The Detective and Mr. Dickens (37 page)

“Thompson, go!” Inspector Field startled all of us. The only one not startled was Tally Ho Thompson, who was moving upon his pre-determined course before the sound of Field’s order had died.

I watched in awe, as Field and Thompson moved in what appeared to be perfect synchronization. Inspector Field swung his truncheon, and, in one sharp downward blow, shattered the glass of the near half of the skylight.

Tally Ho Thompson, without the slightest hesitation, swung into action. Placing both hands on the side of the skylight, he launched himself over its edge, hung for a short moment in midair, then dropped straight down onto the large dining table. He landed with a crash, amongst the odds and ends of soiled plate and forgotten cutlery, but the table held, and he quickly regained his feet.

To my great surprise, without the slightest hesitation, and before Field could put up his truncheon and follow his man, Dickens launched himself down through the broken portal, in precisely the acrobatic manner by which Thompson had descended. Dickens landed upon the dining table as well, but without displaying the agility and balance of Thompson. Indeed, the alert Thompson clasped Dickens as he landed, steadying him.

Inspector Field, always in control, descended more carefully. Taking two firm handholds on the edge of the skylight, he eased himself into a hanging position in the aperture, waited a long moment until his balance was certain, then dropped, almost softly, to the table.

The members of the Dionysian Circle, in their plush chairs, holding their cigars and crystal goblets of wine, were visibly startled. They turned sharply to the sound with mouths agape, but they did not immediately react, other than to stare in disbelief, as these intruders dropped through the roof, and into their midst. Perhaps they thought it was all part of Ashbee’s show.

And there stood I, alone on the rooftop, gaping down at those three madmen who in turn raised their eyes expectantly to me. I confess that I froze. I looked down upon them, and it all seemed too absurd. There they stood, looking up, in the middle of a Lord of the Realm’s dining table, about to do battle with a company of rakes, who outnumbered them seven to three. My head was frantically sending all the right messages, but my body seemed incapable of obeying. It was as if I was nailed to that spot, forced forever to be but a spectator at life. It was that last horrible thought which restored my powers of motion.

Even as I slowly began to move, I could see Thompson, Field and Dickens also beginning to move. As if in synchronization, they jumped down off the table, and flung themselves toward the phalanx of noble rakes, who had formed themselves around the naked girl. The Ternan woman had sunk to the floor, as if in a faint, and the last thing I glimpsed, as I hung in the air before closing my eyes for the drop, was Milord Ashbee stooping to that nude figure, pulling at her wrist.

I landed on the stout oak table with a resounding thud, which buckled my knees, and flung my face forward with my arms outstretched, clawing to break the momentum of the fall. In half a moment, I ascertained that no bones nor vital organs had been broken or ruptured in the drop. When I lifted my head, my three comrades were already engaged with the enemy.

The gentlemen rakes had, whether by design or chance, formed a ragged line. Somewhere between the table and the floor, Tally Ho Thompson had acquired a gentleman’s walking stick, swinging which, he charged. Field and Dickens, unarmed as far as I could tell, followed directly upon Thompson’s lead.

Scrambling down off the table top, a small silver candelabra somehow came to my hand. Swinging it like that fabled biblical jawbone of the ass, I moved in the wake of my detective comrades. In truth, this was not much of an engagement. Only two of the rakes showed any stomach for the fight. The others fled, yet their stumbling around proved an obstacle, preventing access to the girl, whom Ashbee was dragging toward the doors to the main house.

Thompson was engaged with Lord Bowes. The nobleman and the highwayman were duelling with wooden walking sticks, making passes at one another across the floor of Ashbee’s temporary stage.

“’Alt!” Field shouted as an order to Ashbee. The temporary distraction of shouting at the fleeing villain allowed Field’s closest antagonist, the bulky mustachioed man, to land a blow with his fist to the side of Field’s face, which knocked that worthy sideways across the stage.

“’Alt!” Field shouted once more.

Dickens fought his way through the confusion of startled rakes with only one object, that of liberating Ellen Ternan from Ashbee.

“’Alt!” came Field’s third command.

