Death at Hungerford Stairs (6 page)

The superintendent let his light fall on the heads while Dickens bent down to touch one girl gently on the shoulder. They woke suddenly, blinking in the light, pulling at the covering which fell about their ragged dresses. Two blackened faces, gaunt with want, gazed at Dickens and Jones. They might have come from the grave, Dickens thought, so filth-encrusted were their rags. But there was the smell of gin as well as the sharp fish-stink of unwashed clothes and sweat.

‘Wotcher want? Leave us alone. We ain't doin' nuffink – jest sleepin'.'

‘Can you get no lodgings?' Dickens asked.

‘Yers – if we 'ad the money, but we ain't so it's unfurnished lodgins for us, out in the open air, unless yer gotta bob, sir.' The fair girl looked at Dickens. She was desperately dirty, hungry, and probably a drunk, but, as so often, he was amazed at the spark of life, the challenge to poverty and filth which shone in her eyes as she asked him for a bob.

‘How long have you been here?' asked Sam.

‘Dunno, sir. Come in 'ere, say a couple of hours ago – Katey an' me we 'ad a drink or two, dunno where. Come in 'ere for a rest.'

‘See anyone?'

‘Dunno – who, like?'

‘A boy – with someone older – a man, perhaps.'

‘Oh, aye, there was a gent an' a boy sittin' on a grave at the side o' the church. Aksed 'im for a tanner but 'e dint answer.'

‘You did not see his face? Either of you?'

‘Nah – jest a gent – dark suit – thinnish, though.' The dark girl thought for a moment. ‘Young, I think. Dunno – jest an impression. 'Ard ter say. It woz dark.'

‘You said “a gent” – what made you think that?'

‘A top 'at – 'e woz wearin' one – dunno, just thought he woz a toff, can't say why. Yers, I can – no smell – yer know most folk stink. Only toffs are clean.'

Dickens had smelt it when the girls moved, the stink of unwashed bodies, of filthy clothes, of poverty. Interesting that the girl had noted the lack of smell.

‘The boy?'

‘Jest a boy, sir.'

‘How did they seem together?'

The fair girl frowned. ‘Wotcher mean? Do yer mean woz they friendly?'

‘Yes – the boy wasn't trying to get away?'

‘I get yer – like that yer mean,' said the dark girl, looking at Sam, knowingly. Too knowingly, thought Dickens. She'd seen too much, this girl. ‘The man 'ad 'is arm round the boy. 'E woz leanin' against the toff – coulder bin – yer know. Why d'yer wanter know?'

‘A boy was found dead just where you said you saw the boy and the man,' answered Sam.

‘Blimey – d'yer think 'e did it?'

‘We don't know, but I think you two should get away from here, find some lodgings for tonight.'

‘If you had two shillings to get some supper and a lodging, should you know where to get it?' Dickens felt in his pocket for the coins and handed them to the girl called Katey.

‘Ta very much, sir, we knows a place. 'Opes yer finds the killer. We won't be back 'ere in an 'urry.'

They scrambled away hand in hand through the damp grass, round the bulk of the church to be swallowed up into the labyrinth of lanes – to find lodgings, or more gin, or something worse, unbearable to consider. Katey and me – they were – what? Thirteen? Twelve? The same age as Dickens's Katey and Mamie. The dark girl with Katey's name and colouring, and they were lost, gone in a minute.

‘Just children. I tell you, Sam, the sight of them and the legions of others ought to break the heart and hope of any man.'

‘I know – and that poor boy over there and the other. We need to find him before he does it again.'

‘Well, we have the shawl.'

‘A man and a shawl? The two things do not seem to be connected, but I have an instinct that they are. I am not surprised that there was a man with the boy, but I am surprised at that shawl because it's an expensive one.'

Dickens asked, ‘Could he have an accomplice, a woman? If he was a toff as the girls said then his accomplice might be a woman who could afford a shawl like that.'

‘Could be – but it was damned careless to leave the shawl there – unless they were disturbed, but the girls mentioned only a man.'

‘And the drawing – the mask. I don't know, but it seems like someone who is on his own. The mask is some private symbol. You do not think that the boy had stolen the shawl – that it has nothing to do with the murder?'

