Death at Hungerford Stairs (32 page)

‘But you said yourself that you don't know what Victorine was. We said she was sexless. And the witnesses, Sam – Mrs Twiss saw a young man coming from her yard, Constable Green's witness at Hungerford Market said Jemmy was with a toff. The girls at St Giles's Churchyard saw a man. People see a person dressed in man's clothes – they don't look any closer. It's a man. They don't think that it could be a woman. Why would they?'

Sam didn't reply. Dickens and Elizabeth looked at him, but he seemed to be abstracted as though he were listening for something.

‘Sam,' said Elizabeth, ‘for goodness' sake, tell us what you think.'

Sam smiled back at them. ‘I think I hear the sound of the hammer on the anvil!'

‘You believe it?' Dickens wanted a definite answer.

‘I do. You are right, Charles – it does make sense, but –'

‘But me no buts – remember the footman at the Du Canes – he described a slight, young man –'

‘Whom he was ready to believe was Victorine's brother because there was a resemblance – it could not have been Michel. It's impossible to believe that her lover resembled her. I was going to say, but why? Why would she dress as a man?'

‘Yes, why? Surely, it would have been easier for a woman to lure the boys? Would they not have gone more readily with a woman if she asked them to do an errand for her?' asked Elizabeth.

‘That's true, but whatever her reason, her disguise meant that we were looking for a young man – even when we went to her house, we had no thought that she was the murderer. Even when Rogers said it could have been a woman, we did not think of her. But, Charles, why must we go back to Brighton? We have been there and I have heard nothing from the Brighton police.'

‘You remember what Madame Rigaud said about her son – he was born in November. I thought about it on the way here. The child must be buried in Brighton. Mrs Hart went back to her room where Robin lived with her – perhaps Victorine has gone to be with her son.'

‘But Victorine is no Mrs Hart – she is a murderess.'

‘But she is a mother who lost her only child,' said Elizabeth.

Sam looked at his wife. What could he say? She would, of course, think of the loss of the child – she had lost her only child too. He was silent, feeling her words as a rebuke. Dickens felt guilty – he had come here full of the excitement of his revelation, eager to discuss the crime in the abstract. He had not thought of where the discussion might lead.

‘I am sorry, Elizabeth – it was thoughtless of me not to think –'

‘No, no, it is quite different, but I was simply thinking of what she might have felt about her child's death. When Edith died, I thought I should go mad, but I had Sam – I was not criticising, Sam – do not think so. But, suppose she is mad, that the death of the child has somehow twisted her so that she does not understand herself what she has done.'

They stared into the flames, dying down now, all thinking of the losses they had borne. Dickens thought of the death of his sister Fanny in 1848 and her little crippled son who had died so soon after his mother. He thought of his sister-in-law, Mary, and the anguish he had felt then for the girl in whom he had felt a father's pride. It was the death of innocence, he had thought, the cruel, random taking away of a life of promise, of gentle youth and goodness. Yet, in the fight of life, it was necessary to hide our hearts in carrying on to discharge our duties and responsibilities, but then that could be done with the help of work to be carried out, the love of family, friends. Perhaps it could not be done without those things.

‘Loneliness – that was the impression she gave – Sophy Outfin mentioned it and so did Mary Mapes. That house, Sam, when we went there, how empty it seemed.'

‘I can see how that might warp her, but why kill those innocent boys? What had they done?' Sam found it difficult to pity her – three boys dead, three killed because she had lost one.

Elizabeth looked grave. She had felt a kind of pity when she thought of Victorine as a mother who had lost her only child, but then she thought of those dead boys and what had been done to Mrs Hart. Sam was right to remind them of the fact that she was a murderess.

‘You are right, Sam,' she said, reading his thoughts in the set of his mouth. ‘Whatever she felt does not excuse what she has done.'

‘And we must find her. We cannot know that she will not do it again.'

‘So, we will go to Brighton, find out where the child is buried – a Catholic church –'

‘And we will wait, I suppose. I hope you are right. In the meantime, I'll telegraph to Liverpool. The police there can examine the passenger list for the
Cambria
and they can wait to see if she turns up, either as herself or as a young man. I'll give them all the names she might be using: Jolicoeur, Rigaud, Blandois. I need to be sure that I have covered that possibility.'

‘I will go now – and I will see you at the station tomorrow. Goodnight, Elizabeth.'

Sam saw him out. Despite the possibility that they were close to a solution, neither felt at all satisfied. This was the worst part, thought Sam, knowing too well the consequences of their finding her.

‘Goodnight, Charles.'

‘Goodnight, Sam.'

They said no more. Dickens knew his friend's thoughts. Sam could never feel triumph in the catching of the murderer. Justice would be done, but like Dickens he would hate the jeering of the crowd at the death, the greedy desire to see the rope jerk and the body dangle. He walked away, subdued by the dark thoughts, the excitement of his sudden revelation dissipated. Why had she done it? Yes, he could imagine that she was mad, that her loneliness had warped her, but what had she thought about those boys she had killed? Why had she chosen them? They were the same age as her boy would have been, and he remembered Robin and the boy named Nose lying as if sleeping on the marble slab, and Jemmy. They had all looked alike, perhaps resembling her own son. Was that it? She thought she had found him and when she saw that each boy was not her son she killed him. And what would the law make of that?

A defence of insanity was possible under the law if it could be proved that the defendant was labouring under such a defect of reason that he or she did not know that the act committed was wrong. Poor Mary Lamb, who had written
Tales from Shakespeare
with her brother, Charles Lamb. She had murdered her mother. The verdict had been lunacy – her brother had taken care of her for the rest of his life. She had died only two years ago at the age of eighty-three. But this was different. There would be no one to take care of Mademoiselle Victorine, and her murders, unlike Mary Lamb's murder, were not in the heat of some crisis. Victorine had lured those boys. And – he remembered Kip's information – she had known Robin Hart, she must have known his mother and what the boy meant to her – yes, it might be a kind of madness, but it involved calculation, the desire to punish and, as he had said to Sam, the killer had hated.

