The door opened. I caught a glimpse of Meg and Bess sitting like sisters on the bench. Meg was ushered in, but I dared not look at her. I wondered if all the others in the room had noticed my agitation in her presence, and were secretly laughing at me behind their hands.
“This testermoney is the old bawd’s own words as best we could get ’em down,” Field said, introducing the entertainment. “She is bein’ ’eld in custody, as is the butler we surprised in Lord Ashbee’s private library. They’ll not ’ave the oppertunity to warn any of our principals in this case. Mister Dickens ’as kindly consented to read ’em out for us, my voice bein’ summat tired from ’agglin’ with the old ’ore all day.”
With that, Dickens stood and commenced. After only a few questions and answers, his voice began to take on the opposed characters of the two antagonists in the dialogue. His rendition of Field’s dominance and contempt and bullying power was consistent and relentless and measured. His characterization of the creature’s answers was quirky and fluctuating, coy and fearful, full of the chameleon postures of an accomplished actress. I had heard Dickens give speeches in his own persona to full rooms, but this was the first time I had ever heard him read aloud in any sort of dramatic circumstance. Since then—is it not ironic?—this sort of dramatic reading became almost his life. Countless times in the years before his death I sat spellbound as he read aloud The Christmas Carol or the murder of Nancy to halls jammed with people as motionless and straining to catch every word as was I that evening.
What follows in its entirety, including some of Dickens-the-actor’s gestures and voice inflections, is the old bawd’s testimony which he read that night:
Q: To begin, state your name, missus.
A: I am Margaret Ternan, abandoned wife of Patrick John Ternan, run off to Australia now these twelve years since.
Q: You are called Peggy by your familiars?
A: I am.
Q: State your place of occupation.
A: Presently, Covent Garden Theatre in the company of Mister William Macready. (haughtily) I am an actress.
Q: (clearly losing or pretending to lose his temper) You are an old whore who will do anything for money!
A: That’s a lie! You have no right…
Q: Quiet, woman! You are under oath. You can be taken up and placed in prison under no charge for an indefinite time for lying to me in this room.
A: (sullen silence)
Q: (Dickens paused, as if he were Inspector Field gathering his temper in the face of the old bawd’s insolence. When he resumed, it was in a very measured yet harsh tone of voice. He was truly becoming the role he was reading; he was feeling all of Field’s anger in the face of the woman’s sullenness.) Madam, you have a daughter, one Ellen, who also works in Mister Macready’s company?
A: Yes, I do.
Q: What is your daughter’s age?
A: Sixteen years this July next.
Q: Is she not rather young to be working nightly in the theatre?
A: She is very talented and wise for her age, and Mister Macready has marked her skill.
Q: (The creature had been lulled into a false ease of conversation by Field’s subdued line of questioning.) Madam, where is your daughter right now?
A: (He virtually spat the words into her upturned face and she recoiled from the clear evidence of his harnessed hatred.)
Q: Where is the girl? (He pressed the woman.)
A: I do not know. At home, in our rooms, for all I know. (The professional actress was finding difficulty in carrying off her role in the face of both Dickens’s/Field’s vehemence.)
Q: Speak, you lying old slut. Where is she? You know and you shall tell or you will never step upon a stage again but for the high stage at Horsemonger Lane Gaol as a member of Jack Ketch’s company. Where is she? (Dickens pronounced the last almost tenderly with a break in his voice and lapse from his part.)
A: (The woman cowers before his anger. Her voice shakes.) She is safe.
Q: Do not toy with us. Your daughter is suspected of murder. You are taken up as an accomplice to that crime.
A: I know nothing of what you speak.
Q: You know everything, and you will tell me all, or I will personally see that you rot in Newgate until the day that you swing at the end of a rope.
Dickens’s reading had taken on a life of its own. I could not help but recoil from the violence in the Field character’s voice, as, in my imagination, he towered over the cowering woman character. Yet, the woman, if she can be characterized by that supposedly gentle term, persisted in her lies, her unpacking of all her actress’s tricks.
