Chapter 4: December 22
McFergus was at the table Monday morning, looking out the window onto the street. Molly had brought him oatmeal and tea from the kitchen in the basement. As with thousands of row houses, the McFergus house in London was narrow, with three floors.
From the street, one took a flight of stairs up to the middle floor. On this floor the owner welcomed guests into the drawing room. Part of the floor was the dining area, with the best table they could afford and a hutch with their best china and dinnerware. Several stuffed chairs would be scattered around, and possibly a musical instrument such as a small piano. All shelves, and the mantle over the fireplace were normally full of collectables, books, and various interesting objects.
The top floor was reserved for bedrooms for the family.
The bottom floor, the kitchen, was as large as the other floors, but partly set into the ground. Normally, it was well-lit by light from two windows, high on the wall facing the street, even if keeping the glass clean was not always easy. The kitchen had a fireplace that was used to cook food. Long after Germans and Americans had switched to iron stoves, most of the English stuck with fireplaces, although some of these had a number of iron attachments to permit the cooking of food and heating of water. Pots and pans were kept on cupboards. Water and/or gas were piped into the kitchen in the first years that these became available.
Outside, a steady rain was just on the verge of sleet and a nasty wind whipped the horses’ manes and rattled along the housetops. It was, the inspector noted, a dark and stormy morning. Molly joined him for tea, which warmed his heart. He reached over to put his hand on hers.
Molly smiled. “Staying in, today?”
“When the game is afoot?”
“Pardon?”
“A phrase meaning the animal you’re hunting has come out of hiding and you should be able to follow some tracks.” McFergus poured another cup of tea, although it was already too strong. But he wasn’t about to have Amy offer to go down to the kitchen to heat more water; the arthritis in her back was bad enough as it was. The last time he’d tried to heat more water himself, she’d seemed more than a little insulted.
“You think you’ve stirred something up?” His wife looked concerned. “There was that note about the threat to Scrooge, but yesterday, at the Grange, I don’t think we learned much.” She poured herself the last of the tea from the pot. “Do you think you’re getting anywhere because Bill Sikes came on the next train to the Grange?”
“Mostly that,” he said.
“Mostly?”
He shook his head. “Just a feeling that things downtown are getting to be a bit… different.”
“Well, if it’s dangerous, you might not want to continue with the Marley thing.” She smiled. “I need you, Ian. I don’t want a mudlark to find you tangled in chains when the tide goes out.”
“Or in the sewers by some sewer hunter,” he laughed. “I’ll give it one more day; how’s that?”
“What are your odds of solving the Marley thing?” Amy asked, instead of answering his question.
He wrinkled his nose. “One in a hundred, maybe. It’s been seven years and there aren’t going to be a lot of talkative people around.”
“You might as well be off, then,” Amy said. “Put your greatcoat on and come back before you freeze.” She got up to clean away the breakfast dishes.
He sat for a minute after she’d disappeared downstairs, thinking about what else he could or should be doing, and didn’t come up with any ideas.
When he stepped out the door, the first thing he noticed was two street kids sitting in a doorway on the other side of the street. It was snowing by this time, and their clothes looked totally inadequate, but they kept their eyes on him. He checked that the front door was locked.
He looked back a half block later, and the kids were shambling along, following his footprints in the new snow. It unsettled him a bit. Someone who was interested in what he did had paid to have him followed. Someone knew where he lived. There was no consideration of running after the urchins with his bad leg. He went around a corner and waited, but they were too smart to be caught by that, walking wide and circling behind a wagon bringing in bales of hay for London’s horses.
What, he wondered, am I doing? No one cares about Jacob Marley and no one on the planet would care if old Ebenezer Scrooge also fell down the same staircase in the next few days. The world went on without Marley; it will go on without Scrooge. God knows, it will go on very nicely without a limping and cold old police inspector named Ian McFergus. The street was slippery with the snow and he almost fell a couple of times. Good planning, he decided. I can break my other leg before Bill Sikes or someone else gets to do it.
He found himself following the Thames, coming eventually to the King James Docks again. It was hard to see across the river with the snow now falling in thick flakes and swirling in the wind. He leaned over a railing, pulling his coat tighter. The tide was almost full, and only a couple of youngsters were feeling with their feet in the thin mud margins of the river by the wall. They looked very, very cold, and the inspector wondered if they’d have warmth and food in a system such as Mr. Marx proposed. He called to the closest child, a girl, and tossed her a coin. She caught it without smiling, and put it into a pocket. Then she shouted, “Betty’s gone.”
McFergus said, “Gone?”
“Gone,” the girl repeated. “Gone. You won’t ever find her again. Ever.” McFergus hesitated, and the girl said, “Go away. I can’t, won’t talk to you.” She turned her back and went off to find or steal something to sell. After a few moments, McFergus headed back towards downtown, where the buildings might break the wind a bit.
That’s where he met Augustus Oftan, coming down the street and waving to him. The big constable hailed McFergus from the other side of the street. “Ian!” he shouted, crossing the street while dodging a train of ash-hauling wagons, all of whose horses were treading carefully and slowly on the slippery street. “Good to see you again,” Oftan said, with a big smile. “Avoiding drunken sailors these days, I hope.” He brushed a bit of snow off McFergus’s shoulder.
“Indeed, Constable Oftan,” McFergus acknowledged.
“How’s the missus?”
McFergus focused his gaze down the street a bit. “Fine,” he said. There was a bit of a silence.
Oftan stomped his feet on the road, shaking a bit of mud-coloured snow off them, then leaned in a bit. He reached into a pocket, and brought out a small piece of paper from an inside pocket. “This is for you,” he said, moving a broad smile to a slight smirk. “The superintendent said to give it to you.” He seemed disappointed when McFergus stuffed the note into a pocket. “I think he wants to talk to you.”
“Very good, Constable,” McFergus said. “I’ll read the note a bit later.” He changed the subject by pointing to a couple of sewer people searching the sewers at the edge of the road with sticks. “They’re out even in the cold.”
“Some of them will get to move indoors eventually, I guess,” the constable said.
“Indoors?”
Oftan nodded. “They say the sewers they’re building under the streets now will be big enough to live in. Warm and cosy for sewer rats on a winter day, they say.”
McFergus sighed. Searching sewage for items of value was, with mudlarking in the river, pretty well at the bottom of society’s ladders. “At least the streets will smell a bit better.” Country people coming to London for the first time were a bit shocked by the quantities of human waste that slid in the gutters at the sides of each street and edged every alley between buildings.
