The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  But at night, there is a different story to tell. The good Mr Twist is placed on the rack of bad dreams and lives again in the perspiring dark of his feverish bed the torments of his childhood. Out of the bedroom shadows come figures from his past, animated by imagination and fear, to taunt him. Here the fearful Bill Sikes rises up, apparently alive and just as vicious, his hand grasping for Oliver’s neck. Oliver can see him, hear him, can smell and almost touch him. And then comes the dangling form of the hanged Fagin, dancing in sprightly fashion on the gallows as though he were part of a music-hall troupe, his bright avaricious eyes, wide open and sparkling like two puddles caught in the moonlight.

  On the occasions of these nocturnal visitations, Oliver Twist would rise from his bed, drenched in perspiration, weak with fatigue and fearful to return to the uncharted regions of sleep in case the nightmare demons finally had their way with him. Thankfully such occasions are not frequent, but when they come they have a dual effect upon the hero of our tale. They make him gloriously thankful to the Lord for the influence, beneficence and love of the recently deceased Mr Brownlow but they also rob him of energy and brightness of mind for a day or two, after which the memory of the night fears fades . . . until the next time.

  However, used to encountering the spirits of his past in bad dreams, Oliver Twist had gradually built a fortress around his sensibilities to aid him; but he was not prepared for one such figure, albeit not a fearful one, to pop up before him in the flesh.

  This singular occurrence took place early one spring morning, as he was approaching the offices of Gripwind and Biddle, the firm where he was employed as a junior solicitor. (However, as the fulsome and barrel-shaped senior partner Horatio Gripwind was accustomed to observe – “but not junior, for much longer, Master Twist, if I get my little way. A full-blown partner is what you’ll be, if I get my little way, Master Twist.”)

  On this particular morning as Oliver approached the bright blue door with the gold knocker in the shape of a lion’s head, he felt a firm tap, tap, tap on his shoulder. Strange as it may seem, he recognized that tap, tap, tap. It was familiar to him as the touch of rain upon his brow or sunshine on his cheek. He swung around and came face to face with the tap, tap, tapper himself.

  “Oliver, my dear fellow. How are you?”

  Standing before him was none other than John Dawkins, who will be better known to the reader, and indeed to Oliver Twist himself, as “The Artful Dodger”, a sobriquet bestowed upon him in his youth because of his ability to “dodge” or steal handkerchiefs, purses, gold watches and other trifles from passing folk without them feeling a thing. It was an art, indeed.

  “Dodger.” Oliver found himself using the name out loud for the first time in some ten years.

  “I am that wery gentleman and am so wery pleased to see you again, my dear Mr Twist. My, you look a fine gentleman. So refined. So elegant.”

  Oliver wished that he could reciprocate these compliments. Life it seemed had not treated Dodger well in the intervening years since last they had met. He never had been a fresh-faced, smooth-skinned lad with a fine physique but he had a swagger, a penchant for extravagant, eccentric clothing and bright blue eyes which charmed and twinkled. This sad creature before him, attired in dull clothes, frayed at the edges and elsewhere if one were prepared to examine closely, with the sunken cheeks, a sallow complexion and rheumy eyes, looked old before his time. There was some of the old fire in his demeanour; but, like an old fire, the flames died down occasionally, giving the impression that they were about to go out.

  After the surprise of encountering Dodger, a wave of sadness crashed down on Oliver to see his old comrade in such a derelict condition. “My dear Dodger, are you well? Should you be out? You look done in.”

  “Not as done in as I might be, Oliver, my dear, if them what persecutes me gets their way.”

  “What on earth do you mean?”

  “I have little time before I am arrested for a most heinous crime which I swear to you I did not commit.”

  “A crime. What crime?”

  “The capital crime of murder.”

  “Come into my office and tell me all about it.”

  Dodger beamed. “That is what I hoped you would say, my dear Oliver, because you are my last hope. You must save me from the gallows.”