A: Your threats are empty. I have done nothing.
Q: You have done everything.
A: I and my daughter are innocent.
Q: You are as innocent as the whore of Babylon, you lying wretch. Where is the girl?
A: She is safe. She has a protector.
Q: Lord Ashbee?
A: (At the mention of that name, Dickens’s woman character is startled. She answers haltingly.) Yes, Milord is our patron. (The old whore stares at Inspector Field with a new-found respect and fear. He knows more than she suspected. He has trapped her. She is not ready for his next question. Field stabs hard where she is unguarded.)
Q: Did your daughter Ellen kill Paroissien the stage manager?
A: (The woman goes white. He knows all. How can I escape? He truly means to hang us both. Yet, she hangs tenuously to her role, her actress’s mask.) No. (She begins weakly.) No, never. Ellen is but a child. (Her voice trembles at the maternal guise it struggles to assume.)
Q: A child whom you sell to whoever is willing to pay?
A: Sell? My own child? (She is all actress now.)
Q: Did you sell your child to Lawyer Partlow who was murdered?
Q: Did you sell your child to Paroissien for increased favor on the stage?
Q: Did you sell your child as a love slave to Lord Henry Ashbee?
Q: Did you, you foul whoremonger?
Q: Did you? Did you sell her? (Field screams each question at the woman. She sits cowering. He knows all. She breaks. Tears flow, not stage tears induced by astringents rubbed across the eyes, tears of fear of Field who stands over her in a rage.)
A: They vowed to protect her, to use her well, never to turn her out.
Q: (in soft cajoling voice) They gave you money to protect her?
A: They did.
Q: You took her to them—Partlow, Paroissien, Ashbee—left her with them, and they gave you money?
A: Only Milord Ashbee. (The woman still retains some faint hope of escape, still contrives to lie. This is a grievous error in the world of Inspector Field.)
Q: Only Milord Ashbee?
A: Yes, Lawyer Partlow died, God rest, before he ever became my daughter’s protector.
Q: Paroissien? Did he not threaten you with dismissal from the Covent Garden company? Did he not offer you a plum role in Mister Macready’s next play? Did he not promise your daughter’s advancement as an actress?
A: We had no dealings with Stage Manager Paroissien. The man was a pig. The world is better for his death.
Q: Did you or your daughter kill Mister Paroissien?
A: No. No. We had no dealings with Paroissien.
Q: (Field steps back. His forefinger goes slowly to scratch at the side of his eye. A triumphant grin spreads menacingly across his face. He speaks softly.) You never saw Paroissien the night he was murdered.
A: We surely saw him at the theatre.
Q: After the play was done?
A: No. I went nowhere near the man.
Q: And your daughter?
A: No. I do not know. (Confusion was upon her.) We did not leave the theatre together that night.
Q: (Field pounces.) You lie, wretch! Don’t you ever lie to William Field again! (His voice slowed, became almost rational.) You were seen and followed, the three of you, Paroissien, your daughter, your miserable self. You were both with the man. He was murdered later that evening
.
A: (The woman stared blankly at Field. Dickens made it so real, timed each pause, mastered each emotional inflection of voice, that I felt I was there.)
Q: Did Paroissien offer you money for her also? Were you double dealing? Selling your daughter secretly to Paroissien for one night’s use before selling her permanently to Ashbee?
A: No. Yes. Yes, we were with him. He gave me money over dinner when Ellen retired to make water. We took a hackney coach to his lodgings. I left Ellen there with him.
A: Did you go up to his rooms?
A: No, I pretended I was late for an engagement. I left them in the cab, and hailed another. She protested being left in his protection. He vowed to see her home. She returned to our lodgings alone. She had been running in her stage slippers.
Q: How was she dressed? As you had left her?
A: No.
Q: How, woman?
A: She wore only her cape and slippers.
Q: She was naked beneath her wrap?
A: Yes.
At that Field paused, to contemplate his next question, I am sure.
