The Best British Mysteries III

Ten Lords A-Leaping by Jake Arnott

A discrepancy which often struck me in the character of my friend was that, although in his method of thought he was among the most well ordered of all mankind and in his manner of presenting an argument or pursuing an argument or pursuing a case or theory he was impeccably efficient, he was nonetheless in his personal habits one of the most untidy men that ever drove a colleague to distraction. His disorderly study was strewn with manuscripts, books and periodicals. Scattered about the room were knives, forks, cups with broken rims, Dutch clay pipes, discarded pens, even an upturned inkpot. He kept his cigars in the coal scuttle and his tobacco in the toe end of a Persian slipper. His unanswered correspondence was transfixed by a jack-knife into the very centre of his wooden mantelpiece. Everything was, one might say, ‘topsyturvy’.

His rooms reeked with the odour of the cheap tobacco that he had purchased from a small shop in Holborn, in the spirit of one of his more obscure economic inspirations. He had been taken by the slogan in the shop front that promised that ‘the more you smoke the more you save’ and had pointed out to me that by switching to this inferior brand he could save one shilling and sixpence a pound and, if he forced himself to smoke enough of the wretched stuff he might one day be able to live on his ‘savings’. I had long since given up trying to point out the absurdity of the ‘logic’ to one of the greatest materialist thinkers in Europe, just as I had also given up complaining about the downright untidiness of his domestic affairs. I have become familiar enough with them to no longer take much notice of these strange habits and idiosyncrasies, but in the process of introducing the young Lord Beckworth to him on that fateful afternoon (the intercession of a complete stranger forces you to renew what the first impressions are of an old friend), I confess that there was a brief moment of embarrassment on his behalf.

Yet if the young nobleman was at all taken aback by the odd circumstances of the great man, he showed it not one jot. Perhaps in deference to my colleague’s reputation for mental prowess, he simply overlooked this disordered clutter, or quietly acknowledged it as one of the vagaries of genius. I do not mind admitting my own deference to my old friend as a thinker, and resent not that his powers of reasoning and deduction far outstrip my own. I am resigned to the obvious fact that he is the dominant one in our partnership and see it as my duty to assist and support his great mind without complaint or jealousy, or even much thanks from the possessor of it. Indeed, it merely falls to me to facilitate, from time to time, the practicalities needed for this prodigious consciousness to bear fruit and to keep a sober eye on the mundane matters that he all too often neglects, his thoughts, as they say, being on higher things.

It was to this end that I had, in the first instance, invited the young Lord Beckworth to my friend’s lodgings. Lord Beckworth had expressed to me, when we had met earlier that year, at the house of a common acquaintance, a progressive Manchester manufactory owner, his great admiration for the work of my colleague and, more importantly, his desire to support, or even to sponsor, the continuation of his endeavours. My old friend was, at first, reluctant to be beholden to any third party in the way, convinced as he is of the need for independence in all matters. However, I managed to persuade him that he would be in no way compromised by any arrangement with this enthusiastic nobleman, and that the work itself was important enough for him to seek help from the most unlikely of sources.

Beckworth had his manservant with him, a dark, handsome-looking fellow called Parsons. The conversation that afternoon started out amiably enough with the character of a harmless politeness, but very soon it became strangely weighted with a darker and more sinister nature. Formalities had been observed with a certain jocular awkwardness. My colleague made a seemingly harmless remark about social class, I think it was an attempt to include Beckworth’s butler, when Lord Beckworth announced, one could almost say blurted out, as if wishing to unburden himself of a dark and terrible secret: ‘Privilege, sir, is a curse!’ My friend nodded and gave a vague and expansive gesture, as if agreeing that this ‘curse’ extended to us all, but the visitor shook his head vigorously and continued:

‘No, sir, I speak not of a general curse, but a very specific one! The hereditary principle, the very fact of primogeniture that one might call a bane on the world of men, is for me a very personal scourge.’

