The Guilty
Abroad
A Mark Twain Mystery
Peter J. Heck
To my friends in phosphor,
especially the gang on GEnie.
The Guilty Abroad
Copyright © 1999 by Peter J. Heck.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
www.wildsidepress.com
Historical Note and Acknowledgments
The historical Samuel L. Clemens, on whom my fictional detective is broadly modeled, lost his fortune in the early 1890s. After a series of bad investments—capped by the failure of the Paige typesetting machine, an unsuccessful rival of the Linotype—he was nearly bankrupt. He moved his family to Europe to economize, and spent much of the latter part of his life abroad, earning money to repay his debts by touring and lecturing. Thus it seems natural to take him to Europe for an adventure or two. I have chosen 23 Tedworth Square, in which he lived a few years after the nominal date of this adventure, as the home base for his London visit.
I also wanted to show him in the context of his family, from whom his financial troubles in later years forced him to be absent more than he would have liked. I have brought the whole family together to give the girls a chance to become characters in their own right. (Those interested in Twain’s family life would be well advised to seek out Clara’s book, My Father Mark Twain, which includes many letters and photographs illuminating this part of his personality.)
Twain is viewed as one of the prototypes of modern skepticism, and many of his remarks and writings on spiritualism and other supernatural phenomena amply support this image. The account of his visit to a medium in Life on the Mississippi is characteristic of his reaction to his own time’s equivalent of “New Age” beliefs. However, at Livy’s urging, he did attend séances after Susy’s death in 1896, in hopes of communicating with her spirit. The experience seems to have done nothing to change his mind concerning supernatural claims.
Gaslight London is of course the home turf of one of the greatest of all fictional detectives, Sherlock Holmes. Twain himself was no admirer of A. Conan Doyle’s stories, going so far as to lampoon Holmes in “A Double-Barrelled Detective Story.” Still, it seemed appropriate to pay some homage to the Holmes canon in a book set not only in London, but touching one of Doyle’s own obsessions, the spiritual world. So I have borrowed Inspector Lestrade (whom I have promoted to chief inspector, in accordance with the Peter Principle). I hope his performance here is in harmony with his character as drawn by his creator.
Researching these books is always enjoyable. As before, I have borrowed many of Mark Twain’s own stories and sayings, which readers familiar with his work will recognize. The serendipity of research always turns up something amusing; this time it was the Hartford air-gun factory, which was later converted to bicycle production and may well have built the bicycle that Twain attempted to tame in his Hartford days. And I found Clara’s description of her father as a “bad, spitting gray kitten” an irresistible image.
Of course, Mark Twain never became a detective (although his skeptical attitude and sharp mind would undoubtedly have made him a good one). But, given that fictional assumption, I have tried to make his character as authentic as I can. In the process, I have accumulated far too many debts to previous Twain scholars to acknowledge in this brief space. As always, any errors or distortions of fact are my own fault. But I hope I have been able in part to capture the spirit of a writer who was one of the key influences on my own growth and outlook on the world.
Finally, special thanks are due to my wife, Jane Jewell, my first and most demanding reader, who has contributed to the improvement of this book (and of its author) at every stage.
1
I had been in London only three days, in my capacity as traveling secretary to Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, a well-known author under his pen name “Mark Twain.” It was my first journey out of the United States.
I don’t know whether Mr. Clemens or I was happier to be in London. My employer (an old hand at foreign travel) was enjoying a long-awaited reunion with his wife and three daughters, who had been living abroad for some time. He had set aside all work for a few days in favor of spending as much time as possible with his family. That left me free to see the sights of London—and I had been doing so with a vengeance.
Today I had visited the British Museum. All morning and most of the afternoon, I had gazed in awe at a thousand treasures I had previously seen only in books. Those illustrations were now plainly exposed as shoddy counterfeits, compared with the originals. The Elgin Marbles alone were worth crossing the ocean to see. But at last, the guards began to announce that the museum was about to close, and I was forced to drag myself away.
