The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  Rogers quickly stooped to the corpse, showing no squeamishness as he rifled its pockets. “Nothin’,” he informed Field.

  “You’ve done your usual thorough job,” Field muttered.

  Humphrey House, the waterman, flinched perceptibly and shrank backwards.

  At that moment, Rogers rolled the body over to continue his search. The corpse’s gaunt dead eyes stared up at us. Drops of moisture and smears of mud distorted that sightless face.

  Dickens started back, his face twisting in shock and recognition.

  “What is it?” Inspector Field, who missed nothing, and certainly not such a dramatic change of expression, asked immediately.

  I had never seen “the Inimitable” so discomposed. No one, not even Macready, could have imitated that startled look.

  “I…I know that face,” Dickens stammered.

  The Body Will Tell Us!

  April 13, 1851

  It was midnight by the bells atop Saint Paul’s, but not for the spirit which once inhabited that sodden corpse staring up from its bed in the mud of the Victoria embankment.

  “I know that face,” Dickens repeated, his voice shaking.

  “Well, who is it?” Rogers’s impatience showed.

  “What ho, identified on the spot,” Field took a lighter tack.

  “Yes…Yes…I know the man,” Dickens uttered the words slowly as if in a daze.

  Inspector Field became positively festive.

  The corpse lay silent like some shipwrecked seaman washed ashore on an alien beach.

  “It is Lawyer Partlow of Lincoln’s Inn Fields. He is an acquaintance of Forster’s. In fact, one of Forster’s close neighbours.” Dickens’s voice gained strength with each word. “Forster lives at fifty-eight Lincoln’s Inn Fields and Partlow at sixty-two. We shared a hansom back from the theatre one evening. Their addresses were a subject of the conversation.”

  Both Field and Rogers were impressed by Dickens’s novelist’s memory.

  “You ’ave no idea ’ow much better than a ‘FOUND DEAD’ notice posted on boards across the city your identification is,” Field gushed.

  “We wouldn’t ’ave identified this bloke for days,” Rogers nodded.

  “Partlow is well known among the players at Covent Garden Theatre. He is one of the most visible patrons and the theatre’s solicitor, said to be an expert in angel contracts and private fund raising. He has even taken his turn in the crowd scenes of some of the more populous productions.” Dickens’s voice had gradually become clinical and detached. “Macready dislikes him, but then Macready dislikes everyone,” Dickens finished with a quip, the procession of facts from his capacious memory having dispelled his initial shock at being acquainted with such a brutally murdered corpse.

  “Excellent work, Mister Dickens,” Inspector Field complimented him. “You ’ave saved me days of work with your identification.”

  Dickens bowed and smiled.

  A lorry clattered up on the street; the horse stood snorting in the cold wind. Two Bow Street constables placed the body in a winding sheet, the sheet in the lorry and drove off. Field directed us to wait, which occasioned Dickens and me to retreat once again into the shelter of the same overturned boat we had employed earlier. From that protected vantage we watched as Inspector Field tied up the loose ends of the evening.

  First he summoned his water rat, honest Humphrey, and lectured him at some length. Through it all, the dredger repeatedly shook his head in denial, and held out his hands in shrugs of the sort the guilty make when their good character is being impugned. Finally, Field threw up his hands and, with a curse, paid the man with one large coin. With that, the water rat scurried to his mongrel boat, pushed off the mud, clambered aboard and was carried off by the flood.

  Field next turned to Irish Meg Sheehey. He moved her off toward the river out of our hearing. I could barely make out their shadows standing close together against the grey-black of the river. I imagine that Field was outlining her responsibilities as the chief witness in the case. I am also certain that money was exchanged. Their private colloquy ended, they moved back toward our point of vantage.

  As they approached up that beach of oily mud, without really knowing why, I stepped toward her. Actually, Inspector Field was somewhat startled when I suddenly popped out from under that overturned boat. I stopped short. I had nothing to say, especially with Dickens and Field standing by. My sudden impulsive movement toward this fallen creature made me feel quite foolish indeed.

