Oh, No, Octavius!

By Michael Gallagher

Octavius Guy and the Case of the Quibbling Cleric. London, 1853. The well-heeled residents of Highbury have a problem: the Reverend Allaston Burr, the rector who’s been foisted upon their congregation by an ancient yet legally-binding right known as an advowson. When a final appeal to Queen Victoria—as the head of the Church of England—fails to remove him from his post, they turn to Gooseberry for help.
Join fifteen-year-old Octavius and his ragtag bunch of friends as they investigate the detested cleric, only to discover that someone has a far more permanent form of removal in mind.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Seventh Rainbow Publishing
• Release date: Dec 31, 2019
• ISBN: 9780995473362

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COPYRIGHT INFORMATION

Smashwords Edition

Published by Seventh Rainbow Publishing, London

Copyright 2019 Michael Gallagher.

The moral right of Michael Gallagher to be identified as the author of this novel has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

Cover design by Negative Negative

Cover photograph "Covent Garden Labourers" by John Thomson

Monochrome Rainbow by www.rodjonesphotography.co.uk.

All rights reserved.

This novel is a work of fiction. Characters, names, businesses, institutions and organizations are either the product of the author’s imagination or are in the public domain and are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

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. Thanks too to the writers (and others) of Twitter who came to my aid when it was needed: Mark Wright, Maggie Philpott, Nigel Mutt, Gill White, Nick Zea-Smith, Dolores Kearney, and Gwydhar. I am indebted to the Islington Archaeology & History Society for posting back copies of their magazine on line; their researcher Michael Reading’s column was particularly helpful. Thanks as always to Lara Thomson and Malane Whillock for all their hard work, kind support, and encouragement.

Quotations used throughout come from:

A Child’s History of England by Charles Dickens

Songs of Innocence and of Experience by William Blake

The History of British India by James Mill

The Complete Herbal by Nicholas Culpeper

The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

The King James Version of The Bible

When I Am Laid in Earth or Dido’s Lament: music by Henry Purcell; libretto by Nahum Tate

The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins

CONTENTS

Copyright Information

Acknowledgements

Dramatis Personae

Prologue

PART ONE

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

PART TWO

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-one

Twenty-two

Twenty-three

Twenty-four

Twenty-five

Epilogue

Author’s Note

Mr Deepankar Agarwal’s Compendium of Everyday Recipes

About the Author

DRAMATIS PERSONÆ

At Highbury House:

Colonel Robert Palgrave, retired, formerly of the British East India Company

Mrs Margaret Palgrave, his wife

Miss Julia Palgrave, their daughter

Mr Murthwaite, the famous explorer who is their guest

Mr Edwin Webb, the Cambridge student who is also their guest

Mr Deepankar Agarwal, their major-domo and cook

At Highbury Hill House:

Mr Wallace Phinzey, proprietor of the Highbury Barn

Mrs Beatrice Phinzey, his wife

Mr Neville Phinzey, their son

Miss Molly Phinzey, their daughter

At the Reverend Burr’s School for Boys:

The Reverend Allaston Burr, proprietor

Mr Benjamin Badger, his apprenticed assistant

Mrs Binns, the cook

Mr Cedric Grebe, a student

Mr Abner Buckle, a student and a bully

Pickle, the boy who empties the chamber pots

Others:

Mr Octavius Guy, (variously known as Gooseberry and Octopus), Mr Bruff the solicitor’s Chief Investigator

Mr George Crump, Mr Guy’s Investigative Assistant

Mrs Mary Crump (neé Moody), George’s wife

Miss Annie Crump, George’s younger sister

Julius, Octavius’s younger brother

Tricky, Julius’s dog

Mr Mathew Bruff, the London solicitor based at Gray’s Inn, and Gooseberry’s employer

Sergeant Barrington Gray, of the Metropolitan Police’s Detective Division

Superintendent Flood, of the Metropolitan Police

The stalwart men of N-Division, not quite as green as they’re cabbage-looking

Doctor Jacobs, a physician living in the vicinity

Mr William Collins, the humming, whistling mourner at the funeral

An unnamed vagrant, who may well turn out to be nothing more than a bit of smoked haddock

and one or two of Gooseberry’s more dubious friends

Highbury House: a view of the west wing

"Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him."

