Death at Hungerford Stairs

by J C Briggs

  He stood pensively, gazing at the desk. With that capacity he had for standing outside himself, he wondered if, when he was gone, the desk would be there waiting for the author to come back to the empty chair and pick up his pen. The deserted seat, the closed book, the unfinished occupation, all images of death; he had written that. Where would his chair be? He loved his house in Devonshire Terrace – he did not know now that it would be his favourite of all the houses he would live in. He loved his iron staircase leading to the garden – not today, though, when he could hear the drip, drip of the rain on the railings. He loved his garden where on sunny days – if there were ever to be any – he would lie on the grass with a handkerchief over his face, and he loved this room with its bookcases, and the round mahogany table with its secret drawers where he kept his secret keys. But it was only leased, and he had the anxiety of finding another house in a couple of years.

  He was worried about Catherine. His wife was never really well, suffering from headaches, nervousness for no accountable reason, faintness and sometimes confusion. He could not reach her somehow; it was as if a space had opened up between them which he could only fill with little kindnesses, talk about the children, plans for a holiday or a stay with friends although Catherine was beginning to become uneasy if she stayed in other people’s houses. He thought of Mrs Morson, and Mary Boyle with whom he had acted at his friends, the Watsons. He felt guilty when he remembered what he had written to her. He had said how he seemed always to be looking for something that he had not found in life – he, a man with a wife and eight children, and a reputation second to none. What folly! But it was true.

  ‘“Heigh, ho, Rowley, a frog he went awooing”,’ he sang to himself – not this frog, though. This will not do – begone, dull care. He sat down at the desk and saw there the masks he had been doodling, remembering the masks at the murder sites. He had always hated masks; as a child he had shrunk from a mask that hid the wearer’s face – not a stranger, someone usually kind and laughing, but whose face was translated by the mask into something blank and so fixed that it haunted his childish dreams and woke him in the night, crying, ‘O I know it’s coming! O the mask!’ Perhaps, he thought the mask, so still and expressionless, was, even then, some dimly understood presage of death. He looked again at his sketch. Unconsciously, he had drawn two masks, one smiling, one tragic, comedy and tragedy. Then he remembered. The mask at St Giles’s surely had a downturned mouth, or had he made that up? What about the one at the blacking factory? He could not recall. Had it been smiling? Was that why he had felt it to be so sinister? He could not go back there. Perhaps Sam would send Rogers to find out. And what would it mean, anyway, that the murderer had drawn the masks of comedy and tragedy? Disguise? Was the murderer an actor? That might be a lead to share with Inspector Harker. Which theatre, though? Start with those nearest St Giles’s. Ignore the inconvenient fact of the murder at Hungerford Stairs. Make a list: Covent Garden, Bow Street; Theatre Royal, Drury Lane; The Queen’s, Long Acre, and, he thought despondently, all the penny gaffs that it would be impossible to follow up.

  He heard the doorbell ring. A visitor, perhaps, come like a messenger of brightness to clear the shadows of this November day. His friend, Forster, perhaps, though they had no appointment. Zeb? With news of Poll? Or of Scrap? He sprang up in anticipation. No, Zeb would send a message. He waited, listening. He heard John, the manservant, and then an unfamiliar voice. Who?

  John came in. There was a visitor, a seafaring man who had offered Dickens’s card, saying that Mr Dickens had offered to help him if he could. Captain Ned Pierce, he said his name was. Should John show him in? Indeed he should. The seafaring man from Hungerford Stairs – the man who had lost a boy.

  Captain Pierce came in; he was dressed in his pea coat with the red handkerchief at his neck, his cap in his hand, and the rain glistening on his shoulders. Dickens went forward to shake his hand.

  ‘Captain Pierce, I am glad to see you. Come to the fire and warm yourself. I see how wet you are.’

  His quick eye saw also the anxiety in the man’s eyes, and he thought of the boy who was lost to him. He motioned him to a chair by the fire and they both sat.

  Captain Pierce spoke: ‘I have heard that another boy has been found. I came to you for you gave me your card. I looked at it only after I had been to see the boy at Hungerford Stairs – he was not my grandson. I don’t like to trouble you, Mr Dickens. I know how busy you are – who could not? But you obviously had an interest in finding your boy, and I thought you might be able to tell me – the man you were with – the inspector at the old blacking factory said he was a policeman from Bow Street – I thought he might know about the dead boy. That’s why I came.’

