The Guilty Abroad

by Peter J. Heck

  “There was nothing under the table,” said Susy, but there was a hint of doubt on her face. “I’m certain someone took away the candlestick. But I don’t know why any more than you do.”

  “Don’t forget the book!” Clara piped up. “I’ll bet it was hollowed out, and the gun was hidden in it. I read a story where they used a hollow book to smuggle a gun into someplace.” She smiled at her own cleverness.

  Susy looked thoughtful at this suggestion, but then said, “I think the police would have checked for that, if they’d seen someone taking it away. It was a big, thick book . . .”

  “Tell you what,” said her father. “Cabot or I will go over to the McPhee apartment sometime in the next couple of days and see if those things are there. Maybe Mrs. McPhee knows what happened to them.”

  “What if she’s the one who took it?” said Clara, a bright look on her face again. “Who would have a better excuse to move something, right in front of the police and everything? She could have just put it in a closet, and nobody would have thought twice about it.”

  “I don’t think she had the opportunity,” said Susy. “She was in the bedroom with us the whole time until the police arrived, and after that they’d have been watching her.”

  “I bet it was the murderer,” said Jean, waving her dessert spoon to emphasize the point. “He shot the doctor, and then he stole the candlestick!”

  “Put your spoon down, young lady,” said Mrs. Clemens. “We don’t wave our silverware about.”

  “Papa does it all the time,” said Jean, frowning. I could see that this line of argument was a time-tested defense for such behavior. “Especially when he’s acting like a bad, spitting gray kitten!” I had already heard the young ladies tease their father with this description when he got excited or lost his temper.

  “Your papa should know better, and you certainly do,” Mrs. Clemens said. “All this talk of murder has evidently gotten you too excited, if you forget your manners so easily. If you cannot save that spoon for its proper use, I shall tell Cook not to give you any pudding.” This warning had the desired effect, and the spoon was returned to its proper place. And having finally gained control of the conversation, Mrs. Clemens turned it to subjects of her own choosing for the duration of the meal.

  After dinner, Mr. Clemens smoked a cigar and enjoyed an evening of music with the family. Clara was an excellent pianist, and entertained her parents with a variety of pieces until little Jean’s bedtime. I heard snatches of Brahms and Stephen Foster from upstairs, where I had retired to rest my weary limbs, and to inspect my bruises. At least, I had escaped broken bones or more serious injury—no thanks to Tony Parkhurst’s cane. But my predinner drink, and a couple of glasses of wine with the meal, had at least dulled my awareness of my aching back and ribs. I was lying on my bed thinking about having Cook heat up some water so I could soak in a tub and retire early when my employer tapped on my bedroom door.

  “Sony to rouse you up again, Wentworth,” he said, opening the door and peering in at me. “But I thought this would be a good time to go visit that place Lestrade told us about—you know, the pub where McPhee’s Irish assistant used to wet his whistle. I’d like somebody with me if I’m going to walk into a rough workingmen’s bar, preferably a big football player. I know you’ve taken your lumps already today, but do you think you could manage to get back on your feet for one more round?”

  “You make it sound like a prizefight,” I said. “I hope that’s a figure of speech.” He simply grinned, so I pulled myself to my feet, with a deep sigh, and quickly girded my loins to go back out on the town.

  The place Lestrade had mentioned was within easy walking distance, but in deference to my bruises, we took the carriage. Not all the way: as Mr. Clemens pointed out, our clothes and American accents were likely enough to make us conspicuous. Not wanting to emphasize that by pulling up in front of it in even his modest rented rig, he had our driver drop us off at the nearest corner, rather than directly in front.

  Our destination, when we found it, was a shabby building near the river. The street was not quite as brightly lit as other parts of London I had seen, and there was a briny smell in the neighborhood, reminiscent of a pickle barrel. The Painted Lady’s signboard was chipped and faded, hard to read with the gas lamp all the way across the street. Below it was a dilapidated flight of stairs leading to a stout wooden door. We were the only ones on the street, but when we opened the door we found a room full of smoke, noise, and brawny workingmen holding tankards of ale.

