Octopus

By Michael Gallagher

Gooseberry, the fourteen-year-old Victorian boy detective, is having his fair share of problems. Not only must he juggle the task of being Mr Bruff’s newly-appointed chief investigator with the unwanted responsibility of managing London’s entire criminal underclass, he also has to decide whether a drunken wretch of a man—who turns up on his doorstep claiming to be his father—is who he says he is.
But when the leading actress dies in mysterious circumstances on stage during a performance of The Duchess of Malfi at the Sadler’s Wells Theatre, Gooseberry feels duty-bound to investigate. It is, after all, a great deal more exciting than the last case he was assigned to: the tracking down of a rich old lady’s errant cat!
Join Octavius (AKA Gooseberry, AKA Octopus) and his ragtag bunch of friends on their latest adventure, a revenge tragedy (of sorts) in (roughly - very roughly!) three acts.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seventh Rainbow Publishing
• Release date: Mar 1, 2016
• ISBN: 9780957582590

Book preview

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

My grateful thanks go first and foremost to Wilkie Collins, for creating that wonderful chunk of Victorian fiction, The Moonstone, in which Octavius Guy—AKA Gooseberry—first saw light of day. Many thanks also to Elaine Tym for helping me to flesh out one of the characters, to Lara Thomson for her excellent proof reading skills, and to Malane Whillock for her kind support and encouragement, and for helping me tie things up.

The quotations used throughout are from The Duchess of Malfi by John Webster. In this, I follow in the footsteps of giants.

CONTENTS

Copyright Information

Acknowledgements

The Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

The Interval

The Interval Continued

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

A Quick Change of Set

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

The Second Interval

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

The Epilogue

The Epilogue Interrupted

The Epilogue Concluded

Author’s Note

Guy’s Rules of Detection

Receipts Both Ancient and Modern

About the Author

For Lara, who celebrated a very special birthday whilst proof-reading this novel.

THE PROLOGUE

London. Thursday, July 1st, 1852; 9.30 pm.

THE APRON STAGE AT Sadler’s Wells is a large one; it extends well beyond the theatre’s proscenium arch, which marks the traditional boundary to any normal stage. Our private box was situated directly above it, which meant we got a bird’s-eye view of the proceedings.

I’ve seen plays before—well, maybe not plays exactly, but I’ve seen a play. Ned, the one-time leader of London’s criminal underworld, took me to see it just before he made me his deuce…his second-in-command, that’s to say. It was called "Macbeth", and for nigh on three hours I sat transfixed. The blood! The gore! All a young boy could wish for! Afterwards he asked me what I thought the moral of the story was. I considered replying, ‘Go trafficking with witches at your peril,’ which seemed like a perfectly appropriate moral to me, but I found myself saying, ‘You shouldn’t betray someone’s trust, the way that Macbeth betrayed Duncan’s.’ He seemed to appreciate this answer, for he smiled and slapped me on the back. Of course, this was a lifetime ago—well, half of my lifetime, at least—before I was reformed of my felonious ways and began taking my responsibilities more seriously.

If you find it hard to believe that a criminal overlord would make a seven-year-old boy his deuce, let me tell you there are reasons, good reasons, which will no doubt become obvious to you, astute reader, long before you and I finish this tale.

The play I was currently enjoying, The Duchess of Malfi, concerned itself with the greed and corruption that can fester even in the highest-born families. Oh, the poor duchess! She had no chance of happiness, not with brothers like hers! Her despicable siblings distrusted her so, they planted a spy in her household. Their man, a fellow named Bosola, was for ever wrestling with his conscience, for he could see that the duchess was pure at heart, whereas his spy masters were naught but evil.

I was beginning to despair of any bloodthirstiness, however, for so far there had not been a single death. Mercifully, with the arrival of act four—and a new set of orders for the troubled Mr Bosola—this oversight was about to be addressed.

First the spy drove the duchess to despair by showing her the bodies of her slaughtered offspring (waxworks, one and all—not that she was aware of the fact—but my point is, as waxworks, they can hardly be included in the final body count, now can they?). Ah, but I digress!

Next he tried to taunt her by filling her house with madmen. That didn’t go too well for him, for by now she was indifferent to their company.

