The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  At this point Dickens interrupted me, remarking that he was due upon the lecture stage. I was gratified by the interest he expressed – either genuine, or impressively feigned – in my opinions, and he asked me to meet him again after his matinée lecture.

  I would gladly have attended Dickens’s lecture, but I lacked the price of a ticket and he ventured no hint of arranging my entry on a gratis basis. I excused myself, and hastened to the Chesnut Street Theatre. A vast crowd of Philadelphians had assembled, hoping for a glimpse of the famous “Boz”. They seemed far more interested in getting a look at him than in hearing anything he had to say.

  As I loitered outside the showplace, from within I heard the shouts and applause of the audience who had assembled to hear Mr Dickens. Between the huzzahs, I occasionally heard a solitary voice raised in tones of eloquence. I could not distinguish its words, yet I marked this instantly by his London accent as the voice of Dickens himself. It is a curious fact that an observant auditor can readily discern a foreign accent, even when the speaker is too distant for his precise words to be rendered coherent.

  While I waited at the door, an exceedingly well-dressed and pompous figure strolled up to the theatre’s portico. He was short, about thirty years of age, yet heavy-set with the beginnings of stoutness. He wore sleek black side-whiskers, and his back-hair grew longer than is fashionable, compensating for incipient baldness at the front. A black silk necktie was fashioned into an elaborately floppy bow beneath his doubled chin. He bowed obsequiously to me, and he doffed a prosperous-looking high-crowned silk hat.

  “Good day to you, sir!” he boomed at me. “Have you come to hear Mister Dickens? I have the honour to be his personal friend of long standing.”

  “You also have the distinctive accent of a Philadelphian,” I told him, ignoring the hand which he proffered. “Your vowels proclaim that you have lived in this metropolis all your life . . . and, since Charles Dickens has only just arrived here last night, you cannot have known him very long.”

  “Er, ah, true!” the newcomer admitted. “I am indeed a proud alumnus of Philadelphia’s free-school system. I refer, of course, to knowing Mr Dickens through his novels and essays.” The stranger bowed again, more elaborately. “Permit me to introduce myself. I am . . .”

  “You are a hatter,” I told him.

  The man stood thunderstruck. “You have seen my hat-shop in Sixth Street, then.”

  “No; I have seen the stain on your fingertips.” I pointed to his right hand, on the extremities of which was a bright carrot-colored stain. Hatters obtain the felt for their hats by a process known as “carroting”: this requires the treatment of fur pelts with a solution of mercuric nitrate, which leaves a vivid orange residue.

  The pompous intruder resumed his pomposity. “I am indeed a hatter, sir, among my other talents.” He brandished his headgear. “This tile, I make so bold, is one of my own manufacture. I am Colonel Thomas Birch Florence, at your service.”

  Now I knew this man, for his name had preceded his face into my consciousness. Colonel Florence! He has been prominent in Philadelphia’s temperance movement, which explains why our paths have never crossed. As for Tom Florence’s colonelcy: his alleged rank was self-awarded, when he formed a regiment of Philadelphia militiamen to fight in the Texas Revolution. His militia’s bravados festooned themselves with medals and epaulets, yet ventured no nearer to Texas than the quayside of the Philadelphia Navy Yard.

  I had not yet gleaned as much of Charles Dickens’s attentions as I’d hoped, and now I feared that this hat-maker intended to usurp those same attentions for himself. “What brings you away from your chapeaux?” I carefully inquired of Colonel Florence.

  “Why, sir, I mean to persuade the great Boz to take a moment to greet eight or nine of my friends from Philadelphia’s political clubs,” Florence explained, with no small amount of bluster. “As well, to greet a delegation of businessmen from Smith’s Hall, in the Lombard Street district.”

  At this name, I felt my lip curl in contempt. “The men who congregate in Smith’s Hall are all of a colour, and the wrong one at that,” I rejoined. “I hardly suppose that the world’s most esteemed author will deign to shake hands with a mob of common Africans.”

  Colonel Florence seemed outraged. “They are Americans, sir! And God’s children, as well. Surely, your sympathies lie with the abolitionist cause, sir?”