  Every eye turned to inspect us, and there was a distinct pause in the conversation—exposing the wheezing sound of a concertina and an off-key tenor voice singing some oddly familiar air whose words were lost in an accent too thick to penetrate—then the denizens of the little pub gave a collective shrug and returned to their amusements. Still, there was a chill in the air around us as we made our way to the bar and leaned against it, waiting for the tavernkeeper’s attention. We were by a considerable margin the best-dressed men in the place, and both of us had decided to dress down for our foray into Terry Mulligan’s native habitat.

  Finally the tavernkeeper—a broad-beamed fellow with round spectacles and a waxed moustache—sidled over to us. He looked us up and down, then said, “You gents might be ’appier in the Royal Harms, two streets over. This ’ere’s just a workman’s pub, nothin’ posh to hit. Gets a mite rough sometimes, hit does.” A big man next to Mr. Clemens nodded, scowling the whole time.

  “We don’t mind rough,” said Mr. Clemens. “In fact, we’re here because we hear tell this is the right place to find somebody that don’t mind a little rough work. But I reckon the first thing we want is a couple of pints of your best bitter, if you don’t mind drawing ’em for us.” He slapped a pound note on the counter and waited.

  The tavernkeeper stared at the bill as if it might be a ransom note—evidently folding money was not common hereabouts—but then he picked it up and went to draw the drinks. While he worked the taps, Mr. Clemens turned to inspect the crowd, leaning his elbows back on the bar. There were a few of the locals still eyeing us suspiciously—we were probably the only visitors the place had seen in weeks, other than the deliveryman for the brewery. Those who hadn’t overheard my employer’s Missouri twang were probably wondering if he was a plainclothes policeman, and what they had done to make themselves the object of his attention.

  The tavernkeeper set the two pints to the side to let the foam settle, and came back over to our side of the bar; the scowling fellow had signaled him. The two leaned close together and whispered. The noise covered most of what they said, but the phrase “bloody Yanks” came through clearly enough. That, combined with the hostile glances the customer sent our way, was sufficient to convey the general tenor of their discourse. I remembered that Lestrade hadn’t wanted to send his men in here, and I wondered how wise we were to enter someplace the police did not care to visit. I doubted whether any information we might find here was worth having to fight our way out of the place—a prospect Mr. Clemens seemed not to have taken into account.

  Indeed, Mr. Clemens was scanning the room as nonchalantly as he might have an elegant parlor full of tea-drinking literary ladies. Most of the customers had gone back to whatever had occupied them before our entrance—a group was gathered around the concertina, others were playing cards or checkers, and many were simply talking, no doubt on very much the same subjects that would interest their peers in New York (or Singapore, for that matter). It would have seemed a perfectly ordinary place, except for the evident antipathy its regular denizens had for strangers.

  Mr. Clemens broke my train of thought by nudging me and saying quietly, “I don’t think Mulligan’s here, but maybe I don’t remember him well enough to recognize him. Take a look and see if you spot him.”

  A quick look around revealed nobody resembling Mulligan, but the dim light and thick smoke and the fact that many of the men had their backs toward us made it difficult to say definitively whether he
was here. “I don’t see him,” I said. “I wouldn’t put a lot of faith in that, though. I’d have a better chance of recognizing him in daylight.”

  “Maybe we can just walk casually around the room and see if we spot him,” said Mr. Clemens.

  “Oh, I can see very well from here,” I said, not wanting to encourage him in this idea. Standing by the bar, our intrusion was easily overlooked; walking around obviously looking for someone was likely to draw attention from someone hostile to strangers. I added, “Besides, I don’t think he’d drink in one of his known haunts if he knew the police were after him, do you?”

  “Don’t be so sure of that,” said Mr. Clemens. “If he gets thirsty enough, he might decide this is safer than someplace he doesn’t usually go to. Here, at least, he knows there won’t be many strangers.” He craned his neck, peering here and there.

  “Let’s not make ourselves conspicuous,” I said. “I’m beginning to think we shouldn’t have come here.”

