Marley Was Dead: A Christmas Carol Mystery

Marley Was Dead:

  A Christmas Carol Mystery

  By Lenny Everson

  rev 3

  Copyright Lenny Everson 2014

  Cover design by Lenny Everson

  For Dianne

  ****

  Chapter 1: December 19

  Marley was dead: to begin with. There is no doubt whatever about that. The register of his burial was signed by the clergyman, the clerk, the undertaker, and the chief mourner. Scrooge signed it: and Scrooge’s name was good upon ’Change, for anything he chose to put his hand to. Old Marley was as dead as a door-nail.

  Inspector Ian McFergus had not been satisfied; not in the least satisfied. He had inspected Marley's body using all the due processes and checklists upon which the police division insisted and in which he had been trained. And he was not satisfied.

  Marley's body had been found at the bottom of the stairs, dead as a doornail (McFergus wondered where that expression had come from). The inspector had walked around the body as required and had drawn a sketch as required. And however much it looked as if the old guy had simply tripped, Inspector McFergus had not been satisfied at the time and had been no more satisfied after the coroner had hauled the corpse, clothed in a shabby nightgown, away. Eating kippers and potatoes that evening, McFergus had barely concentrated on the food or upon his wife, Amy.

  About midnight he had got up, had lit the stub of a candle, and had made a list of things to do;

  1. Ask the coroner again if there was anything unusual about the body.

  2. Talk to Marley's housekeeper.

  3. Talk to Ebenezer Scrooge, Marley's partner, the man who would now own Scrooge and Marley, Incorporated.

  4. Talk to Scrooge’s clerk, Bob Cratchit. (Sometimes underpaid clerks knew more than they let on.)

  As he had written his thoughts down, even more thoughts had followed, unbidden. The candle had been short, however, and the winter nights in London were long and cold. Inspector McFergus had gone back to bed and had finally able to sleep, snuggled up against Amy.

  The next day he was told by his superiors that there were other things he should be working on, so he never got to talk to Scrooge or Cratchit. He tried to forget about the incident of Jacob Marley.

  ***

  Seven years later McFergus woke up early, as was his habit. For years the knocker-upper had tapped each morning at the McFergus bedroom window with his long pole before moving on. Finally, when McFergus had retired, almost six months before, he’d told the man to skip his house, and thereby saved two pence a week. But long before that date, McFergus had always been awake when that tapping came.

  As usual, he nonetheless checked the watch he had been given. 6:35, of course. Some things didn’t change, although he suspected that one of these days he’d actually be able to make it to seven o’clock before getting up. Maybe then he’d buy a cigar to celebrate if he did. Not that Amy liked cigars much.

  McFergus turned to his wife, still asleep beside him. It was December 19th, by the calendar with the queen’s picture on it, it was cold in the bedroom; and Amy was down so far under the blankets that not much more than her grey hair showed. He smiled, then set about the slow, careful process of trying to get out of bed without waking her. He’d succeeded just once last week, which encouraged him. Or maybe, he thought suddenly, she’d just pretended to be asleep that morning. The thought made him frown; he’d been good on the police force, being unusually able to tell when a suspect was lying or hiding something, but he’d never been as successful with his wife. Must be, he thought, that she knew him much better than the crooks did.

  Quietly, he put his slippers on, then reached for the clothes hanging from a chair. Carefully laying the garments over his arm, he tiptoed towards the door. He’d lubricated the door’s hinges latches with whale oil two days ago, so it was bound to be a bit quieter. As he reached for the handle, Amy said, “Call me when the tea’s warm.”

  The former inspector smiled ruefully. “I’ll do that, Mrs McFergus. I’ll do that,” and went down to the kitchen.

  He got a fire going in the coal fireplace and ran some water from the tap into the old black kettle. He stopped and looked at the tap again. To McFergus it was still a minor miracle. Up until the year before Amy had hauled water in a bucket from a communal well, three blocks away. McFergus had always supposed he’d be doing that chore now that he was retired and Amy’s back hurt her so much. But the piped water line had come through their neighbourhood in the summer, with a branch line coming right into the kitchen. Now it cost money to get water, even if it was available only two days a week, but they could just afford it, and it was so very much easier than navigating the slippery, manure laden area around the communal well.

  He didn’t try to prepare any breakfast; Amy demanded her right to do that, but when he was sure his wife was finished with the chamber pot, he took it down the three flights of stairs then out behind the row housing to the toilet area, where there was a short line of people who, to judge by their sour expressions, obviously hadn’t yet had their morning tea. After emptying the pot (with its picture of Napoleon staring up at him from the inside bottom) into the outhouse, he used the outhouse himself.

  Someday, he thought, even this will be something people will tell their grandchildren about. The new sewer system, a massive public project, which was being built over the objections of the richer classes (those who had servants to empty their chamber pots every morning), marched closer to this street every month. But then, the richer classes usually complained about the tax burden of any construction used for the good of others.

  On his way back to Amy he stopped to chat with a couple of neighbours about the weather and some politics. Generally, he found people friendly, but reserved. The older people weren’t quite sure what a inspector did, since the occupation hadn’t been created until a few years before. They knew it was something to do with the police, so no one was willing to mention anything that might be illegal. And there were more than a few who had trouble grasping the fact that McFergus was retired. They didn’t know anybody who’d retired unless he was very sick, so they suspected the ex-cop was on the take somehow. Maybe they could sense McFergus’s unease. “Now what the heck are you going to do with the rest of your life?” they asked.

  “Visit people, walk, read…,” he told them, but he never seemed sure of it.

  By the time McFergus got back to his own door, Amy had the tea served and a washbasin full of heated water on a counter. As he sat down, she served him a bowl of oatmeal and two slices of bread, with tea. Halfway through, while he was drinking his second cup of tea, she said, “What’s on your plate for the day?”

  He knew what she meant. They had no children now and McFergus’s plan to read a lot had been limited by his failing eyesight. He could see well enough to read the latest instalment of A Tale of Two Cities in the daylight, but he was getting headaches now when he tried to read by lantern light.

  “Might go down to the local and talk to Arthur,” he suggested.

