The Victorian Mystery Megapack: 27 Classic Mystery Tales

by Charles Dickens

  “Yes, it is bread and butter that kills the Beautiful,” said Denzil Cantercot bitterly. “Many of us start by following the butterfly through the verdant meadows, but we turn aside—”

  “To get the grub,” chuckled Peter, cobbling away.

  “Peter, if you make a jest of everything, I’ll not waste my time on you.”

  Denzil’s wild eyes flashed angrily. He shook his long hair. Life was very serious to him. He never wrote comic verse intentionally.

  There are three reasons why men of genius have long hair. One is, that they forget it is growing. The second is, that they like it. The third is, that it comes cheaper; they wear it long for the same reason that they wear their hats long.

  Owing to this peculiarity of genius, you may get quite a reputation for lack of twopence. The economic reason did not apply to Denzil, who could always get credit with the profession on the strength of his appearance. Therefore, when street Arabs vocally commanded him to get his hair cut, they were doing no service to barbers. Why does all the world watch over barbers and conspire to promote their interests? Denzil would have told you it was not to serve the barbers, but to gratify the crowd’s instinctive resentment of originality. In his palmy days Denzil had been an editor, but he no more thought of turning his scissors against himself than of swallowing his paste. The efficacy of hair has changed since the days of Samson, otherwise Denzil would have been a Hercules instead of a long, thin, nervous man, looking too brittle and delicate to be used even for a pipe-cleaner. The narrow oval of his face sloped to a pointed, untrimmed beard. His linen was reproachable, his dingy boots were down at heel, and his cocked hat was drab with dust. Such are the effects of a love for the Beautiful.

  Peter Crowl was impressed with Denzil’s condemnation of flippancy, and he hastened to turn off the joke.

  “I’m quite serious,” he said. “Butterflies are no good to nothing or nobody; caterpillars at least save the birds from starving.”

  “Just like your view of things, Peter,” said Denzil. “Good morning, madam.” This to Mrs. Crowl, to whom he removed his hat with elaborate courtesy. Mrs. Crowl grunted and looked at her husband with a note of interrogation in each eye. For some seconds Crowl stuck to his last, endeavoring not to see the question. He shifted uneasily on his stool. His wife coughed grimly. He looked up, saw her towering over him, and helplessly shook his head in a horizontal direction. It was wonderful how Mrs. Crowl towered over Mr. Crowl, even when he stood up in his shoes. She measured half an inch less. It was quite an optical illusion.

  “Mr. Crowl,” said Mrs. Crowl, “then I’ll tell him.”

  “No, no, my dear, not yet,” faltered Peter helplessly; “leave it to me.”

  “I’ve left it to you long enough. You’ll never do nothing. If it was a question of provin’ to a lot of chuckleheads that Jollygee and Genesis, or some other dead and gone Scripture folk that don’t consarn no mortal soul, used to contradict each other, your tongue ’ud run thirteen to the dozen. But when it’s a matter of takin’ the bread out o’ the mouths o’ your own children, you ain’t got no more to say for yourself than a lamppost. Here’s a man stayin’ with you for weeks and weeks—eatin’ and drinkin’ the flesh off your bones—without payin’ a far—”

  “Hush, hush, mother; it’s all right,” said poor Crowl, red as fire.

  Denzil looked at her dreamily. “Is it possible you are alluding to me, Mrs. Crowl?” he said.

  “Who then should I be alludin’ to, Mr. Cantercot? Here’s seven weeks come and gone, and not a blessed ’aypenny have I—”

  “My dear Mrs. Crowl,” said Denzil, removing his cigarette from his mouth with a pained air, “why reproach me for your neglect?”

  “My neglect! I like that!”

  “I don’t,” said Denzil, more sharply. “If you had sent me in the bill you would have had the money long ago. How do you expect me to think of these details?”

  “We ain’t so grand down here. People pays their way—they don’t get no bills,” said Mrs. Crowl, accentuating the word with infinite scorn.

  Peter hammered away at a nail, as though to drown his spouse’s voice.

  “It’s three pounds fourteen and eight-pence, if you’re so anxious to know,” Mrs. Crowl resumed. “And there ain’t a woman in the Mile End Road as ’ud a-done it cheaper, with bread at fourpence threefarden a quartern and landlords clamorin’ for rent every Monday morning almost afore the sun’s up and folks draggin’ and slidderin’ on till their shoes is only fit to throw after brides, and Christmas comin’ and seven-pence a week for schoolin’!”