  Once ensconced in his small but comfortable cell in the premises of Gripwind and Biddle, Oliver instructed his clerk, Alfred Murk, to brew the kettle and provide tea for his good self and his guest, Mr Dawkins. Once supplied with the steaming beverage, Oliver approached the matter in a most methodical and professional manner. He drew a neatly bound notebook from his desk and dipped his quill dramatically into the inkpot.

  “Now Dodger, give me your story and do not spare me any details.”

  Dodger clasped his giant hat on his lap, his scrawny fingers appearing either side of the brim like two albino spiders. “I must say at the outset, my dear Oliver, that I cannot fund your services. Coins of the realm and I are strangers at present and have been for some time, as you will soon learn. I came to you to see if I might reclaim a debt of friendship for your assistance.”

  Oliver took a sip of tea. “Of course. I would not think of charging you for my services. They are the services of an old friend – I just hope they may be efficacious to you.”

  “Efficacious is a good word and you are a kind gent. Well, to come to the point. I have fallen on bad times of late. My creditors are legion. A king’s ransom would not, I fear, rescue me from the pit. Ah, fear not, Oliver. I do not come to you for money. It is just that you should know my condition. I have a wife. Not in the eyes of God, as you might say, but we have lived together for nearly a year. We’ve got a small gaff down Stepney way in Anderson’s Buildings. Annie Pulbright is her name. A sweet thing when she’s sober and she is generally good to me. Well, it came to pass last week that my landlord, a toad of a fellow by the name of Joseph Jangles to whom I owe great amounts of money, threatened to throw us out and to damage both myself and my dear Annie if I did not cough up on the rent within forty-eight hours. What was a man to do? I tried dodging for while, but pickin’s were slim. It’s not like in old Fagin’s time when the game was a good ’un. And, to be plain, my old hands ain’t as nimble as they were. So what was my last resort? The money lender, of course. King leeches in the good old city of London. I went to Buggs in Murray’s Court. I’d heard he was the least wicious of the brood, which is not to say much. Well, Oliver, I was Faust to his Devil. I sold my soul to him for a mere handful of coin. The interest was four hundred percent, payable within a month or his clerk, an ape of a man called Croker, would kill me. As simple as that.”

  Oliver was no stranger to the notion of how cheap life was in the vilest quarters of the city of London or how the poor devils who dwelt on the edge of the abyss were forced as a matter of course to accept their precarious lot.

  “It was arranged that I go around last evening to pick up my money and sign, in blood it would seem, the deed of agreement with Mr Buggs. I goes along at the appointed hour. Everythin’ were most quiet, Oliver. I should have been wary of that quiet but I needed the money so I walks into his office. There were no sign of Croker, Buggs’s man, who usually stands guard. Buggs is there sitting behind his desk, bolt upright, his pince-nez balanced on his nose . . . and a dirty great dagger sticking into his heart.”

  Oliver Twist gasped, replicating the sound of a faulty bellows. “He was dead?”

  “As the door nail, my dear friend. Murdered.”

  “What did you do?”

  Dodger cocked a disbelieving ironical eyebrow at Oliver. “The obvious. I looked for the cash. I did not have to look far. It was there in a bag before him on the desk. I scooped that up, slipped it in my secret pocket . . . you remember my secret pocket . . .”

  Oliver nodded.

  “. . . and high-tailed it for the door. Only to run smack into Croker who was just acomin’ in from the street. He stopped me dead. ‘What’s your hurry
?’ he says suspicious-like and drags me back into his master’s office. Then there is a scene straight out of one them plays at Drury Lane. Despite his bulk and brutish ways, on seeing old Buggs dead in the chair, Croker throws himself to the floor like a woman, wringing of his hands and wailing and sobbing fit to burst his giant chest. It were as though he’d found his own mother garrotted in bed. While all this is going on, I decide to make myself scarce and I sidles towards the door. But that man must have eyes like an eagle. No sooner had my hand reached for the latch than he was up off his knees and a flying at me, screaming, ‘Halt, murderer!’ and grabs me round the neck and hauls me into the street.

  “ ‘Police!’ he cries. ‘Murder has been done!’ he cries. ‘I’ve caught the murderer,’ he cries.