  “Hm,” Amy said, and he knew what she meant about that.

  “Or,” he said, “I might start on that painting again.”

  “Sure,” Amy said, and he knew what she meant about that.

  “I could go for a walk.”

  “Your leg’s hurting,” Amy said. “I can tell by the way you’re walking. And it’s raining.”

  “Hm,” McFergus said. It was one thing to go strolling down the avenue on a sunny day in June with the spirit of a young man, but entirely another to walk the streets of London in a December rain, when the streets had been turned into a slop from the city’s thousands of horse-drawn vehicles. The
surface of the street was perpetually covered with a thin coating of straw, horse manure, and horse urine, soot from the chimneys, and a fine powder made by iron wheel rims on granite blocks. Crossing a street meant stepping into that soup while dodging various combinations of public and private horse transport. London was installing its first subways and steam-driven subway cars, but it would be months before even the shortest subway line was in operation.

  That left the option of taking the train to the country and looking for a hiking trail in a cold rain. But, of course, the country roads were like London streets, except with more mud and nobody to haul the horse products away every day or two. “Hm,” McFergus said again.

  “Remember the Jacob Marley case?” Amy asked.

  McFergus looked up from his tea quickly. “I do, my love,” he said. Then he tried to change the subject. “What will you yourself be doing today?”

  “Tilly would like me to do a few hours worth of filing.”

  McFergus nodded. That was good news. Amy’s part-time job at the insurance company didn’t pay very well, Amy being a woman and all, but any money was a help, and Amy seemed happier when she got out of the house to meet other people. “I remember the Marley case. If you can call it a case,” he added.

  “You were,” she noted, “bothered by it at the time.”

  “I was.” He studied his tea. “”Had not Superintendent Tayford told me I had better things to do, I might have pursued it.” He looked her in the eyes. “I tried a couple of times after that, but we were so busy….”

  She put her hand on his. “You’re not busy now.”

  He put his other hand over hers. “That I’m not. That I’m not.”

  She withdrew her hand and poured him some more tea. “There were a number of cases you had to give up on, for lack of time.”

  McFergus shook his head. “None bothered me so much as old Marley. I’d like to have followed up a few thoughts.”

  “Nobody else seemed to think his death was suspicious. Just a careless man falling down a flight of stairs.”

  “Ah, my dear. Nobody else on the force was warned in advance.”

  “Pardon?” Amy paused with the tea pot in her hand.

  The former inspector smiled. “A week before his death, I was told by a snitch that someone was going to kill Jacob Marley. of Scrooge and Marley. It would probably look like an accident, the fellow said.”

  “You never told me that,” Amy said. “I never knew why you were bothered by it.” She got up to rinse the teapot and her teacup. “I often wondered if you told me all the events of the day.”

  “Some things were not suitable for a woman to hear, ” he said. “And in some things I was too embarrassed.”

  “I remember you and the new superintendent didn’t get along. That was obvious.”

  “He’s a right bastard,” McFergus said.

  “Language!” Amy said.

  “I misspoke. He’s a right awful bastard.”

  Amy just shook her head in despair. “Who told you Marley was to be killed?”

  The ex-copper took a final sip from his cup, then closed his eyes for a moment, thinking. “I was patrolling up towards Smithfield,” he said.

  Amy nodded. “I don’t think there’s ever been enough police for that place.”

  “You’re right about that. Anyway, I came around a corner and I saw three lads, no more than twelve years old, looking at a silver watch on a chain.”

  “I suspect,” Amy said, “that their ownership of that watch was rather recent. Or were they the duke’s sons, in town for a spree with the flash girls?”

  “Well disguised, if they were anything but ragamuffins. The accent of two of them was south Smithfield all the way. The other was fresh from Edinburgh by the sound of him.”

  “You enquired where they might have obtained the watch?” Amy smiled, knowing her husband better than that.

  “I wrapped my arm around the neck of the lad who had just been handed the item, and scooped up the watch before he could toss it to the others. I told him I was a policeman.”

  “And what did they say?”

  “The others took off down the street, holding their pipes in their hands. The one I had in my arm didn’t say a thing. Apparently, I’d cut off his supply of air somewhat.” McFergus smiled. “Then I dragged him over to a quiet area, stood on him, and checked the watch.”

  “Stolen, of course.”

  “A theft, but not a pickpocket theft. It had the owner’s name in it, and it was from a hotel room that had been robbed the night before.” McFergus massaged his face with both hands, a habit he’d long had. ‘Stolen goods,’ I told him. Then I asked him if he wanted to talk, or would prefer the jail.”

  “I’ve seen that jail,” Amy said. “Most things in life are better than that. Unless you’re a mudlark in winter, I guess”

  “He offered me two names. Neither was a surprise to me, and I told him he was just trying to point me off. I told him to give me something I could check.” McFergus paused, then went on. “The lad was in a right panic by then. That’s when he told me he’d heard that someone bragged that someone was going to do something to Jacob Marley at Christmas. He said he didn’t know what it was. It was all pretty vague,” McFergus admitted.

  “Did you know who Marley was?”

  McFergus shook his head. “I knew the name but couldn’t place it, so the lad told me he was part of Scrooge and Marley. That place I did know.”

  “Is it still there?”

  “Still there. Scrooge runs it, but Marley’s name is still on the door, too.”

  “Marley died of course.”

  “A fall down the stairs. Two weeks later, on Christmas eve. I was at the investigation, but the coroner decided that Mr. Marley had died in an accident and the case was closed. I was put onto other problems.”

  Amy looked pensive for a bit. Then she looked at her husband. “Did that lad add anything at the jail?” There was a pause. “You didn’t take him in, did you?”

  McFergus raised his hands a bit. “The jail was full.” He hesitated. “And I had the watch back.”

  “You didn’t think you might learn who else was involved in the theft, if you took him in?” She didn’t sound hopeful.

  “He wouldn’t dare. It could mean a beating at least, if word got out. They’d be watching him anyway, after I let him go.”

  “And?”

  “He’d told me something. I figured I’d remember his face, and maybe someday I could use him again.”

  “And?”