  Peter winced under the last item. He had felt it coming—like Christmas. His wife and he parted company on the question of Free Education. Peter felt that, having brought nine children into the world, it was only fair he should pay a penny a week for each of those old enough to bear educating. His better half argued that, having so many children, they ought in reason to be exempted. Only people who had few children could spare the penny. But the one point on which the cobbler-skeptic of the Mile End Road got his way was this of the fees. It was a question of conscience, and Mrs. Crowl had never made application for their remission, though she often slapped her children in vexation instead. They were used to slapping, and when nobody else slapped them they slapped one another. They were bright, ill-mannered brats, who pestered their parents and worried their teachers, and were happy as the Road was long.

  “Bother the school fees!” Peter retorted, vexed. “Mr. Cantercot’s not responsible for your children.”

  “I should hope not, indeed, Mr. Crowl,” Mrs. Crowl said sternly. “I’m ashamed of you.” And with that she flounced out of the shop into the back parlor.

  “It’s all right,” Peter called after her soothingly. “The money’ll be all right, mother.”

  In lower circles it is customary to call your wife your mother; in somewhat superior circles it is the fashion to speak of her as “the wife” as you speak of “the Stock Exchange,” or “the Thames,” without claiming any peculiar property. Instinctively men are ashamed of being moral and domesticated.

  Denzil puffed his cigarette, unembarrassed. Peter bent attentively over his work, making nervous stabs with his awl. There was a long silence. An organ-grinder played a waltz outside, unregarded; and, failing to annoy anybody, moved on. Denzil lit another cigarette. The dirty-faced clock on the shop wall chimed twelve.

  “What do you think,” said Crowl, “of Republics?”

  “They are low,” Denzil replied. “Without a Monarch there is no visible incarnation of Authority.”

  “What! do you call Queen Victoria visible?”

  “Peter, do you want to drive me from the house? Leave frivolousness to women, whose minds are only large enough for domestic difficulties. Republics are low. Plato mercifully kept the poets out of his. Republics are not congenial soil for poetry.”

  “What nonsense! If England dropped its fad of Monarchy and became a Republic tomorrow, do you mean to say that—?”

  “I mean to say that there would be no Poet Laureate to begin with.”

  “Who’s fribbling now, you or me, Cantercot? But I don’t care a button-hook about poets, present company always excepted. I’m only a plain man, and I want to know where’s the sense of givin’ any one person authority over everybody else?”

  “Ah, that’s what Tom Mortlake used to say. Wait till you’re in power, Peter, with trade-union money to control, and working men bursting to give you flying angels and to carry you aloft, like a banner, huzzahing.”

  “Ah, that’s because he’s head and shoulders above ’em already,” said Crowl, with a flash in his sad gray eyes. “Still, it don’t prove that I’d talk any different. And I think you’re quite wrong about his being spoiled. Tom’s a fine fellow—a man every inch of him, and that’s a good many. I don’t deny he has his weaknesses, and there was a time when he stood in this very shop and denounced that poor dead Constant. ‘Crowl,’ said he, ‘that man’ll do mischief. I don’t
like these kid-glove philanthropists mixing themselves up in practical labor disputes they don’t understand.’”

  Denzil whistled involuntarily. It was a piece of news.

  “I daresay,” continued Crowl, “he’s a bit jealous of anybody’s interference with his influence. But in this case the jealousy did wear off, you see, for the poor fellow and he got quite pals, as everybody knows. Tom’s not the man to hug a prejudice. However, all that don’t prove nothing against Republics. Look at the Czar and the Jews. I’m only a plain man, but I wouldn’t live in Russia not for—not for all the leather in it! An Englishman, taxed as he is to keep up his Fad of Monarchy, is at least king in his own castle, whoever bosses it at Windsor. Excuse me a minute, the missus is callin’.”

  “Excuse me a minute. I’m going, and I want to say before I go—I feel it is only right you should know at once—that after what has passed today I can never be on the same footing here as in the—shall I say pleasant?—days of yore.”

