William handed her everything he had in his pocket. Julie kissed Cousin Arthur on the least grimy part of his forehead and offered a boiled sweet to each of the mudlarks, while Charles handed Lucy the bundle, which he’d left on a rock.
“A good night’s work,” he suggested. “You can shelter under the bridge for the rest of the night.”
“Smells like piss,” Lucy said scathingly. “We’ll be on the beach.”
* * *
Charles ventured into the three-story, pockmarked stone police station the next day, hauling the manacles in his carpetbag. He felt very grateful to be carrying the metal rather than wearing it.
“Yes?” the sergeant on duty asked, not looking up as Charles approached his desk.
Charles blinked, trying to adjust his eyesight. The windows didn’t seem to have been cleaned since winter, and visibility was poor. Not knowing what else to do, he lifted his carpetbag onto the desk.
“What?” The sergeant peered into the bag. His mustache twitched, as did his right hand, but he didn’t reach in.
“It’s not a live snake. It’s manacles,” Charles told him. “I’d like to speak to Constable Blight, unless you’d rather I take these directly to Sir Silas Laurie, the coroner, so he can use them for his investigation into Miss Haverstock’s murder in Selwood Terrace?”
The sergeant cleared his throat. “The constable is walking his beat, young man. Who are you?”
He drew himself up. “Charles Dickens, of the Chronicle. A man was arrested, a blacksmith, because manacles were found in his shop, but here’s another set.”
“What is your point, Mr. Dickens?”
“Coldbath Fields is missing a prisoner.” Charles shoved his own hand into his carpetbag and pulled out the cuffs. “Look here. These are from the same prison.”
The sergeant scratched under his reinforced collar. “What do you want the constable to do about it?”
“This creates doubt that the blacksmith had anything to do with freeing Ned Blood, the missing prisoner,” Charles snapped. “I want Mr. Jones, the blacksmith, to be released from prison.”
Behind him, the door opened. Several voices were shouting. He turned around and saw two men, hackney drivers, by the looks of them, hauling a uniformed constable between them. The constable, a sallow man in his late twenties, was bleeding profusely from the forehead. Behind the trio came Constable Blight, whose grimace marred the otherwise pleasant expression Charles remembered from before.
The inspector on duty came rushing out of his office. “What is all this commotion?”
The sergeant pulled out a length of cloth from somewhere behind his desk and stepped around Charles. He handed the cloth to the bleeding constable, who pressed it against his head.
“Little bleeders were playing with rocks,” one of the hackney drivers said, shaking out the arm that had been assisting the constable. “Hit this poor man on the head.”
“I need to return to me horse,” said the other driver, sidling backward out the door.
Charles stared hard at the man’s face before he vanished into the small crowd on the street, suspecting he was a criminal of some kind. Narrow, undersized jaw, pitted skin, very blue eyes, and a missing lower front tooth.
The inspector went behind the remaining driver and the bleeding constable and pushed them both into his office. The slamming door rattled the station wall.
Constable Blight then noticed Charles. He tilted his head, the motion arrested by his reinforced collar. “Mr. Dickens, what brings you here?”
“You’d best return to your beat,” the sergeant hissed.
“Give us a minute, so I can tell him about the manacles,” Charles said. “It’s police business.”
“What’s this about?” Blight frowned.
Charles gestured the constable over to his carpetbag. He pulled out the manacles and, ignoring the sergeant’s noise of disgust, spread them out across the desk. “A mudlark found these washed up near Blackfriars Bridge last night.” He pointed at the initials on the cuffs.
The constable yawned, not bothering to cover his mouth. “So that’s where the other set went.”
Charles felt a headache building behind his eyes. “You knew a second set was missing?”
Constable Blight sighed. “There are two escaped convicts. They must not have stayed together. I wonder where these went into the river.”
Charles’s eyes went wide. His heart rate sped up. “Do you know the other name? I didn’t hear that it came up in the inquest.”
“No. Ned Blood was seen in Chelsea, you understand. The other man has disappeared completely. You’d have to inquire at the prison for the name.”