—Shakespeare’s Macbeth

For my friends Stephen Heskin and Stephen John…another thing to cross off your bucket lists. I’ve placed them alphabetically; let them slug it out between them as to who should have come first.

THE PROLOGUE

Highbury, on the outskirts of London.

Early Monday morning, September 5th, 1853.

‘"I CAN’T THINK WITHOUT thinking about you; I can’t BREATHE without thinking about you; I can’t LIVE without thinking about you,"’ George quoted at me from memory. He narrowed his eyes and came straight to the point. ‘It looked like your handwriting, Octavius.’

It was; not that I was about to admit it.

‘Was it signed?’ I asked, knowing full well it was not.

‘No, but the writing was cursive like yours is, all spiky L’s and T’s. This is my little sister we’re talking about.’ He stressed the words little sister again and glowered at me some more.

Oh, why had Annie kept my note? Why had she hidden it where George was bound to find it? Surely she knew that her brother pried—if only where she was concerned? He was angry, very angry—anyone could see that—so angry that it was distracting him from the task in hand.

‘Concentrate, George. This is a crime scene, and we have precious few minutes before Mr Badger returns with all the constables of N-Division in tow. Come, observe whatever may be observed and tell me what you think.’

The big lad peered down at the body, which was sprawled across the aisle in the broad octagonal space where the transepts met the nave. Cool, early morning light filtered in through the church’s east windows, amply illuminating the corpse.

‘I think he’s dead,’ said George.

‘It would certainly seem it. See how the whole of his face has been battered in? All that is left is a wet, pulpy mess.’ The sight prompted in me a sudden memory.

When thou saidst, ‘Seek ye my face,’ my heart said unto thee, ‘Thy face, Lord, will we seek.’

Prophetic words indeed.

‘Hammer?’ George suggested, as his professional curiosity finally began to exert itself.

‘Perhaps…or some kind of mallet.’ I cocked my head to the side. ‘Such a frenzied attack! Someone was particularly determined that he should not survive it.’ One of our own clients, presumably, who—frustrated with our efforts to date—had resorted to a much quicker solution to their problem.

George sniffed. ‘Maybe they just didn’t want us to identify him,’ he posited.

I stared. It was a truly ingenious idea, though not one that was borne out by the evidence. I scrutinized the man’s manner of dress: the fusty old frock-coat, the battered felt hat, and the telltale white gloves he habitually wore. If anyone was trying to hide his identity, they’d made a deplorable job of it.

‘I was just saying,’ George grumbled, when I pointed this out to him, ‘if the murderer didn’t want us to identify him, what better way than by bashing in his face?’

He crouched down to take a closer look. ‘Poor bloke was trying to defend himself. See how he’s cowering? Arms and knees drawn up in front of him to ward off the blows, and look at how his fingers are clenched. Here, what’s this?’

George leaned forward and grasped the Reverend Burr’s right hand. With a forceful tug he prised away whatever it was he had spotted.

‘Looks like a torn scrap of parchment,’ he opined, ‘maybe from a letter…something the murderer must have snatched off him when he knew the old man was done for. There’s writing on it, see?’

‘What’s it say?’

He held it up to the light, peered at it, and then shrugged. ‘Your guess is as good as mine. Looks really old. Here, see for yourself.’

There was writing on it…of a sort. A single line that appeared to be in code:

++ etomnialignaregionisplaudentmanu ++

I scanned my eye back and forth along the text, noting the crosses and the faint but definite underlining. George was right; the script indeed looked ancient, with any rounded parts rendered not in a circular fashion, but formed instead with a flat-cut nib employing short, oblique strokes. No matter how I tried to group the letters, the only words I could make were to or Tom, I align, a region is, and either laud, den, or dent. And man, of course, though, with the ensuing u, I presumed we were missing the -facture or -facturer that would likely come next. A thousand pities that we had only this small portion to work with, I reflected. Had we more, what grand truths might we have discerned?

