The Detective and Mr. Dickens (26 page)

When she spoke again, her words came slowly as if she was on an unfamiliar stage playing an unrehearsed part.

“A girl can’t be poor in London an’ stay clean,” she said quietly. “You can’t live by that dirty river nor walk those dirty streets without gettin’ dirty yourself.” Her eyes came up, and reasserted their hold upon me. “But maybe, I thought, if you try, if you can find ’elp, you might wash the dust off, or some of it.”

I could stand her intense gaze no longer. I had to turn away, to walk to the window, to light the lamp on my writing desk, yet not to light it, to somehow collect myself there in the gathering darkness. I returned down the room to stand before her. Her closeness made the fire blaze up within me once again. Yet, I had thought of something to say. And she had thought of something to do which eased the shadowed gravity of our discomfort.

She smiled…an open innocent nervous smile that a farm lass in Devon might bestow upon her awkward beau. Her self-conscious smile, for an instant, made me feel that indeed I could love her.

“Mister Dickens and myself, we know a woman,” I began. I had regained my gentleman’s formality, my pretentious superiority. I felt a great power over her, yet the heated attraction of my other self gave that power the lie. “We know a woman who…”

“Is she a bawd? A rich folks’ bawd?” she asked, and I felt I detected (but perhaps I only imagined) a faint undertone of disappointment in her voice.

“A bawd? Miss Coutts?” I was at a loss. Laughter beyond my control began welling up in my throat, and burst forth in a half-strangulated chuckle.

“Wot the ’ell’s so funny?” Meggy demanded, planting her hands firmly on her hips, her Irish eyes flashing.

“Oh, no, nothing,” I answered. “She does keep a house full of prostitutes, but somehow I feel that Miss Coutts would be somewhat at a loss if she knew she was being characterized as a bawd.”

“I know that name,” Meg was serious, “an’ I’ve ’eard of that ’ouse. It’s Miss Burdett-Coutts of the stone bank at Trafalgar Square, ain’t it? We calls it the ’ouse for runaway ’ores.”

“Yes, that is the place. We could get you into that house. Is that what you had in mind?”

“I don’t think so,” Irish Meg seemed genuinely confused. “I don’t know right now what I ’ad in mind.” Her voice sank to barely a whisper: “I ’ad you in mind, that’s all.”

Then it was her turn to flee, to gather herself. She crossed to the window where the last light was fading behind the wispy curtains.

“I don’t want savin’,” Meg moved toward me, not much more than a voice in the shadows, “all I wants is to survive, to live like a reg’lar ’ooman bein’. That’s all.”

There was a silent pause but, when she began again, her soft voice was within reach of my arms. I could almost feel her seductive breathing.

“I thought maybe with a man like you…a man who looks at me that way…who wants me for wot I am, not for wot ’ee can make me be. That’s it. Still a ’ore but a legal ’ore like all those fancy married tarts with their prams in ’Eyde Park.”

“What do you mean?” I understood her proposal perfectly but, as a stall, I pretended incomprehension.

“I’d ’oped that you’d keep me. Not to marry, I didn’t mean that, though it sounded that way. Wouldn’t ’ope for that. But dress me, an’ teach me to fit into your gentleman’s company. I’d do what you pleased to escape the streets.”

Her’s was a blatant offer of her wares, if I was man enough to buy. My protective coloration, the formality and stiffness of the proper Victorian gentleman, instinctively (and quite pompously) groused to my defense: “Why, I can’t imagine…”

“Can you imagine livin’ out every dark dream of what you ever wanted to do with a woman? Wot if I says to you that
not
touchin’ me now is a lie? Wot if I says to you that your whole life is a lie? Listen to me,” she said, and her hand touched my chest, “I can make it real.”

She must have sensed the disarray, which my silence signalled. Gently, she taunted me toward action. “You want to be like ’im, don’t you?” she whispered from the shadows. “Mister Dickens wouldn’t be afraid to touch me…to fuck me. ’Ee’d do what ’ee wanted, then, somehow, ’ee’d write about it. I sees the way ’ee looks at me too. Like I’m some spessman under glass in some museum for study.”

