The Hoydens and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “Of course, Inspector, as long as he does not interfere with my movements in the course of business or intrude upon my privacy,” she answered.

  “Oh, Mr. Thompson knows better than to do that, don’t Mr. Thompson?” Field snapped at his familiar.

  “Aye guv. ’Course not. Miss won’t hardly know I’m here, she won’t.” He accompanied this declaration with that same mocking grin which called into question the sincerity of any word that maddening Harlequin ever uttered.

  Field was not amused by Thompson’s facetiousness. He chose, however, not to strike out at it with remonstrance. Instead, he did what initially seemed like a rather strange thing.

  “Mr. Collins”—he turned to me—“do you have the time?”

  Though it was a quite common, harmless request, it mildly surprised everyone because it had no relevance whatsoever to the discussion of this phantom which had hitherto formed the context of our conversation. Nonetheless, in politeness, I immediately moved to accommodate Inspector Field’s request. I reached for my gold repeater, which I wore on a gold fob that led into my right-side vest pocket.

  It was gone!

  My eyes leapt to Field’s face. A tiny grin pursed his lips, and I realized that he had known all along.

  Of course it was gone. Whenever I entered Field and Thompson’s company my watch tended to disappear like a handkerchief loaned at a funeral.

  “Thompson, wot time is it?” And all heads swiveled toward that rogue, who was at that very moment extracting my gold repeater from his coat pocket.

  “Half eight by this piece here.” He consulted my repeater as if he had no clue as to how it had made its way into his pocket.

  It was only a handshake and a slight jostling when I entered the room, I remembered. That is when he lifted it.

  I found Tally Ho Thompson maddening. He seemed to have reserved me as the butt of his favourite joke. This was no less than the third time he had stolen my watch, and although Field always made him return it, it was all turning into a familiar game which I no longer enjoyed playing.

  “I am sorry, Wilkie,” Field moved quickly to smooth my ruffled feathers, “but I told Thompson to do it. Just a little demonstration for Miss Coutts.” And he turned to that lady. “Your bodyguard is a very talented cove, Miss Coutts. He knows all the ins and outs of how the world works. He’ll take good care of you, he will, or he’ll have to answer to me.” And he shot a grim look at Thompson, accompanied by a punctuating swipe of his forefinger at the side of his eye.

  “I’m sure he will, Inspector,” Miss Burdett-Coutts laughed, a bit nervously, in agreement.

  “Now Thompson”—he addressed him as one would an erring child—“give Mr. Collins back his watch like a good bloke.”

  Thompson passed it over with yet another flash of that maddening grin.

  I took it back, vowing never again to wear it in his presence.

  “Thompson as Angela’s bodyguard is fine,” Dickens returned us all to the subject, “but what must we do to find the writer of these letters?”

  “That is exactly wot I intend to do,” Field said slowly and evenly, “but unfortunately this particular individual has not yet made a mistake, and, to my discredit, I have not been ready to catch this individual if this individual did make that mistake. That state of affairs, I assure you Miss Coutts, is about to end.”

  Not a soul in that room could fail to note the determination in his eye and the steel in his voice.

  “But I am not the only one who has been threatened.” Angela surprised us all with this bit of intelligence. “Miss Smith was accosted and cursed in the street last evening by a figure all wrapped and muffled in a greatcoat despite the heat.”

  Dickens and I looked quickly at each other. Could it be? Was it the same ghostly figure who had attacked Angela and whom Irish Meg had driven off?

  “And wot did this, ah, figure, say, do?” Field’s curiosity was piqued.

  “He called her a”—Angela’s voice caught for but the briefest instant—“a whore, and he said she would die like all the other whores.”

  “Duly noted,” Field answered. “Perhaps it means something in this affair, but men call after women in the streets of London every night, chase after them, strike out at them.”

  “But why wearing a greatcoat in the middle of summer?” Angela protested.

  “It is curious,” Field conceded.

  I could not help but think that he was merely humouring her.

  “We shall look into this as well,” Field hastened to assure her.

