by J C Briggs
Rogers’s face fell a little. ‘Intended to come back for ’em. They came back an’ then…’ He looked at the Superintendent, his face anguished now at the collapse of his theory.
‘No, Alf, you’re right. It won’t wash, but I still think you’re right about the hoarding of the loot.’
‘It don’ help much, though.’
‘Not until we find out more about this Mr Tony.’ Dickens studied the picture. ‘Not signed. Pity … though something odd strikes me. The face seems unfinished — slapdash, really. I’ve seen a lot of pictures in my time, but the rest is very well executed. It flatters her, though, I’ll say that, but then it would, wouldn’t it.’ He looked again. ‘Sam, she’s wearing the necklace — the Venetian glass beads —’
‘And the cross?’ Jones asked.
‘I can’t tell, the necklace is partly hidden by the bodice … it’s not her dress — it’s a costume. She’s wearing some sort of robe in green, a sort of medieval style — not what Flora Lambert would wear, I’m sure, and the shape of the neckline. Sam, he’s copied this and put Flora Lambert’s face in it. I saw all sorts of pictures like this in Italy.’ It was familiar, but he couldn’t recall where he had seen something similar. ‘I wonder —’
There was a knock at the door. Constable Feak stood there. ‘A body’s been found, sir, up at Clerkenwell, St John’s reservoir. Woman. Inspector Shackell sent —’
‘Drowned?’ Dickens blurted.
‘Seems so,’ said Feak.
‘Rogers and I will come,’ Jones replied. ‘Charles?’
That curious sense of Time’s curtain parted: unreal and spectral, a red sun hanging, making blood-stained streaks across the leaden sky; a sheet of water, just stirred by the wind, had a mournful look; a few trees on the margin and a group of figures looking down into the liquid. He had seen all this before.
Then the frozen picture cracked into pieces. Sam Jones, followed by Rogers and Feak, was striding ahead towards the figures, one of whom came forward. Dickens went on, shaking off that momentary chilling of the blood.
‘I was up at the police office on Lower Road when the report came in,’ Inspector Shackell was explaining to Jones. ‘Knew you were lookin’ for a girl so I sent word. Doctor’s here.’ He pointed to a kneeling figure.
They went to look at the body which had been pulled onto the water’s edge — a young girl in a grey dress, the bodice of which had been pulled off the shoulders to expose the thin chest. Her little feet were bare. The hair was loose and wet, the face colourless. She looked very young. Not Violet Pout, then, thought Dickens. She looked like a servant girl. Jemima Curd’s family were in Clerkenwell.
‘Who found her?’ asked Jones.
The inspector motioned. ‘This young man — he was fishing.’ The inspector’s voice was stern.
The young man stepped forward. He looked white and frightened. Well he might, thought Jones. No fishing allowed, but he would ignore that. Poor devil, he looked like everyone else in these benighted parts — half-starved. Clerkenwell was no stranger to poverty — and crime, especially murder, unless this was suicide — for the usual reasons — a child on the way, and no other recourse but the workhouse. He could almost sense Dickens next to him, longing for him to ask about Jemima Curd, but he would take his time.
‘Your name?’
‘Ned Orrey, sir.’
‘Do you know her, Mr Orrey?’
‘Niver seen ’er, sir, I lives over by Sadler’s Wells. I ain’t seen ’er afore, though she ain’t the first wot’s gone in there.’
Why should he know her? Like most poor districts, Clerkenwell had a transient population. The place was packed with lodging houses for all kinds of workers — jewellery, ivory, watch-making, engraving, knife-grinding. And then there was the Sadler’s Wells theatre where people came and went all the time: actors, musicians, producers, wardrobe ladies, wig makers — not to mention the audience. And there was Jemima Curd who might have been in Clerkenwell.
The doctor stood up, ‘Superintendent Jones.’
Jones recognised him from the infirmary at the Middlesex House of Correction. ‘Doctor Bennett.’
‘I’ve sent for the mortuary van — I’ll make a full examination in the mortuary, but I can tell you now that she did not drown. She was strangled. Look.’