I walked out onto Great Russell Street, in front of the museum, in the waning sunlight. The curbside was lined with people trying to hail cabs—and the drivers clearly knew this for a spot where they would get good business this time of day. After surveying the tangle of horses, carriages, and would-be passengers, I decided there was no point in fighting the crowds here. The weather looked fine—evidently a rarity for an October day in England. I decided to walk to nearby Euston Station, perhaps half a mile away, where there was a large hotel in addition to the train station. There, I would have a far better chance of finding a hackney coach to take me out to Mr. Clemens’s rented apartments in time for supper.
I had just turned up the street toward the station when a woman’s voice behind me called out in an American accent, “Why, Mr. Cabot! What a surprise to see you here!”
Standing on the street corner in a foreign country, three thousand miles from home, the last thing I expected was to hear a familiar voice call my name. I turned to discover the smiling face of Martha Patterson—or, as she was now known, Mrs. Edward McPhee. I had been told that the world is a small place; now I understood what that expression meant.
“Good heavens, Miss Patterson,” I said, removing my hat. “I mean, Mrs. McPhee . . .” My voice trailed off. It was certainly a shock to find her in London; a shock, and something of an awkward sensation, as well.
I had first met Martha when we were passengers on the Mississippi riverboat Horace Greeley, during the lecture tour for which Mr. Clemens had first engaged me as his secretary. She and I had become friendly—or so I had believed. She had introduced herself to everyone aboard the boat by her maiden name, and I had foolishly believed that she had taken a fancy to me. But at the end, we learned that she was married to Slippery Ed McPhee, a gambler and confidence man whom Mr. Clemens had known during his early days on the river.
But what on Earth was she doing here in England? She politely ignored my sputtered exclamations and merely stepped close to me, smiling, and said, “What are you doing in England, pray tell? Are you still working with Mr. Clemens?”
“Yes, I am,” I said, somewhat regaining my composure. I still found her flashing eyes and bright smile hard to resist. “He’s over here to see his new book through the press, and visiting his wife and daughters. I was just on my way to join them for dinner.”
“Are you staying nearby, or do you need a ride? Edward is bringing a carriage around, and we could take you home.”
“Oh, there’s no need of that,” I said, not certain I wanted to share a cab with Slippery Ed McPhee, despite the presence of his charming wife. (Or was it perhaps because of her presence?) “I was planning to walk up to the railroad station and find a cab there. I’m going all the way out of town, to a place called Chelsea.” Even had I felt comfortable accepting a ride from them, I could hardly impose on them to take me so far out of the way.
“Why, how fortunate that we met,” she cried, clapping her hands. “That’s the very place we’re staying! Now
you must ride with us!”
I was at a loss what to say, and at that exact moment a carriage pulled up a short distance away and a curly-haired fellow with a broad hat leaned out and shouted in a broad western accent, “Here we go, Martha!” It was Slippery Ed McPhee, and no other.
“Hello, Edward, look who’s turned up in England,” said Martha, taking my hand and pulling me toward the waiting carriage.
McPhee squinted in my direction for a moment, then his mouth fell open with surprise. “Well, fry me for a catfish! If it ain’t young Mr. Cabot. Is my good old buddy Sam over here, too?”
“Yes, Mr. Clemens is here with his whole family,” I said, deciding that further resistance to Martha’s invitation would be undignified. “Your wife has offered me a ride out to Chelsea—if that’s not inconvenient to you.”
“Why, no, easiest thing in the world,” said McPhee. “Good to run across another fellow that talks regular American. These here limeys swallow half their words.” He gave a loud laugh, ignoring the icy stares of nearby spectators.
“Really, Edward, one shouldn’t make such remarks in public,” said Martha as she accepted my assistance mounting into the carriage. “These people have spoken English far longer than we have.”
