The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  In the light of the torch, Rogers recognizes the gentleman. He is the infamous Lord Bowes, gambler and rake, a familiar face to most of the detective force in the aftermath of his recent Assizes suit charging two officers from the Park Lane Protectives with excessive force in subduing him one night, when he was brandishing a rapier in the street outside of a Mayfair residence, rumored to specialize in tarts and opium.

  The coachman lights the lord’s way to a dark and unremarkable door set two steps below the level of the cobbled street, in the wall of a dark and unremarkable brick building. Employing a key, Lord Bowes opens that undistinguished door, and disappears through it.

  “Somethin’s afoot here,” Rogers mutters into his capacious lapels.

  He reclines against his dust bin. He considers long and hard. For Rogers, delivering an idea proves equal in effort and pain to the delivering of a pugnacious Irish infant. After agonizing minutes, he remembers the tunnel in Lord Ashbee’s Notting Hill residence. “That’s it,” he hisses into his greatcoat. “That’s it.”

  At a less-than-discreet run, he seeks out his nearest subordinate and dispatches him with an urgent message to Inspector Field.

  That done, Rogers (I am only speculating now) must have taken a moment to celebrate. I am not to be left out of it after all. I have done the real detective work this night, he must have gloated.

  While Rogers was making his discoveries in Kensington Gardens, Inspector Field was returning from a quick inspection of his men posted around the Soho house. Field beckoned Dickens, Thompson, and myself to follow him down a foul-smelling alley and around a corner, where we gathered under a single lonesome gaslight. Field lit a cigar. The rest of us followed suit.

  “We’ve been decoyed, lads,” he growled. “We’ve been done.” He was furious with himself. “They are not meetin’ ’ere at all. He has figured out that we are watchin’ ’im and ’ee ’as temporarily put us off the track.”

  Dickens’s face dropped. “She is lost,” he breathed, barely within my threshold of hearing. But Dickens was not a man to despair so easily. “But where then?” he gasped to Inspector Field. “We must find her, but where?”

  “Ashbee’s other ’ouse, the Kensington ’ouse, is our only ’ope this night. Rogers is still there. Perhaps…” but Field’s voice did not succeed, if indeed that was ever its object, in reassuring Charles.

  “My God, they could have fled the city, the country, for the Continent by now,” Dickens was distraught.

  Field, continuing to puff contemplatively upon his cigar, spoke slowly: “I’ll wager they’re still in London. I’d stake my life on it. Ashbee is a lord. ’Ee don’t ’ave to run away. ’Ee can do anything’ ’ee wants. Or thinks ’ee can. ’Ee’s got the girl, and ’ee’s gonna enjoy ’er in ’is own good time and ’ee doesn’t feel ’ee ’as to sail to France to do it.”

  Dickens found little reassurance in this scenario.

  “Let us get to the bottom of this, now,” Field decisively brought our colloquy to an end.

  We followed Inspector Field in single file—Dickens, then me, then Thompson—as if we were faithful pull-toys. He dragged us back through the narrow mews, across the Soho street, through the iron gate to Ashbee’s house, up the three front steps to the large brass knocker.

  A female servant answered the door.

  “Inspector Field. Metropolitan Protectives. Police business. Is your master at ’ome, Miss?” Field fired off his words in the rapid staccato of musketry and the woman recoiled as if hit by a volley. Her retreat two steps backward allowed Field to take the room. He stepped through the doorway leaving his three pull-toys loitering on the windy porch.

  The maidservant soon recovered herself, and faced up to him.

  “Master an’t ’ere,” she managed.

  “’As ’ee been ’ere this day or these two days past?” Field growled as we stood on the porch eavesdropping.

  “Master an’t ’ere, ’oi say,” the woman was terrified, intimidated, unequal to the task of lying to Inspector William Field, who tapped her three sharp times on the shoulder with his unnerving forefinger.

  “Where is ’ee?”

  “’As ’ee been ’ere?”

  “When?”

  “’Ow long?”

  “Why are all the lights up tonight?”

  “We were hordered to turn all the lights hup by Mister Hutter, who his Milord’s hagent,” the lying hussy finally answered, through Field’s barrage of questions, but he did not relent.

