The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits
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Synopsis
What became of the convict that frightened young Pip in "Great Expectations"? Was he guilty, or framed? And what really did become of Edwin Drood? Was the case ever solved? This book presents over 25 whodunnits from the world of Dickens.
Charles Dickens created some of the most memorable characters in English literature. But just what became of the convict that frightened young Pip in Great Expectations?
Was he guilty, or framed? And what really did become of Edwin Drood? Was the case ever solved? Mike Ashley presents over 25 vivid new whodunnits from the world of Dickens—recorded for posterity by such writers as Michael Pearce, Amy Myers, Peter Tremayne, Alanna Knight, Kage Baker, and Edward D. Hoch.
Many of the stories feature one or more of Dickens's characters, as a sleuth or as the victim of crime; while others are set in Dickens's real life, with him investigating people closely associated with him, such as Wilkie Collins, Elizabeth Gaskell or Hablot Browne. Interlinking the stories is a narrative that brings alive Dickens's own life and part in the early development of crime sleuthing.
The stories include: Miss Havisham's Revenge by Alanna Knight, in which we discover the part Estella Havisham played in the fate of Bentley Drummle; Murder in Murray's Court by David Stuart Davies, in which Oliver Twist has to help the Artful Dodger who has been accused of murder; The Thorn of Anxiety by Keith Miles, in which the mystery of Edwin Drood is at last solved; The Divine Nature by Kate Ellis, in which David Copperfield finds himself investigating the disappearance of Edward Murdstone; The Letter by Joan Lock, in which the skills of Inspector Bucket are once again put to the test in solving a crime that apparently never happened.
Release date: September 1, 2011
Publisher: Little, Brown Book Group
Print pages: 288
* BingeBooks earns revenue from qualifying purchases as an Amazon Associate as well as from other retail partners.
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The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits
Mike Ashley
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Mike Ashley
Even if we’ve never read anything by Charles Dickens, there can’t be many of us who don’t know the names of at least one
Dickensian character, probably more. Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Nell . . . some of them have even found their way into the English language. Dickens was supreme in
his ability to create memorable characters, many associated with wonderful one-liners. Scrooge and his “Bah, humbug!”; young Oliver and “Please, sir, I want some more”;
Uriah Heep being “ever so ’umble”; Mr Bumble’s “The law is a’ ass” or Sidney Carton’s dramatic “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I
have ever done.”
Dickens’s characters live beyond the printed page. They are still with us a hundred and fifty years later and we can easily believe that they had a life beyond the novels. After all, what
did become of Oliver Twist when he grew up? How did Scrooge cope with his new-found generosity? What other crimes did Inspector Bucket investigate?
Ah, Inspector Bucket. Now we’re talking. When Dickens introduced Inspector Bucket in Bleak House in 1853 he created the first true fictional detective in England. He was modelled on
a real police detective, Inspector Field of the Metropolitan Police Force. Dickens frequently accompanied the police on their duties, betraying a fascination beyond the simple research for his
books. Dickens was fascinated by crime and criminals, and we should not overlook the significant role that Dickens played in portraying the police in fiction and thereby helping along the fledgling
field of crime fiction. The majority of Oliver Twist, for example, is set amongst the criminal underworld. There are many crimes in Our Mutual Friend whilst in Martin
Chuzzlewit Dickens created the first fictional private investigator in England in the shape of the mysterious Mr Nadgett. Most puzzling of all is The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which
involved either a murder or disappearance but was unsolved because Dickens died before he could complete the novel, thus providing plenty of speculation amongst Dickens devotees.
Which brings us to the purpose of this anthology. It is a celebration of Charles Dickens’s fascination with crime. Here you will find stories that either feature Dickens himself involved
in a crime connected with people and places that he knew or which feature characters from his books likewise involved in a mystery. For example, we find Mr Pickwick consulted over the disappearance
of a young woman. We find Oliver Twist having to help the Artful Dodger who has been accused of murder. We find Ebenezer Scrooge, now a changed man, with a stolen baby. We meet David Copperfield in
later life not once, but twice: in one story investigating the fate of Mr Murdstone, whilst in another teamed up again with Mr Micawber. We also meet the real Little Nell, who may not be quite the
angel we all thought in The Old Curiosity Shop. All of Dickens’s major works are represented including Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Hard
Times, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and, of course, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens himself also turns a hand to investigating, and we meet up
with Mrs Gaskell, S. Baring Gould, even Edgar Allan Poe. All of the stories here are based either directly on characters or incidents in Dickens’s works or on events in his life.
You do not need to know Dickens’s work to understand the stories. Each one is complete in itself, with any necessary background explained. And to further help set them in context I have
provided an introduction to each story which follows Dickens’s life.
Every story has been specially written for this book. I was not expecting every author to attempt a pastiche of Dickens’s style, though a few have done so admirably. Rather I was after
stories that remained true to Dickens’s life and to the characters in his books, with the object of bringing alive the world of Charles Dickens and his fascination for the underworld of crime
and mystery. So, without further ado let us answer Inspector Bucket’s question, “You don’t happen to have heard of a murder?” Indeed we have – quite a few. . . .
– Mike Ashley
Gillian Linscott
Charles Dickens was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, on 7 February 1812. He was the second of what would eventually be eight children, though two of them died in
infancy. His father, John, was a clerk in the pay-office at the dockyard. Through his work John and his family were transferred first to London in 1814 and then Chatham in 1817. For the time
John Dickens was moderately well paid, his salary of £350 in 1820 the equivalent of about £22,000 today, but with a growing family and a determination to give young Charles a good
education, it was not enough. Neither was John sensible with his money; rather, like Mr Micawber, he spent beyond his means. Admiralty reforms led to John Dickens and his family having to
return to London in 1822 and settle in Camden Town, in what was one of the less salubrious parts of the suburbs. It was an area that the young Dickens explored thoroughly and features time and
again in his books. Debts mounted and in February 1824, on his twelfth birthday, young Charles was sent to work in Warren’s Blacking Factory, which made shoe blacking, earning a shilling
a day. His job was to tie together the bottles of blacking and stick labels on them. The factory was on the bank of the Thames near Charing Cross. Though welcomed by his father, it was too
late. Two weeks after Charles had started work, John Dickens was arrested for debt and cast into the Marshalsea Prison. He was soon joined by the rest of his family, except for Charles, who
continued to work and who lived in lodgings, unbearably lonely. Such is the point at which our first story begins.
