The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  Now, seeing what the governor had said, you might think I was wrong making Perkins and the little wife favourite, but taking my meals in the same common room as them I’d had a good chance to weigh them up and reckoned the governor wasn’t allowing enough for her form. To my mind, she had winner’s enclosure written all over her. She was as pretty as a doll fresh out of the toy box, big blue eyes, little wisps of fair hair showing underneath her bonnet. She always kept herself neat, even though there couldn’t be anything to spend on clothes, her collars and cuffs starched and laundered, little boots clean even after tripping through the muddy streets round the Marshalsea every afternoon carrying her basket. That basket was a winner in its own right. For a start, it was so big and heavy that a man with any warmth in his heart couldn’t stop himself from offering to carry it for her. I’ve seen two of the most hardened sinners in the place practically fighting each other for the privilege of carrying it up the last flight of stairs. Then when she sat down with Perkins at their share of the long common room table and unpacked it, every eye in the room was on it, like kids at a Punch and Judy show. Every day there’d be two clean handkerchiefs for Perkins (who sniffed a good deal), every other day a clean shirt, once a week a clean pillowcase. I daresay King George himself didn’t have better care taken of his linen than Perkins in the Marshalsea. Then, bless you, she’d unfold a snowy white napkin, put it down in front of him and take his dinner out of her basket. By then, you could hear a sound like the sea sucking round rocks when the tide goes out. It was all the other men in the room licking their lips. We got to know the menu by heart. Sundays, for a treat, he got big slices of meat off the joint with potatoes tucked up in newspaper to keep them warm, followed by a slice of apple pie. Mondays was cold cuts and pickle, Tuesdays what was left of the cold cuts done in a curry, Wednesdays a lamb cutlet with a neat little pot of mint sauce. She’d sit opposite watching him eat, not taking a morsel herself then, when he was quite done, pack the plate and knife and fork back in her basket and put his dirty linen that she was taking away for washing on top. Then she’d give him a peck on the cheek – always embarrassed at having to do it in front of a roomful of strangers – and slip away, light as a wisp of hay blowing across the paddock. Talking about her round the fire afterwards on the day that I’d worked out the odds, the three of us agreed she’d thrown herself away when she married Perkins. He’d owned a couple of draper’s shops before his problems and it could be that she’d been impressed with seeing his name up over the doors. But he was a poor enough creature in himself, blaming all the world for what had happened to him, bearing grudges.

  “He doesn’t appreciate what he’s got,” Watts said.

  “Picking the poor woman up like that over a pair of gloves,” Natty agreed.

  Watching her as we did, we’d all noticed that her hands when she packed up her basket were sporting a neat pair of lilac-coloured gloves. So had Perkins.

  “Are those new gloves you’ve bought?”

  She’d coloured up.

  “Of course not. I found them in the back of a drawer.”

  “Practically accusing her of going out buying finery when he was locked up for debt,” Natty said.

  “Even if she had, what difference would a pair of gloves make?” added Watts.

  I noticed that Glue Boy was standing not far away, listening to us. Usually he spent his visits talking to his father but his senior’s attention was taken up with a couple of the younger brats. It struck me that when he wasn’t blubbing Glue Boy’s eyes were better than the rest of him, big and wary like a thoroughbred’s, noticing things. When Natty and Watts moved off to their card school I patted the bench beside me, inviting him to sit down. He did but a bit gingerly, as if he expected the bench to be dirty.

  “So how d’you rate Mrs Perkins?” I asked him.

  “She is the very model of a devoted wife.”

  I could have burst out laughing. Here was this shaver trying to sound like a gentleman three times his age. His voice was clear and carrying, like a child actor’s. Then I noticed him glancing towards Mr Shipham, sitting quietly by the fire.

  “Oh-ho, my lad, you’re not as green as you’re grass-looking,” I thought. I lowered my voice and moved closer to him, in spite of the whiff. “She’s the reason why Perkins is a furlong or two in front of your father.”

  He nodded. He’d seen that.

  “But the race isn’t over till it’s won,” I told him. “Mr Shipham is fairly impressed with you.”

  I’m not sure why I told him that, only I enjoy a close finish and it seemed to me the great handicapper had dealt a bit too lightly with Perkins. I could see Glue Boy had taken in what I said. He had the sense not to glance towards Mr Shipham again but later, when it was time for Glue Boy to go, he made a great business of saying goodbye to his father and even, gawd help us, kneeled down on the floor for his blessing. Over-egging it a bit, I thought, but from the thoughtful look on Mr Shipham’s face, it had played well.

  That was on the Monday evening, with only two clear days to go to the finish, the birthday of Mr Shipham’s late dad falling on a Thursday that year. On the Tuesday night, Perkins went and got himself poisoned. We didn’t know it was poison at first. All the day visitors had left, including Mr Shipham. The outside doors were locked. Inside, some of us were in bed already and a few, including Watts, Natty and me, were dredging the bottom of the punch-bowl round what was left of the fire. Then the shrieking started, coming from the cubbyhole of a room that Perkins shared with another cove. We all looked at each other. Perkins had been complaining of stomach gripes earlier, but then he was always complaining of something so we didn’t take any notice. Then the cove he shared with put his head round the door, yelling that Perkins was dying and to fetch the governor quick. The governor came and had him carried to the sick room. Perkins was groaning and shrieking all the time, face grey, so we had to admit that for once he did have something properly wrong with him.