  The ex-copper smiled wryly, and slumped a tiny bit. “He did remind me of… Charlie. A bit. Somehow.”

  “Thought so,” she said quietly. “Did you ever see him again?”

  McFergus straightened up. “I didn’t. I watched for him, but he never crossed my path again. Maybe some other inspector caught him somewhere else and he’s breaking rocks in Australia.”

  “Did you ask the coroner to check it out?”

  “I did that. I did that. But old men are always getting up in the middle of the night, and if they don’t light a proper candle or if they get weak in the knees, well, it’s down the stairs and onto the noggin at the bottom.”

  “You told them about the warning?”

  “I hinted. If the lad I caught could have been involved in any way, the superintendent would have had my neck in a wringer for letting him go. He was in one of his rampage moods at the time. He’d have sent his own mother off to Pentonville for stealing a scone.” McFergus sighed. “And he was convinced I was favouring Scots on the streets.”

  “So it all just… faded away.”

  McFergus shifted in his chair. “There was no sign of foul play. At least there was no knife sticking out of Marley’s back or anything like that. The door was locked from the inside. And I talked with the housekeeper. She said she hadn’t noticed anything unusual in the week before. Said Marley hadn’t changed in years. Like Scrooge, she said, but a little more inclined to smile on a sunny
day.”

  “Well, now’s your chance to look into the whole thing. Maybe talk with the housekeeper some more.”

  “It’s been seven years, Amy. That’s a long time. I was younger then, you know. I wonder where I’d start, now.”

  His wife waved a hand. “Oh, you know where you’d start. You’d start by talking to everybody, wouldn’t you? And taking notes?”

  McFergus brightened. “That I would.” He looked Amy in the eye. “It’ll get me out of the house, anyway.”

  “I’ll make you a sandwich to take with you.” She stopped. “Take your badge.”

  “You think so?”

  “It might be useful at some point. That hat, less so.” McFergus wore a hat, like almost every man in England; the style and type of a man’s hat told others much about his status and occupation. There was no hat, however, exactly appropriate for an ex-inspector of police, and he’d decided several months before to wear a “bohemian” hat. Suitable, he told people, for his new freedom in retirement.

  Half an hour later McFergus was walking down the sidewalk, occasionally jostling other people and keeping the usual eye open for pickpockets and people acting suspiciously.

  There was a steady flow of people, including costermongers (named after people who once just sold large apples called coasters but now sold everything anyone would buy) with their colourful barrows and carts, and distinctive clothes. They bought fish, meat, vegetables, and fruit from central markets and sold them throughout the city, crying out their wares of hot eels, fried fish, pickled whelks, baked potatoes cough drops, cat food, ginger beer, and a hundred other specialties. Theirs was a separate society, and if they had one enemy, it was the police, who tried to keep the carts from blocking the streets or the entrances to stores. Among them flowed a separate, usually poorer society of people, selling stationery, manufactured items, second-hand items, and live animals.

  Then there were buyers, collecting old clothes, bones, bit of cigarettes, broken glass and anything that might bring in a few pennies for a meal for the evening. There were collectors, assembling discarded ends of cigarettes, dog dung for tanners, or bits of coal or even sifting through the sewers along the edges of streets or the ash that was collected from homes. There were street show people, dragging curiosities behind them, and street entertainers, singing, dancing, or putting on games. And there were people who repaired things, from pots to watches.

  Trying to push them all aside were the cabs, buses, and wagons, all pulled by horses, making their slow passage along streets that were far too narrow to contain them, and were constantly under repair as new water and gas lines came to the city, and ancient wooden-sided pipes under the streets collapsed and had to be replaced.

  Rainclouds were hovering in the sky and it was cold enough to see the breath from the horses. This, McFergus thought, is probably a fool’s errand. But he realized he was feeling better than he had in months. I wonder how long I can drag this investigation out, he thought. He contemplated having tea and the occasional beer, and talking to people he’d never talked to. It might be difficult, now that he wasn’t with the police any more, or it might be easier, just because of that.

  Marley’s house hadn’t changed in seven years. McFergus wasn’t surprised; he’d had occasion to walk past it many times in the seven years since Marley’s housekeeper had found the old guy at the bottom of the stairs.

  He leaned against a lamp post, booted away a small dog that wanted to mark both him and the post, and took out his note-pad and pencil. His friends on the force had given him a fountain pen as a retirement present, but he kept it at home; it was just too hard to fill and was too likely to leak into his pocket. As well, the steel nibs were expensive to replace. He sharpened the pencil carefully with his pocket knife, then paused, the pencil hovering above the paper. After a moment, he wrote, “People to Talk to” on the paper, in the small, fine letters that people of his time had learned to use, considering the cost of supplies.

  Realizing that he couldn’t remember the name of Marley’s housekeeper, he thought a bit, then wrote, “Any housekeeper in the area.” He frowned. Anyway, it was a start. With a sigh, he decided to find a place to sit down, which, of course, meant the local pub. He moved down the street, and his copper’s eye did not miss the thin youth following him.

  McFergus leaned against a lamp post for a minute. His right knee hurt, the result of years of walking the streets of the city and a nasty kick by a troublesome Irishman during that time. The sooty English mist turned to snow for a moment, then eased up. The thin youth passed him, crossed the street between a couple of hansom cabs, and went into a pub.

  Down the street, two cleaning women came out of one of the row houses, adjusted their rough clothing and headed his way. McFergus eased his knee back into action, and stood as tall has he could, waiting until they were close. Then he stepped in front of them, and said, “Excuse me, ladies. May I ask you a question? Police business.”

  One of the women looked frightened, but the other had the scepticism towards authority that was common to the redheaded Irish working class. She looked straight at him. “Copper, are you? Got a badge to go with that?”

  He sighed and showed them the badge Amy had insisted he take with him. The redhead snorted derisively. “I can buy one of them anywhere on the street.”

  “I just want the name of the woman that cleans number 67.” He pointed across the street.

  “Hoping to catch Scrooge cooking and eating little kids, are you, or selling secrets to the French?”

  “He does that?”