  “Where is ’ee?”

  “’Ow long since ’ee’s been ’ere?”

  “Was ’ee alone?”

  “Answer me, where ’as ’ee gone?”

  The woman was in tears, wet and real, not feigned. They were tears of fear, whether of her master or of Inspector Field, I could not ascertain.

  “We don’t know. To the country, ’ee said.”

  “You are lyin’, wench. I can smell a lie,” Field hissed those words quietly at her. “When was ’ee ’ere? And where ’as ’ee gone? Then we’ll know if ye’ll sleep tonight in Newgate.”

  The woman burst into tears, buried her face in her hands. “Left, left, left for the country. We, we, we was told, told, told to stay ’ere. We was, was, was told, told to burn the lights, tonight an’ tomorra. He told, told us that, that, that.” The woman was quaking with sobs.

  Suddenly, Field changed his whole method of interrogation. He became a concerned uncle or a consoling brother. “I know you are not to blame,” he said. His hand offered her a handkerchief to wipe her tears. “You are but a servant in the employ of this evil man. I understand your fear of ’im. But you must ’elp me all that you can. You understand that, do you not?”

  “Yes, sir,” the woman offered, scared half out of her senses, and not knowing what to make of this change of Field’s persona from a badgering bully to a kindly counselor. The woman made a serious mistake. She chose to persist in her lying. “Milord went to visit a friend in the country,” she lied. “A fortnight, Milord said.”

  “And ’ee told you to burn the lights, did ’ee?” Field was suspicious.

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And you don’t know where ’ee went in the country, is that it?” There was a brittle edge to his voice.

  “’At’s it exactly, sir,” She was so polite, so sure, so false.

  “You are a lyin’ little ’ore!” Field slapped her hard across the face. “Don’t you ever lie to Inspector Field, y’ear?” He was screaming into her face as he pushed her backwards with jabs of his bludgeoning forefinger.

  “’Ee didna say where ’ee went nor when ’ee would return.”

  Field slapped her again. “That is a lie!” he spat.

  “’Ee said ’ee went to visit another lord, ’at’s all ’ee said. I promise. Don’t ’it me again.”

  Field slapped her a third time, much harder than the first two. Does he enjoy it? I thought. Intimidating these helpless women, the poor wretches in the Rats’ Castles. Does he like it?

  Later, in the coach, I asked him why he hit her so hard.

  “I needed the information right away,” was his bland answer. “The little ’ore was lyin’ to me. She’d been re’earsed. Told to lie. I ’ad to force ’er to tell the truth, and I ’ad no time.”

  He forced her allright. That third slap snapped her face sideways and made real tears of pain well up in her eyes. He had saved his hardest slap to preface his most telling questions.

  “Was there a lady in Milord Ashbee’s company?”

  The woman’s eyes went wide. She began to shake her head in the negative but never completed the gesture.

  “Was there a lady?” Field screamed, as he grasped both her shoulders and shook her. “Was there? Answer me,” and he raised his right hand to strike her again.

  “No. Yes. No,” she wailed desperately. “No. It was no lady. She was a trollop dressed up like a lady.”

  This last greatly distressed Dickens, and he turned away. Inspector Field sho
ok her again, as if trying to jar the words out of her.

  “They were ’ere for a few ’ours two nights ago. They left our orders, then they left. They ’ave not returned nor ’as Milord’s coach.”

  Field, having squeezed her dry, discarded the woman like an old sponge. He turned and confronted us on the porch. “This is all only deception. Ashbee is not ’ere. ’Ee and the Ternan girl ’ave, for the moment, slipped through our fingers.” Dickens groaned.

  As if on some stage cue for the very moment when all seemed lost, a uniformed constable came stumbling out of the fog, winded, weary, yet wide-eyed for the recipient of his Marathonian message.

  “Inspector Field, sir. Constable Lansbury ’ere,” the man gasped.

  “Yes, Lansbury, what is it?” We were all suddenly on the alert.

  “Serjeant Rogers says for you to come to Kensington Gardens straight away. Says, tell Inspector Field the ’ouse is dark but they’re all in there. ’At’s it, sir.”

