‘I think he was losing the plot, you know.’ James Batchelor put down the latest instalment of The Mystery of Edwin Drood and stared at the empty fireplace.
‘Hmm?’ Matthew Grand had his nose buried in the Telegraph, wondering if Magic, Captain Osgood’s yacht, had a hope in Hell in the America’s Cup next month.
‘Dickens,’ Batchelor explained. ‘His latest opus – forever unfinished now, I suppose – The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Not much of a mystery, really. Uncle Jasper did it.’
‘Did he?’ Grand looked up. ‘How do you know?’
‘Please, Matthew,’ Batchelor chuckled, ‘I am an enquiry agent.’
‘Of course you are.’
‘So, it’s not just that the “who” in “whodunit” is as plain as the nose on George Sala’s face, it’s that about a third of the book is written in the present tense.’
‘Is that illegal?’ Grand wondered aloud. He had been in England for less than five years and he knew they did things differently over here.
‘It should be,’ Batchelor told him. ‘Reads appallingly. I’m surprised at Dickens; I’d hoped for more. How did you get on with the burial details?’
‘Well, I couldn’t get into the abbey for the crowds.’
‘He was a national treasure, however you look at it.’
Grand nodded. He remembered Abraham Lincoln’s funeral, with strangers crying and hugging each other. Everybody wanted to touch the casket, pat the white horses, collect the petals that floated down in the April sun. Four men claimed to have laid the pennies on the dead president’s eyes. Barbers in Washington made a fortune selling locks of the great man’s hair that had been nowhere near the great man’s head. ‘It wasn’t that simple, though,’ he said.
‘What wasn’t?’
‘Well, it seems Dickens wanted to be buried in a village called Shawe, the church of St Peter and St Paul.’
‘No, no,’ Batchelor shook his head. ‘His adoring public wouldn’t have allowed that.’
‘Exactly. The authorities from Rochester Cathedral were round to the Dickens place like rats up a pipe. Said they’d already dug the grave.’
Batchelor looked at him. ‘That was a little premature,’ he said, ‘or am I mixing my authors?’
‘Time was,’ Grand reminded him, ‘you’d have given your right arm for a word from Dickens. According to you, the sun shone out of his—’
‘Yes, but that was before this.’ Batchelor waved the paper at him. ‘Chapters Ten to Twelve.’
‘When’s the next instalment due?’
‘Thirteen to Sixteen should be out next month, but perhaps that won’t happen now; without the end, there seems little point. But I have to admit, Matthew, I’m disappointed. It’s just not up to his usual standard.’
‘The obituaries said he hadn’t been well.’
‘So you think George Sala was wrong – about the murder, I mean?’
Grand shrugged. ‘You know the man better than I do, James,’ he said. ‘You tell me.’
‘“No stone unturned”,’ Batchelor murmured, staring again into the blackness where the fire roared in darker, cooler days. ‘He seemed pretty adamant.’
‘And he did pay us a retainer.’
Batchelor snorted. ‘Notice how pale he turned, though? The man would rather have his teeth drawn than draw a cheque, I fancy. So, how did Dickens end up in Westminster Abbey?’
‘Dean Stanley.’
‘Who?’
‘Arthur Stanley, Dean of Westminster.’
‘You’ve met him?’
‘No, I’ve spent most of the day in the various bookstores around the church—’
‘Abbey,’ Batchelor corrected him.
‘Right. If you want to find out local details, ask the store clerks. Most people wanted to chew my head off on Gladstone’s Irish policy. One of them couldn’t understand why we weren’t backing the Prussians by invading France. And don’t get me started on Mr Forster’s Education Act.’
‘But on Dean Stanley …?’
‘On Dean Stanley, they were as one. He’s a Helluva nice cuss, who would never suggest that England’s greatest writer should be buried in his ch … abbey, but he knows the very place, right between Handel and Sheridan.’
‘Perfect. So,’ Batchelor crossed to the brandy decanter and poured for them both. He raised his glass. ‘To the detecting game, Captain Grand.’
Grand raised his glass too. ‘To the detecting game, indeed, Mr Batchelor. The only game in town. Now, what have we got?’
George Sala was a great story teller, no one would deny him that. In fact his detractors would go further and say that everything he wrote was a story, no matter how factual it was meant to be. But he was so wound up in the toils of the tale of a dead man that he went backwards, forwards and sideways randomly, so that in the end Batchelor’s notes, taken during his discursion, looked like the ravings of a madman. While everything was fresh in his mind, Batchelor had retired to his garret and rewritten it all in an attempt to make it seem like sense. But even then there were so many gaps and bits of nonsense that he was sure that he had got the wrong end of the stick more than once.
He now planned to read it all out to Grand, who was invited to interrupt whenever he thought Batchelor had gone wrong, as he remembered it.