He had been sure that she would not kill again, but when he thought of the hatred she had conceived, he was not sure – and the mask – that drawing – there was something horrible about it.

He walked on to York Gate to make his way to Devonshire Terrace. He paused by the church of St Marylebone, its whiteness silvered in the moonlight. It seemed somehow remote in its marbled quietness, its steeple with its Corinthian columns pointing into the heavens. The chaste stars looked down upon the darkened city, its mansions and its hovels wherein human lives passed in agony and desperate passion.
Is there no pity sitting in the heavens?
he thought.

The eight o'clock express from London Bridge took them to Brighton in under two hours. The Brighton police had been informed on their first visit that Superintendent Jones of Bow Street was in pursuit of a murderer. They went straight to the police station where Sam explained that they needed to know where were the Catholic churches with burial places, and that he needed some men to watch each church. They should be looking this time either for a young, bespectacled woman or a young man. He explained that they believed the young woman to be the suspect, but that she might be disguised as a man. They believed that her child might be buried in a Catholic churchyard. They learned that there was only one Catholic church, St James's, which was in Kemptown – this would be undoubtedly where their suspect would have worshipped. However, it was not likely that the child was buried there – burials took place in the extension to the graveyard at St Nicholas's.

Superintendent Rook of the Brighton police seemed certain that the grave would be at St Nicholas's, though he would send two men to St James's. ‘I will show you why I think you have come to the right place,' he said. ‘There is something interesting at the churchyard which your Mademoiselle Victorine may have seen. You have to see for yourselves. It will strike you more forcibly if you do.'

They were intrigued, of course, but Sam trusted the solidly built superintendent whom he had met before. He was a serious-faced man, a forceful character whose experience demanded respect. He had served under Chief Constable Henry Solomon who had been murdered in 1844 in this very place, bludgeoned by one John Laurence. Solomon had been interviewing him about the matter of a stolen carpet. Laurence had seized the poker from near the fire and beaten him about the head – Solomon had died later from his terrible injuries. Sam knew of the case and the dreadful sensation it had caused. Superintendent Rook was not likely to trifle with them over the matter of murder.

Rain was beginning to fall as they made their way out of the station towards Church Hill where the church of St Nicholas was situated. Although Superintendent Rook explained that the new burial ground had opened in 1841, he took them first to the fourteenth-century church where they walked among the old graves until he stopped and pointed to a particular one – the tombstone erected to the memory of Phoebe Hessel. Reading the inscription, they understood what he meant. The words were astonishing:

In Memory of

PHOEBE HESSEL

Who was born at Stepney in the year
1713

She served for many Years

as a private soldier in the
5
th Regt. of foot

in different parts of Europe

and in the Year
1745
fought under the command

of the DUKE of CUMBERLAND

at the Battle of Fontenoy

where she received a bayonet wound in her Arm

Her long life which commenced in the time of

QUEEN ANNE

Extended to the reign of

GEORGE IV

by whose munificence she received comfort

and support in her latter Years

she died at Brighton where she had lived

December
12
th
1821
Aged
108
Years

‘I see what you mean, Superintendent Rook,' Sam said. ‘This is extraordinary. She was not discovered in all the years she served as a soldier?'

‘Seventeen years and not even when she received her arm wound. She did let slip her identity to the wife of her commanding officer and then she was dismissed. An amazing woman – followed her soldier lover to the wars, apparently. I remember seeing her when I was a boy – couldn't believe anyone would be one hundred and eight.'

‘And you think that Mademoiselle Victorine saw this, and that it gave her the idea for her disguise?' asked Dickens.

‘Why not? She would have come here if her child was buried here – perhaps she remembered it – it is not something you would forget – all those years as a man.'

‘It is so fantastic, it could be true. There are more things in heaven and earth, Sam.'

‘Indeed there are. Now we must look at the church's records. We need to know if the child is here before we commence our vigil in this rain.'

They went into the ancient church to find the verger, a damp and ancient specimen, who, on the instruction of Superintendent Rook, showed them the volume in which were the records of burials in 1846. And there they found him – another lost boy whose death had brought about such suffering. Dickens thought of the innocent child, playing by the sea, perhaps carried away by the treacherous waves. Such a simple, bald statement:
Victor Blandois, Brighton November
26
th,
1846
, Age
9. Sam heard Dickens's sharp intake of breath, and Dickens, turning to look at Sam, saw that he had the same thought.

‘November 26th – today. She will come. I know it,' Dickens said.

They went across the road to the new burial ground and through its imposing archway. The place was still as death itself, cold and very melancholy in the dripping rain. She was there, a slight figure in her grey dress soaked into black by the slanting rain, bareheaded, heedless of the downpour, her sodden shawl hanging off her thin shoulders. They waited for five minutes, perhaps ten. Dickens did not know. It seemed an age, and all the while, the woman stood quite motionless. Time seemed to stand still. This was a terrible thing they had to do – to take her from that grave. Sam moved.

He walked across and touched her on the shoulder. She turned and knew the policeman who had come to her house. She did not speak, but knelt on the ground before the grave upon which she placed a little bunch of artificial flowers. Sam stood, his head bowed under the rain, and waited. Dickens and Superintendent Rook watched in silence. The rain fell steadily and they saw them through a misty haze as in a dream, the two figures, unmoving as if carved from stone. It was almost impossible to believe that the grieving figure was a woman who had killed children – but she had, thought Dickens. It was the only explanation.