Dickens and I said not a word.
I risked a guilty glance in his direction, but he silenced me with a tight-lipped glare.
“I’m sorry, Inspector Collar.” Field was all politeness. “But you have me at a disadvantage. Wot girl has disappeared, and wot are Mr. Dickens and me supposed to know about it?”
“Miss Ternan. She’s gone. And I knows all about her, and you and Mr. Dickens’s connections with her. There’s a private file at Central Station.”
I could not help glancing at Charles. His face was a total cipher. He was waiting, I am sure, counting upon Field to handle this crisis of credibility.
“Ah yes, Central Station, where the clerks buzz like worker bees.” Field sighed in resignation. “Yes, you are quite right,” Field confessed, glancing quickly at Dickens. “I know of Miss Ternan.”
“You know she is a murderess—”
“But I know no such thing.” Field stopped him right there. “She wos, indeed, a witness to a murder case some eighteen months past, and Mr. Dickens is, indeed, her guardian, and she is of the acquaintance of this murdered woman, but that is the all of it as I knows it.” Field delivered this speech with a calm equanimity that utterly disarmed Inspector Collar.
“Then you do not know where Miss Ternan has gone”—Collar’s voice was in full retreat from its accusatory belligerence upon entering—“and you have not interviewed her in reference to this particular case?”
“No sir, I have not.” Field looked him full in the face while delivering this denial. His whole mien bespoke that it would be unthinkable for one officer of the law to lie to another.
It was nothing less than a miracle that we had not yet had the opportunity to tell Ellen’s story to Field, whose straightforward denial had the immediate effect of reducing Inspector Collar to a succession of “hems” and assorted “haws” as he groped for a way to smooth over his unconsidered accusation of Field’s collusion in the case.
“Ahem, uh, considering the girl’s past record, and your, well, her, ahum, what I mean is…” A strained cough strangled in his throat. “Um, Miss Ternan has not been home for two days, ahem, and she happens to be a suspect in this murder at Coutts Bank. We have certain evidences that ties her to the case.”
“That is interesting.” Field feigned fascination. “Please, I am curious. Wot makes you think she is the one.”
“Yes, Inspector.” Dickens suddenly found his voice. “Please tell us. This is absurd. Miss Ternan could never commit such a horrible crime.”
“She wos suspected of doin’ one just as horrible once before,” Collar answered.
“Yes,” Field agreed solemnly, “but there wos no proof in that case. Wot makes you think she is guilty of murder now?”
“It wos her green scarf that strangled Miss Eliza Lane.” Collar showed Field his hand, extracting his winning card, that bright green scarf, from the pocket of his jacket.
Field flinched as if he had been dealt a blow to the chin.
“But she is neither tall enough nor strong enough to strangle a woman of such stature.” Dickens, speaking rapidly, in a passion, argued her case as if he were before a magistrate. His vehemence proved valuable as it temporarily distracted attention from Field’s momentary confusion and gave that worthy a chance to collect himself.
But before Collar could answer, we were all further distracted by the sudden entrance of Serjeant Rogers.
“The witness has signed, sir,” Rogers began, “and Mrs.—”
“Ah! Yes. Thank you, Rogers,” Field cut him off. “Release her. We knows where she bides. She’ll not get away from us.”
Rogers was caught up short by Field’s abruptness, but, without questioning, turned on his heel to do his master’s bidding.
Dickens exchanged a quick glance of relief with me. It signaled what was slowly registering in my own comprehension of the situation. Even though Field knew nothing yet of Nellie’s involvement in Eliza Lane’s murder or of Nellie’s whereabouts, he was already instinctively protecting her from the eager suspicions of Collar, intuitively colluding with Dickens and me in the harboring of our fugitive. I have never ceased to marvel at the acute perception of Field. He could read a situation faster than any man I have ever met. Without the slightest prompting, he seemed able to choose by instinct the right course of action.
“Wot wos that?” Collar asked offhandedly as Rogers disappeared out through the door.
