.

  ‘Wot’s ’e done?’ That was Ern, the young man with the smouldering eyes and dark curls, apparently waiting for someone to invite him to dine inside.

  ‘Killed two men, and just tried for another,’ Roberts said breathlessly.

  ‘Cor!’ Ern exclaimed.

  ‘Walk-er!’ Bert chimed in.

  ‘Somebody call the police!’ Howarth yelled, as the group tried to locate Levin in the crowd.

  ‘They’re all at Trafalgar Square!’ Ern yelled back. ‘Wot d’ye think, Bert?’

  ‘I think our Aaron’s done it this time,’ Bert said. ‘We better go after ’im, afore ’e does any more damage.’ They joined in the chase, leaving any hope of an evening’s entertainment behind them.

  The fog was now drifting in patches, settling back over the streets. Howarth and Monteverde clutched each other, gasping for breath.