  Field looked at Dickens, teeth bared in triumph. Dickens met Field’s eyes. They rushed from the porch. Thompson and I had no choice but to follow.

  Within short minutes, the four of us were rattling at high speed across London.

  Rogers was waiting in Kensington Gardens like a smug setter on point. By a back alley he marched us down to peek into the narrow mews where, by his count, no less than six coaches had delivered passengers this night. He pointed out the unremarkable door through which those passengers had disappeared. He walked us the length of the building and noted how that building connected to the adjoining building by a short enclosed walkway roofed over in brick. He next walked us the length of this second building until it ended adjacent to the back garden of Milord Ashbee’s Kensington manse.

  “We ’ave ’ad experience with Ashbee’s tunnels before, ’ave we not, sir?” Rogers prompted Inspector Field.

  “Indeed we ’ave. Good work, Rogers,” Field complimented his serjeant.

  The five of us stood huddled in the darkness staring through the high iron fence and across Milord Ashbee’s dark garden to the high, gloomy house. No lights showed on this side of the house, except for a dull glow about midway along the flat roofline to the wing, which rose one storey out of the garden, and ran to the main, four-storey body of the mansion.

  “We must get in.” Dickens’s voice was getting desperate.

  “Hold.” Field’s presence, even when invoked in a whisper, silenced everyone. “We ’ave ’em. We must be sure-’anded in this.”

  We waited.

  “Rogers,” he barked, still in a whisper, “you are responsible for securing the outside of the ’ouse, sealing off their escape routes. ’ow many men do you ’ave?”

  “Myself and two constables. Lansbury was sent to fetch you, sir.”

  “A bit thin.” Inspector Field was not pleased. “But others should be arrivin’ soon. Station your men as best you can. When new men arrive, put them on post. We must not allow Ashbee and the girl to get away.”

  “Yessir,” Rogers scurried off to do his master’s bidding.

  “We must rescue her right away. All those men mean to rape her,” Dickens’s words exploded.

  “She is a suspected murderess, and I am ’ere to take ’er into custody.” Field’s wooden assertion momentarily silenced Dickens’s anguish. “We will prevent any ’arm comin’ to the young woman, if at all possible.”

  “She is not the criminal. Those rakes are,” Dickens insisted. “They have corrupted her. They have forced her to violence.”

  “Whatever is the case,” Field clearly did not want to argue either legalities or moralities, “we must find some way to get in without scaring the whole lot off.”

  “Gents.” It was Tally Ho Thompson interrupting their colloquy, “if you’ll stand down for a stroke, I’ll take a stroll round the neighbour’ood, and we’ll see what we can see.”

  Without waiting for Field to answer, Thompson was out of the shadows and, at a dead run, vaulting himself onto the high iron railings of Milord Ashbee’s garden fence. The man scaled those pikes the way the monkeys in the Zoological Gardens climb about on the bars of their cages. He pulled himself to the top and with a pendulum-like swing tossed himself over. He then ran across the garden to disappear around the corner of the rear wing of the mansion. We waited, five minutes stretched into ten.

  “He’s not coming back. He’s been taken by Ashbee’s men.” The desperation had reasserted itself in Dickens’s voice. “We have to do something. Seven men have her in there.”

  Field placed a firm hand upon Dickens’s shoulder, not a hand of authority, but the hand of a friend which seemed gently to say, “I know how upset you are but we are going about this the proper way. Calm yourself, it will all be over soon.” Field’s eyes moved from Dickens’s face to mine. His head gave a slight nod, as if ordering me to intercede.

  I had no idea what to say. I put my hand on Dickens’s shoulder as Inspector Field withdrew his. My lips were mere inches from Dickens’s ear. I, for once, had his full attention.

  “Charles, we must be sure. Rogers has, by now, got his men in place. We will move to find her as soon as Thompson returns. We can’t just barge in there not knowing what we are going into. That would endanger her as well as us. We shall get her out; I am sure of it.”

  It was so dark that I could not detect any signs that my words had reassured him, but he said no more.

  We waited silently only a few short moments, before Thompson, like a ghost, materialized out of the darkness. That incorrigible jokester had the aggravating habit of doing that, just popping up as if creating himself out of thin air.