“I will.” Charles dropped the manacles back into his bag. He hadn’t known Ned Blood had been seen so close to Selwood Terrace. None of this would help Mr. Jones. He’d wasted William’s money and his time in pursuit of nothing useful. At least not yet.
Chapter 9
Charles arrived at his parents’ rooms for dinner, eager to see Kate. Just seeing her would repair his low mood after the debacle with the manacles. When he reached their floor, the Gordons’ door opened and Mrs. Gordon peeked out.
“How good to see you here,” Charles exclaimed, stepping to the opposite side of the small passage. “Mr. Ferazzi allowed you back?”
Her skirts were laden with dust. He held back a sneeze with his finger under his nose as she spoke. “His man, that Mr. Nickerson, said we’d have another chance, since my husband paid our account yesterday.”
“I’m glad to hear it,” he replied, feeling a little of the burden of them fall off his shoulders. They would be unlikely to show up at his door in a new crisis, unlike his own parents.
Mrs. Gordon gently picked up his hand, then dropped five shillings into it. “Your repayment, plus the cost of the food we ate.”
“No,” he said, instant guilt pricking at him. He handed the shillings back to her. “Please, keep the money for your children.”
“I couldn’t.” She bit her lip.
“You could, as a gift. Hide it away for an emergency.”
He touched his hat and went to his parents’ door as she called, “Thank you, Mr. Dickens.”
As far as he was concerned, the money had been gone, anyway. He sneezed mightily, then wiggled the tip of his nose with his fingers.
His parents’ door was unlocked, so he went in, unnoticed. Chaos reigned in the parlor, as the younger boys hopped around, fighting with wooden swords. No wonder they hadn’t heard him in the passage.
“Bedlamites!” he called. “Isn’t this the dinner hour?”
“Mother burned the bannocks,” Boz said. “She started over.”
Charles’s eyebrows went up. Mrs. Hogarth must have attempted to teach his mother how to make the Scottish oatcakes. “I arranged for a carriage to be here in half an hour. How delayed are we?”
Kate dashed into the room, a smear of flour dusting the apron she wore over a short-sleeved dress of pale pink with a daisy detail in the fabric. Her lips parted in a wide smile. “Charles! I thought I heard your voice.”
“Sweet Kate,” he replied, kissing her cheek. “You remember we are going to the opera tonight?”
“Of course. What about Mother?”
“The carriage will drop us off at the English Opera House, then will take your mother home.”
Her eyebrows scrunched together. “Unaccompanied?”
“No, the Agas will meet us in Wellington Street and ride with her.”
“What a perfect idea,” Kate said.
“To make the plan work, we have to be done eating in”—he checked his pocket watch—“approximately twenty-five minutes.”
“Bannocks need about fifteen minutes’ cooking,” Kate said. “I don’t think we will sit to dine for another ten minutes.”
“Then we will have to eat fast.”
Kate dismissed that with a wave. “The driver will wait.”
A bloodcurdling scream came from deep within Alfred’s sma
ll frame, and he ran at his younger brother with his sword. Boz countered the attack by ramming his brother with a bony shoulder. They both went down on the hearthrug in a whirl of legs and elbows. Charles stuck his foot into the melee and separated the pair by pressing against their soft parts.
Fanny came in and snatched away the swords. “Quiet now. Father is working.”
Charles snorted. “Working? At the dinner hour?”
Fanny frowned at her brother. “We don’t wish to disturb him.”
“No,” Charles agreed. “If it is true. Do you know, I think young Alfred should be trained as a singer? He has at least your lung capacity already.”
“It’s too expensive,” Fanny demurred. “I love music, but I’ll never forget how hard it was for Father to pay the fees.”
“He has never known how to budget.”
Kate cleared her throat, reminding him that a relative outsider was in the room and did not need to hear the old Dickens troubles. “Fanny, would you play? I’d love to hear something. Do you know any of the music from The Spirit of the Bell? That’s the opera Charles is escorting me to this evening.”