“Ashbee, stop!” Dickens shouted.

At that moment, the air was rent by an ear-shattering report. It was a pistol shot. Its source smoked in Milord Ashbee’s hand, as he stood on the threshold of the double doors to the main house. The girl was standing, dazed, at Ashbee’s side.

To my horror, Dickens lay prone upon the floor.

Down into the Maze

May 11, 1851—Night

All was utter confusion. Tally Ho Thompson and Lord Bowes were whacking and flailing their walking sticks, with the abandon of children at Sherwood Forest make-believe. With a sudden move, Thompson sank to his knees. Lord Bowes relaxed for the briefest of moments, gathering strength, perhaps, to move in for the kill. At that very instant, the wily Thompson lunged back into action, cutting the legs out from under Lord Bowes, with a savage swipe to the backs of his adversary’s knees. Bowes went unceremoniously sprawling. With that quicksilver agility, which in the years since has never ceased to amaze me, Thompson, in an instant, was on his feet, and standing over the toppled Lord Bowes. Snapping his wrist wickedly, Thompson cut sharply downward with his walking stick, landing a stinging blow to an exceedingly delicate and vulnerable area, just below Lord Bowes’s waist. That gentleman, with a cry of extreme anguish, gathered himself into a protective coil, drawing up his knees, and burying his head between them.

To my left, Inspector Field was similarly engaged. He had managed to wrestle the bulky mustachioed man to the floor, and was sitting atop that walrus, pursuant to beating a swift tattoo about the man’s head and shoulders. It looked as if, within short moments, that worthy would be as thoroughly subdued as was the downed Lord Bowes.

From all indications, the other four members of the Dionysian Circle had either fled, or were frantically in the process of doing so, as I made my way swinging my field-commissioned candelabra.

All of these skirmishes were sparking around me, yet (though I must have been aware of them, for, after all, I am describing them in some detail now) all I could focus upon was the body of Charles lying still upon the floor, and, in the background, the figure of Ashbee, the pistol smoking in his hand, dragging Miss Ternan by the wrist through the double doors into the house.

The large mustachioed man had somehow disengaged from Inspector Field. Without hesitation, I hit him on the head with my silver candelabra. He crumpled at Field’s feet, and I felt as if I had smitten a Philistine.

When I reached Dickens’s side, I sank to one knee, and, to my great relief, saw that he was stirring. His breath came in quick little gasps. I searched frantically for a bullet wound, for blood. I found nothing. I ran my hands over his face and forehead, searching for a bruise—nothing. Later, all that Inspector Field could speculate was that the bullet in Ashbee’s gun had somehow misfired, or come apart upon firing. He conjectured that the lead ball in the tip of the projectile had either disintegrated on firing, or had separated immediately upon exiting the barrel, thus deflecting downward from its intended course. Dickens, however, was felled by something—if not the bullet, then what? Field further conjectured that Dickens was struck in the neck (a small bruise was later found there) by the wadding of the defective shell, which upon impact expelled the air from his throat and lungs, and temporarily incapacitated him.

I knelt to revive him, but his eyes were already alert and frantic. His mind, I could see in his eyes, was racing, but his body was, quite simply, temporarily unable to obey its commands.

“After them, Wilkie.” His lips scraped out the words. “You must not let him take her. I shall follow, as soon as I can right myself.”

In the confusion, Ashbee and the naked girl were gone. I left Dickens lying on the floor, jettisoned my candelabra, and ran in pursuit of that villain. I reached the doors, through which they had disappeared, in time to hear scuttling noises at the far end of a dim corridor. I dashed down that passage. One door stood open at the end. I rushed to it, entered a room as dark as pitch. I stood perfectly still, just inside the threshold, listening. All was still as death.

I groped along the walls searching for I know not what, a gas jet, perhaps. As I blundered around in the dark, suddenly the room was flooded with light. It was Serjeant Rogers and his ever-ready bull’s-eye. He, upon hearing the gunshot, had abandoned his post outside the house, and rushed into the fray, entering through the front door. (There was no way the idiot could have known, but his precipitate action would prove the key to Ashbee’s escape; however, one must be fair, police surveillance was quite a new concept in eighteen fifty-one.)