‘What?’ My friend retorted, frowning.

‘It is a matter of bad blood, sir. Parsons here is forever entreating me to deny the blight on my family name, but I cannot, sir.’

Beckworth looked for a moment at his manservant, who shrugged.

‘Well,’ said the butler slowly, ‘I have always wanted my lord to find blessings in life, also.’

Beckworth smiled briefly at this, then his mood darkened once more. And, as the early evening light faded, with a foreboding he recounted, the ‘curse’ of the Beckworths. It was related to us that the first lord of this unfortunate house was a certain Ralph Beckworth, of yeoman stock, who had found employment in the household of James I. He was, by all accounts, a good-looking youth and he soon became one of that king’s many ‘favourites’. He gained his title and no small fortune, but did so without merit or breeding but rather from an exploitation of the baser instincts. Ambition, lasciviousness and a general moral incontinence that had secured him an elevated station in society, all conspired to corrupt him fully once he had attained his rank. His were the temptations of power, without the necessary moderations of genuine nobility. His debauched revels became legendary and culminated in a terrible scandal. It seems that in 1625, the first Lord Beckworth, now grown ugly and malicious in appearance, had taken a shine to a young footman in his employ and no doubt wished to make him his own ‘favourite’, just as he had himself been despoiled as a young man so many years before. The footman, however, was not as compliant as his masters had been, but despite defending his honour with vigour, found himself imprisoned by that degenerate peer in an upper chamber of his Great Hall. Lord Beckworth and a crowd of flatterers and hangers on sat down to a long carouse, as was the nightly custom. The poor youth upstairs was likely to have his wits turned at the singing and shouting and the terrible oaths which came up to him from below, for they say that the lightest words used by Beckworth, when he was in wine, were such as might damn a man who used them. As it was, that evening there were loud declarations that he intended to exercise upon his unfortunate servant a droit de seigneur of the most appalling and perverse kind. The hapless footman, no doubt in utter despair at his fate, threw himself out of the upstairs window to his death on the cobbled courtyard below.

After this awful incident the first Lord Beckworth grew melancholy and brooding. He quickly developed an utter terror of high places, a vertiginous fear of falling. Not of heights so much: we know after all, that vertigo is not the fear of heights. It is a fear of depths, of a fall. And it manifests itself not as a fear, but rather a compulsion, a desire even, for a return from the insubstantial loftiness of our aspirations, back down to earth, as it were. And it was, with this awful realisation, that the first Lord Beckworth went into a long decline, a descent into gloom and enervation. Cursed by a strange madness, he climbed up upon the roof of his Great Hall and hurled himself down.

Our young noble visitor then went on to recount the litany of his cursed family. The next Lord Beckworth had been part of the Royalist defence of the castle of Banbury, a stronghold that had been of strategic importance in the Civil War, or what my old friend would have insisted was the ‘English Revolution’. In any case it seems, in a lull in the battle between Roundhead and Cavalier, the second Lord Beckworth had thrown himself, without apparent reason, from the battlements to his death.

The third Lord Beckworth had lived in exile until Charles II was restored to the throne in 1660, and then had tripped and broken his neck on the stone staircase of Windsor Castle. The fourth lord was thrown from his horse during a fox-hunt; the fifth, a commodore in the Royal Navy, was captured by Barbary pirates and made to ‘walk the plank’; the sixth fell from scaffolding whilst inspecting repairs to the Great Hall; the seventh slipped and plunged to his death from a precipice while on a walking tour of the Swiss Alps and the eighth, after an assault by footpads on Blackfriars Bridge, had been hurled into the treacherous waters of the Thames.

‘And my own father,’ concluded our guest, ‘the ninth Lord Beckworth, was killed in a ballooning accident five years ago, leaving me this awful inheritance. The family curse is a joke to many. We are known as the “Leaping Lords”.’