“That opera is better known for its flare than its music,” Fanny said carefully. “So I have not inquired into learning any of the songs.”
“Oh.” Kate glanced uncertainly at Charles.
“I know ‘The Grateful Heart’ from Hermann,” Fanny offered. “That was an opera from last year.”
Charles nodded at her. “I’d love to hear you perform.” While Charles deeply regretted the interruption of his own schooling, he never resented Fanny’s. It also appeared that she’d met the man she would marry through her music career, though he didn’t really care for his future brother by marriage, considering him overly religious. Letitia was being courted by his friend Henry Austin. He had, in fact, hoped Henry would move into Furnival’s Inn with him, but he’d decided to stay with his mother for now.
As Fanny sang, Charles brought Kate up to date on the manacles and his failed hopes for freeing Mr. Jones with his find. Finally, Mrs. Dickens appeared and invited them into the dining room. Charles winced when he saw the time, but had his Hogarths shepherded out of the building only ten minutes late.
His hackney driver, a regular from the stand below his chambers at Furnival’s Inn, gave him a dirty look but greeted the ladies politely. The Agas were at the curb waiting when the carriage stopped in Wellington Street.
“I hope ye have another carriage waiting after the opera,” Mrs. Hogarth fretted.
“Of course,” Charles promised as he slid to the edge of the seat and toward the door. “I won’t make Kate walk all the way to Brompton.”
Kate laughed. “I’d never agree to it, Mother.”
“If anything goes wrong, ye must return to Mrs. Dickens,” Mrs. Hogarth insisted.
“A perfect solution,” Charles declared. “But I’ll have her home.”
“Will ye stay with us?” Mrs. Hogarth inquired.
“No. The plan is for Fred to order another hackney at the stand and meet us after the opera. Then all three of us will return to Brompton, and we gentlemen will brave Selwood Terrace tonight.”
Mrs. Hogarth grimaced. “Oh, Charles, are ye sure?”
“I’m not afraid of ghosts, only odors,” he assured her, then opened the door and swung himself out. He went to his friends and whispered in William’s ear, then handed him a couple of extra coins for the driver’s wait time.
Kate kissed her mother’s cheek. “I’m leaving the valise with you, dear.”
“I’ll remember,” Mrs. Hogarth assured her. Her anxious face stayed in the window of the hackney while her daughter climbed down.
William gave Kate a wink and helped his wife inside, then climbed in himself. Then Charles heard Mrs. Hogarth laugh at some remark William made. A thump sounded as the door closed. The driver clicked his teeth and lifted the reins. The horses moved back into traffic.
Kate let out a long sigh.
“Tired, darling? Was my family awful?” Charles took her arm and pulled her into the line waiting under the tall arches of the newly rebuilt theater.
“No, they were delightful. Your sisters are angels, and your brothers are scamps, of course, being younger. I can’t wait for Fanny and Letitia to receive their proposals. What fun to have us all be new brides together.”
“The news is coming shortly?”
“I think so, though a girl cannot ever quite know what is in her gentleman’s heart.” She giggled. “I had no idea you were going to propose when you did.”
“Neither did I,” Charles admitted. It had happened on a walk as they inspected the early blooms in the apple orchard. He might have planned a more special moment, but in that instant, he’d known he’d never be perfectly happy without this calm, clever girl beside him. “I hope Mr. Austin and Mr. Burnett plan better than I did.”
She smiled warmly at him. “I liked my proposal exactly as it was, full of feeling and hope for the future, rather than you nervous and unsure.”
He touched her cheek. “You are a perfect darling, always.”
As they entered the theater, Charles saw a frown line form between her eyes. “What’s wrong?”
“I worry about you roaming the streets at night. And the foreshore.” She shivered. “What if the criminal who’d been wearing those shackles had still been about?”
“That’s the beauty of the river. The manacles didn’t stay where they went in. Although,” he said thoughtfully, “they were hardly a scrap of metal. You’d think they’d have sunk to the bottom.”