  “So how are we to proceed, Inspector Field?” Angela asked in her soft, composed voice.

  “Thompson will be always nearby. He knows wot to do. As for these letters, they have been delivered to your house and to the bank. We will be ready when the next one arrives. Your bank guards and all of your clerks on the bankin’ floor will be told wot to do to catch the messenger. Your house will be watched. We will be ready if this person makes a slip.”

  Field completed this business with assurances to Angela that he would concentrate all of his energies toward finding this phantom.

  She left with Thompson in tow.

  At that, Dickens and I bid Field and Rogers good evening.

  Out in the street, however, Dickens exhibited an agitation which I knew had only one cure.

  “We must walk, Wilkie,” he declared. “This is all too disturbing and I fear there is even more to it.”

  “Charles, what is it?” I asked as we turned out of Bow Street and entered the teeming streets of the West End. He waited to answer until we had passed through the Strand and were well on toward the river.

  “Who could be sending these letters?” I prompted him as his long legs drove us along.

  “Oh, Wilkie, there are so many possibilities.” And with that cryptic remark he actually quickened our pace, lost in thought, as if trying to decide whether to go on, to divulge even more disturbing information.

  I always find it amazing how, in looking backward, one remembers things that only prove relevant in the context of future events. That night after the murder and the robbery at Coutts Bank, as I lay plagued by my waking dreams, what Dickens had told to me weeks earlier suddenly made sense. I realized that I had taken an unsuspecting hand in his undoing.

  “What is it, Charles?” I finally asked, rapidly losing my breath as I tried to keep up with his breakneck pace on our forced march toward the river. “Stop, and tell me what has gotten you so upset.”

  He pulled up short and turned to me, a look of pain crossing his face like a dark cloud.

  “It’s Nellie, Wilkie. I fear she may be involved in all of this.”

  “But how?”

  “I have learned from actor friends that her mother has returned to the city.”

  “My God!” I gasped. “Has she approached Miss Ternan?”

  “No. No.” He waved me off. “And I do not think that she will. She knows that Nellie is well protected, and who her protectors are.”

  “Do you think that she is the author of these threatening notes?” I felt that I had almost caught up with Dickens’s headlong flight either toward or away from the truth. Of course, as usual, I was still lagging quite far behind.

  “Who knows?” He shrugged his arms in exasperation. “That hag is capable of anything. But no, that is not the worst of it.”

  By now we were stopped dead beneath a lone streetlamp on some dark cavernous street of Thames-side tenements somewhere between Blackfriars Bridge and the Strand.

  “And what could be worse?” I pressed him.

  He started back as if I had struck him a blow to the face.

  “Oh, Wilkie, she has done so well, become whole again after the horrors of that nightmare. I must protect her, can you not see?”

  “Of course, yes, protect, yes, I see,” I stammered.

  “Certainly you have noticed my feelings for her. I cannot drive her out of my mind, Wilkie. She haunts me.”

  None of us then were ever
comfortable in the presence of such personal emotion. We were such a close and careful lot, and none was ever more guarded than Dickens. Yet here he was confessing to me his most private feelings.

  “Good God, Wilkie, I think I am falling in love with this girl.” He was almost pleading with me now in a pitiful and helpless way as if he wanted me to rescue him from this torment. “Do you see what I have gotten myself into? I am cursed. I love her. There, I have said it. Oh, Wilkie, she is all that I can think about.”

  “But Charles, I—” But he would not let me intrude upon the intensity of his feelings.

  “My only comfort is in motion, Wilkie, you know that.” His fervent argument raced in like the night mail. “Yet on this, I have been standing still, untracked, for more than a year. It is maddening, Wilkie, can you not see?”

  “Yes, Charles, I do see. I think I see.” But again he ignored my stammer of incomprehension and plunged forward desperately. He strode like the writer he was, desperate to get the words down on paper before his inspiration fled. I realized that for the last year he had been working on two complicated—good lord, labyrinthine!—works of fiction. Bleak House had become the toast of London. His impossible love for Ellen had become the torture of his soul.