“Oh nothing,” Field covered up the intrusion, “just a witness in another case. But Miss Ternan? I have heard nothin’ of any of this. Her scarf? Is she really gone, fled? It does not sound like her.”
“No,” Dickens broke in before Collar could answer, “it most certainly does not. It is not like her at all.”
He is protesting too much, I thought, but Collar, locked in his territorial battle with Field, did not seem to note Dickens’s vehemence.
“It is her scarf, quite so,” Collar hastened to answer. “Her name, ‘Nellie Ternan,’ and the words ‘Urania Cottage’ are sewn with white thread right here in the corner.” He handed the scarf over to Field. “And she never came home the night of the murder, nor last night, neither. Her housemates do not know where she’s gone. We waited all mornin’ at her house, but she never arrived.” His silent serjeant nodded violently in support of that fact.
“Perhaps she is just off visitin’ relatives in the country,” Field said, and then, as if some mischievous devil made him say it, with a quick flick of his crook’d forefinger to the side of his eye, he added, “her mother, perhaps.”
Dickens darted a look in my direction. It was all that either of us could do to keep from bursting out with laughter at Field’s cruel wit.
“In the middle of the night leavin’ for the country?” Collar countered. “I do not think so.”
“Ah, but she did not leave in the middle of the night.” To my horror, it was my own voice I heard.
“How do you know?” Collar snapped, as the company, including Rogers, who had just come back into the room, turned to stare at me.
“Because I know that she spent last evening, and quite possibly the whole night—she frequently does—with my private secretary, Miss Margaret Sheehey, whose rooms adjoin mine in Soho.”
“You saw her?”
“Yes, I did.”
It was not wholly a lie, but what horrified me was that I told it almost involuntarily. When I heard my own voice divulging information there was no need to divulge, I was sure it was someone else.
“She departed this morning with Miss Sheehey,” I added.
I glanced quickly at Dickens, and he was staring wide-eyed at me, whether in horror, or simply in surprise, I cannot say.
Field looked at me as if I were an idiot he would like to strangle, but that was often the way he looked at me.
“Do you know where she has gone?” Collar pressed me.
“No, I don’t.” With that, I was fully committed to lying. Swift images of being hung on the gallows in Newgate yard flashed in my mind’s eye. “They went out before I awoke this morning.”
Then Inspector Collar did a curious thing. He turned suddenly upon Dickens as if, perhaps, Charles had been his prey all the while.
“And Mr. Dickens, have you seen your young ward the last two nights?”
Dickens was startled, yet he did not hesitate. He, too, chose to lie.
“Why no, I have not. I have been with Mr. Collins both nights before retiring to my offices in Wellington Street, where I make my abode during the workweek in the city. My family, presently, is in Dover.”
“Ah yes, well, no help here it seems,” Collar said sourly as he wedged with both hands his square brown hat down upon his square bald head and turned to go. His man pivoted like one of the palace guards to follow him.
“We still wish to follow this case,” Field petitioned cheerily as they made their way to the door, “and be of any assistance that we can. If you could keep us informed…”
Dickens and I stayed back
in the bullpen as Field showed them out. When our eyes met, the guilt we shared seemed almost palpable.
“Well now, that wos a close one, were it not, now gents?” Field was deceptively jovial when he returned with a puzzled Serjeant Rogers in tow. “Does you two swells feel like tellin’ me just wot the devil is goin’ on here?”
We quickly told him almost all of it, if not the whole truth of it. We told him of Eliza Lane’s unnatural advances toward Nellie, of her taking Nellie’s scarf away with her that afternoon before the murder, of Nellie spending the night with Irish Meg, of our hiding her in Captain Hawkins’s Shooting Gallery. But the one thing we still held back was the most important thing of all, where Dickens and Ellen Ternan had spent the night of the murder.
He pondered the whole story for a long moment, then asked the inevitable question: “But that fool Collar says Miss Ternan did not come home the night of the murder in Coutts Bank. Where wos she that night?”
An oppressive silence closed over us like a thick fog. We seemed suspended there in time, as if the whole world were holding its breath.