Oftan shook his head. “I hope so, but it’s going to take a long time to connect everybody to the sewer, and the way London’s growing, well, I hope the engineers planned for that.”
“I expect they did,” McFergus said. “Thank you for the note. Have a good day.”
“As should you.” The constable moved off. McFergus watched him for a moment,
then continued towards the heart of the city. The snow fell more heavily. It was after eleven, by the inspector’s retirement watch, by the time he got to the teahouse.
Eventually, on his third cup of tea and second fried cake, and after the inevitable second trip to the facilities behind the store, Former Police Inspector Ian McFergus took the note from his pocket. Superintendent Stanley Brimagem Bannim had taken over five years ago, coming from the Manchester Police. The man had, McFergus admitted to himself, been a very effective copper in some ways, particularly in extending an increased police presence in areas of London that had, for a long time been left to themselves.
But Superintendent Bannim and Inspector McFergus had come into conflict over what McFergus considered ignorable crime. McFergus preferred a warning to a costermonger over a food violation or a tap on the head with a police baton for an aggressive drunk to a trial and a few months in prison for those found guilty. Removing a poor man from the street often not only left his family without support, but the prisons too often changed a man for the worse. Many of the prisons on land were brutal workhouses. A prisoner spent his sentence forbidden to talk to any other prisoner, and his days with other men operating a large treadmill on a diet that was somewhat short on the calories necessary to exist.
Even so, the workhouses were still better than the rotting hulks of the old warships, their masts and rigging long gone, that served as anchored penitentiaries in the Thames. Many of the prisoners in the ships spent most of their sentences chained to the walls in rooms too small to stand up in. At intervals they got to see the outside, as men would be put, three at a time, into an iron cage, then hauled to the deck to be washed off by warders using a hose and long-handled brushes.
It was a policeman’s call; someone you let off could commit a major crime shortly after; some of those you sent for imprisonment might well die, become bitter to all humanity, or even, occasionally, turn out to be innocent, incarcerated for lack of a good lawyer. Bannim was a tough man, but one, McFergus thought, without much sympathy for the poor. There had been a sense of relief on both sides when McFergus had retired from the force.
McFergus took out the note. On letterhead paper, it said, “Mr. McFergus; could you arrange to see me at your earliest convenience.” It was signed, “Superintendent S. B. Bannim.” The former inspector was still frowning when he looked up and noticed Sampson Hill beside him. The young man was looking a bit disheveled and was holding a bloodied handkerchief to his head.
McFergus stood up. “Are you all right? What happened?” he asked.
Sampson pulled the handkerchief away. “How does it look, to you? I suspect you’ve seen more abrasions and contusions than I.”
McFergus took the handkerchief, dipped the end in his tea, and wiped a spot on the youth’s face. “A surface cut that’s almost stopped bleeding. You’ll also have a bruise or two for a while.”
Sampson sat down, and the inspector waved to a server. Sampson ordered a cake and a cup of tea. “I was assaulted,” he said.
“Was it anyone you knew, or did you annoy one of the locals?”
“I was walking along, observing the people, when a young man, about fourteen years old, wearing the garb of a transient, walked up to me and hit me three times in the face, knocking me against a building. I can give a complete description, if it would do any good.”
McFergus shrugged. “English law has always tended to ignore physical violence as a crime, unless severe injuries occur. Most of her laws are about property, although I’ve heard that’s changing.” He sipped his tea. “One more step towards civilization, I guess.”
“I rather suspected that. Even the policeman who stepped in to rescue me didn’t seem inclined to apprehend the assailant.”
McFergus sat up. “Can you describe the policeman to me?”
“A large man, with an East Anglian accent. He’s been a constable most of his life, without promotion and is satisfied with that position, presumably because of graft. His father was disappointed in him, but his wife is afraid of him. He has a mole on the back of his neck and his left ear is slightly misshapen, most likely from a fight. He likes to think of himself as intelligent, but is aggressive towards anyone who is actually smarter than he is. He spent at least one year at sea as a youth.” He looked at McFergus.
“Ah,” said McFergus. “You, too, have now met Constable Oftan, Constable Augustus Corbally Oftan. He’s been with the force for about nine years, and we can hope he never rises above his current grade.”
“He rescues people who are in trouble?”
“Constable Oftan,” McFergus said, “has never, so far as I am aware, rescued anybody, with two exceptions.” He paused to take a bite out of a scone which did not taste as good as the scones McFergus knew as a child, perhaps because of the London habit of adulterating the flour with alum or other white fillers. “You are the second. He was the one who rescued me from that drunken sailor last week.”
“I thought as much. More street theatre?” Sampson asked.
McFergus, who was by nature suspicious of most things, merely tilted his head and looked sideways at Sampson. “Constable Oftan is not all that intelligent. If someone had asked him to keep close to us, this is the sort of thing he’d dream up, so we’d think of him as a friend.”
“Perhaps,” Sampson said with a rueful smile, “perhaps we’d better pretend to be the constable’s close friend before he does us both serious injury.”
“That,” said McFergus, “was my plan. I didn’t know he’d try it with you, if that was indeed what he did.”
“That presumes that someone is getting sufficiently interested in our endeavour that he’s putting pressure on us.”
McFergus told him about the two street urchins who followed him from his house, and about what the mudlark had told him. “As you said, the game is afoot.” Then he remembered to Sampson about Altham Grange.
Sampson nodded his head. “But we ourselves might end up as the game that’s afoot.” He sighed. As long as we’re here anyway, we might as well draw up a list of logical possibilities.”
“About?”
“The killing of Marley, of course.” Sampson pulled out a few sheets of paper.
“You think the notes will come in handy?” McFergus didn’t think so, having talked this over with Amy already.
“For you,” Sampson said, handing the paper to McFergus. “I can remember everything but I find other people are less able to remember correctly. It would be logical to start with the assumption that Marley’s death was murder, and see if we can draw some conclusions from that.”
McFergus nodded, arranged for a beer for each of them, and hoped his bladder would hold out a bit longer. He put the papers that Sampson had given him aside, and took out his notepad.
Sampson looked at him. “If someone rolls you on the way home, they might take that notepad as their first item of interest.” McFergus smiled and said nothing, but the idea of beating the crap out of the kid didn’t seem as reprehensible as it had moments before. Sampson sighed, as if people would always be a bit illogical. “The easiest place to start, especially in the case of a rich man, is to ask who gained monetarily with the death of Mr. Marley.”
“Logically, the first person would be Mr. Scrooge.” McFergus just pretended to sip his tea; he’d had enough liquid.