  “Oh, no, Cantercot. Don’t say that; don’t say that!” pleaded the little cobbler.

  “Well, shall I say unpleasant, then?”

  “No, no, Cantercot. Don’t misunderstand me. Mother has been very much put to it lately to rub along. You see she has such a growing family. It grows—daily. But never mind her. You pay whenever you’ve got the money.”

  Denzil shook his head. “It cannot be. You know when I came here first I rented your top room and boarded myself. Then I learnt to know you. We talked together. Of the Beautiful. And the Useful. I found you had no soul. But you were honest, and I liked you. I went so far as to take my meals with your family. I made myself at home in your back parlor. But the vase has been shattered (I do not refer to that on the mantelpiece), and though the scent of the roses may cling to it still, it can be pieced together—nevermore.” He shook his hair sadly and shambled out of the shop. Crowl would have gone after him, but Mrs. Crowl was still calling, and ladies must have the precedence in all polite societies.

  Cantercot went straight—or as straight as his loose gait permitted—to 46 Glover Street, and knocked at the door. Grodman’s factotum opened it. She was a pock-marked person, with a brickdust complexion and a coquettish manner.

  “Oh, here we are again!” she said vivaciously.

  “Don’t talk like a clown,” Cantercot snapped. “Is Mr. Grodman in?”

  “No, you’ve put him out,” growled the gentleman himself, suddenly appearing in his slippers. “Come in. What the devil have you been doing with yourself since the inquest? Drinking again?”

  “I’ve sworn off. Haven’t touched a drop since—”

  “The murder?”

  “Eh?” said Denzil Cantercot, startled. “What do you mean?”

  “What I say. Since December 4, I reckon everything from that murder, now, as they reckon longitude from Greenwich.”

  “Oh,” said Denzil Cantercot.

  “Let me see. Nearly a fortnight. What a long time to keep away from Drink—and Me.”

  “I don’t know which is worse,” said Denzil, irritated. “You both steal away my brains.”

  “Indeed?” said Grodman, with an amused smile. “Well, it’s only petty pilfering, after all. What’s put salt on your wounds?”

  “The twenty-fourth edition of my book.”

  “Whose book?”

  “Well, your book. You must be making piles of money out of Criminals I Have Caught.”

  “Criminals I Have Caught,” corrected Grodman. “My dear Denzil, how often am I to point out that I went through the experiences that make the backbone of my book, not you? In each case I cooked the criminal’s goose. Any journalist could have supplied the dressing.”

  “The contrary. The journeymen of journalism would have left the truth naked. You yourself could have done that—for there is no man to beat you at cold, lucid, scientific statement. But I idealized the bare facts and lifted them into the realm of poetry and literature. The twenty-fourth edition of the book attests my success.”

  “Rot! The twenty-fourth edition was all owing to the murder! Did you do that?”

  “You take one up so sharply, Mr. Grodman,” said Denzil, changing his tone.

  “No—I’ve retired,” laughed Grodman.

  Denzil did not reprove the ex-detective’s flippancy. He even laughed a little.

  “Well, give me another fiver, and I’ll cry ‘quits.’ I’m in debt.”

  “Not a penny. Why haven’t you been to see me since the murder? I had to write that letter to the ‘Pell Mell Press’ myself. You might have earned a crown.”

  “I’ve had writer’s cramp, and couldn’t do your last job. I was coming to tell you so on the morning of the—”

  “Murder. So you said at the inquest.”

  “It’s true.”

  “Of course. Weren’t you on your oath? It was very zealous of you to get up so early to tell me. In which hand did you have this cramp?”

  “Why, in the right, of course.”

  “And you couldn’t write with your left?”

  “I don’t think I could even hold a pen.”

  “Or any other instrument, mayhap. What had you been doing to bring it on?”

  “Writing too much. That is the only possible cause.”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Writing what?”

  Denzil hesitated. “An epic poem.”

  “No wonder you’re in debt. Will a sovereign get you out of it?”

  “No; it wouldn’t be the least use to me.”

  “Here it is, then.”

  Denzil took the coin and his hat.

  “Aren’t you going to earn it, you beggar? Sit down and write something for me.”

  Denzil got pen and paper, and took his place.

  “What do you want me to write?”

  “The Epic Poem.”