  “Gents, follow me,” he invited us.

  The Skylight

  May 11, 1851—night

  Mister Tally Ho Thompson proved quite an accommodating tour guide.

  “No need for concern, gents,” he whispered as we peered out of the deep shadow of the wall, “I met no guards on the grounds. Follow me. It’s a simple crack.”

  We followed this demon jokester. Nothing could make the man stop grinning idiotically. Perhaps it was the idea of his giving orders to Inspector Field which amused him so. Perhaps he simply enjoyed burgling houses under the wing of the police.

  He led us along the iron railings to a high gate which stood ajar. Its lock, clearly picked, hung open upon its chain. Like a magician displaying a bird plucked from his hat, Thompson grinned, nodded and led us through the gate. We crossed the lawn of the back garden at a run. The shadows of the rear wing of the house enfolded us. No alarum was raised.

  It was as if Thompson had built a set upon a stage and we were his actors. All of his props were in place. He led us to a wooden ladder placed against the wall of the house.

  “Pinched it from the coach ’ouse,” Thompson declared proudly.

  From all evidence, this madman was proposing that the three of us follow him up this ladder. To my perfect amazement, Field and Dickens hesitated not one whit. They were well into their ascent before I even realized that I was expected to follow. It struck me as extremely dangerous and unconsidered, but, when they disappeared up into the darkness leaving me abandoned at the bottom, I reconsidered and followed with little enthusiasm. Housebreaking, climbing ladders, traversing dark rooftops is the stuff of Grub Street hacks and ha’penny novelists, not of real writers like Dickens and myself. Somehow, Thompson had drawn us so far into his romantic, risk-taking career that none of us was capable of turning back.

  We crouched at the top of the ladder. Thompson whispered orders.

  “Go softly across the roof to the skylight. They are directly below us. We can see it all. Inspector Field,” he said, with a professional politeness, “you’ve got your truncheon in your coat as ever, do you not?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Good, I may need it to break the skylight if the scene gets dicey and the script calls for a surprise entrance.”

  Field gave a silent nod of approval. Even he, I think, was rather impressed with t
he command Thompson had taken of the situation.

  About halfway across the roof, the contour ceased to run flat, and ascended in a gentle slope to meet the side of the main house. From our vantage point near the edge of the roof, we could see the skylight.

  On tiptoe, one by one, we traversed the flat expanse of the roof, until all four of us knelt at the base of the skylight. Because it slanted upward, we could kneel around its base, and, leaning slightly forward, look down into the room below. The skylight was directly over a long, high-ceilinged ballroom. We could see all that was taking place below, but, unfortunately, we could hear nothing. We spied through that skylight like spectators in an aquarium gaping through glass at exotic species performing in another medium.

  The gentlemen, seven of them, were at dinner around a long table set elegantly in the middle of the room. They were dining off the finest silver plate. Candelabras blazed at three places upon their board. Bottles of fine wine stood on the table, were passed and poured by the gentlemen themselves. No servants were in immediate attendance.

  At the far end of the room, toward the main body of the house, a space, ringed with overstuffed wing chairs, had been cleared, as if for a stage. It is to this small stage that, after our first glances down at the lavish eating scene, all of our eyes were immediately drawn.

  Ellen Ternan was chained to the wall at the center of the stage.

  My eyes, as if on a leash, snapped immediately to Charles’s face. His eyes met mine and were filled with chaotic emotions. I shall never forget that look of anguish. It left no doubt whatsoever how deeply he was involved with the girl inside his own mind. She was everything to him and seeing her down there…like that.

  The girl leaned backward against the wall, her eyes wide open, yet strangely detached. She stared at the sumptuous table where the rakes sat, indulging themselves. She was, without question, drugged. The vacancy in her gaze, the docility of her stance, the lolling of her head, all attested to it. She was the complete victim, prisoner, possession of her chains, those men. Her hands, manacled, were stretched apart and slightly above her head. The manacles around her wrists were connected, by short lengths of chain, to heavy iron staples set high in the wall. Her ankles too were in irons, also connected to short chains, terminating in staples sunk in the floor. She was hung on that wall as if on a gallows, waiting for the trap to spring.