‘I’m sorry, James,’ Grand said before the reading even began. ‘At times I wondered whether the man hadn’t come straight here from some opium den or somewhere. He was … well, I can only use the word incoherent.’
‘Sala does have a habit of using twelve long words where one short one would do,’ Batchelor agreed. ‘I’ve cut all that out where I can.’
‘That’s a mercy,’ Grand said, leaning over and tugging the bell, the only one that linked to the kitchen. ‘Brandy’s good when you have work to do, but shall we have a snack as well? I’m as hungry as a hunter.’
Batchelor sighed. They had both managed to lose the excess weight caused by their brief employment of a gourmet chef, but Grand had been left with a taste for canapés of an evening. Sadly, Mrs Rackstraw had never quite got the knack, and she usually produced a cheese sandwich, cut into small squares. She was an excellent plain cook, as her references all attested, but with the emphasis very much on the plain.
In answer to the bell, there was a thunder of running feet in the hall and the housekeeper burst in as though the hounds of Hell were at her heels. ‘Yes?’ Then, ‘Sir?’ There was something about her timing that added insolence to injury whenever she spoke.
‘Umm … yes,’ Grand said, ignoring the slur. ‘Could we have some canapés, do you think? Not cheese-based, if possible.’
The woman stood there, still swaying with the violence of her entry, but didn’t speak.
‘So … that would be marvellous, thank you,’ Grand smiled and turned back to Batchelor. After a moment or so, the door slammed, and the running feet were heard to disappear down the corridor. The slamming of the green baize door completed the picture.
‘Shall I wait …?’ Batchelor was loath to begin when she would be back shortly with a tray of something unidentifiable. With cheese out of the question, it was doubtful that she would have anything else she could squeeze between two bits of bread.
‘No, no,’ Grand said, waving a hand. ‘Let’s get going. We can’t hang around waiting on the help all the time. When did Sala’s story begin? I could hardly tell even that, honestly.’
Batchelor shuffled his papers and tapped them into neatness on the table. ‘I don’t know when Sala’s story began, but I have started with the finding of the body. Dickens, as you probably know, did all his writing in a small summerhouse in the grounds of Gads Hill, which everyone refers to as the chalet.’
Grand threw up his hands. ‘There you are, you see; I have already learned something.’
Batchelor was aghast. ‘Everyone knows that,’ he said.
Grand made a decision and leaned forward. ‘James, before this all begins in earnest, can we come to a consensus? I won’t keep on telling you it was news to me, if you don’t keep telling me that everyone knows that. Is that agreed?’
Batchelor was sulky, but agreed. He took a deep breath. ‘So, on the 9 June last, Dickens’s housekeeper, Georgina Hogarth, known as Georgy, went to the chalet.’
The door crashed back. Mrs Rackstraw deposited a plate of toasted squares of bread oozing something brown. ‘Canapés,’ she remarked.
‘And they contain …?’ Grand wasn’t sure he wanted to know, but couldn’t help but ask.
‘Dripping,’ she said. ‘You said you didn’t want cheese.’ As an explanation it left a little to be desired, but she swept out anyway, giving him no chance to pursue the matter.
Grand looked at them from every angle and finally popped one gingerly into his mouth. He chewed with his eyes closed and then opened them, smiled and mumbled through the mouthful, ‘They’re good.’
‘Of course they are,’ Batchelor snapped. ‘I had dripping toast practically every afternoon of my life until I left home. Now, do you mind if we get on?’
‘Not at all.’ Grand slid the plate nearer to him. ‘Do you want any of these?’
‘No. As I was saying, Georgy went to the chalet and found Dickens there, dead in his chair.’
‘What time was this?’ Grand interrupted through his next mouthful.
‘Er … mid-afternoon … ish. She screamed the place down and several of the staff from the house and grounds came running. It strikes me as odd.’
‘Why? Most women scream when they find someone dead. It’s kind of in their bones; dead body means scream. Spider, scream. Mouse, scream.’ Grand was unashamedly polishing off his dripping; most English food left him cold, but this he liked. His remarks were short and pithy so as not to interfere with eating.
‘I agree. But it appears that George Sala – this could get confusing, this George, Georgy confluence. I’ll call George just Sala, shall I?’
Grand nodded.
‘So, Sala said he got the impression that she wasn’t just screaming that a dead body was in there, but that anyone at all was in there. Her reaction, according to the gardener who saw her open the door, was just too immediate. Dickens’s body didn’t look unpleasant or even very dead. He was just sitting in his chair. For all she knew, he was just asleep.’
‘So, is that why Sala came to us?’
