The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  Next Field moved to the doorway of the adjoining chamber (which, upon later inspection, proved to be the entrance to a small kitchen and water closet, which held a large chamber-pot), and stood facing in toward the bed almost treading on the stiffening feet of the corpse. He was leaning so precariously forward, that I thought that he was going to lose his balance, and pitch headlong down on top of the bloody body. Instead, he bent down, and examined the soles of the late Paroissien’s bare feet. Then, he was up and moving along the wall to a position approximately half the distance between the dry sink with its open drawer and the doorway through which Paroissien had entered, prior to receiving his first stab wound in the back.

  On the move again, he stepped to the chairs against the wall near where we stood. With one professional hand, he inventoried the clothes—one pair white cotton under-breeches, one pair tweed trousers, one tweed jacket, one pair grey gloves, one pair black stockings with garters, one pair leather pumps. We later found a greatcoat and hat, on a chair near the door in the front parlor. One other wooden straight-backed chair was pulled up to the side of the bed, but it held no clothes nor anything else, just stood there empty, seemingly out of place. Nevertheless, Inspector Field bent to study this chair, reached down, and removed some small tatter of something from the wood of the chair’s seat. He placed whatever this clue was in one of his many inside pockets before I could distinguish its color or texture or meaning.

  For more long minutes, Field prowled that room. He bent this and poked at that, his crook’d forefinger scratching lightly at the side of his eye. “He was re-creating the scene,” Dickens speculated later, “writing it exactly as a novelist would.”

  The last thing Field bent to examine was the corpse itself. I glanced at Dickens but, to my surprise, Dickens was not looking at Inspector Field. Dickens was watching the scene unfold in the large mirror. The pier glass over the dry sink reproduced every move of Inspector Field’s detective investigation: his precise measurement, with a small ruler extracted from one of his many inner pockets, of the length and width of each stab wound, and the recording of those measurements in his small notebook; his sketching of a diagram of the configuration of the stab wounds, and his placing the numbers one through six next to each wound in that configuration; his insertion of his formidable forefinger into each wound testing no doubt for its depth; his frozen pondering over the body as he rested on one knee beside it. I must admit that I too became fascinated by this angle of view which Dickens had chosen. Watching it all take place in the mirror somehow made it seem not so real or terrible or brutal.

  Later, when we were alone, I asked Dickens why he had been watching so intently in the mirror rather than looking directly upon Field. “Mirroring life, that is what I do,” Dickens answered almost wistfully. “Perhaps I didn’t want to look too closely because I was afraid I would see too much. Perhaps I am like the famous inhabitants of Plato’s cave, content to watch the mere shadows of reality.”

  I watched through Dickens’s mirror for a brief time but when Inspector Field rose from his contemplation of the stab wounds in the corpse’s back, he regained my full and direct attention. He shot a quick glance at Dickens and myself, and he too caught Dickens looking in the mirror, because he then glanced quickly into the glass startling Dickens.

  Gingerly, with his right foot, Inspector Field rolled the corpse over onto its back. My mind immediately recalled the dead eyes of Solicitor Partlow, staring up into the Thames night. Paroissien’s mouth was twisted into a silent gasp of surprise, as if he had made a sudden drawing in of breath to cry out or curse, but then froze in the midst of that aborted act.

  After a momentary hesitation, Field once again stooped to inspect the corpse. First he examined closely the face, neck and hands. Next, however, Field did one of the most distasteful things I have ever seen a gentleman do. He took the dead man’s sexual appendage in his hand and squeezed it twice with an upward movement toward the head, with the intent, I presume, to force any liquid which might have pooled within to flow out. Whether or not he was successful neither Dickens nor I could see. Then, carefully, he stretched and examined the skin of the member, concerning which he made a number of notes in his small black book. The indecorousness of this episode brought to Dickens’s countenance a look of chagrin so severe that it verged upon pain. I found it a bizarre and mildly revolting procedure, but I was not nearly so strongly affected. When Field finished, he rubbed his hand twice on his trouser leg and rose to his feet. With one quick step he moved to the foot of the bed. For a long moment he stared down at the wrinkled and blood-stained sheets, then a quick glance down at the dead body, then a glance to the doorway from the kitchen, then a glance into the pier glass, then another glance into the kitchen’s doorway, then another glance to the corpse, then his eyes returned to contemplation of the tousled bed.