  “Not likely,” the cleaning woman said. “Just joking. He’s mean, I hear, but not a crook.” She shifted her load of cleaning equipment. “You’ll want Sally Detwood. She’s been and gone there already and is probably over on Marden Lane by now.” She watched as McFergus wrote the name down, then stepped around him. “We’ll be going now. Time won’t wait for us, you know.”

  She left before he could get her name. He shook his head; the fact that she’d questioned his authority left him less confident of his quest. He’d always been able to use weight of the police force to back him up, but he wasn’t a policeman any more. If the superintendent found out that he’d been pretending to still be a copper, things could go badly fairly quickly. He shook his head again, and crossed the street. A couple of street urchins with heavy brooms swept the larger pieces of horse droppings ahead of him, and he tossed the taller one a farthing. This was met with a, “Thanks, govn’r” and a grin.

  He walked into the pub, waited for his eyes to adjust to the darkness, then looked around. The thin youth who had been following him was sitting at the back. The youth waved at him, beckoning.

  McFergus pulled up a chair by the small table. The room was poorly lit by a few candle lanterns and by what little light seeped in through a small, dirty window from the gloomy sky outside. Most of the voices had a strong Irish lilt, which didn’t surprise the inspector; it had been more than a dozen years since the start of the potato famine, but Irish labour was still cheap throughout the Empire. By keeping his head down, he was able to avoid most of the tobacco smoke that hung just below the black beams.

  A server, male and middle-aged, showed up at once. “A half pint of porter,” McFergus told him. The youth asked for a lager.

  “Ah, inspector,” the youth said. “Porter. I’ll note that.”

  “We’ve met?”

  “Never before.”

  “Then?”

  “You have the coat and shoes of someone who spends a lot of time walking the streets. Policemen get shoes like that as soon as they can. You have the air of one who’s used to carrying authority, so I can surmise you’re an inspector. A superintendent would have got a better class of shoes. And I can guess that you’re no longer with the force, or your shoes would have a better shine. The slight limp you have isn’t enough to remove you from the force, but your age is. You must be retired. My compliments to your wife’s sense of thrift; not everyone c
an afford to retire.” The youth waved his arm around. “These gentlemen of the shovel will work until they can work no more, then hope their children can afford to care for them.”

  McFergus paid for the beer.

  After a sip, the youth went on. “I saw a glint of unease in your eyes when I mentioned children. I extend my sympathy and will not bring up the subject again.”

  “I suppose you know my name, as well.”

  “How could I do that? Probably Mac-something or other. You have the accent of the Edinburgh Scots, but much less of it, so you must have come to London when you were younger, or you’ve adapted to the local accent very well.”

  The ex-copper pondered the question, looked at the well-made clothes of the young man across from him. “Ian McFergus,” he said, extending his hand.

  “I’m…” There was a slight pause. “Sampson at your service. Sampson Hill.”

  “You deduce very well,” McFergus said, “but you don’t drink much. You’ve had only a sip of your lager.”

  “I fear I may have an addictive personality,” Sampson said, “but I was thirsty, and I doubt the water here is trustworthy.”

  “Probably right on that one. There seems to be a consensus in this place that alcohol is the safer choice, but not by much.” McFergus paused. “And why were you following me?”

  Sampson laughed. “Just a final test.”

  “Most people have to watch out for people following them. The place is alive with pickpockets.” McFergus took a big sip of his porter, his eyes scanning the room again.

  “But,” Sampson said, “most people would have dismissed a well-dressed young man like myself as a threat. Only professional criminals and policemen keep track of everything.” He took a small sip of his beer. “And the same for watching the room like you just did.”

  “But you decided I wasn’t a criminal.”

  “To be honest,” Sampson said, “you don’t dress well enough to be a successful criminal.”

  McFergus laughed. “That’s true. So why this meeting?” He’d waited for Sampson to ask him to deduce a few conclusions about Sampson himself, but it didn’t happen and McFergus didn’t feel like offering.

  “I thought you might need a bit of help in your quest.”

  “I have a quest?”

  “A retired man with a spring in his step such as you have is on a quest. Or he’s off to see a woman.”

  “I could have been off to see a woman.”

  Sampson shrugged. “You wouldn’t have been so careful about watching the street, you would have dressed a bit better… and you wouldn’t be in here talking to me.”

  The Scot spent a while looking at the young man. “And what help could a man of… your age be?”

  “I’m eleven years old, almost twelve.”

  “And you think you can help me?”

  “I am a prodigy of observation and deduction.” Sampson held up his palms to forestall objection. “I’m not bragging; it’s just something I discovered about myself and have tried to take advantage of it. I go to a private school and am by temperament less athletically inclined than most. Bullying is very much taken for granted there.” Sampson took a sip of beer. “At the moment, I can say there are none who would harm me, lest certain revelations about themselves or their family surface. Most people have concealed skeletons in their closets that they must keep hidden.” Sampson looked around. “Mind you, an unfortunate and fatal accident to myself would be cause for celebration among some of the students, as well as among the staff.” He smiled at McFergus. “You looked like a worthy companion, and talking to me might bring out a few details you’d otherwise overlook. I myself have been looking for a person to share deductions with.”

  “But not observation.”

  “I am,” Sampson said, “often confined to a classroom, so at this point I can help only with deduction.” He paused. “At this point most people I could talk to would just roll their eyes.”

  “Would you like some food?”

  “I would.”

  McFergus ordered a pork pie for each of them. Then he signalled to a vendor who’d come in from outside and bought from him a few whelks. Sampson didn’t want any, so the vendor scooped a few from a glass jar onto the table in front of the former inspector. McFergus took time to look around the public house again. He could see a couple of men glancing at him suspiciously. They’d have referred to his companion as a “hobbadehoy,” a youth who has ceased to regard himself as a boy, but is not yet regarded as a man. They probably wondered about the relationship between the himself and the young Mr. Hill.

  He didn’t know the men, but they’d probably been involved with the police enough to recognize a copper. Further across the pub was Bill Sikes, his back to McFergus, his dog at his feet. The Yorkshireman had been hauled up before court several times, but never found guilty, perhaps because witnesses tended to disappear or to abruptly discover the value of silence. McFergus would have been happier to know Sikes was safely in Australia, cutting gum trees under supervision, especially since the crook was undoubtedly aware McFergus no longer carried a badge. He turned back to Sampson, and put his hands together on the table.

