Some fifteen hours after Lady Lugoson had been called to her daughter’s bedside, perhaps seventeen hours since her dinner party had commenced, Christiana Lugoson’s soul had fled her mortal form.
* * *
Charles walked through the apple orchard with Miss Hogarth an hour later, blinking in the weak January sunlight. She held her bonnet strings, attempting to keep the sides closely around her cheeks despite the brisk wind. They had refused the offer of the Lugoson family carriage for the brief journey, but his hat had already flown off once and in consequence bore a fresh streak of dirt along the brim. His clothes were stained with sweat and broth. Altogether, he looked and smelled like a man who had been cooped up in a death chamber for most of a day.
Across the road he could see workers in the market gardens, planting dormant fruit trees and pruning the hedges that squared off the orchards. The ten bells in the tower of St. Luke’s Church, a couple of streets away, tolled the late morning hour in sonorous fashion.
“I’d prefer to address remarks to you about pruning your family’s apple trees,” Charles remarked. “Anything but the dreaded subject.” He dared to take Miss Hogarth’s arm as they traversed a particularly muddy dip under a tree.
She thanked him. “But it does not seem appropriate.”
“I’m afraid not. Had you ever seen anything like Miss Lugoson’s demise?” Charles asked. The Hogarth family’s home came into view on the other side of the tree. A chill, not just from the wind, blew through him as he realized this private moment with Miss Hogarth might not come again.
“No. I’ve seen babies die, poor darlings,” Miss Hogarth said from behind the protection of her bonnet. He could scarcely see more than her nose. “But nothing like that. When my time comes, I sincerely hope it is more peaceful.”
“And not so sudden,” Charles agreed, letting go of her arm as she took half a step away, reminding him of propriety. “Do you feel ill?”
“Not at all, but I find that illnesses take a couple of days to spread within a household. As it is Tuesday . . .” she trailed off.
“Wednesday now,” he said gently.
“Goodness,” she said, stopping at the edge of the herb garden and turning to face him. “I’ve quite forgotten. I have never stayed up an entire night before.”
He smiled at the silly expression she made, though he was too tired to laugh. “Friday, then. We must check in with each other on Friday. Do write me, will you, so that I can be certain you are well?”
She put her gloved fingers over her mouth. “Oh, do you think Mother would approve?”
“You can give a message to your father on Friday morning,” he said. “To bring to the office.”
“Very well,” she said, taking a step in the direction of the house. “As long as my parents approve. Will you come in?”
“No, I had best be on my way, so that I can work at least a little today.”
“I hope you aren’t going to walk into London, after being awake all night.”
“It is far from the first time,” he said cheerily. “If I come across an inn with a short-stage ready to go I promise to climb aboard, but I can walk at least as quickly.”
“Oh, very well. If only I weren’t certain that Father had long since departed. Would you like anything to eat first?”
He would, very much, but dawdling would not impress the father of this pretty girl, and he would know how long Charles had relaxed in his family home if he entered. “No, thank you. That can be managed along the way, as well.”
“Then, this is farewell.” She pushed a trailing sprig of herb off the path back into its allotted spot.
He inclined his head. “As tragic as the night was, Miss Hogarth, please be sure that my regard for you is of the highest. You were a true angel to the Lugosons during their ordeal.”
“I wish it had made a difference.” She clasped her hands together. Her bonnet strings loosened and flew around her face, as if adding punctuation. She smiled suddenly. “You were an angel too, Mr. Dickens.”
He watched, bemused, as the slim figure dashed across the herb garden and went through the kitchen door. Only then, feet wet, entire body aching, he retraced Mr. Hogarth’s route of the night before, going east toward the city.
* * *
The closer Charles came to the Chronicle’s offices, the more his head ached, the more the old pain in his side flared. He remembered Miss Hogarth’s wise words about illness taking time to develop, but he had drunk the tea the Lugosons had provided during the night. If their kitchens had been befouled, he might have contaminated himself merely by drinking the beverage. Or if Miss Lugoson had a contagious disease, he might have contracted it.
