“He’s dead!” shouted Hoysradt.
Although Charles Dickens had often written of death and the dead, those corpses were fiction whilst this was reality: Dickens had such a horror of the dead that now he instinctively recoiled from the bearded man on the floor. Yet he watched from a distance, morbidly fascinated, as George Putnam knelt and pushed aside one portion of the dead man’s beard, unbuttoning the man’s stiff collar while placing two fingers of his right hand against the bared throat.
“There’s a pulse. A faint one,” said Putnam. “This man’s still alive, but just barely. He wants a hospital, quickly.” Putnam started to unbutton the man’s coat, then shuddered and quickly closed the garment. “Lord God! He’s all over blood! The lining of his coat is quite soaked with it.”
Dickens suddenly discovered that he had been holding his breath. Now he expelled it, relieved that the dead man was not dead after all. As Putnam held aside the stranger’s beard, Dickens observed that there was something about this stranger’s face – something out of the common – that made him approach, and take a closer look.
The bearded man looked familiar, and Dickens remembered him as one of the more than nine hundred Philadelphians who – less than an hour earlier – had pressured him for a handshake. It was only this man’s unusual and prolific beard – looking as if a beaver had taken up lodgings in his face – which caused him to stand out in Dickens’s memory. Now, examining the bearded man again, Dickens noticed something so obviously wrong as to cause him to wonder that he had not noticed it previously.
“Putnam! This beard is false!” With a swift movement, Dickens snatched the jet-black beard from the unconscious man’s face. It came off easily, leaving behind only some stubble of a darker and more natural hue. In his teenhood years and early twenties, Charles Dickens had participated in amateur theatricals, so he knew of several spirit adhesives suitable for attaching a crepe-hair beard.
Now, Dickens felt a sharp peculiar thrill as he recalled his discussion with Edgar Poe, and Poe’s tales of detection. Here was a true mystery: why would a beardless man disguise himself so elaborately? And was his collapsion in this place mere coincidence, or something larger? With mounting excitement, Dickens saw that – by following Poe’s rules of observation and deduction – it might well be possible to unwrap this enigma.
A negro pageboy had arrived, in the hotel’s livery. Red-faced, Hoysradt gave this youth his instructions: “Lock the door, then fetch a policeman. Tell nothing to anyone.”
As the pageboy hurried away, William Hoysradt glanced nervously at the unbearded man, then towards Dickens and Putnam. “Gentlemen, I regret your involvement in this matter. This man before us is no common man of the crowd.”
The fastidious Dickens, unaccustomed to having his neckcloth wander loose from his throat without a tie-clasp, tried to tuck in its ends. “Explain yourself, sir.”
Hoysradt gestured towards the unconscious figure. “I know this man. Rather, I have met him twice, and read of him several times. After reading about him, I never expected to see him again. He is Hosea J. Levis, head cashier at the Schuylkill Bank in this city. Last year, he embezzled and diverted more than a million dollars from the bank’s funds. It caused a plague of bank failures: the Moyamensing, the Merchants, and most particularly the Second Bank, which stands not twelve yards from this hotel. Mister Dickens, as you are a foreigner, you may not appreciate what every man in America knows: the failure of the Second Bank of the United States thirteen months ago triggered a nation-wide panic, which even now . . .”
At that moment the pageboy returned with a uniformed constable, whom Hoysradt clearly recognized. “Officer Whisner! I’m glad it’s you who’s come. Good work, lad.” This last was addressed to the pageboy.
The policeman Whisner was already examining the unconscious Levis. “Is it syncope, d’you think?” asked Putnam.
“Not unless syncope carries a dagger.” The policeman lifted the flap of the unconscious man’s coat, pointing to a tiny puncture in his shirtfront, directly above the heart. “This man’s been stabbed. And not by accident.” Then, as if noticing the victim’s face for the first time: “Sam Hill! It’s Levis!”
“You know him, I take it?” asked Dickens, moving nearer as his curiosity overcame his aversion for bloodshed.
“You take it wrong,” said Officer Whisner. “I never met Levis, but I know his face from the handbills and ‘Wanted’ posters. Got one here in my tunic.”