He gave a hollow and humourless laugh as he ended his story. I have to admit to feeling an almost disabling bafflement at the conclusion of this extraordinary narrative. My colleague maintained a more thorough and hard-headed attitude to the bewildering unravelling of this supposed ‘curse’. Knowing him as I do, I observed that expression of effrontery on his countenance which manifested itself whenever he found himself confronted with any evidence, anecdotal or otherwise, that contradicted his precious materialism. His method, after all, was a method of elimination: he always sought to eliminate the impossible in order to arrive at the truth. And yet, as the street lights were being lighted that evening, I saw my esteemed friend for once on the defensive, ‘on the back foot’ as prize-fighters are wont to say.

‘Well, your class is tainted with superstition,’ he muttered, as if trying to make sense of what he had heard. ‘You’re, you’re feudal, barbaric. I’m sorry, I don’t mean this as a personal insult nor a slur on your character but just -’ his gestures for a moment looked helpless, as if he was signifying the very search for meaning, ‘a, a psychology, isn’t that the word? Maybe this “curse” that you speak of is merely that.’

Our young nobleman merely nodded at this and the conversation quickly turned to more practical matters. He invited us both to his townhouse in Mayfair the following day and bade us farewell, as my friend and I had an evening appointment.

I remember feeling an absurd sense of lucidity in the artificial illumination by gaslight of the darkened streets we sauntered south into Soho for our assignation that night. The words that our noble visitor had uttered that very day still affected me deeply, their insistence reverberating in my mind with a contagious fear. I was somewhat reassured to find that my old friend, despite his abundant intellect and rationality, had been no less impressed by the strange unfoldings of the story of the Beckworths’ curse.

‘An interesting case,’ he finally admitted as we passed through Bloomsbury. ‘A series of coincidences, no doubt. But what if they were not?’

We proceeded to amuse ourselves with a kind of intellectual banter, trying to apply theories of historical materialism to what we had heard that afternoon. My friend then suggested that, perhaps, the new and controversial ideas of evolution could be related to this ‘curse’.

‘His class is dying out, after all,’ my colleagues reasoned.

‘You’re surely not proposing that, somehow, one branch of a social class is somehow spontaneously accelerating its own extinction?’ I retorted. ‘I wonder what Mr Darwin would think of that.’

‘I wasn’t thinking of him, but rather of the work of Pierre Trémaux.’

My friend had recently become besotted with this French naturalist who maintained that evolution was governed by geological and chemical changes in the soil and manifested itself in distinct national characteristics. I had no time for this Frenchman’s far-fetched notions and did not hesitate in expressing my doubts to my esteemed friend.

‘His theories are preposterous!’ I exclaimed. ‘No, no, not preposterous,’ my colleague insisted. ‘They are elemental, my dear Engels.’

When we arrived at Greek Street for a meeting of the General Council of the International Working Men’s Association, our thoughts turned to the business of that evening and no more mention was made of our young nobleman and his family ‘curse’. Except when one of the delegates brought up the proposal that ‘All men who have the duty of representing working-class groups should be workers themselves’, hastily adding with a deferential nod in the direction of my colleague, ‘with the exception of Citizen Marx here, who has devoted his life to the triumph of the working class’; and my friend muttered to me: ‘Well, they should have seen me hobnobbing with the aristocracy this afternoon.’ But the very next morning, when we went to call upon Beckworth at his house in Mayfair, we found a police constable posted at the front door and we were informed that the young lord had died, having fallen down the stairs and broken his neck.

We were ushered into the hallway of the house and greeted by an officer in plain clothes.

