The Guilty Abroad: The Mark Twain Mysteries #4. Peter J. Heck
that we met,” she cried, clapping her hands. “That’s the very place we’re staying! Now you must ride with us!”
I was at a loss what to say, and at that exact moment a carriage pulled up a short distance away and a curly-haired fellow with a broad hat leaned out and shouted in a broad western accent, “Here we go, Martha!” It was Slippery Ed McPhee, and no other.
“Hello, Edward, look who’s turned up in England,” said Martha, taking my hand and pulling me toward the waiting carriage.
McPhee squinted in my direction for a moment, then his mouth fell open with surprise. “Well, fry me for a catfish! If it ain’t young Mr. Cabot. Is my good old buddy Sam over here, too?”
“Yes, Mr. Clemens is here with his whole family,” I said, deciding that further resistance to Martha’s invitation would be undignified. “Your wife has offered me a ride out to Chelsea—if that’s not inconvenient to you.”
“Why, no, easiest thing in the world,” said McPhee. “Good to run across another fellow that talks regular American. These here limeys swallow half their words.” He gave a loud laugh, ignoring the icy stares of nearby spectators.
“Really, Edward, one shouldn’t make such remarks in public,” said Martha as she accepted my assistance mounting into the carriage. “These people have spoken English far longer than we have.”
“Well, you’d think they’d’ve learnt how to talk it better by now,” said McPhee, chuckling, as his wife settled into the seat beside him. She gave him a fond smile, as if he’d said something quite clever. I clambered up and took a position in the facing seat. The driver snapped his reins, and the horse started off toward the sun, which was already brushing the chimney tops to the west.
After thanking McPhee for the ride home, and exchanging a few more pleasantries, I said, “I must say, I never expected to see the two of you in London. What brings you to this side of the Atlantic?”
McPhee’s expression turned serious. “Well, son, I have to say that when Sam gave me that talking-to back on the river, it got me to thinking. ‘Ed McPhee,’ I says to myself, ‘maybe it’s time for you to get a fresh start in life. Time to walk the straight and narrow, for a change.’ So I made up my mind to do just that. Of course, I couldn’t have done it without this little lady, here.” He patted Martha’s hand. His wife blushed, and waved her hand as if to dismiss his compliment.
“Oh, you give yourself far too little credit, Edward,” she said, smiling again at her husband. She turned to me and continued, “But you must understand, Mr. Cabot, it’s difficult to start with a clean slate in a place where everyone knows you, and where some of them hold your past against you, however much you’ve changed.”
McPhee nodded and gave a snort. “The lady’s got it dead to rights,” he said. “At first, I thought about heading to New York, or maybe even California. But then I thought of all the fellows from my old line of work that had moved to all those places, and I just knew it wouldn’t be long before bad company come looking for me, wanting to go out on the town and raise a little hell. It’s mighty hard for a man to look an old friend in the eye and just turn him down cold, especially if that old friend’s still in the same old business.”
“Edward’s given up cardplaying entirely,” Martha explained, a proud look in her eye. Her husband smiled foolishly, as if this were the greatest of accomplishments.
As before, I found it puzzling that a woman so obviously intelligent and ladylike could enjoy the company of a crude specimen like Slippery Ed McPhee. And yet, they seemed to be happily married, and I had never seen any sign of friction between them. In the circumstances, all I could think of to say was, “Why, my congratulations to you.”
Privately, I wondered—could he really have turned over a new leaf? For his wife’s sake, I hoped he had, though it was hard not to be skeptical. It was easy for him to claim that he’d started a new life, but he might just be running from the consequences of the old one—with the police in hot pursuit.
“It must be quite an alteration in your life, Mr. McPhee,” I continued. “I can hardly remember seeing you away from the card table in all our time on the river.”
“I got to say you’re right,” said McPhee, shaking his head. “But I’m proud to tell you, I ain’t dealt a hand of monte since we set foot in England, and nobody over here seems to know how to play poker right. But that’s all by the by. I reckon this is the last place any of my old crowd is ever going to show up and try to rope me into some sort of crooked business—that’s why I come over here. And then, first thing I know, here’s Mr. Cabot, and now you tell me good old Sam is here, too. We’ll have to get together and have a laugh about old times on the river.”
I was not at all certain Mr. Clemens wanted anything to do with Ed McPhee, even if his reform was genuine, but I refrained from telling him so to his face. For all I knew, my employer would be pleased to hear the news that McPhee had found an honest way of life, and would do what he could to further the fellow’s attempts to amend his life. It would not be the first time Mr. Clemens had helped someone who was down on his luck.
Our driver (a self-important little Cockney with an extravagant beaver hat that had seen far better days) took us a short distance south along Bloomsbury Street, crossed Oxford Street, then slanted to the southwest along Shaftesbury Avenue in the direction of Piccadilly. He picked his way carefully, as the streets were full of carriages and pedestrians: Londoners making their way home after a long day’s work.
To an American eye, London seems to resemble Boston in the rambling layout of its streets. In both cities, many of the prominent streets began as winding country roads leading to small towns now incorporated into the modern city. In sheer size, however, London is a better match to New York. But London’s antiquity sets it apart from anything in the United States. For someone who grew up (as I did) in a town like New London, Connecticut, where the oldest surviving buildings are just over two hundred years old, it is a heady experience to visit a city possibly ten times that age.
“Just imagine,” I said, with a sweeping gesture. “These roads once felt the tread of Roman legionnaires, and before that were perhaps the paths that the Brythonnic tribesmen led their herds along. Every stone has seen the passage of millennia of history.”
Our driver turned around with a disdainful look on his pockmarked face. “You’re way off the mark, guv’nor. This ’ere’s Shaftesbury Havenue, and there’s not a single buildin’ more’n ten years old. They knocked down me sister’s ’ome to make the streets wider, and moved ’er and the brats off to a new place, willy-nilly. That there big posh theater is right where she used to live. That’s always the way of it—move out the ’umble workin’ folk so the rich don’t ’ave to see ’em on their way to the play’ouse.” He punctuated this sentiment by spitting sideways into the street, and turned back to his horses.
I was somewhat taken aback by this response, but McPhee took it in stride. “Jimmy’s a wonder,” he said, clapping the driver on the back. “The little rascal knows his way around this big ol’ city as well as Ed McPhee knows his way around a deck of cards—and that’s saying a Missouri mouthful. He’s been driving us ever since we come to town.”
“Well, that must be valuable knowledge for a driver,” I said, impressed in spite of myself—I had seen McPhee dealing cards. “Do we pass by anything of particular historic interest on our way to Chelsea? I’d appreciate your pointing it out to us, if we do.”
Jimmy turned around and looked at me again, as if deciding whether to trust me with his hard-won gems of knowledge. At last, he seemed to have determined that I was not about to set up in competition with him, and he nodded. “I’ll do that, guv’nor. But we’re goin’ the wrong way to see the real ’istoric parts of Lunnon. Most of what we’ll be goin’ through was open fields and country villages not all that long ago. Nothin’ Roman ’ere.”
“How long ago was it open fields?” asked Martha.
“King Charles’s time, barely two ’unnerd years