The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

by Lillian de la Torre

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  The Return of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

  Lillian de la Torre

  MYSTERIOUSPRESS.COM

  DEDICATION

  To my beloved Theodore and Evelyn,

  who share the “Johnsonian aether.”

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  Murder Lock’d In

  The Bedlam Bam

  The Disappearing Servant Wench

  The Blackamoor Unchain’d

  The Lost Heir

  The Resurrection Men

  Milady Bigamy

  Preview: The Exploits of Dr. Sam Johnson, Detector

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  FOREWORD

  Once upon a time I had an argument with my husband, the Professor. I usually forget an argument as soon as it is over, but I have never forgotten this one, for its consequences were far-reaching.

  The Professor was decrying my favorite reading, detective stories.

  “Detectives, bosh!” he snorted. “Drawling dilettantes, cute brides, sententious Chinamen, dear old ladies—next thing, I suppose, a police dog!”

  “There’s been a police dog,” I admitted. “Granted, if the detective’s flimsy, the story’s flimsy. But if the detective is a solid and many-sided personality, like—like, for instance, Dr. Sam: Johnson in Boswell’s great biography—”

  As the words left my lips, I knew what I had. Here was a real man as versatile and various as any fictitious detective, just and humane, with wide-ranging interests and flavorful personality; a man of undaunted valor, keen intellect, and scientific curiosity. What a detective he would make! And he came equipped with his Boswell, the only original Boswell, a fascinating character in his own right, with his amatory exploits, his flair for sensation, and his gift of observation.

  And the two friends flourished in the English Age of Reason, the 18th Century, a time of awakening scientific curiosity and humanitarian regard for the fate of the individual. As Howard Haycraft has pointed out, detective interest could hardly have come along sooner. In earlier days, “whodunit” was not the point. If a Montague was murdered, the thing to do was not to ask questions, but to go out and poignard a Capulet. Any Capulet would do.

  The urge to ask questions, the appetite for facts, may be dated, in England, from the founding of the Royal Society in 1660. Then experimental science began to flourish, and gradually that inquiring habit of mind began to be brought to bear on the investigation of crime.

  It was in 1698 that the first expert witnesses appeared in court to narrate experiments they had performed which proved the innocence of the accused, a lawyer named Spencer Cowper. In 1733, faced with a locked-room murder, the authorities demonstrated the classic string trick in open court. (See “Murder Lock’d In”.) In 1770, footsteps in the snow were first fitted to the shoes that made them. In 1783 the ingenious Captain Donellan was detected distilling and administering the first fatal dose of prussic acid, and was duly hanged for it.

  These were only beginnings. There was as yet no such thing as a detective. Scotland Yard only came into being in the next century. Before that, the law was represented on the one hand by the watch, ineffective old “Charlies” hired by each parish to cry the hours and keep the peace if they could; and on the other hand by professional thief-takers like Jonathan Wild, who would cheerfully swear away your life for money; while trading Justices in Bow Street plundered your pockets in the middle.

  As the 18th century advanced, Bow Street began to know honest magistrates like Henry Fielding, the novelist. Later his brother Sir John Fielding flourished, the famous “Blind Beak of Bow Street,” with his sturdy second in command, Saunders Welch. These latter were Dr. Johnson’s friends, and from them he learned about crime. “Johnson, who had an eager and unceasing curiosity to know human life in all its variety, told me,” records Boswell, “that he attended Mr. Welch in his office for a whole winter, to hear the examinations of the culprits.”

  Here in a word is the answer to a question that high-minded people often ask. Why is crime so fascinating? Because there is no better way to learn about human life in all its variety. It reveals man under stress, wound up to his highest pitch. A crime, so to speak, blows off the roof of man’s privacy, and the law, the press, and public curiosity focus a great spotlight on everyone involved, innocent or guilty. In the ensuing investigation, in the trial which follows, everyone stands pitilessly revealed, victim, bystanders and culprit alike, all caught in the spotlight glare.