  “Nemo was the lucky one, Wilkie. He died and no one ever knew he was gone.* Me, I don’t know what to do. I love her and I cannot have her. If I could have her, what would I do with her? If anyone knew that I loved her I would be hooted about town like a madman. Yet I love her, God help me, and there is nothing I can do about it. Oh, Wilkie, what under heaven am I to do?”

  It was only then that my head cleared and I realized why he had chosen me to tell. It was only then that I realized the terrible torment he was in. His love for Ellen, his concern for, yet aversion to, his wife Kate, his worry for the children, the oppression of his public image, the censure of his age, all of those persistent furies dashed about his mind, tearing at his sanity. What Dickens knew, and I realized, was that he was one of the most visible men of his time and thus could never afford the luxury of being himself. Nonetheless, at that moment, he had chosen to be himself to me, and I knew, instinctively, that if I was ever to be truly his friend I must help him.

  “If you love her, Charles”—I felt as if I were speaking in a dream—“then you must have her.”

  “I know, and it terrifies me.”

  These weeks later, lying there staring up at the ceiling in the darkness of that long night of the day the murder was discovered, I wondered if my well-meant advice had played a major part in causing the predicament that he and his beloved Ellen now found themselves in.

  * * *

  *Nemo is a mysterious character who dies early in Bleak House.

  On the Run

  August 12, 1852—Morning

  I lay awake thinking back upon all these things until day broke. Irish Meg and I were awake long before Ellen Ternan. We were both ravenous and soon found ourselves facing each other across our dining table with all the fragments of our meagre pantry spread in disarray between us. The remains of a loaf of bread, a small rotting parcel of cheese, some broken bits of roast, a pitcher of water, a pot of mustard, and a small cabbage had been hurriedly assembled. A pot of hot tea was brewing at the hearth.

  “I tell you, Wilkie, I wanted to scratch her eyes out last night,” Irish Meg opened our colloquy, “and now she’s dead. I don’t hardly believe it. She threatened every woman in that room. Any one of them could have killed her. I didn’t really care wot Liza Lane said about me, but she wos so hateful to the others. Miss Angela wouldn’t hurt a flea and just wants to help other women, and Nellie hasn’t done anything wrong.”

  “This Eliza Lane, she said terrible things about everyone. How did she know all those things?” My curiosity drove our conversation. “Did people talk about their private lives that openly in your meetings?”

  “No. Not really. But people can know things about all of us just by watchin’ close. But she seemed to know everything. It makes me so angry. Wot I wos in the past seems to haunt me like some phantom.”

  “What do you mean, things can be watched?” I asked in all innocence.

  “All you has to do is listen to me talk and you knows I ain’t from the same company as Miss Angela or Barbara Smith. I give myself away, Wilkie. But we’re not the things Liza Lane said we are. Women shouldn’t say such things about other women. Her truth’s all twisted, it is.”

  “Twisted?”

  “I don’t know. She wosn’t like that in other meetin’s, all violent and agitated. But the look on her face this time…like she wos under some spell, her eyes all blank. Strange!”

  A long pause ensued as we picked over our morsels of food and digested our thoughts.

  “Wot are we to do, Wilkie?” Meg demanded, as poor Nellie wandered into the pantry rubbing her eyes and looking as forlorn as if already condemned to the gallows. We both turned to stare at her, somewhat embarrassed that she had caught us talking about her in her absence. But Nellie seemed unaware of what we had been discussing and joined us at the table.

  I tried to think of something to say, some solution to Nellie’s (and our) predicament. Her scarf, her whereabouts the night of the murder unaccounted for, her past—sooner or later all of those facts must surface in this case and demand explanation. I knew that she could not remain with Irish Meg and me in our rooms hiding out. She must return to her normal pattern of life, or else the appearance of guilt and flight would surely condemn her.