Gillian Linscott is a former reporter and Parliamentary journalist, and the author of the Nell Bray series of suffragette mysteries that began with Sister Beneath the Sheet (1991)
and includes the award-winning Blood on the Wood (2000). Although most of her books are set in the early 20th century, Murder, I Presume (1990) takes place in 1874 in the
aftermath of the death of Dr Livingstone.
“Right,” I told them. “They’re under starter’s orders and these are the odds.” I showed them the list:
Little Wife – evens.
Geranium – three to one.
Glue Boy – three to one.
The Inventor – ten to one.
Holy Joe – twenty to one.
Fifty to one the field.
“Geranium should be better odds.” Watts, moaning as usual.
“Think so? Father Christmas is fond of flowers. Don’t you remember he turned up one day with a rose in his buttonhole?”
“Carnation,” Natty said. “It was a clove carnation. And how you got it narrowed down to those five?”
“Makes no odds whether it was a carnation or a dandelion. Instinct’s what I go by and instinct tells me there’s only five in the field worth a second look.”
Instinct’s worth something, true, but inside knowledge is worth a good bit more and that was what I had, though I’d no intention of letting on to Watts and Natty. The thing is, if
you’ve been a customer of a place as often as I have, you’re valued by the management. The top storey but one of Marshalsea debtors’ prison, south of the Thames in Southwark, has
probably never had a more regular patron than me – in and out two or three times a year as my luck goes up or down – and the governor and I are like old school chums. So when it came to
some tips from the stable on the annual Marshalsea Father Christmas Handicap Stakes, he put me right.
“He’s got it narrowed down to five and as it happens three of them are on your floor. You know Mr Perkins?”
“The one with the pretty little wife who brings his dinner in every afternoon?”
“That’s the one. Mr Shipham is very sentimental about wives. His own died young and he confided that little Mrs Perkins reminds him of her.”
I should mention here that Mr Shipham is the one we call Father Christmas, for reasons that will become obvious.
“It’s a one-horse race, then?” I said.
“No, because he’s not quite made up his mind about Mr Perkins. He thinks he may be responsible for his own misfortunes and perhaps not as thoughtful towards his wife as he should be.
At present he’s rather inclining to two of your other neighbours. One’s Mr Peat.”
“Who went bankrupt trying to breed a yellow geranium.”
“Mr Shipham thinks it shows praiseworthy enterprise. Then there’s Mr Dickens.”
“Pretty ordinary case, I’d say. Government clerk spending beyond his means. A dozen of those on every floor.”
“Yes. But Mr Shipham has been impressed by the son. He saw him when he came to visit his father and said he thought he’d go far.”
I was surprised. I’d seen the boy on his visits, but he’d struck me as no more than a twelve-year-old streak of misery, taking it hard.
“Young Charlie the glue boy, you mean?” I said.
“Why do you call him the glue boy?”
“Because he smells of glue. He works in Warren’s Blacking Factory near the Strand, sticking labels on the tins. Boiled horses’ hooves, that’s what they make glue from,
and that’s what he smells of.”
We discussed the two from another floor, a failed inventor and a clergyman who’d spent all his money, and some he hadn’t got, trying to put a Bible on every beer house counter, and I
went away to make up my betting book.
Now, you won’t find the Marshalsea Father Christmas Handicap in any racing calendar and you probably won’t have heard about it at all unless you’ve done time
in the Marshalsea yourself, but among debtors it’s nearly as famous as the Derby. It isn’t run at Christmas, either. That’s just the name we give it because for one lucky man
it’s like all the Christmases he ever had rolled into one, thanks to Mr Shipham. What happened was, around forty years ago when Mr Shipham was about the age that Glue Boy is now, his own
father died in the Marshalsea. Young master Shipham supports what’s left of the family and goes on to make a fortune in the building trade, but how ever much money he makes it preys on his
mind that he couldn’t save his own dad. So once a year, on his father’s birthday, he chooses the most deserving man in the prison and pays off his debts up to the sum of two hundred
pounds. Now, since a lot of poor devils end up in here for owing no more than thirty pounds or so, that’s the key to the door and a bit over. Mr Shipham starts making up his mind a week or
two beforehand, discusses things with the governor a bit but mostly relies on his own judgement. What he does is sit quietly in the common rooms in every part of the place, just watching and
listening to what goes on. Now, you might think that would mean he couldn’t move for people crowding round him and begging him to choose them, only the Marshalsea Stakes has its rules like
any other and the main one is that the debtors and their friends and relations mustn’t approach him or even let on they notice him. Well, that’s asking a lot, of course, but it helps
that he’s a quiet old gent, nothing special to look at and his clothes as plain as anybody’s, only better quality if you get up close. So he can sit of an evening on a bench by the fire
with his pipe and after a while people do get used to him more or less and the drunks start drinking and the swearers start effing and blinding again, all nearly natural. That’s the point we
were at when I made my final list of the odds with just a few days to go to the big day.
Now, seeing what the governor had said, you might think I was wrong making Perkins and the little wife favourite, but taking my meals in the same common room as them I’d
had a good chance to weigh them up and reckoned the governor wasn’t allowing enough for her form. To my mind, she had winner’s enclosure written all over her. She was as pretty as a
doll fresh out of the toy box, big blue eyes, little wisps of fair hair showing underneath her bonnet. She always kept herself neat, even though there couldn’t be anything to spend on
clothes, her collars and cuffs starched and laundered, little boots clean even after tripping through the muddy streets round the Marshalsea every afternoon carrying her basket. That basket was a
winner in its own right. For a start, it was so big and heavy that a man with any warmth in his heart couldn’t stop himself from offering to carry it for her. I’ve seen two of the most
hardened sinners in the place practically fighting each other for the privilege of carrying it up the last flight of stairs. Then when she sat down with Perkins at their share of the long common
room table and unpacked it, every eye in the room was on it, like kids at a Punch and Judy show. Every day there’d be two clean handkerchiefs for Perkins (who sniffed a good deal), every
other day a clean shirt, once a week a clean pillowcase. I daresay King George himself didn’t have better care taken of his linen than Perkins in the Marshalsea. Then, bless you, she’d
unfold a snowy white napkin, put it down in front of him and take his dinner out of her basket. By then, you could hear a sound like the sea sucking round rocks when the tide goes out. It was all
the other men in the room licking their lips. We got to know the menu by heart. Sundays, for a treat, he got big slices of meat off the joint with potatoes tucked up in newspaper to keep them warm,
followed by a slice of apple pie. Mondays was cold cuts and pickle, Tuesdays what was left of the cold cuts done in a curry, Wednesdays a lamb cutlet with a neat little pot of mint sauce.