Doctor Bennett pushed back the hair and they saw the sodden ribbon pulled tight around the neck. Dickens looked, remembering. Pulled from a canal because her rosary caught on something. Found in a water tank with her neck broken. Something dark is coming — so Madame Emerald had prophesied, looking at his palm. It had come. The red sun was sinking and the sullen water took on a black hue, deep and mysterious, and the wind rustled the grasses at the margin. He looked at the still white face of the dead girl. Her eyes were closed. Whose eyes had gazed into her trusting eyes and determined her end? What had she known that had brought her to this melancholy place and this death? It was Jemima Curd. He was sure of it.
‘She is naked under the dress,’ said Doctor Bennett. ‘I’ll examine her for any other signs of assault — it might be a rape as well as murder. The young man found her among the tree roots which go down into the water. That is why she didn’t sink.’
‘Why were you down there among the trees, Mr Orrey?’ Jones asked.
‘I ain’t touched ’er —’ Ned Orrey’s face turned even whiter — ‘Niver seen er — yer can’t —’
‘I am not accusing you, Mr Orrey; I just want to know how you came to find her.’
‘Fishin’ line caught — just went to free it an’ then I sees ’er, all tangled up. Coulda just left ’er but knows it wasn’t right —’
He could have, thought Jones; he was hardly likely to report the body if he had murdered her. ‘Give your address to the sergeant. You’ll be needed for the inquest.’ Jones turned to the doctor. ‘Doctor Bennett, I wonder if you would oblige me by sending the body to Doctor Symonds at King’s College Hospital? I have another case which might be connected so I should like him to examine her.’
Doctor Bennett acceded and promised to send his report to Jones — he would be needed at the inquest and was quite content for Doctor Symonds to make a more detailed examination. Feak was to wait with the doctor then go to make the explanations to Doctor Symonds. Inspector Shackell’s instructions were to get more men and make enquiries round and about the theatre and lodging houses, and he was to ask, in particular, if anyone knew of a servant girl named Jemima Curd.
‘You think it is Jemima?’ Dickens asked Jones as they moved away.
‘She is missing. It makes sense to ask about and we do know where her parents are so we’ll be off to the Holborn Union. We need to know when and where they last saw her, and to take the father to see this girl. Then we’ll know — and then we can think about what we do know.’
Mr George Curd’s dazed eyes wandered feebly and his breathing was shallow and weak. They had taken his clothes — burnt them most likely. He had been washed, but not thoroughly enough to rid him of the ingrained grime on his thin face and scrawny neck. His yellow hands like claws picked distractedly at the meagre coverlet. He would never be picking oakum, thought Dickens, as they looked at him. He would hardly be capable of answering questions.
‘Pneumonia,’ the infirmary nurse had said as they went into the ward where the sick who could not work for their keep were taken. He smelt the gin on her breath. Most of these workhouse nurses were illiterate and very often drunkards, but this one had a kindly face. The ward was a bleak sight with its rows of beds facing each other. It was cold, though there was an open fire. If you lay where Mr Curd was, you would freeze from the draughts from the cracked windows. Worse than anything was the smell: ammonia from a water closet nearby, the smell of sewerage, and of lives decaying. He hardly blamed the nurse for her gin.
‘Mr Curd,’ began Jones in a whisper.
The eyes, dark with pain, turned towards them, but there was no response.
Dickens took one of the restless
hands in his own. ‘I hope you are feeling better, sir, now that you are being looked after.’
The eyes looked at him, first in fear and then, as Dickens chafed the cold fingers, the expression changed to something more peaceful, and the other wandering hand stilled. Jones watched and waited, knowing it was no use asking about Jemima Curd. Mr Curd was following his daughter into the dark. He heard the breathing slow.
‘God bless you,’ Dickens murmured, and Jones sent up another prayer.
The eyes closed. There was only a slight change, and then, Mr George Curd, a wreck of a man who had endured only poverty and misery, died.
At least, thought Jones, he wasn’t alone. He put his hand on Dickens’s shoulder and they waited.
‘A poor, bare fork’d animal,’ murmured Dickens, ‘that is what he was, come in this world to weep.’