George watched as I stowed the scrap inside my pocket. ‘Guy’s Seventh Rule of Detection?’ he queried, and I shot him a grin: Never allow good evidence to fall into the hands of the police. Well, it’s not as if they would be needing it; if I couldn’t work out what the message meant, then they, poor souls, hadn’t a chance. Mr Peel’s finest are not exactly noted for their brains.

‘Has the clergyman anything more to tell us?’ I asked.

George scratched his head. ‘Well, his muscles are stiff.’

‘Fully stiff?’

‘They don’t come no stiffer.’

I tried to recall what I had read about this—which proved a lot easier than having to apply it.

‘Rigidity starts to take hold approximately two hours after death and reaches its peak some eight to twelve hours later. The muscles can remain fully stiff for a further eighteen. But…’

‘But?’

‘Well, it was a rather warm night last night, which may have sped up the process. The hour is now almost seven by my reckoning. Which means…’

‘What?’

‘The Reverend Burr met his end at some point in the past thirty-odd hours.’

George raised an unimpressed eyebrow. ‘We both saw him alive at yesterday’s service,’ he said. ‘It had to have happened since then.’

Ho hum. I should like to state in my defence that estimating time of death by observing the body’s natural rigours is an imprecise science at best.

‘We should check the church for more clues while we still have the chance,’ I said, keen to put my little oversight behind me. ‘You take that side; I’ll take this.’

For the next few minutes we inched our way through the interior, starting at the altar then working down the nave, thence back along the side aisles on either wall. Though Gothic in style, it was a new church, and everything in it—save for a discarded lantern and the fresh pool of vomit made by young Mr Badger—was spotless. From the bible on the lectern—open, I observed, at the Book of Isaiah—to the rows of hardwood pews, there was not a scratch nor a scuff mark to be seen.

‘Anything, George?’ I asked, as we met up again by the body.

‘Nah. You?’

‘Only an impression, but rather an interesting one. The blood…or the lack of it, to be precise. His face was beaten to a pulp, and yet there isn’t nearly as much blood as I would expect there to be.’

George glanced down at the floor and frowned. ‘You’re right. There should be more. A lot more. What can it mean, Octavius?’

‘That one of the people who hired us cleaned up after themselves when they murdered him.’ Though I was speaking in jest, my face was grim, for it seemed to me the most probable explanation.

The sound of rapidly approaching footsteps from outside the church put paid to any further speculation, however; it appeared that Mr Badger was back, now accompanied by the stalwart men of N-Division.

‘Don’t think I’ve forgotten that note to Annie,’ George warned me as they came blundering in through the doors. ‘She’s my little sister, see?’ He fixed me with a stare that was positively bovine.

Unfortunately for me, I saw only too well.

PART ONE:

In which we first meet our clients, who may very well turn out to be our suspects…

"Subdue your appetites, my dears, and you’ve conquered human natur."

—Charles Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby

CHAPTER ONE

London, some few days earlier.

The fourth week of August, 1853.

THE CASE OF THE Quibbling Cleric, as I have come to refer to it, started promisingly enough with an acquaintance of mine poking his head round my office door.

‘Mr Murthwaite!’ I cried. ‘Is that really you? Please, sir, come in, come in!’

A pair of attentive, brown eyes beamed engagingly at me as their tall, wiry owner—a man famed for his travels throughout India and the East—made his way into the room. I had met him only the once, but I knew he could tell a cracking good yarn and was happy to stand his friends a fine dinner. His skin was even darker than I remembered it, a deep, ingrained mahogany that no English sun could produce, and yet in all other respects he remained unchanged: that casual aloofness, that faint whiff of tobacco smoke, that lip curled with the promise of a joke to be shared.

In his wake there followed a woman in her late forties, though at the time I imagined her to be older; a thin, faded bloom whose petals were wilting, but of the sort that seemed determined to stay put in its vase.

