The Hoydens and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “And how do you propose she will do that?” Dickens asked in all innocence.

  “You and young Mr. Collins here are going to take her out on the town tonight, that is how,” Field answered with a mischievous flick of his crook’d forefinger to the side of his eye and a devilish grin commandeering the upturned corners of his mouth.

  “What do you mean by that?” Dickens was surprised. “You just said yourself that she was a wreck.”

  “Oh, we will paint her up and bolster her. Never you mind. It will be two fast gents out to the gay spots with their fancy whore,” Field said with a laugh, but then immediately turned grim, his usual self. “This Lane, he is a gambler. He does not know that Barsad has been taken. We can find him in Mayfair by night, I know it. The wench will be our stalkin’-horse.”

  “But will he not recognize her?” Dickens was applying himself to the problem.

  “Perhaps, but perhaps she can point him out before he recognizes her.” Field seemed perfectly happy with his plan.

  “I have a wonderful idea.” Dickens voice leapt. “We will dress her as a man. It is how she dresses half the time, anyway. It will be three gentlemen making the rounds. He will never recognize her.”

  Field smiled at Dickens’s enthusiasm. “Exactly,” he said, “I should have thought of it. We will catch him at his own game. Do you not see? That is all it was. The blackmail, the planned bank robbery, the murder, it all played into his hand. For this Lane, it was all nothing more than a game within a game within a game.”

  “And his game is almost over,” Dickens pronounced the plan set.

  “We will meet here at eight tonight,” Field said, tidying up the details. “Mr. Collins”—and he turned gleefully to me—“you are closest to this woman’s size; could you bring your tightest suit of clothes for her to wear, and bring Meggy as well, to dress her.”

  Unlike Dickens, I was less than enthusiastic about being so visibly included in this whole affair. The very things that so excited that madman Dickens tended to terrify me. All I could envision were dangerous fights, precarious chases, lethal gunshots. To my chagrin, I fear we, the amateur detectives, were off again.

  But Dickens was off to Newgate first. With a letter of passage from Inspector Field, he hurried to tell his beloved Ellen the good news. He spent the afternoon with her at the prison while I went home to my Irish Meg.

  The Face of the Phantom

  August 15, 1852—Night

  It was a rather unwieldy group that gathered at Bow Street that night. Indeed, there were so many of us that I feared we might look like a traveling circus going down into Mayfair to apprehend our villain. Of course, Field and Rogers were in charge, and Dickens thought he was. As for me, I was rather reluctant, as always, to embark on yet another dangerous nighttime adventure.

  Irish Meg had come along as directed to help Marie de Brevecoeur get ready for her work, but Florence Nightingale had also appeared out of the night to inquire as to her patient’s condition. She proved an especially calming influence upon the fragile Frenchwoman. Angela Burdett-Coutts was also present with Tally Ho Thompson in tow and serving as her bodyguard, still concerned for the protection of her bank’s reputation, I presume. And Sleepy Rob was loitering on the doorstep waiting to transport us and our charge down into the depths of Mayfair.

  My clothes were a bit baggy on Marie de Brevecoeur, but with a dexterity I had no idea that she possessed, Irish Meg tucked and pinned and belted them so that the woman made for a passable man. All ready, we embarked for Mayfair at about half nine. We purposely went late, when the various festivities of debauchery would be well under way.

  “’E goes to zee gaming tables at Kate Hamilton’s almost every night. We need look no furzer for him zan zere.” Marie de Brevecoeur seemed alert and committed to Field’s plan for finding our murderer.

  “Rob, can you find a Kate Hamilton’s establishment in Mayfair?” Dickens inquired.

  “If I can’t, I don’t desarves to be no London cabman,” Sleepy Rob replied in his usual confrontational tone, but there was the slightest note of surprise in his voice, which signaled that he knew full well where Kate Hamilton’s was and what it was all about, and he wondered what his two personal gentlemen were doing going to such a disreputable place. But Sleepy Rob well knew his own place, knew that his was not to wonder why, and certainly not to judge the destinations of his best customers. “Kate ’Amilton’s, it is,” he growled as we climbed in, and with a sharp crack of his whip in the air above his business partner’s ear we were off.

