by Tim Mason
“Hallo, Dennis,” Field said, his voice a mix of commiseration and censure. “Rough night? I think you’ll agree with me that you’re a little worse for wear. Feelin’ a bit queasy, perhaps? That’s how it takes me, the mornin’ after.”
Merrydew swallowed and licked his lips and said nothing.
“My colleagues here say they located you asleep outside a public house early this morning, is that right?”
Merrydew’s shoulders sank a little.
“Listen, chum,” said Field with a wink. “I expect your head is splitting, but I’m in rather a hurry. ‘I wasted time and now doth time waste me,’ if you get my meaning.”
Merrydew wiped his nose with his sleeve and coughed.
“That’s Shakespeare saying the sooner you speak up brisk-like, the sooner you’re out of here, right?” The young man nodded, wincing as he did so.
Field drew out a chair and sat opposite his subject; his colleagues remained standing, their eyes on Merrydew. “Where do you do your butchering, Dennis? What’s your theater of operation, so to speak?”
Merrydew cleared his throat. “Smithfield Market,” he said.
“Just so,” said Field. “Something tells me, Dennis, that you met someone at the market yesterday morning, am I right? A stranger?” The butcher’s face registered surprise. “Early this would have been. P’raps you’re just arrivin’ for work, or headin’ out with a delivery, this bloke says howdy-do, offers to stand you a drink. An eye-opener, right? Where’s the harm in that?”
Merrydew nodded hesitantly.
“That’s it, lad! That’s the spirit of cooperation! Well done!”
“He’s been drunk ever since, Chief.”
“Well, Officer Kilvert,” said Field, never taking his eyes off the butcher, “it happens.”
“Not to me it don’t, sir,” said Kilvert.
“No, Mr. Kilvert, of course not to you.” Field inclined his head in Merrydew’s direction and winked.
“A situation like that, Chief,” said Llewellyn, “in my experience, could be a bit of fun or could be a situation where you get took advantage of, know what I mean?”
“He missed work, Mr. Field,” said Kilvert indignantly. “He never showed up for work the whole day long, and him in the guild and all.” He turned on Llewellyn. “That’s not what I call a bit of fun!”
“Be fair, Kilvert!” said Llewellyn. “Can’t you see the man’s in pain?”
“Actions have consequences, Mr. Llewellyn!”
“Gentlemen!” said Field. “I think we all agree that the whole affair of yesterday morning was unfortunate. Am I right, Dennis?”
Merrydew nodded emphatically.
“How did the man get your apron off you, Merrydew?” asked Llewellyn suddenly.
“Your butcher’s apron,” intoned Kilvert.
“He did want your apron, didn’t he?” said Field. “And your wheelbarrow?”
Merrydew hung his head. “Seems he did.”
“Did he pay you for it?” said Llewellyn.
Merrydew’s eyes darted from man to man. “Nah,” he whispered.
“He’s lying,” said Kilvert.
“Now, now, Officer Kilvert,” murmured Field.
“Sorry,” said Merrydew. “I mean, he did let me have some coin for drink.”
“How much?” said Kilvert.
“Don’t remember,” said Merrydew. “Don’t remember much, to tell you the truth.”
This statement produced an awful silence in the little room. Merrydew felt it and was alarmed. The three police officers looked at each other gravely.
“Uncooperative,” said Kilvert.
“I thought we were getting on so well,” said Llewellyn.
“Right,” said Field, rising from the table. “I don’t have time to waste here.”
“You leave him to us, sir,” said Kilvert darkly.
“Wait!” cried the butcher as Inspector Field opened the door. “Officers, please! What d’ you want to know? I’m ’appy to oblige, if ever I can!”
Half an hour later the officers of the law had wrung Merrydew dry and sent him packing. They had a description, albeit a foggy one, of the man who had wrangled the butcher’s apron and wheelbarrow in exchange for a day’s drinking money.
The man was tall. Slender. A decent chap, never mind that he was well spoke. Yes, a gentleman, no doubt of that. Funny way of walking, smooth-like. As if he was on wheels or something. Good looking, fair-skinned, sandy-haired. And the darkest, deepest eyes you ever did see.