  Meg Sheehey did a strange thing, however. She smiled as if she understood.

  “Mind your manners, Meggy,” Inspector Field snapped. He missed nothing. “Be gone,” he ordered with a harsh jab of his frightening forefinger.

  Her face twisted into a sudden look of disdain for all of us. She turned and ran off into the night.

  I was, of course, embarrassed by my impulsiveness, embarrassed by my romantic idealization of this common street harlot, but most of all I was embarrassed that Dickens and Field had seen my attraction to the woman. Yet, the woman had cast a strange spell over me. She had an independence about her atypical of her sex in our age. When she disappeared into the night, all that was left was that image of her gazing raptly into the fire in her blood-red dress back at the stationhouse. I was convinced that Meggy Sheehey, the fire-woman, was different from all the others. I felt a strange sadness that our brief intercourse had been forced to end so abruptly. I never expected to meet her again. Little did I know then about the fickleness of expectations.

  Field quickly dispatched Rogers with orders to oversee the cleaning and scrutinizing of Lawyer Partlow’s corpse, ending with a directive to report the results to him at “the usual place.”

  Then Field turned to us: “Gentlemen, it ’as been an eventful evenin’. If you are like me, you are chilled to the bone. There is only one remedy. You must allow me to stand you a ’ot gin. I’m sure you want to see this affair through. It will be an ’our until the surgeon’s scrutiny of the deceased is completed.”

  We accepted his invitation without hesitation.

  Inspector Field led us back through narrow airless streets to the Bow Street neighbourhood. We passed by the bright lamps burning on the facade of the Police Station where, we presumed, the shell of what had been Lawyer Partlow was being scrutinized. A few abrupt turns brought us to a closed alley and a pub sign that read “THE LORD GORDON ARMS.” This was clearly Field’s “usual place.” The public house was warm and hospitable. The Inspector was well-known there. The publican, who in this case proved an ample and jovial lady of the ruddy persuasion, came out from behind the tap and personally escorted us to a private room down a short rear hallway.

  “They will warm us a flavorful gin ’ere, gentlemen,” Field assured us, “and tease it with the flavor of nutmeg and lemon if you so desire.”

  He gave his order to the woman with a curt nod, and she, in turn, dispatched a blank-looking boy of fifteen or sixteen who had followed us down the hallway. With quick facility, she stoked and lit the fire, and, with an energetic pumping of a large antique bellows, it was soon blazing away.

  “Miss Katie Tillotson, Proprietress,” Field introduced our hostess after she had vacated the room. “Inherited the Lord Gordon from ’er first ’usband thirty years ago and ’as gone through two more since; first two dead, natural, third driven away for stealin’ from ’er till and drinkin’ up ’er profits. Fine woman, Miss Katie. Keeps a clean, well-lit ’ouse.”

  Neither Dickens nor I had any argument with that. Within moments, the dull boy returned with a large steaming jug from which, to our frozen senses, emanated the most fragrant odor of spiced gin we had ever sniffed. He poured us each a steaming mug, and withdrew. For long minutes, we warmed ourselves by the welcome hearth, and sipped gratefully from our smoking cups. It was a reflective Dickens who finally broke the silence.

  “It seems hard to believe what I have seen this evening, Inspector Field. Reality is indeed a shocking thing.”

 
“What’s shockin’,” Field answered slowly, “is that this reality ’appens every week. People take to murder as easy and reg’lar as if it were a darts game or a dust disposal.”

  “One can’t help but wonder why that man was so brutally murdered.”

  “The ‘why’ of it is the last thing to make itself known in most o’ these cases. We can find the ‘’ow’ and the ‘where’ and the ‘when’ and even the ‘who,’ but the ‘why?’ Even the murderers sometimes don’t know ‘why.’”

  “Ah, but to me, the ‘why’ is the most interesting.”

  I could see that Dickens was hooked.

  “Not to me,” Field disagreed. He and Dickens had fallen into a debate which reminded me of two scholars of different disciplines presenting their opposing views of the same case. “To me, the real game is the readin’ of the signs, the gatherin’ of the clues, the puttin’ together of the puzzle. My satisfactions come in catchin’ my man. Let the magistrates worry about catchin’ ’is reasons.”