“Have you any idea who would stab Hosea Levis?” Dickens asked.
The American policeman gave him a sidelong look. “You just blow into town, mister? Would you like a list of every person who’d want to stick a snickersnee into H. J. Levis? Sure! Got a Philadelphia street directory?”
George Putnam, with his customary discretion, drew Dickens aside. “Sir, I’ve read about this Levis fellow. He caused the wholesale failure of America’s national banking system. His embezzlements from the Schuylkill Bank led to the exposure of irregularities at the other banks. One large theft cascaded many more discoveries. The scandal transpired in February 1841. It grew worse a month later, in March, when the Americans inaugurated a new President – Mister William Harrison – who did not enjoy the trust and reliance of the banking establishment. The financial unease grew still worse in April, when President Harrison died abruptly after only thirty days in office. America’s gold and silver coinage are sound, but most of the Yankee banknotes are no better than . . . well, sir, pen-wipes.”
“I’ve had an eye out for this here jasper,” said Whisner, kneeling over the insensible figure. “I recall there were reports that Levis got arrested in Kentucky last year, but those turned out to be false rumours. If a sawbones can get Levis patched up until he tells us where he’s got the shin-plasters salted away, then . . .”
“Shin-plasters?” Dickens was uneasy with American slang. “D’you mean, the stolen funds?”
Whisner nodded. “Just when the banks are starting to calm down, and making specie payments again, this had to happen. A million dollars is a lot of money for one man to spend; I reckon Levis has still got most of it hid.”
Charles Dickens felt a prickling of the hairs at the back of his neck. This embezzlement could be the plot of his next serial! His imagination already weaving the threads of his fictional tapestry, Dickens mentally relocated the embezzlement to a British bank – to be of greater interest to his readers – and he was translating Hosea Levis into the disowned son of an English merchant who . . .
“Mister Dickens, sir.” George Putnam was gently shaking his arm. “Please. The last thing we want is to get embroiled in this crime, which is clearly a strictly local act of revenge. Need I remind you that to-morrow morning we leave by steamboat for your speaking engagement in Baltimore? Further, there is the event which you had asked me to arrange for you this afternoon. The tour of the Penitentiary?”
For a moment, Dickens did not grasp the meaning of his secretary’s words. Then he remembered: yes, he had commitments elsewhere, and no time to linger in this place to solve a crime which possessed no want of suspects. With a sigh of regret, Dickens began to excuse himself, when the flapping ends of his cravat reminded him of another lapse. “My tie-pin! I say, constable . . .”
“Yes, Mister Boz?”
“My tie-pin appears to have vanished. Perhaps stolen by one of the nearly one thousand strangers who passed close to me this morning and shook my hand.”
The constable made a low whistling sound. “One thousand! Mister, that sure narrows down your list of suspects.”
“Perhaps I can narrow it,” said Dickens, ignoring the policeman’s sarcasm. “I have observed the criminal mind closely enough to notice that a man who embezzles a fortune – as this man Levis has done – all the same has no scruple to prevent him from committing thefts of a far more petty nature. If this Levis stole my tie-pin, it might still be on his person.”
“Might be, but it ain’t,” said the American policeman, who had alread
y emptied Levis’s pockets, and was now spreading their contents on the hotel’s carpet. “According to these here calling-cards, this Levis jasper has been living under the name John Riggs. I can put that down in my report as his name, for now, and sort this out later. Mightn’t be a good idea to put round that Hosea Levis has been stabbed.”
The negro pageboy, displaying commendable initiative, had evidently summoned medical assistance without instruction to do so: Dickens had not seen him leave, yet now the liveried boy returned with two stretcher-bearers, who straightaway attended to the body on the carpet.
Dickens felt a plucking at his arm: it was Putnam again. “We really must leave, sir!” For a moment, it occurred to Dickens that perhaps the fellow Edgar Poe should be given a chance to solve this crime. His talent for deduction was well up to the task, and Poe had the advantage of being a resident of Philadelphia.
