The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Read online

  MIKE ASHLEY is an author and editor of over eighty books, including many Mammoth titles. He worked for over thirty years in local government but is now a full-time writer and researcher specializing in ancient history, historical fiction and fantasy, crime and science fiction. He lives in Kent with his wife and over 30,000 books.

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  Constable & Robinson Ltd

  3 The Lanchesters

  162 Fulham Palace Road

  London W6 9ER

  www.constablerobinson.com

  First published in the UK by Robinson, an imprint of Constable & Robinson Ltd 2007

  Collection and editorial material copyright © Mike Ashley 2007

  All rights reserved. This book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not, by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, re sold, hired out or otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

  A copy of the British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978 1 84529 630 8

  eISBN: 978-1-78033-353-3

  Printed and bound in the EU

  1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2

  Contents

  Copyright & Acknowledgments

  Introduction: Dickensian Crimes, Mike Ashley

  The Marshalsea Handicap, Gillian Linscott

  The Three-legged Cat of Great Clatterden, Mary Reed and Eric Mayer

  Murder in Murray’s Court, David Stuart Davies

  The Leaping Lover, Kage Baker

  The End of Little Nell, Robert Barnard

  Encounter in the Dark, F. Gwynplaine Maclntyre

  The Lord No Zoo, Deirdre Counihan

  The Bartered Child, Charles Todd

  The Little Christian, Rebecca Tope

  The Fiery Devil, Peter Tremayne

  The Divine Nature, Kate Ellis

  I Encounter an Old Friend and a New Mystery, Derek Wilson

  Awaiting the Dawn, Marilyn Todd

  The Letter, Joan Lock

  Not Cricket, Judith Cutler

  Tom Wasp and the Swell Mob, Amy Myers

  Miss Havisham’s Revenge, Alanna Knight

  The Prints of the Beast, Michael Pearce

  The Mystery of Canute Villa, Martin Edwards

  Watchful Unto Death, Hilary Bonner

  The Tidal, Michael Ryan

  The Thorn of Anxiety, Edward Marston

  Copyright and Acknowledgments

  All stories are original to this anthology and copyright © 2007 in the name of the individual authors. They are printed by permission of the author and their literary representative, as follows:

  “The Leaping Lover” by permission of Kage Baker and the Linn Prentis Literary Agency.

  “The End of Little Nell” by permission of Robert Barnard.

  “Watchful Unto Death” by permission of Hilary Bonner.

  “The Lord No Zoo” by permission of Deirdre Counihan.

  “Not Cricket” by permission of Judith Cutler.

  “Murder in Murray’s Court” by permission of David Stuart Davies.

  “The Mystery of Canute Villa” by permission of Martin Edwards.

  “The Divine Nature” by Kate Ellis and “The Fiery Devil” by Peter Tremayne by permission of the authors and A. M. Heath & Co.

  “Miss Havisham’s Revenge” by permission of Alanna Knight. The story has been adapted and extensively revised from a chapter in Estella (Macmillan, 1986).

  “The Marshalsea Handicap” by permission of Gillian Linscott.

  “The Letter” by permission of Joan Lock.

  “Encounter in the Dark” by permission of F. Gwynplaine MacIntyre.

  “The Thorn of Anxiety” by permission of Edward Marston.

  “Tom Wasp and the Swell Mob” by permission of Amy Myers and the Dorian Literary Agency.

  “The Prints of the Beast” by permission of Michael Pearce.

  “The Three-legged Cat of Great Clatterden” by permission of Mary Reed and Eric Mayer.

  “The Tidal” by permission of Michael Ryan.

  “The Bartered Child” by permission of Charles Todd.

  “Awaiting the Dawn” by permission of Marilyn Todd.

  “The Little Christian” by permission of Rebecca Tope.

  “I Encounter an Old Friend and a New Mystery” by permission of Derek Wilson.

  Introduction:

  Dickensian Crimes

  Mike Ashley

  Even if we’ve never read anything by Charles Dickens, there can’t be many of us who don’t know the names of at least one Dickensian character, probably more. Ebenezer Scrooge
, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Nell . . . some of them have even found their way into the English language. Dickens was supreme in his ability to create memorable characters, many associated with wonderful one-liners. Scrooge and his “Bah, humbug!”; young Oliver and “Please, sir, I want some more”; Uriah Heep being “ever so ’umble”; Mr Bumble’s “The law is a’ ass” or Sidney Carton’s dramatic “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I have ever done.”