“Well, you’d think they’d’ve learnt how to talk it better by now,” said McPhee, chuckling, as his wife settled into the seat beside him. She gave him a fond smile, as if he’d said something quite clever. I clambered up and took a position in the facing seat. The driver snapped his reins, and the horse started off toward the sun, which was already brushing the chimney tops to the west.
After thanking McPhee for the ride home, and exchanging a few more pleasantries, I said, “I must say, I never expected to see the two of you in London. What brings you to this side of the Atlantic?”
McPhee’s expression turned serious. “Well, son, I have to say that when Sam gave me that talking-to back on the river, it got me to thinking. ‘Ed McPhee,’ I says to myself, ‘maybe it’s time for you to get a fresh start in life. Time to walk the straight and narrow, for a change.’ So I made up my mind to do just that. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without this little lady, here.” He patted Martha’s hand. His wife blushed, and waved her hand as if to dismiss his compliment.
“Oh, you give yourself far too little credit, Edward,” she said, smiling again at her husband. She turned to me and continued, “But you must understand, Mr. Cabot, it’s difficult to start with a clean slate in a place where everyone knows you, and where some of them hold your past against you, however much you’ve changed.”
McPhee nodded and gave a snort. “The lady’s got it dead to rights,” he said. “At first, I thought about heading to New York, or maybe even California. But then I thought of all the fellows from my old line of work that had moved to all those places, and I just knew it wouldn’t be long before bad company come looking for me, wanting to go out on the town and raise a little hell. It’s mighty hard for a man to look an old friend in the eye and just turn him down cold, especially if that old friend’s still in the same old business.”
“Edward’s given up cardplaying entirely,” Martha explained, a proud look in her eye. Her husband smiled foolishly, as if this were the greatest of accomplishments.
As before, I found it puzzling that a woman so obviously intelligent and ladylike could enjoy the company of a crude specimen like Slippery Ed McPhee. And yet, they seemed to be happily married, and I had never seen any sign of friction between them. In the circumstances, all I could think of to say was, “Why, my congratulations to you.”
Privately, I wondered—could he really have turned over a new leaf? For his wife’s sake, I hoped he had, though it was hard not to be skeptical. It was easy for him to claim that he’d started a new life, but he might just be running from the consequences of the old one—with the police in hot pursuit.
“It must be quite an alteration in your life, Mr. McPhee,” I continued. “I can hardly remember seeing you away from the card table in all our time on the river.”
“I got to say you’re right,” said McPhee, shaking his head. “But I’m proud to tell you, I ain’t dealt a hand of monte since we set foot in England, and nobody over here seems to know how to play poker right. But that’s all by the by. I reckon this is the last place any of my old crowd is ever going to show up and try to rope me into some sort of crooked business—that’s why I come over here. And then, first thing I know, here’s Mr. Cabot, and now you tell me good old Sam is here, too. We’ll have to get together and have a laugh about old times on the river.”
I was not at all certain Mr. Clemens wanted anything to do with Ed McPhee, even if his reform was genuine, but I refrained from telling him so to his face. For all I knew, my employer would be pleased to hear the news that McPhee had found an honest way of life, and would do what he could to further the fellow’s attempts to amend his life. It would not be the first time Mr. Clemens had helped someone who was down on his luck.
Our driver (a self-important little Cockney with an extravagant beaver hat that had seen far better days) took us a short distance south along Bloomsbury Street, crossed Oxford Street, then slanted to the southwest along Shaftesbury Avenue in the direction of Piccadilly. He picked his way carefully, as the streets were full of carriages and pedestrians: Londoners making their way home after a long day’s work.
To an American eye, London seems to resemble Boston in the rambling layout of its streets. In both cities, many of the prominent streets began as winding country roads leading to small towns now incorporated into the modern city. In sheer size, however, London is a better match to New York. But London’s antiquity sets it apart from anything in the United States. For someone who grew up (as I did) in a town like New London, Connecticut, where the oldest surviving buildings are just over two hundred years old, it is a heady experience to visit a city possibly ten times that age.
