Our Mutual Friend

by Charles Dickens

It’s time I was at Harmon’s.’ ‘Eh?’ said Mr. Venus. ‘Harmon’s, up Battle Bridge way?’ Mr. Wegg admits that he is bound for that port. ‘You ought to be in a good thing, if you’ve worked yourself in there. There’s lots of money going there.’ ‘To think,’ says Silas, ‘that you should catch it up so quick, and know about it. Wonderful!’ ‘Not at all, Mr. Wegg. The old gentleman wanted to know the nature and worth of everything that was found in the dust; and many’s the bone, and feather, and what not, that he’s brought to me.’ ‘Really, now!’ ‘Yes. (Oh dear me, dear me!) And he’s buried quite in this neighbourhood, you know. Over yonder.’ Mr. Wegg does not know, but he makes as if he did, by responsively nodding his head. He also follows with his eyes the toss of Venus’s head: as if to seek a direction to over yonder. ‘I took an interest in that discovery in the river,’ says Venus. ‘(She hadn’t written her cutting refusal at that time.) I’ve got up there——never mind, though.’ He had raised the candle at arm’s length towards one of the dark shelves, and Mr. Wegg had turned to look, when he broke off. ‘The old gentleman was well known all round here. There used to be stories about his having hidden all kinds of property in those dust-mounds. I suppose there was nothing in ’em. Probably you know, Mr. Wegg?’ ‘Nothing in ’em,’ says Wegg, who has never heard a word of this before.

So this Mr Harmon is AKA Mr Boffin? And Everyone on the river knows about the inheritance? How is he related to the dead man? How is he related to the man who wrote the will?