As McFergus set the cup down, Sampson looked at it and raised an eyebrow. “Mr. Scrooge seems to have inherited everything of Mr. Marley’s, including, eventually, a apartment at a good price.”
“Yet Mr. Scrooge does not seem to have enjoyed his newfound gains very much.”
“From what you tell me, Mr. Scrooge likes gaining money, or is habituated to such as his life’s occupation.”
“Still, from what I know, Mr. Scrooge insists on being fair in his transactions, and is not known to practice any evil arts at the exchange.”
Sampson nodded. “As it seems to you. Then, unless Mr. Scrooge was ready to change his ways and kill to get a
better apartment, we’ll proceed to others who might have gained. Have you considered Bob Cratchit?” Sampson scowled at his tea. Tea leaves were sufficiently valuable that they were often recycled instead of being thrown out.
“I have,” McFergus said calmly. “The people closest to a victim are, of course, primary suspects.” If Sampson could patronize him, he could patronize Sampson, McFergus thought. “I can’t see what financial good Marley’s death did the clerk, though.”
“Then we’ll put him on hold for now, and contemplate other persons who might have benefited by Mr. Marley’s death.”
“At the present moment,” McFergus said, “there don’t seem to be any. Scrooge and Marley seems to have engulfed the lives of both those men.” He contemplated a trip to the toilets behind the tea shop. “I’ll check in case there are any financial interests that were linked to Marley, but not to Scrooge.” He took out his notebook and pencil, then carefully wrote in it, “Don’t forget to buy a Christmas present for Amy.”
“In the meantime,” Sampson went on, “We should consider non-monetary motives. Perhaps someone hated Mr. Marley for personal reasons.”
McFergus wrote, “Maybe a new hat,” into his notebook. “Again we come to the clerk, Cratchit, and Mr. Scrooge at the only people known to have been close to Mr. Marley.” He looked up. “As I said, my impression of the housekeeper was that she neither disliked Mr. Marley nor gained from his demise.”
“In other words, if we include only Mr. Marley’s murder, we are at a dead end. If Mr. Marley was playing with flash girls or street boys, the trail probably went cold years ago. What odds do you think we have, from that point of view?”
McFergus smiled ruefully. “Last week I’d have said one in a hundred. Just enough to keep a restless old man active for a few months before giving up.” He squeezed his hands together. “After the events of the last few days, I’d say one in ten, given that people are getting riled like an ant’s nest.”
“”Bringing us to the next item; what changes if Mr. Scrooge is truly targeted for death?”
“We have to look at the motives again.”
“Right,” Sampson said.
McFergus then told Sampson about his interview with Bob Cratchit, and handed over the address note Cratchit had given him. “I’ll be right back,” McFergus said. “While I’m gone, you might think of the man Miss Boyle described as dressed like a banker; the one who had an argument with Mr. Marley.”
He returned, a bit snow-covered, a couple of minutes later to an impatient Sampson, who started talking before the inspector sat down. “You understand that a threat to Mr. Scrooge revives the possibility that the clerk, Mr, Cratchit or Mr. Scrooge’s nephew, Fred, may have been involved.”
McFergus nodded, and lit his pipe. “Seven years would be a long time for someone to wait for whatever benefit might accrue from killing Scrooge.”
Sampson nodded. “It would, but some motives and desires stew in a person’s mind, rising and falling with circumstance. If Mr. Marley’s wealth went to Mr. Scrooge, then who would get it when Mr. Scrooge died?”
This time McFergus did actually take a note in his notepad. “I’ll look into that. “We must also consider the long-running grievance as a possibility,” he said.
“Cratchit,” Sampson said. “Underpaid, overworked, and, more importantly, treated poorly by Mr. Scrooge.” He shifted nervously in his chair. “We must ask ourselves why Mr. Cratchit stayed with the Scrooge & Marley firm so long.” Sampson looked serious, as if he’d have preferred a pipe of his own. “Obviously, at first an economic downturn may have made him cautious about leaving, but the economy’s been good for a couple of years, and good financial clerks should have no trouble moving to a place where they are appreciated more.”
“There’s also the possibility,” McFergus said, “that there was financial gain available. If Scrooge died, a sharp clerk might have the opportunity to, shall we say, make a few amendments to the books if he were quick enough. Get a few crumbs in the confusion.”
Sampson nodded. “Especially if under pressure to do so by his family.”
“I’ll check that out. The Cratchit family might have an urgent need for money.”
“Other than that, following the money would probably go to Fred, Scrooge’s nephew.”
“I’ll also check that out.”
“And Fred’s wife, if he has one. For all we know, she may have been eyeing Fred’s uncle’s fortune for years, impatient to move up financially in London society.” Sampson brushed his hand through his hair. “And there’s the ‘banker,’ of course.”
“The man Miss Virginia Boyle saw visiting Mr. Marley at his apartment. Why would a professional man go to Mr. Marley’s apartment instead of to the offices of Scrooge & Marley?” The inspector tapped the ashes from his pipe onto the saucer on the table.
“We have leads, and we need more information.” Sampson looked a bit uncomfortable.
“And you have to return to school now, leaving all the information-gathering to someone else. Someone who might decide not to pursue the case at all.”
“You know we should,” Sampson said, looking a bit desperate. “It would be wrong if we… let a murderer get away with his crime.”
McFergus looked into Sampson’ s eyes and thought he knew what the boy really meant; that it would be wrong to leave a case unsolved; that it was the challenge that excited Sampson, not the morality. “I am old,” he said, “but I’d like to get a bit older before I get tossed into the Thames for the mudlarks to find.”
“You think that’s likely.”
“I care,” McFergus said, “if it’s possible.”
“How many would go to that extreme?” Sampson put his hands together in front of him.
McFergus sighed. “There are four thousand costermongers in London now. They do not like much of the English power structure, they do not like rich people, and they certainly don’t like the police force of the city, whom they see as interfering with their supposed right to make a living. A lot of the force is dedicated to moving the stalls and tents and barrows out of the way of traffic, and out of the way of the stores that face onto the streets. And there is also a less savoury underworld, more dangerous than the costers.”
“Enough to hurt you, an inspector?”
“The costermongers believe the police are just thieves in uniforms, sending little girls selling apples and flowers off to jail, where they’ll die on the treadmill. As far as the costermongers are concerned, most policemen are bullies in the pay of the aristocracy. And I was a beat constable, doing just that for years.”
“Are the police like that?” Sampson asked.