“As intended,” she agreed.
They were ushered upstairs to the second-story box overlooking the stage. The opera had not been particularly well reviewed, and Charles suspected the theater would not fill before the performance. Plenty of humanity’s antics were on display below, ready to entertain him. However, Kate was not about to let him sit in silent repose, considering his fellow operagoers, potentially setting the stage for another sketch.
Charles helped Kate with her light wrap, and then they sat next to each other, so close that his leg brushed her skirts.
He closed his eyes, savoring the warmth of her legs under her summer layers. His thoughts went, as they so often did, to how soon they could marry. If only his family weren’t such a heavy burden. He prayed his father could keep his finances in line long enough to keep him from delaying his marriage to Kate.
“Do you want to talk about the manacles more?” Kate asked. “Is there any way to use them to persuade the police to release Mr. Jones?”
“No, not since they’ve revealed there are two escapees. Their case against Mr. Jones doesn’t change at all.”
“Unfortunate,” Kate whispered. “The escapees must have gone in opposite directions.”
“I wonder why,” Charles said as the lights in the theater dimmed.
He listened to Kate breathe until the overture began, and imagined that sound lulling him to sleep on cold winter’s nights. Would Mrs. Jones ever have the comfort of her husband’s breathing next to her again? He resolved to do his best to help her.
* * *
Fred met them after the opera, and they returned to Brompton. The air in the Selwood Terrace rooms no longer smelled like death, and no one had broken into their scantily furnished rooms.
Still, Charles slept uneasily, as did Fred. The next morning, they both admitted to nightmares, and Fred hadn’t even seen Miss Haverstock’s body.
At breakfast, Charles related his dream of being harassed by images of bugs crawling on Miss Haverstock. He had to toughen himself. A man should be able to see a dead body without nightmares plaguing him.
Along those lines, he was seized with the desire to visit a prison.
* * *
“William,” Charles said into the air from his Chronicle office chair late the next afternoon.
“Yes?” William pushed his chair over to Charles and reseated himself next to Charles.
“How would you go abou
t a trip to Coldbath Fields Prison? Would someone see us if we just turned up there?”
“Normally, you would write a letter, request an interview with a prison governor.”
Charles doodled on his scrap of paper. “But we’re reporters, and we only just learned that there was a second escapee. Plus, what if Mr. Jones is being kept there? Maybe we can see him. Maybe he’s thought of something that might help.”
William flashed a good-natured grin. “You’re not a crime reporter, Charles. And I’m sure Mr. Jones is at Newgate.”
Charles’s doodle turned into a broken manacle cuff. “You are. You should write about it, and I’ll go along. Who knows what I’ll learn? I can use it in a sketch.”
“Then you should make arrangements to visit Newgate,” William advised. “No one is going to care about criminals who’ve done only enough to serve a couple of years on a treadmill, when those at Newgate are facing the rope.”
Charles added a second set of irons to his drawing. “I have to start somewhere, and I need to sort out this escaped-criminal matter. What is the connection between them and Miss Haverstock?”
“Poor Daniel Jones,” William mused. “He is a sweet man, and his wife is a darling. I thought his father was a tougher sort. I’d not have been surprised if he’d known a criminal or two in his day.”
Charles thumped the desk. Now, there was a good point. “Do you think one of the Joneses really did help Ned Blood? That maybe it was Jones senior?”
William chuckled. “Now you’re thinking, Charles. You’ve been so overset with domestic fancies that I’d thought you’d lost your edge.”
“We need to speak to the coroner.” Charles half rose, but William pushed him into his seat.
“Not so fast, lad. All you would do is manage to have Jones senior arrested and Daniel Jones not freed. Then the ladies will have no one to run the forge. You’ll ruin the family.”
“But it makes sense,” Charles insisted. “Just because old Mr. Jones is somewhat crippled doesn’t mean he couldn’t have cut off a set of manacles. We know he’s strong enough, even if the constables didn’t. He works part of the day.”
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