But of course, there was no reply – Marley was gone.
He went inside and closed his door behind him.
The house was very different now. The hall was tidy, the stairs carpeted, the drawing room respectably set out. A prosperous merchant’s dwelling. Neither blatantly fashionable nor in any way ostentatious. A house where he could invite his friends and his family, where he could be at peace with himself, where he could carry on the charities that had needed his guidance and funds.
Had he been wrong? Should he have left this great barn of a place empty of warmth and instead spent the sums where they could have done more good? Had pride, not necessity, coaxed him into breaking his promise?
What had he done that Marley had come again?
The door knocker clanged hard against its plate, and Scrooge jumped at the unexpected sound. He gathered his wits and went to answer the door himself. In spite of what he’d done in the house, he’d not indulged in servants, though from time to time he’d offered a position to someone in need of work and a good reference. At present there was only a cook and a housekeeper. Marley couldn’t expect him to cook his own meals or launder his own sheets. Surely?
The man standing on the step was the one he’d seen loitering across the street. A rough sort, his clothes well used and a two day’s growth of beard on his chin.
Scrooge said, “What is it you’ve come for?” And half expected the fellow to answer, “Robbery.”
Instead he mumbled, “I was told, if I come here you’d give me five shillings for the message I carry.”
Robbery indeed.
“I shan’t know the message’s worth until I hear it,” Scrooge responded.
“And then you’ll not pay me,” the man retorted stubbornly.
Scrooge took out his purse and found the shillings. Instead of handing them over, he held them in mid air. “The message, if you please.”
The man hesitated, eyeing the coins as if he expected them to vanish. Finally, he handed a folded sheet of paper to Scrooge. It was crumpled and smudged with dirt and something else Scrooge preferred not to imagine. Scrooge took it as the man whisked the shillings out of his hand and disappeared down the street.
“Here!” But it was too late; the man had vanished around the corner.
Shutting the door, Scrooge unfolded the message.
I know where Betsy Talman’s baby is. Tonight. The Green Dragon.
There was nothing else.
Betsy Talman was a young woman Scrooge had met destitute and begging on the streets some months ago. He’d employed her as housemaid and her husband as a messenger until she gave birth to her son, then found more suitable work for the couple in Dorset. He had put them on the mail coach himself, but it overturned just short of its destination, and the child had died in the wreckage. Betsy had grieved little short of madness, swearing the baby wasn’t dead, that she’d held it in her arms, hadn’t she, and she herself had not a scratch on her. But she’d had a severe blow to the head and the child had been buried in the village churchyard before she was allowed to leave her bed.
Now here was someone claiming the child was alive. Truth or trick? The Green Dragon was near the docks, and hardly a place for a respectable merchant to be hanging about, waiting for person or persons unknown to come up to him. In hope of payment for producing a baby, any baby of the right age?
Scrooge debated with himself. Was it wise to open old wounds? On the other hand, what if he didn’t meet this person or persons, and the baby, by some miracle, was hers?
He’d a fondness for Betsy. Something about her reminded him of Martha Cratchit’s little Sally, and he’d been touched by her plight. Her husband was a good and loving man. Scrooge had felt responsible for their loss, having put them on that luckless coach for what he’d believed was a better life than London had provided the little family.
Which brought him back to the note in his hand. If he went to the Green Dragon, how was he to know, if he were shown it, that the boy was Betsy’s? Babies looked very much alike, didn’t they? And what if he took it, and it wasn’t hers, and he was left with it? He couldn’t very well ask Betsy to come to the Green Dragon and look at it herself, to be sure!
He remembered Marley’s face on the knocker. Perhaps it was a different kind of warning, not one disapproving of his expenditures but one telling him to beware? He was a man of business, not a man of action. He could be in danger.
By dusk, still undecided, he had changed to his third-best suit of clothes and gone out, taking his cane with him. Much good it would do him at the Green Dragon.