  We jolted to a stop on one of Mayfair’s darker, less populous streets. That is not to say that there were not street whores about and scattered gentlemen in Tilbury hats sporting thin summer sticks and stalking their night prey, but there was not the lusty press of some of the wider, better-lit Mayfair thoroughfares.

  The house we had come to a stop before was deceptive in its dimness. Unlike the blazing brothels of Park Street or Upper Grosvenor Street, with their lurid torches and lanterns gaily beckoning, this high house, set back from the street behind a black iron fence, was utterly dark in its upper storeys and most negligently lit on its small square porch. It was as if it did not want to draw undue attention to itself. Suspicious, however, in the face of this unobtrusive exterior, was the significant number of coaches drawn up in front. There must have been five or six others, their drivers smoking, their horses pawing at the dusty street. We were, clearly, not the first gentlemen to arrive for the evening’s entertainment. Somewhere behind us, in separate coaches, standing off like privateers but ready to move in at the first signal, were Field and Rogers with their coach full of constables and Thompson with his coach full of women—Angela, Irish Meg, and Miss Nightingale. These last were under orders to stand off completely until Lane was captured and in irons.

  As the three of us stepped down from the cab, an extremely dark-skinned man (whether Indian or African or of some South Seas origin I could not determine in the dim light) in formal evening clothes materialized out of the darkness of a large bush and peered at us through the black iron gate. He was above the average height of an Englishman and so broad through his neck, shoulders, and chest that he looked like a block of stone waiting for the sculptor’s chisel. He spoke not a word of greeting as we approached, and I found him quite threatening in both his bulk and his silence as he barred our way.

  “We are gentlemen, and we have been directed here to Mrs. Hamilton’s by Mr. Rossetti, the painter, to witness the evening’s entertainment,” Dickens addressed this dark monolith while reaching his hand through the gate and depositing a half crown in said gatekeeper’s palm.

  The man’s demeanor magically changed. His bright white teeth bloomed into a wide smile and he opened the gate for us.

  We escorted our charge across the dark lawn and climbed the tiny porch only to have the high front door swing open before us in the hand of another large, dark-skinned mute who ushered us down a short, dim hallway which ultimately opened into the large, well-lit casino. Well-dressed gentlemen crowded around the gaming tables and congregated at the bar, smoking, sipping champagne, and conversing in soft murmurs and hooting laughs.

  “Gentlemen, welcome,” the cool firm voice of a woman greeted us as we entered the casino. “I am Kate Hamilton and I welcome you to our gaming tables this evening. My barman and hostesses will be happy to accommodate you.” She delivered this rehearsed little speech with all the formality and confidence of the hostess of a fashionable dinner gathering. “I hope you all enjoy your evening, gentlemen, and remember, private performances can be arranged in the upper rooms.” With that parting invitation to further degradation, she demurely withdrew.

  This Kate Hamilton was a quite attractive woman of some five and thirty years, younger than Dickens, but older than I. She was dressed tastefully in a floor-length sky blue dress adorned with long, formal white gloves. Her hair was golden, her eyes a striking green, and her skin as pale and rich as the oriental carpet which adorned her
plush casino. She was not at all the desiccated bawd that I had expected.

  In discussing that evening later, Dickens remarked upon Kate Hamilton that “she was so businesslike and in control, so direct in her mastery of her place of business.”

  “Let us get a drink then, Wilkie.” Dickens turned to me and our silent companion.

  “Zere ’e is,” Marie de Brevecoeur gasped in a barely audible whisper, “at zee bar.”

  “Which one?” Dickens gently steered her by the elbow away from the bar to the safe spying place of a large pillar across the casino in a corner which was further protected by a large potted palm. Like three frightened explorers peering through the jungle growth at a tribe of savages whooping it up, we parted the leaves of the palm tree to identify our prey.