“Why, she, she came home with Meggy and me that night, too.” Even as I spoke I felt the noose tightening as I mounted lie upon lie up to my own private gallows.
To this day, I do not know why I felt compelled to lie for Charles. Of course, I wished to protect him. For a Victorian gentleman of the stature of a Charles Dickens, the worst threat was to his reputation, the public image that his vast reading audience held of their great man. Married, a public figure, the moral voice of his age, it would be death to be caught in a hotel room with such a young woman, and an actress to boot. But there was more to it than that. He had given me my life. I had freely chosen to follow him everywhere, so it seemed only natural that I should lie for him as well. But the worst part of this was that in lying for Dickens I was betraying Field, and that was a dangerous thing to do.
Field seemed to accept my lie without further thought, and gratitude for it fairly beamed out of Dickens’s eyes.
“’Tis a gang of ruffians have done this,” Field declared, “all led by this French cove. First their aim wos at blackmailin’ Miss Burdett-Coutts, but then their aim turned to the robbin’ of her bank.”
“But then why was the Lane woman murdered in the bank?” It was Dickens’s turn to press.
“And why wos she dressed in men’s clothes?” Serjeant Rogers, who thus far had not participated at all in our deliberations, piped in.
“That’s it!” Field sharply rapped the back of his thick rocker with his forefinger. “That’s it, Serjeant. It’s not a gang of ruffians at all. They’re all women they are, all women in men’s clothes, except for our friend Frenchy with his magic ring and his disappearin’ mustache. He is the leader of the gang, I’ll wager me walkin’ stick.”
We looked at one another, each of us mulling the strangeness (and the logic) of Field’s scenario.
“We must talk to all of the women in that group.” Field was not dwelling upon the strangeness of this revelation, but rather planning our next step. “Meggy can help you. You two approach as many of the literary ladies as you can this afternoon. We must make quick work of it. Rogers and I will try to find the two who dress like men. It is these women will lead us to that night guard, Frenchy, I am convinced of it.”
“But what of Miss Ternan?” Dickens asked. She was never out of his mind.
There was an uncharacteristic tenderness in Field’s voice that rarely raised its head above his exceedingly rough exterior as he faced Charles: “You know, Charles, do you not, that you must give her up.”
For a moment my mind raced and I didn’t know quite what Field meant. Does Field know that Nellie is his mistress? I thought. Does Field mean that he must give her up? Or that he must surrender her to Collar? Of course, he meant the latter.
Dickens was speechless, staring sightlessly at Field.
“You know that the longer you keep her hidden, the more she looks like a murderess.”
Both Dickens and I breathed a collective sigh of relief. Of course Field was right, but the important thing was that he did not yet know the real facts of the case of Dickens and his Ellen. More surprising was the gentle tone of kindness with which Field spoke. For all of his murderous intimidation of the denizens of his world, at that moment Field was a friend. What I had come to realize was that their relation was not based solely upon utility, the using of one another for their own purposes, as it had been at the beginning.*
“I would like to find this murderer before Collar finds Miss Ternan,” Field continued, “but I don’t think it can be done. Really, the best thing is to give her up.”
“But…but they shall take her off to Newgate.” The strain and worry made Dickens’s voice waver. “They will charge her with murder!”
“Perhaps, but the scarf alone is not enough.” Field was trying to be reasonable with a man in love, which was akin to asking a gorilla to light your cigar. “I am certain you and Mr. Collins can concoct some story of her whereabouts. Tell Collar she wos off in the country visitin’ her mother,” he chuckled.
Even Dickens, who was listening to Field like a man staring straight up at the blade of the guillotine, had to laugh, but his mind was working at high speed.
“We shall get Jaggers of the Middle Temple,” Dickens said. “He will shield her from Collar.”
“Perhaps,” Field speculated, “or perhaps his presence right off will just make Collar more suspicious, inflame him to press harder.”
“But she is innocent.” Dickens’s voice was almost a wail of frustration. “She must be protected!”
Aha, Saint George to the rescue once again, I thought.