  ‘It is no trouble, Captain Pierce – I could see how worried you were. The dead boy has been identified by his mother. He was Robin Hart – does the name mean anything to you?’

  ‘No – I do not know of anyone called Hart. My grandson is my son’s boy, Johnny Pierce.’

  ‘How came he to be missing? Before you tell me, perhaps I can get you some tea or coffee?’

  ‘No, no thank you. My son is dead, and the boy was taken, I think, by his mother. I must begin at the beginning. It’s a long story – have you time, Mr Dickens? I hate to impose on you.’

  ‘Please, tell me all. If I can help, I will. My companion the other day was Superintendent Jones – he may be able to assist you.’

  ‘I have retired from the sea now, but while I was last at sea, in 1848, my son died. His wife had already left him and the boy to go off with another man. She was an idle, shiftless wife and mother, a spendthrift who loved gaiety and fine clothes. My son was a marine painter, Mr Dickens, a quiet, thoughtful young man, taken in by a pair of shining eyes, and a pretty manner, but he didn’t make much money and she tired of him and cared nothing for the boy. However, when my son, John, died, she came for the boy, as I found out from the neighbour who had looked after him. She emptied the house, took all the belongings and vanished. When I returned from my last voyage, I went to my son’s house. I had been away eleven months, starting for Valparaiso in January 1848 – I came back in November. You can imagine what I felt when I found the house empty, my son dead, and the boy gone. I had been away for almost a year and in that year all was lost to me, and I have searched ever since. I traced the mother, Rosa – she had died in March 1848, but there was no sign of the child – he’d disappeared completely.’

  ‘There were no neighbours of Rosa Pierce to tell you about the boy?’

  ‘None, Mr Dickens. By then she was living in a slum, earned her money as a prostitute. She died of drink and disease. The neighbours knew nothing of a boy, those who were sober enough to speak to me. I have read your works, Mr Dickens, you know what it is like – it is unspeakable, the dirt, the squalor, people living like brutes, and that poor boy – I could hardly bear it. Perhaps he’s dead, perhaps I will never find him.’

  Dickens had listened, but, as he always did, he watched the man, too, scrutinising the features, and he had thought all the time that Captain Pierce was speaking, that he was familiar. He had watched his transparent hazel eyes that had still, for all his years, a kind of innocence, and he had watched the mouth, and the way one of the front teeth protruded slightly, and the way, as he spoke, the tooth caught on the bottom lip. How should he proceed? If he were wrong, and told Captain Pierce that he might know where Johnny Pierce was, would the disappointment be crushing? But if he were right, then the risk would be worth it. Dickens was a shrewd reader of character; he believed he knew his man. Captain Pierce who had pursued the lost boy with such dogged persistence would want to know, and he would be strong enough to bear a disappointment.

  As he looked at Captain Pierce, Dickens could superimpose the face of a young boy on the older face. He was sure. And so he spoke.

  ‘Captain Pierce, I know of a boy who greatly resembles you, who has your eyes, mouth, and teeth. And, if you will hazard the risk of disappointment, then I wi
ll tell you his story and take you to him.’

  Captain Pierce did not speak. The hazel eyes were clouded now with doubt and disbelief, but he shook his grey head as if to clear the uncertainty. He looked directly at Dickens as if to read what was in his face, and he saw there in those keen, brilliant eyes something so fixed, almost mesmerising, that he could not resist. Afterwards, he could not remember the colour, only the power of those eyes. Johnny Pierce always said that they were blue.

  ‘Tell me, Mr Dickens. I am willing to take the risk; I have nothing left.’

  ‘At Shepherd’s Bush, there is a home for fallen women which I established with Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts. Its aim is to give young women a chance of a better life. It is run by a matron who is a kind, motherly woman with children of her own. I admire her very much, and when I found a boy living on the streets, a boy with eyes exactly like yours, I knew that Mrs Morson would take care of him, that he would be safe.’

  ‘But fallen women, Mr Dickens, how would that be safe for a boy? If it is my boy, surely he’s seen too much of that.’

  ‘You will have to trust me, Captain Pierce. I assure you it is a well-run house. Think of it, if you will, as a school. The boy – to whom I gave the name Davey – ’

  Captain Pierce interrupted, ‘But why? Why change his name? I don’t understand.’