Q: Did you go back to Paroissien’s?
A: Yes. In a cab.
Q: Did you go up to his rooms?
A: Yes. (The creature stared at the floor and her answers had faded to a weak whisper.)
Q: Did your daughter, Ellen, go up with you?
A: No.
Q: She refused?
A: Yes.
Q: She remained in the cab?
A: She did. (The woman seemed intent upon giving the shortest, least revealing answers. Impatience was beginning to strain at the control in Field’s voice.)
Q: Why? What reason did she give for refusing to return to his rooms for her clothes?
A: (No answer was forthcoming. The old bawd stared viciously at Field. She was cornered and she knew it.)
Q: Speak, you bloody whore! (Field lashed out at her.) Tell me all, or you will be in Newgate before the hour is out.
A: I don’t know the whole truth of it. The girl was queer, quite queer. All she told I had to wring out of her. (The bawd fell strangely silent. Was she composing her next lie?) The child spoke only in broken fragments. Whatever sense I made of her answers was my sense. She was passing queer.
Q: Get on with it, wretch. Her words. Her words.
A: She said that, when they entered his rooms, he asked her if she desired a leading role in Mister Macready’s next play. She answered “yes” as I had schooled her. He said other things to her, things which became increasingly lewd. He put his hands upon her. I had not schooled her for this. She tried to flee. (The hag, lying through her teeth, stopped.)
Q: Continue. (Dickens-the-actor spoke in a resigned voice. He had lost his relish for the part he was playing.)
Q: And then…
A: (Summoning all of the tragedian’s tricks out of her actress’s bag, the bawd drew a deep breath and went on.) And then my daughter said to me “He raped me, mamma. He struck me, slapped me down and…he raped me.”
A silence fell over the bullpen. The fire crackled in the hearth. We had heard exactly what we had expected to hear, and yet, somehow, none of us had been fully prepared for the brutal reality. I looked at Irish Meg, and I felt like a rapist myself. As I think back upon it now, I realize that Field staged all of this to force Dickens to accept the reality of it all. When Dickens resumed, it was in the woman’s role.
A: My daughter was in another world. She could barely speak.
Q: And then what?
A: I went up to his rooms.
Q: Alone?
A: Yes.
Q: Why?
A: My God, she was sobbing into the cushions of the cab.
Q: Why did you go up?
A: I went up to his rooms to accuse him of his treachery.
Q: Treachery? That is a word used in plays. You care nothing about “treachery”; it is your way of life. You knew exactly what “treachery” Paroissien had planned for your daughter, before you ever sold her to him.
A: I didn’t sell her!
Q: You did. (Field’s voice was even and cold.) The truth now. Why did you return to the stage manager’s rooms?
A: To curse him.
Q: Just being in the same room with you is a curse! You went back to collect more money, did you not? You went up there to collect your daughter’s clothes, and to hide or carry off all evidence of the crime she had just committed. Isn’t that why you went back to Paroissien’s rooms?
A: No. No. (The woman was waving her hands wildly before her face.) I didn’t know he was dead. She never said a word.
Q: You entered his rooms. Was the door open? What did you see?
A: He lay dead on the floor in his own blood.
Q: And you fled with your daughter?
A: What else was I to do?
Q: Call for a constable perhaps?
A: The police are so new. One doesn’t think to…
Q: Especially if one wishes to flee from a murder scene.
A: I am concealing nothing (the woman was trying to regain her actress’s hauteur, and not succeeding).
Q: Did you not remove the murder weapon from the stage manager’s rooms? A large sewing shears? Did you not remove it along with your daughter’s clothes?
A: (The woman’s face went grey and stiff.) No. (It was a whisper.) No. (Louder.) No, I took nothing! (She spat the words at Field.) How dare…
Q: Ternan! (Field’s voice froze her in the midst of her tirade.) Did your daughter murder Paroissien? Did she stab him with the cutters?
A: (There was a long pause.) She did not say.
Q: Tell the truth, woman!