McFergus looked up. “Enough of them. You don’t wander into those crowds on a Saturday night unless you’re tough enough to get back out if the drunks and criminals turn on you, or unless you’re paid off so you do only a token job.” He looked Sampson in the eye. “There are many honest people in among those who sell products and services in the streets of London, but there are a lot of truly desperate people, for whom the sale of one more item means they can buy some stock on the morrow and have something to sell. They sleep thirty to a bug-infested room that lets the snow and rain in, and they make children when they’re not much older than you. They are desperate, as I said, and there are an increasing number of professional criminals ready to organize them.”
“But didn’t you have a reputation of being better than the other policemen towards them?”
“I did, when I was a constable. But not everyone believed my motives and many people have come and gone since I became an inspector and more since I retired.” He paused. “Many costers have more fear of a man they can’t pay off than one they can.” He finished his tea. “Many would say even if Marley was actually murdered, it was a crime that hurt no one except an old man with more money than he had a right to.” Sampson was about to say something, but McFergus put up a hand first. “Is your morality so strong at your age that you’d risk danger to both o
f us to get justice?”
Sampson smiled. “I have discovered I have a fairly low sense of morality.” He finished his now-cold tea. “I cherish the chase, the chance to solve a puzzle.”
“And if I gave up. Or were killed?”
“I’d wonder all my life if this problem could have been solved.”
“I want to give up this chase,” McFergus said simply. “I have no one on my side right now except a callous young man who would read my obituary without a tear.”
“Until the end of the day, perhaps,” Samson said. “You’ll have the chance to get out the word that you’re removing yourself from the case.”
“And who would I tell?”
Sampson grinned for the first time. “The prime suspects, of course.”
McFergus pondered that. “And perhaps my old Superintendent.” He handed the note to Sampson.
The youth read it, then shook his head. “People do like handing you notes, don’t they? Are you going to see him?”
“Is there any reason I shouldn’t?”
“Other than the fact that you two can’t stand each other? Can he affect your pension?”
“In theory, no,” McFergus said.
“In theory. Did the note come to your house?”
“No. The same Constable Oftan who saved both of us. The Jesus of the streets.”
“You could do time for blasphemy,” Sampson noted.
“Unlikely, in this part of town.”
“Any idea what he wants?” Sampson got up.
“No.”
“Then it may be connected to our case.”
McFergus snorted. “To our former case, which I had two days left to solve.”
“Two and a half,” Sampson corrected.
McFergus snorted, tapped the ashes from his pipe and put it into his jacket pocket. As Sampson left, McFergus noted that it had stopped snowing. He realized that he had no idea where the Cratchits or Scrooge’s nephew lived. It seemed a good time to visit Scrooge and Marley Inc, and see if he could get some information from the clerk.
He had gone barely half a block when he paused to watch a match girl weeping loudly. She was telling a well-dressed man that he had bumped her, causing her to spill her matches into the snow. She would, she claimed, go hungry. A tall woman standing nearby nodded, saying the match girl would also surely be beaten for losing her product. The well-dressed man, and a few more strangers, gave the little girl with the thin, ragged clothes, a few shillings. McFergus, having seen the scam a hundred times before, smiled and went on.
As he was dodging fresh horse manure McFergus was remembering that there were more than twenty thousand horses in London and estimating that the city had to get rid twenty thousand tons of horse manure a year, when a hackney cab stopped in front of him and interrupted his calculations. A constable unknown to McFergus stepped out. “The superintendent sent you a cab.”
Interesting, McFergus thought. This must go into the police budget. And how did they know where to find me? A shiver that wasn’t from the winter went through him.
He looked around. A seller of newspapers was squeezing between the cab and a coster pushing a cartful of vegetables along. McFergus waved at him, then bought a copy of The Scotsman from a couple of weekends past. Superintendent Bannim was well know as a man who liked to make visitors, even ones with appointments, wait a while. As the former inspector stepped into the hansom, a dog left a pile of brown turds on almost under the wheels. Immediately, a very small and quick girl rushed in to scoop the deposit before it was run over. The dog excrement might be unappealing, but, thickened to the consistency of honey, it was essential in the process of turning cowhide into good leather; despite centuries of efforts by chemists, nothing better had been found. The girl who rescued it from the melting snow and the wheels of the traffic was one more step on the way to making enough for another night’s food.
With the cobblestone streets, the rough suspension of the hackney cab (commonly known as a “growler” from the noise its wheels made), and the stops and starts as the cab negotiated its way through the streets, it was not possible to read inside. McFergus preferred, anyway, to watch the people of London. What must they think, he wondered, of the policeman in a cab and the man beside him? A felon being taken to court? He smiled; felons traveled by police cab; McFergus had accompanied many of them in his time on the force. He didn’t anticipate any pleasantness at the division office, but there wasn’t much he could do about it, it seemed.
It was a slow trip, but McFergus was in no hurry. The snow had stopped but the granite streets were slippery in any case and people were taking care with the horses. One street was more or less blocked with the deep hole made as London’s first subway line progressed steadily from Paddington to Farringdon. The huge trench was braced with timbers, and the men worked with no mechanical help, hauling buckets of mud and water up to the street level, and lowering bricks downward. The cold, he assumed, made the men’s hands numb, but the work went on; London was frantically trying to put underground as much of the utilities and transport as it could before gridlock on the street level had become permanently hopeless.
That was yet another reason the society and police faced the costermongers and other street people; as useful a function as these vendors served, they clogged the streets and harboured a multitude of petty criminals. The police went into some areas only in groups, for safety, but bit by bit the world of the costermongers was shrinking under police pressure. Yet the number of poor in the city was always being augmented by the endless stream of optimistic or desperate people coming into the capital city by train, wagon, and on foot. McFergus thought of the boy he’d seen from the train, sleeping by a hay rick and probably now somewhere in the warren of slum housing south of the town centre. That kid would be lucky not to end up working for Fagin or some other gang of thieves.
Once, McFergus turned his head to watch a Hansom cab go by; it was the second one he’d seen. A nimble two-wheeled vehicle, capable of holding two passengers, it was pulled by a single horse, and the driver stood behind the passengers. The former inspector approved of this import from New York; its smaller shape promised to make it more suitable for the packed streets. He suspected they’d have become more common except for a lingering resentment of America.
Superintendent Stanley Brimagem Bannim was, of course, busy when the unnamed constable followed McFergus up the steps and into the pretentious opening of the police station. McFergus wondered, as he was seated on a hard wooden chair beside a shifty-eyed man of strong body odor, whether police stations should be made less pretentious, so that the common folk would be less likely to associate maintaining the law with maintaining the aristocratic national structure. There was, of course, nothing to be done about it, so he opened the newspaper and began searching for articles worth his time. He ignored the police officers who came and went, although he’d known many of them well enough to call them friends. They ignored him, too, as if he were a common criminal. Bannim’s still setting the tone for this place, McFergus thought.