These worries must be ignored, for he had a parliamentary debate to write up, and he was eager to begin on sketches for Mr. Hogarth’s new paper, his portrait musings about London. He stumbled into the reporters’ workroom and found his desk. Through a haze of pain, he assembled ink, pen, and paper. An under-editor, Thomas Pillar, came by some time later.
“I need that debate article, Charles,” Thomas said, depositing a slice of bread and butter next to his arm.
“Thank you.” Charles handed his papers to the kindly, late-middle-aged man and picked up the bread. “Though laudanum might have been more effective. I’m half dead today.”
“I didn’t want to say anything,” William Aga said from the chair behind him. His fellow reporter, a few years older, who received choice theater and crime assignments as well as the political, had turned his seat around. “What’s wrong with you? Did a stagecoach break down? You look like you spent the night walking home from Dover.”
Charles pushed away from his desk, devouring his bread while the under-editor sifted through his article. “The worst happened.”
“What do you mean?” William asked. He had the kind of mouth that always looked ready to tell a joke, and had an appealing, easygoing manner. Added to a straight, wide-shouldered frame and innate dress sense, it was no wonder he attracted glances and made new friends everywhere he went.
Charles’s voice had turned into a croak. “A girl died. I watched her life flee.”
“Where, on the street?” William asked as Thomas looked up from the article.
“No, in her bed. She is—was—a neighbor of Mr. Hogarth. Just seventeen. Struck down after dinner.” He described the course of the illness.
“I’m sorry to hear that,” Thomas said, a little green from the deathbed description. “But you have managed a decent article despite it all. I need to make a few changes, then send it to the printers.”
After the under-editor moved away, William pulled a flask from a hidden pocket in his coat and unscrewed the cap. “Gin. It will help.”
Charles took the flask and downed a mouthful. “I need about three of these.”
“Did the doctors have any theories?” William asked.
“I do not know. Why?” Charles drank again, the cheap spirits clawing against the back of his throat.
William sucked at his teeth. “It’s odd, but I’ve heard the same death described. I remember, it was the same day, too. Epiphany, a year ago. I followed the case for the Chronicle.”
Charles handed William the flask. The spirits couldn’t be going to his head already. “Have I heard you correctly?”
William nodded and drained the flask. “A seventeen-year-old girl, dead after a long night of mortal struggle, one year ago last night.”
Charles let his arms drop limply to his sides, a thought striking him in the strongest manner. “Two angels, gone to their reward, and it is our duty to know why.”
“Whatever can you mean?” William asked, secreting away his empty flask.
“The deaths of Christiana Lugoson and the girl you wrote about might be related.” Charles stared through the workroom, unseeing, despite the parade of reporters, editors, and secretaries moving around the space. “They might be.”
“It was pronounced heart failure, that death a year ago. A well-born girl
, as I recall. Died in her bed somewhere out in Kensington.”
“Not so far from the Lugoson house. I thought it might be bad food, or some kind of contagious illness.” Charles tilted his head from side to side, and heard a popping noise in his neck. “Not a heart problem. Did you see the body?”
“Yes, she was beautiful.” William clicked his tongue. “A waste.”
Charles stretched his legs and his arms, trying to loosen his stiff and exhausted body. “Lady Lugoson said the potato sauce tasted bad. I wonder if anyone else at her dinner party became ill.”
“You were invited to a titled lady’s dinner?” William asked, more than a touch of envy in his voice.
“No. I was at the Hogarths’. We heard screams across the orchard between the houses,” Charles explained, sitting upright again. “And went to investigate.”
“You have yet to stop investigating,” William said. “But Parliament calls. You have too much work to do to worry about this further. Maybe you can write a sketch about this girl’s life.”
“Yes,” he said enthusiastically. “I shall suggest it to Mr. Hogarth. A capital notion. I’ll write him a note and have one of the boys deliver it to his office, then get to work on my next article.”