  Dickens’s characters live beyond the printed page. They are still with us a hundred and fifty years later and we can easily believe that they had a life beyond the novels. After all, what did become of Oliver Twist when he grew up? How did Scrooge cope with his new-found generosity? What other crimes did Inspector Bucket investigate?

  Ah, Inspector Bucket. Now we’re talking. When Dickens introduced Inspector Bucket in Bleak House in 1853 he created the first true fictional detective in England. He was modelled on a real police detective, Inspector Field of the Metropolitan Police Force. Dickens frequently accompanied the police on their duties, betraying a fascination beyond the simple research for his books. Dickens was fascinated by crime and criminals, and we should not overlook the significant role that Dickens played in portraying the police in fiction and thereby helping along the fledgling field of crime fiction. The majority of Oliver Twist, for example, is set amongst the criminal underworld. There are many crimes in Our Mutual Friend whilst in Martin Chuzzlewit Dickens created the first fictional private investigator in England in the shape of the mysterious Mr Nadgett. Most puzzling of all is The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which involved either a murder or disappearance but was unsolved because Dickens died before he could complete the novel, thus providing plenty of speculation amongst Dickens devotees.

  Which brings us to the purpose of this anthology. It is a celebration of Charles Dickens’s fascination with crime. Here you will find stories that either feature Dickens himself involved in a crime connected with people and places that he knew or which feature characters from his books likewise involved in a mystery. For example, we find Mr Pickwick consulted over the disappearance of a young woman. We find Oliver Twist having to help the Artful Dodger who has been accused of murder. We find Ebenezer Scrooge, now a changed man, with a stolen baby. We meet David Copperfield in later life not once, but twice: in one story investigating the fate of Mr Murdstone, whilst in another teamed up again with Mr Micawber. We also meet the real Little Nell, who may not be quite the angel we all thought in The Old Curiosity Shop. All of Dickens’s major works are represented including Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Hard Times, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and, of course, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens himself also turns a hand to investigating, and we meet up with Mrs Gaskell, S. Baring Gould, even Edgar Allan Poe. All of the stories here are based either directly on characters or incidents in Dickens’s works or on events in his life.

  You do not need to know Dickens’s work to understand the stories. Each one is complete in itself, with any necessary background explained. And to further help set them in context I have provided an introduction to each story which follows Dickens’s life.

  Every story has been especially written for this book. I was not expecting every author to attempt a pastiche of Dickens’s style, though a few have done so admirably. Rather I was after stories that remained true to Dickens’s life and to the characters in his books, with the object of bringing alive the world of Charles Dickens and his fascination for the underworld of crime and mystery. So, without further ado let us answer Inspector Bucket’s question, “You don’t happen to have heard of a murder?” Indeed we have – quite a few. . . .

  – Mike Ashley

  The Marshalsea Handicap

  Gillian Linscott

  Charles Dickens was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, on 7 February 1812. He was the second of what would eventually be eight children, though two of them died in infancy. His father, John, was a clerk in the pay-office at the dockyard. Through his work John and his family were transferred first to London in 1814 and then Chatham in 1817. For the time John Dickens was moderately well paid, his salary of £350 in 1820 the equivalent of about £22,000 today, but with a growing family and a determination to give young Charles a good education, it was not enough. Neither was John sensible with his money; rather, like Mr Micawber, he spent beyond his means. Admiralty reforms led to John Dickens and his family having to return to London in 1822 and settle in Camden Town, in what was one of the less salubrious parts of the suburbs. It was an area that the young Dickens explored thoroughly and features time and again in his books. Debts mounted and in February 1824, on his twelfth birthday, young Charles was sent to work in Warren’s Blacking Factory, which made shoe blacking, earning a shilling a day. His job was to tie together the bottles of blacking and stick labels on them. The factory was on the bank of the Thames near Charing Cross. Though welcomed by his father, it was too late. Two weeks after Charles had started work, John Dickens was arrested for debt and cast into the Marshalsea Prison. He was soon joined by the rest of his family, except for Charles, who continued to work and who lived in lodgings, unbearably lonely. Such is the point at which our first story begins.

  Gillian Linscott is a former reporter and Parliamentary journalist, and the author of the Nell Bray series of suffragette mysteries that began with Sister Beneath the Sheet (1991) and includes the award-winning Blood on the Wood (2000). Although most of her books are set in the early 20th century, Murder, I Presume (1990) takes place in 1874 in the aftermath of the death of Dr Livingstone.

  “Right,” I told them. “They’re under starter’s orders and these are the odds.” I showed them the list:

  Little Wife – evens.