  “Thanks,” said the youth. To McFergus’s raised eyebrow he added, “Your body language tells me that you’ve decided to trust me, but not too far. Yet. I hope to establish more trust as we go along, if you approve.”

  McFergus sighed, then wondered what Sampson was reading into that. “I’m Ian McFergus,” he started. “I was Inspector with the London force up until six months ago. My dear wife is tired of falling over my dour presence, and has suggested I look up an old unsolved case or two.” Then he described the warning about Jacob Marley being targeted, followed, a few days later, by the finding of Marley’s body at the bottom of his stairs.

  “Did you report the threat….” Sampson started, then shook his head. “Irrelevant. Let’s get to the real business.”

  “Okay”. McFergus was relieved.

  “This will be pretty elementary, of course. The two most obvious questions we can ask are: did anyone hate Marley enough to kill him, and who benefited from his death?” He paused. “Was Marley rich?”

  “He was half of a company called Scrooge and Marley. Bankers, with a seat in the Exchange.”

  Sampson nodded. “He was worth money then. Was there any sign of a robbery?”

  “None.”

  “What happened to his money?”

  McFergus shrugged. “That’s a bit of a mystery. He left everything to Scrooge. But it was rumoured that he was worth a lot more than that.” He ate another whelk. “Or that he smuggled money to finance a railway in Canada. Or that he didn’t trust Mr. Scrooge and paid money to the mistress of a cabinet minister in the government.” McFergus set aside a suspicious-looking whelk. “But there are always rumours like that when a rich man dies.”

  “So maybe he had some hidden in the house”

  McFergus shrugged. “If someone was planning to break in afterwards, they may have missed the chance; Scrooge took the apartment for himself in less than a week. If there was a hidden safe somewhere in the house, it must have been Scrooge himself who did the deed.”

  “Did he seem like the type?”

  “I don’t know; I’ve never talked to him.”

  Sampson smiled. “Then that’s where we start.” He drew a piece of paper and a pencil from a pocket. “Here,” he said. “We’ll list some of the reasons a man like Mr. Jacob Marley might be murdered.”

  McFergus was a bit dubious, but he started. “For his money, of course. Which would make Mr. Scrooge the prime suspect.” He watched as Sampson wrote that down.

  “Vengeance,” he said next. “Perhaps his clerk or someone that worked for him had a grievance.” Sampson wrote that down, too. “We should check out the family of the employees, too. Sometimes a wife has a grievance at the treatment of her husband.”

  “And the housekeeper,” Sampson said, “if only for the opportunity for access. Perhaps she�
€™d stolen something valuable and was about to be turned over to the police.”

  McFergus had done some thinking along those lines over the years. “We cannot,” he said, “dismiss that fact that a rich man is a powerful man, and people and institutions are affected by his acquisition and use of that power.”

  “If so,” Sampson said, still taking notes, “it must have been something that was not true of his partner, since Mr. Scrooge was not attacked. That fact could be helpful.” Sampson pushed the list over to McFergus . “It’s a beginning. We’ll see what you think of Mr. Scrooge ”

  “Makes sense,” McFergus said, feeling a bit pressured, although talking to Scrooge had been high on his list of things to do anyway. “And what shall I ask him?”

  “Oh, I suppose you policemen have your methods of judging people’s demeanour. I assume you talk to a person and are able to tell whether the fellow is telling the truth or all of it.”

  McFergus nodded. “We think we do, although I’ve known a few that were hopeless at the job.”

  “And you?”

  The retired cop smiled at the very young man. “All of us cops suppose we’re good at it, but not all of us truly are. We’re seldom good judges of our own abilities.” He looked around the room. Bill Sikes was looking his way.

  McFergus smiled at Sikes and Sikes smiled back, mouthing something unheard, but it looked a lot more like a threat than a Christmas greeting.

  “You can probably ignore him,” Sampson said, his back to Sikes.

  “You think so?”

  The youth nodded. “However many times you tried to get him, you obviously didn’t succeed or he’d be in Australia or in the ground by now, so he’ll be feeling a bit superior. And he probably doesn’t know that you’re a bit alienated from the rest of the force. He’d have to assume that you still have lots of friends there.”

  McFergus stared across the small table.

  “As I mentioned,” Sampson said, “I am good at observation and deduction.”

  “Does it get you beat up a lot at school?”

  “It did, until I had enough information on the leaders, and had it in an envelope where they couldn’t get at it.” Sampson smiled, his eyes distant. “But the school’s headmaster could, if necessary.”

  The copper considered things for a moment, then reached out and shook Sampson’s hand. “Your offer of partnership in this enterprise is accepted.”

  “Thank you again. My guess is that you are about to be accosted by the man you smiled at, and perhaps one or two of his friends. If they’re true to character, they’ll be hostile to me, just to annoy you. I’d prefer you distracted them from such an idea.”

  McFergus noted that Sikes had arrived with a bully pal named Jack Finch who was indeed reaching for the back of Sampson’s head.

  Perhaps, thought McFergus, Sampson had some vision of him rising and smiting the two rough men. Then he corrected himself; the youth had already noted his new friend’s age and slight limp. In any even, McFergus merely looked Sikes’s companion in the eye and said, firmly, “That would be a very bad idea, sir.” The man hesitated, looked at Sikes, then lowered his hand.

  “You’re not on the force any more,” Sikes said, without smiling.

  “That I’m not,” McFergus said.

  “You’re retired, and not on the best of terms with the force.”

  McFergus nodded. Sikes then broke into a wide grin. “Maybe I should buy you an ale?” When he got no answer, he motioned to his companion, and they walked away and out the door. McFergus noted that the place had got noticeably quieter. He also noted that two large men had paused, then returned to the bar to put away the cricket bats they’d been carrying. Broken tables and glasses did not come cheaply.

  Sampson ignored the stares. “There’s a tea shop around the corner on Baker Street, where they’ve got a rather large hole in the road for putting in the underground railway. Shall we meet there tomorrow at noon?”