“That is all? From you?” He laughed. “No plan for a crusade against the ills of aristocrats feeding their children sauce? Or a new bill to be introduced banning the deaths of all pretty young girls?”
“There must be some reform in the food supply or something similar I can write an article about,” Charles mused, pretending he hadn’t picked up on William’s sarcasm. “Something that can be fixed.”
William laughed. “Now there is the Dickens I know. Always with an angle.”
The conviction of truth made his voice ring out. “Lady Lugoson took us to Miss Lugoson’s death chamber for a reason. I must do this.”
Chapter 4
A couple of hours later, Charles still sat, his quill scratching busily on paper as he wrote up a review of a play he had seen a couple of days before, featuring a most unnatural murderer, a mother of three who had pushed her husband off the Battersea Bridge about fifteen years ago, back before the iron railings were added to the notoriously dangerous bridge. His brain only half minded the grisly material, puzzling unceasingly over the death of Christiana Lugoson. He’d found his sketch in progress tending very dark. It was time to give in to his impulse to find closure for the dreadful event at Lugoson House.
Setting his sketch aside, he took up a fresh piece of paper and began to detail the death scene he’d witnessed. When he had relived each excruciating detail, he went back and underlined the items that might lead to a decision on the cause of death. The truth was, he knew almost nothing about what Miss Lugoson had done before taking ill.
Next, he detailed what little he had heard about the death William had mentioned. What did he know? Both girls had been seventeen. They had died in their own beds, with family present. The progression of their illness was similar. None of this should excite him. Yet, something had struck William as so alike.
He pushed back his chair and rose to his feet, his ink-stained fingers disordering his hair. While he couldn’t trouble the Lugosons in their fresh grief, he could try to recover William’s old articles from last year. When he turned around, though, William had vanished, and he realized the workroom was nearly dark. Nothing but candles lit the space.
George Hogarth came in through the door as a couple of Charles’s fellow reporters departed for the night.
“Still here?” he asked, buttoning his thick winter coat. “Ye have the stamina of a soldier at the front.”
“Better, I hope,” Charles joked. “I am well fed. Mrs. Hogarth outdid herself last night.”
“I am glad ye think so.” Mr. Hogarth peered down at him. “Are ye well, Charles?”
“No, I have a dreadful headache.” He lifted his candle. “I think I have done enough for today.”
“Why don’t you come home with me?” the older man suggested. “We’ll give ye a good dinner.”
“I haven’t washed,” Charles demurred. “I’m not fit to be around your family.”
“Kate, ye mean?” Mr. Hogarth chuckled in a conspiratorial fashion. “Well, given what ye both experienced last night, she’ll expect you to be a bit wan. Let the girl nurse ye.”
Charles brightened at the name. “As you wish.”
They caught a short-stage that would take them most of the way. The fresh air stroked Charles’s headache away from his temples as they walked down Fulham Road an hour later, washing the scent of horse and unwashed coachman from his nostrils. At this hour, Lugoson House should have been brightly lit, as it had been the night before, but instead it had an air of doom and disuse.
“Poor family,” Mr. Hogarth said, as they passed.
Charles nodded. “Had you heard that another girl died similarly a year ago? William Aga reported on the case. He even saw the body.”
“What was the name?” Mr. Hogarth asked, his forehead creasing.
“I don’t know yet. I need to have the articles pulled from the archives.”
The Hogarths’ front door opened as they came up the walk. “If it isn’t Mr. Dickens,” Mrs. Hogarth said, her face creasing with pleasure. Her hair had fluffed up around her face. She must have been working over the fire or stove. “I’m so pleased to see ye again.”
“I am a stray dog brought home by your husband once more,” he joked.
“Well, come in. What a day ye’ve had. We’ll fix ye a nice meal, the girls and me, and ye will feel better.”
“I hope Miss Hogarth isn’t feeling the effects of the night too keenly,” Charles said. “How is she?”
“Very well indeed. She and Mary did the shopping this afternoon and left me to my babies.”