He found a cabbie willing to take him there and wait for him, then sat back in the shadows of the cab, thinking about what the night would bring.
There was a mist rising off the water, grey and unpleasant, when he reached the docks and saw the Green Dragon tucked into a space between a mercantile shop with gear for seamen and a doss house whose smell wafted down the stairs and into the street. Stale sheets, stale beer and stale faces at the windows, men for whom life had nothing left to offer except more pain, more disappointment and more poverty.
The Green Dragon was not as picturesque as its name, and had nothing to do with China or the opium trade. Although as Scrooge walked in and found a table to the rear, he thought that he might have taken over a small ship in company with the dozen or so men already into their cups. The scars on their faces spoke of quick use of the knife, and if any of them had seen the inside of a bath house in living memory, he would be surprised. Tobacco smoke, mixed with the odour of cabbage and sweat, was overwhelming in this back corner, but he was here, and here he’d remain, his back to the wall.
He was thinking about Marley’s face on the knocker, when a slim man in black edged around the door and stood surveying the drinkers. His gaze stopped at Scrooge and he began to cross to the table in the rear. Someone called out to him, asking about the latest ship in, and he replied that it was the Anna Maria, from Portugal.
He nodded to Scrooge and sat down in the chair opposite. A rough man, close to, with cunning eyes.
Scrooge said, “What am I to call you? You know my name, and I must have yours or we do no business here.”
“They call me Ned, mostly.”
“What’s this about a baby?”
“I’ve told you. I’ve seen the lad with my own eyes.”
“Yes, well, so you say. But how is it he’s still alive, and what have you to do with him?”
“Ah, that you will know tomorrow. I don’t fancy being brought up before the magistrates tonight. Eleven o’clock in the morning, Kensington Gardens. And bring a hundred pounds with you.”
“To be robbed in the shrubbery? I think not.”
“Suit yourself then. The babe’s as well off in the river. No one else wants him.”
Ned started to rise, eager to be gone now that no profit was in the offing.
Scrooge said quickly, to keep him there, “You’ll not see five shillings, until I’ve seen this boy.”
Ned laughed. “Done. He’ll be there. Look for Jenny.”
“How does this Jenny know who the child is? If she’s in hope of a reward for sending it back to his rightful mother, I tell you straight off that the Talmans don’t have a penny to rub together. They’re in service.”
Ned was unabashed. “Ah, but you’ve helped them quite a bit, haven’t you? Jenny thought the child might be your own, and you’d pay handsomely to have it back.”
Scrooge felt his face go red as his anger flared. He’d done well with his temper these last ten years, but sometimes it was out of hand before he could prevent it. “Mine?”
“Jenny says.” Ned moved like a snake, smoothly and quickly, one minute sitting there, the next out the door, leaving Scrooge at the table, his face flushed with his anger.
It was a clever scheme, this one. Tell him that his long lost “son” was found, tell some other bereaved parent that the baby was hers, and let the bidding war begin. No matter who won – and it was almost cer
tain that Betsy would lose – this man and Jenny would prosper.
But who was the mother of this child? He had until eleven in the morning to find out.
A man with his own ’counting house always had sources of information. A good bargain – a bad investment – a bit of gossip that would stand someone in good stead – information was of value, and sometimes meant money in hand.
Scrooge set out early in the morning, going to first one and then another ’counting house, asking questions and listening to the answers. By ten minutes before eleven, he was in Kensington Gardens, no wiser than he had been the night before. He chose a bench in the open, sat down in the watery sunlight, and watched nursemaids in starched uniforms take their charges out for the air.
He played the game of which one might be Jenny, the dark-haired nursemaid with narrow eyes and pursed lips or the sly, fair-haired woman who glanced his way twice. Instead it was the red-haired girl with a laughing face who sat down beside him, and in her arms was a baby wrapped in blankets, sleeping quietly. It was difficult to say with such a young child who he most resembled.