  McFergus nodded. “Bound to be a bit safer than here. I’m to report to you, am I?” he asked, smiling.

  “Oh, not that! We’ll just see if there are any deductions I can help you with. I,” he said, “am your humble and unpaid servant.”

  “Is not an unpaid servant a slave?”

  “Your humble slave, sire.”

  “I rather doubt the humble part, young man,” said McFergus, getting up.

  On the street, McFergus watched Sampson catch a cab, thinking, I didn’t even ask which school he was going to. He shrugged, dodged a couple of boys either chasing each other through the crowds or running a pickpocket routine – it was hard to tell unless you watched their eyes – and made his way towards Scrooge’s house. The rain had let up and the odd ray of sunshine touched the city, lighting up the smoke that curled from thousands of chimneys.

  It was still damp and cold, and McFergus wondered why he hadn’t volunteered to serve a few years in some warmer climate. God knows, he thought, the empire accumulated enough warm places to ship more than criminals to. The thought of serving as a minor functionary in some British colony had its appeal, and he could probably have got a job there. He pictured bright colors, endless sunshine, heat, and happy natives with wheelbarrows of fresh fruit by his door, then he sighed. He was just as likely to end up in Canada, he and Amy in some log hut in a raging snowstorm huddled over a tiny wood fire under a pile of moose-fur blankets. Amy, he thought, was happier now that she had the part-time job and people to talk to.

  It took him most of an hour, moving slowly and watching the street scenes, to get to Scrooge’s house. He looked around, saw nothing happening, and decided to wait, sitting himself on the stone step. A street vendor sold him a fresh roll.

  A couple dozen more costermongers, packmen, and vendors of miscellaneous goods, made offers, but, obviously knowing him as a policeman, didn’t persist. For most of an hour he sat patiently on the steps, watching the street people and trying to decide whether or not to take to one of the alleys and relieve his bladder when a street conjurer wheeled his small table up in front of him. “Paul Ledwitch Dwan,” McFergus said. “How is the magician business these days?”

  Dwan laughed and sat down beside the policeman. “No magic, as you know,” he said. “Just tricks and quickness of the hand. Are you ready to buy my book, yet? Tuppence for most folks, but a penny for you.”

  “That’s the same offer you’ve been making me for ten years now.”

  “But now your curiosity is getting better of you, isn’t it. Wouldn’t you really, finally, like to learn how I do some of my tricks?”

  “Some?”

  The conjurer laughed again. “Some. No point in telling people all of it. In fact, if they know some of the tricks, they’ll come back because they’re sure they can figure out the rest.”

  “And you make money on that. I suspect you’d sell the tale of one of those last tricks for money?”

  “Of course. A man’s got to earn his supper.”

  “Has anyone ever bought them all?”

  Dwan shook his long curly locks. “I save one. I know a man who thinks he knows all of them but hasn’t figured out how I cut a hole in his hat, then make it complete again. He shows up regularly, but doesn’t give much any more, he’s so angry.”

  Both men waited until a marching band and some people towing a truly large sign advertising a local show had passed by, and McFergus ignored the calls of the Irish kids trying to sell him small articles. When he’d first arrived in London, such kids had been almost entirely Jewish, but that was before the potato famine in Ireland. The Irish lads had a poverty and desperation that drove all their rivals out of business. Many were homeless, sleeping under stairs, and some didn’t have shoes, even in winter. “And how did you end up in the magician business?” McFergus asked.

  “No magic to that, either. My father held a good position, a very good one, with the Customs, and we lived very well. But I was six when he died of the cholera, he did. Some say we get it from bad wells, but a
lot of us drank from the same well and never got it.”

  “More likely the sewers,” McFergus said, pointing to the sewer channel at the edge of the street that carried people’s waste to the Thames. “That can’t be good for a person. I’ll be glad enough when the underground sewers get here.”

  Dwan nodded, then continued. “My father hadn’t saved any money, and it had never occurred to my mother to do so. We sold the flat and lived for a while on the money, but a fire took that one night. Barely escaped with our lives.” He lit a very smelly cigar, then continued. “My father had a cousin in India, and he sent us enough money to make the transit, my mom and me.”

  McFergus watched the scene passing by. Some of them took a quick glance at him; some a long glance. He’d walked this beat for the first few years of his employ in the constabulary. It seemed like a long time ago, or a moment. He’d arrested a few, and given a lot of warnings. A few times he’d hauled a miscreant off to the nearest local and explained the rules of his existence, and what his boss would do to him if he didn’t enforce those rules. Usually, the man opposite him would accept the glass of ale, and acknowledge that the two of them were on different sides of things. Sometimes, the other fellow, especially if he were a costermonger, had an anger or need too deep to ever acknowledge that the rules were fair, and the other guy would part with a sneer.

  “What are you thinking?” Dwan asked, suddenly, interrupting his own narrative.

  “Sorry,” McFergus said. “My mind wandered back a few years.”

  Dwan nodded. “There are a lot of people here who knew you when you were a beat copper here. But not many had it in for you, even then. You were known to be fairer than most.”

  “There are a few who would wish me harm.”

  “Dwan shook his head. “Things have changed here. You’re just the old guy who let Jamie Whittle go when you had every right to haul him in.”

  “They remember that?” McFergus turned to look Dwan in the eyes.

  “They do.” Dwan blew out a cloud of smoke. “He was close to losing his kids when you collared him, and he was pretty grateful when you let him off. Did you get in trouble for that?”

  McFergus shrugged. “Just a warning, and a lecture.”

  “And a note in your record, no doubt. Well it wasn’t forgotten. Most people here don’t mean you harm.” He looked around. “I can sit beside you and not have any – well, not much – explaining to do.”

  “Most people.”

  “There are a few blokes,” the conjurer said, who can’t be reasoned with.”

  McFergus nodded. “I interrupted you. How’d you get back from India?”

  “Sure you want to hear it?”

  “Actually, I’m enjoying it. I always wondered about the street people.”