‘Partly. But wait. If you remember, Sala said that Dickens had complained of exhaustion and of being unable to sleep for several weeks. But when he tried to find someone to whom Dickens had spoken on this subject, he could find no one. It was all just supposition and gossip after the event. The doctor gave the cause of death as a severe stroke. But you could say that about many deaths which have other very well-attested causes. You may as well say he died because he stopped breathing, or because his heart stopped.’
‘Did Sala find out why she went there?’
‘Pardon?’ Batchelor thumbed through his notes.
‘If she was surprised to see him there, why did she go to the chalet?’
‘I expect she was just going to tidy up or something. She was his housekeeper, after all.’
Grand looked thoughtful. ‘Have I imagined it, or is there a rumour going around about Dickens and his housekeeper?’
Batchelor was shocked. ‘I think you must be thinking of Wilkie Collins,’ he said, on his dignity. ‘That’s well known.’
Grand set his lips and shook his head. ‘Nope. I definitely remember hearing it about Charles Dickens.’
‘Thackeray. Apparently—’
‘James.’ Grand had had enough. ‘If Thackeray once lived with his housekeeper as man and wife he certainly isn’t doing it any more. Even I, unlettered colonial though you think me, know that he’s as dead as a nit. But if it upsets you we will agree that yes, Georgina … what did you say her name was?’
‘Hogarth.’
‘Any relation?’
‘Yes, she’s his sister-in-law.’
Grand’s mouth moved as he tried to work it out. ‘Whose sister-in-law?’ he had to ask in the end.
‘Dickens’s of course. Who else are we talking about?’
‘For a moment there, the artist. But that doesn’t matter – I didn’t know she was his sister-in-law.’
‘Yes. His wife lives apart from him these days,’ Batchelor grudgingly admitted, ‘and her sister runs the house.’
Grand said nothing and his expression was so bland that Batchelor could have struck him.
‘I will admit that there are rumours about Dickens and the odd actress, but I am sure they are just ill-natured gossip. He loved a pretty face, apparently.’
‘There were no actresses there, I’m assuming. In the chalet, with the dead body.’
‘No. He was by himself. Sala apparently was there within the hour – they sent a post boy, Isaac somebody, on a fast horse to various key people, and of course he was a great comfort to Georgina on her loss. Some of the children were there of course, Trollope …’
‘That is a bit uncalled for. Some people don’t have much respect for actresses, but they deserve a bit of respect, nonetheless.’
‘What?’ Batchelor was puzzled for a moment. ‘Oh. I see. No, Trollope. Trollope the author.’
Grand shook his head.
‘The Barsetshire novels?’ He looked at his friend, who was still in the dark, and wondered whether to tell him about the dripping on his lapel. ‘No. You’ll just have to take it from me that Anthony Trollope is a leading author. Not as great as Dickens, of course …’
‘Of course.’
Batchelor continued, ‘But a great friend of the family, according to Sala. Dickens’s doctor, Dr Beard, stayed to speak to the family, and Sala managed to take him aside and ask him a few pertinent questions.’
‘Which were …?’ Grand was getting a little tired of George Sala already, retainer or no retainer.
‘He didn’t say. But he did say that Dr Beard was extremely circumspect in his replies.’
‘Doctors are,’ Grand observed. ‘Especially when one of their patients has been found unexpectedly dead.’
‘Yes. I agree with that at least. But Sala …’
Grand had finished all the dripping and was bored. The discussion was going nowhere, George Sala, in his humble opinion, was just building up his part, hoping to be able to write himself into the last chapters of his biography of the great, dead, Dickens. It was time to wrap this up. ‘So, James, if I may. Dickens is found dead in a place in which he spent a lot of time. He wasn’t stabbed, shot, throttled or otherwise done away with.’
‘As far as we know.’ Batchelor couldn’t help the addition.
‘As far as we know. He had been working like a demon, had complained of exhaustion, and lived what we must agree to call an unusual private life. How old was he?’
‘Fifty-eight.’
‘Not a bad innings, as you English chaps say. A bit too young to just drop dead, I suppose, but I really can’t for the very life of me work out why Sala thinks he was murdered.’
Batchelor tidied his papers once more and marshalled his thoughts. ‘It isn’t very obvious, perhaps,’ he said. ‘But … but he was willing to part with money and that isn’t like him. And he came to us because Dickens had our card on his desk. Why would he have that unless he was thinking of engaging us? And why would he want to engage us unless he was in fear of his life?’
Grand walked over to Batchelor and took the notes from him, sliding them into a drawer. Batchelor took the opportunity to flick the globule of dripping off his friend’s lapel and into a dried-flower arrangement gathering dust on the table. ‘Come on, James,’ Grand said kindly. ‘Time for a walk to clear our heads. Because you know why Dickens had looked out our card, don’t you? Hmm. Now, don’t you?’
Batchelor smiled and buttoned up his coat. ‘Because he’d lost his cat?’
‘You know it!’