Scrooge had no experience of babies. What colour were its eyes? Blue, at a guess. But half of Britain had blue eyes, surely. Fair hair, burnished even in the pale sun. Yet it appeared to be the same age as Betsy’s might have been.
He said to Jenny, “How can I be sure this isn’t a trick?”
Jenny said, “Well, you must take the matter on trust.”
“The mother of this boy has grieved and recovered. Why open old wounds?”
“Why then are you here? Betsy was your housemaid, and if the child were truly hers, and not yours, you’d have no interest in the boy.”
Scrooge said nothing.
After a moment, Jenny said, “I was hoping you would want him.”
Ah, Scrooge thought, here’s the rub.
“Because if you don’t take him, what’s to become of him? I got him from a mother who didn’t want him any more. He’s not really hers, you see, and they had too many mouths to feed as it was. I told her I thought I might make a little money from him—”
“What do you mean, not really hers?”
But Jenny was frightened now, looking over her shoulder as if she half expected Ned to be hiding in the shrubbery, listening.
“You must tell me,” Scrooge urged. “Ned promised the child would go into the river if I didn’t meet you.”
She stared at him. “He’s that cruel,” she said, touching the child protectively. Scrooge wondered if the boy might be Jenny’s.
“All right, if you swear you won’t tell Ned. The wet nurse to the child of a man of means forbade her to see her own boy, and it struck her that if she exchanged the babies, she’d have her own son with her day and night. She did that, thinking no harm would come of it. But this man of means found out she’d taken his lad with her when she went to see her family, and he cast her out. The very day she’d made the swap. And it was too late to get her own boy back, wasn’t it? Without being taken up by the police.”
Scrooge was appalled. “She left her own child in her employer’s house, and now that this boy’s no more use to her, she’s ridding herself of him?”
“I told you, there’s too many mouths to feed!” Jenny cried, as if Scrooge couldn’t understand, with food on the table three times a day, what hunger was.
“How do you know these things?” he asked sharply.
“I don’t know how Ned knows, but he does. He knows everything.”
He considered the situation for a moment. “This poor child’s real mother – the rich man’s wife – is dead, isn’t she? Otherwise she’d have seen at once that the wet nurse had exchanged the babies.”
Jenny shook her head. “Ned didn’t say.”
But Scrooge was going rapidly through his acquaintance. Who among them had lost a wife within the past few months, after the birth of a child? Paul Dombey for one. Scrooge himself had attended Fanny Dombey’s pathetic funeral and noted Dombey’s indifference to her obsequies even while he waxed effusive over his son.
It was a place to begin.
“How do I know you’ve told me the truth?” he demanded. “Jenny, you mustn’t let this child suffer through Ned.”
“Then buy him,” she begged. “He could be yours, couldn’t he? Or give him to Betsy to rear. I tell you, he’s not wanted!”
“I’ll give you fifty pounds for him. And if you’re wise, you’ll take it and go away where Ned can’t find you.”
Her face looked old with her worry. “I told you, Ned knows everything. He’d find me.” She held out her hand. “If you please, I’ll tell Ned that you wanted him for your own. He’ll be suspicious, else, and give me no peace.”
Scrooge gave her the fifty pounds, and Jenny counted it quickly.
Then she stood up quickly and walked away without looking back.
Scrooge sat there, looking down at the sleeping child. Why hadn’t it stirred or cried or demanded to be fed? He picked it up gingerly, and as he did, he caught a sweet scent he recognized. An opiate had been given to this child to keep him quiet!
Shocked, Scrooge calculated his next action. If he took the child to Dombey and Son, there would be a fuss. The best solution was to take it to Dombey’s home. His sister Louisa Chick would know where to find the discharged nurse, and confront the woman with him.
He hailed a cab and gave directions to Dombey’s house. He was received with warmth by Mrs Chick and her shadow, Miss Tox. Mrs Chick asked, “And is that a baby, dear Mr Scrooge, that I see in your arms? I wasn’t aware that you . . .”