‘Inspector Bucket of the Detective,’ he announced and took out a large black pocket book with a band around it. He produced a pencil, licked it, and ungirdled his notebook as a prelude to interrogating us both as to the movements of the young Beckworth the day before. Neither myself nor Marx has ever had much reason to trust a gendarme of any colour, particularly those who go about in mufti, as police spies and agents provocateurs are wont to do. But this Bucket displayed none of the underhand furtiveness one associates with such fellows. Indeed he had an altogether affable manner, if a peculiarly directed energy and purpose in his questioning. Oft-times a fat forefinger of his would wag before his face, not at us, but rather at himself as if in some form of communication. This digit seemed to have a life and intelligence all of its own and Bucket looked to it as his informant.

We learned in the course of our interview that Lord Beckworth had been found dead at the front of the main staircase that morning by the parlour maid. The upstairs rooms were in disarray and it appeared that a great quantity of alcohol and a certain amount of laudanum had been consumed. The butler Parsons was missing and his whereabouts unknown. There was one very strange clue to the death of the young lord: a small green flower, a buttonhole perhaps, was found clasped in his hand.

Marx seemed very taken by the scientific approach of the ‘detective-officer’ and at the end of the questioning turned to Bucket and said:

‘If I can be of any assistance in this investigation, do let me know.’

Bucket’s finger twitched thoughtfully.

‘I certainly will, sir,’ he replied jovially. ‘I certainly will.’

‘Why did you say that?’ I demanded of my friend when we were away from the house. ‘We certainly don’t want to have much to do with the police, do we?’

‘My dear Engels, I have a strange fascination with this case and feel sure I could apply my own skills and methods in investigating it.’

‘But Marx, what possible qualifications do you have in the field of criminology?’

‘I have spent my life trying to solve the greatest crime committed by and against humanity. Surely I can bring some of this intelligence to bear on what, in comparison, is a mere misdemeanour.’

He was, of course, referring to his definitive work on the political economy. His great case, if you like. But I feared that this was yet another excuse for him to be diverted from his historic task. Decades had passed since its outset and yet he had only completed the first part of Capital. Alas, I have grown used to so many excuses for the non-completion of the work. I had no idea why his great mind might be stimulated in pursuing this particular distraction, what was to become known as ‘The Case of the Ten Lords a-Leaping’, but I suggested to him that it was perhaps the supposed supernatural aspect of it that provoked him so.

‘You may be somewhat affronted by the use of phantasmagoria,’ I chided him. ‘But wasn’t it you yourself that described communism as a spectre haunting Europe?’

‘Now, now,’ my friend reproached me. ‘Let us stick to the facts. But first let us retire into this tavern here.’

‘Isn’t it a bit early?’

‘Yes, yes,’ he whispered furtively. ‘But I fear we are being followed.’

My colleague and I had long been sensitive to the attention of police spies and government agents. Once safely inside the pub there was a brief appraisal as to who our pursuer might be in the pay of. My friend was of the opinion that his movements were far too subtle to be that of a Prussian.

‘You mean that he might be from Scotland?’ I demanded.

‘Perhaps,’ muttered Marx, stroking his beard thoughtfully.

‘Then that is all the more reason for staying away from this unpleasant business. We must not unnecessarily provoke the attentions of any government institution.’

But Marx was having none of it. It has been my experience that despite his rather chaotic approach to his work, once my friend becomes obsessed with something it is invariably impossible to dissuade him from a complete involvement in it.

‘Now,’ he went on. ‘The manservant Parsons, he seems under suspicion, does he not?’

‘I suppose so.’

‘And did you notice anything strange about the butler?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘In his appearance. Would you say he was English?’

I remember the swarthy looks of Parsons, a peculiar accent.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘Then what?’

‘Er, Jewish?’ I ventured tentatively, knowing of my friend’s sensitivities.

‘I thought so at first, yes. But did you notice the strange tie-pin that he wore?’

‘I can’t say that I did, no.’

‘A curious device. I’ve seen the emblem before. A black M embossed on a red background. I’ve seen it struck on medallions and tokens commemorating Garibaldi’s “Thousand”.’

‘You mean Parsons is an Italian?’