  The 18th-century criminal enjoyed his full share of the spotlight. Vast mobs crowded to Tyburn Hill to see him hanged. There on the spot they could, and many did, purchase for sixpence his “Last Dying Speech and Confession” (whether or not he had made one), ghosted by some Grub Street hack. Those who missed the show could still gloat over the malefactor’s misdeeds in doggerel broadside ballads, or collections of “Newgate Lives,” or even a full-scale folio transcript of some notorious trial, all of which poured from the presses throughout the century, turning an honest penny for the printers and keeping crime in the spotlight.

  The 18th century was rich in picturesque culprits to take the spotlight, highwaymen and footpads, frauds and forgers. Dr. Sam: Johnson interested himself in the forgers and the frauds. He even wrote the last dying speech and confession of one of them, Dr. Dodd, the fashionable “macaroni parson,” who had augmented his emoluments with some quiet sleight-of-pen work, and was hanged for it. Visiting Bristol, he studied the literary forgeries of Thomas Chatterton, the “marvellous boy,” and pronounced him, correctly, both a fraud and a genius. When “Ossian” Macpherson produced “an ancient epic poem translated from the Gaelic,” Dr. Johnson immediately perceived it to be a contemporary fake, and denounced it as such. “Do you think,” demanded a believer, “that any man of modern age could have written such poems?” “Yes, sir,” replied Johnson contemptuously, “many men, many women, and many children!” Naturally Macpherson, a surly Scot, waxed irate. When he sent Johnson a threatening letter, the sage replied truculently, “I will not be deterred from detecting what I think a cheat by the menaces of a ruffian.” (Note the word “detecting.” He knew what he was doing.) It was for defence against Macpherson’s threats that he purchased his famous oaken stick.

  His curiosity about the world ranged wide. He gratified it by performing chemical experiments in Thrale’s garden shed, with such enthusiasm that Mrs. Thrale feared he would blow them all up. He was open-minded enough to seek evidence of the supernatural world; but when he probed the matter of the Cock Lane Ghost and wrote up the results, he was forced to conclude that Scratching Fanny was no ghost at all. “He expressed great indignation at the imposture of the Cock Lane Ghost,” says Boswell, “and related, with much satisfaction, how he had assisted in detecting the cheat.” (Detecting again!)

  James Boswell, Dr. Johnson’s disciple and biographer, was by profession a lawyer. He too was fascinated by the world of mystery and crime, but his point of view was more sensational. His approach to a forger—the intriguing lady forger, Mrs. Rudd—was to make love to her and take her along to ride the circuit with him. He haunted executions with “horrid eagerness,” and badgered condemned men to reveal t
heir tremors. He was avid for such sensational experiences, and wrote them all up, in his letters, in his diaries, and in the newspapers.

  The late Colonel Ralph Isham, who restored the Boswell Papers to the world, in general seemed to regard my inventions with indulgence. He did protest to me, however, that in them I was making Boswell appear too much of a poltroon. This I firmly denied, pointing out that Boswell liked to savor and record all his emotions, including fear. At Inchkenneth, for instance, he visited the ruined chapel by night, was gratified to experience “a pleasing awful confusion,” and came back in haste, as Dr. Johnson told Mrs. Thrale, “for fear of spectres.” Again, calling on Mrs. Rudd, he alarmed himself pleasurably with apprehensions of both bullies lurking in the kitchen and ghosts haunting the parlor. Neither thought kept him from amorous dalliance. When in Scotland he lost a client to the gallows, the very sight of the victim in his grave clothes struck him, he records, “with a kind of tremor.” Tremors, however, did not prevent him from plotting boldly (though abortively) to resuscitate the still-warm cadaver when the hangman was through with it.

  Like Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson a century later, Johnson and Boswell perambulated the most facinating of cities, London. “He who is tired of London,” observed Dr. Johnson, “is tired of life.” Theirs, however, was a London with a difference—not the fog-bound metropolis that Conan Doyle etched, but the sparkling city that Canaletto painted.