Did he have a name?
Cory something.
Occupation?
Merrydew had said he thought the man might have been a barber or a surgeon. Just a feeling he had.
A feeling? What sort of feeling would that be, Merrydew?
A smell of carbolic. And the man had showed him knives. A whole box of them.
Did he now? Thank you, Mr. Merrydew. Mr. Llewellyn will show you out.
When Llewellyn returned to the little office after ushering Merrydew out of the building, Inspector Field was gazing at the constable darkly.
“So you’re a communist, are you? A bloody insurrectionist under my own command. A revolutionary, a bomb thrower.”
“Sir, really, that’s not us at all, we’re just, you know, workers!”
“You’re not a worker, you’re a bloody policeman! I took you under my damned wing, lad, and this is how you repay me?”
“Please, sir! It’s a free country, or so I’m told!” Llewellyn turned on his partner. “What have you gone and done? You prim little Baptist prig, turning the chief against me, and without cause!”
“There’s been an incident,” said Kilvert, ominously. “We’ve just had word.”
Llewellyn looked from his partner to his superior.
“A demonstration outside Newgate Prison,” said Field. “A show of support for Philip David Rendell.”
“Solidarity, they’re calling it,” continued Kilvert. “Standing by the man who tried to kill the Queen.”
“When a few of our lot moved in,” said Field, “solidarity ran for the hills.”
Kilvert’s voice dropped to its lowest register. “Communists. Every man jack of them.”
9
Charles Field, dressed as a laborer, stood among the massive columns before the British Museum, smoking a stubby pipe and wishing he’d chosen larger boots; these pinched. His target should emerge any minute now if the man kept to his daily pattern, which he was reputed to do. The man was a heavy smoker and perennially short on tobacco, according to Llewellyn, although the young Welshman claimed never to have met him but only heard him speak.
A museum guard was eyeing Field dubiously. There was a pushcart at the base of the steps, a hot-pie vendor. Field moved purposefully down the stone staircase, pulling out a battered old leather change purse as he went, to indicate his solvency. As he passed the guard, he deferentially touched his hat.
Nice, said the theater critic within him.
A workingman with money in his pocket, munching a pork pie, viewing one of the monuments of his nation’s glory—that’s what he was. Not a policeman, not a detective inspector, lying in wait for a leader of insurrectionists. No, he was who he pretended to be; it was a point of pride with Field.
What a mark I would have made on the stage! Top tier! Amongst the very best of them, thank you very much!
Just then a stocky, striking figure in a rumpled old suit appeared at the top of the steps, polishing his spectacles and squinting in the daylight. Field had seen an engraving of the target (on file, supplied a few years earlier by the Belgian police), and Llewellyn had described the man to him, even as he deplored the whole enterprise as a waste of time.
Karl Marx was at this time forty-two years of age. The hair on his head had gone white, but his beard was still coal black and well kept. An improbably high forehead rose above a pugnacious brow and a squat nose. Officially unwelcome in Prussia, France, and Belgium, he had fled to London a dozen years
earlier with his wife, Jenny, and their maid, Lenchen. In the years that followed, the couple had lost three of their five children (to pneumonia, cholera, and poverty). Marx had grieved for his children, lived financially off his friend and collaborator Friedrich Engels, and impregnated Lenchen. Marx told his wife that Engels was the father. During this time Karl Marx had also written works of philosophical and economic theory that would shake the world to its foundations and make his name forever famous.
Right now he was patting his pockets, in search of tobacco. Pigeons fluttered up into the gray London sky as Marx descended the steps distractedly. By the time he reached the bottom, Field had his tobacco pouch out and ready, nodding and smiling and touching his hat.
“Guv’nor.”
Marx gave him a cool glance and passed on toward the omnibus stop in Tottenham Court Road.
Field hurried after, and when Marx stepped onto the rear platform of the waiting omnibus, the disguised policeman boarded, too. The ’bus was packed, as usual. The driver flicked his whip above the heads of the horses, the ’bus lurched forward, and Karl Marx fell backward into Charles Field.
