The Murder of Patience Brooke (12 page)

‘Perhaps, James and his sister could take a group out to start with – perhaps Isabella – not with Sesina – and three of the other girls. Then, another day you could take another group. It does concern me that we are taking on another person without proper procedure.’

‘We do know James, and I have met his sister who is a sensible widow – like me,’ she laughed, ‘and I am certain we could trust her. She is willing to sleep in. It would help me greatly.’

‘Very well. I shall tell all to Miss Coutts – no secrets – and I will explain how restless the girls are. I will not, however, tell her too much about Isabella and Sesina. She might be too shocked.’

They laughed together, ease restored between them. They parted still friends despite what she had had to tell him or perhaps because of the intimacy they had shared. Dickens could not imagine such a conversation with Catherine. A surprising and interesting woman, Mrs Georgiana Morson.

Dickens walked to the village where he hoped to find a cab to take him back to London. He thought of Georgiana’s disturbing revelations. He was shocked, more at Isabella’s malice, if it be so, than the possibility of a love affair between the two women. He could not understand such love, but he would not condemn it. He was a novelist, fascinated by all aspects of human passion. It was difficult to write about sex in the society in which he lived, impossible, in fact, yet sexual corruption and prostitution were rife. That was the paradox, he thought, sexual desire was hidden yet it was powerful enough to drive men to prostitutes, to adultery, and women, too, both even to murder. He wondered again about Isabella Gordon. Had she approached Patience in that way? Had Patience rejected her and had that led to murder? No, for all her faults, he still did not see her as a murderer. She was corrupt, no doubt, and though he hated to think it, vicious, but that was the result of the life she had led, and, he thought regretfully, she was probably not saveable.

He hurried on. He wanted to get home. Ought he go to Bow Street to tell Sam about Francis Fidge? He would want to know. No, send a note. Topping, the coachman, could take it.

Dickens was glad to be home. There had been no cab at Shepherd’s Bush so he had been forced to return on the green omnibus, and there were no seats inside. He had been obliged to climb on to the roof of the carriage and take an uncomfortable ride on the ‘knife-board’, that narrow, uncomfortable seat on top. It had come on to rain, too, and he had endured a jolting ride next to a thin, gloomy-looking carpenter who seemed to be made of pieces of wood which poked him in the side at every bump. And sneaking drops of rain managed to insinuate themselves down his upturned collar to trickle coldly down his neck.

He took off his sodden coat and ruined hat, and went upstairs to the drawing room. The fire-dappled room looked snug. Catherine, her eyes closed, lay on the sofa with the baby in its bassinette beside her and there was little Alfred, aged three and a few months, sitting at the end of the sofa staring solemnly at the fire. Francis, aged five, was sitting on the carpet playing with a wooden horse. Dickens went over to his wife and lifted Alfred up to sit him on his knee. He took Catherine’s hand, feeling a surge of tenderness for her soft prettiness in the peaceful scene. She looked plump and fresh-coloured in the firelight; he still admired her small retroussé nose and little red mouth. She opened her blue eyes and saw him there.

‘Charles, you are here.’

‘I am, my dear, here, in the flesh which is something fish-like in consistency. I have just had a bumpy ride in an omnibus from Shepherd’s Bush. My bones still rattle.’

‘Would you like tea? I can send for some fresh.’

‘Not yet, let me sit awhile.’

He shifted the child on his knee so that he could see him better. The boy gazed at his father, and touched a raindrop on his whiskers. ‘Wet,’ he said, puzzled.

Dickens laughed. Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson Dickens, not much like the poet who was his godfather, he thought, grinning at his own folly in naming this plump infant with a butter smear on his cheek after the immensely tall, grave, bushy-haired man who resembled a stork which had found its nest unaccountably round its neck. Poets should look like Keats, he mused, remembering Severn’s portrait of the young poet gazing into the distance with his bright, dreaming eyes.

‘And novelists,’ he said laughing out loud, ‘should look like Mr Dickens, the Inimitable.’

Alfred D’Orsay Tennyson laughed too and Francis, desiring attention also, brought his horse. ‘Charger,’ he said, proudly showing off the new word.