‘Yes. And I suggest that Parsons is not his real name. Here is my theory: he was a Red Shirt with Garibaldi in the triumphant success in Sicily. After the defeat at Aspromonte, he goes into exile, and like so many of the “Thousand” finds himself an émigré in London. There he enters into the service of Lord Beckworth and adopts the name Parsons.’

‘But how can any of this point to a motive in the death of the young lord?’

‘I have no idea. But, as you know, it has always been my contention that it is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness. I intend to discover more about this Parsons, or whatever his real name is. Once we have a clearer idea of his social interactions, then we might be able to deduce his intentions.’

He stood up from the table.

‘Where are you going? I asked.

‘There is a back way from this pub. I can slip out unnoticed if you can keep our spy occupied for a while. Clerkenwell, I believe, is where most of Garibaldi’s Italians have settled. I intend to make some inquiries there. Meet me at my place tomorrow at noon.’

Marx was already entertaining a visitor when I called upon him the next day, a young lady in mourning weeds. She was so shrouded in black that her face, revealed as it was beneath a veiled bonnet, seemed a half-mask of white. I do not think that I have ever seen such a deadly paleness in a woman’s face. Her eyes were speckled grey like flint, her lips a blood-crimson pout. I could not help but frown when I looked from her to my friend. Marx gave a little shrug.

‘This is Miss Elizabeth Cardew,’ he explained. ‘She was the fiancée of the young Lord Beckworth.’

‘I have been informed,’ she said to me, ‘that yourself and your esteemed colleague here were among the last people to see my beloved alive.’

‘The butler Parsons must have been the last,’ I reasoned.

‘That damnable fellow!’ she exclaimed.

My friend and I were shocked at such an outburst and Miss Cardew’s pallor was all at once infused by a rosy flush that bloomed in her cheeks. She quickly sought to regain her composure.

‘I must apologise, gentlemen,’ she explained. ‘I’m sorry, but the enmity that I feel towards the man known as Parsons is so strong that I find it hard to moderate myself.’ She sighed. ‘I do believe that he had some kind of diabolical hold over my betrothed. He certainly is not the person he presents himself as.’

‘Indeed not,’ my colleague concurred. ‘The man employed by your husband-to-be as Gilbert Parsons was, in fact, one Gilberto Pasero, a Piedmontese fighter in Garibaldi’s “Thousand”, forced into exile in London. He worked for a while at the Telegraph Office in Cleveland Street, then after meeting with Lord Beckworth at a Radical meeting in Finsbury, was engaged in service as his gentleman’s gentleman.’

Something like fear flashed in the expressive eyes of Miss Cardew.

‘How did you know…?’ she began.

‘I have been conducting my own investigation. Now, you say that Parsons, or rather, Pasero, had some kind of hold over Lord Beckworth. What do you mean by that?’

‘We had just become engaged when he took up with this dubious manservant.’

‘When was this?’ I interjected.

‘Oh,’ she thought for a moment. ‘It was over two years ago.’

‘A long engagement?’ I suggested.

‘Yes,’ she sighed, mournfully. ‘It was the curse, you see. My betrothed was terrified of it, but even more fearful of passing it on. He could not countenance the continuation of his family’s bane. He had a horror that,’ she gave a little sob, ‘in consummating our love we might pass on something so wicked and damnable.’

She took out a handkerchief and dabbed at her eyes that were now filmy with tears.

‘He always sought to try to understand his fate,’ she went on. ‘This led him to unconventional ideas, radical ones even. The love that I offered him seemed no consolation to his desperate temperament. Instead he seemed ever more drawn to that awful butler of his. He was enthralled in some way and I am sure that Parsons, or whatever this creature is really called, was responsible for my fiancé’s death.’

‘Have you informed the authorities of your suspicion?’ I asked.

‘Oh yes, but it seems that they are following procedure without much effect. This wicked manservant must be found before it is too late.’

‘But where can he be?’ I demanded.