  “Hell, I’ve been in plenty of worse places,” Mr. Clemens began. “When I was your age—”

  Whatever he was about to say was interrupted by the arrival of the tavernkeeper with our pints, which he had topped off now that the foam had dissipated. “ ’Ere’s your pints,” he hissed, shoving them across the counter at us abruptly enough to slosh some of the contents out of the glasses. “Hi’d had-vise you drink right up and be hon your way. We don’t want no trouble ’ere.”

  Mr. Clemens picked up his glass and leaned forward. “We don’t want trouble anywhere, but sometimes you get it when you don’t want it.” He took a sip, then added in a lower voice, “A friend of ours is in jail right now for something he didn’t do. There’s a man who comes in here sometimes who might be able to help us get him out.”

  “Well, hif ’e drinks hin ’ere, ’e’s no bloomin’ barrister,” the tavernkeeper said, his expression skeptical. “What did ye say this bloke’s name was, guv’nor?”

  “I didn’t yet, because the wrong people might hear it,” said Mr. Clemens, lowering his voice to a barely audible growl. “Scotland Yard’s looking for him, and for all I know they’ve got half a dozen lousy snoops in here right now. Can you vouch for everybody in the place?”

  The tavernkeeper narrowed his eyes and shifted them from one side to another, taking in the entire room in a single sweep. Then he shook his head. “Not a soul ’ere but the reg’lars. Hi know the lot of ’em. Hexcept you and your fellow, ’ere.”

  “That don’t mean one of them won’t go sell the cops every word he overhears,” said Mr. Clemens. He had stuck a cigar in his mouth and was mumbling around it. It gave him an air of conspiracy, and I realized that he had somehow managed to make himself seem every bit as disreputable as the rest of the denizens of The Painted Lady. “I reckon that’s how they caught this fellow we know—he came in here a couple of times, I hear tell. Curly-headed fellow, wears a big hat and puffs up like a banty rooster. McPhee’s the name, Ed McPhee.”

  “Aye, that’s the bloke to a tee,” said the tavernkeeper, smiling for the first time at Mr. Clemens’s imitation of McPhee’s voice and accent. “Jabbers and japes, just like that, honly louder. ’E’s in the clink, you say now, guv’nor?”

  “That’s right,” said my employer. He made shushing motions and lowered his voice again. “Now, Ed came in here looking for somebody to help him with a job he was doing, I guess you know the kind of work I mean.”

  “Maybe I does and maybe I doesn’t,” said the tavernkeeper, his face becoming suspicious again. “Hit ain’t wise for a man to blab heverythin’ ’e might know.”

  “That’s the kind of man I thought you were,” said Mr. Clemens, nodding approvingly. Just then there was an outbreak of raucous laughter from someone in the back of the room. We all peered through the smoke, trying to make out what was so funny, but whatever the reason was, we never learned it. After a moment, Mr. Clemens turned back to the tavernkeeper and continued.

  “I like a man who finds out who he’s talking to before he says something he might regret,” he said. “I’m not here to ask a bunch of questions, anyway. There’s just one thing maybe you can help me with. Ed hired a fellow name of Terry Mulligan, and we think Terry can help us get Ed out. Terry’s gone into hiding, not that I blame him one bit. Now, I’m not asking you where he is—what I don’t know can’t hurt anybody. But if you knew somebody that might get the word to Terry that Ed’s old pal Sam is looking for him—well, I reckon he can figure out how to find me if he wants to talk.”

  “Maybe I can do that,” said the tavernkeeper. “I don’t know if I remember Terry, or ’oo might know ’im.”

  “This might help you remember,” said Mr. Clemens, and he passed a folded banknote to the man. “Just make sure nobody finds out who doesn’t need to know.”

  “I’ll think about hit, guv’nor,” the barman said, slipping the bill into the pocket of his apron. He glanced around the room again, then said, “Now maybe you hought to drink up ’fore some of the lads get restless. Hif somebody recollects where Terry might be, I’ll make sure ’e knows to get the message to ’im.”

  “Fair enough,” said Mr. Clemens, and he handed the man another bill. “This ought to make sure the fellow knows to keep things under his hat.” Then he turned to me and added, “Drink up, Cabot, we’ll get out of the way so these good folks can drink without worrying about who’s watching them.”