She’d sit opposite watching him eat, not taking a morsel herself then, when he was quite done, pack the plate and knife and fork back in her basket and put his dirty linen that she was taking
away for washing on top. Then she’d give him a peck on the cheek – always embarrassed at having to do it in front of a roomful of strangers – and slip away, light as a wisp of hay
blowing across the paddock. Talking about her round the fire afterwards on the day that I’d worked out the odds, the three of us agreed she’d thrown herself away when she married
Perkins. He’d owned a couple of draper’s shops before his problems and it could be that she’d been impressed with seeing his name up over the doors. But he was a poor enough
creature in himself, blaming all the world for what had happened to him, bearing grudges.
“He doesn’t appreciate what he’s got,” Watts said.
“Picking the poor woman up like that over a pair of gloves,” Natty agreed.
Watching her as we did, we’d all noticed that her hands when she packed up her basket were sporting a neat pair of lilac-coloured gloves. So had Perkins.
“Are those new gloves you’ve bought?”
She’d coloured up.
“Of course not. I found them in the back of a drawer.”
“Practically accusing her of going out buying finery when he was locked up for debt,” Natty said.
“Even if she had, what difference would a pair of gloves make?” added Watts.
I noticed that Glue Boy was standing not far away, listening to us. Usually he spent his visits talking to his father but his senior’s attention was taken up with a
couple of the younger brats. It struck me that when he wasn’t blubbing Glue Boy’s eyes were better than the rest of him, big and wary like a thoroughbred’s, noticing things. When
Natty and Watts moved off to their card school I patted the bench beside me, inviting him to sit down. He did but a bit gingerly, as if he expected the bench to be dirty.
“So how d’you rate Mrs Perkins?” I asked him.
“She is the very model of a devoted wife.”
I could have burst out laughing. Here was this shaver trying to sound like a gentleman three times his age. His voice was clear and carrying, like a child actor’s. Then I noticed him
glancing towards Mr Shipham, sitting quietly by the fire.
“Oh-ho, my lad, you’re not as green as you’re grass-looking,” I thought. I lowered my voice and moved closer to him, in spite of the whiff. “She’s the reason
why Perkins is a furlong or two in front of your father.”
He nodded. He’d seen that.
“But the race isn’t over till it’s won,” I told him. “Mr Shipham is fairly impressed with you.”
I’m not sure why I told him that, only I enjoy a close finish and it seemed to me the great handicapper had dealt a bit too lightly with Perkins. I could see Glue Boy had taken in what I
said. He had the sense not to glance towards Mr Shipham again but later, when it was time for Glue Boy to go, he made a great business of saying goodbye to his father and even, gawd help us,
kneeled down on the floor for his blessing. Over-egging it a bit, I thought, but from the thoughtful look on Mr Shipham’s face, it had played well.
That was on the Monday evening, with only two clear days to go to the finish, the birthday of Mr Shipham’s late dad falling on a Thursday that year. On the Tuesday night,
Perkins went and got himself poisoned. We didn’t know it was poison at first. All the day visitors had left, including Mr Shipham. The outside doors were locked. Inside, some of us were in
bed already and a few, including Watts, Natty and me, were dredging the bottom of the punch-bowl round what was left of the fire. Then the shrieking started, coming from the cubbyhole of a room
that Perkins shared with another cove. We all looked at each other. Perkins had been complaining of stomach gripes earlier, but then he was always complaining of something so we didn’t take
any notice. Then the cove he shared with put his head round the door, yelling that Perkins was dying and to fetch the governor quick. The governor came and had him carried to the sick room. Perkins
was groaning and shrieking all the time, face grey, so we had to admit that for once he did have something properly wrong with him.
“Twisted gut,” Natty said. “A cousin of mine died from it.”
“Gallstones,” said Watts.
Geranium, who’d been woken up by the noise and reckoned he knew about medicine, said it was a burst appendix. It wasn’t worth making a book on it and just as well because by the time
the outside doors were unlocked in the morning, all bets would have been off. The word had spread round the Marshalsea that Perkins was dead of rat poison. Now, being hundreds of years old, the
Marshalsea’s got more than its fair quota of rats, so rat poison’s more common than sugar here. Every now and then, some poor blighter who can’t settle himself philosophically to
being locked up decides to take a few mouthfuls of it as the quickest way out. So if the prison doctor said it was rat poison, rat poison it was, leaving open only the question of how it got inside
Perkins.
“For a start, he didn’t know he was taking it,” Natty said.
No argument about that. A man with a good chance of being out with all his debts paid in two days and a loving little wife waiting for him isn’t going to take the boneyard exit of his own
free will. Our common room had filled with visitors from outside plus debtors from other floors who wanted to know all about it. No sign of Mr Shipham. The word was that he was closeted with the
governor, quite distressed.
“They’ll have to send somebody to let his wife know,” Watts said.
“That’s being seen to,” said somebody from the ground floor. “Can’t have her tripping in this afternoon with her basket as usual and finding him in his
coffin.”
Natty took his pipe out of his mouth and gave the man an old-fashioned look.
“How come you lot on the ground floor know about the basket, then?”
Several people spoke at once, saying much the same thing – everyone in the whole Marshalsea knew about Mrs Perkins and the daily visit with her old man’s dinner. Truth is, not a lot
happens here and we gossip like farm wives on market day. You could feel the atmosphere change. Natty’s question, and his tone of voice, had brought into the open the question we were all
asking ourselves. If somebody nobbles one of the favourites, who gains?
