The Detective and Mr. Dickens (14 page)

To buy a girl, Derri Da, Derri Derri Derri Da
.

A gay girl
,

A play girl
,

A fey girl, Derri Da, Derri Da
.

Buy a girl
,

For a toy
,

And she will not be coy
,

When she plays with your Derri Derri Derri Derri Da!

She sang lustily, like a provincial music hall performer, and, tucking her breasts temporarily back into her gown, called for the auction to begin.

“Who is she?” Dickens asked, tugging at the sleeve of a shadowed gentleman standing beside us in the darkness.

The gentleman, with a mocking laugh, apprised us that the scarlet singer was the mistress of the house, Lady Godiva herself.

The words of the novelist in eighteen seventy are not adequate to describe what next occurred on that stage. Yet, I am not really writing a novel. I am a clandestine Boswell for Dickens. This memoir is not meant to be published. It can’t be published now, because our readers would never believe it, and, besides, one doesn’t use real people in one’s novels. No one knows about these events, not even Forster who insists that only he shall write “the Inimitable’s” biography. Yet, as Dickens said, we must learn to deal with reality—and what was taking place on that stage was reality with a vengeance. I feel that I must somehow find the words to describe it. It is my fervent hope that if anyone reads this document, long after I am gone, that what follows will not prove overly offensive, though offensive, I am sure, to many it must ultimately be.

The blonde woman pranced about the stage as, one by one, she brought forward her merchandise for sale. Displaying each object placed on the auction block, she called for bids and directed each successful purchaser to the cashier for the collecting of his evening’s prize.

Each of the women, when summoned from behind the curtain, put on a brief display of their various charms and accomplishments. The stage was raised about three feet above the floor. As we stood below, looking up, our eyes were on a precise line just below the waist level of those women who in succession occupied the stage. As the auction progressed, we found ourselves looking into a succession of exposed and, in fact, proffered Mounts of Venus.

The women were dressed either in some exotic costume, such as that of a French sailor, an Egyptian princess, an Amazon warrior, or in some seductive state of
deshabille
formed out of lascivious black or red stockings, lacy garter belts and diaphanous
peignoirs
. On stage, they proceeded slowly to discard, piece by piece, every article of their costumes until they stood entirely naked before us, except perhaps for some small trinket of jewelry.

Thus unencumbered, these women proceeded to expose themselves by every imaginable contortion of their supple young bodies. They fully displayed, against a backdrop of their meticulously powdered white skins, their pink and brown secret aureoles and their richly forested nether labia. A description of the performance of one auction lot will suffice.

She came in the costume of a French cabaret dancer, and when she kicked high and bent over, throwing her skirt up behind, it was revealed that she wore nothing beneath her voluminous petticoats. At commands from Mistress Godiva, she seductively unwrapped her skirt and, one by one, dropped her petticoats to a total of three until she stood naked from the waist. At the command of some gentleman’s voice, she unfastened her tightly laced corset thus freeing her breasts and leaving her standing totally naked before the company. Other voices from beneath the stage commanded her to expose herself in different ways. She took a wide stance and at each gutteral command from the dark pit displayed herself in a series of slow archings of her back and bendings of her hips. With her fingers she caressed herself on command and opened and closed the labia of her Mount of Venus. Turning and bending at the waist until her palms lay flat upon the boards of the stage, she exhibited her full
derriere
; placing her hands on her hips she spread its creamy globes upon orders from the voices in the darkness.

We had known that rituals of this sort took place beneath the surface of our society, but, I am sure, neither of us considered how perverse and dehumanizing these sexual rituals could be. And yet, there was a fascination about the scene. Dickens stared directly ahead, unflinching, at the sub-human display unfolding on the stage. He later told me that it was more base than a slave auction he had once observed in Virginia.

The sex auction continued. As the whores’ clothes fell with a gathering monotony, I thought of many things. These women were degraded marionettes, dancing on the strings of the perverse male imaginations gathered in the darkness. I remembered the murderess, Mrs. Manning, dancing on her string and hissing back at the crowd as the noose was tightened around her white neck. Each winning bid in this flesh auction bound each naked wretch in an evening’s net of submission. I remembered Field’s hand clamping Scarlet Bess’s fragile white wrist in its relentless grasp, and Irish Meg smiling nervously and reaching forth her glass for more gin. Scarlet Bess and Irish Meg, both whores, yet somehow still human. They still clung, perhaps hopelessly, to some small, fragile remnants of their womanhood, their humanity—but not these wretches. They were like the dead child I had glimpsed in horror only a fortnight before. They looked as if they were still alive, but they were dead inside. Their only existence was in the minds of these sick men who bought their bodies.

Some men construct their fantasies of women in their imaginations, and then attempt to bring those fantasies to life in configurations of words. Through the ages (except in this age), sexuality and writing have been great allies. David’s songs, Sappho’s hymns, Boccaccio’s wry stories of men and women joined in joy, Cleland’s epic obscenities. Words can turn sex into magic. Sex, in its real state, as it was now appearing before us, was tortuous and artificial. I felt trapped within this “real life” text, which Dickens was composing as we pursued Inspector Field’s “real life” murder mystery. We had all become characters in some yet unwritten novel. I had voluntarily allowed Dickens to imprison me in his imaginary text. But, as those women struck their naked poses, I desired only to escape this prisonhouse of words within which Dickens had enclosed me. Reality is the stage upon which all men commit their crimes, but writing about reality is the prison where the novelist serves his sentence. I watched him in the yellow-tinged darkness. He could not take his eyes off of the women on the stage. What will he do with them, I wondered? Will he attempt to capture their degradation in words?