‘Chairs, George; chairs,’ I prompted, but my assistant didn’t move, watching instead as there now appeared a third visitor, a bewhiskered military man of advancing years. Nor was he the last one, it seemed. Next there came a gent who was a good decade younger, with an expensive taste in clothing and a luxuriant mop of hair. His clean-shaven face bore a slight trace of menace—more manly than gentlemanly, you might say. He glanced dismissively about at the now cramped surroundings, then stood scowling most ungraciously into space.

The last—and very obviously least—person to enter was a young man about George’s age. He had sandy-blond tresses and nondescript features, the most memorable of which were his spectacles. He dithered in the doorway, neither quite in nor quite out, then perched himself uncertainly against a wall.

I glanced at George. He glanced back. A silent message passed between us. Five chairs! Five chairs! Even when George surrendered his and added it to the pair we kept for clients, this still left him with two more to procure. While the lady of the party availed herself of one, and Mr Murthwaite’s two gentlemen friends took the others, George squeezed his way through the assembly of bodies and out into the junior clerks’ common room. Would he manage to appropriate two chairs from our fickle—some might say jealous—colleagues? I can’t say I fancied his chances much.

As we waited, I seized the opportunity to point out some of the more outstanding features I had instituted in my own small domain: the umbrella stand in the corner, where clients could disencumber themselves of their parasols and umbrellas; the bamboo coat-rack by the door for hanging their coats; the small but streak-free window that looked out on to a side alley; and the lush, green fern that was currently under threat of being toppled from its plinth by someone’s elbow. Mr Murthwaite seemed enchanted by my improvements—the others less so—and yet despite their awkward silence, it was only when George returned with his two hard-won chairs that the explorer began making the introductions.

‘Octavius, may I present Colonel and Mrs Palgrave?’

Since handshakes were out of the question (there being precious little room to manoeuvre), I clasped my hands in my lap and met the military man’s gaze with a smile.

‘Colonel; Mrs Palgrave,’ I said. ‘How very nice to meet you.’

The colonel’s eyes bulged and his cheeks flushed red. He looked away, ignoring my greeting. His gaunt-faced wife, who was equally uncommunicative, regarded me keenly, however.

‘The Colonel and Mrs Palgrave live at Highbury House,’ Mr Murthwaite explained. ‘They’ve been kind enough to put me up as their guest during my stay here in England.’

‘Ah. Highbury House.’ I tried to make it sound as if I’d heard of the place, not that I had.

‘And this is Mr Wallace Phinzey of Highbury Hill House.’ He stressed the word "Hill" and I nodded. ‘Mr Phinzey is the proprietor of the Highbury Barn.’

Again, the name of the house meant nothing to me, but I had heard of the Highbury Barn. It was one of those dining-and-dancing places out in the countryside, somewhere to the north of the city; the kind of establishment that bends over backwards to cater for every conceivable taste.

‘How do you do, Mr Phinzey?’ I said, and smiled at the not-so-gentlemanly gentleman.

‘I do quite well,’ he replied without smiling back.

‘And this, Octavius, is Mr Edwin Webb, a Cambridge scholar, who is also staying with the Palgraves. Mr Webb is researching the history of Highbury.’

I nodded at the young Mr Webb. He seemed surprised to have been remembered, let alone acknowledged.

Mr Murthwaite now turned to his companions. ‘Mrs Palgrave; gentlemen, may I present Octavius Guy, investigator extraordinaire?’ On noticing George, who had managed to squeeze his way back behind my desk, he added, ‘Oh, and his able assistant…?’

‘George,’ said George, standing to attention. ‘George Crump, sir.’

In the whole jam-packed office, the only person who seemed truly at ease was Mr Murthwaite himself.

‘Am I to suppose that this is not a social visit, sir?’ I inquired.

‘Quite right, my young friend. Mr Bruff sent us here.’