A: (Defiant, and, I might add, convincing.) She said nothing to me about the murder. I was fully surprised when I entered the man’s rooms. I entered, passed through to the bedroom, and saw him. That was all of it. I gathered my daughter’s clothes and ran. Ellen said he raped her, that is all!
Q: You lie!
A: (Almost calm.) I do not.
Q: Your daughter murdered him.
A: Perhaps…perhaps not.
Q: You say?
A: Someone else could have come in. After my daughter fled, anyone could have entered, and killed the pig. More than half an hour passed between her leaving and my return, perhaps longer. Someone could have waited until Ellen left, then entered to make it look as if she killed the man.
Q: She did it!
A: She is not more than a child. (The actress resurrects herself, the role of the pleading mother.) A weak girl. She could not stab a man to death, drive him to the floor, and kill him. She has not the strength.
Q: Did you kill him then? (Field mocked her.) You entered the room after she fled. You are older, stronger. If she is so weak, how did she escape her rapist?
A: (The woman ignored Field’s baiting. She sat silent, refusing to answer.)
Q: (Once again, Field walked away.) Where is your daughter now?
A: I don’t know.
Q: That isn’t good enough.
A: I don’t know.
Q: And I say that you do. She is with her, as you put it, “protector,” is she not? With Lord Ashbee?
A: Yes, she is, but I don’t know where he has taken her.
Q: You just gave your daughter to him, in her state, after all that has happened?
A: He is the only protector we have. I had no one else to turn to. We had talked before about Ellen becoming his ward, he the patron of her career.
Q: Her career as a kept whore!
A: No. He said nothing of that sort, nothing indelicate.
Q: You are an artful liar. What he said meant nothing. You knew his plans for your daughter. You sold her to him.
A: No. That is not how it was. He said that he had seen my daughter on the stage. He said that she had great talent and beauty. He said that he had heard Stage Manager Paroissien and others, men of power in the theatre, discuss my daughter in the most lewd terms. He said that she needed a “protector,” I swear it is his word,
more powerful than all of the others. “I can be that protector,” he said.
Q: I’ll wager that he did, and with relish. (Field was talking to the fire rather than to the subdued Mrs. Ternan.)
Q: What did you do when he offered to be her “protector”?
A: I thought it a jest. Gentlemen make game of actresses.
Q: Did he pursue the subject?
A: Yes, he mentioned it twice more. He suggested that he could get both of us better parts. Finally, he offered me money.
Q: You did sell your daughter for a whore!
A: No, I refused. I rejected his offer. He said that he wished to protect my Ellen from men like Partlow and Paroissien, who would use her badly. He wanted Ellen to live with him, and he would guide her career.
Q: And he offered you money?
A: Yes.
Q: And you refused?
A: Yes.
Q: Yet she is with him now, is she not?
A: I had no other choice. I did not take her to him until we needed a powerful protector, and there was nowhere else to turn. He promised me that she will never be put in prison, and that he will never turn her out into the streets.
Q: Where is your daughter now? At this moment?
A: I don’t know.
Q: Would you care to guess?
A: The country. The Continent perhaps. I do not know.
Q: You know. Perhaps you don’t think you know but you do. (Field paused to slowly scratch the side of his eye with his meditative forefinger.) Now, quickly, tell me every place where you have met with Milord Ashbee.
A: I and Ellen have dined at his Notting Hill estate. He has entertained us at his Kensington mansion, and, one night after the play, a whole party retired to a large set of rooms in Soho. Those are his places in the city. I have never been to his country house.
Q: (Field’s voice is even and menacing.) You are an insolent old slut. You belong in jail. You will end there forever, if I have any say in the matter. You are a monster of your sex. (Field turns and opens the door) Take her away. Take down a full description of each of Ashbee’s houses and their location. Hold her in custody.
With those orders, Dickens placed the small sheaf of papers from which he had been reading on the desk and held his hands out palm up in a gesture of finis.
The Detective and Mr. Dickens Page 24