“Got to be one on your list, hasn’t it?” Watts said.
Murmurs of agreement from all round. They all knew the odds and most of them had got bets on.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be one of the favourites. It could be anybody who thought he was in with a chance.”
There was no point in pretending that Perkins’ death had nothing to do with the Marshalsea Handicap so we didn’t try.
“You wouldn’t risk getting your neck stretched if you were only an outside chance,” somebody objected.
“That’s the whole point about debtors,” Watts said. “We always think the outside chance is going to come up.”
Couldn’t have put it better myself. I looked round, wondering if any of the favourites was listening. None that I could see. Geranium had taken himself off somewhere and Dickens had shut
himself in his own room with his wife and young brats. Only I noticed his lad Glue Boy standing on the edge of our group, taking in every word.
“Look at it logically, though,” Natty said. “Biggest chance, biggest motive. It makes sense to start with the favourites. Then you ask yourself, who out of them had the best
chance of feeding him rat poison without anybody knowing.”
“You’d slip it in his dinner,” said the man from the ground floor.
Which was true enough, only our little group didn’t like it or the way he said it. It meant that he was putting suspicion fair and square on our top-storey-but-one common room. We were the
ones with the opportunity. I pointed out that it didn’t need to be in his dinner, he could have been given something with poison in it by anyone, any time of the day. But the argument
didn’t stand up for long. Rat poison acts pretty quickly and Perkins was a creature of routine. He’d eaten his dinner, drunk a glass of water with it and nothing else. So it had to be
in the dinner and if you accepted that our common room had the best opportunity, well . . .
“It puts Geranium and Dickens right in the frame,” said the man from the ground floor.
My eyes went to Glue Boy. His whole body flinched and for a moment his eyes screwed up tight as if he wanted to shut out everything. Next second, they were wide open again, as if his life
depended on taking in every detail of the scene. He said nothing. I don’t think the man from the ground floor had intended any harm to him, he just didn’t know who the lad was. But
there wasn’t time to think any more about Glue Boy, because a new voice spoke up. A slow, preachy kind of voice.
“If in the frame means under greatest suspicion . . .”
Several impatient voices assured him that it did. It was Holy Joe, the clergyman. Until then, I hadn’t known he was in the room. He was sitting on a bench, some way apart from the group. A
balding, egg-shaped man, very satisfied with himself in spite of where he’d landed up.
“Then the argument is proceeding on a false premise. There would have been ample opportunity for a person from another floor to have introduced a noxious substance into the unfortunate
man’s repast.”
“How?”
We all spoke at once. He’d probably never caught a congregation’s attention from the pulpit the way he held ours and you could see him enjoying it.
“The fact of the matter is that Mrs Perkins left the basket containing her husband’s dinner on the landing of the floor below for some time yesterday when she was paying a visit to
me in our common room.”
Noises of incredulity all round. The idea of Mrs Perkins bothering with Holy Joe when there were plenty of other men in the place to talk to didn’t please anybody. Watts expressed the
general feeling.
“Why the hell would she want to visit you?”
Holy Joe glared at him.
“Because, unlike some people, Mrs Perkins has a proper Christian spirit. In spite of her adversities, she came to make a small contribution to my Bible fund.”
That silenced us for a while. Against all the odds, Holy Joe still cherished this mad scheme of putting Bibles in beer houses. He’d tried to get most of us to stump up for it, with as much
chance of success as running a three-legged donkey in the Gold Cup.
“How much?” somebody asked.
“A shilling. Not a great deal, perhaps, but you know the parable of the widow’s mite . . .”
“She wasn’t a widow then,” somebody said.
We were worried that Holy Joe was going to start preaching at us.
“Was she with you long?” I said.
“Ten minutes or more. She asked me about my work and we prayed together.”
“And the basket was out on the landing all the time?”
“Yes, indeed. I accompanied her out to the landing and carried it upstairs for her, as far as this landing.”
Then, probably judging that he’d made his dramatic effect, he got up and left. Natty, Watts and I moved away from the rest of the group and formed a huddle in the corner to talk it
over.
“If he’s right, anybody had time to do it,” Watts said. “Whoever it is notices her basket on the landing, nips down to the basement for the nearest dish
of rat poison and sprinkles it over Perkins’ dinner while she’s in there praying.”
“If he is right,” Natty said. “But why make such a point of telling us?”
“Well, it puts suspicion away from him for a start,” said Watts. “He couldn’t be inside praying with her and outside with the rat poison at the same time.”
“But he’s admitted to carrying the basket upstairs for her. He could have put it in then.”
“Twenty stairs or so and her walking just in front of him? Don’t be daft.”
“You’re both of you missing the point,” I said. “It’s not who his story puts suspicion away from, it’s who it puts it onto.”
Silence for a while as they thought about it.
“The Inventor?” Natty said.
“Yes, he’s on the same floor as Holy Joe and they can’t stand each other.”
The Inventor was a bit of a free-thinker, though he’d been keeping that quiet when Mr Shipham was around so as not to spoil his chances. Men from the floor below were fed up with arguments
between him and Holy Joe about miracles.
“So he’s implying that the Inventor had a good chance of seeing the basket there on the landing?” Natty said.
“Well, it might be true, mightn’t it, even if it is Holy Joe that says so,” Watts said. “If it is, then we have to add another one to the list. It’s Geranium, or
Dickens, or the Inventor.”
Watts had spoken quite loudly, certainly loudly enough to reach the ears of Glue Boy who, just by chance, had moved over to look out of the window near us when we started our discussion.
I’d noticed, but the other two hadn’t. What’s more, Glue Boy had noticed that I’d noticed.
I went over, casual like, and stood beside him at the window.
“Taking the day off from the factory, are you?”