Miss Hogarth must have stamina equal to or even greater than his. He hadn’t paid much attention to her younger sister at Epiphany, other than to notice Miss Mary Hogarth had the identical rosebud lips of her sister but considerably darker hair. “Have you learned anything more about the Lugosons?” Charles asked. “Any contact with the household today?”
Mrs. Hogarth took their coats, mufflers, and hats. “I had a chat with our maid. She recalled that the late Lord Lugoson was a political man. Very active in the House of Lords.”
“I believe so. My impression is that his widow wants to be a political hostess again,” Mr. Hogarth added, as he replaced his shoes with slippers.
“Last night wouldn’t have put her back on the right footing,” Charles said.
Mrs. Hogarth pointed them into the dining room. “They aren’t a literary family, or a musical one. I canna imagine any connection will strengthen between us.”
“A theatrical family,” Charles recalled, as a number of children came into the room. One of the younger ones tumbled against a violoncello leaning against the wall in a precarious position. Last was Miss Hogarth, holding one of the babies, followed by her younger sister, Mary, with the twin.
Today, her ribbons were lemon yellow, freshening her face, though her gown was gray and worn and rather tight, as if she’d almost outgrown it. She obviously hadn’t been expecting outside visitors, but she smiled with generous ease when she saw him.
“I’ve brought our friend home again,” Mr. Hogarth declared. “Too scrawny. Needs another good meal in him.”
“Then come to the table, Mr. Hogarth, and let us all dine. We’ve waited for you.” Mrs. Hogarth took the baby from her eldest’s arms.
Charles’s eyes widened. Hadn’t Mrs. Hogarth fed the children yet? They ought to have dined long before now, but the entire large family came to the long table, as they had the night before, and they supped well on Scotch broth, cold beef, and potatoes. “Delicious,” Charles praised.
“Unlike what they must have eaten next door last night,” Mrs. Hogarth said with a shudder.
“I asked at the butcher’s today.” Miss Hogarth leaned forward. “And we don’t use the same one.”
“It was the potato dish’s sauce that was bad,” Charles said. “Isn’t that what Lady Lugoson said? So it would be bad cream, or butter.”
“Or flour.” Mrs. Hogarth rubbed her chin. “Flour can go bad.”
“I suppose ye could speak to everyone who was at the party, to see if anyone else became ill, but what good would it do? If they have a lazy cook or bad suppliers, it is no business of yours,” Miss Mary Hogarth added pertly.
“Not so,” her father chided. “We are newspapermen, always on the look for a story.”
“Will you ever be a lawyer again, Father, do you think?” the oldest Hogarth son, Robert, asked. He was just about a year younger than Miss Kate Hogarth, and seemed bright enough, though Charles wasn’t sure about his level of education.
“No, the news has been good to me,” Mr. Hogarth said. “What do ye say, Charles? Ye were busily working when I came to check on ye.”
Charles’s heart thumped at the sudden attention. He’d been musing over the fascinating way the tight fabric of Miss Hogarth’s bodice illuminated her assets. “I had murder on my brain,” he said.
Mr. Hogarth sat forward on his chair. “Ye think Christiana Lugoson was murdered? By whose hand?”
Charles blinked. “No, sir, I meant that I had been writing up a review of a murder play.”
“Could she have been murdered?” Miss Hogarth asked tentatively. “It was such a dreadful death. What if she was poisoned?”
“Good heavens, Kate,” the older man said. “She was a blameless lass. You must excuse my daughter. She is such a great reader that fanciful notions fill her head at times.”
“We don’t know much about Miss Lugoson’s character.” Even gently reared girls could be less than perfect. “Honestly, I would like to know more. Still, I want to suspect food poisoning.”
“And that other girl, Charles? Food poisoning there as well?” Mr. Hogarth said, echoing the main point of his concerns.
“What other girl?” Miss Hogarth demanded.
Charles recounted what William Aga had told him about the first Epiphany death. “Is it not suspicious? Another young girl? The same night?”
A Tale of Two Murders Page 3