It forced him to put his final humiliation for her into play. A tingle—a thrill—ran down my spine as he ushered his band of assassins on stage. They were dressed as monks, and with their cowls drawn over their heads it was impossible to see anything of their faces. How exquisitely creepy they looked!

‘Pull, and pull strongly,’ the duchess cried out, as they each strung a cord round her neck.

Oh, but she was a feisty one! Refusing to utter so much as a whimper, she writhed and convulsed in heart-rending silence before crumpling in a heap on the floor. Any caterwauling was left up to the big, brawny chambermaid—who was next for the chop—as the thugs dragged her screaming from the stage. I had to sit on my hands to stop myself clapping! And, yes, even I know you clap at the end of an act and not at some point in the middle—well, I do now, having clapped at a seemingly inappropriate moment during Macbeth.

The leading actress, Miss Prynn—or Bella, as I’d already begun to think of her again, for it turned out that I’d known her in the past—had given us a sterling performance as the throttled duchess. Even now she lay face-up and motionless on the stage some fifteen feet below me. So perfect was the effect, in fact, that, in the narrow beam of limelight that fell across her throat, I could have sworn I saw signs of actual bruising. I was only sorry that our host, Mr Willoughby, had had to miss all the fun, having withdrawn from the box some time earlier to answer a call of nature.

When one of the brothers who’d come to gloat over her corpse eventually made his exit, Bosola stood surveying the duchess’s body, then suddenly gave a start.

‘She stirs, here’s life!’ he marvelled, hurrying to her side. ‘Return, fair soul, from darkness and lead mine out of this sensible hell.’

The actor knelt down and, grasping Bella’s hand, raked her fingers along his smooth, jutting jaw.

‘She’s warm, she breathes,’ he murmured. ‘Upon thy pale lips I will melt my heart, to store them with fresh colour.’

He leaned forward and kissed her. Everybody in the theatre leaned forward too.

‘Her eye opes…’

He was staring down at her face, as were we, so we could see just as he could that her eyelids hadn’t budged.

‘Her eye opes…’

This time he said it louder, emphasizing the words, but still to no effect as far as I could see. Both Bella’s eyes remained stubbornly closed.

‘HER EYE OPES…’

He was almost shouting the line now, and I could hear the panic in his voice.

‘You said that twice already!’ came a heckler from the balcony. A number of people burst out laughing.

Mr Jacobs—the actor playing Bosola—rose to his feet and approached the front of the stage. White-faced and trembling, he addressed the audience directly: ‘Ladies and gentlemen, I beg your forgiveness. Miss Prynn appears to have been taken ill.’

A low, rumbling mutter started somewhere in the dress circle, then spread rapidly to other sections of the building.

‘Ladies and gentlemen, please,’ Mr Jacobs appealed over the din, ‘is there a doctor in the house?’

Mr Bone, a man whose acquaintance we’d only just made whilst on our way to the theatre, sprang up from his chair beside me. He was obviously intending to help, but was unsure quite how to proceed. All of a sudden he spied a figure racing down the aisle of the stalls. ‘Look,’ he said, pointing.

As we watched, the fellow hopped the barrier into the orchestra pit, then hauled himself on to the stage. He knelt beside Bella and, after loosening her ruff, he felt for a pulse in her wrist. The mumblings in the auditorium faded to a whisper.

The man removed his hat and bent over Bella, obscuring our view of her face.

‘The procedure he’s attempting is known as mouth-to-mouth resuscitation,’ Mr Bone informed us tensely.

Since he claimed to have some medical training, I could only assume he knew what he was talking about. I could see the rise and fall of Bella’s chest with every breath the man delivered, but apart from this she remained unnaturally still. After what seemed like an age, he stopped what he was doing and leaned back on his haunches.

‘What’s going on here?’ asked Mr Willoughby, as he made his way back to his seat. ‘Did I miss summat while I was away?’

His return to the box was met with a ‘Shush!’

Frowning at this unexpected reception—for he’d been the one to fork out for this evening’s entertainment—he sat himself down with as much dignity as he could muster and peered over the balustrade with the rest of us.

‘Miss Prynn’s been taken poorly,’ my employer whispered in his ear. ‘That’s the doctor with her now.’

‘I fear one of the executioners may have got a little over-zealous with his cord,’ muttered his partner-in-the-making, the flashily-dressed Mr Peacock.