He gave me an unfriendly look, too big for a child-sized fac
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The Mammoth Book of the Deep
The Mammoth Book of Dirty, Sick X-Rated & Politically Incorrect Jokes
The Mammoth Book of the Edge
The Mammoth Book of Egyptian Whodunnits
The Mammoth Book of Erotic Photography
The Mammoth Book of Erotic Women
The Mammoth Book of Extreme SF
The Mammoth Book of Famous Trials
The Mammoth Book of Great Detective Stories
The Mammoth Book of Great Inventions
The Mammoth Book of Haunted House Stories
The Mammoth Book of Historical Whodunnits
The Mammoth Book of Illustrated True Crime
The Mammoth Book of International Erotica
The Mammoth Book of IQ Puzzles
The Mammoth Book of Jokes
The Mammoth Book of King Arthur
The Mammoth Book of Lesbian Erotica
The Mammoth Book of Modern Ghost Stories
The Mammoth Book of Mountain Disasters
The Mammoth Book of New Terror
The Mammoth Book of New Jules Verne Adventures
The Mammoth Book of On the Road
The Mammoth Book of Perfect Crimes and Impossible Mysteries
The Mammoth Book of Pirates
The Mammoth Book of Polar Journeys
The Mammoth Book of Roaring Twenties Whodunnits
The Mammoth Book of Roman Whodunnits
The Mammoth Book of Secret Code Puzzles
The Mammoth Book of Seriously Comic Fantasy
The Mammoth Book of Sex, Drugs & Rock ‘n’ Roll
The Mammoth Book of Sorcerers’ Tales
The Mammoth Book of Sudoku
The Mammoth Book of Space Exploration and Disasters
The Mammoth Book of SAS & Special Forces
The Mammoth Book of Short Erotic Novels
The Mammoth Book of Special Ops
The Mammoth Book of Sudoku
The Mammoth Book of Travel in Dangerous Places
The Mammoth Book of True Crime
The Mammoth Book of True War Stories
The Mammoth Book of Unsolved Crimes
The Mammoth Book of Vampires
The Mammoth Book of Vintage Whodunnits
The Mammoth Book of Wild Journeys
The Mammoth Book of Women Who Kill
The Mammoth Book of the World’s Funniest Cartoons
The Mammoth Book of the World’s Greatest Chess Games
Mike Ashley
Even if we’ve never read anything by Charles Dickens, there can’t be many of us who don’t know the names of at least one
Dickensian character, probably more. Ebenezer Scrooge, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield, Little Nell . . . some of them have even found their way into the English language. Dickens was supreme in
his ability to create memorable characters, many associated with wonderful one-liners. Scrooge and his “Bah, humbug!”; young Oliver and “Please, sir, I want some more”;
Uriah Heep being “ever so ’umble”; Mr Bumble’s “The law is a’ ass” or Sidney Carton’s dramatic “It is a far, far better thing that I do, than I
have ever done.”
Dickens’s characters live beyond the printed page. They are still with us a hundred and fifty years later and we can easily believe that they had a life beyond the novels. After all, what
did become of Oliver Twist when he grew up? How did Scrooge cope with his new-found generosity? What other crimes did Inspector Bucket investigate?
Ah, Inspector Bucket. Now we’re talking. When Dickens introduced Inspector Bucket in Bleak House in 1853 he created the first true fictional detective in England. He was modelled on
a real police detective, Inspector Field of the Metropolitan Police Force. Dickens frequently accompanied the police on their duties, betraying a fascination beyond the simple research for his
books. Dickens was fascinated by crime and criminals, and we should not overlook the significant role that Dickens played in portraying the police in fiction and thereby helping along the fledgling
field of crime fiction. The majority of Oliver Twist, for example, is set amongst the criminal underworld. There are many crimes in Our Mutual Friend whilst in Martin
Chuzzlewit Dickens created the first fictional private investigator in England in the shape of the mysterious Mr Nadgett. Most puzzling of all is The Mystery of Edwin Drood, which
involved either a murder or disappearance but was unsolved because Dickens died before he could complete the novel, thus providing plenty of speculation amongst Dickens devotees.
Which brings us to the purpose of this anthology. It is a celebration of Charles Dickens’s fascination with crime. Here you will find stories that either feature Dickens himself involved
in a crime connected with people and places that he knew or which feature characters from his books likewise involved in a mystery. For example, we find Mr Pickwick consulted over the disappearance
of a young woman. We find Oliver Twist having to help the Artful Dodger who has been accused of murder. We find Ebenezer Scrooge, now a changed man, with a stolen baby. We meet David Copperfield in
later life not once, but twice: in one story investigating the fate of Mr Murdstone, whilst in another teamed up again with Mr Micawber. We also meet the real Little Nell, who may not be quite the
angel we all thought in The Old Curiosity Shop. All of Dickens’s major works are represented including Nicholas Nickleby, Martin Chuzzlewit, A Christmas Carol, Bleak House, Hard
Times, Dombey and Son, Little Dorrit, Great Expectations, Our Mutual Friend and, of course, The Mystery of Edwin Drood. Dickens himself also turns a hand to investigating, and we meet up
with Mrs Gaskell, S. Baring Gould, even Edgar Allan Poe. All of the stories here are based either directly on characters or incidents in Dickens’s works or on events in his life.
You do not need to know Dickens’s work to understand the stories. Each one is complete in itself, with any necessary background explained. And to further help set them in context I have
provided an introduction to each story which follows Dickens’s life.
Every story has been specially written for this book. I was not expecting every author to attempt a pastiche of Dickens’s style, though a few have done so admirably. Rather I was after
stories that remained true to Dickens’s life and to the characters in his books, with the object of bringing alive the world of Charles Dickens and his fascination for the underworld of crime
and mystery. So, without further ado let us answer Inspector Bucket’s question, “You don’t happen to have heard of a murder?” Indeed we have – quite a few. . . .
– Mike Ashley
Gillian Linscott
Charles Dickens was born at Landport, a suburb of Portsmouth, on 7 February 1812. He was the second of what would eventually be eight children, though two of them died in
infancy. His father, John, was a clerk in the pay-office at the dockyard. Through his work John and his family were transferred first to London in 1814 and then Chatham in 1817. For the time
John Dickens was moderately well paid, his salary of £350 in 1820 the equivalent of about £22,000 today, but with a growing family and a determination to give young Charles a good
education, it was not enough. Neither was John sensible with his money; rather, like Mr Micawber, he spent beyond his means. Admiralty reforms led to John Dickens and his family having to
return to London in 1822 and settle in Camden Town, in what was one of the less salubrious parts of the suburbs. It was an area that the young Dickens explored thoroughly and features time and
again in his books. Debts mounted and in February 1824, on his twelfth birthday, young Charles was sent to work in Warren’s Blacking Factory, which made shoe blacking, earning a shilling
a day. His job was to tie together the bottles of blacking and stick labels on them. The factory was on the bank of the Thames near Charing Cross. Though welcomed by his father, it was too
late. Two weeks after Charles had started work, John Dickens was arrested for debt and cast into the Marshalsea Prison. He was soon joined by the rest of his family, except for Charles, who
continued to work and who lived in lodgings, unbearably lonely. Such is the point at which our first story begins.
