The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “Thank you very much.” Dickens bowed politely. “If I might ask,” his voice took on a low conspiratorial tone, the voice of a whore about to stab a customer, “where are you from, doctor? South America, I presume, but what country and city? I am, you see,” and he carried the conspiracy right over into the whispered jocularity of his apologetic explanation, “an amateur linguist,” and he nodded to me while Doctor Rodrigo nodded knowingly to him as if he understood what Dickens was saying, “and though your English is excellent, you speak with a slight accent and I am fascinated by the geographics of accented speech.”

  “Whot? I beg…who?” The man was clearly bucked off by Dickens’s large words like “geographics.”

  “I am sorry,” Dickens said, oozing conciliation, “where are you from in South America?”

  “I am from Brazeel,” the man confessed. “Sam Pow-low.” It sounded like a bandit’s name. “A coastal ceety, menny peeple, few buildeengs.” For some inexplicable reason the man shrugged both hands at us as if to say sorry, nothing I can do about it.

  “Ah Brazil.” Dickens leaned in toward him from the edge of that wooden chair. “That is in the heart of the Amazon jungle, is it not?”

  “Well,” the man was hesitant, not wishing to offend. “No, señor, my country not jungle all. Sam Powlow old Portuguese feesheen veellage. Jungle ees center of Brazeel.”

  “Quite. Quite so.” Dickens was starting his retreat, rising from his chair, extending his hand, edging toward the door. He has gotten what he wants, I thought, whatever in the name of all that’s holy, that is.

  “When will Doctor Palmer be in?” Dickens fired one more dart as we retreated through the doorway.

  “Hee ees never een,” Doctor Vasconcellas fired back, clearly perturbed and unaware of indiscretion. “One finds heem more easily at hees riding club than heere.”

  With that eyebrow-raiser as a fare-thee-well, we took our leave of the good doctor. As we came out of St. Bart’s, one of those strange and fortuitous metamorphoses that infrequently bless a London winter occurred. The sun came out. It made us blink, and warmed our blood, and put an entirely different aspect upon the day. Inspector Field was waiting expectantly on the stone steps, his face gruffly upturned to our approach so that it quite comically formed an eloquent match with the upturned snouts of the stone lions between which he loitered.

  “Well?” Field opened his interrogation.

  “Palmer was not there.” Dickens killed Field’s hope aborning.

  “Palmer’s never there. Spends more time at his riding club than in his surgery it seems,” I added, echoing our put-upon Doctor Vasconcellas.

  Field sputtered with anger as if the planets were lining up against him in this case: “Bloody ’ell!” he cursed, not quite under his breath. “I’ll talk ta that toff if I ’ave ta ride ta the ’ounds with ’im.”

  “We did have an interview with his assistant,” Dickens interrupted Field’s little fit of pique.

  “I wondered wot was takin’ yew two so long,” Field interrupted right back, “’specially if friend Palmer wosn’t even in.”

  “But that is not all,” Dickens wrested back the floor. “Assistant is Brazilian, a Portuguese, almost a Spaniard, one Rodrigo Vasconcellas.”

  “Says yew!” A glorious grin, like the sun that had only moments before, like some heavenly alchemist, transmuted that grey day into gold, bloomed in Field’s face and resurrected his hopes. “A Spainiard in a ’ooded cloak. ’Tis wot our actor friend said.”

  “And this Spaniard is a doctor as well,” Dickens added. “And he lives on the edge of the Amazon jungle. And curare is known and used by the Indians in that jungle.”

  Dickens had utterly caught me by surprise by his aggressive journey down this trail of deduction. I think he caught Field by surprise as well. Dickens clearly meant to keep centre stage in this case and uppermost in Field’s mind the information gleaned from Burton concerning the probable cause of those poor women’s deaths. It was a subtle sort of gloating upon Dickens’s part, as if he were reminding our professional detective colleague, you are right, I would wear well in your line.

  “Dickens, my friend, yew are a genius.” Field, in his enthusiasm, did not hesitate in giving credit where due. “’Ee must be our man,” Field was absolutely twitching in his certainty, his crook’d forefinger jigging at the side of his eye as if tapping out a tune. “Now all we need is ‘why?’ Why would ’ee kill ’is master’s wife?”

  “Perhaps he is not the killer.” Much to my own surprise, it was my voice entering this animated colloquy. “He certainly did not seem like a murderer when he spoke to us just now. Somehow he seemed too, I do not know, too, well, gentle…to do something like that, I mean.”

