The Mammoth Book of Dickensian Whodunnits

by Mike Ashley (ed)

  I felt a powerful urge to be kind, even protective. “I will tell you what I think you saw,” I said. “It occurs to me that the lady you imagined to be dead was in fact a dummy – a model used by an artist perhaps, or a dressmaker . . .” I found myself inventing wildly. “You will perhaps have noted the way the people of London use their river as a sewer? A place to throw all their unwanted dross. Well, is it not the most probable elucidation, that this is what you saw? Murder, as I said before, is a rare event – especially of one lady by another.”

  His frown deepened as he examined my words. He was eleven or twelve, a boy utterly innocent of the ways of the city. As I watched his face, he seemed to change. No longer was he the small C. D., forced to find his own way in the streets, perpetually cold and afraid. Starved young Sabine might be, and in sore need of a mother’s consoling arms, but his strategies for survival were in no way similar to those I had adopted. This lad, I fancied, put his trust in God, when everything else had failed.

  “A dummy would droop lifelessly,” he mused. “And it would avowedly sink into the water, and not float. And yet – I did think it was a real lady, sir. I did indeed.”

  “I understand that you did,” I assured him. “I might very well have thought the same thing myself. But we must apply reason to the experience, to find the most fitting explanation for what you saw. And my reason assures me that nothing is less likely than that you witnessed the aftermath of a violent killing.”

  He meditated for a few moments more. “Mr Boz,” he began, startling me slightly until I recalled the name I had given him, “I would greatly prefer to believe there was no murder. It comes to me, you see, in the night, that people should not commit such terrible acts, one upon the other.”

  How sheltered he must have been, until now. Touring the beauty spots of Europe in a carriage full of his close relatives, exposed to the quaint old towns and cities of Bavaria and southern France, he had been spared the presence of cruelty and wickedness. My adult instinct was to ensure that his innocence continued yet a while.

  “I am quite sure of it,” I said. “Put it out of your mind, and tell me more of your journeyings. Which of the many places you have seen was your most preferred?”

  “Salzburg,” he said promptly, with a spark in his eye.

  I would have quizzed him longer, but I felt my other obligations pressing on me, and in truth my interest in the lad began to wane as rapidly as it had flared. The church was pleasant enough, but I felt myself a false worshipper, in contrast to the little Christian at my side.

  “We should leave,” I said. “Such respites are rare and I am grateful to you. But I have to attend some important gentlemen presently.”

  He glanced up at me with a look of such panic and reproach that I had to defend myself. In a tone most unwarrantably harsh, I repeated my words. “I cannot spare the whole day, young sir. You must forgive me.” I was momentarily tempted to add, “Are you really not aware of who I am? What great man has accorded you some moments of his precious time?” But I bit my tongue. I had played with the lad’s affections too much as it was.

  “I see, sir,” he submitted. “I thank you for your company. And for introducing me to this church, which I hope I will be able to visit again.” He coughed a little, more from emotion, I thought, than congestion.

  I bowed my head close to his. “Do what you can to have yourself reunited with your family,” I said urgently. “There is no better place to be. Make no attempt to conceal any illness that might afflict you. I warrant your mother will quickly take you away if she believes you to be severely sick.”

  “Oh, yes, sir, she would,” he assured me. “And I am very often ill.” He disclosed to me an incident in the high Alps where his chest had been so badly affected that he was bound with poultices that removed much of his skin. “It worries my Mama considerably.”

  “Then that is your escape route,” I told him, with a wink.

  I delivered him back to his lodgings in Queen Square, where a soft-skinned gentleman was glimpsed through the front window, as the maidservant admitted the boy. Mr Hayes, the careless schoolmaster, I assumed. I remain confident to this day that the boy never guessed the identity of the man who was briefly kind to him.

  The matter of the woman’s body nagged at me as I walked away, facing west. Ahead of me was Bow Street, home to the new police force. On a whim, I entered the building and rapped on the desk. Without revealing my identity I suggested there could be a female cadaver fished from the Thames somewhere adjacent to the Strand who had died in suspicious circumstances. It was a useless spasm of social conscience, and yet it seemed wrong to simply do nothing. The constable made a note of the day and time I gave him and asked laconically what led me to beget such a suspicion. Had I personally witnessed a felonious act? With a sinking sensation in my bowels, I indicated to the contrary. “A whisper,” I said with a shrug. “A rumour picked up in a sedan.”