  “Well, my mother died in India, of some tropical disease or other.” Dwan went on quickly. “Me and my uncle didn’t get along right well, so I worked my way on a boat back to old Blighty. Got a job on the street working for a medicine man.”

  “Selling stuff that didn’t work to desperate people.”

  “More or less. A few of our products worked. Some were downright dangerous. The guy I worked with had potions from the Amazon to Borneo. You need something to make you happy? I can get it.” He stared at McFergus. “I can make these people feel better. Sometimes I can heal them. It’s worth while.”

  “I’ll pass for now.”

  “Well, I got into the conjurer business because it’s… less dangerous to people. I just entertain them for a few pennies at a time.”

  McFergus bought an orange from a costermonger, although Dwan turned down the offer of one for himself. “I can be seen talking to a copper,” he said, “but accepting something from you isn’t going to be a good idea. How’d you end up in the police business?”

  “Came from Glasgow,” McFergus said. “My father was a parson. I did that myself, but I never took to it, which caused a break between myself and my father. Then I worked as a gamekeeper for a few years before I lost my respect for rich bastards who owned the land.”

  “And then you came to London, like me?”

  “With my wife. It was hard for the first few years. Got so hungry I almost became a mud lark.”

  “Feeling through the river mud with your bare feet? That’s pretty low.”

  “Then,” said McFergus, “a friend told me the constabulary was looking for blokes, and they took me, even if I was a Scot.” McFergus fell silent for a few minutes. Then he asked, “Do you know anything about Scrooge, the guy who lives here?”

  “I don’t,” the conjurer said, getting up, “but here comes someone who might.” A washerwoman was approaching the steps. “Good day, and merry Christmas.” Dwan said, smiling at the women as he got up and wheeled his cart back into the throng in the street.

  “It’s not Christmas yet!” McFergus called after him. It annoyed the inspector when people wished him a merry Christmas before it was actually Christmas day.

  The two women stopped on the street in front of Scrooge’s house and looked McFergus up and down. The redhead, who McFergus judged to be in her mid twenties, tilted her head in the direction of the departing conjurer. “What’s Dwan talking to the likes of you for?” she asked, in a lilt so Irish that McFergus wished for a translator.

  “Don’t know,” McFergus replied, honestly. “Maybe he just needed conversation.”

  “Off his regular beat,” he is. “Must have a reason.”

  “Ah, is he? I wondered about that.” Scrooge’s house was half a block off a larger street, and only a few vendors came down it. “He didn’t try to sell me anything, anyway.”

  “I can believe that. Aside from his conjuring, he sells a few potions, mostly for female problems.” She smiled. “And for men that need some boosting.”

  “Do they work?” McFergus raised his eyebrows.

  She shrugged. “All the way from the Amazon jungle, you know, or so he says. Liars, like all men. You going to let us in? We got work to do.”

  “Of course.” McFergus slid sideways so they two could get up the steps. “I was hoping to find out who was doing the house when Marley lived here. Sally Detwood, perhaps.”

  “What for?” The older washerwoman looked decidedly less friendly than the younger, and had a south Devon accent.

  “Got some questions to ask her.” McFergus shrugged. “I’m curious about a few things that happened the night he died.”

  There was a silence, then the older woman said, “Those questions should have been asked back then.”

  “I’m a slow man,” McFergus said. “Or so my wife says.”

  “You want Virginia Boyle, not Sally. She was here when Mr. Marley was, when he died.” The woman was looking less happy every second.

  “Do you know where I can find her?”

  She laughed. “Millbridge Abbey. Long way from London town, she is. Long way.” She got out a key and opened the door. The two women went in. McFergus could hear them locking the door from the inside.

  McFergus wrote down, “Virginia Boyle. Millbridge Abbey,” into his notebook. He looked up to find a couple of young boys watching him. They carried baskets of nuts under their arms; a common enough sight, he knew. Boys like these would buy items such as onion greens or apples in the Covent Garden Market before dawn then spend the morning trying to sell them to housewives too poor to have servants. Such boys would return to the market in the afternoon to get nuts to sell in the public houses until after dark. McFergus thought they must be doing the side streets door to door, but they turned and ran as he stood up. Odd, he thought, that they should be on a small street like this at this time of day. A small chill ran down his spine.

  The streets were in shadow now, with only the tips of chimneys lit by a momentary sun, so McFergus knew it was almost four in the afternoon. Sunset, he thought, in a northern country. Maybe someone in the Barbados colony needed a retired policeman to check the quality of the rum supplies. He pictured himself and Amy on the b
each, watching a sunset. Then he headed home as the gaslighters were starting up the coal-gas streetlights. Amy would be expecting him.

  He followed the main streets as far as he could. Seeing his breath told him it was getting cold, and he suspected there might be snow by morning. A few of the costermongers, still trying to sell their wares from barrows or donkey-drawn carts, nodded at him. A policeman didn’t make friends in the city, but many of the street people were at least aware that he’d gone against the department standards in sympathy with them.

  He found himself walking beside a man and his donkey, moving silently in the same direction. McFergus patted the donkey gently. The costermonger smiled. Donkeys were prized and loved among the street people. Then, as they parted ways at a street corner, the man said something surprising. “Talk to Desmond,” he said. “At the Great Blackfriar’s market. About the Marley murder.” And he was gone.

  For a moment McFergus stood there, stunned. Up to that moment he’d thought that he alone in all of London, or the world, for that matter, had even considered the possibility that Marley’s death wasn’t the accident it seemed.

  While he stood there, the gaslighter showed up and began lighting the lamps along the side street that would take McFergus home. It was almost symbolic, he thought. A sudden light among the shadows of doubt. Something to tell Amy when he got home.

  Having been a policeman in the city, he thought it unwise to go too quickly into dark areas, and paused in the doorway of what he first assumed was a penny-gaff theatre. Like most people except the bottom levels of society, McFergus considered penny-gaff temporary theatres immoral and degrading. Even the street sellers avoided them, but they were profitable. One penny would get a person an hour of clothed people simulating various sexual acts while someone else read a raunchy poem or sang a song that made the audience laugh. Most of the audience was made up of women from the ages of seven to twenty, something McFergus never got used to. They certainly learned things McFergus hadn’t known at seven.