Gillian Linscott is a former reporter and Parliamentary journalist, and the author of the Nell Bray series of suffragette mysteries that began with Sister Beneath the Sheet (1991)
and includes the award-winning Blood on the Wood (2000). Although most of her books are set in the early 20th century, Murder, I Presume (1990) takes place in 1874 in the
aftermath of the death of Dr Livingstone.
“Right,” I told them. “They’re under starter’s orders and these are the odds.” I showed them the list:
Little Wife – evens.
Geranium – three to one.
Glue Boy – three to one.
The Inventor – ten to one.
Holy Joe – twenty to one.
Fifty to one the field.
“Geranium should be better odds.” Watts, moaning as usual.
“Think so? Father Christmas is fond of flowers. Don’t you remember he turned up one day with a rose in his buttonhole?”
“Carnation,” Natty said. “It was a clove carnation. And how you got it narrowed down to those five?”
“Makes no odds whether it was a carnation or a dandelion. Instinct’s what I go by and instinct tells me there’s only five in the field worth a second look.”
Instinct’s worth something, true, but inside knowledge is worth a good bit more and that was what I had, though I’d no intention of letting on to Watts and Natty. The thing is, if
you’ve been a customer of a place as often as I have, you’re valued by the management. The top storey but one of Marshalsea debtors’ prison, south of the Thames in Southwark, has
probably never had a more regular patron than me – in and out two or three times a year as my luck goes up or down – and the governor and I are like old school chums. So when it came to
some tips from the stable on the annual Marshalsea Father Christmas Handicap Stakes, he put me right.
“He’s got it narrowed down to five and as it happens three of them are on your floor. You know Mr Perkins?”
“The one with the pretty little wife who brings his dinner in every afternoon?”
“That’s the one. Mr Shipham is very sentimental about wives. His own died young and he confided that little Mrs Perkins reminds him of her.”
I should mention here that Mr Shipham is the one we call Father Christmas, for reasons that will become obvious.
“It’s a one-horse race, then?” I said.
“No, because he’s not quite made up his mind about Mr Perkins. He thinks he may be responsible for his own misfortunes and perhaps not as thoughtful towards his wife as he should be.
At present he’s rather inclining to two of your other neighbours. One’s Mr Peat.”
“Who went bankrupt trying to breed a yellow geranium.”
“Mr Shipham thinks it shows praiseworthy enterprise. Then there’s Mr Dickens.”
“Pretty ordinary case, I’d say. Government clerk spending beyond his means. A dozen of those on every floor.”
“Yes. But Mr Shipham has been impressed by the son. He saw him when he came to visit his father and said he thought he’d go far.”
I was surprised. I’d seen the boy on his visits, but he’d struck me as no more than a twelve-year-old streak of misery, taking it hard.
“Young Charlie the glue boy, you mean?” I said.
“Why do you call him the glue boy?”
“Because he smells of glue. He works in Warren’s Blacking Factory near the Strand, sticking labels on the tins. Boiled horses’ hooves, that’s what they make glue from,
and that’s what he smells of.”
We discussed the two from another floor, a failed inventor and a clergyman who’d spent all his money, and some he hadn’t got, trying to put a Bible on every beer house counter, and I
went away to make up my betting book.
Now, you won’t find the Marshalsea Father Christmas Handicap in any racing calendar and you probably won’t have heard about it at all unless you’ve done time
in the Marshalsea yourself, but among debtors it’s nearly as famous as the Derby. It isn’t run at Christmas, either. That’s just the name we give it because for one lucky man
it’s like all the Christmases he ever had rolled into one, thanks to Mr Shipham. What happened was, around forty years ago when Mr Shipham was about the age that Glue Boy is now, his own
father died in the Marshalsea. Young master Shipham supports what’s left of the family and goes on to make a fortune in the building trade, but how ever much money he makes it preys on his
mind that he couldn’t save his own dad. So once a year, on his father’s birthday, he chooses the most deserving man in the prison and pays off his debts up to the sum of two hundred
pounds. Now, since a lot of poor devils end up in here for owing no more than thirty pounds or so, that’s the key to the door and a bit over. Mr Shipham starts making up his mind a week or
two beforehand, discusses things with the governor a bit but mostly relies on his own judgement. What he does is sit quietly in the common rooms in every part of the place, just watching and
listening to what goes on. Now, you might think that would mean he couldn’t move for people crowding round him and begging him to choose them, only the Marshalsea Stakes has its rules like
any other and the main one is that the debtors and their friends and relations mustn’t approach him or even let on they notice him. Well, that’s asking a lot, of course, but it helps
that he’s a quiet old gent, nothing special to look at and his clothes as plain as anybody’s, only better quality if you get up close. So he can sit of an evening on a bench by the fire
with his pipe and after a while people do get used to him more or less and the drunks start drinking and the swearers start effing and blinding again, all nearly natural. That’s the point we
were at when I made my final list of the odds with just a few days to go to the big day.