Miss Tox substituted gently, “. . . were starting a family.”
Scrooge grimaced. “Alas, the child is not mine. In fact, I’ve come on a delicate matter. You have a child the age of this one, do you not?”
“Oh, dearest little Paul, yes.”
“The light of our day,” Miss Tox murmured.
“Does he resemble his papa or his mama?”
“His papa, without any doubt.” Louisa Chick answered serenely.
“Indubitably,” Miss Tox assured him, with a nod.
“Would you be so kind as to let me see him? There’s a question of this child’s paternity. I must advise, and I have no experience of one this young.”
They bustled to help him. Miss Tox took the child from his arms and carried it to the window. Mrs Chick hurried up the stairs to retrieve young Paul from his nursery.
When she came back, flushed with exertion and pleasure, she presented the sleeping Paul as if he were a royal prince. “Here is our dearest treasure, our joy.”
Scrooge stared at the bundle in her arms. He could see no difference between the two boys. “Then consider this child I have with me. If you were the parents of one of these lads, would you know your treasure from the other, if they were somehow confused?”
Mrs Chick stared dubiously at the two sleeping faces. “This one,” she said, “has nothing to distinguish his features – although it pains me to have to say such a thing to you. But our Paul here has his father’s eyes, his father’s nose. I’d know him if you brought a thousand babies here and spread them about the furniture.”
“One has only to look,” echoed Miss Tox.
Scrooge did, and could see very little difference between the children. The width of the chin? The shape of the ears? But then he’d spent only a short time in their company. Perhaps day in and day out, one came to know the small divergences.
He put his thought into words. “Then you feel that the mother of the child I brought here will know him on the instant?”
“Of course she will!”
“And I couldn’t confuse you with any other child of the same age?”
“Never,” Mrs Chick announced stoutly. “Only look at Paul and remember his father. A Dombey if ever there was one.”
Scrooge asked, “There is nothing of his poor mother in him?”
“Nothing. A Dombey through and through.”
“Beyond any doubt,” Miss To
x agreed.
What could he say in the face of their conviction, when there was no proof of anything? Only the word of a girl like Jenny against the family’s certainty.
He must find the nursemaid and persuade her to confess to the exchange.
“I have need of a wet nurse for a week. I understand you employ one who has been with young Paul for some time. She might know of someone trustworthy.”
Mrs Chick pursed her mouth. “Polly Toodle, that was. She was discharged. You will not want that one for your sweet child.”
“No,” Miss Tox added. “She was not trustworthy at all.”
“Toodle? An odd name,” he said.
“As odd as she was. Not surprising, coming from where she did.” Miss Tox added “Staggs Gardens,” in a voice so soft Scrooge had difficulty hearing it, as if she were ashamed of the address.
“Then I must ask my housekeeper to recommend someone.” He rose to take his leave
They were curious about the child and plied him with questions, but Scrooge shook his head and said, “Alas, it is a very private matter. I’m not at liberty to discuss his parentage.”
He found a carriage to take him as far as Polly Toodle’s humble cottage, but he had no need to ask if she had given away a child. She was sitting in the sun nursing one the same age as the baby he had brought with him. He called to the little family group to ask if Mr Toodle was at home, and she told him he was expected later in the day.
“And you are Mrs Toodle?”
“I am.”
He beckoned one of the boys at her feet and handed over five shillings, mentally keeping an accounting of his expenditures thus far. “Tell your father I have repaid my debt,” he said, then indicated mother and child on the doorstep. “The little one. Is he a part of your family?”
“Yes, sir.”
“And a handsome lad he is. Who do you think he favours, his papa or his mama?”
“His mama, sir. He has her eyes.”
Scrooge tapped the roof of his carriage with his cane, and the driver said, “Where to, sir?”
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 18