  ‘He could not tell me his own name – he does not speak.’

  ‘Never?’

  ‘No. He is not deaf so Mrs Morson and I thought that –’

  ‘He had experienced something dreadful.’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Then, you must take me to him. I must see if it is Johnny.’

  They took a fly to Shepherd’s Bush. It was the quickest way which took them along the New Road, into Grand Junction Road and then to Uxbridge Road by Kensington Gardens and the gravel pits.

  ‘You will know him?’ asked Dickens, breaking the silence.

  ‘I will know him, Mr Dickens. Now tell me his story.’

  Dickens told of the bitter night when he found a boy curled up in a doorway like a lost dog, a boy whose hazel eyes were transparent as the light brown water of a stream, eyes which looked at him with appeal and bewilderment, a boy who could not tell him his name, a boy who wept when an outstretched hand clasped his and took him away to warmth and food. Dickens told the captain of Mrs Morson’s care of the boy, and how James Bagster, the gardener at Urania Cottage, had taught him to laugh again, and he told him of Patience Brooke whose gentle care had reminded the boy that he could read and write. He told him about Patience Brooke whose murder had made the boy afraid, but how he had recovered in James Bagster’s kindly company. He told him how the boy, Davey, loved the horse, Punch, and the cat, Peg, and he told him how he and Superintendent Jones had thought of what the boy might have seen, what nightmare figures inhabited his memory.

  ‘What secrecy there is in the young, under terror. We could never know. We wondered if he would ever speak or whether his silence is now fixed so that the memories can never be exorcised.’

  ‘I understand you, Mr Dickens, and I fear what he has seen or heard. Is he damaged beyond repair?’

  With the question unanswered, they arrived at Urania Cottage. Mrs Morson looked at Captain Pierce and she knew.

  ‘He is so like you,’ she said. ‘He must belong to you. And I am glad, so glad. Davey is in the garden with James,’ she said to Dickens. ‘Shall you go out to them?’

  They went out through the kitchen door up into the garden where they saw James Bagster at work. He came to them and saw Captain Pierce.

  ‘You have come for him?’ He knew, too. They looked across the garden to the open stable door where, in a patch of winter sunlight, the boy sat with Peg the cat, both absorbed, staring at a piece of string snaking along the ground.

  ‘Go to him,’ said Mrs Morson.

  The three of them watched as the captain crossed the garden. Dickens found himself clasping Mrs Morson’s hand too tightly. The cat, which usually walked away from strangers, sat where she was, looking at the man with fixed yellow eyes, and then the boy looked up. The man knelt, and they saw him touch the boy’s shoulder. Peg the cat looked at the boy and the man before she disappeared into the stable.

  The three watchers turned away. This was not for spectators.

  ‘I shall miss him,’ said Mrs Morson.

  ‘So will I,’ said James Bagster, ‘but I am glad for him and for the captain. You have done such a good thing, Mr Dickens.’ He went away, back to his work.

  ‘I must go back to London,’ said Dickens. He thought of Scrap and Poll, and it seemed important to get there soon. ‘Tell the captain to come to see me soon to tell me about Davey – or Johnny, as we must think of him, now. You will look after them until they are ready to go home?’

  ‘I will. Home – how wonderful for Davey.’

  ‘Home. There’s a word as strong as a magician ever spoke.’

  ‘You are a magician, Charles, to have found the captain.’

  ‘He found me, really, though something prompted me to give him my card when I knew he was looking for a boy. Perhaps it was magic. Fate, anyway – we are all connected, I am certain. Now I must go and see if my magic will conjure my missing boy, Scrap. I shall come again soon.’

  ‘Do – I think we might need to settle with Miss Sesina – but not now. Let us not spoil this.’

  They looked back over the garden where the boy and the man stood now, their arms about each other.

  Dickens went out to walk back to the village. It had been extraordinary, he thought, that his return to the despised blacking factory should be the means of restoring Davey to his grandfather. A rebirth, he thought, but a death, too, and another death. Poor Robin. His pace quickened. Go back. Let us find the murderer before he does it again. Why did he think that? Because of the mask. Did it mean, as he had thought, ‘You can’t catch me’?