‘
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
,’ Dickens sang, ‘
to buy Alley and Frankey a galloping horse.
’

‘
To buy Alley and Frankey a galloping horse
,’ the boys repeated, delighted that Papa had put in their names, instead of Johnny’s.

Dickens stood up with a boy under each arm, singing, ‘
And they shall both ride till they can ride no more.
’ Round and round they went. Catherine looked on as he whirled them about. Dickens put them down. ‘Papa can gallop no more. You big boys are too much for him.’

Catherine said, ‘Both of you play with the horses.’ Happily, they went back to the rug to play their complicated games with horses and riders.

‘You are tired, my dear.’

‘I am,’ agreed Dickens, closing his eyes. They sat on in the comfortable firelight. Let Time stand still, thought Dickens, grant me this peace just for a while. But Time would rush on like a hurrying pedestrian, poking and jolting through the crowd, heedless of the blows he gave, marching sternly onward, grim-faced through eternity.

At the same time at Bow Street, Superintendent Jones and Constable Rogers were piecing together what information they had. Sam Jones had Dickens’s note on his desk. He had been glad to know that Francis Fidge was not the murderer.

‘Since we now know that Francis Fidge, the curate of St Mark’s, is not our man, and we know that Godsmark is not, then we are left with the mysterious singing pedlar with the crooked face – distinctive, and yet, according to Constable Jenkins who has sent me his report, though he was seen on the Friday before the murder, he was not seen at any time after, which is odd, since you would think that he might have been about if he had found customers at the Home. I wonder,’ he paused, getting his ideas into order, ‘if he came that Friday, two weeks ago, deliberately to give a message to Patience Brooke for a meeting with him –’

‘Or someone else,’ said Rogers, interrupting eagerly. ‘’E might have been set on by someone else, someone from ’er past.’

‘That might well be the case. I was going to say that he might have been proposing a meeting the following Friday – it makes sense. A week hence – it would be easy to remember.’

‘But, then, it might have given Patience a chance to run away.’

‘So, we are assuming that the message would have been from someone she did not want to see which rather negates the idea of an appointment in a week’s time. Unless, it was someone she felt she had to see – something so important that she waited. If only we had found a note! Still, we cannot do anything about that. We have to find him – but where to look? We’ll just have to keep Jenkins on it. God knows, he hasn’t much else to do out there. I have asked him to keep an eye on the Home – let us hope he has the wits to cope with that.’

‘I ’ad an idea, sir. It came to me as I was reading the paper. You know those notices that ask about missing persons – I’ve got one ’ere. Look, it says:
Missing. – Young man. Aged twenty years
,
of pale complexion with dark hair. Last seen
leaving his place of employment in
Chancery Lane.
I wonder if anyone advertised that Patience was missing. ’E found ’er at the Home, didn’t ’e?’

‘Well reasoned, Rogers.’ Rogers’s eager face was suffused with red right up to his large ears. ‘I think it’s worth following up. She arrived at the Home last September so it would be sensible for you to go to the newspaper office and check their earlier numbers, to see if you can find any reference to her in the personal columns. We should be able to find out who placed the notice, and that –’

‘Might lead us to her or to her family, if she had one, or fiance, or even husband.’ Rogers’s words tumbled out in his enthusiasm. The superintendent’s face stopped him. ‘What?’ exclaimed Rogers, startled.

It was as if a light had shone a beam in a dark corner. The superintendent said, ‘You said husband. We had not thought of that, and I have remembered two things that were said about her that might be explained if she had a husband which are: first, James Bagster thought she had had a child, and, second, Francis Fidge told us that Patience had said she could never love again. Mr Dickens picked up on that. Well, Rogers, you are a genius. Two brilliant ideas in one half hour.’

Rogers beamed, his red face shining. To please the superintendent was his daily goal, and now, to be called ‘genius’, it was like getting a medal. ‘What now?’

‘Tomorrow, you go to the newspaper – but which? You might as well start with the one you have there. Remember, discretion. Tell no one – you are on a special investigation for me, if anyone asks. Tomorrow evening, we meet the river police at Wapping Stairs. You will come with me and Mr Dickens. We search for Edward Drown – let us hope we find him. I will ask that a lookout is kept for our man with a crooked face – just on the grounds that he is wanted on suspicion of theft. If he is spotted, you and I, and Mr Dickens, will bring him in. Now I am going home to my wife. I will see you in the morning.’