  Denzil started and flushed. But he set to work. Grodman leaned back in his armchair and laughed, studying the poet’s grave face.

  Denzil wrote three lines and paused.

  “Can’t remember any more? Well, read me the start.”

  Denzil read:

  “Of man’s first disobedience and the fruit

  Of that forbidden tree whose mortal taste

  Brought death into the world—”

  “Hold on!” cried Grodman; “what morbid subjects you choose, to be sure.”

  “Morbid! Why, Milton chose the same subject!”

  “Blow Milton. Take yourself off—you and your Epics.”

  Denzil went. The pock-marked person opened the street door for him.

  “When am I to have that new dress, dear?” she whispered coquettishly.

  “I have no money, Jane,” he said shortly.

  “You have a sovereign.”

  Denzil gave her the sovereign, and slammed the door viciously. Grodman overheard their whispers, and laughed silently. His hearing was acute. Jane had first introduced Denzil to his acquaintance about two years ago, when he spoke of getting an amanuensis, and the poet had been doing odd jobs for him ever since. Grodman argued that Jane had her reasons. Without knowing them he got a hold over both. There was no one, he felt, he could not get a hold over. All men—and women—have something to conceal, and you have only to pretend to know what it is. Thus Grodman, who was nothing if not scientific.

  Denzil Cantercot shambled home thoughtfully, and abstractedly took his place at the Crowl dinner-table.

  CHAPTER VI

  Mrs. Crowl surveyed Denzil Cantercot so stonily and cut him his beef so savagely that he said grace when the dinner was over. Peter fed his metaphysical genius on tomatoes. He was tolerant enough to allow his family to follow their Fads; but no savory smells ever tempted him to be false to his vegetable loves. Besides, meat might have reminded him too much of his work. There is nothing like leather, but Bow beefsteaks occasionally come very near it.

  After dinner Denzil usually indulged in poetic reverie. But today he did not take his nap. He went out at once to “raise the wind.” But there was a dea
d calm everywhere. In vain he asked for an advance at the office of the “Mile End Mirror,” to which he contributed scathing leaderettes about vestrymen. In vain he trudged to the city and offered to write the “Ham and Eggs Gazette” an essay on the modern methods of bacon-curing. Denzil knew a great deal about the breeding and slaughtering of pigs, smoke-lofts and drying processes, having for years dictated the policy of the “New Pork Herald” in these momentous matters. Denzil also knew a great deal about many other esoteric matters, including weaving machines, the manufacture of cabbage leaves and snuff, and the inner economy of drain-pipes. He had written for the trade papers since boyhood. But there is great competition on these papers. So many men of literary gifts know all about the intricate technicalities of manufactures and markets, and are eager to set the trade right. Grodman perhaps hardly allowed sufficiently for the step backward that Denzil made when he devoted his whole time for months to Criminals I Have Caught. It was as damaging as a debauch. For when your rivals are pushing forward, to stand still is to go back.

  In despair Denzil shambled toilsomely to Bethnal Green. He paused before the window of a little tobacconist’s shop, wherein was displayed a placard announcing:

  “PLOTS FOR SALE.”

  The announcement went on to state that a large stock of plots was to be obtained on the premises—embracing sensational plots, humorous plots, love plots, religious plots, and poetic plots; also complete manuscripts, original novels, poems and tales. Apply within.

  It was a very dirty-looking shop, with begrimed bricks and blackened woodwork. The window contained some musty old books, an assortment of pipes and tobacco, and a large number of the vilest daubs unhung, painted in oil on Academy boards, and unframed. These were intended for landscapes, as you could tell from the titles. The most expensive was “Chingford Church,” and it was marked 1s. 9d. The others ran from 6d. to 1s. 3d., and were mostly representations of Scotch scenery—a loch with mountains in the background, with solid reflections in the water and a tree in the foreground. Sometimes the tree would be in the background. Then the loch would be in the foreground. Sky and water were intensely blue in all. The name of the collection was “Original oil paintings done by hand.” Dust lay thick upon everything, as if carefully shoveled on; and the proprietor looked as if he slept in his shop window at night without taking his clothes off. He was a gaunt man with a red nose, long but scanty black locks covered by a smoking cap, and a luxuriant black mustache. He smoked a long clay pipe, and had the air of a broken-down operatic villain.