  “That is all there is to be done ’ere, gentlemen,” he announced, startling both Dickens and myself when he broke the silence which had reigned over the chamber. “Let us return to Bow Street. My constables will clean up ’ere.”

  I was ready to leave. I actually took an immediate step backward to the door. Dickens, however, did exactly the opposite. He stepped into the room, moved directly to the corpse. Field did not object. Dickens bent to the dead body and, with the thumb and forefinger of his right hand, closed the man’s vacant staring eyes. With that, Dickens turned and led us from that chamber.

  “What did you learn in there?” Dickens timidly inquired in the coach.

  Inspector Field deflated the entire evening with the grim resignation of his profound verdict: “The young woman killed ’im, I’m afraid.”

  Dickens slumped back against the cushions as if he had received a sharp blow to the chest.

  Reading the Book of the Dead, or, “Out, Out Damned Spot”

  May 8, 1851—almost midnight

  Novel writing, this compulsive attempt to mirror reality, is much like detectiving, yet different. In writing a novel, the author must construct a credible plot, even if, in reality, the events upon which that plot is modeled take irrational turns. What the detective undertakes is precisely the opposite. The detective looks at the events and furnishings of the world, studies them, and constructs the plot of his story. A novelist is, from the onset, lord of the whole, and his talent for words and structures serves as a valet to the parts. A detective begins as valet to the parts, but by his ingenuity and hard work rises to become lord of the whole. There lies the difference between art and reality.

  Though this is but a secret journal, it nonetheless poses all of the novelist’s problems. I am a novelist, yet this is not a novel. I am forced to play the role of the greenest of apprentice detectives. I cannot see where this tale is going. Perhaps Dickens could see further. Yet, that cold night at Bow Street Station, newly returned from that grisly scene in the murderer’s lodgings, I felt that Dickens was as far adrift as was I.

  Dickens once said, on one of our night walks, “We should be able to read the world as we would read a book.” Should not I, then, have been able to read this vision of the world, which had been thrust upon us that night? The scene of that grisly crime was a text, a veritable three-decker, yet I was fully incapable of reading past page one. Thank the Lord that Inspector Field was an expert at reading the book of the dead.

  “What makes you believe that Miss Ternan killed the stage manager?” Dickens was already arguing in the young woman’s defense. “I saw no evidences…”

  ‘‘I cannot yet prove it,” Field answered, trying to hide his surprise at the emotional strain detectable in Dickens’s manner. “Yet, in my own mind, she is the one. All the signs were there, in the room, all pointin’ to ’er.”

  “What signs?” It was my voice, the faithful bulldog.

  Field smiled benignly, giving two nervous little scratches to the side of his eye with his crook’d forefinger. “The signs were there, posted all about that room. You gentlemen just did not know ’ow to read ’em.”
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br />   Both Dickens and I waited for him to explain.

  “Tho’ it’s neither ’ere nor there until we catch up with the principals in our little drama, this is what I am certain ’appened. We all know that Paroissien killed Solicitor Partlow over the girl. That night Partlow ‘ad struck a bargain with the girl’s mother for the sale for sexual purposes of ’er virgin daughter.” For some unexplained reason he gave particular emphasis to that word “virgin” by a quick tap on the wooden arm of his chair with his formidable forefinger.

  How could he know she was a virgin? The thought darted through my consciousness no sooner than Inspector Field enunciated it.

  As if reading my mind, Field continued with his narrative.

  “Rakes of wealth and power, of the order of Lawyer Partlow and Lord Ashbee, take great satisfaction in the deflowerin’ of such an innocent. They coveted ’er because she was young and beautiful, but especially unspoiled.”

  “They?” my voice challenged him again.