There was an interesting discussion near the back of the paper. Thomas Henry Huxley, one of Charles Darwin’s proponents, was carrying out a debate, in the newspaper, on whether evolution was real or not. His opponent, one Lord Greystoke, argued that lack of any fossils of creatures intermediate between apes and humans cast a lot of doubt on the theory. “Show me an ape-man,” he wrote, “and I’ll be more inclined to believe I’m descended from a tree-climbing, chest-beating, banana eater.” It was a good line, but McFergus knew that the study of fossils was only in its beginning.
He opened the week-old Scottish newspaper. There was continuing commentary on golf, two months after the first professional golf tournament had been held at Prestwick. Some thought the next tournament should be open to amateurs, too. And the Royal Hospital for Sick Children had opened in Edinburgh. McFergus wondered if it would have made any difference to his family; only three of his eight brothers and sisters had survived childhoo
d.
By the time a clerk indicated that Superintendent Stanley Brimagem Bannim would see him, former Inspector Ian McFergus had read most of the newspaper, and the opinion pieces twice. Most of the paper was taken up with Scottish politics, and McFergus realized again how far he was from his native land.
Inside the superintendent’s office there were three people waiting. Superintendent Bannim, a tall man with a grey mustache, did not get up from his desk. McFergus wasn’t totally surprised to see the coroner in another chair, but the presence of Constable Augustus Oftan, seated in another chair did cause him pause. What? he thought, Does Bannim think I’m going to limp over and assault someone?
The Superintendent waved him to a chair, which McFergus took as a good sign; he’d have refused to remain standing as if he were a truant schoolboy back in Scotland. He looked at the coroner, who didn’t smile. He looked at Oftan, who smirked. Then he looked at the Superintendent.
“Thank you for coming here,” Bannim said, as if McFergus had had any other choice except to limp away into the crowds and hide in the slums where people slept thirty people and to a room. McFergus just nodded, so the Superintendent continued. “We have word that you’re doing some investigating on your own.” He looked like he was trying not to glare. He didn’t succeed. McFergus didn’t move a muscle.
“The case of the death of Mr. Jacob Marley,” the coroner said, in a squeaky voice. He had, McFergus realized, a rather rat-like face.
Bannim glared at the coroner.
There was a moment’s silence in the room, then Bannim looked back at McFergus. “Mr. McFergus,” he said, “We were told you might be investigating the death of Mr. Marley. Is this in fact the case?” Although the other three were staring at him, McFergus said nothing, and sat, expressionless, looking at Superintendent Bannim. After a moment, the Superintendent added, “We’ve brought the coroner’s report for you to look at.” He nodded to the coroner, who handed a report book to McFergus.
McFergus took the book and skimmed the writing, which was small but neat and quite legible. Then he read it in more detail. There was nothing he didn’t already know. Mr. Marley had been discovered, dead, inside the building he lived in one morning. The building had housed not only Mr. Marley’s apartment but the offices of several enterprises, and the first person to enter the building the day after Christmas had discovered Mr. Marley’s body at the bottom of the stairs. That person had returned to the street, and had called the nearest police constable.
That was a surprise; the policeman had been one Constable A. Oftan. Interesting, McFergus thought. I didn’t know that. Some time later, the coroner and McFergus had arrived, but by that time Oftan had returned to his beat.
The rest of the report was no different than he remembered. There was no sign of violence, nor of robbery. It appeared that sometime in the night Mr. Marley had opened the door to his apartment, and carrying a candle, had walked out into the hallway, then had tumbled down the stairs, breaking his neck. He’d landed on top of the candle, which probably prevented a fire in the building. McFergus handed the report back to the coroner without comment.
“You see,” the coroner squeaked. “You see; there’s nothing to indicate foul play.” Bannim glared at the coroner again.
“Are you,” Bannim asked, “investigating the death of Mr. Marley? And if so, why? Is the report not complete?”
McFergus sighed, and began to talk. He told them of his love of London and how much he enjoyed the noise and the people, and compared it with his youth in the highlands of Scotland. Eventually he got to his living conditions in London and how he and Amy were looking forward to the increasing progress of British society, even anticipating the arrival of indoor flush toilets some day. As he talked, his Scottish brogue grew wider and deeper, like the river Clyde. By this time the other three were straining to make sense of what he was saying.
He worked his way through Amy’s suggestion that he deal with his boredom, making up a threat from her to go back to her mother if he didn’t get a hobby and adding a few fictitious details about how he’d tried knitting and candle making, but could never compete with the street vendors, for whom a penny profit on a day’s work was adequate, and anyway the doctor had told him that walking was essential for the leg he’d got injured heroically in the line of duty, and how he’d decided to revisit some cold cases, and what a joy it had been to be wandering the streets of London just before Christmas. He assured them it was only a pastime for him. It took quite a while to do this, since he seldom finished a sentence without inserting another in parenthesis first, and often another within that, until some how his sentences were long paragraphs, constructed like a set of Russian nesting dolls, with parts within other parts within other parts, and until he finished the exact meaning of the original could not be deduced, assuming the listener could translate it into something resembling English in the first place. There should, McFergus thought, be a piper playing sadly behind me.
When he stopped, the other three men had rather glazed looks in their eyes. There was a silence, then Bannim asked, as if to stop McFergus from starting again, “What made you think there was foul play in the death of Mr. Marley in the first place?”
“I had no reason to,” McFergus lied to them, and explained how his dear mother had told him that when the wind was right through the heather and the morning mist was lifting off Glen Miller in Scotland, where his people had lived for centuries, well, sometimes a person could sense things that others could not. It was, he said, just a gut feeling, and he had no basis for it.
In fact, there would have been several problems with telling about the warning he’d received from the youth he’d detained. In the first place, he’d let the youth go free, and he knew how Bannim would have felt about that, even if the event did happen before Bannim had arrived as superintendent. Another problem was that it might have seemed that McFergus had dealt with a “confidential informant” among the criminal classes. The use of snitches had been firmly banned in the London police for fear of creating unregulated relationships between police and criminals.
“And the results of your investigation?” the coroner squeaked.
“McFergus spread his arms wide. “Sir,” he said. “It’s been seven years, and there was no cause for me to doubt the report. The results have been as expected, of course. No one remembers and no one will talk to me.” He winked. “In another few days I can tell my wife that I’m done with this case.” He looked around. “I assure you that I’m assuring all I speak to that I’m no longer with the police and have no authority whatsoever.” This, thought McFergus, is going to be the hardest part. He was expecting The Lecture, the part where he’d be told, at length and in detail about his obligations as a former police officer and how fragile the relationship with the public was. And, of course, he’d be told to quit doing any investigation.