The auction came to an end. Only a few voyeurs who had not participated in the bidding loitered in the room when the lights went up. One, the drunken M.P. from Devon, sat on the floor with his back against the wall, snoring loudly. All the others had withdrawn with their prizes to the private bedrooms in the upper reaches of the house. I felt somewhat embarrassed, either because of the light coming up and taking away my anonymity, or, strangely, because I was empty-handed, as if some judgement on my manhood might be handed down. Dickens, however, was on the watch. When Lady Godiva re-entered from behind the scarlet curtain, he approached her straightaway. She received us quizzically, as if expecting to deal with some complaint.

“Gentlemen,” she said, not recognizing Dickens, “were you unable to fit any of the ladies of my house to your liking?” She paused, and then, cocking her head as she studied us, continued, “Or was there something special you required?”

“No, not at all,” Dickens assured her. “We are not here to partake of the excellent entertainments of your house.”

“You are not?” Her look positively overflowed with disdain.

When Dickens introduced himself, and then me, her recognition overcame her suspicion and she visibly relaxed toward us.

“Am I and my girls to appear in your next novel, sir?” she laughed.

“One can never know,” Dickens said, taking up her playful tone, “perhaps in some form. I fear my audience would be quite unable to take you all neat.”

“No, you don’t write
that
kind of books, do you sir? I’ve looked into one or two of yours, and they are decidedly not
that
kind.”

“We are here in search of information,” Dickens said, rather sharply changing the subject, “and I hoped that you could help us.”

She was immediately suspicious. But Dickens was well prepared to deal with her reticence. Reaching out, he took her right hand in both of his own, saying, “It could be quite profitable for both of us.”

As she drew her hand from his grasp, it closed around the dull yellow shine of a gold sovereign.

“Yes, I am sure it can be,” she said, her suspicion superseded by her greed. “Would you gentlemen care to join me in my private salon?”

Settled there, Dickens revealed the true reason for our visit to Lady Godiva’s House of Gentlemen’s Entertainments.

“A fortnight ago a group of revellers came to your house. Lawyer Partlow, who was subsequently murdered and cast into the Thames that very night, after leaving your premises, was a member of that group. Is there anything you can tell us about them?”

“I read about that murder. I’ve been expecting the police. You’re a surprise.”

“Yes, well,” Dickens was improvising, “Partlow was of interest to me.”

“I remember that party well.” She leaned conspiratorially toward us. “They are all pretty reg’lar attendants upon my girls, especially Lord Ashbee. He attends here several nights each week.”

I was somewhat surprised at her openness. She seemed to feel no responsibility to protect in any way the reputations of her regular clients.

“Ashbee?” Dickens sounded somewhat startled.

“Yes, he brought them in, drunk. Theatre people. The kind who only come here when someone like Ashbee or Partlow is paying.”

“How many were there in the party?”

“Five, I would say,” she answered, after some consideration. “Three bought women, but afterwards they all sat together in the casino playing cards and drinking champagne. Five, I am sure of it.” She paused to reflect. “Strange, now that I think of it, one left for a time. Struck me because I was talking to Lord Ashbee and Solicitor Partlow when this one got up and left. He was someone important backstage at Covent Garden. The other two were railing him about something. He walked right out the door. Later, he was back, in the company of the others.”

“Do you remember how long he was gone?”

She shook her head in the negative.

“He may have just needed air,” the woman offered. “They were all quite drunk.”

“Yes. Of course,” Dickens agreed. “Can you remember anything else?”

“They left about two or three in the morning, quite loud and very, very drunk. Henry Ashbee did not leave with them.”

“Where did he go?” he finally asked.

“Nowhere.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“He did not leave at all that night. You see, Mister Dickens, I entertained him myself. It is a courtesy I extend to special customers. It involves out of the ordinary entertainments.”

“Such as the smoking of opium?”

She raised her eyebrows at his question. “Perhaps.”

“I understand.”

“Mister Dickens, I would be happy to entertain you and Mister Collins in such a manner this evening. A number of my employees of different types are now free. It is a courtesy I extend only to special customers.”

“Yes. Of course. I do quite understand.” Dickens’s face was flushed. He was, perhaps, beginning to feel the same overwhelming need to escape which had infected me back in that smoky darkness during that obscene performance. “But we must go now. You have been very helpful indeed,” he saluted her with a hypocritical smile and another golden handshake.

With that, we fled like housebreakers from an alarum. The casino was filled as we made our exit. The men, just come from the beds of their whores, crowded around the tables. The Mayfair streets were deserted (all the street whores having retired to the dark reaches of Hyde Park, knowing that the gentlemen leaving the fancy houses of Mayfair at this hour would be sated, and show no interest in them) as we contemplated in silence all that we had experienced that night.

“Paroissien, that is his name!” Dickens broke our silent march.

“Whose name?” I inquired.

“Why, the stage manager, of course. At Covent Garden.

I have been trying to remember his name ever since that fat pander described him. He is the one who left and then returned that night. Why did he leave?”

“For any number of reasons,” I must have seemed incredibly dull then, “all of which we have already rehearsed.”

“Not at all,” he argued in a calculating voice. “We haven’t rehearsed the most important and obvious one of all.”

“We haven’t?”

“He left to procure the murder weapon. He left Godiva’s House, took a cab to Covent Garden, and secreted Macbeth’s handsword on his person.”