Whereas Dickens was merely passing through, and had other engagements. As Putnam was reminding him, he had an appointment within prison walls . . .
The Eastern State Penitentiary is now, in this year of Our Lord 1842, the largest and most expensive building ever constructed in the United States. It stands in the northwest outskirts of Philadelphia. It is designed, built, and overseen so as to conform to the new method of penal incarceration known as the Pennsylvania System, which condemns every inmate to silence and solitary confinement for the span of his or her sentence. Prisoners in transit through the building – because they are new arrivals, or more rarely because they have been reassigned from one cell to another – are required to wear a tarred burlap hood in the prison’s corridors, so as to remain blind and mumchance while under escort.
Charles Dickens – obsessed with prisons, their inmates, and their management – had expressed a desire to visit this wondrous new penitentiary. On the afternoon of March eighth, he was escorted through the prison by its assistant governor Frederick Vaux and a warden, James Brodrigg.
The entrance to the Penitentiary stands in Coats Street. The high outer wall, completely surrounding the prison, is entirely unconnected to any structure housing the inmates. As Dickens stepped through the massive gate, expecting to see dank hallways, he was pleasantly surprised to observe a spacious garden occupying the grounds between the cell-blocks and the outer walls. Mr Vaux explained that trusted inmates who had earned the privilege were assigned to tend this garden, but were forbidden to speak, or to make eye contact, or in any way to acknowledge one another’s existence, while in the open air.
At the far end of the garden, Dickens and his escorts passed through a wicket into the main building. Here there was a corridor leading into a large circular chamber. Eight corridors – including the one by which they had arrived – radiated from this circular room, at intervals of forty-five degrees of arc. Finding himself at the nexus where eight radii converged, Dickens was strangely reminded of an octopus, with its tentacles splayed forth in eight directions. Then a more accurate image stirred within his intellect: this prison was the great Panopticon which had been conceived and designed in England by the liberal reformer Jeremy Bentham. Never constructed in Britain, here was that prison brought forth to reality in brick and limestone and flesh.
For there were prisoners in these walls. Seven of the octopoid corridors – all of them save the entranceway – were flanked on both sides by a long row of low cell doors, with a number on a brass disc above each. That was the lower tier. A flight of stairs at the base of each tentacle led to an upper gallery of cells, nearly identical to the lower.
Mr Vaux and Mr Brodrigg had promised to introduce Charles Dickens to some of the most unusual and least violent inhabitants of the prison. Further, these prisoners – normally required to toil in silence, or silently meditate – would be privileged to converse with the distinguished visitor Mr Dickens: to answer his questions, and to question him in turn if they so wished.
Each cell in the Eastern State Penitentiary has two doors: the outer of sturdy oak, the inner of iron grate-work; this inner door has a trap opening through which food and laundry may be passed. Each inmate upon arrival is issued a Bible, a slate and a pencil, pen, ink-horn and paper. There is a small shelf in each cell for the prisoner’s washbasin, cup, plate, soap and razor: prisoners who cannot be entrusted with a razor are confined elsewhere. Dickens was astounded to discover that each cell had its own water-pump, so that the prisoners could obtain water freely, disposing of excess via a sluice in the floor. Each cell contains one bedstead, designed to turn up against the wall when not occupied, so that the prisoner has more space for his loom, or bench, or wheel, or whatever kit defined his labours.
The first inmate whom Dickens interviewed was two-thirds’ through a sentence of nine years for the crime of translating: receipt of stolen goods, and their conversion. This man quietly asserted his utter innocence of the charge, yet Mr Vaux had informed Dickens that his current sentence marked this prisoner’s second conviction for that offence.
The translator wore a paper hat of his own ingenious design, and was pleased when Dickens complimented him for it. Over the span of many months, this inmate had constructed a sort of Dutch clock out of various discarded objects, with a vinegar flask as its pendulum. He proudly informed Charles Dickens of his hope to modify the clock so that it would chime the hour, by means of a small hammer and a bell made of tin.