“Just imagine,” I said, with a sweeping gesture. “These roads once felt the tread of Roman legionnaires, and before that were perhaps the paths that the Brythonnic tribesmen led their herds along. Every stone has seen the passage of millennia of history.”
Our driver turned around with a disdainful look on his pockmarked face. “You’re way off the mark, guv’nor. This ’ere’s Shaftesbury Havenue, and there’s not a single buildin’ more’n ten years old. They knocked down me sister’s ’ome to make the streets wider, and moved ’er and the brats off to a new place, willy-nilly. That there big posh theater is right where she used to live. That’s always the way of it—move out the ’umble workin’ folk so the rich don’t ’ave to see ’em on their way to the play’ouse.” He punctuated this sentiment by spitting sideways into the street, and turned back to his horses.
I was somewhat taken aback by this response, but McPhee took it in stride. “Jimmy’s a wonder,” he said, clapping the driver on the back. “The little rascal knows his way around this big ol’ city as well as Ed McPhee knows his way around a deck of cards—and that’s saying a Missouri mouthful. He’s been driving us ever since we come to town.”
“Well, that must be valuable knowledge for a driver,” I said, impressed in spite of myself—I had seen McPhee dealing cards. “Do we pass by anything of particular historic interest on our way to Chelsea? I’d appreciate your pointing it out to us, if we do.”
Jimmy turned around and looked at me again, as if deciding whether to trust me with his hard-won gems of knowledge. At last, he seemed to have determined that I was not about to set up in competition with him, and he nodded. “I’ll do that, guv’nor. But we’re goin’ the wrong way to see the real ’istoric parts of Lunnon. Most of what we’ll be goin’ through was open fields and country villages not all that long ago. Nothin’ Roman ’ere.”
“How long ago was it open fields?” asked Martha.
“King Charles’s time, barely two ’unnerd years since,” said the driver, waving his hand to show his opinion of such freshly settled areas. “Oh, I won’t say ther
e’s not a fine old ’ouse ’ere and there, but there’s nothin’ out ’ere like what’s in the City.” I wondered idly what he would have to say about New York or Boston, which could not have been much more than frontier villages at the time he spoke of.
Nonetheless, I was well enough entertained by the sights he did point out. “ ’Ere’s Piccadilly Circus,” he said as we entered a large open area where several broad streets converged. He pointed to a large winged statue of an angel, rising above a public drinking fountain. “That statue’s made from haluminium—cost a bundle, it did. There was haluminium cups for drinkin’ when it was first put up, but they didn’t last long. I know a lad what clipped one, and ’e stayed drunk three days on what ’e ’ocked it for.”
Around the base of the fountain sat a number of garishly dressed women. “Those are the flower girls,” said Jimmy, without further explanation. From the look of them, I did not think they sold many flowers.
We continued southwest on Piccadilly Street, originally an ancient road leading west from the walled City of London. There were a good many grand homes, almost mansions, along the way. Those overlooking the Green Park to the south had a fine view of Buckingham Palace. Evidently this was one of the most elegant of addresses during the early years of this century. Jimmy pointed out one house that had been occupied by Lord Chancellor Eldon, who amused himself by counting long and short petticoats from his drawing-room window. “ ’E counted a lot more short than long,” said Jimmy, cackling merrily.
At the corner of Green Park, we passed the mansion of the Dukes of Wellington, and an equestrian statue of Wellington as the victor of Waterloo. “That’s the new statue,” said Jimmy. “The old one was so ugly that some claimed the Froggies ’ad it put up in revenge for losin’.” We all laughed heartily at this anecdote, and Jimmy turned around to grin at us as he guided his team—a nicely matched pair of grays—onto Knightsbridge Road. His previously sour countenance was much improved by the grin.
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