  There they found a chiaroscuro of contrasts, from high elegance to the lowest of wretchedness. The macaronis of the Dilettanti Club donned taffeta caftans of Roman purple to toast the arts of antiquity. The rakes of the Hell-Fire Club assumed monkish garb and conjured up the Devil. Balloonists in gaudy “aerostatic globes” rose in air.

  Meanwhile in nighted churchyards bodysnatchers dug up dead men for anatomists to dissect. Abandoned children slept in doorways. (Dr. Johnson, passing by, liked to surprise such waifs, now and then, with a sixpence slipped into the sleeping hand.)

  Inhumanity was rife. The lunatics in Bedlam were treated as a kind of impromptu Grand Guignol show. Superannuated black slaves, turned out to beg or starve in the streets, were curses with heartless jocosity as “St. Giles Blackbirds;” while able-bodied fugitives were transported in chains to the horrors of Jamaica. Slavery in every aspect incensed the humane Dr. Johnson, who thought that all men were by nature free (though he was sometimes not so sure about Americans).

  Such were the men, and such was the setting, that flashed into my mind that day. Soon plots of mystery and detection began to form theselves around many of the striking events, the picturesque scenes, and the eccentric personalities of that fascinating time; and Dr. Sam: Johnson as detector dominated them all.

  To the best of my knowledge, I was the first—but not the last—to weave such stories around a real historical character for a detective. I was certainly the first to select a historical character who already had his Boswell to narrate his adventures.

  Writing as James Boswell, I found it a challenge to use the rhetoric and vocabulary that he would have used, and no other. He made a point of adhering to certain old-style spellings, and so do I. Dr. Johnson’s words come sometimes from the record, sometimes from my imagination as I conceive he would have spoken.

  Boswell said of himself that he had become “impregnated with the Johnsonian aether.” I should like to think that the “Johnsonian aether” permeates my tales, and that in fictitiously presenting Dr. Sam: Johnson as a detector of crime and chicane, righting wrongs and penetrating mysteries, I have made him act in a manner that is always consistent with the real man as he walked the earth two hundred years ago.

  Lillian de la Torre

  MURDER LOCK’D IN

  “Murder! Murder lock’d in!”

  With these horrifying words began my first experience of the detective genius of the great Dr. Sam: Johnson, him who—but let us proceed in order.

  The ’63 was to me a memorable year; for in it I had the happiness to obtain the acquaintance of that extraordinary man. Though then but a raw Scotch lad of two-and-twenty, I had already read the WORKS OF JOHNSON with delight and instruction, and imbibed therefrom the highest reverence for their authour. Coming up to London in that year, I came with the firm resolution to win my way into his friendship.

  On Monday, the 16th of May, I was sitting in the back-parlour of Tom Davies, book-seller and sometime actor, when the man I sought to meet came unexpectedly into the shop. Glimpsing him through the glass-door, Davies in sepulchral tone announced his approach as of Hamlet’s ghost: “Look, my Lord, it comes!”

  I scrambled to my feet as the great man entered, his tall, burly form clad in mulberry stuff of full-skirted antique cut, a large bushy greyish wig surmounting his strong-cut features of classical mould.

  “I present Mr. Boswell—” began Davies. If he intended to add “from Scotland,” I cut him off.

  “Don’t tell him where I come from!” I cried, having heard of the great man’s prejudice against Scots.

  “From Scotland!” cried Davies roguishly.

  “Mr. Johnson,” said I—for not yet had he become “Doctor” Johnson, though as such I shall always think of him—“Mr. Johnson, I do indeed come from Scotland, but I cannot help it.”

  “That, sir, I find,” quipped Johnson with a smile, “is what a great many of your countrymen cannot help!”

  This jest, I knew, was aimed at the hordes of place-seekers who “could not help coming from” Scotland to seek their fortunes in London when Scottish Lord Bute became first minister to the new King; but it put me out of countenance.

  “Don’t be uneasy,” Davies whispered me at parting, “I can see he likes you very well!”