“It’s you!” Rogers confronted me with acute disappointment.

“Yes,” I answered, as if we were two long lost brothers meeting by remarkable chance in some far outpost of the Empire.

In a moment, Inspector Field and an unsteady Dickens joined Rogers and myself. Looking round, I immediately realized why the room had been so preternaturally dark. The trail had ended in the library, where the walls, lined with books, digested all natural light. I looked at Dickens, he at me. It was uncanny how our minds seemed to be taking the same deductive steps. I remembered the secret library in Ashbee’s Notting Hill house.
A secret passage
, I thought,
that is how they have escaped
.

“There is a secret passageway here somewhere,” Dickens was trying to shout, but what came out was merely a cracking whisper.

Field scanned the room. “We ’aven’t time to search it out,” he barked, turning to Rogers. “We must seal off this neighbourhood.”

Rogers set off at a dead run for the front door.

“We must overtake them in the streets.” Dickens, still somewhat dazed, picked up the cue from Inspector Field. “I know these streets.”

We emerged onto the front porch of the house, to find the night enveloped in a thick fog. It had also begun to rain, in a cold and steady drizzle. We stood on that cramped porch, staring out at the empty street, seeing little but the shine of the rain on the cobblestones, and the thick encroaching mist.

Suddenly, at the end of the garden well down to our left, a bright white light, a powerful lantern of some sort, blazed up and swung sharply back and forth, once, twice.

“A signal,” Inspector Field was the first to interpret this sign penetrating the heavy fog. “That’s them, there.”

The three of us scrambled down off the porch in the direction of that light, but before we had progressed to the garden gate, I heard, near upon us, the clatter of horses’ hooves. From the sound, it was a matched pair pulling a light coach, and moving at a controlled speed under tight rein. I saw the coach as it passed by on the glistening street, and was swallowed by the mist. I could hear, however, the coach scraping to a stop, near where the signal light had been extinguished. We could not get to the fugitives in time. Out of the fog came the snapping of the coachman’s whip, the flint-like cadence of the horses’ hooves picking up speed on the cobbled street, the terrible finality of the coach’s wheels rumbling out of our grasp. They were escaping.

“They are getting away!” Dickens almost shrieked in a desperate voice. “He is taking her!”

Ever analytic, Field tried to calm the distraught Dickens: “’Ee ’as kept this coach in reserve for ’is escape. My men are not in a position to stop ’im.” He stated our helplessness as the mere fact that it was. Dickens’s shoulders slumped. “Rogers, bring up the coach, quickly!” Field shouted into the fog. “We will pursue, and try to pick up their trail,” he said, turning to Dickens, “but the fog, this sharp night, will keep witnesses in. I don’t know.” He was offering little hope for our success.

“No, he must not take her!” Dickens screamed out his frustration.

We could hear the hollow echoes of the escape vehicle moving off.

I had last seen Tally Ho Thompson as he applied the
coup de gras
to Lord Bowes at the conclusion of their mock duel. For some reason, he had not joined the pursuit of Ashbee into the main house. Where was he? My theory was that he was going through the pockets of the fallen combatants.

The sounds of Ashbee’s coach grew fainter.

It was at that moment that Thompson rode up out of the fog. He was sitting bareback upon a speckled grey coachhorse, his fingers entwined in the animal’s coarse mane. “I’ve ’ad better mounts than this,” he laughed, “on a carousel. Which way did they go?”

“There,” Field pointed. “You can still ’ear ’em faintly. Stay back, but keep ’em in sight or ’earin’. We’ll catch up with you.”

With no more than that, Thompson galloped off in pursuit.

I stood staring after him, as the sounds of his mount’s hooves faded into the fog. How had Thompson known? I tell you the man was uncanny. Somehow he always seemed to know what was going to happen, and what to do when indeed it did. Furthermore, the man had the power of always popping up in exactly the right place, at the right time, properly equipped to do expressly what was required. I remember Field saying, sometime after it was all over, “What a detective Thompson would make, if only ’ee could keep ’is ’ands out of other peoples’ pockets.”