Mr Willoughby shot him a look. ‘Then why’s the doctor doing nowt? Why don’t he try to bring her round?’

‘He has tried to revive her,’ explained Mr Bone, with a touch of exasperation in his voice. ‘He’s just sent backstage for a hand mirror.’

‘A hand mirror? What the heck for? That lass is in no state to be fussing with make-up!’

‘He’ll want to check for her breath on the glass, sir. It’s exactly what I would do in his position. Look, someone is bringing one now.’

An actress, who’d had a very minor role in the play, entered from the wings, carrying a mirror. She passed it to the doctor, who held it first to Bella’s mouth and then up to her nose.

‘"O fly your fate. Thou art a dead thing. Never see her more,"’ intoned Mr Bone, and, though he was murmuring these phrases under his breath, in the silence that had fallen in the auditorium we all heard every word.

‘What’s he on about?’ demanded Mr Willoughby.

Mr Bone looked at him and blinked. ‘They’re lines from later in the play, sir, that the duchess speaks from her grave. It seemed an appropriate tribute to the late Miss Prynn.’

‘The late—?’

‘Miss Isabella Prynn. She is dead, sir. She is dead.’

My former friend, with whom I’d just been reunited, dead? How had a day that had started out so promisingly come to such a dreadful pass?

CHAPTER ONE

London. Thursday, July 1st, 1852; some eight hours earlier.

THE DOOR TO MR Bruff’s office opened and out stepped the first of his two new clients: Mr Hector Willoughby, a tall, soberly-dressed gentleman of northern extraction in his early thirties. He’d recently returned from South America, where he’d managed to acquire certain "exclusive mineral rights"—whatever they were! Best not to ask, I always think…they might try to tell you! Mr Joseph Peacock, also in his thirties (but with a noticeably more flamboyant dress sense), stepped out next. He had just inherited his father’s estates in the south of England; all he was waiting on now was something they call "probate"—whatever that might be! Again, best not to ask.

To build his refinery in South America, Mr Willoughby needed Peacock’s money. To increase the already large fortune that was coming his way, Mr Peacock needed Willoughby’s minerals. Though the pair had only reached what one might call "the early wooing stage", they required a presiding minister if this marriage was to work: a solicitor, to wit; a post that Mr Bruff was surely born to.

‘George!’ cried my employer, as he stuck his head round the door. It was the leaner, trimmer, older of the two Georges who sprang to his feet. Five months in, the reducing diet that Mr Bruff had put him on was working like a charm. So far he’d managed to shed nearly three stone. The same could not be said of the younger George, I might point out. Several pounds heavier and as round as a pudding, he was currently slumped on the bench beside me, snoring his head off for all to see.

Furtive dinnertime forays to his forbidden chophouse would have been my guess, not that my employer had ever asked me to look into it. Still, in the unlikely event that he did, as Mr Bruff’s newly-appointed chief investigator, it was always useful to have a working theory up my sleeve.

Chief investigator, eh? Or, to be more precise, chief and only investigator. But even so! It was definitely a step in the right direction. My one regret was that, although this promotion came with an increase in wages, it sadly didn’t come with an office. Hence here I sat beside the younger George, still relegated to the corridor bench.

‘George, you will accompany these gentlemen to their hotel,’ Mr Bruff explained, ‘where they will furnish you with a number of documents. You’re to take them and deposit them with my bank.’

‘The one in Lombard Street, sir?’ George inquired. ‘The new one?’

I rolled my eyes, for it certainly couldn’t have been the old one, which had burned to the ground earlier that year. It seemed that Mr Bruff picked up on this too, for he winced before nodding.

‘Oh, and, George,’ he added, ‘you’re to come straight back. I may need you to run further errands.’ He glanced at the snoring lad on my left and let out a sigh. ‘Gooseberry, my office, if you please.’

Well, at least I rated a "please", I reflected, as I followed my employer into his inner sanctum. Having shut the door as requested, I sat myself down, removed my bowler hat, and adjusted my chair so that it faced Mr Bruff’s desk square-on. I find that little details like these create an impression of professionalism, so important when one’s just starting out in one’s career.

‘What do you know of Sadler’s Wells?’ my employer asked, carefully avoiding my eye. He usually does this when he’s embarrassed to talk about something.