‘It was as well he did not know that Jemima is dead — the only hope that family had.’
‘It is cruel,’ said Dickens. ‘I suppose we must see these poor orphans — which is what they are since the mother is missing.’ The porter at the workhouse had told them that the mother had refused to come in with her children. She had been drunk and wouldn’t go where there was no drink. He had seen her stumble off. She had not been back.
‘We must, but what to tell them about Jemima?’
‘They must be told that their father is dead — I wonder if something might be done for them. This is not the place for them.’
‘Can I leave it to you?’ Jones asked. ‘I need to get down to Hemlock Court. Nolly Turner will have to identify her.’
‘I will. I’ll be careful about Jemima — I’ll see what I can find out from them.’
‘Don’t feel you must press the matter for my sake — we don’t know for sure.’
Dickens smiled at him. ‘You are a good man, Sam. I’ll meet you back at Bow Street.’
Dickens was taken to that part of the workhouse where the children were kept separated, told the wardswoman what had occurred, and asked if he might see the children.
She looked him up and down, appraisingly. ‘Relative, are yer?’
‘No, I was with Mr Curd when he died.’
The two children, Sarah and Daniel, were brought into a reception room. They looked uncomfortable in their workhouse clothes, made of rough material, but clean and neat. They were gaunt, however, old before their time, their yellow faces all bone, the childish roundedness worn away by hunger and cruelty. He thought of the drunken mother who had taken Jemima’s money and promised, no doubt, that the children would be fed.
Their eyes were without hope. It was no wonder. Dragged from what wretched home they’d known, trailed about the streets, abandoned by their mother, separated from the only father they’d known, parted from each other, stripped, scrubbed, de-loused, disinfected and labelled. And now, their sister was dead, too, probably.
They looked at him without interest. He was just another stranger come to look at them as though they were animals in a zoo. The girl was the elder, about twelve, he thought, the boy, nine or ten. They stood apart from each other as if they were strangers.
‘Sarah,’ he began, ‘I have just come from your pa.’
‘Is ’e dead?’
‘I am afraid he was very ill.’
‘Allus woz.’
‘You will be very sad, I know.’
She shrugged and looked away towards the window. What did it matter, he thought, to her? A father who had been able to do nothing for her.
‘Where’s Jemima?’ the boy asked.
‘I don’t know, I’m afraid.’
‘Pa sed she’d come fer us — telled a lie, a lie. A bloody liar, ’e is. Glad ’e’s dead. Wasn’t no good anyways. Liar, liar, liar…’
The boy howled; it was the cry of a stricken beast, but Sarah remained impassive. It was no good asking anything about Jemima. They had been here for several weeks and she had not been to see them. So where had she been? And where was she now? In Doctor Symonds’ mortuary?
Sarah stayed staring at the window. Her brother’s noisy cries had no effect. Dickens felt despair. There was nothing, not a thing he could do — no comfort in the world would pierce the carapace of that girl’s suffering. It was enough to break the heart and hope of any man.
He went away, pausing to tell the wardswoman that they knew about their father, and to give her some money.
‘Look after them,’ he said. She looked at the coins. He knew she wouldn’t.
Dickens walked back down into Gray’s Inn Lane, past the gate through which he had gone into to Mr Blackmore’s chambers to do his work as a very junior clerk, but it had been a start, better than the blacking factory in those days when he had been a kind of vagabond child, roaming where he would when his father had been with the rest of the family in the Marshalsea. How easy it was to fall. Only luck had kept the Dickens family from the workhouse, he sometimes thought. Little Dan Curd would not be a clerk in anyone’s chambers. Only Jemima might have saved them.
‘It is Jemima Curd,’ said Jones as he went in, ‘Nolly Turner identified her.’
‘Then there is very little hope for those two children, if any at all.’
‘They didn’t know anything?’
‘I didn’t ask. Sam, if you could have seen them, they were hardly children at all, hardly human. The death of their father had no effect — the girl, Sarah, simply shrugged her shoulders, and the boy screeched that his father was a liar. How Jemima emerged from that swamp of poverty and despair, I know not.’