  Geranium – three to one.

  Glue Boy – three to one.

  The Inventor – ten to one.

  Holy Joe – twenty to one.

  Fifty to one the field.

  “Geranium should be better odds.” Watts, moaning as usual.

  “Think so? Father Christmas is fond of flowers. Don’t you remember he turned up one day with a rose in his buttonhole?”

  “Carnation,” Natty said. “It was a clove carnation. And how you got it narrowed down to those five?”

  “Makes no odds whether it was a carnation or a dandelion. Instinct’s what I go by and instinct tells me there’s only five in the field worth a second look.”

  Instinct’s worth something, true, but inside knowledge is worth a good bit more and that was what I had, though I’d no intention of letting on to Watts and Natty. The thing is, if you’ve been a customer of a place as often as I have, you’re valued by the management. The top storey but one of Marshalsea debtors’ prison, south of the Thames in Southwark, has probably never had a more regular patron than me – in and out two or three times a year as my luck goes up or down – and the governor and I are like old school chums. So when it came to some tips from the stable on the annual Marshalsea Father Christmas Handicap Stakes, he put me right.

  “He’s got it narrowed down to five and as it happens three of them are on your floor. You know Mr Perkins?”

  “The one with the pretty little wife who brings his dinner in every afternoon?”

  “That’s the one. Mr Shipham is very sentimental about wives. His own died young and he confided that little Mrs Perkins reminds him of her.”

  I should mention here that Mr Shipham is the one we call Father Christmas, for reasons that will become obvious.

  “It’s a one-horse race, then?” I said.

  “No, because he’s not quite made up his mind about Mr Perkins. He thinks he may be responsible for his own misfortunes and perhaps not as thoughtful towards his wife as he should be. At present he’s rather inclining to two of your other neighbours. One’s Mr Peat.”

  “Who went bankrupt trying to breed a yellow geranium.”

  “Mr Shipham thinks it shows praiseworthy enterprise. T
hen there’s Mr Dickens.”

  “Pretty ordinary case, I’d say. Government clerk spending beyond his means. A dozen of those on every floor.”

  “Yes. But Mr Shipham has been impressed by the son. He saw him when he came to visit his father and said he thought he’d go far.”

  I was surprised. I’d seen the boy on his visits, but he’d struck me as no more than a twelve-year-old streak of misery, taking it hard.

  “Young Charlie the glue boy, you mean?” I said.

  “Why do you call him the glue boy?”

  “Because he smells of glue. He works in Warren’s Blacking Factory near the Strand, sticking labels on the tins. Boiled horses’ hooves, that’s what they make glue from, and that’s what he smells of.”

  We discussed the two from another floor, a failed inventor and a clergyman who’d spent all his money, and some he hadn’t got, trying to put a Bible on every beer house counter, and I went away to make up my betting book.

  Now, you won’t find the Marshalsea Father Christmas Handicap in any racing calendar and you probably won’t have heard about it at all unless you’ve done time in the Marshalsea yourself, but among debtors it’s nearly as famous as the Derby. It isn’t run at Christmas, either. That’s just the name we give it because for one lucky man it’s like all the Christmases he ever had rolled into one, thanks to Mr Shipham. What happened was, around forty years ago when Mr Shipham was about the age that Glue Boy is now, his own father died in the Marshalsea. Young master Shipham supports what’s left of the family and goes on to make a fortune in the building trade, but how ever much money he makes it preys on his mind that he couldn’t save his own dad. So once a year, on his father’s birthday, he chooses the most deserving man in the prison and pays off his debts up to the sum of two hundred pounds. Now, since a lot of poor devils end up in here for owing no more than thirty pounds or so, that’s the key to the door and a bit over. Mr Shipham starts making up his mind a week or two beforehand, discusses things with the governor a bit but mostly relies on his own judgement. What he does is sit quietly in the common rooms in every part of the place, just watching and listening to what goes on. Now, you might think that would mean he couldn’t move for people crowding round him and begging him to choose them, only the Marshalsea Stakes has its rules like any other and the main one is that the debtors and their friends and relations mustn’t approach him or even let on they notice him. Well, that’s asking a lot, of course, but it helps that he’s a quiet old gent, nothing special to look at and his clothes as plain as anybody’s, only better quality if you get up close. So he can sit of an evening on a bench by the fire with his pipe and after a while people do get used to him more or less and the drunks start drinking and the swearers start effing and blinding again, all nearly natural. That’s the point we were at when I made my final list of the odds with just a few days to go to the big day.