  Marie de Brevecoeur pointed out a bulky, mustachioed man sitting at the bar. He was in the company of four or five other mustachioed or muttonchopped or vandyked gentlemen all railing at two light-haired hostesses in their midst whom they seemed to have shanghaied from their serving duties.

  “Wilkie, I have him,” Dickens ordered. “Take the woman out and give her to Rob. Send him off with her as if she is drunk and sick, then come back. Field will see you and will cover the doors. Do not arouse suspicion. You are merely sending a drunken gentleman home. Return quickly; I will do nothing until you are back.”

  Faithful bulldog that I am, I hastened to do his bidding. When I returned, Marie de Brevecoeur safely trotting off in Sleepy Rob’s cab, but no sign whatsoever of Field and the Protectives, Dickens had infiltrated the circle of men around the two fair-haired whores. He was silently observing Mr. Peter Lane from a standing position at the bar just off that worthy’s right shoulder.

  At the very moment that I returned, the gruff Lane emptied his champagne glass, clapped it down on the bar, announced, “Enough of these whores, I am for play,” and stalked off to a large and noisy dice table on the far side of the room. Waiting a discreet moment, Dickens followed him along, stopping on the way to purchase a supply of gaming chips from a card dealer who was presently occupied with only two players. Dickens told me later that he did that in order not to draw attention to himself when he joined the crowd at the dice table. He was a marvel, always two steps ahead of the game. I followed along, of course, for want of anything safe to do.

  Dickens stationed himself directly across the dice table from Mr. Peter Lane, who was betting the various lines and numbers with the grim intent of the obsessive gambler. The croupier’s stick maneuvered the dice around the green felt expanse of the table until, finally, they arrived at our Mr. Lane’s station. I was watching him closely, as I am sure Dickens was, and when the dice arrived at his hand, a fire seemed to kindle in his eyes; his face came alive with the excitement of the risk and the game. He rubbed the dice lovingly between the palms of his hands, caressed them with his fingertips as if trying to feel their love for him, kissed them once before throwing them out upon that plush green field of chance.

  “Stop!” That loud shout shocked and utterly froze everyone around that table. “Stop the game. This gentleman cheats!”

  To my horror, it was Dickens whose voice had stopped time.

  Every single member of the thick crowd around that table stared at Dickens. Some must have recognized him.

  A heavy silence descended upon the entire gaming room.

  Lane had been frozen in midroll by Dickens’s loud order, the dice still balanced in his hand. His head came up to find his accuser as would the dangerous hood of a cobra poised to strike. “How dare you, sir,” Lane hissed at Dickens, almost quietly.

  “He changed the dice. Check them and you shall see.” Dickens paid no attention to Lane, but turned to the stunned croupier. “The man is a brazen cheat. He changed the dice.”

  “I changed no dice. I will kill you for this!” Lane, in his rage, flung the dice at Dickens and started around the table to get at him. Lane flung people aside as he struggled through the crowd, which parted in alarum at the murderous look on his face. Halfway around the table, however, Peter Lane stopped, stared hard at Dickens, looked quickly around the room at all the other people frozen in tableau looking at him, and seemed to come to some realization which his anger had obscured.

  “What is this? Who are you?” he slid the words carefully, suspiciously, across the table toward Dickens as if pushing them with the croupier’s stick. “I did not cheat. Why would you say such a thing? To provoke me? Who are you?”

  “A friend of your murdered wife, sir. Charles Dickens.” Dickens actually had the audacity to smile at him as he said it. Good lord, Dickens was a cool customer.

  A gasp of recognition and celebrity set heads nodding around that crowded gaming table as the two men stared each other down.

  I hoped against hope that Lane had no pistol at the ready, for the look of cold hatred in his eyes bespoke murder.

  “Damn you!” Lane burst out, but he knew that he was cornered. “Damn you!” he repeated, but his voice wavered in indecision. Dickens had drawn him out for certain, all the way to the end of his tether.

  Suddenly, that curse still on his tongue, Lane leapt back and, flinging people to the side to clear his way, fled the room.

  Dickens, who through this whole confrontation had never once blinked at that murderer’s rage, moved swiftly to my side.

