The Murder of Patience Brooke (14 page)

‘Where will you go?'

‘Goin' for a job at the Pool – longshoreman, I am. Oughter make a decent livin'. Got lodgins in Gravel Lane wiv the wife's ma.' He jerked his head at the young woman whose narrow, pale face looked out from the folds of her hood. She smiled at them, glad to be going. Dickens felt pleased for them – he could see the golden head of the child peeping out from a grubby little cap. One saved, at least. A thin little cat suddenly appeared and jumped lightly into Drown's boat. Drown looked as if he might chase it away. He looked at his wife.

‘Oh, all right then. It can come.' His gaze was tender as he looked at his wife and child.

‘What about Alice?' asked the woman, shyly. ‘'As something 'appened?'

‘No. We just want to find her. She may have information concerning a missing woman.'

‘She came 'ere a few weeks ago. Give us money. Told us to get out and save that child. Good girl is Alice.' He said the last aggressively as if the superintendent had other ideas.

Dickens smiled. Alice was a good girl for all her petty thieving and loose living. He remembered her bold, generous laughter.

‘I don't doubt it,' said Sam, ‘but we need to speak to her. Do you know where she is?'

‘Theatre. Victoria. Got a job, she 'as, singin' and dancin'. That's where money came from, if you woz wonderin'.'

‘I wasn't. Thank you for your help.'

‘Good luck,' said Dickens. Drown grinned suddenly, his face transformed from sullenness to good humour.

‘Aye, we'll survive. I'll see to it.' Dickens had no doubt that he would.

They climbed carefully into the launch; the constables pulled at the oars and turned the boat to face the dark tunnel of warehouses and the black stretch of water which would take them back to the Thames and Wapping Stairs.

‘It is now eight o'clock,' said Sam Jones.

‘To the theatre then,' said Dickens, glad to be on land again, however muddy and dreary. ‘I could go at half time – for nine o'clock. It'll be half price,' he added with a grin.

‘I'll not come with you – Alice will prefer to talk to you alone. You'll get more out of her than I would.'

Dickens and Jones with Rogers took a cab back to the Strand where Jones and Rogers got out to walk to Bow Street; the cab took Dickens across Waterloo Bridge where he hoped to find Alice Drown at the Victoria Theatre.

Dickens made his way through the New Cut market lined with hawkers and traders selling everything in a mad tumble of temporary stalls: fruit and fish, boots, baked potatoes, bonnets, brushes, live chickens and dead ones, eels and whelks, night caps, lace caps, old clothes and new, battered steel helmets and rusty swords with basket hilts. Dickens imagined himself brandishing one in a duel on stage. ‘
Behold I have a weapon
’, he quoted, grinning at his fancy. Brass-voiced women shouted their wares, beaten children and dogs howled, gin-soaked customers staggered singing crazy ballads, knocking into stalls and passers-by with equal indifference. At the theatre, the half-price audience was pouring in as the full-pricers poured out into the glittering gin palace opposite.

Dickens paid his shilling and sat down at the halfway point in
The Brigand’s Chief
when the wife of the chief dashes in, wielding a blue wooden dagger with which to despatch her treacherous mate. Seeing the fair captive – how she came to be there, Dickens could not quite make out, but no matter, the sight of her brings tears to the wife’s two black eyes. It seems that she is, in fact, the wife’s long-lost daughter. The daughter is dragged away. The wife returns, plunges her dagger into the breast of her miscreant husband, a ghost appears clad in a fetching bit of sheeting – nobody knows whose ghost it is, but, again no matter, justice is done and the audience, including Dickens, roars its approval.

The play was followed by burlesque sketches and songs with girls in satin dresses, and with bright rouged cheeks. Dickens leant forward – it was hard to tell, but one of them might be Alice Drown – perhaps the one on the end who rolled her eyes and tossed her dark hair, kicking higher than the others to display a pair of sturdy legs sheathed in black stockings.

After the burlesque numbers, Dickens went round to the stage door where just within there was a sallow-looking man with yellow fangs who looked like a kind of Cerberus – the doorkeeper – guarding whatever lay in the dingy corridor beyond his little box. Dickens asked for Alice Drown, and was rewarded with a wink and a nod to the corridor. He pushed his way through a crowd of players coming out, their glamour gone in the miserable light which cast a grey pallor over their faces now that the powder and paint had been wiped off. A friendly girl pointed him to a door. ‘In there,’ she said, giving him an appraising look. She opened the door for him, saying to someone inside, ‘Alice, dearie, it’s yer lucky night. Gentleman for yer.’ With that she went off, rolling her hips and giving him a wave over her shoulder.

