Grave Expectations

by Heather Redmond

  Charles’s father leapt to his feet from his position on a battered secondhand sofa and bowed to his guests. “Well met, Hogarths!” He shook hands with both ladies, exclaiming over their beauty.

  Charles saw Kate cataloging his father, no doubt looking for hints of Charles’s future appearance. He saw his father at fifty years of age, graying hair much sparser than it had been, yet still full of the waves he’d passed to many of his children. He’d also passed along his lean build to his sons. His rather sunken cheeks and a sharp beak of a nose, but a strong chin, had not universally appeared in his descendants, however, at least not yet. A ready smile had creased lines around his mouth.

  John Dickens rubbed his hands together. “So glad you came this particular evening, as I was craving fried fish. Nothing better, would you agree, Mrs. Hogarth?”

  “Oh, I do love it,” she assured him. “A good beer batter is heaven.”

  Mr. Dickens chuckled. “I understand your husband is quite a famous musician. So pleasant to be able to boast of that in our own family.”

  “We had the pleasure of hearing Miss Dickens sing while my husband played at your son’s birthday party,” Mrs. Hogarth said.

  “Excellent,” Mr. Dickens pronounced. “Soon we shall have to reunite them, but tonight I believe Letitia will be the player while Fanny sings, if you will allow the indulgence. Or perhaps Miss Hogarth would like to perform for us?”

  “Goodness, no,” Kate said. “My best skill is embroidery, not music. It would be a shame to force you to listen to me when we can hear Miss Dickens.”

  “It is always a treat,” Mr. Dickens agreed. “A veritable cornucopia of delights. Charles, why don’t you take the Hogarths’ baggage into the best bedroom?”

  “Oh, we couldn’t,” Mrs. Hogarth protested.

  “Indeed, you must,” Mr. Dickens insisted. “It has such a superior mattress that you will think the angels also provided it. Mrs. Dickens has sewn a beautiful coverlet. Miss Hogarth may find it worthy of mention.”

  “Let us dine,” Mrs. Dickens said, touching her husband’s arm. “The food is ready. Charles?”

  Pleased with the impression his father was offering, and glad his parents were making an effort with the Hogarths, Charles took the Hogarth’s bag into his parents’ bedroom and deposited it on the bed. Fred jumped up from the rocking chair to the left of the battered dressing table, which their mother had dressed up with a length of lace under her perfume bottle.

  “There you are, Charles. Am I going home with you?” his brother asked.

  “To Furnival’s Inn,” Charles said. “Unfortunately, Miss Haverstock was not removed until after midday, and I doubt the air has improved much.”

  “June is not the right time to die,” Fred pronounced.

  “I quite agree.” He clapped Fred on the shoulder. “What larks we’ll have at the old place for a day or two.”

  “I wish we could go coin hunting,” Fred suggested with a sly glance.

  “I don’t think we dare. Remember how we were scared off by the courting couple last month? I think we’d best wait until the weather changes.”

  “How about mudlarking, then?”

  “Are you so desperate for coin? I won’t allow it,” Charles declared. “Our little patch by Blackfriars Bridge is full of friends these days, thanks to my charity, but generally, mudlarks are a desperate, dirty bunch. No, if you want to earn some money, I’ll pay you to run errands for Mother or me.”

  Fred gave a frustrated huff. “I could leave school and get employment of my own.”

  “Absolutely not. School is where you belong, for a while longer at least.” Charles ruffled Fred’s hair, so like his own. His brother tended to romanticize things, but Charles well knew what it was like to be out in the world, undereducated and too young to take care of himself properly. He wouldn’t bestow the same fate upon his brothers, even if they thought they were ready for it.

  Letitia stomped into the room, her feet making an elephantine noise for such a small woman. “Dinner, boys. The soup will go cold.”

  “Boys?” Charles sneered.

  Letitia stuck her tongue out at him and flounced away, dark ringlets bouncing.

  “She’s not much of a lady,” Fred said.

  “Her force of personality is alarming,” Charles agreed. “She’s going to become a termagant if she doesn’t tame that wild spirit of hers.”