The prisoner was not allowed to own paints, owing to the toxic elements in many of the pigments. However, he had hoarded scraps of coloured yarn: he had patiently sorted these by colour, and then soaked them in water to draw out the dyes. With his shaving brush, he had painted a few crude images of women on the walls of his cell. The female likeness above the door, he proudly told his visitor, was a portrait of the Lady of the Lake.
In another cell within another corridor, Charles Dickens encountered a large negro who had been occupied in the outer world as a burglar, yet who within these walls operated a small lathe upon which he fashioned screws and bolts. Consenting to be interviewed, he loudly blessed the day that he had entered this prison, and vowed that he would never commit another theft. But the black footpad recounted the details of his previous crimes with such evident delight that it was clear he had no plans of reformation.
One small and timid little prisoner was allowed, as an indulgence, to keep rabbits. His cell therefore had an unpleasant closeness; in consequence, the men escorting Dickens permitted this convict to step out into the corridor for his interview. He stood blinking in the sunlight from the nearby window, shading his haggard face with one hand while clutching a white rabbit to his chest. As the interview drew to an end, this creature abruptly pulled itself free, tumbled to the floor, and then quickly hopped back into the open cell. The rabbit-breeder, now dismissed, nodded meekly and crept hastily after his pet. Charles Dickens, watching this timorous behaviour, found himself at a loss to find much difference between rabbit and human.
In the female sector of the penitentiary were three young women in adjacent cells, having been sent down for conspiracy to rob a mutual victim. Dickens observed that they were marked from birth with plain coarse features, but that – in the silence and solitude of their imprisonment – they had grown to be quite beautiful. The youngest and prettiest of the trio, not yet twenty years old, occupied a cell with walls whitewashed so thoroughly as to remind Charles Dickens of snow, and winter, and Christmas. Far high up in the outer wall of this maiden’s cell was a small chink in the brickwork, through which a narrow strip of sky and sunlight pierced the prison’s gloom. In that shaft of sunlight, Dickens watched while Mr Vaux interviewed this penitent: “In a word, you are happy here?”
Her mournful eyes were downcast. She attempted to nod, but left the gesture uncompleted. “I . . . try to be,” she said at last, and burst into tears. With a shudder, Dickens turned away.
As there seemed to be no imminent threat to his safety, Dickens inquired of his hosts if he might move freely through the prison’s corridors, unescorted. Mr Brodrigg reminded him that,
under American law, Dickens assumed responsibility for his own safety when he came within this prison’s walls. Mr Vaux assured Dickens that the most violent inmates in the Philadelphia prison system were situated elsewhere, and that this penitentiary’s residents had all demonstrated at least outward signs of sincere penitence. Bidding temporary farewell to his hosts, then, Dickens returned to the central hub of the Panopticon, and next chose another radius at random. He set forth down this long hall, between the cells. The acoustics of the Panopticon were so perfectly balanced that Dickens could hear his own footfalls echoing within each of the other seven radii . . . and now, suddenly, another set of footfalls came nearer, as if following the sound of Dickens’s steps.
In the darkness, a hooded figure shambled down the corridor. Charles Dickens knew the prison’s rules: an inmate who earned a place in the penitentiary’s honour system was permitted to perform errands unsupervised, providing he remained hooded and silent. Dickens stood fascinated, as the hooded man approached.
The gas-light in the corridor was dim, and the prisoner’s vision hampered further by the tarred burlap encasing his head. The approaching hooded figure kept close to the wall, using it for guidance as he crept along the corridor. To give this man – this fellow human – as much privacy and dignity as possible in this inhuman place, Dickens cast his eyes downward as the hooded prisoner reached him. Moving aside, Dickens endeavoured to give the oncoming stranger a wide berth . . . yet the hooded man brushed up against him in the narrow corridor.
There was a sudden tautness in Dickens’s coat. He had experienced this before, among the pickpockets of Bermondsey and the East End. Quickly, Dickens thrust his right hand into his right-side coat pocket, encountering another hand there already. He tightened his grip on its wrist, drawing this alien hand forth. The hooded prisoner did not struggle as his own right hand was extracted by Charles Dickens from Dickens’s own pocket.
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 13