As I write this, as I look back upon that pivotal moment in my life, I cannot help but think of how many times in his books Dickens arranged just such situations, where the lower classes, the poor, the criminal element, bump up against and confront the upper classes, gentlemen and gentlewomen. His scenes are much less passionate, his language less accurate, less vulgar, less real, yet they are this same scene.

Darkness had completely filled the room. We were but the voices of two shadows. I had to touch her, to verify her reality, no…my reality. I gathered her into my arms as one pulls a quilt close on a bitter night. I felt her softness, her warmth. Her hands like smooth fabric caressed my face. Her arms glided around by neck, closing out all the world.

We kissed.

A first kiss, like a feint, then a hard long kiss that neither wished ever to end. We gasped for breath. Her body moved urgently against mine. Our lips searched out each other once again.

Three sharp knocks sounded, like an axe biting into the wood of the door.

I recoiled from Meg, as if those startling sounds were nails being driven into a cross of guilt, upon which I suddenly found myself hung.

Three more knuckle raps fell upon my flimsy door.

“Who’s there?” I called out. “One moment.”

“It is Charles, Wilkie, with Inspector Field.”

“Oh, God, ’ee must not find me ’ere,” Irish Meg begged in a whisper.

“One moment, Charles,” I repeated.

I pushed her into my bedroom and closed the door. My mind was racing. Since I had come in only a short time before, all that I needed to go out, my hat, gloves, walking stick, were conveniently deposited on a chair in my sitting room. There would be no necessity for me going back into my bedroom, for opening the bedroom door behind which Meg was secreted.

I opened the door without further hesitation, and Inspector Field entered, followed by Dickens.

“Charles,” I said, counterfeiting acute surprise, “I just left you no more than thirty minutes past. What has happened?”

Dickens never got the opportunity to respond to my inquiry.

“We ’ave no time to lose, Mister Collins,” Inspector Field gruffly informed me. “We must pursue them, before we lose the trail. Will you accompany us? Now?”

“Why…of course,” I said, looking at Dickens. He was grinning with eagerness. “Pursue whom? What trail?”

I must admit that, in the excitement of their bursting in, I actually forgot that Meg was concealed in the next room. My heated desire to have her, fanned to such a wild flame in our embrace of only moments before, had subsided into cold ash.

“Your questions will be answered on the way,” Inspector Field assured me. “Are you ready? Let us go.”

As we exited my rooms, Field hesitated a brief instant on the threshold, turned back before closing the door.

“Strange,” he said, as we descended the stairs.

“What is it?” I inquired.

“There was a smell of scent in your parlor.” He had that searching look on his face of a man trying to remember an old comrade’s name.

“Woman who cleans up,” I replied, surprising myself at the facility with which the lie leapt to my lips, “must drench herself in it.” I felt certain that that lie kept Irish Meg out of it, but with a sharper like Field, one can never be sure. He let the subject drop easily enough. Irish Meg, I am sure, made her own way out of my rooms, and, to my knowledge, never stole a thing.

In the coach, Field briefed me on the developments in the case.

“Your visit this afternoon seems to ’ave, with certainty, flushed our friend Ashbee,” he began.

“There has been a flurry of suspicious activity at the Ashbee estate since we left there this afternoon,” Dickens interrupted.

I listened intently as we clattered through the night streets. We had been scheduled to rehearse
Not So Bad As We Seem
later that evening, but Dickens quickly informed me that, through Wills, he had cancelled the rehearsal.

“Immediately after you left the estate,” Field continued, “all but one of the servants, a butler who lives on the premises, departed the ’ouse, dismissed through the weekend. One, under questionin’, described preparations for Milord’s departure for somewhere. No idea where. The country, perhaps. Perhaps the Continent. None could say for certain.” Field stopped but a moment to draw breath.

“Only moments after,” he proceeded on, “a closed coach, its top fully loaded with baggage, which gives one to suspect that the sudden withdrawal was not so sudden after all; at any rate, this coach, springs ’eavy against the road, galloped away from the vicinity of the Ashbee estate.” Again he paused for breath.

“Vicinity?” I had the temerity to interject.