  “I protested my innocence, I even gave him the bag of money back from my secret pocket, but he wouldn’t listen to me. Just as two peelers were making their way down the street in response to his yells, I managed to wrench myself away from the brute and sprint off in the opposite direction with wild cries of ‘Murderer’ burning in my ears. I ran to my place and informs Annie of my plight. Quite rightly she says that it is not safe for me to stay there. I grabbed some bread and cheese and left. I spent the night by the river wonderin’ what to do. I reached one big conclusion, I did: what I needs is a friend to help me out of this particular bear pit what I got myself innocently into; a friend who has a particular legal turn of mind.”

  Oliver gave a wry grin. “You mean me.”

  Dodger nodded his head so vigorously that it seemed that his pupils were in danger of being propelled from their sockets. “I do. I hurried home to tell Annie of my decision before coming here. It cannot be long before the law gets its clutches on me and throws me in the darkest dungeon. I do not relish dangling on the end of a rope like old Fagin for I am an innocent man.”

  Sometimes fiction is accused of manipulating fate for dramatic purposes, but if this is true it is only because fiction mirrors true life. This moment in Oliver Twist’s chamber is a fine example of the practice. For Dodger had only just uttered the words concerning the law getting its clutches on him when Twist’s clerk, Alfred Murk, entered, begging their pardon and stating that there were two gentlemen of the law outside whose business it was to arrest Mr John Dawkins for murder.

  At this very moment a young woman entered, pushing past Murk. She was a gaunt, sallow-faced creature, with blonde ringlets and was attired in a blue and white gingham dress. She might have been pretty once, but poverty, malnutrition and hard times had scrubbed the bloom of youth from her features and dimmed the brightness in her eyes.

  “Oh, John,” she cried as she threw her arms around Dodger. “My John, they are here for you.”

  This creature, whom Oliver assumed was Dodger’s “wife”, had hardly uttered these words before two Bow Street Runners entered and disentangled the woman and grasped hold of the craven John Dawkins.

  “Fear not, I shall do my best for you,” assured Oliver as the careworn and defeated Dodger was hauled off to Newgate Prison with the promise of a swift trial and an even swifter hanging.

  With tears forming in Dodger’s eyes, he smiled bravely at his old friend. “For the first time in my life, I am innocent.”

  To note that Murray’s Court is one of the vilest alleys in London graces it with no great distinction. There are many vile alleys in London. Indeed, it could be said that alleys of the vile category outweigh the other kind. Nevertheless, as Oliver Twist was able to attest at first hand, by appearance and smell, that Murray’s Court had certainly earned a high ranking within the aforementioned “vile category”. In one dingy corner stood the premises of “Theobald Buggs, Usurer to the Gentry”. Naturally the establishment was in darkness, not so much out of respect for the deceased owner whose corpulent corpse was currently resting in the police morgue but because there was no one there to run the business.

  Oliver approached the grubby door and tried the handle. To his delight and surprise it opened and he stepped inside. The place was illuminated by the pale shafts of daylight that struggled in through the grime of the windows, glad to be away from the unpleasant atmosphere outside. In this supernatural half light he saw a figure flitting about the room, a strange squeaky wail issuing from it. If this apparition had not been so small in stature and slight of build, Oliver might have been persuaded that it was the shade of Buggs himself come back to haunt his old quarters. It was in fact Lizzie Dottle, Buggs’s maid servant, whose job it was every third Thursday in the month to dust the premises. It was such a Thursday and despite the fact that her employer was no more, she was about her business for she was of the hope and the opinion that if the work was carried out, someone would pay her for it.

  Suddenly becoming aware of a dark stranger in the room, she ceased her singing, for that bizarre strangulated noise issuing from her thin lips was her tuneless rendition of one of the popular alehouse songs of the moment, turned and gave a shriek of surprise.

  “Lawks a mercy!” she cried, her hands flying to her face.

  “I apologise for startling you, madam,” said Oliver. “I was wondering if Mr Croker was about the premises.”

  Lizzie Dottle shook her head. “I ain’t seen hide nor hair of him this mornin’, sir. He’ll most likely be in The Brass Baboon, a whetting of his whistle.”