  “Twisted gut,” Natty said. “A cousin of mine died from it.”

  “Gallstones,” said Watts.

  Geranium, who’d been woken up by the noise and reckoned he knew about medicine, said it was a burst appendix. It wasn’t worth making a book on it and just as well because by the time the outside doors were unlocked in the morning, all bets would have been off. The word had spread round the Marshalsea that Perkins was dead of rat poison. Now, being hundreds of years old, the Marshalsea’s got more than its fair quota of rats, so rat poison’s more common than sugar here. Every now and then, some poor blighter who can’t settle himself philosophically to being locked up decides to take a few mouthfuls of it as the quickest way out. So if the prison doctor said it was rat poison, rat poison it was, leaving open only the question of how it got inside Perkins.

  “For a start, he didn’t know he was taking it,” Natty said.

  No argument about that. A man with a good chance of being out with all his debts paid in two days and a loving little wife waiting for him isn’t going to take the boneyard exit of his own free will. Our common room had filled with visitors from outside plus debtors from other floors who wanted to know all about it. No sign of Mr Shipham. The word was that he was closeted with the governor, quite distressed.

  “They’ll have to send somebody to let his wife know,” Watts said.

  “That’s being seen to,” said somebody from the ground floor. “Can’t have her tripping in this afternoon with her basket as usual and finding him in his coffin.”

  Natty took his pipe out of his mouth and gave the man an old-fashioned look.

  “How come you lot on the ground floor know about the basket, then?”

  Several people spoke at once, saying much the same thing – everyone in the whole Marshalsea knew about Mrs Perkins and the daily visit with her old man’s dinner. Truth is, not a lot happens here and we gossip like farm wives on market day. You could feel the atmosphere change. Natty’s question, and his tone of voice, had brought into the open the question
we were all asking ourselves. If somebody nobbles one of the favourites, who gains?

  “Got to be one on your list, hasn’t it?” Watts said.

  Murmurs of agreement from all round. They all knew the odds and most of them had got bets on.

  “Not necessarily,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be one of the favourites. It could be anybody who thought he was in with a chance.”

  There was no point in pretending that Perkins’ death had nothing to do with the Marshalsea Handicap so we didn’t try.

  “You wouldn’t risk getting your neck stretched if you were only an outside chance,” somebody objected.

  “That’s the whole point about debtors,” Watts said. “We always think the outside chance is going to come up.”

  Couldn’t have put it better myself. I looked round, wondering if any of the favourites was listening. None that I could see. Geranium had taken himself off somewhere and Dickens had shut himself in his own room with his wife and young brats. Only I noticed his lad Glue Boy standing on the edge of our group, taking in every word.

  “Look at it logically, though,” Natty said. “Biggest chance, biggest motive. It makes sense to start with the favourites. Then you ask yourself, who out of them had the best chance of feeding him rat poison without anybody knowing.”

  “You’d slip it in his dinner,” said the man from the ground floor.

  Which was true enough, only our little group didn’t like it or the way he said it. It meant that he was putting suspicion fair and square on our top-storey-but-one common room. We were the ones with the opportunity. I pointed out that it didn’t need to be in his dinner, he could have been given something with poison in it by anyone, any time of the day. But the argument didn’t stand up for long. Rat poison acts pretty quickly and Perkins was a creature of routine. He’d eaten his dinner, drunk a glass of water with it and nothing else. So it had to be in the dinner and if you accepted that our common room had the best opportunity, well . . .

  “It puts Geranium and Dickens right in the frame,” said the man from the ground floor.

  My eyes went to Glue Boy. His whole body flinched and for a moment his eyes screwed up tight as if he wanted to shut out everything. Next second, they were wide open again, as if his life depended on taking in every detail of the scene. He said nothing. I don’t think the man from the ground floor had intended any harm to him, he just didn’t know who the lad was. But there wasn’t time to think any more about Glue Boy, because a new voice spoke up. A slow, preachy kind of voice.

  “If in the frame means under greatest suspicion . . .”

  Several impatient voices assured him that it did. It was Holy Joe, the clergyman. Until then, I hadn’t known he was in the room. He was sitting on a bench, some way apart from the group. A balding, egg-shaped man, very satisfied with himself in spite of where he’d landed up.

  “Then the argument is proceeding on a false premise. There would have been ample opportunity for a person from another floor to have introduced a noxious substance into the unfortunate man’s repast.”

  “How?”

  We all spoke at once. He’d probably never caught a congregation’s attention from the pulpit the way he held ours and you could see him enjoying it.

  “The fact of the matter is that Mrs Perkins left the basket containing her husband’s dinner on the landing of the floor below for some time yesterday when she was paying a visit to me in our common room.”