  Fred let out a whoop and raced out the door, leaving his brother to reflect that Letitia wasn’t the only one with high spirits in this family. With a father like theirs, was it likely that his siblings had futures as sober, responsible citizens?

  By the time Charles reappeared, his father was seating everyone, giving Mrs. Hogarth the pride of place at the far end of the table and settling Kate next to himself. John Dickens, Esq., as he styled himself, was the perfect gentleman of an older age while he fussed over Kate, who, unlike his own daughter Letitia, was demure, ladylike, and pleasing to his father.

  Charles took the seat opposite Kate at the table, resigning himself to being the one to entertain Mrs. Hogarth, since Boz was her other dining companion.

  “The inquest was today,” Fred said after his father had said a prayer and everyone had hoisted their spoons over their soup bowls. “Was it grisly?”

  “No such talk at the dinner table,” his mother snapped. “We have guests.”

  “Even if we didn’t have guests, Mrs. Dickens,” his father said. “No dissections and postmortems ever at the table.”

  Letitia giggled. “Were you busy with it all day, Charles?”

  “No.” He leaned forward, so she could hear him across the table, careful not to drop anything into his beef broth. “In fact, I had a pleasant sojourn in the Jewish burying ground next to the Hogarth home.”

  “You live next to a graveyard?” Alfred asked, eyes shining. “How thrilling!” Two years younger than Fred, he was the oldest Dickens boy still at home.

  “We don’t really notice it,” Mrs. Hogarth said. “There is a high wall and trees all around. I’ve never seen it open.”

  “Unusual,” Charles agreed. “Anyway, I had a look at the gravestones. Very odd to the eye, with all the foreign writing, though the lower parts are in English. My neighbor was in there, trying to write a song. That’s what he does, and I might try working with him.”

  “How delightful,” Kate said. “I’d love to hear a song you’ve written.”

  He smiled fondly at her. “So would I. I did help him with a verse. It helps to have a large vocabulary, so that you have a wide selection of rhymes available.”

  His father jumped to his feet and declaimed, his hand over his heart, “There was a monkey climbed up a tree. When he fell down, then down fell he. There was a crow sat on a stone. When he was gone, then there was none.” His voice rose as Boz giggled loudly. Their father widened his eyes, and his stance became more theatrical. “There was an old wife did eat an apple. When she had eat two, she had eat a couple.”

  “That’s enough, dear,” Mrs. Dickens said. “We don’t want our guests to think we haven’t any manners.”

  “No different than my husband jumping up from the table to write down a thought on some music he has running through his head,” Mrs. Hogarth said complacently. “These geniuses.”

  Mr. Dickens beamed at the implied compliment and raised his wineglass to her.

  Charles, not wanting the poetry to descend into something bawdier, cast about for some other subject. He remembered that strange magazine article.

  “Speaking of, err, literature,” Charles said. “The morning we found the unfortunate Miss Haverstock, someone had thrust a magazine under my door.”

  “Something interesting, dear?” Mrs. Dickens asked.

  “To begin with, it was fifty years old,” Charles explained. “Who put it there? The Agas were gone, and Mr. Gadfly didn’t leave it.”

  “And Miss Haverstock was deceased,” Kate added pertly.

  “Quite.” Charles raised his glass to
her, in imitation of his father. “A chilling article resided inside, about a group of bloodthirsty children who basically killed a young Jewish girl who roamed with their gang but wasn’t well liked.”

  “What happened?” Alfred asked as everyone gasped.

  “They put her into a barrel, and she ended up drifting out of their hands, down the Thames.”

  Charles’s father looked thoughtful. “Sounds almost like a reverse parable.”

  “Why?”

  “You know the rumors, Charles? About Jews killing children and baking them into matzo?”

  “What’s that?” Boz asked, his small nose wrinkling.

  “A meal they use to make their food,” his father said. “There are some delightful ballads on the subject.”

  Mrs. Dickens narrowed her eyes.

  “But I won’t regale you with any,” her husband said hastily. “I simply mean to say that the usual tale has Christians being killed by Jews, not the reverse.”

  “I cannot appreciate the intolerance of those days,” Charles said. “Why did someone stuff it under my door? That’s the real mystery. I cannot understand the point of the article with no context.”