  “No. Partlow is the only one of whom I can be certain. I simply suspect that Ashbee is of that type. No…I meant Partlow.”

  Dickens sat like a stone idol.

  “The night of the first murder, Partlow, in ’is cups and feelin’ secure in the company of other rakes and drunkards, boasted of ’is purchase of the girl’s virtue, perhaps even went so far as to describe when and where ’ee planned to force ’imself upon ’er. That night, as ’is tongue ran loose, Partlow either did not suspect, or was too drunk to care, that Paroissien also coveted the young woman, and could not stand to ’ear another man boastin’ of the ownership of that which ’ee so passionately longed to possess. In an uncontrolled passion of lust and ’ate, Paroissien killed Partlow, and, with the ’elp of the others, threw his mortal remains into the Thames.”

  He paused and glanced in Dickens’s direction, as if to check a barometer. Steady there, his eyes seemed to say.

  “You both know the details of our investigation. Paroissien ’angs back until ’ee feels ’ee ’as put the bloodhounds off the scent. ’Ee feels ’ee ’as gotten away with it, and, in ’is false security, allows ’is lust for the Ternan girl to rise up out of its dormant state. Rememberin’ Partlow’s boasts, ’ee is convinced that ’ee can buy the girl. ’Ee approaches the maternal bawd. The deal is struck. Paroissien’s dinner this evenin’ with the mother and the girl was the scene of the final transaction. Paroissien, by payin’ money or by offerin’ the promise of favor, possessed himself of the prize he had so long lusted after and even killed to possess. Since the girl herself would probably be innocent to all that was afoot, the scenario most likely followed the conventional rake’s progress. Paroissien pays the Ternan woman, mother lures daughter to Paroissien’s lodgin’s, then abandons ’er. Perhaps they drug ’er. Thus, the scene is set. Yet, when the script is played out, the result is murder.”

  “But all of this is sheer speculation,” Dickens sputtered.

  “Quite right. Quite so.” Field tapped the arm of his chair with his forefinger. “Yet it is true and real, I am certain. What ’appened next is not speculation, and verifies this whole scenario.”

  Dickens subsided back into a wounded silence. Field softened his voice as if he sensed that there was more at stake in this case for Dickens than the gathering of authentic material for his next novel.

  “It is from this point in the night’s events that the signs posted in that dead man’s bedchamber present a much clearer picture.”

  The man stood unwavering in his sense of his own rightness.

  “Aye, the signs,” Rogers nodded in iteration of his superior’s authority and credibility.

  “The stage manager took ’er by force in that bed. She put up a struggle. The actual rentin’ and drivin’ of the bedclothes to the floor signal ’er futile resistance. ’Ee deflowered ’er. ’Er virgin blood mixed with ’is spendin’s pooled in one spot on the foundation sheet, a bright red stain laced with dirty yellow streaks. It formed an almost perfect ’eart-shaped sign. That is the shape formed by the female body lyin’ on its back. Perhaps she was unconscious for some time after ’ee finished with ’er, for she did not move as these fluids drained from ’er body. Perhaps ’ee remained atop ’er body preventin’ motion or flight.”

  Field described it as if the girl was no more than a prop which he could maneuver across his stage at whim.

  Dickens’s face remained dead and impassive throughout.

  “Paroissien left the room, threatenin’ to return and resume ’is perverse attentions. No doubt ’ee proceeded to the water closet to relieve ’imself. ’Ee did not, ’owever, clean ’imself. ’Ee did not wash the virgin blood from ’is sexual member.”

  I remembered the distasteful thoroughness of Field’s inspection of that appendage.

  “Terrified by the threat of ’is return, the Ternan girl ’urriedly searches the room for a weapon to defend ’erself. She finds ’er weapon and waits beside the doorway, through which ’ee must re-enter. The weapon, a large pair of sewin’ shears, is ready in ’er ’ands. Paroissien, wearin’ only ’is shirt, returns through the door, realizes the girl is not in the bed, ’alts puzzled. In ’er panic, she does not ’esitate. With both ’ands she stabs into the man’s back. ’Ee never saw ’is killer. ’Ee pitched face forward on the floor. ’Ee may ’ave been killed instantly by the first thrust. It may ’ave pierced ’is ’eart. Nevertheless, she was on ’im as ’ee fell, stabbin’, stabbin’, in a frenzy of fear, stabbin’ ’im five more times.”