  But instead of rude pictures on the front supposedly showing what the entertainers inside would do onstage, there were pictures, not nearly as well drawn, of rich men in top hats standing on what was obviously a ragged working man. The door was open, so McFergus walked in. Onstage a man in clean working clothes was lecturing a small audience on the evils of the capitalist system. McFergus tended to rather agree with him, from his experience with Scots society, but he didn’t think the Communists would get very far in central London. Desperately poor as they were, the majority of the costermonger street vendors either owned their barrows and stalls, or were looking forward to they day they could. They were capitalists, just not very rich ones.

  The copper was about to leave when the speech ended to a small round of applause, and a blonde girl came on stage with four members of a band. Judging by the hooting and applause, this was what the audience was waiting for. The girl was singing beautifully about the oppression of the rich factory owners and the useless upper classes when he recognized her. Molly Lambert, daughter of a metal worker from the Great Blackfriars’ Market. Her father sold and repaired various metal items. She’d grown into a beautiful young woman with a commanding voice.

  After four songs, all of them done to Irish or Scottish folk-song tunes, the lecturer began again, and McFergus left the building. Shame, he thought, that they don’t have a bagpiper.

  It took him a most of an hour to get home. The streets were lit most of the way, but he kept, where possible, to the center of the street unless there were people around him. On this cold night, some of the streets were getting deserted.

  He unlocked the door and let himself into the dark hallway. Upstairs there was the light from a tallow candle. Amy greeted him with a big smile; he always liked that about her. “Sit down,” she offered, “and I’ll get you some supper.” She served him potatoes with bacon fat, with a piece of bread, and a mug of ale. “Now, tell me about your day,” she said, sitting down across the table from him.

  Amy listened attentively, without interruption, drinking tea. McFergus didn’t leave anything out.

  As usual, she spoke when he was done. “Do you think this Bill Sikes is any danger.”

  McFergus shook his head. “He’s got away with so much for so many years. Why risk attracting the attention of the police now? For all he knows,” McFergus lied, “I might have a lot of friends on the force who would come down on him. He’s a bully, but a canny one.” It was dark outside the window, now, with only a little glow coming from a streetlamp on the corner. The two candles on the table lit Amy’s face. How old we’ve grown he thought, but she’s still a beautiful woman. When spring comes, maybe we can take the train to see her cousin in Cornwall. Walk some quiet hills. Go down to the beach. She hasn’t seen her cousin in two years. How long since she’s breathed clean air?

  “Do you think the young man will be any help to you?” Amy poured another cup of tea.

  “Unlikely.” He paused. “But it’ll be nice to be on the street and have someone to talk to.”

  Amy nodded. “You always used to talk to Brian.” Brian was a constable who’d never been promoted, despite his intelligence. He and McFergus would meet in the Old Jerusalem public house for a beer many afternoons, and discuss the activity on the street and the progress of various cases.

  “That’s probably what I was thinking of. We’d fill each other in on what we picked up walking the streets. Where the pickpockets were, and where the street sellers were about to get into fights because somebody new was pushing his way in. Things like that. I miss him.”

  “Considering the turnover in the force, it’s a wonder we know as many people as we do.” She looked at her husband. “And now there’s even fewer, since Bannim became superintendent.”

  McFergus nodded. The constabulary was a pretty tight group. Members were encouraged to share their spare time together, and to hang out in public houses together. But when Bannim became chief superintendent, he and McFergus just didn’t get along. Probably had an ancestor slaughtered by some Scot in the old days, the inspector figured, some highlander pulling a sharp skein dhu from his sock while others played the great highland bagpipes to drown his screams. Yes, all of that plus the golden sickle knife for that most infamous cut. He smiled at the thought. In any case, the coppers who’d shared the police life with him, McFergus noted, tended to avoid him now, perhaps afraid of Bannim, or fearful for their pensions. The force had some of the first pensions in England, but the rank and file always believed that, even after retirement (at sixty percent salary, for McFergus), a pension could be taken away with a bit of political pressure.

  “Are we thinking of moving out again?” he asked, taking her hand. It was an old subject.

  “We thought we had so many friends,” she said, almost in a whisper.

  He nodded. They’d talked about moving out to a village somewhere. London, especially central London, was more and more a place for young people. “There’s your job,” he said.

  Amy nodded. “We can use that money, and I like getting out to meet people. Not likely to get a job in a village.”

  “Some living costs might be cheaper there. Or we’d get more room.” He didn’t have to say that the police didn’t pay well even if someone in the village wanted him on the local force, at his age. Or that most older people needed to have money from working children just to keep going. But with Charlie, their only son, now dead, they were barely in the position to even have a servant to help Amy, even if she’d wanted one.

  So now what are you going to do? Amy asked him.

  “Well,” he said. “I didn’t get a lot accomplished today….”

  “You did, though,” Amy said, looking intently into his eyes. “You got started on something. That first step can be the biggest. You are on the way to finding out if the death of Mr. M. was an accident or not.”

  He smiled. “Perhaps you’re right, but I think the only reason the police were called at the time was because Marley was
rich. I imagine the superintendent decided it worth checking out, not only because there might be a reason to kill the old man, but because rich people all over London are always nervous about criminals and relatives ogling their money. Did you know that that Marley’s house became Scrooge’s house within a week of Marley’s funeral?”

  “Meaning?”

  “If there’s a meaning to that, I don’t know it yet.”

  “It’s a start,” Amy said. “It’s a start.”

  They lit the lantern and read books by lantern light until it was late enough to go to bed. McFergus read the communist pamphlet a couple of times, then returned to reading a wild west adventure that was entertaining, if not well written. The mesas of Kansas seemed a long way from the streets of London.

  McFergus lay awake long after Amy was snoring gently beside him. He’d grown up in a village and had spent much of his childhood in the woods playing Cheyenne raider. He’d learned to dodge gamekeepers long before he’d become a gamekeeper himself. His years in the police in London had finally left him longing for something more, but he didn’t miss the village he’d grown up in, he finally decided, as he fell asleep. He missed only the youth and optimism he’d had in those woods.

  ***