  “And stuff it under your door while a dead body decayed on the floor above,” Letitia said with a kind of ghoulish relish. “It must be a clue.”

  “Speaking of context,” Kate inserted. “I’ve been thinking about what we saw in Miss Haverstock’s parlor, and I think the wedding dress she wore is a key to the murder.”

  “Why was she wearing it?” Mr. Dickens asked.

  “Exactly.” Kate beamed. “Was she secretly married? Or jilted?”

  “I admit it is an interesting point,” Charles said, “and certainly the dress might have been intended for a wedding, but we now know there was a convict in the neighborhood.”

  “Yes, but—” Kate said.

  Charles interrupted. “The convict must be the killer, even though Daniel Jones had nothing to do with the situation and only his forge was used to remove the manacles that were found.”

  “I think you should move back to London,” his mother said, throwing a damper on the conversation. “That Selwood Terrace doesn’t sound like a decent place for you or Fred. Murder? Escaped convicts? Manacles?”

  “It’s as safe as anywhere else,” Charles muttered. “But Fred and I are going to spend a couple of nights in town, while the Hogarths enjoy your hospitality.”

  “I should think so,” his mother agreed. “And perhaps you won’t return to Chelsea.”

  “I enjoy being so close to the Hogarths,” Charles said. “Maybe our present rooms are too close to the market. I don’t know, but I need to be there to help solve this murder. Mrs. Jones has especially asked for my help.”

  “She is very distressed,” Kate agreed.

  “As long as ye don’t put yerself into any danger,” Mrs. Hogarth said. “We have a wedding to plan.”

  “Weddings,” Kate mused, revisiting her point. “Why would an old lady be killed in an ancient wedding dress?”

  “Was it out of style, dear?” Mrs. Dickens asked.

  “Oh, yes. Nothing like the present fashion,” Kate assured her. “But so lovely.”

  “Very odd,” Mrs. Dickens agreed. “Had it been well cared for?”

  “I didn’t take a close look,” Kate admitted.

  “Under the circumstances,” Charles’s father interjected. He patted Kate’s hand. “My dear, you must forget all about it. We’ll have Fanny perform some sprightly tune and talk Charles and his brothers into doing comic recitations.”

  “Oh, you must honor us with one yourself, Mr. Dickens,” his wife added.

  He inclined his head. “Of course, my dear, of course.”

  * * *

  The next morning, Charles and Fred arrived back in Bloomsbury for breakfast, after a short night’s sleep in their chambers at Furnival’s Inn.

  “Good morning, good morning, sirs,” his father cried. “Come to check on your lady love?”

  “Indeed, Father,” Charles said, shaking hands. “And eat, before the long day ahead of me. What are your plans?”

  “Oh, a spot of something or other,” his father said vaguely. “Might go to the theater tonight, review a play.”

  His father had all the ability in the world but claimed a chronic illness kept him in too much discomfort to work often. For all Charles knew, it was even true. He’d seen the expression of pain that crossed his father’s face when he sat for too long.

  They had just finished eating, and Fanny was just saying something about clearing the table, when something fell against the outer wall of the chamber, loudly and harshly enough to make the teacups rattle in their saucers.

  “What on earth?” Charles’s father muttered, standing up. “Someone must be moving furniture, but I won’t have our meal disturbed.”

  “We’re as good as finished, Mr. Dickens,” his mother said. “Dear Charles must leave for the newspaper. We cannot keep him any longer.”

  Another bang came, louder than the first. His father straightened his neckerchief before storming out of the room.

  “Stay here, Kate,” Charles said, following his father out. His mother joined the procession, as did Fred.

  Charles slid from behind his father as they reached the passage. Across the hall, the door to the tailor’s apartment was open. A cloud of dingy, worn underclothing came through the doorway and landed on the boards in a heap.

  Mrs. Dickens gasped and retreated to her doorway, eyes averted.

  Charles heard raised voices shouting about missing rent payments. More fabric came flying through the door, a bolt of black worsted and a heap of printed cotton that had seen better days. A man with a twisted nose brought out a couple of stools and set them against the wall, sneering at the Dickenses, before he disappeared again.