  “Appearances can be deceivin’,” Field scoffed at my naïveté. “The politest o’ men kin murder yew just as dead as the gamest Rats’ Castle strong-armer.”

  “He is different, that is for certain.” Dickens supported my contention with a slightly raised eyebrow that left me utterly puzzled as to its meaning.

  “Collins, old mate.” Field’s enthusiasm for this turn in the case had not ebbed a whit. “That is yet another ’ard possibility. Assistant at direction o’ ’usband ’ires Dunn who ’ires Thompson, provides poison, is the man in the middle ’oo keeps Doctor William Palmer completely out o’ ’arm’s way. But why would any bloke do that? No, ’tis too farfetched. People don’ do others’ murders unless…unless…”

  “Unless?” Dickens coaxed.

  I caught myself raising up on my toes on those stone steps as I strained for Field’s answer. Even the lions seemed to be listening.

  “Unless someone ’as such a ’old on ’em they can’t break it any other way,” but Field’s voice displayed little confidence in this possibility.

  “Blackmail?” Dickens asked.

  “Yes, certainly possible.” But Field’s mind was off hunting other game. “The next step is ta let Dickie Dunn identify this Spaniard’s voice. T’would never serve as evidence in the dock, but at least we would be certain ’at we ’ad the right man.” He was actually talking aloud to himself, talking out his tactics. “We ought ta do ’at next, but ’tis too soon. If we wait, per’aps our Brazilian friend will think on all o’ this, will wonder if we are on ta ’im. Per’aps if we keep away jus’ a bit ’ee will don ’is ’ood once again an’ we kin ketch ’im wearin’it.”

  It was a rather long soliloquy for Field’s taste, but evidently necessary for his plotting of strategy. Dickens and I bore up well under it.

  “There is one other thing I noticed about our Doctor Vasconcellas.” Dickens most certainly had taken Field’s latest rendition of the “simply observe” speech to heart.

  “An’ wot might that be?” Field was once again on the alert.

  Dickens hesitated. Either something unseemly or of great gravity or of which he was rather uncertain was bothering him, and he was weighing whether to open this new Pandora’s box for our discussion. He must have decided that the box contained a relevant wind because he unleashed it upon us.

  “Did it not appear to you, Wilkie, as it appeared to me, that Doctor Vasconcellas…”—that hesitance surfaced once again—“that he appears to be, though as Inspector Field has already noted ‘looks can certainly be quite deceiving,’ ahem…I mean…appears to be, well, ahem”—slight cough behind his hand once again, his eyes moving from Field’s face to mine and back to Field’s—“a man of somewhat exotic tastes and, perhaps…one can never say for certain…of somewhat unconventional life-style.”

  I stared at Dickens, utterly uncomprehending.

  “Are yew sayin’ wot I think yer sayin’?” Field pressed.

  “A man of sexual difference, I mean.” Charles nodded.

  “You think he is a Sodomite?” The two of them flinched at the unconsidered loudness of my reaction and cast quick glances over their shoulders to see if anyone had heard. Only the lions bore witness to my amazement.

  “Wot brings yew ta tha
t?” Field was a bit open-mouthed himself at Dickens’s making such an unusual charge.

  “It is his hands, I think,” Charles spoke slowly, strongly aware of the defamatory gravity of this new terrain that he was exploring, “they never stop moving, and his voice, I do not know really, it is merely an impression, he seemed so feminine in his sensibilities, his movements. There is simply something very different in his manner, his mode of speech. Really, Field, you must meet him to understand.”

  “’Tis a grave charge.” Field was talking aloud to himself once again, and we could see his mind racing with the possibilities that Doctor Rodrigo Vasconcellas’s “otherness” might open in this case. He pondered another moment, and then dismissed the whole discussion. “But one we cannot make.”

  “I meant to make no charge,” Dickens protested. “I was merely expressing a perception, an observation of the man.”

  “I too ’ave observed ’im, I think.” Field ran his memory over this ground once more. “’E wos the one fawnin’ o’er Palmer at the funeral. ’Is assistant I think I saw on one o’ the constable’s reports. ’Ee wos there, but ’at’s no evidence o’ anything.”

  “Perhaps so.” Dickens gave it one last poke. “But he is different. I am sure of it.”

  Field shrugged. The lions frowned. The sun disappeared behind a cloud.

