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The Guilty
Abroad
A Mark Twain Mystery
Peter J. Heck
To my friends in phosphor,
especially the gang on GEnie.
The Guilty Abroad
Copyright © 1999 by Peter J. Heck.
All rights reserved.
Published by Wildside Press LLC
Historical Note and Acknowledgments
The historical Samuel L. Clemens, on whom my fictional detective is broadly modeled, lost his fortune in the early 1890s. After a series of bad investments—capped by the failure of the Paige typesetting machine, an unsuccessful rival of the Linotype—he was nearly bankrupt. He moved his family to Europe to economize, and spent much of the latter part of his life abroad, earning money to repay his debts by touring and lecturing. Thus it seems natural to take him to Europe for an adventure or two. I have chosen 23 Tedworth Square, in which he lived a few years after the nominal date of this adventure, as the home base for his London visit.
I also wanted to show him in the context of his family, from whom his financial troubles in later years forced him to be absent more than he would have liked. I have brought the whole family together to give the girls a chance to become characters in their own right. (Those interested in Twain’s family life would be well advised to seek out Clara’s book, My Father Mark Twain, which includes many letters and photographs illuminating this part of his personality.)
Twain is viewed as one of the prototypes of modern skepticism, and many of his remarks and writings on spiritualism and other supernatural phenomena amply support this image. The account of his visit to a medium in Life on the Mississippi is characteristic of his reaction to his own time’s equivalent of “New Age” beliefs. However, at Livy’s urging, he did attend séances after Susy’s death in 1896, in hopes of communicating with her spirit. The experience seems to have done nothing to change his mind concerning supernatural claims.
Gaslight London is of course the home turf of one of the greatest of all fictional detectives, Sherlock Holmes. Twain himself was no admirer of A. Conan Doyle’s stories, going so far as to lampoon Holmes in “A Double-Barrelled Detective Story.” Still, it seemed appropriate to pay some homage to the Holmes canon in a book set not only in London, but touching one of Doyle’s own obsessions, the spiritual world. So I have borrowed Inspector Lestrade (whom I have promoted to chief inspector, in accordance with the Peter Principle). I hope his performance here is in harmony with his character as drawn by his creator.
Researching these books is always enjoyable. As before, I have borrowed many of Mark Twain’s own stories and sayings, which readers familiar with his work will recognize. The serendipity of research always turns up something amusing; this time it was the Hartford air-gun factory, which was later converted to bicycle production and may well have built the bicycle that Twain attempted to tame in his Hartford days. And I found Clara’s description of her father as a “bad, spitting gray kitten” an irresistible image.
Of course, Mark Twain never became a detective (although his skeptical attitude and sharp mind would undoubtedly have made him a good one). But, given that fictional assumption, I have tried to make his character as authentic as I can. In the process, I have accumulated far too many debts to previous Twain scholars to acknowledge in this brief space. As always, any errors or distortions of fact are my own fault. But I hope I have been able in part to capture the spirit of a writer who was one of the key influences on my own growth and outlook on the world.
Finally, special thanks are due to my wife, Jane Jewell, my first and most demanding reader, who has contributed to the improvement of this book (and of its author) at every stage.
I had been in London only three days, in my capacity as traveling secretary to Mr. Samuel L. Clemens, a well-known author under his pen name “Mark Twain.” It was my first journey out of the United States.
I don’t know whether Mr. Clemens or I was happier to be in London. My employer (an old hand at foreign travel) was enjoying a long-awaited reunion with his wife and three daughters, who had been living abroad for some time. He had set aside all work for a few days in favor of spending as much time as possible with his family. That left me free to see the sights of London—and I had been doing so with a vengeance.
Today I had visited the British Museum. All morning and most of the afternoon, I had gazed in awe at a thousand treasures I had previously seen only in books. Those illustrations were now plainly exposed as shoddy counterfeits, compared with the originals. The Elgin Marbles alone were worth crossing the ocean to see. But at last, the guards began to announce that the museum was about to close, and I was forced to drag myself away.
I walked out onto Great Russell Street, in front of the museum, in the waning sunlight. The curbside was lined with people trying to hail cabs—and the drivers clearly knew this for a spot where they would get good business this time of day. After surveying the tangle of horses, carriages, and would-be passengers, I decided there was no point in fighting the crowds here. The weather looked fine—evidently a rarity for an October day in England. I decided to walk to nearby Euston Station, perhaps half a mile away, where there was a large hotel in addition to the train station. There, I would have a far better chance of finding a hackney coach to take me out to Mr. Clemens’s rented apartments in time for supper.
I had just turned up the street toward the station when a woman’s voice behind me called out in an American accent, “Why, Mr. Cabot! What a surprise to see you here!”
Standing on the street corner in a foreign country, three thousand miles from home, the last thing I expected was to hear a familiar voice call my name. I turned to discover the smiling face of Martha Patterson—or, as she was now known, Mrs. Edward McPhee. I had been told that the world is a small place; now I understood what that expression meant.
“Good heavens, Miss Patterson,” I said, removing my hat. “I mean, Mrs. McPhee . . .” My voice trailed off. It was certainly a shock to find her in London; a shock, and something of an awkward sensation, as well.
I had first met Martha when we were passengers on the Mississippi riverboat Horace Greeley, during the lecture tour for which Mr. Clemens had first engaged me as his secretary. She and I had become friendly—or so I had believed. She had introduced herself to everyone aboard the boat by her maiden name, and I had foolishly believed that she had taken a fancy to me. But at the end, we learned that she was married to Slippery Ed McPhee, a gambler and confidence man whom Mr. Clemens had known during his early days on the river.
But what on Earth was she doing here in England? She politely ignored my sputtered exclamations and merely stepped close to me, smiling, and said, “What are you doing in England, pray tell? Are you still working with Mr. Clemens?”
“Yes, I am,” I said, somewhat regaining my composure. I still found her flashing eyes and bright smile hard to resist. “He’s over here to see his new book through the press, and visiting his wife and daughters. I was just on my way to join them for dinner.”
“Are you staying nearby, or do you need a ride? Edward is bringing a carriage around, and we could take you home.”
“Oh, there’s no need of that,” I said, not certain I wanted to share a cab with Slippery Ed McPhee, despite the presence of his charming wife. (Or was it perhaps because of her presence?) “I was planning to walk up to