Instead, to his surprise, Bannim asked him, “Have you any problem with the coroner’s report or any questions to ask these men?” McFergus just shook his head, wary. Then Bannim got to his feet. “Then get out, all of you. I have work to do.”
McFergus left first, followed by Oftan and the coroner. Neither man spoke to McFergus as he walked through the station, watched by the eyes of all present, and out onto the street. Since no one offered him transport, he began walking homeward. It was still cold, but the snow had stopped, and there were more costermongers on the street, many offering Christmas cards and small toys. Must buy something else for Amy, he thought. A bonnet would be good.
Eventually he realized he was not far from Scrooge & Marley, so he changed direction to pass by the establishment. He was sure, now, that his wisest move would be to abandon the inquiry as quickly as possible. The odds of him getting beaten were high and the odds of him actually solving the case were vanishingly small. And those boys outside his home in the morning had spooked him; he didn’t want anybody targeting his wife.
“Greetings again, former inspector.” The voice came through
the street-side window at Scrooge and Marley, Incorporated after that window had been opened slightly.
“I gather that Mr. Scrooge….” McFergus looked around. There was nobody suspicious, as far as he could tell, but he’d gathered in the last couple of days that any number of people might be tracking him.
“Is at the ‘change at the moment. So he is, as far as I know. Have you solved the murder of Mr. Marley, yet?” There was a chuckle from the clerk.
“I have not. Furthermore, I have indications that several… people are following my wanderings as if concerned that I might just turn up something.”
“You might want to quit your endeavour, then,” Cratchit said. “Former policemen may receive unwanted pokes in the ribs when moving about. I had an uncle in the Manchester force,” Cratchit explained. “He eventually moved to another town where he could shop without tripping so much.”
“I am,” said McFergus, “thinking seriously of doing exactly that, although I have some suspicion that the people opposing me are doing so because of my inquiries into the Marley case.”
“You’d quit when you might be getting somewhere?”
“The odds are still small, and the pay is nothing but bruises, at the least. Even the police would like me to take up making ferret cages or hunting sewer rats as a pastime, it seems.”
“Have you come here to redeem your promise to keep me informed, or are you here to arrest me before I’ve also killed Mr. Scrooge?”
“The former,” McFergus said, “but I didn’t know you were planning on interring your current boss.”
“Oh, it’s a diabolical plan,” Cratchit said, laughing. “As soon as Mr. Scrooge is gone, I’m going to steal the candle and pen from his desk and make a run for it. I’ve been planning it for seven years because I’m a very patient thief. Have you any other suspects than myself?”
“I have not.” There was a silence. “Well, then –” McFergus began.
A gloved hand reached through the window with a slip of paper. “They day’s not over. Check these out or you’ll be dissatisfied the rest of your life.”
McFergus looked at the notes. “These are?”
“The addresses of my wife and Mr. Scrooge’s nephew and a note of introduction. Perhaps they’re also involved in planning Mr. Scrooge’s murder. Maybe we’re a murderous bunch, astounded by our success with Mr. Marley.”
“You seem sure Mr. Scrooge will be murdered.”
“It’s only logical,” Cratchit said. “No one seems to have gained at all from the death of Mr. Marley, except Mr. Scrooge, and he had no known motive. But the death of Mr. Scrooge would result in the liquidation of the firm, and a fair amount of money would have to be moved. Not,” he added, “that I would know where it would be moved to, only that I’d be out of a job.”
McFergus sighed a world-weary sigh. “Why not?” he asked no one in particular.
“Why not?” Cratchit agreed, and shut the window.
McFergus took a bus to the suburb where Scrooge’s clerk lived. It was in an area perhaps a little poorer than that where the McFergus residence was situated, but Bob Cratchit’s house was one room larger. McFergus tapped on the door.
A woman who must have been Mrs. Cratchit opened the door. She was dressed out but poorly in a twice-turned gown, and attended by two youngsters, a boy and a girl, and a somewhat older boy with a crutch. “Please, what may I do to help you,” the woman said.
“I have here a note from your husband,” McFergus said, producing from his pocket the neatly folded piece of paper. He knew it read, “Emily. This man is a former policeman who would like to ask you some questions.” It was signed, “Bob.”
Mrs. Cratchit looked at the note briefly, then said, “Come in; I’ll put on some tea.” She did, in fact assign that task to a daughter, maybe twelve or thirteen years old, whom she addressed as “Belinda.”
When the tea was poured, some slices of bread were laid onto a small, cracked plate. Mrs. Cratchit told Belinda to get the good plate for the bread, which was done without any sign of resentment on the daughter’s part.
After comments on the weather and some thanks for the tea and hospitality, McFergus said, “I fear I am troubling you for nothing. I am merely looking into the case of Mr. Marley, who died seven years ago.”
“Seven years ago, on Christmas Eve,” Mrs. Cratchit said. “I do remember it.”
“Did you think it was an accident?” McFergus decided to get right to the point.
“It seemed strange,” Mrs. Cratchit acknowledged, “but it was to nobody’s convenience or gain, and the coroner at the time declared it accidental.” She looked strangely at McFergus. “Do you not think it was an accident?” she asked.
McFergus smiled and once again told the story of being sent to the streets by his wife to keep him busy. “But,” he added,” It did seem a bit strange at the time. It was an unlikely thing to do, to leave his apartment in the night with a candle.” He sipped the last of the weak tea.
“People do strange things,” Mrs. Cratchit said, nodding her head wisely. “People live lives of quiet desperation in their normal lives, and keep their desires within their secret lives, if only in their imaginations. It is their way of being free. Mr. Marley may have had a secret life. Possibly Mr. Scrooge has one, too.
McFergus thought it unlikely that Mr. Scrooge had a secret life. “Then, with nothing to trace, the truth may never been known.” He shook his head, then asked, “Did your husband like Mr. Marley?”
“Mr. Marley,” she said, “could be nice to Bob at times, but then, for no reason would criticize him loudly.” She was lost in thought for a moment. “In many ways Bob preferred Mr. Scrooge, because he’s always a odious, stingy, hard, unfeeling man, but very much the same, every day.”
“I’m wondering why your husband doesn’t change positions. There must a demand for good clerks in the city.”