  A London sun in January is like a chameleon. It tends to mime the colouration of its surroundings, the personality of the season. Standing there upon Bart’s steps discussing that case, we had been granted a short respite from the grey dreariness of London winter. Our momentary sun was, however, obliterated with such force that it was as if some giant’s foot had trampled upon it or some malignant goddess had turned it to stone. The gloom of that dislocated world closed around us as we stuffed ourselves into a random hansom for the ride back to the Shooting Gallery.

  When one rides with a hansom cabman on a regular basis as we had been riding lately with Sleepy Rob, one becomes accustomed to his style of driving. Sleepy Rob was slow and sure and, for all his exterior appearance of unconcern, attended to his business (or else he had an uncommon sharp horse!). This strange cabman was quite the opposite. He was jerky with the reins and inattentive to the winter holes that sometimes gaped between the paving stones. If hansoms are, in truth, “the gondolas of London” as, I believe, our friend Disraeli, who fancies himself a novelist, calls them, they certainly do not float through the city as their namesakes do on their Venetian roadways. We bounced and jolted toward Leicester Square.

  Inspector Field, Dickens, and I had received a number of jolts in the course of this day. Little did we know that there were still more to come. By the time we reached Captain Hawkins’s Shooting Gallery, all three of us had been forced to remove our hats to keep them from being crushed against the ceiling of the cab.

  The Unkindest Jolt of All

  January 18, 1852—evening

  Pursuant to Inspector Field’s three goals as articulated in the Shooting Gallery the previous day, we had progressed quite handsomely. First, we had isolated curare as a quite probable cause of the two women’s deaths. Second, we had confronted the actor Dick Dunn and extorted a confession of his complicity. As for Field’s third wish, however, an interview with Doctor Palmer, we were no closer to that desired goal than we had ever been.

  “Wot do we know about ’im?” Field posed the hypothetical question to the assembled company, including Captain Hawkins, Serjeant Moody, and that worthy’s indecorous bird. He had already narrated for Thompson and Rogers the particulars of our afternoon’s interview with Doctor Rodrigo Vasconcellas. He had focused that narration upon friend Rodrigo’s “Spanishness” and likely knowledge of Amazonian poisons, but he did not mention Dickens’s speculation upon the man’s sexual preference. “We know ’ee’s rich”—Field turned his attention to Doctor Palmer—“’ee rarely goes to ’is surgery, ’ee is o’ the ’orsey sort, an ’ee’d recently married a young wife ’oo is now dead. Wot else, Rogers?”

  Serjeant Rogers, always ready to shine as an exemplar of efficiency and preparation, extracted a small, square notebook from an inner pocket of his greatcoat and commenced to read.

  “I have dispatched three constables hupon Palmer, sir. Hallmost hall huv their reports har complete. Hee hinherited his wealth. Left nearly seventy thousand pound when father died hin ’forty-two hin Staffordshire. Came hup to London to study med’sin hat Bart’s hin ’forty-three. Licensed has hay physician hin ’forty-hate.” Rogers took a breath. He was reading these facts from his notebook as if they were Blue Book statistics on textile exports or colliery accidents. Perhaps that is why he took his pause, because, when he went on, his statistics gave way to more personal information, became a bit more gossipy. “Word has hit that he lost hall seventy thousand pound got from his father’s death withhin two years hupon comin’ hup to London. Horse-race bettin’, they say. Hestablishes medical practice hat Bart’s hin ’forty-nine. Marries young hairess, name huv Hannie Brooks hin ’fifty. She his hour deeceeased.” At which point, having brought us nearly up to the present, that smirking little martinet took pause. I could see it in his face. He was milking the moment. He stood smug as an oyster in the certainty that he had some pearl of information to disgorge of which none of us yet had any knowledge, not even Inspector Field.

  Also seeing it in his face, and perhaps resigned to the man’s little games from having been subjected to them much longer than we, Field slowly and sarcastically nudged Rogers into dispensing his valuable information: “Yew seem to ’ave more ta tell us Serjeant, might we bother yew ta proceed.”

  “This just came hin this hafternoon, sir,” Rogers resumed excitedly. “This his the capper, Hi’d say.”

  “Dammit man, git on with it.” Field’s impatience triumphed in its battle with his tongue.