I blinked. ‘Mr Bruff sent you here?’ Mr Bruff, my employer, was a successful London solicitor, as famous in his own field as Mr Murthwaite was in his. If Mr Bruff sent this group to us, then the chances were that their problem involved a light-fingered servant or a runaway pet. As the sign on the door says: "No case is too big or too small!" Unfortunately for us, they all tend to be small ones. And yet, as I surveyed the belligerent, mismatched huddle before me, I realized that this time was different.

‘Oh, this is preposterous!’ the colonel exploded, his anger now finding its head. ‘First Bruff lets us down abominably…and then he sends us to this boy! A boy—wot?—a damned boy! How can he be expected to help us? Why, he can’t be any more than fourteen!’

‘Fifteen, sir; fifteen!’ I retorted, resisting the urge to add that I’d shot up by nearly an inch in the last year alone. ‘And George here is quite close to his majority!’ Well, at the advanced age of nineteen, closer than I was, at least.

‘Colonel Palgrave! Octavius! Calm yourselves, both of you!’ Mr Murthwaite reprimanded us sternly. ‘Colonel, I’ll have you know that if it were not for this lad here, the little matter of the Moonstone might never have been resolved!’

Colonel Palgrave frowned. ‘The Moonstone, sir?’

‘Before he was elected to Parliament, the MP Mr Franklin Blake was embroiled in a mystery that nearly brought him to the very brink of madness—the theft of a rare and precious jewel. By a concerted effort, he and his friends managed to trace the gem’s location to a certain bank, and yet had this boy not been present on the day the thief redeemed it—well, I dread to imagine the outcome! It is through his efforts and his efforts alone that the perpetrator was ever unmasked. Do not be misled by his age, sir; there is no sharper-eyed, quicker-witted youth in all of England than the lad you see before you in this room.’

That put the blustering colonel in his place! Given that Mr Murthwaite had had his own part to play in the Moonstone affair, I was touched. More than touched, to be honest. A deep glow of satisfaction suffused me to the core.

‘You alright?’ muttered George, shielding the exchange with his hand.

‘I’m fine,’ I whispered back. ‘Now hush! Just remember what I told you about how we need to look professional.’

‘Professional?’ he snorted. ‘You look like you’re about to pass out!’

The colonel’s wife, who’d had her eye on me ever since she’d entered the room, leaned towards her husband and said, ‘Tell him, Robert.’ Her voice was deep and sonorous, and though it took me a while to place the accent, place it I did, for it was one I had encountered before.

‘But, my dear…’ the man resisted.

‘No, Robert, tell him. Tell him everything.’

Defeated by these few short words, the colonel raised his hands in surrender. ‘We want to be rid of our rector,’ he said. ‘We want the rascal out of our lives.’

Whatever I’d expected, it wasn’t this. ‘Your rector, sir?’

‘You seem to have heard of Highbury—’

I mentally cursed myself for my earlier dissembling and quickly cut in: ‘Pretend that I haven’t, sir. Pretend I know nothing. Do as your good wife says: start at the very beginning and tell me all.’

The colonel huffed, yet set about piecing together the odd snippet of background for my benefit.

‘Highbury—wot?—in the parish of Islington; the north-east corner, don’t you know? A select community; decent chaps on the whole. Founded some seventy—eighty—years back by a fellow named Dawes…John Dawes…a man of vision, or so I was told. He foresaw that, as the community grew, the old parish church would be unable to accommodate us all, so he set aside a parcel of land on which the residents could build their own.’

‘Most perspicacious of him, sir,’ I remarked, and the colonel grunted.

‘When my wife and I bought Highbury House on our return from India, it was the first thing we put our minds to: to get that ruddy church built—wot?—no matter what the cost!’

Mr Phinzey sniffed and shifted in his seat. I waited for him to speak, but he didn’t. Rather, he sat there with his lips pursed and an eyebrow raised like a cynic’s.

‘As Highbury’s most prominent citizens,’ the colonel continued, ‘my wife and I—and Phinzey here—we formed ourselves a Vestry committee…and we got that ruddy church built—wot? We got that ruddy church built!’ He puffed out his chest, and for the briefest of instants it was as if I could see the whole campaign played out through his eyes: the rallying of neighbours, the raising of subscriptions, the laying out of bricks for the foundations. Now, in the wake of his hard-won victory, he stared darkly at the floor. ‘Man of vision, be damned!’ he said. ‘Dawes hadn’t the least idea of the onslaught we’d face.’