‘I think that I might know the answer to that,’ claimed Marx.

The young lady looked as astonished as I felt.

‘What?’ I began.

‘Just say that my contacts among the revolutionary émigrés in Little Italy have borne much strange fruit. Now,’ he said to Miss Cardew, ‘you go home. I feel sure that we will have news of this Pasero fellow this very evening.’

My friend saw the young lady out and then came back into his study.

‘Now Marx,’ I reproved him. ‘What are you up to?’

He merely pulled out a slip of paper from his inside jacket pocket and handed it to me. Daubed with red printer’s ink on the heading were indecipherable Chinese characters and, in black copperplate below, an address in Limehouse.

We took a hansom with a good horse down to the Docks that night. A skull-like moon hung low above the river, casting a jaundiced shimmer on the dark and filthy waters below. Gaslight grew thinner, the streets more narrow, as we came closer to our appointed address. We passed gloomy brick-fields, their kilns emitting a sickly light in the dripping mist. The public houses were just closing, befuddled men and women clustered in disorderly groups around the doorways. There were shrieks of awful laughter, loud oaths and raucous outbursts of brawling and disorder.

We rattled over rough-paven streets. The roads were clogged with muck and grime. The stench of putrescence hung in the air, a wraith of dreadful contagion. Most of the windows were dark, but here and there fantastic shadows were silhouetted against some dreary lamplight like magic-lantern shows of penury and degradation. Here dwelled the sordid secrets of the Great City.

‘My God, Engels!’ Marx exclaimed. ‘Such squalor!’

I was somewhat surprised that he should be so shocked at the appalling poverty we witnessed that night. But then it always amazed me that, despite my friend’s prowess in commentary and observations of conditions, his lucid approach to theoretical social analysis, he could, for the most part, be strangely inattentive and unmindful of the actual destitution that surrounds us. His detachment of thought, however, did not impair a particular attentiveness of his, no doubt born out of his many years of exile, intrigue and subterfuge, and he confided to me that he had noticed another carriage on the same trail as ours and consequently it was likely that we were once more being followed.

The hansom drew up with a start at the top of a dark lane, nearly at the waterside. The black masts of ships rose over the squatting rooftops of the low hovels. We got out and made our way towards the quayside along a slimy pavement and found a shabby house with a flickering oil lamp above the door that illuminated the same Oriental characters that were printed on the slip of paper that Marx had shown me earlier that day.

We knocked and were greeted by a sallow Chinaman who showed us into a long room, heavy with the sickly odour of opium, and edged with low wooden berths, like the forecast of an emigrant ship. The low flare of gaslights glowed feebly, their scant illumination diffused by the miasma of the foul-smelling drug. A group of Malays were hunched around a stove, clattering ivory tokens on a small table. Our attendant offered each of us a pipe. Hastily we demurred and proceeded to search amongst the stupefied occupants of the bunks on either side of us.

We were watched with suspicion by the more sober patrons of that den. Harsh oaths were uttered as we moved through the room; one of the Malays looked up from the game in our direction and hissed something to his fellows in their alien tongue. I began to feel a concern for our safety, though Marx seemed quite oblivious to any danger, driven as always by his relentless curiosity.

‘I’ve always wanted to see what one of these places looks like,’ he commented with a quite inappropriate jocularity.

Through the gloom we could make out contorted figures reclining in strange twisted poses; some muttered to themselves, others appeared to be in a trance, but all were possessed by a mental servitude to that merciless narcotic. In the corner a man lifted himself up from his bed and reddened eyes blinked against the vaporous light. He looked with a docile astonishment upon us, as if not sure if what he was seeing was real or a phantasm of his contorted imagination. He then gave a rasping and mirthless laugh. It was Pasero.

‘Ah!’ he called out to us. ‘Comrades! Citizen Marx, now you may prove the accuracy of your aphorism as to the anaesthetising effect of religion.’ He relit his pipe and taking a ghastly inhalation, held the glowing red bowl towards my friend. ‘Here is to oblivion, comrade.’