Now, seeing what the governor had said, you might think I was wrong making Perkins and the little wife favourite, but taking my meals in the same common room as them I’d
had a good chance to weigh them up and reckoned the governor wasn’t allowing enough for her form. To my mind, she had winner’s enclosure written all over her. She was as pretty as a
doll fresh out of the toy box, big blue eyes, little wisps of fair hair showing underneath her bonnet. She always kept herself neat, even though there couldn’t be anything to spend on
clothes, her collars and cuffs starched and laundered, little boots clean even after tripping through the muddy streets round the Marshalsea every afternoon carrying her basket. That basket was a
winner in its own right. For a start, it was so big and heavy that a man with any warmth in his heart couldn’t stop himself from offering to carry it for her. I’ve seen two of the most
hardened sinners in the place practically fighting each other for the privilege of carrying it up the last flight of stairs. Then when she sat down with Perkins at their share of the long common
room table and unpacked it, every eye in the room was on it, like kids at a Punch and Judy show. Every day there’d be two clean handkerchiefs for Perkins (who sniffed a good deal), every
other day a clean shirt, once a week a clean pillowcase. I daresay King George himself didn’t have better care taken of his linen than Perkins in the Marshalsea. Then, bless you, she’d
unfold a snowy white napkin, put it down in front of him and take his dinner out of her basket. By then, you could hear a sound like the sea sucking round rocks when the tide goes out. It was all
the other men in the room licking their lips. We got to know the menu by heart. Sundays, for a treat, he got big slices of meat off the joint with potatoes tucked up in newspaper to keep them warm,
followed by a slice of apple pie. Mondays was cold cuts and pickle, Tuesdays what was left of the cold cuts done in a curry, Wednesdays a lamb cutlet with a neat little pot of mint sauce.
She’d sit opposite watching him eat, not taking a morsel herself then, when he was quite done, pack the plate and knife and fork back in her basket and put his dirty linen that she was taking
away for washing on top. Then she’d give him a peck on the cheek – always embarrassed at having to do it in front of a roomful of strangers – and slip away, light as a wisp of hay
blowing across the paddock. Talking about her round the fire afterwards on the day that I’d worked out the odds, the three of us agreed she’d thrown herself away when she married
Perkins. He’d owned a couple of draper’s shops before his problems and it could be that she’d been impressed with seeing his name up over the doors. But he was a poor enough
creature in himself, blaming all the world for what had happened to him, bearing grudges.
“He doesn’t appreciate what he’s got,” Watts said.
“Picking the poor woman up like that over a pair of gloves,” Natty agreed.
Watching her as we did, we’d all noticed that her hands when she packed up her basket were sporting a neat pair of lilac-coloured gloves. So had Perkins.
“Are those new gloves you’ve bought?”
She’d coloured up.
“Of course not. I found them in the back of a drawer.”
“Practically accusing her of going out buying finery when he was locked up for debt,” Natty said.
“Even if she had, what difference would a pair of gloves make?” added Watts.
I noticed that Glue Boy was standing not far away, listening to us. Usually he spent his visits talking to his father but his senior’s attention was taken up with a
couple of the younger brats. It struck me that when he wasn’t blubbing Glue Boy’s eyes were better than the rest of him, big and wary like a thoroughbred’s, noticing things. When
Natty and Watts moved off to their card school I patted the bench beside me, inviting him to sit down. He did but a bit gingerly, as if he expected the bench to be dirty.
“So how d’you rate Mrs Perkins?” I asked him.
“She is the very model of a devoted wife.”
I could have burst out laughing. Here was this shaver trying to sound like a gentleman three times his age. His voice was clear and carrying, like a child actor’s. Then I noticed him
glancing towards Mr Shipham, sitting quietly by the fire.
“Oh-ho, my lad, you’re not as green as you’re grass-looking,” I thought. I lowered my voice and moved closer to him, in spite of the whiff. “She’s the reason
why Perkins is a furlong or two in front of your father.”
He nodded. He’d seen that.
“But the race isn’t over till it’s won,” I told him. “Mr Shipham is fairly impressed with you.”
I’m not sure why I told him that, only I enjoy a close finish and it seemed to me the great handicapper had dealt a bit too lightly with Perkins. I could see Glue Boy had taken in what I
said. He had the sense not to glance towards Mr Shipham again but later, when it was time for Glue Boy to go, he made a great business of saying goodbye to his father and even, gawd help us,
kneeled down on the floor for his blessing. Over-egging it a bit, I thought, but from the thoughtful look on Mr Shipham’s face, it had played well.
That was on the Monday evening, with only two clear days to go to the finish, the birthday of Mr Shipham’s late dad falling on a Thursday that year. On the Tuesday night,
Perkins went and got himself poisoned. We didn’t know it was poison at first. All the day visitors had left, including Mr Shipham. The outside doors were locked. Inside, some of us were in
bed already and a few, including Watts, Natty and me, were dredging the bottom of the punch-bowl round what was left of the fire. Then the shrieking started, coming from the cubbyhole of a room
that Perkins shared with another cove. We all looked at each other. Perkins had been complaining of stomach gripes earlier, but then he was always complaining of something so we didn’t take
any notice. Then the cove he shared with put his head round the door, yelling that Perkins was dying and to fetch the governor quick. The governor came and had him carried to the sick room. Perkins
was groaning and shrieking all the time, face grey, so we had to admit that for once he did have something properly wrong with him.
“Twisted gut,” Natty said. “A cousin of mine died from it.”
“Gallstones,” said Watts.
Geranium, who’d been woken up by the noise and reckoned he knew about medicine, said it was a burst appendix. It wasn’t worth making a book on it and just as well because by the time
the outside doors were unlocked in the morning, all bets would have been off. The word had spread round the Marshalsea that Perkins was dead of rat poison. Now, being hundreds of years old, the
Marshalsea’s got more than its fair quota of rats, so rat poison’s more common than sugar here. Every now and then, some poor blighter who can’t settle himself philosophically to
being locked up decides to take a few mouthfuls of it as the quickest way out. So if the prison doctor said it was rat poison, rat poison it was, leaving open only the question of how it got inside
Perkins.
“For a start, he didn’t know he was taking it,” Natty said.
No argument about that. A man with a good chance of being out with all his debts paid in two days and a loving little wife waiting for him isn’t going to take the boneyard exit of his own
free will. Our common room had filled with visitors from outside plus debtors from other floors who wanted to know all about it. No sign of Mr Shipham. The word was that he was closeted with the
governor, quite distressed.
“They’ll have to send somebody to let his wife know,” Watts said.
“That’s being seen to,” said somebody from the ground floor. “Can’t have her tripping in this afternoon with her basket as usual and finding him in his
coffin.”
Natty took his pipe out of his mouth and gave the man an old-fashioned look.
“How come you lot on the ground floor know about the basket, then?”