  Off in the darkness I heard a woman squeal, then say, with a giggle, “Keep yer ’ands hoff!” A chorus of male laughter followed her outburst.

  “Yes, it’s high time we got home,” I said, reaching for my ale. I hadn’t touched a drop of it, wanting to be ready for whatever might happen. Now I drained it in two drafts, though it was hardly the best quality. Mr. Clemens (who had a bit of a head start on me) finished his at almost the same time. I put my empty tankard on the counter and we turned to leave the disreputable pub.

  “ ’Ere, ye’ll not go hout so heasy,” said a gruff voice behind me, and a heavy hand fell on my shoulder. With a sigh I stopped and looked back over my shoulder. There stood the large man who had scowled at us while we waited for our drinks. His face was very red, and his shirt and trousers were soiled from whatever work he had done that day—perhaps for the last several days. From the look of his arms, the work involved a good bit of heavy lifting.

  I tried to keep my voice calm. “Excuse me, friend, but I have had a long hard day. I think we would both be happier if I went on home and left you with your friends.” It was exactly what I felt, and I sincerely hoped it would suffice to get us out of the place without any more trouble.

  The fellow was not interested in being conciliated. He began railing at me, working himself up to a fighting furor. He was close enough for me to smell his breath, which reeked of fried fish and more ale than was healthy for him. “Too good for the likes of us, are you? You bloody toffs drinks your pint and shakes the dust hoff your feet, does you? We’ll teach you to sneer at the workin’ man.” He cocked a ham-sized fist and took aim at my jaw.

  “ ’Arry! We’ll ’ave none o’ that,” came a cry from somewhere behind him, but it was too late. I ducked under his drunken swing and planted three solid punches to his midsection before he could set himself for another assault. His eyes rolled up into his head and he went down like a rag doll.

  I stepped back to give him room, but I could see that he was not about to get up for some time. “I’m sorry,” I said, as much to the tavernkeeper as to him or to the now silent crowd. I held my hands out to my sides, palms open. “I would have walked away if he’d let me. You saw it. I don’t pick fights, but a man has to defend himself.”

  “That’s hall right, Yank,” said the tavernkeeper, who had come out to the front of the counter. “You done wot you ’ad to do, and nothin’ more. ’Arry won’t bother you, and won’t nobody else, if they wants anythin’ more to drink ’ere. You go your way, and that’ll be that.”

  I was about to say something more, but Mr. Clemens took
my elbow and said, “You heard the man, Wentworth. Let’s get out of here while we still can.”

  That seemed the best advice I’d had all day, and so I followed it.

  20

  “Jesus, Wentworth! I didn’t know you had it in you,” Mr. Clemens said for the third time since we had left The Painted Lady. He looked sideways at me with an expression I could not quite read, though it seemed to contain a large admixture of surprise. After my one-sided fight with Harry, the barroom bully in the unsavory tavern, we had hurried away from the place—“That big ox doesn’t worry me, but he just might have friends,” my employer had said, and I needed no urging to put any possible pursuit behind me. Any friends of Harry might not confine themselves to bare fists. But we made it home without incident.

  Mrs. Clemens and the girls had already retired. I had put a large kettle of water to heat up on the kitchen stove, to fill a tub for me to soak my weary and battered limbs before retiring, but it would be some time before it was warm enough. For now, we sat in the parlor, sipping Mr. Clemens’s whisky—mine liberally diluted with soda water. We thought it might still be possible to make some sense of what we had learned today—and to decide whether any of it pointed to something useful.

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Are you surprised that I managed to overcome that bully?”

  “Not so much that,” said Mr. Clemens. “You’re a big man, but I never saw you acting like a big man. Until now, every time I saw you use your strength it was to protect me—like this afternoon, when Tony Parkhurst came at us with his cane. He wasn’t after you, he was after me, and you just happened to be in the way. But tonight, that drunken ignoramus wanted to take a bit out of your hide—and you put him on the floor before he could get started. I always wondered when you would realize you can handle yourself in a fight, and now I’ve seen it twice in one day. I hope it isn’t going to change you from the nice young boy I hired to be my secretary.”