  Then a woman stepped into the passage, a baby in one arm and the hand of a tiny girl in the other. She had the full figure of a woman who’d recently given birth, and her bodice had milk stains on it. Her eyes were reddened, and she had a pack of belongings strapped to her back.

  “Mrs. Gordon?” Charles’s father queried. “What has happened?”

  The woman stared blankly at the pitiful pile of cloth and clothing on the hallway boards.

  “Mrs. Gordon?” Mr. Dickens prompted.

  “The rent,” she said in a tiny voice. “We gave credit to too many gentlemen and didn’t have money for the rent last week or this.”

  “What do you owe?” Charles asked.

  “Two pound,” she whispered. “We was already behind, sir.”

  Charles’s father shook his head and went to his wife, still in the doorway. They walked into their apartment and left the door open. Mrs. Gordon stared past them, unseeing.

  Charles remembered the debtors’ prison when he was twelve, his family in the Marshalsea Prison for the sake of a forty-pound, ten-shilling baker’s bill. He fished into his pocket and pulled out four shillings.

  Pressing them into the woman’s hand, he said, “It’s all I have. Maybe it will be enough to stave them off.”

  Mrs. Gordon prompted her little girl to take the coins in her grubby fist. “Thankee, sir, but the landlord, he wants every penny.”

  Behind her, a man appeared. Charles took a step back as he recognized the figure in the doorway. Small statured, with bottle-black hair and a long, thin mustache. Mr. Ferazzi, his own landlord. He felt a soft touch on his arm and found Kate there.

  “Dickens,” the man grunted.

  “Mr. Ferazzi,” Charles said. “Can you accept partial payment for tonight? I will attempt to raise funds for this worthy family tomorrow. They have customers they can collect from.”

  “They can do that from another boardinghouse,” Mr. Ferazzi growled. “I won’t have spongers on my property.”

  “I can ask my father for coin,” Charles said with an air of desperation. But his father did not appear in the doorway.

  “No doubt we’ll be removing your family some
day soon,” Mr. Ferazzi said. “The lower classes are so improvident.”

  “My father is a gentleman, sir.” Charles’s indignant retort brought nothing but a sneer to the landlord’s sunken face.

  Mr. Ferazzi leaned forward from his waist, his neck craning, vulture-like. “Then what is he doing here?”

  He brushed past Mrs. Gordon and went down the stairs.

  Kate squeezed Charles’s arm. When he glanced at her, he saw her expression was as stricken as his.

  A chair came at them, a bulk tossed through the doorway. Charles jumped back, pulling Kate behind him.

  “Goodness,” she said.

  “Go inside,” he urged her. “It isn’t safe.”

  She did as he asked, returning to the safety of his parents’ rooms.

  Mrs. Gordon looked at him.

  “Did you manage to hold on to the shop?” Charles asked.

  She nodded. “The rent is paid on that for the week.”

  “Can you sleep there?”

  “It’s against the rules. Mr. Ferazzi says if he catches us there during the dark hours, we’ll lose it, too.” She squeezed her baby.

  Charles wondered if Mr. Ferazzi was the sort of man to lurk around Bloomsbury in the deep night. His Mr. Nickerson might be, though. Perhaps the men in this gang were even the Chelsea neighborhood thieves.

  “Tell your husband you and the children are going to Furnival’s Inn for the day. You can open the shop tomorrow, after your husband raises the funds he needs today.”

  Mrs. Gordon pressed her lips together before speaking. “But Mr. Ferazzi won’t take us back.”

  “I’ll reason with him,” Charles said. “He understands business, and he’s lost more than one tenant recently. He won’t want to run his enterprises at a loss.”

  She sighed. “Two pound.”

  Another chair sailed out, followed by the tailor. “They said they’d leave the beds until tomorrow,” he said. The little girl ran to her father. “They have another job to get to.”

  “We’re going to stay with the young Dickenses today,” Mrs. Gordon said with dignity. “Unless you object, Mr. Gordon.”

  “I must mind the shop,” her husband said, eyes wide. “I have three orders I can finish and deliver, to collect the payments. I’ll work all night if I need to, though I hope I can gather the coin today.” Mr. Gordon drew himself up. Slight and starved as he looked, there was a tattered dignity to the man.