  Dickens simply could not maintain his unnatural detachment any longer. “That’s absurd.” He was attempting to speak forcefully, but his voice wavered out of control. Field and Rogers stared at him in surprise. His voice was a thin rasp: “She could not have done this evil thing. She is too young and innocent. She hasn’t the strength. You cannot be serious.”

  Field’s face rarely betrayed any emotion, yet I thought I detected a softening around Field’s mouth and eyes, an understanding. I feel that at that moment Field realized that Dickens was in love with the girl.

  “You cannot know this, all of this,” Dickens struggled on. “That room was splashed with blood. You cannot prove that he had his way with her. There was no such murder weapon in that room, no sewing shears.”

  Field spoke softly: “True. There was no murder weapon in the room when we arrived. She took it away with ’er. Do you remember the drawer that ’ung open in the washstand? Sometimes it is not so important what is in an opened drawer as what is not and ought to be. There were needles, spools of thread, fabric patches, swatches of dark wool, but no shears for the cuttin’ of these ’ousehold fabrics. Those shears were the murder weapon. The wounds were not made by a knife. Those wounds were too large, too wide. They were made by a thick, blunt, pointed object. The doubled blade of a pair of sewin’ shears.”

  “No. No. I can’t believe it. She is but a child,” Dickens said in a low distraught whisper. “How do you know that she was the only one there? Could not someone else have been there?”

  “There are, of course, other possibilities,” Field said calmly. “Another person or persons could ’ave been in the room with ’em.”

  “What do you mean? Who?” Dickens strained forward in the chair.

  “Or, they could ’ave been surprised in the act of love.”

  “What do you mean?” Dickens sank back. “Why would others be there?”

  Field stared levelly at him.

  Dickens slowly lowered his eyes, shaking his head in disbelief, and murmuring “no, no,” beneath the threshold of hearing. After a long moment, his head came back up, his eyes still struggling with that disbelief.

  “Watching?” It was more a plea than a question.

  “Yes, possibly, or…” Field’s voice was quiet, level, cold.

  “Oh God, Wilkie, what a perverse dose of reality we have walked into this night.” He was turning to me for relief from the relentless truths that Inspector Field sent raining down upon his sensibilities. “Who coul
d possibly make up such a godless party?”

  “Perhaps the old bawd who sold her daughter. Perhaps Ashbee. Perhaps someone of whom we have no information at all. Anythin’ is possible.” Field, I feel, was simply musing aloud, with no real conviction in his voice, yet Dickens seized that straw.

  “Ashbee?” Dickens pressed him. “Why Ashbee?”

  “No one else is involved in this case.”

  “You feel Ashbee, a gentleman, would stoop to this?”

  “I have unearthed some rather unsettlin’ rumors concernin’ Milord Ashbee,” Field replied.

  “Then, if he or the old witch were there, they could have killed Paroissien. She may be innocent.”

  “No…,” Field replied sadly, “I fear she is no longer innocent.”

  Dickens glared. Field met his eyes with a steady gaze.

  “Unless Paroissien left the front door open by some prior arrangement, they were not surprised. There were no marks of forced entry. Unless the mother, the others, entered with Paroissien and the girl, there was no one else there. There is no sign of any other person ‘avin’ ever been in that bedchamber.” Field spoke with quiet decisiveness.

  Dickens’s eyes were dead.

  “I am certain that Miss Ternan killed Paroissien. But, I am not certain that a crime ’as been committed ’ere. She could well ’ave been defendin’ ’erself against further violence.”

  Hope fluttered feebly in Dickens’s countenance. “Yes, could not Paroissien have been killed after the girl left the rooms, if, indeed, she ever entered them? Could it not have been one of those actors? He was universally disliked at the theatre.”