The superintendent whistled as he went on his way; the tune of the old song of Edmund, poor peasant boy wafted on the air as he walked up Drury Lane to the junction with Queen Street.

A dark shape hurrying down an alleyway in the direction of Whetstone Place heard. The figure stopped under the sickly light of a gas lamp. The crooked face grinned and then walked on, whistling the same tune.

On Tuesday, Dickens stood at the window gazing at a morning of lowering cloud and slanting rain. He was thinking about
Macbeth
. As a boy in Chatham, he had seen the play at the Theatre Royal. It had been the witches that had impressed his imagination most, their terrifying incantations in the flaring footlights, and the impossible fact to him, as a boy, that they bore an awful resemblance to the thanes of Scotland. Later, he had seen William Macready in the role; this time it was the murderer who had harrowed him with fear and wonder. It was the wearing away of the man by his guilt, the terrible suffering had held Dickens spellbound. And his wife, driven to madness and suicide. He thought of Sikes fleeing from Nancy’s bloodied face – even Sikes knew guilt as he wandered like Cain, pursued by the glassy, blind eyes of his victim. Dickens had written that the murderer does not escape justice in the agony of his fear, but he wondered about the man who had sung as he crept away into the darkness from Patience Brooke. He saw in his imagination the crooked face twisted into a smile and he shuddered, glad now that he had not caught up with him in some dingy alley. He hoped too that the boy Scrap had not come near him.

Work first – David Copperfield was to go to school, Mr Creakle’s establishment, where he would wear as his introduction to the institution a placard announcing that ‘he bites’. Next he would write his report on the pedlar, and his sighting of a man with a crooked face in Whetstone Place. He would finish his latest article on the orphanage at Tooting Fields. He would then go to see Miss Coutts, and ask about employing James Bagster’s sister – Dickens would have to persuade her for Mrs Morson’s sake; that done, he would make his way to the stationer’s shop to see if Scrap had any news. Then he could take his finished article to John Forster at the offices of
The Examiner
.

There was a customer in the stationery shop – a portly man with a white waistcoat embellished with a heavy gold chain. He looked prosperous and ill-tempered. Dickens listened.

‘I am afraid Father is not here,’ Eleanor was saying politely. Tom and Poll obviously had their heads down under the counter.

‘When will he be here?’ barked the man impatiently.

‘Tomorrow, perhaps; may I help you?’

The man did not answer, but walked swiftly to the door, banging it as he went out. Dickens felt the silence left by the jangling bell and looked at Eleanor, whose little face wore an anxious frown. Before he had time to speak, the door burst open and Scrap flew in. Tom and Poll popped up from behind the counter.

‘Chased?’ asked Dickens, sympathetically.

‘Nah – jest in a rush. ’Oo’s that cove ’oo went out, Miss Nell? Bad-tempered, ’e looked.’

‘Just someone wanting Father,’ she said.

‘Oh – y’awright, then?’

‘Yes, Scrap, don’t worry.’ An understanding seemed to pass between them, Dickens thought, but exactly what he could not fathom. He would keep his eye on them when he could.

Eleanor filled the gap. ‘Here is Mr Dickens, Scrap.’

‘Have you seen him?’ he asked Scrap.

‘Nah – watched the street like you sed, watched at Lincoln’s Inn and the fields, but nuffink. I can keep watchin’ if yer wants.’ Scrap looked at him hopefully. Dickens knew that another few sixpences would be more than welcome.

‘Yes, if you will, Scrap. I would be very pleased to employ you until you spot him – would sixpence a day be sufficient – and a bonus when you have found him?’

The boy’s eyes gleamed, ‘Yes, sir. Trust me – I’ll find ’im for yer.’

Dickens thought of the cold-blooded singer with his twisted face, ‘Mind Scrap, do not go near him – just watch.’ He had an idea suddenly. ‘Try Gray’s Inn, up Chancery Lane, across High Holborn.’

‘I will, sir. When yer coming back?’

‘I’m not sure, perhaps tomorrow. Leave a message with Miss Eleanor. If that is acceptable?’ he enquired of the girl.

‘Yes, we shall be glad to see you at any time, Mr Dickens.’