‘Until we find the owner of it – if we do – it is hard to say. We don't even know who this boy is or the other one. But they are connected, and we will need to think of all the connections. In the meantime, tomorrow, I will have enquiries made about this boy – he belongs to someone. There is a mother somewhere – who else would have darned that shirt?'

‘And his mother kept him clean. He was loved,' said Dickens.

Dickens and Jones went back to Rogers and saw that Stemp had returned with two more constables who were lifting the boy on to a stretcher to take him to the morgue.

‘I will get back to Bow Street,' said Sam. ‘You should go home, Charles, after the night you have had. Go and rest those bruises. I will send word tomorrow if there is any news.'

They parted, and Dickens walked away from the church towards the High Street. He would get a cab in Oxford Street to take him home. Now that Sam had mentioned his bruises, he could feel them. Then, he remembered his clothes. He should have gone back to Zeb's to retrieve his own coat and hat. Too late, he had not the energy. He wanted to get home, to seep in a hot bath, to wash away the dirt, and horror that he had seen. That poor boy. Somehow there was the betrayal of innocence in the brief sketch drawn by the dark girl. He could see the little scene as if it were spotlit – a boy trusting a young man who held him, and who, in that embrace, slid the blade into the unresisting heart.

Isabella Gordon had gone. Dickens had dismissed her; now Urania Cottage at Shepherd's Bush resounded with sobs, and tearful faces looked at Dickens and Mrs Morson with reproach as if Dickens did not feel bad enough when he had watched Isabella walk away with her half crown, wiping her eyes on the cheap shawl she had been given.

They went into Mrs Morson's own parlour and sat silent for a few moments. Mrs Morson felt that she had let him down; she ought to have been able to cope with Isabella and Anna-Maria Sisini, but their combined mischief and malice, it had to be said, were too much in that they undermined the order of the house, and their relationship, she feared, was too close to be healthy. She felt always a sense of unease about them, and they knew it. They challenged her with their kisses, their caresses, their flirtation which could seem just affection, but which Mrs Morson was sure was not. Not that she condemned them; she had known of a similar relationship between two women in the tiny European community at the mine in Brazil. She had seen how one of them, a young woman abused by a hard-faced husband, had looked at the other woman with such love. Mrs Morson had been so afraid that others would see it too.

But what she feared in Isabella and Sesina was their insolence, and their desire to overturn the order of Urania Cottage. When she and Dickens had gone into her parlour, as they often did when he visited, she had frequently seen Isabella's mocking eyes on her, and she had sensed her exchange of meaningful looks with Sesina. She had felt the beginnings of a blush and had held herself rigid, willing the tell-tale heat to subside. They challenged her authority by being able to discomfort her, and that annoyed her. It made her uncomfortable with Mr Dickens, and she felt that now, though they had always been good friends.

‘What about Sesina?' he asked. ‘Will she last?'

‘I doubt it. She needs Isabella. And I told you before what I suspected about their relationship. I am surprised she didn't go after her just now. I am sorry I failed with Isabella.'

‘I do not think anyone could have succeeded. She had to be the centre of attention, and I thought all along that the life we were offering would not suit her. She is so full of spirit, and yet so hardened by what she has been. I suspect we will hear of Isabella and Sesina, together again. We will not succeed with all of them. Alice Drown for example – she told me it was the very thought of a possible marriage in Australia that put her off. She said Australia was bad enough, but marriage was worse – and, you know, I could hardly blame her when she told me about her childhood, and I am not surprised that she got work in the theatre – she said she liked her independence when I saw her that time we were trying to find out who murdered Patience Brooke.'

‘Isabella is bright, too, clever enough to manipulate the others, teasing the plain ones whom she thought of no account – remember her spite against poor Lizzie Dagg when Lizzie fell in love with the curate. And clever enough to get the lively, pretty ones on her side by inventing grievances, telling them what a cruel place this is, and challenging our authority – not yours to your face, of course.'