  Thus encouraged, I made bold to wait upon the philosopher the very next Sunday, in his chambers in the Temple, where the benchers of the law hold sway. I strode along Fleet Street, clad in my best; my new bloom-coloured coat, so I flattered myself, setting off my neat form and dark, sharp-cut features. As I walked along, I savoured in anticipation this, my first encounter with the lion in his den, surrounded by his learned volumes and the tools of his trade.

  But it was not yet to be, for as I turned under the arch into Inner Temple Lane, I encountered the philosopher issuing from his doorway in full Sunday panoply. His mulberry coat was well brushed, his wig was new-powdered, he wore a clean linen neckcloth and fresh bands to his wrists.

  “Welcome, Mr. Boswell,” said he cordially, “you are welcome to the Temple. As you see, I am just now going forth. Will you not walk along with me? I go to wait on Mistress Lennon the poetess, who dwells here in the Temple, but a step across the gardens, in Bayfield Court. Come, I will present you at her levee.”

  “With all my heart, sir,” said I, pleased to go among the wits, and in such company.

  But as it turned out, I never did present myself at the literary levee, for as we came to Bayfield Court, a knot of people buzzing about the door caught us up in their concerns.

  “Well met, Mr. Johnson,” called a voice, “we have need of your counsel. We have sent for the watch, but he does not come, the sluggard.”

  “The watch? What’s amiss, ma’am?”

  A babble of voices answered him. Every charwoman known to Bayfield Court, it seemed, seethed in a swarm before the entry.

  “Old Mrs. Duncom—locked in, and hears no knock—here’s Mrs. Taffety come to dine—”

  A dozen hands pushed forward an agitated lady in a capuchin.

  “Invited, Mr. Johnson, two o’clock the hour, and Mrs. Duncom don’t answer. I fear the old maid is ill and the young maid is gone to fetch the surgeon, and Mrs. Duncom you know has not the use of her limbs.”

  “We must rouze her. Come, Mrs. Taffety, I’ll make myself heard, I warrant.”

  The whole feminine contingent, abandoning hope of the watch, escorted us up the stair. As we mounted, I took stock of our posse. The benchers of the law, their employers, were off on their Sunday occasions, but the servitors were present in force. I s
aw an Irish wench with red hair and a turned-up nose, flanked close by a couple of lanky, ill-conditioned lads, probably sculls to the benchers and certainly admirers to the wench. A dark wiry little gypsy of a woman with alert black eyes boosted along a sturdy motherly soul addressed by all as Aunt Moll. Sukey and Win and Juggy, twittering to each other, followed after.

  Arrived at the attick landing, Dr. Johnson raised his voice and called upon Mrs. Duncom in rolling stentorian tones. Mrs. Taffety seconded him, invoking the maids in a thin screech: “Betty! Annet!” Dead silence answered them.

  “Then we must break in the door.” said Dr. Johnson.

  Indeed he looked abundantly capable of effecting such a feat single-handed; but at that moment a stumble of feet upon the stair proclaimed the arrival of the watch. “Hold!” cried that worthy. “None of your assault and battery, for I’ll undertake to spring the lock.”

  “Will you so?” said Dr. Johnson, eyeing him thoughtfully.

  The watch was no Bow Street constable, but one of the Temple guardians, a stubby old man in a seedy fustian coat, girded with a broad leather belt from which depended his short sword and his truncheon of office.

  The women regarded him admiringly as he stepped forward, full of self-importance, and made play with a kind of skewer which he thrust into the lock.

  Nothing happened.

  After considerable probing and coaxing the man was fain to desist.

  “’Tis plain, sir,” he covered his failure, “that the door is bolted from within.”

  “Bolted!” cried Mrs. Taffety. “Of course ’tis bolted! Mistress Duncom ever barred herself in like a fortress, for she kept a fortune in broad pieces under her bed in a silver tankard, and so she went ever in fear of robbers.”

  “How came you to know of this fortune, ma’am?” demanded Dr. Johnson.

  “Why, sir, the whole world knew, ’twas no secret.”