Marx pushed the foul object away.

‘Oblivion from guilt?’ he demanded. ‘Is that what you seek here?’

Pasero coughed and shook his head.

‘From sorrow,’ he croaked, mournfully.

‘Elizabeth Cardew, the fiancée of Lord Beckworth, seems convinced that you had some hold over your late master and believes that you were responsible for his death. What do you have to say to that?’ demanded my colleague.

‘That bitch!’ hissed Pasero. ‘It was her fault. It was she that drove him to his death.’

‘Explain yourself, man!’ Marx exclaimed. ‘And why you absented yourself from Beckworth’s household just after he had met his terrible fate.’

‘Because no one would understand. Do you think you could understand?’

This enigmatic query was, of course, a direct provocation to the great mind of my friend. He stroked his beard, thoughtfully.

‘Go on,’ he insisted.

Pasero sat up on the edge of the bunk and rubbed at his sore eyes. He sighed and shook his head, as if trying to rouse his dulled mind into some sort of coherence.

‘I was a young man when I joined Garibaldi’s Red Shirts,’ he began. ‘I hardly knew myself back then. But I was drawn, I know now, to the dear love of comrades. We were a band of brothers and, through danger and action, some of us could find comfort in each other, and secretly believed in that Ancient Greek ideal: that we were an army of lovers. Ah, the Thousand! A true company of men. After Aspromonte I came here in exile, lost and alone in a cold city. I tried to involve myself in the political movements like so many other émigrés, but these dull meetings with their endless arguments and empty resolutions were nothing compared to the solidarity I had known with the Thousand. Then, one night, at a Chartist gathering in Bloomsbury I met with Beckworth. He was kind and generous. Although we were from entirely different worlds we were drawn to each other and we soon discovered the desire that held us in common. We shared another curse, as you would call it, like that of the first Lord Beckworth who was a king’s favourite. I strove to make Beckworth see it was a blessing also.’

‘You mean the abominable sin of sodomy!’ I gasped.

Pasero groaned.

‘Really,’ Marx chided me. ‘We are trying to understand the social circumstances of this case.’

‘Understand gross and unnatural vices?’ I retorted.

‘My dear Engels,’ my colleague went on, ‘I would have thought that you, as the author of The Origin of the Family, might have a more scientific curiosity concerning this problem.’

‘And encompass human perversion as part of my thesis?’ I demanded.

‘If you have both quite finished!’ Pasero declared boldly, his voice suddenly becoming clear and emphatic. ‘I am a man of action, I have little time for your analysis. You theoreticians, you have no idea what real rebellion is! We were revolutionaries of the heart, ours was the sedation of desire.’

Marx saw that I was about to make a reply to this and glared to me to keep quiet.

‘We had so many plans for our liberation. Utopian ideas maybe, but we both dreamt of a world where we could be free. When we were alone there was no servant and no master but equal souls, true comrades joined together in love. But she!’ he seethed through gritted teeth. ‘She ruined everything!’

‘How?’ asked Marx.

‘That Cardew woman’s designs upon poor young Beckworth were for securing herself a social position. She preyed upon his sensitive nature and his vulnerability. When she discovered where his affections really lay she tried to insist upon my dismissal. She threatened to expose His Lordship to open scandal if he did not honour his promise to elevate her to her long-desired status as Lady Beckworth. On the night of his death she had sent him a hateful letter and a green carnation.’

‘Oh, that,’ Marx interjected. ‘What is the significance of that flower?’

‘It is a symbol of our condemned nature. She wanted him to know that she knew the truth about him. He was utterly distraught, at his very wits’ end. He had so much to lose. We argued, we had drunk much and taken laudanum in an attempt to quell our anxiety. We ended up fighting and in a struggle Beckworth slipped at the top of the stairs and fell to his death.’