“Mr. McFergus,” Mrs. Cratchit said, “do you remember the financial downturn a few years back? Many clerks were on the streets after that. Bob is underpaid, but his job is likely secure if only because Mr. Scrooge cannot find another clerk who knows Mr. Scrooge’s business and would work for that salary.” She smiled a wan smile. “We are not free, Mr. McFergus, none of us. Even Mr. Scrooge is bound by his money devils. We make our choices if we can, but we are not free to do what we want.” She began to clear the table. “You are perhaps freer than most people I have met.”
McFergus stood up. “Then nothing is likely to change unless Mr. Scrooge happens to die?”
“It might be good if Mr. Scrooge were to die,” she said, “but it might not. Bob could find a better-paying position, but in the next financial downturn – do you not remember the ‘hungry forties?’ – he could be on the street selling apples, could he not?” She walked the ex-policeman to the door, children following. “I wish you the best in your quest. Try Mr. Scrooge’s nephew; maybe he’s as greedy as his uncle, and needs money. Good day, Mr. McFergus. And merry Christmas.”
McFergus, who didn’t remind her it was not yet Christmas, walked into the street under a cold pearl-and-grey sky and a nasty wind. Now what, he wondered. He looked around and for a moment caught the eye of a young woman passing by. She looked away and hurried off, but he remembered her as Molly Lambert, whom he’d seen last at the Communist meeting. Hmm, he thought. Then he looked at the paper that Mr. Cratchit had given him, and began walking north. After a mile, his leg began aching, and he took a bus. It didn’t take long before the bus had travelled uphill and upscale away from the crowded central London buildings and into quieter and tidier streets. Not, McFergus decided, upper class, but a safe distance from downtown.
When he arrived at the home of Fred, Scrooge’s nephew, it was getting late and dark; he wondered if Fred might be in. He tapped the door knocker, and the door was opened in a few seconds by a young woman in servant’s dress. “Could I speak to Mr. Holywell,” he asked.
“Mr. Holywell is expected momentarily, the young woman answered
in a lowlands accent that made the inspector smile. “Shall I inform Mrs. Holywell that you are here?”.
“I would appreciate that,” McFergus said, handing her a business card that identified him as a former police inspector.
She had barely gone in before a coach stopped and a handsome man in his mid-thirties stepped off. The man, his face ruddy from the cold, inspected the inspector, smiled broadly, and asked if he could help. “Fred Holywell, at your service,” the man said, handing McFergus a card that identified him as a solicitor for a large and well-known legal firm.
Before McFergus could reply, an exceedingly pretty woman came to the door. “Fred,” she said with a smile that brightened the dark street outside, “Inspector McFergus has just arrived.” She turned her face to McFergus. “Welcome to our home, Inspector McFergus. Come in out of the cold!” She led the two men into a well-lit interior. McFergus noted that the residence was about three times that which he and Amy lived in, and better furnished. The servant took McFergus’s hat.
“Former,” he said. “Former inspector. I’m retired now.”
It took a good ten minutes for the servant girl to start the tea heating, put more wood onto the fire, and get out some fine china with sweets to go with the tea. While they were waiting, they talked about the London weather, which both Holywells seemed to find very funny, especially when it involved some snowball fights that had occurred among children with the morning’s snow. A description of hats being knocked off brought more laughter, and the prospect of London being blanketed under a few inches of the white stuff brought a comment from Clara Holywell on how beautiful the city could be on a winter’s day. It was not, McFergus decided, that there wasn’t misery around, but that these two had chosen to look at life the way they wanted it.
During the small talk, which went well into the drinking of the tea and eating of the afternoon sweets, McFergus could smell supper cooking somewhere in the house, and decided that he’d try to keep this interview to a reasonable length. He looked around, and could see the house was being prepared for Christmas, presumably for a gathering of friends and relatives in three days. There were several wrapped gifts on a shelf. Beside them was a small pile of embroidered goods, pen wipers, bookmarks, and handkerchiefs awaiting some final hand assembly or colouring to be ready for wrapping, as well as a few books by Tennyson and Dickens. Scissors, string and hand-painted wrapping paper sat on another chair. There were rolls of ribbon awaiting and space enough for a small Christmas tree, a fashion that was spreading steadily throughout England. Perhaps, he thought, this pair share the superstition that a Christmas tree brought bad luck if a tree or wreath were set up before Christmas eve.
Finally, there was a moment’s silence, and McFergus said, “I have to be getting home soon.” He smiled, and went into his usual explanation of how his wife had told him to get out of the house and find something to do. Fred and Clara paid such rapt attention that McFergus reached into his Scottish roots to find the humour in the situation, exaggerating as much as he could, and adding details that hadn’t actually happened. The couple across the table laughed at everything, and McFergus even saw the servant girl keeping close enough to listen. For a moment, he even saw the servant girl smile at a joke, an act normally prohibited among servants.
“You think Mr. Marley was murdered?” Clara was aghast. Her perpetually surprised expression outdid itself and her very bright eyes grew wide. “Who would murder Mr. Marley?” Then she paused, and added, “Of course, I never met Mr. Marley. He died several years before I met Fred.”
“Three years before we met,” Fred said happily, looking at his wife with a large smile. “And four years before we were married.” He turned to McFergus. “I didn’t know the man well. We talked socially whenever I went to Scrooge and Marley Incorporated, but that’s all.” He frowned. “A person never could tell what mood he’d be in. Sometimes he was warm and friendly and other times he just growled like my uncle Scrooge.”
“Now there’s a man I would expect to be murdered,” said Clara, indignantly, looking hard at McFergus. I have no patience with that man. He’s odious, he is.”
He is what he is,” Fred said. “He’s a strange duck, but not a happy man. He makes his own misery to live in, although he could be happy. I understand he has bins of money.”
“And shame on him for that. You tell me he has all that money, and yet he spends nothing on himself and nothing on anyone else.”
“He doesn’t provide for you?” McFergus asked, casually.
“Oh no!” Fred was adamant. “He paid my way though school, and if it weren’t for him, I’d never have become a solicitor, but when I met Clara….” Fred gave his wife a loving look. “When I fell in love with Clara, and then married her, my uncle cut me off entirely. I am sure he was looking to get a free lawyer from my education, and a connection to some other financial interest with my marrying a rich woman. But I married for love, and have never regretted it.” Fred hugged Clara, who blushed and smiled even more; her smile gave her dimples a depth McFergus had seldom seen.
“You don’t think he’s likely to change his mind.”
“I don’t’ think so,” Fred acknowledged, “but he gave his word that I’d never see a penny of his money, and my uncle’s word is final.”
“So, if he were to die….” McFergus shook his head.