  I did not choose to give answer. Smith’s Hall, I am reliably informed, was built as a meeting-place for escaped slaves and their would-be saviours, and the hall’s construction was financed by a wealthy negro businessman. The mere thought that a savage blackamoor might prosper, while I lack funds to purchase medicine for my dear wife, provokes me to a phrensy of anger . . .

  By the sounds of applause within the Chesnut Street Theatre, I knew that Mr Dickens had nearly terminated his lecture. I hastened back to the United States Hotel, where again I persuaded the coloured pageboy to usher me into the celebrity’s presence. This time, when I entered the parlour of Dickens’s hotel suite, I found the room unoccupied. Yet a moment later the author emerged, having exchanged his previous morning-suit for a yellow silk dressing-gown with violet facings. I suppressed my revulsion at this gaucherie, reminding myself that I needed the gentleman’s good favours. Dickens seemed genuinely pleased to see me again, as he seated himself on the chaise-longue while giving sign that I was to make myself comfortable in the suite’s second-best chair.

  “Mister Poe,” he began. “I am greatly impressed with your powers of intuition. You published a review of my serial novel Barnaby Rudge while the series was not yet completed, yet you correctly guessed the murderer’s identity, as well as several other details.”

  “That was not intuition,” I corrected him. “It is ratiocination, or rational detection. My review in the Saturday Evening Post correctly foretold several particulars of your novel, and I was wrong in only one prediction. I anticipated that Grip, the talking raven owned by Rudge, would play a major role in the plot’s denouement. Your raven, Mr Dickens, was a powerful symbolic device, yet you ultimately squandered him.”

  “Did I, quotha!” Charles Dickens held a trace of scorn in his reply, and of a sudden I felt acutely conscious of the shabbiness of my own garments – and the shabbiness of my very life – in contrast to his. “Well, Poe, go ahead with a raven of your own, then, and see if you’ll have better success than I did.”

  “Perhaps I will, sir,” I assured him.

  “Tell me more of these detections,” Dickens went on. “I have read your ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’. My dear Poe! This is altogether a new form of literature, deserving a new name. The puzzle-story, one might call it: a mystery to be unriddled by the reader, with all the clues in plain sight. You must write more of those . . . mysteries.”

  “I intend to,” I said graciously. By way of an example of the science of detection – and hoping to impress Mr Dickens – I now related my encounter with the self-commissioned Colonel Florence, and told of how I had deduced his trade by a stain on his fingers. I saw the Englishman’s dark grey eyes taking silent inventory of my hands as I spoke, for I had taken off my shabby gloves.

  “A clever trick, sir, to know a hatter by his carroting,” said Dickens. “Let me return your trick of deductive observation. You are clearly a man deeply preoccupied: an author who does much of his writing in late hours, by dim lamp-light . . . for I perceive ink-stains between the two major fingers of your right hand, as well as the white flakes of crystallized lamp oil – we call it paraffin in England – on your clothes: indeed, there is a general odour of paraffin about you. Further, I mark a peculiar stain on your left shoe: a mingling of both yellow sputum and dark brown tubercular blood. And, pray: what is this amber-coloured stain on your shirt-cuff?”

  The sputum and blood had been coughed up by my little dear wife this morning: the amber stain a residue of the Jew’s beer which is now her sole nutrient. I felt my face flush with anger, that this well-dressed and wealthy
Dickens should call attention to my own shabbied garments and the stains of my preoccupations. At the same moment, I felt an up-welling surge of self-pity at my undeserved penury and its consequences. In that instant, I confessed all to Dickens: my wife’s illness, our poverty and hard living conditions . . . even the bank failure which had dashed my hopes of editorial success.

  But, hold! This outburst is unseemly. With a manful effort, I derailed myself from my incontinent confession and I swiftly made a change of topic: “In fact, sir, my ‘Murders in the Rue Morgue’ was entirely fiction,” I told Dickens, “but I am now in progress of a sequel, based on the true unsolved mystery of a Manhattan cigar-girl who . . .”

  Just this instant, the parlour door swung open and a red-faced man arrived, in extreme agitation. “Mister Dickens!” he panted. “A word with you, sir.”

  Dickens performed the introductions: this new arrival was William Hoysradt, the hotel’s assistant manager. Hoysradt clutched to-day’s edition of The Daily Chronicle. “Did you place this advertisement without the hotel’s consent, Mister Dickens?” he asked.