  9

  HARK, HARK,

  THE DOGS DO BARK …

  The rain that Dickens had watched soaking his garden had poured all night on to Scrap’s shelter, and on to the iron roof of Poll’s cage where she had lain with her head on her paws, waiting. It had fallen on Georgie Taylor’s garden, or rather, on the stunted tree in the sodden earth behind the house. Georgie was not fond of nature in any shape or form. The tree was a leftover from some earlier time when St Giles’s was really in the fields, and Violet Lane had bloomed with other things than mud and dog dirt. Not a bank where the nodding violet grows now, unless one counted Georgie’s purple nose or the bruises blossoming on the boy’s arm where Georgie squeezed it. The boy was Mrs Georgie’s son. There were no daughters as Georgie liked to claim – why, he could claim a dozen daughters, twenty nieces if the occasion asked for sentiment. Georgie always understood when a little miss’s doggie was missing. No, Georgie was not fond of the boy, the child of nature who perforce must come with Mrs Georgie when she was a slip of a girl, well, not quite a slip, but slimmer than she was today.

  Today, Georgie must go to Nat Boney to see if the dog, Poll, was there, and how much out of the three sovereigns it would cost to get the dratted thing back. No, Georgie was not keen on nature; dogs, apart from the profit they made, were a blamed nuisance. He would have liked another trade, he thought, something cleaner, less yappy. Horses, the races, that’s what he’d have liked, but Mrs Georgie didn’t care for racing – money down the drain. Mrs Georgie liked to keep her money where she could count it – under the frowsty bed where she now lay, an unromantic heap of flesh, gurgling like a drainpipe in her sleep. Lazy cow, he thought, bitterness rising like acid. Lazy bitch. And he was tied to her like a terrier on a leash.

  In the kitchen, the boy – not a boy at all, but a thin, simple, shambling creature of nineteen – was eating a piece of bread. Georgie snatched it away and gave a spiteful squeeze to the thin arm before tossing the bread to the black dog with red eyes which snarled in the corner. The boy looked at Georgie and smiled his idiot smile. Georgie’s anger flared an
d died. What was the point? Whatever was done to him, the boy smiled, though Georgie never noticed the hurt in his eyes.

  The rain still fell, turning the lane to mud and slush, and the sky was dark and thick as wet wool. Georgie pulled on his oilskin. Bloody rain, bloody dogs, but two sovereigns were not to be sniffed at and, what’s more, he might, just might, keep a bit back from Mrs Georgie – a little bit to add to his secret hoard. One day, one day, he thought, the terrier might just wriggle out of the leash. He picked his way fastidiously through the mud and made his way to Nat Boney’s.

  Scrap watched the cross-eyed boy come out of the door, which he held open with one hand so that he could set down one sack and reach back in for the other. Scrap heard the dogs barking, a clamour of yelps, howls and snarls. Scrap was poised. This was the moment when he could offer to help the cross-eyed boy. He stepped across the alley. Then something amazing happened. The door was smashed to the ground, and a great mastiff stood in the alley. The cross-eyed boy was bowled over, his yelping sack splitting to release a frightened spaniel which stood bewildered. And then a stream of dogs came racing through the hole where the door had been. Cross-eyes had left the cage open. Scrap heard a roar of rage and he saw Nat Boney rush forward into the writhing mass of dogs still in the yard. But the gods were just. Boney slipped on the collop of shit left by the mastiff for just that purpose. Down he went. Scrap heard the sickening thud. And the alley was full of legs, tails, tongues, teeth, barks, yaps. Poll? There she was shooting under the mastiff’s bulk, popping out, seeing Scrap, barking her head off, leaping into his arms. Just as he bent to receive her, Scrap saw the astonished face of Georgie Taylor. Bloody hell! Two sovereigns! But Scrap was gone. Exit, pursued by twenty dogs.

  He could not take them all. But he could lead them off. Away he ran, like Mr Browning’s pied piper, the dogs barking and racing, diving off down alleys, some even running back the way they came, but hearing Boney’s curses, leaping away again, mad with freedom, into gardens and passageways, through open doors into hallways where astonished householders tried to shoo them off, over walls, into shops, snatching chops from the butcher’s counter, and following the scent of home, Scrap hoped. Home which was where he and Poll were bound. Home to Eleanor and Tom Brim, to Mr Brim and Mrs Jones who were in the stationery shop, about their daily business, but with a space in their hearts where Scrap and Poll should be.