The green room was a dilapidated apartment with a thick, dusty carpet that had once been patterned; shabby, once-green velvet curtains; a spotted mirror over the fireplace with notices in the side of a chipped, gilded frame which gave instructions about rehearsals; and a cheval glass in a mahogany frame for the players to see their costumes. The air smelt of powder, dust, sweat and stale scent. Nevertheless, for Dickens, backstage was still, despite its tawdriness, a place where secret, magical transformations took place. He loved being out front, but being backstage was to be in on the secret, to be part of the magic, to be able to be transformed into someone else, into many different selves, each man in his time playing many parts. That was what he loved, forgetting himself, becoming someone else, as Alice Drown was doing, standing before the mirror, powdering her face and swishing her satin skirts. She saw him in the mirror.

‘Hello, Charlie,’ said Alice Drown mischievously. ‘How d’you find me?’

‘I found your brother.’

‘Come to take me back?’

‘No, Alice, unless, of course, you wish to.’

‘No fear. I’m doin’ well ’ere. Makin’ my own way, ta very much. I know you meant well but some of us ain’t suited for the quiet life.’

‘You didn’t fancy Australia, then?’

‘It’s a long way from ’ome, Mr Dickens, an’ I git seasick on the river steamers. No, it wasn’t that so much as you promising we’d all get married and live ’appily ever after. Not for me, Mr Dickens. Kids, neither.’

‘Why ever not, Alice?’ Dickens was surprised. It was one of his cherished schemes that the young women who came to the Home could be offered the incentive of a new life, the potential for marriage to an honest man, and children, a family life. That was what made Urania Cottage different – the promise of a better life.

‘I seen too much. I was oldest of ten – two of us lived. I seen eight of ’em die, the last born dead an’ took my mother with ’er. After that Pa died an’ me an Eddie were left on our own. That’s when we come to London – born up Chertsey way – to live with our aunt. Mean old skinflint she was. ’Er ’usband was a brute, as well. I don’t like to tell yer wot ’e did to me. Put us to work as soon as – well, I ain’t seen many ’appy couples. Why’d it be different in Australia? Look at Eddie and that wife of ’is – lost one kiddie already. I seen too many kids dead, Mr Dickens, an’ I likes my own way. You got kids?’ she asked with a shrewd look at him.

‘Eight.’

‘Blimey. You bin busy. Wot’s yer wife think of that? Or didn’t yer ask er?’ She chuckled richly, and too knowingly. Dickens thought of Catherine passive on her sofa, passive in his arms. What did she think? He couldn’t answer. Alice took pity on him.

‘Sorry about runnin’ off – I knew yer’d try ter make me stay. I got me own life, Mr Dickens. I earn my own money and that’s ’ow I like it. An’ I like it ’ere – it may not be much, but on that stage, I can be someone else – someone different from that raggedy girl from Chertsey way.’

Dickens understood, of course he did. He saw how the satin, garish as it was, suited her better than the neat uniform of Urania Cottage.

‘So wot can I do for yer – yer didn’t come jest to pay a social call, did yer?’

‘No, I came to find out if you ever knew a young woman called Patience Brooke, whether you told her about the Home.’

‘I did – I didn’t know what else to do with ’er – she wasn’t goin’ ter last out on the streets. Wot’s ’appened to ’er?’

‘She’s dead.’

‘Gawd! ’Ow?’

‘She was murdered – her throat cut, and I want to know who did it – and why. Can you tell me anything about her?’

Alice stared at him, her eyes wide with horror. ‘Not much. I found ’er in the street – half-starved she was. I could tell she was a lady even though she ’ad nothin’ with ’er – not a thing, Mr Dickens, ’cept the clothes on ’er back. I took ’er ’ome – couldn’t leave ’er there could I?’

Dickens did not doubt that she could not. He waited for her to go on.

‘I fed ’er up a bit. She was all for goin’ but I says, “Where to?” She didn’t know so she stayed a bit. I got ’er some work, sewin’ an’ that for the costumes but yer know, Mr Dickens, she ’ardly told me anything – not that I asked much. Why should I? I ’ad my own secrets – yer remember about the ’at and the red feathers – well I was young and foolish – an’ it made me go straight. Still, anyways, Patience stayed till she was better, an’ then I thought of you.’ Her eyes twinkled at him. ‘Just the place for a girl like Patience. I told ’er not to say who sent ’er an’ she never did, did she?’

