A very good question, one he couldn’t answer. Jenny, it appeared, had lied twice. The boy wasn’t Betsy’s and it wasn’t Paul Dombey’s. Who then did it belong to? Was it Jenny’s, after all? And he’d been lulled into parting with fifty pounds through a tissue of lies? Had she been afraid that Ned, overwhelmed with jealousy, would indeed rid himself of what might well be another man’s child? And so this scheme had been hatched, with Ned promised fifty pounds in return for the child’s life . . .
Afraid for the drugged child, he ordered the cabbie to take him home. It had been quiet far too long, and Scrooge had no idea when it had last been given nourishment.
Mrs Nelson, his housekeeper, was aghast to see Scrooge walk through his door with an infant in his arms. It was rousing from its sleep, the little mouth working and one arm struggling to free itself from the swaddling blankets. She peered at it short-sightedly.
“What’s this, then?”
“A foundling, in need of food and care. You must find a wet nurse at once, if you please, and see that he has whatever he needs to survive.”
“But Mr Scrooge—”
He said only, “And keep him safe. If anyone comes to ask for him, you know nothing of him. Do you understand me?”
She was on the point of questioning him, but Scrooge ignored her and went back to the waiting cab. This time he traveled to the police station nearest Kensington Gardens, on the theory that Jenny had known the area where they had met, and must at some time worked nearby. He went inside to find the sergeant at the desk in a heated argument with a chimney sweep.
Scrooge waited with ill-concealed impatience, and when the sweep had finally been satisfied and sent on his way, he said to the sergeant, “Ebenezer Scrooge. I’m here on a matter of some urgency, entrusted to me by a client. Can you tell me if there has been a report of a missing child?”
“You say a child is missing?”
“No. I ask you if one has been reported missing.”
“We’ve not heard of any such thing. I’d be the first to know. Here, what’s this about?”
“I’m also attempting to trace a certain young person—” Scrooge described Jenny and that conspicuous red hair, the saucy face, but the sergeant shook his head.
“She’s not known to us. What’s she done?” He reached for pen and paper. “We’ll keep an eye out, if you like.”
The last thing Scrooge wanted was anyone looking for Jenny. Not yet, at least.
He extricated himself with some difficulty and a number of lies, and went back to the cab. The driver was sunning himself, eyes closed, face lifted. Scrooge tapped on his knee and said, “If a child went missing, one too young to be useful to a beggar or a tradesman, who would know of it?”
The cabbie eyed him suspiciously. Scrooge, again reckoning his costs, reached for his purse and offered the cabbie half a crown.
The cabbie said reluctantly, “There’s Mrs Brown, if you like. She deals in second-hand clothes, but there’s not much happens she doesn’t hear about. Where there’s gossip, there’s money to be made.”
Half London seemed to thrive on gossip about the other half. He himself had profited more than once from a chance word dropped into a conversation.
“Then by all means, find me this Mrs Brown.”
The cabbie was dubious, but Scrooge said harshly as he climbed into the cab, “Get on with it, man, I’ve had nothing to eat since the morning, and I’m in no mood to argue.”
The horse set off at a trot, and Scrooge soon found himself no more than an hour’s walk from Staggs Gardens, where Polly Toodle lived. The neighborhood was not to his liking, and he found himself with his hand on his purse, protecting it. The cab drew up before a small, inconspicuous house in a street that appeared to be deserted.
But he was in luck. Mrs Brown herself answered his knock, and he waved five pounds in front of her ugly nose and said, “I’m in a hurry. There’s a child missing, and I’m told you can tell me what I need to know.”
She stared at him, a fierce frown on her face. “Who sent you to Good Mother Brown?” she asked suspiciously.
“Jenny,” Scrooge answered. “She’s afraid Ned will harm the child, and I’ve agreed to buy it. She promised to meet me at Kensington Gardens, but she wasn’t there.”
“Ned’s a nasty piece of work,” she agreed. “I haven’t seen Jenny this fortnight. I told her she’d regret ever setting eyes on him. But she told me he’d be rich soon.” She looked Scrooge up and down. “Why would the likes of you want to buy a child?”