‘It’s a theatre, sir,’ I replied, as candidly as I could, in order to put him at ease.

‘Theatre; yes, theatre,’ he mumbled. ‘Go on…’

‘It’s a twenty-to-thirty-minute walk from here.’ The "here" in question being Gray’s Inn Square, where Mr Bruff has his suite of offices. Surprisingly, this simple observation seemed to unnerve the man deeply.

‘Twenty minutes?’ he gasped, staring at me for the briefest instant before tearing his eyes away again.

‘Or thirty, sir. From the Gray’s Inn Road, you head north-east. I warn you, though, the route can be a little—how can I put it? Rough? Run down? Depressing?’

‘Rough?’ echoed Mr Bruff, seizing on my first attempt to describe it. Suddenly he began rummaging through his drawers, sending dip pens and quills flying everywhere. He pulled out an oft-resorted-to box of Anderson & Crombie Patent Liver Powders and emptied a sachet into the glass on his desk. He gave the contents a swirl and downed it in one. Having steeled himself in this fashion, he replaced the glass, closed his eyes, and muttered, ‘What else are you able to tell me?’

‘Well, they put on plays there, sir. I hear they’re currently reviving The Duchess of Malfi.’

I knew this because I’d read a review of said play that claimed it was one of the most bloodthirsty ever written. Apparently everybody’s dead by the curtain-fall. I’d been longing to see this alluring production for myself, but the question was how I might fund this; my per diem for daily expenses had been reduced to a measly shilling, of which I was obliged to account for every penny. Blast Mr Crabbit and his damnable receipts!

‘It stars a Miss Isabella Prynn in the role of the duchess,’ I continued, purposely skirting around the play’s rather bloodthirsty nature; it was bound to offend Mr Bruff’s quaint notions of what were and what were not suitable topics for discussion where a fourteen-year-old boy was concerned. ‘You may well have heard of her, sir. I believe she’s quite famous.’

Very, if the article I had read was anything to go by. As I was rapidly running out of things to say, I gave a discreet cough and came straight to the point.

‘Mr Bruff, wouldn’t it be easier if you just told me what it is you wish to know?’

Mr Bruff opened his eyes and blinked. I watched the tip of his tongue striving to moisten his lower lip as the seconds, if not minutes, ticked by.

‘Is it…safe?’ he inquired at last.

‘Safe?’

‘Safe…to go there…at night.’

‘At night?’

‘Oh, dash it all, I’ve read the reports in the papers! The thuggery that goes on outside its walls! The public displays of drunkenness when you venture inside the theatre! The building’s in such an awfully remote spot, I can’t help worrying that, if I attend, I shall end up being set upon by thieves!’

‘Are you to attend, sir?’

Mr Bruff nodded miserably. ‘Peacock’s been going on about it for days, and Willoughby needs the man’s money so badly, he’s not only reserved them a box, he’s jolly well gone and fixed it for him to meet the entire cast! So when they asked me to accompany them, I could hardly say no, now, could I? I had no wish to appear faint of heart.’

I should like to go on record as saying that Mr Bruff is not usually faint of heart, nor does he put much faith in what he reads in the papers. He’s far too level-headed for that. Clearly something had put the wind up him, but what?

‘When, sir?’ I asked.

My employer sighed. ‘Tonight.’

A truly inspired idea occurred to me. ‘What if I were to come with you, sir? I’d see to it that no harm befell you.’

Mr Bruff regarded me with a sceptical eye. ‘How?’ he asked, rather bluntly. ‘If a big, burly mugger came at us with a knife, how could a tiny lad like you hope to defend yourself?’

‘Before you were kind enough to employ me, sir, and rehabilitate me of my iniquitous ways, I was a well-respected and—dare I say it? revered—member of the criminal fraternity. No one would harm a former brother-at-arms, sir. You would be perfectly safe with me.’

Safer than he might imagine, for I was now in charge of these very same criminals. Having publicly fought their leader and won, the title of kingpin had fallen to me. By the rules of our time-honoured code, I was the person they now answered to.

‘What about your mother, Gooseberry? Won’t she be expecting you home?’

The "mother" he was talking about was in fact my house guest, Bertha, who, you may as well know from the start, is a man. The one time they’d met, Bertha had been wearing his beloved skirt and blouse, and his hair had been done up in ribbons. I’d never had the heart to disabuse Mr Bruff of his illusion, for I doubted he could cope with the truth.