  “I see,” said Oliver, moving towards the far end of the cramped chamber, to the door which he supposed led to Buggs’s inner chamber. On reaching the door he placed his hand upon the doorknob. “Is this where it happened?” he whispered, affecting a ghoulish intonation which he believed would appeal to his companion.

  Lizzie Dottle’s eyes widened. “It is, sir. A blade right through the heart, sir. He bled like a pig – or so they say. The bloodstains are still there, sir. Want a look?”

  Oliver nodded. “I should be most interested.”

  Lizzie scurried past him and bade him enter. The room was dark, dank and dusty. Oliver raised the blind. If anything the chamber grew darker.

  “It was in this werry chair where the foul murderer struck him.”

  Oliver examined the chair. The leather padding was scored and ripped where the knife had gone through Buggs’s chest and out the other side. A large bloodstain in the shape of Italy formed around it. On the corner of the chair there was a scrap of material which had been caught by the rough edge. Oliver extricated the material and examined it. It was unremarkable. A piece of cheap cloth but of a pattern he had seen before. Behind Buggs’s chair was a large safe. Oliver glanced at it slyly but his actions were spotted, even in the gloom, by eagle-eyed Lizzie.

  “It’s empty!” she cackled. “First thing I looked at when I arrived this morning.”

  “But isn’t that where he kept his money, surely?”

  “I believe it was. He’d everythin’ in there from pennies to big white notes. But not now.”

  “Where’s it all gone? Have the police got it?”

  Lizzie shook her head, “No, they have not. It’s the murderer what has the lot. He’ll have stashed it somewhere. Much good it’ll do him on the gallows.”

  Oliver knew this was impossible; or to be more precise, he knew that Dodger couldn’t have the money. He didn’t even get away with the bag containing his loan. Someone has been very clever here, thought the young Mr Twist, stroking his chin in a thoughtful manner. Now who could that be? The words formed in his mind but did not emerge in spoken form.

  Able Croker was at this time, as Lizzie Dottle had surmised, whetting his whistle at The Brass Baboon. In fact he was making it an urgent mission to enter into the realms of senselessness by the archway of alcohol as soon as possible. He was on his fourth mug of ale already. Able Croker was a bereft man: he had lost his master and his position but he had lost a great deal more if the Truth could be told, but unfortunately for him the Truth could not be told. Not unless he wanted to stand on the gallows alongside, or, indeed, instead of, the Dawkins creature. He had been a fool and getting nothing fo
r your pains is the penalty for being a fool in this world. He drained his mug dry and banged it on the counter to attract the serving wench for a refill.

  As he slumped back down in his chair, half in his cups and fully in his depression, he was aware of someone taking a seat by him. It was a slim, young, clean-shaven fellow in a stylish coat and with an odour of soap and water about him. A gentleman in fact.

  At first Croker had the idea that this individual might be a representative of the law, but he was too smart, too refined, and too sweet-smelling.

  “Have I the pleasure of addressing Able Croker, Mr Buggs’s late employee?” he asked quietly, leaning forward in order not to raise his voice much above a whisper.

  “I’m Croker, but I can’t says as how it’s much of a pleasure to converse with such a wretched soul. I was, as you so rightly say, an employee of Mr Buggs. Now he is dead and I have no occupation. But that is half my sorrow. I was expecting to be married before the year was out, but my true love has upped and left me.”

  “My condolences on your double loss,” said the gentleman. “Allow me to buy you a mug of ale to ease your bereavement.”

  This fellow certainly was a gentleman. Croker’s hazy eyes brightened momentarily and his furry tongue travelled across his blubbery lips in anticipation of a free drink.

  “That’s very kind of you, sir.”

  Oliver, for he was the gentleman in question, purchased a beer for Croker and a small porter for himself.

  Croker had by now finished his own drink and as soon as Oliver placed the new mug before him, he snatched it up, pressed it to his lips and took a great, noisy gulp.

  Wiping his mouth with his sleeve, he grinned at Oliver.

  Oliver grinned back. “What have you done with the money?” he said as quietly and as reasonably as he had done before, but there was now a cold, steely glint in his eyes.