  He looked down his narrow nose at me. “We cannot proceed on a rumour, sir. Hard evidence – that’s the thing. What exactly would you have us do?”

  I grimaced and took a step backwards. I could not take the risk of mentioning the name of Mrs Heron as the possible victim, her husband’s lover her killer. It was too fanciful an interpretation without giving the name and status of the one and only witness. And that I had no intention of doing – no more than I had of revealing my own details.

  “I concede the point,” I said. “And yet – perhaps a morsel of extra vigilance in that part of the river might not come amiss.”

  His long neck seemed to wilt like a thirsty plant and he emitted a soft snort of impatience. “Thank you, sir. Very public-spirited of you.”

  I left with every intention of casting the entire episode from my mind.

  Remembering that I had urgent claims on my attention awaiting me in Fleet Street, I turned back the way I had come, my route lying through Covent Garden and back onto the Strand. Those few months of my life, before young Ally was born, and after the thrills and spills of the play that I performed with my friends, were largely spent in that part of London. The smells and sounds of the river were ever present, along with the constant clatter and swirl of traffic. I recall meetings with other great men of intellect in rooms just above the mass of humanity swarming through their daily dealings on the street below. I was not working on a book in those months, but in hindsight I can see that the ghost of little Paul Dombey was riding upon my shoulder.

  For reasons not apparent to my conscious mind, I took the same alleyway from the market to the Strand as the one young Baring-Gould and I had seen the lady in magenta use an hour or so previously. The alley was thronged with people intent on catching the afternoon reductions at the market, the bruised fruit and stale meat dropping hourly in price. I had to dodge and weave my way between them, annoyed at myself for selecting such a narrow thoroughfare. Already my thoughts had turned to my plans for the coming weeks and the discussions I should have to take part in. When the same magenta figure filled my vision, it was some moments before I collected myself. It was a back view, but I recognized the purposeful stride and the hue of the gown. She was returning from a considerable bout of spending, to judge from the bulging bags she carried. Perhaps it was remorse at my dismissal of the boy, or perhaps something struck my unconscious mind as awry, but I resolved to follow the lady and glean something more of her. When she turned to the right at the end of the alley I could not prevent myself from doing likewise, instead of pursuing my intended route to the left.

  But then I spotted Mr Chapman, of all people, a few yards ahead of me. Here was a man I most assuredly did not wish to meet, after our falling-out the year before. In great haste, I spun on my heel and positively cantered back towards Somerset House. There I hailed a cab and returned home for the rest of the day.

  But there was a restless maggot squirming in my brain, as I reviewed recent events. The lady in magenta had cut such a striking figure that the tale told by the Baring-Gould boy began t
o seem increasingly convincing to me. It would, I concluded, be lacking in responsibility on my part if I did not attempt to elucidate what might have happened that early morning a few days previously.

  I made a point of calling on Fanny that evening, knowing she would be pleased to have a ready ear for her gossip. She was at home to friends, and already there were three or four gathered. “Any fresh news of your Mr Heron?” I invited quietly, after a few moments of social chit-chat.

  Her eyes widened. “It seems not,” she said. “The talk is all over Town that he has not been seen for several days now. The suspicion is that he has come to some harm, perhaps at the hands of the father of the young lady from Chelsea, who is known to be a decided curmudgeon. The father, that is, not the young lady.”

  I mused for a second or two. “And Mrs Heron? What of her?”

  “No news,” said Fanny succinctly. “But she has a sister in Essex, who has probably taken her in.”

  I frowned at this. “Why would she need taking in, pray?”

  Fanny sighed. “Because she would doubtless wish to teach her husband a lesson by leaving him for a while. It is what injured wives do, Mr Dickens.” She chuckled mockingly. “As a man of such wisdom and insight, you might have understood that.”

