Dodger

rookeries were crowded, dark and stank; you would be better off going outside, and many did – which meant that walking along an alleyway at night was a very big adventure. Solomon, always fastidious about this sort of thing, had his own portable bucket with a little well-scrubbed wooden lid for those moments when a man just wanted a nice sit-down. One of Dodger’s chores was to take the bucket to the nearest cesspit, but these were overflowing most of the time; anyway, every night the honey wagons came round, which did a little something to improve matters when the workers shovelled up the stuff and away it went, along with the horse muck too. But however often the honey wagons came along, and however hard the dunykin divers scoured the septic tanks, you were never very far from yesterday’s dinner. But this place, well, this was amazing, and although he knew what the hole in the shiny mahogany was for, it seemed like sacrilege to use it. And what was this? Sheets of paper, all cut out ready for use, just like Solomon did with the
Jewish Chronicle
, and there were mirrors too, and little soaps in a large bowl, soft and smelling nice on the hands. Dodger couldn’t help pocketing some – despite the company – because there were so many of them.
    He took a few moments to be stupefied, despite the pressure on his bladder and a certain nervousness about being cooped up in the same room as the boss of the peelers who, he noticed, was now sitting quite happily in a very expensive chair and lighting a cigar.
    Sir Robert Peel smiled at him and said, ‘Please don’t stand on ceremony, Mister Dodger; I am in no hurry and, of course, as you must have realized, I am also between you and the doorway.’
    This information, just as he was addressing himself to the ornate and gleaming pan in front of him, dropped Dodger into a state where the business in hand was turning out to be impossible. He glanced over his shoulder. Sir Robert wasn’t even looking at him, but was simply enjoying his cigar, like a man with all the time in the world. But since nothing actually
bad
was happening now, Dodger got a grip on his . . . fears and had to admire the perfect workings of this wondrous new contraption. When he had finished, the voice of Sir Robert, still in his chair, said laconically, ‘Now you pull the porcelain knob on the chain to your left.’
    Dodger had been wondering what that was for. It was surely waiting to be pulled, wasn’t it? But why? To let people know that you had finished? Did it ring a bell so that people didn’t come in and disturb you? Oh well, he gave the nice little ceramic knob on the end of the chain a casual but hopeful pull, then backed away from the bowl, just in case this really was the wrong thing to have done and despite everything he was going to get into trouble . . . except the water gurgled around the pan, leaving the place spotless. Now that was a thing worth having!
    He swung round and said, ‘Yes, sir, I know what to do. And I know you are having a little game, sir. I am wondering what you want from me.’
    Sir Robert looked at the tip of his cigar as if he had not seen it before, and said very casually, ‘I would very much like to know how you did that murder in the sewers this afternoon.’
    Inside Dodger, the turbot and all his little friends rushed to escape the sinking Dodger, and for a moment he thought he would make a terrible mess on that shiny floor until he reminded himself,
I never murdered anyone, didn’t want to, didn’t have time
. So he said, ‘What murder would this be?’ quelling the turbot and telling it to mind its manners. ‘I never murdered nobody, never!’
    The head of all the policemen in London said cheerfully, ‘Well now, it’s funny you should say that, because I believe you, but sad to say we have a dead body in the morgue and two men who say you put the poor fellow in there. And the funny thing is, and you might laugh at this, I do not believe
them
. There is a corpse, certainly, reported to us by a gentleman known around and about as Manky Smith – probably known to you as well?’
    ‘Manky Smith? He’s a boozer, walks around all the time with wet pants. He would peach anybody for a pint of porter. I bet the other one was Crouching Angus, an old sweat with one and a half legs.’
    The man had said that he didn’t think that Dodger had murdered anybody and that was a good thing, wasn’t it? A very good thing, but nevertheless the chief peeler