‘Alice Drown was clever, too, and Sesina, and Jenny Ding,' said Dickens thoughtfully. ‘Sometimes when I watch a group of girls in the street, I think that if these girls were properly educated, they would grow into capable, intelligent women, and yet society offers them nothing except drudgery or prostitution. Ignorance and want are the two great evils. I saw two girls sleeping in a graveyard last night – they could only be twelve or thirteen – same age as my daughters – and they stank of gin already.'

‘I know, and it is not much better, in some ways, for girls of the upper class, trained only for marriage, trained to be undemanding, to pretend to be simple and to submit to the authority of first their fathers, and then their husbands. And, still, too many girls have no choice in their marriage partner. I want something better for my girls.'

Dickens looked at her; he was not surprised by the indignation in her voice. He admired her. Here was a woman whose husband had died in Brazil, leaving her pregnant, having to bring home two small girls, and she had done it, had travelled hundreds of miles by mule to find a ship to take her back to England. Even when she was home she found that her husband's brother had embezzled her husband's money. But she had not sat down and wept; she had placed her children with their grandparents, and she had found herself this post – and she was the best matron he had engaged.

Dickens had to return to town. He bade goodbye to Mrs Morson, told her to write if Sesina caused more trouble, and clasped her hand to show that he was not disappointed. They were friends. Once he had felt something more, but it could not be. Outside the house, he looked down the street and thought of Isabella; he pitied her, felt sorry that they had not tamed her, worried what might become of her, and novelist that he was, imagined Isabella, bold and haggard, and flaunting and poor, and translated his image into Martha, the ruined girl in
David Copperfield
who, like Isabella, went weeping on her way to London. Somehow, he thought, Isabella would not weep for long.

His fly took him to Bow Street where he found the superintendent gazing at the shawl as if in its embroidery he could read the identity of the murderer. Rogers and other constables were out enquiring about the dead boy. Sam hoped that if they could find out who he was then they might discover the owner of the shawl. Inspector Harker had not had any success in finding out the identity of his boy either. But it was early days, Sam said to Dickens; his experience told him that they would have to wait, to follow all sorts of leads, some of which would be dead ends, but something would happen. Two murders, two masks and one beautifully embroidered shawl meant an unusual case, and unusual cases usually had a solution – eventually.

A constable, Semple, came in. ‘There's a woman 'ere, sir, says she wants to know about the boy. 'Er son's bin missin' – not a runaway, she says, a good boy – well, they all say that. Still, she's upset all right.'

‘Bring her in.' Semple went out. ‘I hope for her sake that our boy is not hers,' said the compassionate superintendent, ‘even though we desperately need information.'

The woman came in, a woman who had once been pretty but whom poverty had worn out, a woman who was very afraid that the boy who had been found was hers because hers was missing. She looked frozen. A rough piece of sacking was tied at her neck; that was all she had as a cloak or coat. She wore an old brown bonnet – it had once been good but the velvet had been rubbed away and it was tied under her chin with string. Her brown dress was threadbare, and Dickens could see the ancient boots she wore. He thought he had seen her before. She looked not at them, but at the shawl which was hanging off the chair where Sam had left it, its colours seeming to glow in the gloomy office with its utilitarian furniture.

‘Where did you find that? It is mine.'

‘Yours?' The superintendent was astonished.

‘Well, it was, but Zeb Scruggs gave me five shillings for it – weeks ago. But, my boy, have you got my boy?' She forgot the shawl now. Her terror about her boy returned.

‘How long has he been missing?'

‘Not long – only since yesterday. He wouldn't run away, not my boy, not my Robin.'

The name conjured innocence for Dickens who thought of Ophelia singing of bonny sweet Robin, all her joy. Somehow he felt that this woman had loved her son, that he was all her joy. And he knew, though he did not know how, that the thin boy in the morgue was Robin, and that she would die without him. He felt it all as he looked at the wasted face, with its sheen of hunger shown up in the harsh gaslight, as he looked at the eyes, grey as dark water, in which dread and hope alternated.

‘Mrs …' began the superintendent.

‘Hart, Mrs Hart. My husband is dead. Robin is all I have. You must tell me. Is it my boy – the boy you found in the churchyard? I must see him.'