“I beg your pardon,” said Marx, looking Field up and down suspiciously. Field waved him off with a grin, as though he were perfectly delighted to be halfway crushed by strangers on ’buses.
“So,” said Marx, “what do you want of me?”
At which point Field made a full confession: he had lain in wait for Herr Marx on purpose; he had heard the great man speak on a couple of occasions and had even got his hands on copies of the New-York Daily Tribune when Marx’s articles were published there.
“I do not remember you,” said Marx. “When did you hear me speak?”
“Let me think,” said Field, slowly. “It was in the past year, o’ that I’m sure.”
“In Stepney, perhaps?”
Field had laid enough interrogatory traps in his day to be wary. “Stepney . . . does not ring a bell, Herr Marx, to tell you the truth, but then at my time o’ life I’m sometimes hard put to remember me own address.”
“Where do you live?”
“Blowed if I know!” replied Field, laughing. Marx looked at him a moment longer, then burst into laughter himself.
This time when Field offered his tobacco pouch, Marx accepted, and within moments the two of them were puffing congenially, clinging to the overhead straps with their free hands. Two female passengers seated beneath them waved the smoke away from their faces, but the men were oblivious.
“Your name, sir?” said Marx.
“Meadow,” said Field. “Charles Meadow, sir.”
“What, Mr. Meadow, is the state of your liver?”
Field looked at the great man blankly.
“Mine is a source of almost constant discomfort.”
“You don’t say, Herr Marx?”
“This entire month, it is for me almost impossible to work. I feel like bloody Prometheus.”
Field cocked his head, his brow furrowed.
“The chap who gave the gift of fire to mankind?” said Marx. “And was therefore punished by Zeus by having his liver forever eaten by an eagle?”
Field sighed deeply. “See, this is why I like to hear you speak, Herr Marx. I am always eager to learn from my betters.”
Marx drew at his pipe, regarding Field closely.
“This is why you read my essays?”
“To tell the truth, Herr Marx, I’m not much of a reading man.”
“But you said you read me in the Tribune!”
“Oh! Yes, quite, but that’s generally my helpmeet a-readin’ them articles out to me, bless her old heart.”
“So, a married man, are you then, Mr. Meadow?”
“Blissfully so, sir.”
Marx sighed, staring over the heads of the other passengers. “Ja, so, me also,” he said wanly. “Pure bliss, pure bliss.” The omnibus was inching northward through heavy London traffic, with passengers boarding and alighting at every stop. “For how long have you been a communist, Mr. Meadow?”
“Well now, I can’t say as I’m exactly a full-fledged . . . you know . . . one of you lot, not at this point, at any rate. I could be in time. I would say that currently, as of today, I’m more an interested well-wisher.”
“I see. Then you are the enemy.”
“Good God, no, Herr Marx! Please!”
Marx smiled and nodded. “We are at war, Mr. Meadow. Your good wishes are worse than worthless.”
“Aha, well yes. Put it like that, I can see your point, Herr Marx. Given the . . . the war and all. See, I’m a slow man, I need things spelt out, in a manner of speakin’.”
Marx jabbed him in the chest with the stem of his pipe. “Take this recent shooting at the Queen.”
Field’s heart quickened. “Yes, Herr Marx, wotcher think o’ that now?”
“I think, what a pity no one ever shoots at cabinet ministers!” said Marx. “You’ve read my anti-Palmerston tracts, perhaps?”
Field shook his head.
“You must ask your blissful wife to read you my thoughts on the prime minister one day. The great liberal, the radical reformer, Palmerston? And how much better we all would be if he were dead and buried? Ja?”
“Yah,” said Field. “But what about the Queen, then? Where do you stand on . . . well—not to put too fine a point upon it—shootin’ the Queen?”
“A question for you, first, Mr. Meadow: are you fond of Primrose Hill?”
Field’s mind raced. Fond of Primrose Hill. Was it a code?
“Not in particular, sir, although it’s got its points, does Primrose Hill. I got nothin’ against Primrose Hill, if it comes to that. Why do you ask?”