Scrooge’s nephew shook his head. “I’ve not seen the will, but I have connections with other solicitors, and have been assured that my name is not in it.”
“He’s a bitter man.”
“I didn’t meet his expectations, and I killed his sister.”
“Pardon?”
“I am sorry for him,” Fred said, “and for his expectations. And for my mother’s death. She died giving birth to me, of childbirth fever.” For just a moment, Fred looked sad. “But I never knew my mother, and that’s the way it is, so now I have a happy life, with enough money if we don’t spend too foolishly, and uncle Scrooge is stuck in his dusty chambers in that old office. It’s comical, it is, the way he hunches over his desk like a toad. He makes his own misery and doles out his own punishment to himself.”
“And yet you see him every year,” Clara said.
“At least once a year, at Christmas time, to invite him over here for a Christmas dinner. He never accepts, but I think he should see a merry face every now and again, if only to remember what one looks like.”
“I haven’t the patience with him that you have,” Clara said, pursing her small red lips.
“Maybe someday I’ll wear him down. Or maybe he’ll get so angry that he’ll write a will leaving all his wealth to his poor clerk, just to spite me. That would be fine. Just fine,” he said, decidedly.
“Well,” said McFergus, “if you get it into your head to sing a Christmas carol outside his lodgings, I don’t think I would want to be part of that.”
“Now would I,” said Fred. “I imagine he’d fling his chamber pot at me from his window if I did.” Suddenly Fred seemed to smell the supper that the servant was cooking. “You are more than welcome to stay here,” he started, but the inspector rose to his feet.
“I must be going home,” McFergus said. “My poor Amy will be wondering where I am.”
“Merry Christmas,” Fred said.
McFergus just sighed. “Yes,” he said.
It was dark by the time McFergus had walked halfway home, saving money rather than find a coach. There was no wind, but a few snowflakes drifted down. As he crossed a major street, two policemen joined him, greeted him, then walked away at the next corner. McFergus sighed, and kept on, wrapping his muffler closer around his face, and pulling his hat a bit further down. The cold weather made his leg hurt more every year.
Amy greeted him from the kitchen when he opened the door and climbed the steps to the dining level. “I’ll be right back,” he assured her, taking a candle to go to the privies out behind the row of houses in which he and Amy lived.
After returning he washed
his hands and face in the cold-water sink. Amy would have heated and brought him warm water from the kitchen basement, but Ian didn’t want her to go up and down the stairs more than she really had to. Besides, between his Scots upbringing and the police force, he’d washed in cold water most of his life.
He told her about his day over a stew of carrots and potatoes, flavoured with some small pieces of salt pork.
“Gone?” she exclaimed when Ian told her about the mudlark who had spoken to him in the morning. “The mudlark you gave the what-is-it to? That young girl said you’d never find that woman, that ‘Betty,’ again?”
“The scraping tool,” he reminded her. “Just the sort of thing a mudlark might find.”
“Or steal,” Amy reminded him. Mudlarks were notorious for “finding” things that “must have fallen off the back of a ship.”
“True. But I guess that line of inquiry’s closed.”
“Do you think it might have been because she asked about Marley?”
McFergus scratched his chin. “Just talking to a policeman might be enough to get a person warned off the area. I wouldn’t think it would be enough to get someone killed.” He had more tea. “I’ll see if I can find out if her body turns up downriver, but I doubt that anyone will tell me that, either.” He sighed. “Nobody’s eager to tell me anything.”
“But if it were because of the Marley investigation, might it mean some criminal elements are concerned?”
“Not much of an investigation.” McFergus smiled ruefully. “Nobody wants to talk about it, and all I’m likely to get out of it is another bad leg.” He told her about Samson’s assault and how Constable Oftan had “rescued” the boy. Then he told her about his interview with the Superintendent.
“So,” his wife said, “Let’s get this clear. The criminal underground doesn’t want you investigating this and the police don’t want you investigating anything and Constable Oftan, who might be part of both of these, might be arranging for you to think twice about it?”
“By Jove,” McFergus said, “I think you’ve got it!”
“And so?”
“I’ve spent the afternoon assuring everybody that I’m off the case,” he said, although he suddenly remembered that he hadn’t told Fred and Clara any such thing.
“Can you do that?” Amy asked. “Would you be happy if you did?”
“I think I can live with it,” her husband assured her, looking away. Then he added, “I’m worried that if I go any further you yourself might not be safe.”
“The problem is Scrooge, isn’t it?” Amy got to the heart of it. “If Scrooge is killed, like that note suggests, you’ll feel very bad.”
Ian sighed again. “There is that, isn’t there?”
“Can you let that go?”
“I could pass the note to the police,” Ian said quietly.
“Amy shook her head. It wouldn’t affect the outcome, whether the note’s a fake or real, and you’d end up in deep trouble.”
McFergus nodded. He’d figured that out himself. “There are people following me sometimes. Maybe some of the police, too. I can’t be sure, but it feels that way.” He inspected the empty teacup. “It could get dangerous.”
“Maybe they’ll get word that you’re off the case. Even if you just stay to protect Mr. Scrooge.”
“Stay? Where would I go?”
In answer, Amy went to a cupboard and brought back a piece of paper. She put it into the light of the tallow candle in front of her husband. He read it twice. It was a telegram from her cousin Harland, from St. Austell, in Cornwall. Older by ten years than Amy, he’d been with the military, but had been retired for a few years. The telegram was an invitation to spend a few weeks around Christmas with him. Ian had met him only a few times; he seemed a nice man, if a bit quiet. “You should go see him,” McFergus told his wife. “Take the train tomorrow, and you can be there in a day.”
“And you’ll stay here?” Amy tilted her head.
He sighed, then nodded. “Till the day after Christmas. Then I’ll take the next train to join you.”
“That seems reasonable.” There was a silence. “You’ll take care?” Amy asked.
“I will. I will do that.”
“Then tell me about what you did this afternoon.” Amy folded the telegram.
McFergus described his visits with the Cratchits and the Holywells.
“Suspects?” Amy asked, smiling.
“Unless they’re very good actors, probably not. I won’t eliminate them, but they’re not at the top of my list any more.”
“A killer who would wait seven years might have to be a good actor.”
McFergus winked. “They’re still on the list, just not at the top.”
“And who’s at the top, then?”
He shook his head. “I don’t know yet. But someone’s concerned about my investigation, and I’d like to figure out who that might be.” He got another candle. “I’ll help you pack.”
“That would be fine,” Amy said. She knew that really, she’d be packing up bags for both of them. Ian had spent so many years as a policeman he had little idea how to dress for civilian life.
***