  “But aren’t you curious about them? After you catch them don’t you talk to them to find out ‘why’?”

  “Not atall. Not atall. After I get ’em cuffed, I don’t even think on ’em anymore. I’ve done my job and there is always another waitin’.”

  Dickens had no further argument for that and we sipped our gin in silence for a minute or two.

  “How could something like what we witnessed this evening happen in a civilized society?” Dickens mused aloud. “This man was a gentleman, accepted in the highest, most respectable circles.”

  “Because it ain’t a civilized society,” Field was enjoying himself, “otherwise there’d be no need for my kind. As to ’ow it ’appened…”

  “Yes, how?”

  “The body will tell us.”

  That cryptic statement left both Dickens and myself at sea. “’Ow did it ’appen,” Field repeated, seeing Dickens and I befuddled at his pronouncement. “A drunken argument, the woman says. The body will tell us more.”

  At that very moment, Rogers entered our snug retreat bearing a folded paper, the Police Surgeon’s report on the corpse. Field took the report from his lieutenant but, before looking at it, called for the dull-eyed boy to bring another mug and, when delivered, poured his second-in-command a steaming draught. Only when Rogers was settled amongst us did Field turn to see what indeed “the body would tell us.”

  “Well?” Dickens couldn’t wait. “What does it say?”

  “Yes,” I added, paraphrasing Inspector Field ironically, “just what is it that Lawyer Partlow’s body has to tell us?”

  He smiled patronizingly, the professional briefing the amateurs: “As one might expect, ’is clothes were expensively tailored. ’Is waistcoat was missin’, probably appropriated along with all money and identifyin’ papers by ’Umphrey the waterman. ’Is ’ands were still gloved. ’Eavy bruises on the face and ’ead, but, because they contain splinters of creosoted wood, they probably were caused by the tides throwin’ ’im against the ’ulls of ships after ’ee was put in the water. ’Ee was stabbed from behind by a long, quite wide, flat blade, long enough to go all the way through the body and emerge from the chest. Blade was withdrawn with a downward wrench which split the whole back open. Shape of wound and exit wound suggest some kind of medieval sword, very ’eavy, skin around the wound totally crushed. That’s what the body of our friend Partlow ’as to say tonight, gentlemen.”

  We were visibly impressed.

  “Oh, one more thing. Surgical opinion says death by stabbin’, not death by drownin’. That’s important.”

  “Why?” I asked.

  “Makes a difference as to whether we’re lookin’ for just one murderer or whether all four of the men present are to be charged. Meg said they either ’elped carry the body to the stairs and threw it in, or they stood by and watched while it was done without interferin’. But if the stab wound killed him, the others get off free.”

  With that, we were even more impressed.

  “What does it all mean?” Dickens asked.

  “What it means,” Inspector Field said, glancing quickly at Rogers, who sipped at his steaming gin and looked out from beneath his fierce black eyebrows, “is that this is planned murder. No drunken argument as Meggy thought. Murder plain and simple.”

  “For God’s sake, why do you say that?” Dickens exploded.

  Field smiled benignly, “Isn’t it obvious? Don’t you see it?”

  Neither Dickens nor I saw it at all.

  Inspector Field finally decided that he had tantalized us quite enough: “Gentlemen on a drunken spree don’t carry antique weapons like that which made this wound. Perhaps they carry a walkin’ stick or a small truncheon secreted in an inner pocket. But this murderer was carryin’ a ’eavy sword brought along for the purpose of murder and none other.”

  “So what is your next step?” Dickens asked Field.

  “The same as yours,” Field answered unblinking.

  Dickens, puzzled, took the bait: “And what is that?”

  “To go ’ome and get some sleep.”

  We all smiled.

  “I quite agree,” Dickens stood up. “It has been a long and eventful evening.”

  “Your assistance ’as been greatly appreciated, sir,” Rogers spoke up.

  “Yes, indeed.” Field’s animation was genuine.