  Noises of incredulity all round. The idea of Mrs Perkins bothering with Holy Joe when there were plenty of other men in the place to talk to didn’t please anybody. Watts expressed the general feeling.

  “Why the hell would she want to visit you?”

  Holy Joe glared at him.

  “Because, unlike some people, Mrs Perkins has a proper Christian spirit. In spite of her adversities, she came to make a small contribution to my Bible fund.”

  That silenced us for a while. Against all the odds, Holy Joe still cherished this mad scheme of putting Bibles in beer houses. He’d tried to get most of us to stump up for it, with as much chance of success as running a three-legged donkey in the Gold Cup.

  “How much?” somebody asked.

  “A shilling. Not a great deal, perhaps, but you know the parable of the widow’s mite . . .”

  “She wasn’t a widow then,” somebody said.

  We were worried that Holy Joe was going to start preaching at us.

  “Was she with you long?” I said.

  “Ten minutes or more. She asked me about my work and we prayed together.”

  “And the basket was out on the landing all the time?”

  “Yes, indeed. I accompanied her out to the landing and carried it upstairs for her, as far as this landing.”

  Then, probably judging that he’d made his dramatic effect, he got up and left. Natty, Watts and I moved away from the rest of the group and formed a huddle in the corner to talk it over.

  “If he’s right, anybody had time to do it,” Watts said. “Whoever it is notices her basket on the landing, nips down to the basement for the nearest dish of rat poison and sprinkles it over Perkins’ dinner while she’s in there praying.”

  “If he is right,” Natty said. “But why make such a point of telling us?”

  “Well, it puts suspicion away from him for a start,” said Watts. “He couldn’t be inside praying with her and outside with the rat poison at the same time.”

  “But he’s admitted to carrying the basket upstairs for her. He could have put it in then.”

  “Twenty stairs or so and her walking just in front of him? Don’t be daft.”

  “You’re both of you missing the point,” I said. “It’s not who his story puts suspicion away from, it’s who it puts it onto.”

  Silence for a while as they thought about it.

  “The Inventor?” Natty said.

  “Yes, he’s on the same floor as Holy Joe and they can’t stand each other.”

  The Inventor was a bit of a free-thinker, though he’d been keeping that quiet when Mr Shipham was around so as not to spoil his chances. Men from the floor below were fed up with arguments between him and Holy Joe about miracles.

  “So he’s implying that the Inventor had a good chance of seeing the basket there on the landing?” Natty said.

  “Well, it might be true, mightn’t it, even if it is Holy Joe that says so,” Watts said. “If it is, then we have to add another one to the list. It’s Geranium, or Dickens, or the Inventor.”

  Watts had spoken quite loudly, certainly loudly enough to reach the ears of Glue Boy who, just by chance, had moved over to look out of the window near us when we started our discussion. I’d noticed, but the other two hadn’t. What’s more, Glue Boy had noticed that I’d noticed.

  I went over, casual like, and stood beside him at the window.

  “Taking the day off from the factory, are you?”

  He gave me an unfriendly look, too big for a child-sized face.

  “They’re saying my father killed Perkins?”

  “Well, somebody killed him,” I said.

  “It wasn’t my father.”

  “How do you know? You weren’t here last night.”

  He coloured up.

  “I had business somewhere else.”

  Business, gawd help us. It was this solemnity of his that made me tougher with him than I might have been with an ordinary twelve-year-old brat. If he wanted to play the grown-up, he could have it.

  “Just as well, then,” I said. “At least nobody could say you slipped the poison in his curry.”

  I was watching him, wondering whether he was going to take a swing at me or burst into tears. A boy that age could do either. He did neither.

  “Curry, yes.” He said it quite coolly. “Tuesday night, so it was curry.”

  He stared at me, and the eyes that met mine weren’t a child’s. He’d understood something that Natty, Watts and all the rest of them had missed.

  “That’s the size of i
t,” I said. “Always curry on Tuesdays. Nothing better for hiding the taste of rat poison.”

  “But not everyone would know that,” he said. “They all knew about her bringing him dinner every day, but they wouldn’t know what it was.”

  “Not unless they were in the same room with him when he ate his dinner,” I said.

  “And you’re saying it brings it back to my father or the geranium man?”

  “I’m not saying anything,” I said.

  He looked away.

  “You haven’t asked me where I was last night,” he said.

  “I’m not one to pry into a gentleman’s private affairs.”

  “I was at Astley’s.”

  I laughed. “Nothing like the circus for taking your mind off your troubles.”

  Astley’s Amphitheatre in Lambeth, not far upriver. No blame to the lad if he took a night off from attending on dad in the Marshalsea to watch clowns and Cossack riders. But something in the way he said it suggested there was more to it than that.

  “A boy from the postroom where I work knows a back way in.”

  “So you can get in without the formality of passing the pay office? Don’t worry, we knew the back way in when I was your age.”

  “We managed to get to the front of the side part of the gallery. You can see the people in the expensive seats from there.”

  “Well?”