“That’s my business and not yours. If you don’t know where to find Jenny, tell me how I can find Ned. It may not be too late!”
The urgency in his voice wasn’t pretence. And she seemed to sense it. A gleam of avarice stirred in her eyes, and she said, “Here, he was doing a bit of work for the one they call Samuel Dancy. Don’t tell me Ned’s gone and cheated him! There’s no child, is there? Dancy has paid you to bring him Ned. How much for me if find Ned for you?”
Scrooge said, “I’ll find him myself and keep what I’ve earned.” He turned away, expecting her to follow him. And she did.
“If there’s money to be made, I’ll sell Ned to you. Dancy’s not one to cross, and I’d as soon have him owing me a favour.”
“I don’t know any Dancy.”
“Yes, you do. He’s half-brother to the late Lord Wenhill—”
But Scrooge had got what he wanted, and he swung himself into the cab, leaving her in the road. She ran after him, crying, “I’ll have my five pound. I’ve earned it!”
He tossed the money toward her and left her scrabbling in the dust for it as the cabbie spoke to his horse.
Dancy. Scrooge knew that name. The late Lord Wenhill’s father had taken an actress as his second wife, and gossip had it that the family was relieved when she died young of consumption. But their son had become the black sheep of the family.
But what had Dancy to do with this bartered child? He had never married, and if the child was his bastard, he’d rid himself of it without the help of a man like Ned. His reputation in business was one of ruthlessness. There was nothing for it but to go to Lady Wenhill and beg for her help.
Scrooge was forced to return to the police sergeant in Kensington to ask the direction. The man was thoroughly suspicious now.
“What’s your business with her ladyship?” he demanded.
Scrooge, lying through his teeth, answered, “There’s a question about her late husband’s estate.”
“Oh, yes. First a missing child, and then a will.”
Scrooge smiled. “The child was a separate matter. That was charity. This is money.”
He left the sergeant grinning at his back and gave the cabbie directions.
The house fronted a large square, and like most of its neighbors spoke of wealth and pomp. Scrooge walked up the shallow steps to the door and lifted the knocker. A maid in a starched cap opened the door and stared at him.
“Ebenezer Scrooge to see Lady Wenhill.”
“She’s not in to callers today.”
“I think she’ll see me. Tell her I’ve come about Samuel Dancy, her brother-in-law.”
The maid went away and came back quickly with a young woman in severe mourning at her heels. The woman’s face was drawn, dark shadows under her eyes and lines of grief around her mouth.
She dismissed the maid and said in a low voice, “What is it? Haven’t I suffered enough? I’ve done as I was told, and he promised – promised! – to leave me alone!”
“Lady Wenhill,” Scrooge answered gently, “I haven’t come to distress you. But there’s a matter of a baby—”
He thought she was going to faint on the spot. She caught his arm and dragged him with her to the sitting room overlooking the back garden, shutting the door behind them.
“Is he well? You haven’t come to tell me he’s dead? Oh, please God, not that!”
Scrooge stared at her. “My lady, I don’t understand.”
“If Samuel se
nt you, you understand very well! My son – is he alive or dead?”
Her hand, still clutching his sleeve, was trembling, and he thought only fear was holding her upright.
“Lady Wenhill, I assure you, I haven’t come from Samuel Dancy. I’m trying to find him. But you speak of a child?”
“My son—” she broke off, turning away. “You know nothing of this? Is it true?”
“It is true.”
She sat down in a chair by the window and began to cry, sobs racking her body.
“You said something about a child, Lady Wenhill. And it’s about a child that I’ve come.” He didn’t think she was listening. “I was approached by a young person only this morning, offering me a child. She told me it was the son of a woman who had worked for me until recently. I knew it couldn’t be true, but Jenny was afraid that Ned—”
He stopped. Lady Wenhill turned on him with such a violent expression on her face that he stepped back against the door.
“Ned? Ned Paling?”