  “Nellie, you must go home.” I finally broke the awkward silence. “You must not allow the Protectives, this Inspector Collar, to suspect that you are trying to avoid him. We must not invite unwholesome speculation. We must gain some time until Field and Dickens can find the real murderer.” It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Collar appeared a rather slow-witted policeman, certainly not a match for the redoubtable Field.

  That seemed to settle it. For once Irish Meg seemed willing to abide by my advice. Poor Nellie was so confused that I am convinced she would have done anything that anyone suggested. The women combed and dressed themselves for going out. I performed a rudimentary toilette in the pantry and changed out of the shirt I had slept in. Sleepy Rob,* who had become a morning fixture on our street, almost my (and Dickens’s) private driver, was dozing on the box of his double hansom at our very doorstep. I roused him with a sharp tap of my stick to his wheel and directed him to Miss Ternan’s lodgings.

  I certainly could not have foreseen what awaited us in Macklin Street. As we turned the corner into that thoroughfare, I noticed a black Protectives post-chaise occupied by two men, one, the driver, on the box, the other sitting waiting in the carriage, pulled up directly in front of Miss Ternan’s doorstep.

  By sheer reflex, whether out of guilt or fear or some unaccountable protective instinct, I swiftly stuck my head out of the opposite window of our cab and ordered Sleepy Rob to “Drive on” while simultaneously pushing, rather roughly I fear, Miss Ternan to the floor out of sight.

  It was Inspector Collar and his man sitting in wait upon Miss Ternan’s return. As we drove by on the opposite side of the street, a bright green scarf of fabric being pulled and knotted in Collar’s hand caught my eye like sunlight glistening off the barrel of a pistol.

  I was horrified at what I had done. Meggy and I were now officially harboring a suspected murderess. My immediate sentiment was to turn back, to give her up, but I knew that Irish Meg would never allow it.

  “Oh, Wilkie, that wos close,” Meg exclaimed.

  “Oh God, they know.” A dark cloud of despair passed over Miss Ternan’s face, and I was sure she would once again burst into tears, but she did not.

  At the end of the street, I leaned out the window and directed Sleepy Rob to drive us to Wellington Street and Dickens.

  * * *

  *In the affair of “the Medusa Murders” recounted in The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens, Sleepy Rob the cabman had played a pivotal role in saving Dickens from harm.
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  Two Gentlemen and Their Concubines

  August 12, 1852—Morning

  By not so striking a coincidence, at the very moment that we pulled up in Sleepy Rob’s cab at the Household Words offices in Wellington Street, who else but Dickens should be disembarking from another cab in front of the building. Before we had even extracted ourselves from our cab, Dickens was charging toward us.

  “Where have you been?” he scolded, as if we were errant children late arriving home from school. “I have been searching for you what seems the whole morning. I have been to both Macklin Street and Soho.”

  “We were at my flat in Soho,” I attempted to pacify him.

  “I was there but a short time ago.”

  “You must have just missed us,” I assured him. “And Collar is—”

  “Waiting for Nellie in Macklin Street. Yes, I know,” he finished my sentence for me. “That is why, to warn you, I have been tearing across the city this morning.”

  “Oh!” My mouth, a moment previous so full of news, dropped.

  “Oh?” Irish Meg echoed.

  “Oh, Charles.” Miss Ternan ran straight into his arms, buried her face in his chest, and clasped him tight right there in the public roadway in the bright sunlight for all of London to see.

  He held her close for a long moment, like a father comforting his frightened child, but then pushed her away.

  “We must not linger over this turn of events.” Dickens spoke quickly in the desperation of the moment. “Inspector Collar is perched like a vulture waiting to carry Nellie off. We must hide her, then we must go to Field.”

  “But where, how?” I stared dumbfounded at Dickens with my hands stretched out in a shrug of helplessness.

  He pondered our dilemma a long moment.

  I became acutely conscious of our vulnerability to prying or suspicious eyes, the four of us, standing there in bright daylight, in the public way, discussing murder.

  Irish Meg was waiting, impatiently I am sure, with a look that fell somewhere between fear and frustration, for us men to decide.