  I stole a glance over Dickens’s shoulder as he perused the newspaper. On its third page was a “squib” advertisement, announcing that Mister Charles Dickens of London would appear for one hour on the morning of March eighth – tomorrow – in the lobby of the United States Hotel, and would shake hands with all who chose to meet him. The squib gave assurance that ladies attending the event would be quite safe, as there would be no admittance granted either to negroes or firemen.

  “This is disastrous!” said Hoysradt, mopping his forehead with a handkerchief. “The hotel’s directors will never approve. The thought of every ruffian and Irishman in Philadelphia, tracking street-dust into our . . .”

  “It is preposterous, sir,” said Dickens. “I made no such offer, and I am certain that my secretary Putnam made none on my behalf. You may assure your directors, Hoysradt, that I have no intention of . . .”

  “Please, Mister Dickens!” The red-faced manager looked as if he were about to burst from syncope. “If only it were that simple. This advertisement, or a variant, is in every Philadelphia paper. Even the Episcopal Recorder! The entire city has seen it, I tell you. Already, we have had more than ninety inquiries . . .”

  I saw Dickens turn pale. Hoysradt continued gibbering. The gist of his outburst was this: although Charles Dickens did not want to perform this impromptu reception, and the hotel’s management held no desire to host it, on the whole it would be better for the event to proceed than otherwise, lest the disappointed hordes foment a riot in the hotel’s lobby.

  In my private thoughts, I found it galling that thousands of Philadelphians might clamour for a chance to shake Charles Dickens’s hand, while I – an author of no less skill than Dickens – must struggle to make myself known, and the only people eager to meet me are bill-collectors. Now I tried to turn the conversation back to the vital topic of Dickens using his influence to speak on my behalf to London publishers. But it was clear that this unsolicited advertisement – and the identity of the unknown advertiser – had altered Dickens’s priorities. Urging me towards the door, Dickens swiftly promised that he would indeed advocate my Tales of the Grotesque and Arabesque upon his return to England. I found myself out in the corridor, still holding my mended gloves.

  8 March

  My poor little wife grows more ill by the hour. Aunt Maria, dearest Muddy – in one fell bargain she is at once my father’s elder sister, my mother-in-law, and my substitute mother – has done as best she can to cool her daughter’s fevers. I find myself thinking of Dickens’s gold watch-chain and diamond tie-clasp. With those baubles, I could purchase a dozen pharmacists’ dispensaries . . . and all the medications on their shelves, to save my dear little Virginia.

  I have not slept this past night. After sitting up through half the dark hours with my sick wife – her mother keeping vigil through the other half – I am resolved to meet Dickens again, and to prevail on him to help us. It is unfair that one belles-lettreist enjoys so much wealth and adulation, while another of even greater talents lingers in paupered obscurity.

  It is now just past sunrise. In a few hours, the crowd will assemble to greet Charles Dickens at the United States Hotel, while my wife languishes here in ill-health. I confess that I covet Dickens’s acclaim, and its material rewards. Still, I have little desire to witness, and even less urge to chronicle, the assured chaos that will greet him before noon to-day.

  Yet I am drawn to his fame, as a moth to the flame.

  Before Charles Dickens reached the hotel’s carpeted lobby, he was already aware of a bizarre buzzing sound like the wings of thousands of bees. The noise put him in mind of “The Humble Bee”, the ridiculous series of couplets by the poet Ralph Waldo Emerson which only yester-morning Dickens had discussed with that shabbily-dressed American . . . what was his name? Poe? The thought of yesterday’s encounter with the impoverished poet Poe filled Dickens with embarrassment. Did this unfortunate Mr Poe not apprehend that his very name was French slang for “chamberpot”? With an effort, Dickens put yesterday’s events out of his mind. Yet now, as he approached the lobby of the United States Hotel, he was aware that the loudening noise before him was not a monstrous buzzbuzzbuzz but rather the sound of hundreds of human throats clamouring “Boz! Boz! Boz!” Nervously, Dickens adjusted the jewelled tie-pin restraining the Hanover knot in his green silk cravat.