“Because, Mr. Meadow, that is where this omnibus is going.”
“Ah, yes, of course.”
“Do you really think I will confess assassination to you, an officer of the so-called law?”
“What? Herr Marx, that’s not who I am—I’m a worker, like you!”
“I am not a worker, sir, I am a revolutionist. And this is my stop coming up. Detective Bucket, isn’t it? My wife and I enjoyed reading about you in the Dickens, even if you are a counterrevolutionary and an enemy of the people.”
Field’s face slowly turned a shade of purple. “Think you’re clever, do you?”
“I do indeed, Mr. Bucket.”
“I am not Bucket!” shouted the detective, attracting the scrutiny of the conductor. Field lowered his voice. “You know I could take you into custody right this minute? Hustle you and yours onto a packet ship straight back to Germany?”
“Of course.”
“Then, Herr Marx, talk to me. Open your heart. It will do you good, and to do otherwise would be sheerest folly on your part.”
“Doubtless.”
“So? Perhaps, sir, you would miss the checks that your friend Herr Engels sends you? If the postal authorities were to stop ’em?”
Marx’s brow furrowed.
“Perhaps your good wife already knows who is the father of your servant’s child?”
Marx shot Field a look of wide-eyed alarm.
“Oh, yes, our people know all about it. Maybe I’m not clever enough to fool you, Herr Marx, but we keep a close eye and I could cause you certain difficulties, I’m sure you would agree.”
Marx looked off again and nodded slowly.
“Was your lot in on it?” asked Field. “Firing upon the Queen?”
The man was silent for some time as the ’bus crawled up the hill. “You feel it, don’t you?” he said finally. “It’s coming. The Times says this was a lone crazy man yesterday who tried to do this, but you don’t believe The Times, do you, Mr. Bucket? No more do I. Because you can feel what’s coming, too, just as I can, just as do thousands across Europe. The railroad, this remarkable new invention, you can hear it approaching from a long way off, ja? What you feel, Mr. Bucket, what you fear, what you hear in the distance, is the sound of the revolution that is coming.”
“I’m a policeman, Mr. Marx
. Not a fortune-teller, not a philosopher. I’m an uneducated man. But I’ve got a job to do and I do it, unlike some as I could mention, leavin’ wife and children near penniless whilst he’s off at some library. I arrest wrong-doers and turn them over to the magistrates. You say that makes me an enemy of the people, but there are many people who would say that makes me their friend.”
Marx made sure his pipe was extinguished, gingerly dipping a thumb into the bowl.
“When will you wake up? You especially—a policeman, in your own subjugation, complicit. You feel inferior, speaking to me about ‘your betters’ and your lack of education and touching your cap to me—that was not all an act, Mr. Bucket, don’t tell me it was. Mein Gott, you are the architect of your own pain! It is true, is it not? You rank yourself quite low on the scale of things. You serve your masters, hoping like a dog for a crumb from their table, or a pat on the head or a kind word. And when none of that is forthcoming, you simply try harder to please them. You poor man, how miserable your life is, and how alone with that pain you are. And when this dream nears its end, and you are about to wake to endless night, what then will you say of your life? That it was empty? Meaningless? Join us, Mr. Bucket. At least, sir, when you lie awake at night, as I know you do, think about it. Have a pamphlet.”
Marx thrust a crumpled, soiled sheet of paper into Field’s hand. Across the top Field saw the words a specter is haunting europe! He was speechless as the omnibus clopped to a halt.
“Listen,” said Marx, lowering his voice, “do you think you could loan me a fiver, just until the end of the month?”
Field’s head was spinning. “You want money from me?” he said, hoarsely.
“Even a quid would help, old man. I have mouths to feed. No? Never mind. My wife will be excited to hear I met you, Mr. Bucket.”
Marx stepped down onto the street, turned, and waved up at Field with his pipe as the ’bus started up again.
“Old man, the Queen is irrelevant! Give me the man who runs his railroad over the backs of the workers who built it!” Marx aimed his pipe at Field, as though it were a pistol. “Put him in my sights, and—bang!”