  “We would very much like to continue to follow this case, to give any assistance that we can, of course, but mainly for curiosity’s sake,” Dickens addressed Field cautiously. “You have drawn us right into the middle of one of your mysteries, and, I feel I speak for Mister Collins as well, I found the evening exciting and fascinating. Will you keep us informed? May we continue to observe your investigation at first hand?”

  Inspector Field smiled openly at Dickens and answered, without the slightest hesitation, “You’ve identified our murdered man. Meg says there are four others involved. Who knows, perhaps you can identify ’em too. It is my thinkin’ that these swells are from your part of town, rather than mine. Before this is done your ’elp may be even more useful than it ’as already been ’ere at the start.”

  With Field’s assurances that he would keep us informed, and, in fact, summon us at any crucial point in the case, we parted company.

  It was nearing two in the morning. As we walked back through those deserted streets, I began to understand Dickens’s great affection for them. He walked his beloved streets out of restlessness, but one could not help but see those streets’ potential for this kind of shocking reality which Field had guided us down into this night. I am convinced that those night streets were Dickens’s greatest inspiration.

  Death Closing All around Me

  April 14, 1851

  If this were one of my novels, this chapter would not exist. It digresses. As a memoir, not a novel, however, I am bound to tell what happened when it happened. Historians and biographers may some day refer to this manuscript, probably to learn about him, not me.

  This particular date, April fourteenth, eighteen hundred fifty-one, proved one of the most important in Dickens’s personal history. Only one day after looking into the dead eyes of that murdered man, Dickens on this day was forced to confront an event which darkened his view of life. After the events of this day, he was never the same again, either in life or in fiction.

  I slept late the morning after our nocturnal adventure in the company of Inspector Field. I had business in the City, so I did not look in at the Household Words office that afternoon. Forster later told me that Dickens rose late at Wellington Street, and immediately called for a coach to take him to Malvern to visit his wife. The following day, the fourteenth, he returned early to the city but did not go to Wellington Street. Instead, he went to his city house in Devonshire Terrace. Mrs. Dickens was in Malvern, recuperating from one of her frequent undiagnosable illnesses, but the children were quartered in Devonshire Terrace in the care of a nurse and three trusted family servants. Forster looked in there late in the a
fternoon, and found Dickens in the nursery playing with the youngest, Dora Annie, who within the week had recovered from a stiff bout with the chicken pox. As Forster described it, she was skipping about the room and perching on her father’s lap like a bird newly freed from its cage. Dickens had spent the afternoon preparing the evening’s speech and playing with the children. He and Forster rode in a cab into town at six.

  I met Dickens as he was climbing out of the hansom outside The London Tavern at number five Bishopsgate Street. There was a crush of people at the door, those waiting to get in, plus the inevitable Grub Streeters who seemed to appear whenever it was publicized that Dickens would be in attendance at any public function. He looked tired, but he was jovial upon coming in. When his good friend Macready inquired after Mrs. Dickens’s health, I saw Dickens wink, and overheard him answer with an evil grin, “I fear my wife is once again in the early stages of her anti-Malthusian state.” It was an unkind thing to say about his wife in her absence, but the all-male company could not help chuckling at his wit. I, however, knew that his joke was nothing but a joke. Mrs. Dickens had been in the throes of an elusive and unsettling illness for more than four months, and had been recuperating at the spa at Malvern for the last two. During all of that time Dickens had been working full time and sleeping most nights in the Household Words offices at Wellington Street.

  That night of the fourteenth, Dickens was in the Chair presiding over the annual dinner of the General Theatrical Fund. We peopled every table that had been brought in for the occasion and the tap of The London Tavern was filled to overflowing with those unfortunates who had made their pledge to the fund either too late or too usurously to assure them a good table for the festivities. I was sitting at a table with Sala and Egg and Phillip Collins, immediately behind the most prominent of the satellite tables peopled with Dickens’s oldest friends: Forster, Wills, Macready, Bulwar, Trevor Blount and Talfourd, a lawyer who lived his whole life under the illusion that he was really a literary man.