“I don’t know his full name—”
“Describe him to me!”
Scrooge did, and watched the woman before him flush with fury.
“It was Ned Paling who took my son!”
“I don’t understand, my lady—”
“I retired to our country estate after my husband’s death. I was seven months with child, and for my husband’s sake I wanted it to be born in Gloucestershire. All the Wenhills for generations have been born there, you see. But when I arrived, I found the servants had been dismissed, new servants in their place. Ned Paling was there, and he became my jailer. There was nothing I could do. No one I could send for help. When I was delivered of a son, Samuel Dancy came into my bedchamber and told me that I had borne a daughter. But I knew I hadn’t, I’d seen the child. Still, they brought me a baby and put it in my arms, and insisted that this was my child, and so it would be registered, as my daughter.”
“Why should he do such a terrible thing?”
“Because of the will – if my child was a son, everything went to him, the title, the property, the family’s wealth. If it was a girl, the estate was divided into thirds – for her, for myself, and for Dancy, who would also claim the title.”
“And if you hadn’t survived? For certainly it would have been easier if you had been reported to have died in childbirth, with your son.”
“No, I was safe enough. If neither of us had survived, Dancy got nothing but the title. Every penny would have been put into a trust fund for scholars at Harrow.”
Scrooge was beginning to see. “And so he took your child, told you that if you accepted a daughter in its place, your son would live. If you told the world what had been done, the boy would die. But surely there was a doctor in attendance?”
“No, only a midwife.”
“And where did this girl come from, so handy to be exchanged for your boy?”
“I don’t know. The midwife must have known of some such.”
“And that girl is now upstairs, in your nursery?”
“Yes. I can’t bear to look at her, but she has every care. Servants, a wet nurse. Everything but my love.”
“And has her birth been registered?”
“No. I – I couldn’t bear to do it. Not so soon. It made everything final, you see. And once that last step was taken, how could I protect my son?”
Scrooge felt a sudden surge of fear. “Why have you told me this? When you were warned not to tell?”
“Because I’m so terribly afraid something will happen to my child, and I’ll never be told. You said there was a boy—”
“I must go to him straightaway. Before someone realizes he’s in my house and I’m here.”
“I’ll go with you!”
“No, you mustn’t, it isn’t safe—”
But she would not hear of staying behind. He took her out to the cab and to his house, where Mrs Nelson had found a woman on the next street willing to suckle a strange child for money. Scrooge thought once more about the accounting for this child, and sighed.
Lady Wenhill was taken to him straightaway, and she touched her son’s face with tentative fingers, then asked that he be taken out of the blanket wrapped around him.
“There’s a port wine stain on his shoulder. I saw it as the midwife lifted him from my body. My husband had the same—” She stopped, looking down at the tiny shoulder where there was a birthmark, and then she began to cry, reaching for him and holding him to her.
Scrooge said urgently, “Lady Wenhill, we are not safe here. Can you trust your servants here in London?”
She shook her head. “I don’t know. They are not the servants we had when my husband was alive.”
“Then I’ll find a safe haven for you and the boy until we can put an end to this.”
He took her to one of his friends, an older man named Henley who had known Marley as well as Scrooge, and whose reputation for honesty and uprightness was unquestioned.
Scrooge spoke to him briefly, asking questions but refusing to answer Henley’s. “You must guard this woman and her child,” he said again as he prepared to leave, “and if anything should happen to me, you will take them to a place of safety.”
Henley protested, but Scrooge clapped him on the shoulder, adding, “Old friend, you must trust me for now.”
And then he was out the door and into the waiting cab.
He sat there thinking for several minutes. Ned had spoken of the Portuguese ship, the Anna Maria, as if he knew the docks. And according to what Nicholas Henley had told him just now, Samuel Dancy had been a partner in more than one lucrative merchant venture.
Scrooge gave the cabbie the address in the City of one Solomon Gills, and sat back.
Gills was a man of few words, but his workmanship spoke for him. Every ship’s captain and merchant in London had come to him at one time or another, and the gossip of the City and the docks flowed in and out his door while he kept his own counsel.