Just then came a loud banging on the front door of the squalid den. There was a chorus of groans as the pitiful wrecks roused themselves from their berths. The game-playing Malays stood up and started jabbering at each other. After two or more heavy thuds the door was broken down and a shrill whistle pierced the night air.

‘Police!’ a voice called out as a group of uniformed men, with a plain-clothed man at their head, stormed into the smoke-filled room.

‘Gentlemen,’ the leader hailed us. ‘I thought you might lead us to the quarry.’

It was Inspector Bucket of the Detective.

‘But where…?’ he went on.

We looked to Pasero’s bunk. In the commotion he had slipped out of the den through a back way.

‘I’ve men posted outside,’ said Bucket. ‘He won’t get far.’

We rushed out into the cold air. A figure could be seen making its way to the dockside.

‘There he goes, then. And get on, my lads!’ called Bucket to his men.

But it was myself and Marx that were closest to him as he reached the edge of the slippery quayside. He looked at us for a second, panting like a hunted animal, his breath steaming into the night. He gave a defiant laugh, then dropped out of sight. There was a muffled splash. As we reached the waterside we saw him flounder in the dank waters below. He struggled awhile, his body protesting against its fate, though there seemed a strange tranquillity in his countenance, as if his mind had already given up the ghost. The policemen arrived and made an attempt to drag him out of the dock with a boat-hook. But by the time he had been fished out of the dirty water he was quite cold and dead.

We gave our statement to the affable Inspector Bucket, whose curious forefinger wagged with increasing agitation at our strange testimonies. The ‘Case of the Ten Lords a-Leaping’ was, as they say, closed, and it seemed likely that the inquest into the death of the last Lord Beckworth would record a verdict of accidental death. A perturbing conclusion perhaps, but I must confess that our minds were reeling at the unfolding of events over the last few days. My friend’s great intelligence seemed particularly vexed at all these provocations of meaning; confounded, even.

‘Struggle,’ he murmured to me as we made out way back to his lodgings as the dawn broke. ‘It’s all struggle.’

A week later I was much relieved, when I met with my colleague as he came out of the British Museum, to see that he had been coaxed back to his great work after this strange diversion. A curious-looking young man was with him who bore an intense expression on his countenance, and wore some kind of tweed hunting-cap on his head. After the briefest of formalities the young fellow left us.

‘Who was that?’ I asked Marx.

‘Oh, a student, or, rather, he had just left university with prodigious talents and is unsure of how, exactly, to apply them. Very much like myself when I was his age,’ Marx mused. ‘He has lodgings in Montague Street and is using the Reading Room to develop methods of analysis. He feels sure that a scientific approach to criminology is to be his vocation. I told him of the Beckworth case and he was most interested. I believe he wants to pursue a career as a detective.’

‘As a police officer?’

‘No, as a civilian.’

‘What a peculiar notion,’ I commented.

‘Yes, it’s a pity that such a gifted mind cannot be persuaded to apply itself to our cause but I’m afraid he’s utterly unpoliticised.’

‘The youth of today,’ I sighed.

‘Yes. Though he is a committed materialist. It’s just that he is content to analyse human behaviour and interactions without a desire to change them. Though I must confess that I can now see the fascination in uncovering evidence, interpreting disclosures and clues. One could get lost in the deduction of class and society. He is working on a puzzle presented to him by a high-born friend of his from college, a superstitious observance of an ancient family known as the “Musgrave Ritual”. It is a litany of questions and answers that have no apparent meaning but -’

‘Marx!’ I barked at him.

He stared at me in shock for a second then his face broke into a broad grin.

‘No more of this amateur sleuthing,’ I reproached him. ‘There’s work to be done.’

‘You’re quite right, my dear Engels,’ he assured me, patting the thick sheaf of notes he had been making for the next part of Capital. ‘We’ve the greater crime to solve.’