Several people spoke at once, saying much the same thing – everyone in the whole Marshalsea knew about Mrs Perkins and the daily visit with her old man’s dinner. Truth is, not a lot
happens here and we gossip like farm wives on market day. You could feel the atmosphere change. Natty’s question, and his tone of voice, had brought into the open the question we were all
asking ourselves. If somebody nobbles one of the favourites, who gains?
“Got to be one on your list, hasn’t it?” Watts said.
Murmurs of agreement from all round. They all knew the odds and most of them had got bets on.
“Not necessarily,” I said. “It doesn’t have to be one of the favourites. It could be anybody who thought he was in with a chance.”
There was no point in pretending that Perkins’ death had nothing to do with the Marshalsea Handicap so we didn’t try.
“You wouldn’t risk getting your neck stretched if you were only an outside chance,” somebody objected.
“That’s the whole point about debtors,” Watts said. “We always think the outside chance is going to come up.”
Couldn’t have put it better myself. I looked round, wondering if any of the favourites was listening. None that I could see. Geranium had taken himself off somewhere and Dickens had shut
himself in his own room with his wife and young brats. Only I noticed his lad Glue Boy standing on the edge of our group, taking in every word.
“Look at it logically, though,” Natty said. “Biggest chance, biggest motive. It makes sense to start with the favourites. Then you ask yourself, who out of them had the best
chance of feeding him rat poison without anybody knowing.”
“You’d slip it in his dinner,” said the man from the ground floor.
Which was true enough, only our little group didn’t like it or the way he said it. It meant that he was putting suspicion fair and square on our top-storey-but-one common room. We were the
ones with the opportunity. I pointed out that it didn’t need to be in his dinner, he could have been given something with poison in it by anyone, any time of the day. But the argument
didn’t stand up for long. Rat poison acts pretty quickly and Perkins was a creature of routine. He’d eaten his dinner, drunk a glass of water with it and nothing else. So it had to be
in the dinner and if you accepted that our common room had the best opportunity, well . . .
“It puts Geranium and Dickens right in the frame,” said the man from the ground floor.
My eyes went to Glue Boy. His whole body flinched and for a moment his eyes screwed up tight as if he wanted to shut out everything. Next second, they were wide open again, as if his life
depended on taking in every detail of the scene. He said nothing. I don’t think the man from the ground floor had intended any harm to him, he just didn’t know who the lad was. But
there wasn’t time to think any more about Glue Boy, because a new voice spoke up. A slow, preachy kind of voice.
“If in the frame means under greatest suspicion . . .”
Several impatient voices assured him that it did. It was Holy Joe, the clergyman. Until then, I hadn’t known he was in the room. He was sitting on a bench, some way apart from the group. A
balding, egg-shaped man, very satisfied with himself in spite of where he’d landed up.
“Then the argument is proceeding on a false premise. There would have been ample opportunity for a person from another floor to have introduced a noxious substance into the unfortunate
man’s repast.”
“How?”
We all spoke at once. He’d probably never caught a congregation’s attention from the pulpit the way he held ours and you could see him enjoying it.
“The fact of the matter is that Mrs Perkins left the basket containing her husband’s dinner on the landing of the floor below for some time yesterday when she was paying a visit to
me in our common room.”
Noises of incredulity all round. The idea of Mrs Perkins bothering with Holy Joe when there were plenty of other men in the place to talk to didn’t please anybody. Watts expressed the
general feeling.
“Why the hell would she want to visit you?”
Holy Joe glared at him.
“Because, unlike some people, Mrs Perkins has a proper Christian spirit. In spite of her adversities, she came to make a small contribution to my Bible fund.”
That silenced us for a while. Against all the odds, Holy Joe still cherished this mad scheme of putting Bibles in beer houses. He’d tried to get most of us to stump up for it, with as much
chance of success as running a three-legged donkey in the Gold Cup.
“How much?” somebody asked.
“A shilling. Not a great deal, perhaps, but you know the parable of the widow’s mite . . .”
“She wasn’t a widow then,” somebody said.
We were worried that Holy Joe was going to start preaching at us.
“Was she with you long?” I said.
“Ten minutes or more. She asked me about my work and we prayed together.”
“And the basket was out on the landing all the time?”
“Yes, indeed. I accompanied her out to the landing and carried it upstairs for her, as far as this landing.”
Then, probably judging that he’d made his dramatic effect, he got up and left. Natty, Watts and I moved away from the rest of the group and formed a huddle in the corner to talk it
over.
“If he’s right, anybody had time to do it,” Watts said. “Whoever it is notices her basket on the landing, nips down to the basement for the nearest dish
of rat poison and sprinkles it over Perkins’ dinner while she’s in there praying.”
“If he is right,” Natty said. “But why make such a point of telling us?”
“Well, it puts suspicion away from him for a start,” said Watts. “He couldn’t be inside praying with her and outside with the rat poison at the same time.”
“But he’s admitted to carrying the basket upstairs for her. He could have put it in then.”
“Twenty stairs or so and her walking just in front of him? Don’t be daft.”
“You’re both of you missing the point,” I said. “It’s not who his story puts suspicion away from, it’s who it puts it onto.”
Silence for a while as they thought about it.
“The Inventor?” Natty said.
“Yes, he’s on the same floor as Holy Joe and they can’t stand each other.”
The Inventor was a bit of a free-thinker, though he’d been keeping that quiet when Mr Shipham was around so as not to spoil his chances. Men from the floor below were fed up with arguments
between him and Holy Joe about miracles.
“So he’s implying that the Inventor had a good chance of seeing the basket there on the landing?” Natty said.
“Well, it might be true, mightn’t it, even if it is Holy Joe that says so,” Watts said. “If it is, then we have to add another one to the list. It’s Geranium, or
Dickens, or the Inventor.”
Watts had spoken quite loudly, certainly loudly enough to reach the ears of Glue Boy who, just by chance, had moved over to look out of the window near us when we started our discussion.
I’d noticed, but the other two hadn’t. What’s more, Glue Boy had noticed that I’d noticed.
I went over, casual like, and stood beside him at the window.
“Taking the day off from the factory, are you?”
He gave me an unfriendly look, too big for a child-sized fac
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The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits
Mike Ashley
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