  “Meanwhile, rumour suggests that the errant husband has fallen foul of an irate father, and learned an even harsher, possibly even fatal, lesson in the process? Are we acquainted with Mrs Heron’s likely response to such an eventuality?”

  Fanny smirked. “She might find it less than devastating,” she acknowledged. “Although the circumstances, once discovered, could prove embarrassing.”

  “Indeed,” I agreed. The story refused to fit with what my young friend had witnessed, and I began to think my own suggestion of a discarded dummy might well be the truth of the matter after all.

  But the next day, a Sunday, saw me yet again on Waterloo Bridge, examining the river and puzzling further over the strange events of the past few days. Had Mrs Heron lured the young rival for her affections to her home in the Strand and then slaughtered her and cast the body into the high tide of the Thames? Or had the Essex sister been the perpetrator, defending Mrs Heron’s honour in a most extreme act? My over-active imagination toyed with these many ideas while at the same time more than half convinced that no murder had been committed at all, and if it had, then the Herons were not part of it. I walked slowly towards the Aldwych, thinking I honestly could not spare any more attention to this small but intriguing mystery.

  And then, for the third time, I sighted the magenta figure, emerging from the largest house on the south side of the Strand and coming directly towards me. It was as if the clouds had parted and a Divine Finger had pointed right at me. I dodged quickly down a flight of steps, which took me into a dingy lowered courtyard adjacent to Somerset House. Peering cautiously over the stonework, I found the woman to be scarcely six yards away. Ducking down, I pressed against a wall beside a grimy window, and recalled on an instant my father’s long description of the secret entrance to the building behind me. With a boyish sense of mischief, I tried the stones around two of the windows, but nothing gave to my touch. There was, however, a loose catch and one window readily opened as I pushed at it.

  Another time, I promised myself, I might return and explore further. But it would not avail my sleuthing now to climb into the bowels of Somerset House, however strong my curiosity might be.

  My next reconnoitre of the street above me revealed the magenta skirts swirling quickly around the corner, and I rushed up the steps in order to follow. The top step was grimed with dog mess, my foot slid sideways and I fell heavily onto the cast iron post alongside the steps.

  My shoulder was bruised and my ankle twisted. I leaned my weight on the post and assessed my situation. Although it was not common for my face to be recognized as I walked the London streets, there was a great risk that if I raised a commotion, my identity might be discovered, and the ensuing stories certain to give me much chagrin. I therefore limped stoically to the pavement’s edge, and waved down a passing cab, very much as I had done the day before. My wife clumsily bound the ankle and applied liniment to the shoulder, and gave me scant sympathy.

  But I had to know more of the magenta lady. Fate had placed her in my path too often for me to let the quest drop now. I knew the house from whence she had emerged, and could check with Fanny whether or not it was the home of the Herons. She might also give sufficient of a description to confirm whether or not it was Mrs Heron herself that I had seen.

  Fanny made a witticism about my repeated visits, but readily enough provided a verbal portrait of Margaret Heron as a short fair woman, with a halting gait due to some degeneration of her joints. Not, I was convinced, the person in magenta, despite the house being confirmed as her residence. Furthermore, Fanny informed me that the object of Mr Heron’s dalliance had been glimpsed in the custody of her father, looking pale and defeated. “So much for that little escapade,” said my friend. “The wretched girl will be married off to the first clerk with a hundred pounds a year that can be found.”

  I ought to have let it lie, allowed time to erase the worm of curiosity gnawing at the depths of my mind. But I was like a terrier with a rat, and could not relinquish my researches until I had found a plausible exegesis to fit the known facts.

  And so I went to lie in wait, thinking that if there had indeed been a murder, the villain would long ago have flown the scene and be in hiding somewhere inconspicuous, and not in the centre of bustling London. My vantage point was a doorway on the northern side of the Strand, from which I could keep a close eye on the building opposite. I had little expectation of success, and was thinking I could really not spare the time to act as investigator in this way, when my pessimism was confounded. Once more, the magenta gown, now beginning to look a little dusty, came into view, stepping briskly down from the house into the street. Did this woman only possess one garment, I asked myself? If she lived in that house, she ought to have funds for a better wardrobe. I immediately fell into step behind her, as she strode eastwards along the Strand.