‘Onslaught, sir?’

‘Why, from the Reverend Allaston Burr! Marched right in through the doors of our church—our church, damn it—and claimed it as his own! And to think that blasted cad was once my teacher! Dreadful chap then; dreadful chap now!’ The colonel’s cheeks were so red and inflamed, I feared he might have done himself a mischief.

‘This rector, sir, this Reverend Burr, what right had he to do that?’ I glanced at George, hoping that he, being a religious sort, might have a little more insight than I did. George gave me an imperceptible nod then posed the colonel a question:

‘What about the bishop? Didn’t he try to put a stop to it?’

‘The damned bishop was in on it, wasn’t he!’ he bellowed, though his wife seemed not to agree.

‘Be fair, Robert,’ she said. ‘Bishop Blomfield did all he could to help us. He took our case to the Archbishop of Canterbury, did he not? It is not their fault if the law does not support your cause.’

‘So this is a legal matter?’ I hazarded. ‘And that’s why Mr Bruff was involved?’

Once again the rubicund colonel seemed set to explode; once again his wife stalled him and answered me levelly.

‘Yes, Octavius—may I call you Octavius?—not that I fully understand it all myself. Mr Bruff drew up an appeal requesting that the head of the Church of England intervene to have the man removed. We learned only just now that our petition has failed.’

I felt woefully out of my depth. I’d been attending church quite regularly since the beginning of the year—though it certainly hadn’t prepared me for this. ‘And who might the head of the Church be, miss?’

‘Why, Her Majesty Queen Victoria, of course.’

‘Really?’ I wondered for an instant whether it was worth my own personal appeal to her, but then I reflected that it was her husband I was closer to, not she. ‘I still don’t understand why this pretender, this Reverend Burr, can have such a strong legal claim to your church, miss.’

Mrs Palgrave glanced uneasily at her friends. ‘Can someone please explain to him the advowson?’

Mr Phinzey swung one leg over the other and began drumming on his thigh with his fingers. Mr Murthwaite suddenly became intrigued with a speck of dust on his coat. Even the colonel ceased his habitual spluttering to bury his head in his hands.

‘Anybody?’ she entreated.

‘An advowson is the ancient legal right whereby the lord of the manor may appoint whomsoever he pleases as his vicar or rector.’

It was the scholar from Cambridge who spoke, and it shames me to admit that his name had escaped me.

‘Come again, Mr—?’

‘Webb. Edwin Webb.’ The young man adjusted his spectacles. ‘It’s a lord’s legal right to appoint whomever he chooses to an ecclesiastical benefice—a church living, if you prefer—in any church erected on his manorial lands.’

‘Whether or not he built it himself?’

‘Absolutely. An advowson is appurtenant to the manor, not to a particular church, so the question of who built it becomes irrelevant.’

‘Appurtenant?’ I queried, latching on to yet another word I was unfamiliar with.

‘Pertains to,’ Mr Webb explained, and none too clearly in my humble opinion. I had to wonder if he was making these phrases up. Surreptitiously I picked up a pencil and began jotting them down—with every intention of checking them later.

advowson = someone’s legal right to appoint a clergyman.

ecclesiastical benefice = a church living,

whatever that might be!

appurtenant = pertains to something???

relates to something???

who knows!

Feeling somewhat less than satisfied, I began to sum up. ‘So you’re telling me that, when you built your church, you built it in someone else’s manor?’ To my mind it sounded like two rival gangs battling it out for supremacy on adjoining London streets.

Again it was Mr Webb who replied: ‘To put it simply, yes. The whole of the community is built on ground that once belonged to the manor of Highbury.’

‘Once belonged to, you say?’

Mr Phinzey stirred in his seat. ‘Our community’s founder, Mr Dawes, may have acquired all the necessary deeds to build