“Of course she is.” Field’s voice was all pacification. “I knows that, and you knows that, but Collar thinks she is his murderer…” Field paused for effect like an actor delivering a climactic line. “And until I can prove she is not, we need to keep Collar in hand. Do you not see, all we are doin’ is stealin’ a little time while I try to figure this whole affair out.”
“What do you mean?” It was all moving too fast for Charles to comprehend.
“Do you not see?” Field had turned up the heat of his persuasion. “If Collar has your Miss Ternan in hand, it will distract him from this case. With all the attention on the suspected murderess, it will keep the robbery and Coutts Bank out of the public eye.”
Dickens was not happy. Again he started to protest, but Field cut him off.
“Do you not see? Our investigation is well under way. If Collar thinks he has got his murderer, he will not be underfoot.”
Dickens seemed to collapse inward upon himself, to deflate like one of those huge festive hot-air balloons that we once observed floating over the park in Paris. He surrendered with a silent shrug of his hands. He was already dreading having to break the news to his Ellen.
Field never gave Dickens a chance to reconsider. He leapt instantly to logistics and timing. “Give her up to Collar at St. James Station tomorrow morning,” he advised. “That will give us at least a one-day lead on findin’ the real gang who did this. Tell him any story you want about her whereabouts. Then, later, go get your precious Jaggers to speak for her. Maybe he can keep her out of Newgate, but I doubts it.”
Dickens acquiesced with yet another silent shrug.
“Leave her at Hawkins’s place for today”—Field had subtly shifted into the giving of orders—“and go speak to those other women for me. We must find out all we can about this gang of women dressed as men or wotever they are. Meanwhile, I’ll make sure they cannot leave the city.”
With that, our discussion came to an abrupt end. Field nodded silently to Serjeant Rogers, who opened the bullpen door and stood aside for us to pass. In a mere moment we were outside in the heat of Bow Street.
“Oh, I don’t like this, Wilkie,” Dickens said helplessly. “We must find the real murderer or both Ellen and I are doomed. She at Collar’s mercy, I at the mercy of the Grub Street sensation-monge
rs.”
“Field will find them,” I tried to comfort him.
“I don’t like this, Wilkie,” he repeated, like a man in a trance. “Don’t you see? I love her and he wants me to put her in prison.”
* * *
*In their first case together, recounted in The Detective and Mr. Dickens, this unusual friendship had begun because Field realized that Dickens and Collins could gain access to places, such as the private gentlemen’s clubs and the private homes of lords of the realm, and gather information which he or his men could not. Dickens, of course, with his adventurous spirit, was more than happy to become Field’s agent in these investigations.
A Buried Secret
August 12, 1852—Early Afternoon
As we stood in front of Bow Street Station, Dickens fought to compose himself. He won out by shifting his concern to the business at hand, the tasks that Field had assigned to us.
“Wilkie, we shall seek out these women and interview them about this Eliza Lane, but our first stop must be Coutts Bank.”
Charles set our afternoon’s schedule without ever considering that I might be otherwise engaged. Without any thought to my preferences, he simply informed me of this as we were stepping into Sleepy Rob’s ever loyal cab, which had been waiting for us all the while.
“I promised Angela that I would keep her informed. She must be told of Ellen’s predicament, be warned of that hag Peggy Ternan’s presence back in the city.”
I, of course, offered no objection. In a sense, I was much like Sleepy Rob’s horse. Without any question, I went where I was directed. What rankled is that Dickens assumed no less of me, tugged at the reins with the easy assurance that I would follow his lead no matter where we went or at what risk.
Coutts Bank guards the Strand entrance to Trafalgar Square, looms darkly like Gibraltar over her straits. It is the royal family’s bank, a symbol of the stability of Queen Victoria’s rule and the power of England’s empire. It is a fortress of money, its stone pillars rising from the top of its wide stone steps to the base of its Corinthian roofline. And it is all governed by a woman, Angela Burdett-Coutts.
The Hoydens and Mr. Dickens Page 11