Scrooge found him working on a chronometer. Sol looked up and nodded as he saw who had come in his door.
“What takes you away from your ’counting house, Mr Scrooge? I’ve not laid eyes on you these six months or more.”
“I’ve come for information, Sol, if you have it.”
“I’ll give it gladly, if I do.”
“I’m looking for one Ned Paling. He works sometimes for Samuel Dancy.”
“Ah, the Honourable Samuel Dancy Wenhill. He seldom uses his father’s name, I can’t think why. Except that his father cut him off without a penny and rumour says his brother did the same.”
“There was a will.”
“Indeed, and not to Samuel Dancy’s liking, they say.”
Scrooge said, “Where will I find Ned Paling?”
“He’s not been showing himself about of late. It seems he’s done well enough for himself that he’s avoiding trouble. There’s a public house called The Red Slipper that he fancies. Try there.”
Scrooge thanked him and went on his way. The Red Slipper was between St Paul’s and the river, tucked in a narrow corner. Only the garish red slipper on its sign drew attention to it. Scrooge sent the cab around the corner and settled himself in the shadows of a building down the street from the pub, prepared to wait.
Some two hours later, he saw Ned Paling step out of the pub and walk toward the water. Scrooge followed him. He was no match for a Ned Paling. But he thought perhaps there was a way to solve many problems with one small lie. God knew, he’d told enough that day.
Ned Paling turned around smartly, and caught Scrooge creeping along behind him.
“Old man,” he warned, “it isn’t safe to meddle with Ned Paling.”
Scrooge said, “I’ve no need to meddle. I’ve come to tell you I’ve decided to keep the child for my heir. But Samuel Dancy is not best pleased. He told you to deal with the lad, not sell him. I wouldn’t be surprised if Dancy was more than a match for you. A friendly word, that’s all. You’ve done me a good turn, and I’ve
done you one. We’re quits.” Scrooge made a move to go back the way he’d come.
“Here – how did he find out anything of the sort? Was it you told him the brat was still alive?”
“No, nor was it Jenny. He’d set a watch on you, Ned. That’s what Dancy did. I’d watch my back, if I were you.”
“How did you know about Dancy? Was it Jenny? I’d have sworn she knew nothing!”
“No, I told you, she didn’t betray you. I recognized the man watching you. I knew who his master was. A friendly warning, Ned, that’s all this is. Dancy is more powerful than you. You’ll turn up floating in the river, and none the wiser. He’s got eyes everywhere. Did you think he’d trust you when it came to that boy? That was foolish of you. Consider what befell the midwife and that little girl’s mother. Did he leave them alive to tell their tale?” He watched as something changed in Ned’s face, that shot in the dark striking home. “Take Jenny and your fifty pounds and go as far as you can as quickly as you can!”
Ned said, “It’s Dancy’s afraid of me, not the other way around.” But the words were bluster. “I know too much about his affairs.”
Scrooge said, “A knife in the back on a dark street, that’s all it takes. No courage required there. He could hire any number of men who would kill you for a pittance. You know that as well as I do. Well, I’ve said what I came to say.”
Scrooge walked away, and behind him Ned said again, “He’s more afraid of me, is Dancy. I know too much.”
“The river is a quiet grave. You’ll tell no one anything when the tide takes you. Goodbye, Ned.”
When Scrooge turned the corner, he glanced back. Ned Paling was nowhere to be seen.
His conscience pricked him. But there was no way to prove what Dancy had done. The servants hired by Dancy in place of the Wenhill retainers would have been told nothing – it was too dangerous to trust so many. And any who saw their mistress in distress would have been persuaded that she was half mad with grief to bear a daughter in place of the son she desired to carry on her late husband’s name. Indeed, having seen a girl from the start, they would wonder how she now came by a boy. Dancy might even use their concerns to have her committed to an asylum for the incurably insane. As it was, the truth was going to be difficult enough to establish.
The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits Page 19