‘No, she did not. I thought she might – in time.’

‘So did I – but yer know though she was quiet and modest and that, she wasn’t weak – when she said she was goin’ I knew she meant it.’

‘So, you can tell me nothing about her? I have a suspicion she might have been married, had a child perhaps.’

Alice thought, her brown eyes narrowing, ‘Run off from a brute of an ’usband, you think?’

‘Could be.’

‘She never said nothin’ about bein’ married, but she liked kids – my landlady Mrs Cross has two boys – little ’uns. She used to look after them sometimes – to the manner born, Mrs Cross said – oh, blimey, it fits don’t it? – but why’d she leave a kiddie?’

‘I don’t know. Now think, Alice, was there anything she let slip – however small?’

‘I asked her once where she come from – was she from London, and she said, “A long time ago” – but it couldn’t ’ave been that long – she was young. An’ we was once talkin’ about where she might go an’ she says she lived at somewhere called Polly something – I can’t remember the name – then she shut up quick. I’m sorry, Mr Dickens, but that’s all.’

‘Was the word “polygon”?’ Dickens hoped, holding his breath.

‘Might a bin – funny old word innit. Is it a place?’

‘It is – up in Somers Town. I lived there once myself.’

‘Well I ’ope it’s the place. An’ I ’ope you find whoever killed ’er. I liked ’er. I thought she might do all right in Australia – but it wasn’t to be, was it?’ She sounded sad. ‘Wot a world, eh?’

What a world indeed, thought Dickens as he stood in the corridor. He had wished Alice the best of luck. She had turned down the money he had offered. ‘No, Charlie, buy some sweets for all them kids you got!’ She laughed at him but kindly, shook out her satin skirts, showed him a black-stockinged leg and went out, ready for her last call. He heard her laughter float back to him as she disappeared along the corridor.

‘The Polygon,’ repeated the superintendent. Dickens had told him what Alice had said the night before. It was Wednesday morning and they were seated in Sam’s office at Bow Street.

‘Up at Somers Town. I lived there once – as a boy. It was what you might call shabby genteel – respectable people down on their luck. Hoping for better times,’ Dickens said, remembering his father whose fancies of a cultured life of ease had so often come to nothing. ‘And a few artists and writers, musicians and so on.’

‘I’ll get Rogers to look about the Polygon – see if there’s anyone there who might know of Patience Brooke. He can go in plain clothes – a lawyer’s clerk asking about the family. Let us hope that really was her name. If it wasn’t then that’s a dead end though there might be something in Rogers’s idea about the missing persons notice – a bit unlikely, I know. What about Crooked Face? Are you going to see that lad of yours, Scrap? I had thought of putting a constable on the watch for Crook but we don’t want to spook him. Your lad won’t be noticed. If he sees him, then it’s time to leave it to us. We do not know yet what we are dealing with.’

‘I will go to the shop now and see if there are any developments. I’d like to know, too, about that father of theirs and who is really looking after them.’

‘Elizabeth said she would go there. She might be able to find out something – just her sort of thing – abandoned children. She has a very tender heart, and she’s good at getting them to tell her things – Posy, for instance.’

‘Yes, she has. You are fortunate, Sam, in a wife who is beautiful and intelligent,’ said Dickens, ‘and if they are in need of help, she would be the right person to gain their trust.’

Dickens went out into and through Covent Garden towards Seven Dials and Crown Street. The shop was empty of customers, but the proprietors were at their counter. Scrap came in a moment later – not in so much of a hurry as usual, it seemed. He carried a brown paper bag which he placed with an air of triumph on the counter.

‘Currant cake,’ he declared. ‘Not broken bits neither. Bought it – wiv me earnins.’ He looked at Dickens. ‘Want some?’

‘I’ll get a knife,’ said Eleanor as she opened the bag and took out a handsome round of cake.

‘Got one,’ said Scrap, fishing in his pocket and bringing out a rusty article which looked too blunt to slice even an egg.

Eleanor said tactfully, ‘I’ll get a bigger one.’

She came back, cut the cake into five equal portions which she placed on a plate she had brought in, and offered the plate to Dickens first. ‘Our guest first – family second.’ Scrap looked delighted.