  There was something unusual about the gait, which caused me much puzzlement. Fanny had referred to a limp, caused by a faulty hip. This was quite different from any such affliction. I watched closely, until it came to me that I had myself adopted the same manner of walking when acting the part of a female in a piece of amateur dramatics. I had studied the differences in the ways men and women move, and with the aid of a cumbersome skirt had taught myself a new mode of perambulation. The person ahead of me was experiencing the same difficulty that I had at first – kicking out the fabric with every step, giving a jerky awkward impression to any onlooker. Unless I was much mistaken, the person I was tailing was no lady.

  We proceeded thus in single file all the way to Trafalgar Square, where the crowds gathered daily to admire the new fountains surrounding Nelson on his towering granite column. My quarry made for the nearest fountain, where a slim young woman stood clutching a valise that looked too heavy for her. She had light brown curls escaping from a cream-coloured bonnet, and a turned-up nose. Her cheeks were the very shade of dog rose petals. She glanced perpetually to all sides, and made every effort to shrink from view. The magenta-clad impostor approached her, took the valise and laid a hand briefly on the girl’s shoulder. I saw their eyes meet as I circled them cautiously. I saw the man’s face beneath his ridiculous bonnet as he gazed down at his lady love. I saw her trusting adoration shine naked from her eyes – and I could do nothing to interrupt such passion. The truth of the matter struck me on an instant. Young Sabine’s tall lady was in reality Mr Heron, the victim his hapless wife. My own persistence had won through, and I preened gently at the idea of myself in the role of detective. I, and I alone, had resolved the matter. I took a step towards the couple, intending to apply my hand to the collar of the wife-killer and drag him to Bow Street.

  But he had no collar, and the crowds on every side might well take a vast interest
in the sight of a man seizing hold of a gentlewoman and accusing her of murder. The young paramour might scream or faint, the business attract all manner of notoriety. I looked again at the lovers before me. What purpose could it serve, I demanded of myself, to send them to the gallows, with the shrewish Mrs Heron already dead and gone? The devoted damsel must have escaped the enraged father, doubtless lulling him by waiting a while before achieving her elopement. How cruel, then, to intercede and consign her to the ungentle chastisement that must surely be her due!

  Side by side, with a valise and two bags of meagre necessities between them, the couple, presenting themselves to the world as two women out for a jaunt, made towards Westminster and doubtless a boat to Harwich or similar, escaping to the Continent and a new life together.

  The story of the Herons died away quickly, eclipsed by fresher scandals. I mentioned it once more to Fanny, a few weeks later, idly enquiring as to whether they had ever turned up. She shook her head indifferently and shrugged.

  “But the house . . .?” I persisted. “And his money. What will happen if neither one of them returns?”

  She cocked her head at me. “Why such an interest, Mr Dickens? But I will tell you – I understand the house was on a tenancy, and there is money on deposit somewhere abroad. There is no scandal, Charles, after all. The wife has seen sense and forced her man to escort her on a long migration to take the waters at Wiesbaden, or sip Chablis on the shores of Lake Como, until he forgets all about his little peccadillo.”

  I accepted her interpretation as if entirely persuaded, and abandoned my faint intention of giving an anonymous report to the police. If Mrs Heron’s body ever did wash up from the river, it must by that time be too far gone for identification. Amongst the suicides and the victims of drunken accidents, she simply disappeared from view.

  As for young Baring-Gould, his name lodged in a recess of my mind and less than five years later, it flashed before me in the pages of the Illustrated London News. Curiously, after many adventures, I was once again presenting the same play as the one I had been involved in when I met Sabine. This time we were at Knebworth, and I discovered the paper in a rack while idly seeking some easy reading matter. It was four or five months out of date, but appeared never to have been opened. It seems the boy had been doing some excavating in Pau, in the Pyrenees, and his excellent sketches of some mosaics were reproduced in the paper. “A young Englishman,” I read, “of sixteen years of age, Mr Baring-Gould, who, having a taste for archaeology, discovered a Roman villa . . .”