“We are not sure where it left from,” Field continued, “though its ’aste was too suspicious to overlook. Gatewood was not caught up short this time. ’Ee followed. ’Ee ’as not yet reported in. It did not come from the carriage ’ouse behind Ashbee’s main ’ouse. It may ’ave come from the back reaches of the estate, perhaps some concealed outbuilding in the wooded park. Its curtains were drawn. We ’ave no idea who was inside. It ’it the ’eye-road at full gallop.”

“You feel it was Ashbee, yes?”

“Ah, but there is more,” he said, pausing for effect. “This afternoon, while we were watchin’ the Ashbee estate, Mrs. Peggy Ternan was picked up attemptin’ to sneak back into ’er temporary lodgin’s near Covent Garden Theatre. At first, she vows that nothin’ ’as ’appened. ‘Where’s your daughter Ellen?’ our man says. ‘Gone to visit relatives,’ the old bawd answers. ‘Not good enough,’ our man presses. The result, under rigorous questionin’, the old ’ore takes a fright, and admits that ’er daughter ’as, in ’er words, ‘left the city in the protection of a gentleman.’”

“That ‘gentleman’ being Ashbee.” There was pain in Dickens’s voice as he placed this
coda
upon Field’s narrative.

With that, the coach horses reined in at the Bow Street Station.

“Keep your seats, gentlemen. This won’t take long. Rogers!” Field sent his lieutenant into the building with a jab of his omnipotent forefinger.

“What do you propose to do?” I asked, with an outsider’s timidity.

“We must go back to Ashbee’s house, and see if she is there,” Dickens’s voice was stretched taut.

“She is not there,” Inspector Field answered decisively, “but you are right. We must search the premises now. No time to attain permission from the Queen’s Bench. A search might tell us where she ’as been taken.”

In mere minutes, Serjeant Rogers returned, accompanied by the redoubtable Mister Tally Ho Thompson, who climbed into the coach, and, with a jaunty wave and a grinning “Gents,” seated himself.

“If we’re goin’ ta be breakin’ an’ enterin’, might as well ’ave an expert along,” Field grinned across at us. Rogers climbed dourly up on the box.

Milord’s Secret Library

May 9, 1851—evening

We rattled over the cobbled streets, and soon emerged onto the moonswept high-road. Tally Ho Thompson seemed unable to suppress the singular bemusement, which kept twisting his face into a quite remarkable series of Pickwickian smirks.

“Mister Thompson is ’ere purely in an advisory capacity,” Inspector Field announced some minutes after the ne’er-do-well had taken his place in the coach. “You will gain our entry into the ’ouse,” Field said, giving Thompson his marching orders, “and then you will do your best imitation of Lot’s biblical wife.” Field punctuated that last with a stab of his forefinger into Thompson’s greatcoat, and seemed quite pleased with his little metaphor. “You will not remove any negotiable objects from the premises.”

“In other words,” Thompson smirked, “make the crack, and turn to salt.”

“Ah, a quick study,” Field approved.

The coach bounced and lurched with each rut and curve in the high-road. The night was clear, and the moon was full and white. Light pooled like fog in the open spaces. It was not a very good night for housebreaking.

“An’ wot ’appens if we get caught, Cap’n? If the country sheriffs descend on us from Shooters ’Ill with pistols an’ blunderbusses? They don’t never go habroad without their barking persuaders. Wot will my hadvisory capacity be then, eh?” Thompson brought up the possibility calmly, fighting off his irrepressible grin of bemusement. He was clearly enjoying the discomfiture of Field at having to treat him as an equal.

Field’s forefinger came up for a familiar scratch at the side of his eye. “You are under my protection,” he assured Tally Ho Thompson.

“Sure I am, but just for fancy’s sake, ain’t it possible I’m present ’ere as a convenient way for all you gents to hedge your bets?”

With studied sarcasm, Field said: “Why, what, pray tell, can you mean?”

“I mean, Cap’n, you brought me along so that if you get caught breakin’ into this posh bloke’s digs, you can say it wos me, and you wos on my trail, and you come out sharp as nails, and I come out prime for a dance with Jack Ketch. That’s wot
I
mean.”