  On the stair-landing were Mr Hoysradt and Dickens’s assistant George Putnam. The two men positioned themselves at either side of Dickens, as if they were his bodyguards. “That man Poe you met yesterday,” Putnam began. “I’ve made some inquiries, and . . .”

  “Not now, George.” Charles Dickens put a finger to his lips, then nodded in the direction of the buzzing clamour, which threatened to burst open the intervening door. Putnam nodded in turn. Nearly in unison, all three men took a deep breath, then Hoysradt flung open the door.

  In the hotel lobby were crowded the whole populace of Philadelphia . . . or so seeming, at least. Strategically positioned near the front desk, his hands to his lapels, stood the whiskered Colonel Florence. As Dickens arrived, the colonel cheerfully called above the huzzbuzz of the throng: “Charlie Dickens, my friend! I’ve promised a few dozen of my friends that they might shake hands with you.”

  Dozens? “The man can’t count,” Putnam whispered at Dickens’s right side. “There are three hundred people in this lobby, easy, and at least twice that number crowded into the streets beyond.”

  The next hour was agony for Dickens. He found himself pumping hands and swapping bankrupt how-dee-do’s with a succession of American strangers, most of whom took alien delight in chewing thick cuds of tobacco, and spitting its liquidities in the vague direction of brass pots: spittoons, provided for that purpose. The one fortunate aspect of this vast crowd was that its very force of numbers discouraged any individual Philadelphian from tarrying more than a few seconds; only Colonel Florence lingered, maintaining the peculiar posture which Dickens had observed exhibited by Yankees in their more prideful moments: that habit of thrusting their thumbs into their armpits while splaying their fingers. Tom Florence maintained a constant presence near Charles Dickens, while all the other Philadelphians were compelled to offer Dickens their tributes of only scant praise and a handshake, before being prodded to give way by the flood of worshippers behind them.

  Each member of this vast Philadelphian horde had his own distinctive odour, none of them pleasant to Dickens’s nostrils. One man, with a dark brown beard and long side-whiskers – who hastily shook Dickens’s hand and moved on – had about himself a strong aroma of paraffin, reminding Dickens of his yesterday encounter with Edgar Poe, and the latter’s system of deduction. Wiping an ink-stain from his own hand as this man departed, Dickens felt a sudden stirring of interest as it occurred to him that it ought to be possible for a skilled detective to read the narrative of each man in this crowd – his profession, his vices, his habits – mere
ly by intuiting the clues to each man.

  For an hour, the only sounds in the hotel lobby were the steady murmur of “Boz! Boz!” and the hurried praises of the individual hand-shakers, as well as an undertone of constant spitting, and the occasional metallic ring of a spittoon when someone’s expectoration found its target. On the whole, Dickens thought, the crowd were extraordinarily well-behaved for Americans: few coughed, there was no shouting except for one brief sudden yelp, and – surprisingly – nobody spoke an oath more pungent than “loco-foco!”. At last, the crowd showed signs of diminishing, and soon only a few dozen attention-seekers remained.

  George Putnam showed Dickens a memorandum-book, scored with innumerable tally-marks. “I kept count, sir.” He smiled weakly. “To-day you have shaken hands nine hundred and sixty-three times.”

  Colonel Florence, with one final and unwanted effulgence to his “friend, Mister Dickens” had left. The lobby was now uninhabited, except for Dickens and Putnam, Mr Hoysradt, and a couple of minor hotel employees. No, wait: there was oddly one straggler. A black-bearded man was asleep on a horse-hair settee in one corner of the lobby, his head cushioned against the arm-rest. That any man should sleep through an event such as this was quite laughable to Dickens. By his posture, the bearded man reminded Dickens of some elderly clubman in the Beefsteak Club, or White’s in Piccadilly, snoozing his afternoon away after a hearty English luncheon.

  As William Hoysradt strode across the lobby to wake this slumberer, Dickens was suddenly aware that his own cravat had unaccustomedly undone itself. He put a hand to his throat. “My tie-pin’s gone!”

  Putnam was startled. “What? Your diamond clasp, sir?”

  “No, not the diamond, Putnam. I chose to wear my . . .” Dickens was interrupted by a shout from Hoysradt, who had nudged the sleeping man . . . only to have him tumble out of the settee and onto the hotel’s blue carpet.