  “Come on, Wilkie”—he motioned to me to follow as if we were merely returning to the theatre for the second act of a play—“we must drive him into Field’s net.”

  The man had disappeared down a dim corridor at the rear of the room. We made our way quickly through the stunned assemblage, and Dickens plunged into that hallway, giving no perceptible thought to the fact that there might be a violent, cornered animal waiting for us in the shadows.

  Dickens at a run traversed that corridor to its end, where we found a wooden door, conveniently ajar, as if someone had just recently passed through. It opened upon a sort of musty attic, a storage area whose center had been cleared to form a small makeshift waiting room. That open space in the center of the room accommodated a tall candlestick for the purpose of light, a nondescript overstuffed chair, and a small couch flanking a wooden table which held two pots filled with the butt ends of cigars. No persons were in attendance.

  Dickens took in the appointments of this scrabbled-together waiting room in an instant.

  “He is gone, Wilkie!” he fired back over his shoulder as he dashed across that cluttered space and disappeared into the darkness.

  I scuttled obediently after him, much less eager than he. Down a corridor between rough and shrouded shapes (old furniture, perhaps, or odd stored objects hung with sheets), a door stood open upon moonlight. Standing in that open doorway, looking out, was a woman. It was Kate Hamilton, the proprietress.

  When Dickens came up to her out of the darkness, she made a startled turn at the sound of his running footsteps, and then stepped forcefully into the doorway, blocking our egress into the moonlit courtyard.

  “How dare you!” she challenged Dickens as he rushed up. “What are you doing? This part of the house is not open to visitors.” And she attempted to block his passage through that doorway.

  There have been certain times throughout our long friendship that the unconsidered rashness of Dickens’s actions stopped me dead in my tracks. This was one of those times.

  He tossed that protesting woman aside as if she were no more than a string of beads.

  “Where has he gone?” Dickens shouted at the woman even as he was roughly pushing her out of his way and bursting through that door.

  That rear door opened upon a dark, cobblestoned mews bathed in ghostly white moonlight. As I stood in that doorway, stunned at Dickens’s violence, gaping at that woman thrown so brutally aside, the whole eerie scene, so provocatively moonlit, spread out in front of me like a strangely familiar panorama.* It all rushed toward me in a series of fragmented images like a Turner painting torn into strips. A hackney coach waited in the mews. Lane was, a
t that very moment, climbing into it. Dickens, with his arm upraised in a hail, was running after him.

  “Stop!” I heard Dickens shout.

  But I did not hear the rest because at that moment a terrible pain shot through my right leg and I toppled hard to the stones. Kate Hamilton had picked herself up off the ground and kicked me sharply in the shin.

  “Who are you?” She stood over me screaming. “What right have you got to break in here?”

  Fearing further retribution from her and smarting from the sharp pain, I rolled quickly away, picked myself up, and began limping painfully after Dickens.

  The startled cabman could not arouse his horses quickly enough. Dickens reached the coach and ascended its step before they could get under way. Limping as quickly as I could toward them, I saw it all play out as if time had slowed.

  “Stop! You are trapped,” Dickens shouted as he hung in the window of the coach just getting under way.

  Suddenly, a large fist shot out of the coach window and caught Charles flush in the face, knocking him backward into the air and down to the stones as the vehicle began to roll away.

  When I came up to him, Charles was still stunned from the blow and the fall, but as I knelt to tend to him he rolled over and sat up. Together we watched as Field’s dark post-chaise blocked the mouth of the mews and the cab was forced to pull up.

  Lane leapt out and tried to run, but Field was upon him in an instant and dashed him to the ground with his murderous policeman’s truncheon. The phantom was brought to bay.

  * * *

  *A similar scene, on a Thames waterfront street, as described in Collins’s first commonplace book, The Detective and Mr. Dickens, provided the backdrop for the climactic confrontation of the Ashbee case. This, perhaps, accounts for the familiarity to which Collins here refers.

  “Frilly Beggars and Frothy ’Ores”

  August 15, 1852—Night