‘Nolly Turner told me something of that. A childless sister of Mrs Curd took Jemima when it was clear that Mrs Curd was never going to look after the child — of course no one could prevent the coming of more children — there are dead ones, too. The aunt, a respectable body, made sure that Jemima had some education to fit her for service, but that girl had a good heart and she did not forget those useless parents and the two surviving children. She did what she could.’
‘And now someone has taken the little life of that loyal, generous girl — it wasn’t an accident, I suppose.’
‘It was not.’ Jones’s voice was grim. ‘She was dead before she went into the water. It was murder and I should like to know why.’
‘Someone wanted her out of the way.’
‘Violet Pout? Rolando Sabatini?’
‘Sir Neptune Fane?’
Jones looked at Dickens closely. ‘Why him?’
‘I heard something. I hadn’t time to tell you about the reception. Mrs Carlyle heard a whisper — that Miss Mariana Fane is not in the country with relations, but is being cared for in a private asylum at Hammersmith. I thought of Doctor Forbes Winslow’s.’
‘Asylum — you think she might have suffered some mental collapse?’
‘I think of Lady Fane’s alarm and fear when I asked her about her daughter. I think of Mrs Carlyle’s servant asserting that Miss Fane was sweet on Mr Sabatini, and I think of the disappearance of her lover and Miss Pout.’
‘And Jemima Curd might have known of the daughter’s madness.’
‘What a scandal that would be — perhaps Jemima Curd knew something about Mr Sabatini’s relationship with Miss Fane. Good Lord, Sam, suppose he had seduced her.’
‘Sir Neptune would go after Sabatini, surely — that’s maybe why he’s vanished. Murdering Jemima Curd, though, I don’t know. Still, I shall have to go to Wisteria Lodge. I must question Sir Neptune’s servants about Jemima — in the absence of her mother or, indeed, any new person to give information.’
Dickens’s eyes gleamed. ‘We could —’
‘No, we couldn’t, Charles. Jemima Curd, their former servant is dead. I go there investigating murder. That has nothing to do with Charles Dickens who came to ask about Miss Pout and was told that Sir Neptune could not help. If I took you, think how it would look. You have no right to be there. Sir Neptune is a powerful man — he would be sure to complain to the Assistant Commissioner, who will ask me what business it is of Mr Dickens. I
can hardly say that Charles Dickens heard gossip and believes Sir Neptune Fane to be suspect.’
‘No, I see that, Sam.’
‘I must tread very carefully — indeed, I quake to think how carefully, given what you have told me. We have no evidence — not even that Miss Fane is at Hammersmith.’
‘I have thought of how I might possess myself of such evidence. Dr John Elliotson, my particular friend —’
‘The mesmerist — is he to read Sir Neptune’s mind?’
Dickens laughed, ‘No, no — though he could. I daresay I could were I to get close enough to make my passes upon his noble brow.’
‘Don’t — I quake again. What have you in mind?’
‘A piece for Household Words on Dr Winslow’s excellent establishment, which advocates the gentle treatment of the insane. Dr Elliotson is also Doctor Winslow’s particular friend.’
‘I beg you, Charles, be discreet in the matter. No reference at all to Miss Fane.’
‘My lips will be as tight as sealing wax, but I may discover something in general and there may be records.’
‘Take care. I do not want the Assistant Commissioner ordering me to cease harassing Sir Neptune Fane about the matter of a former servant and prying into his private life in the process. Now, I must take Rogers and storm the citadel.’
‘I am bound for supper with a lady — the aunt of Mr Sabatini.’
‘A maiden aunt?’
‘Not exactly — a rather beautiful lady. I shall press her — ’
‘Do not, I beg you,’ said Jones, laughing.
‘Metaphorically, of course — on the matter of Mr Sabatini and Miss Pout.’
‘I doubt that Sir Neptune will wish to be pressed to my bosom.’
15: Superintendent Jones Asks Questions
Jones was early at Wisteria Lodge, hoping Sir Neptune would be at home. The tall footman said he would ask if his master would see the Superintendent after Jones had handed in his card. He and Rogers waited in the porch of Wisteria Lodge. Sir Neptune could hardly refuse — a public man with a public duty.