‘No,’ I replied brightly. ‘She’s well aware of my need to work late on occasion.’

‘But I feel as if I’m imposing…’

‘Sir! No imposition at all! I’d be delighted to be of service.’ I smiled and added hopefully, ‘What time do we leave?’

Mr Bruff blinked. ‘Willoughby and Peacock expect me at seven; we’re to meet the cast before the show begins. I suppose you and I might get a bite to eat at around, say, five, and then go on to the theatre from there. The local chophouse should do us quite nicely.’

Supper, a show, and I get to meet the cast? Could the day get any more perfect? Well, perhaps it could in just one respect…

‘Sir,’ I said, ‘I know of somewhere much better than the chophouse, and it’s not even out of our way.’

I was talking, of course, about Mrs Grogan’s on the Gray’s Inn Road, where the food was vastly superior to that of any chophouse. But our reception at her esteemed establishment, shortly after the appointed hour of five, could only be described as downright frosty. I, it seemed, had made it squarely into her bad books. It was something that happened all too frequently to me these days.

‘And where, pray tell, have you been hiding yourself?’ she asked, staring down her nose at me as we installed ourselves at one of her tables. ‘I ain’t seen hide nor hair of you in weeks! What’s the matter? Ain’t my food good enough for you any more?’

‘Mrs Grogan, your food’s just—’

‘Funny, isn’t it?’ she went on darkly, talking over me to address the non-existent companion at her side. ‘One teensy taste of power, and they quickly go forgetting who their friends are! Oh, you may rule the roost now, lad, but it wasn’t always so. And who was it that cooked for you throughout all those years when you were a good-for-nothing nobody? Why, me, that’s who! Yes, ME! And now you go blinking-well ignoring me! Can you honestly not see how it gives people the wrong kind of impression?’

I glanced at Mr Bruff, who was watching this ticking-off with an expression of mild amusement. So far he hadn’t caught on to what it meant…and I was determined to keep it that way.

‘Mrs Grogan! Mrs Grogan! You’re right,’ I butted in, before she let something slip that he did understand. ‘I admit it; I let my promotion—to chief investigator—go to my head.’

It did the trick; it put a stop to her tirade. ‘You what?’ she asked, frowning.

‘May I present my employer…the SO-LI-CI-TOR, Mr Bruff?’ I emphasized the word as forcibly as I dared, considering how I didn’t wish Mr Bruff to remark upon it in any way. ‘This is the man who recently made me his chief IN-VEST-I-GA-TOR.’

The woman’s eyes narrowed into slits. Planting both of her palms on the table, she leaned forward and peered at me closely—uncomfortably closely. ‘Chief investigator?’ she queried.

I nodded.

She cocked her head and cast a sidelong glance at Mr Bruff. ‘And he’s a solicitor?’

‘I am, madam. Mr Mathew Bruff of Gray’s Inn Square. At your service.’ Mr Bruff can be quite charming at times.

Mrs Grogan scrutinized the cut of his jacket and the quality of his black silk top hat, then straightened her back and took a long, deep breath. I expect she thought I had a plan afoot to swindle the old man out of his money. Fussing with the tea cloth at her apron strings, she pursed her lips sourly.

‘So what can I be getting you two fine gentlemen this evening?’

Her manner thawed by the tiniest degree when I told her we would be happy to place ourselves in her capable hands. The stew, when it arrived, was cooked to perfection, with dumplings like pillows and meat that fairly melted on the tongue.

‘That was extraordinary,’ declared Mr Bruff, when at last she came to clear away our plates. ‘The bread was especially delicious.’ Mrs Grogan is famed for her bread.

‘It’s all to do with the flour,’ she confided, blushing at the compliment. ‘You don’t take nothing out of it, and you don’t go putting nothing in; no chalk, no lead, and certainly no arsenic!’

Now perhaps you can see why she’s so famed for her bread. There was a tricky moment when my employer asked for the bill and she began to inform him that naturally our meal would be on the house. She noticed me shaking my head just in time. It didn’t prevent her from stuffing a large bag of cheese cakes into my hand as we took our leave, though. The way she saw it, it couldn’t hurt to keep on the right side of the