  “Constable O’Jordan hinterviewed han hagent hat Lloyd’s this afternoon hoo says that huone month hafter they wos married, Palmer took hout hay life hinsurance policy hon the missus. Twenty thousand pound he stands ta gain pending the houtcome huv hour hinvestigation. Constable halso hinterviews Palmer’s solicitor. Hasks how much Doctor will hinherit from wife’s hestate. Solicitor raises highbrows, but won’t hanswer. Client privilege yoo know, but O’Jordan thinks hits hay pile,” and, with that, Rogers, dripping with self-importance, snapped shut his notebook as if to say and there you have it! My police procedures have solved this case!

  “Good,” Field, perhaps still a bit perturbed at Rogers’s dramatising of his gathered information, the drawing out of his moment, spoke it dryly, unenthusiastically, “all circumstantial, but quite good nonetheless. So…’’—he turned back to the rest of us—“as I expected, Doctor William Palmer stands ta profit ’andsomely from ’is wife’s death. No doubt, when interviewed ’ee will ’ave a brigade o’ witnesses ta ’is whereabouts the night o’ ’er murder. An’ then there are the Spaniard an’ Thompson ta reckon with, but ’tis the man ’oo gits the money ’oo’s the one”—and he slammed his decisive forefinger down upon the gun table—“I’d stake me life on it!”

  “So wot do we do now?” Tally Ho Thompson, less than comfortable at Field’s still including him as one of the suspected murderers in the case, exhibited his impatience.

  “Nothin’.” Field squelched him.

  All of us, including Dickens, were struck dumb. So much progress had been made, so much information gathered in the course of this one day, that Field’s placidity, his unconcern, was received with unanimous consternation. The case seemed to be gaining a momentum that could possibly carry it straight through to its destination, and suddenly Field wanted to pull on the brake.

  “Wot do we do now?” There was a mischievous glint in Field’s eyes as he scratched at it with his crook’d forefinger. “Is that dinner I smell, Cap’n ’Awkins?”

  “It is indeed, sir”—Hawkins’s open face bloomed with pleasure at the prospect of entertaining such an august company—“and a better yule niver git in any regimental mess
in Her Majesty’s Empire!”

  With that, we gathered our ragtag collection of chairs around the gun table, and Captain Hawkins and Serjeant Moody set our places. It was a savoury hunter’s stew prepared over the Shooting Gallery’s stone hearth on a cast-iron cooking hook of the sort that soldiers in the field would drive into the ground over an open fire. Dished out of its open pot into pewter bowls by Serjeant Moody, who used an iron ladle also of a military cut, the stew steamed on the table before us, encircled us in a mesmerising aroma that killed our conversation and sent us leaping for our spoons. That enticing smell, composed of stewed beef hearts, potatoes (skins still on, of course), and a magical mixture of spices, danced and swirled around us with the seductive power of a Salome at her dance or a Scheherazade at her tale. As befits the truly impromptu character of any hunter’s stew (which is a cook’s metaphor for the originality of the creative act), all of its ingredients had, most likely, been bought in Covent Garden Market that very day. They all found expression in a strong beef gravy with pieces of onion swimming about amidst the essences of nutmeg, clove, and a touch of ginger, and beans, carrots, and heavy cauliflowers drowning in the seething boil, all well-peppered, with islands of soldiers’ drop biscuits floating on the top. That stew, exuding the richness of the West Indies, was complimented by mugs of strong coffee, the most common military potable next to rum, and penny loaves of coarse English bread.

  No dish depends solely upon the delicious culinary chemistry of its ingredients, but rather upon the generous creative spirit of its maker and the receptivity of spirit of its devourers. No one could deny the fine spirits of Captain Hawkins and his faithful squire, and we did, indeed, unhesitating, devour that imposing hunter’s stew in the high spirits of his openhearted hospitality. We were a close company drawn into a tight circle of comradeship around that savoury pot and those smoking mugs. As we ate, broken Bert bustled around us in his crabbed and stilted way, refilling our cups and bowls while his evil parrot squawked out a running commentary upon our cannibal rapaciousness: “Fagging rips, bloody hogs, fagging bloody glutton sots.” Whether he really pronounced those things that clearly or we just imagined that those were the words formed by that evil bird’s chorus of gutteral sounds I am not certain even to this day. I do remember clearly, however, that in later years whenever Captain Hawkins’s name came up in conversation between Dickens and I or Inspector Field, Charles always played the same chord: “Most generous man in London,” he would declare, “would take anyone off the streets and give them a home!”