“Why, it’s that Miss Jaggers,” Mr. Nickerson explained. “Miss Haverstock’s ward.”
Charles’s eyes widened. Mr. Ferazzi would never have made a Haverstock his heir.
Sir Silas’s fingers went to his chin. “Are you the appropriate person to notify her? Can the business run without her intervention?”
“She hasn’t reached her majority,” Charles said. “She’s only seventeen.”
“Was Mr. Ferazzi her guardian?” Sir Silas asked.
“Miss Haverstock was her guardian,” Charles explained. “Did she have a will? Did she leave the guardianship to Mr. Ferazzi? It seems unlikely, though not out of what is possible.”
Sir Silas nodded. “I’ll call on the lawyers. I’ll want them at the inquest.” He turned to Reggie Nickerson. “Give the constable the lawyers’ names on your way out. We’ll have to send word to Miss Jaggers in the morning.”
“When will the inquest be?” Charles asked.
“Tomorrow afternoon,” Sir Silas said. “Clear enough situation. Three witnesses to most of it.”
Mr. Nickerson glanced at Charles. “What happened?”
“He was drinking laudanum. I think he hallucinated,” Charles said.
“You think he killed Miss Haverstock?” the factotum gasped.
“He confessed,” Charles said wearily. “He confessed and then ran down the street and drowned himself. Clearly, he’d been consumed by guilt about what had happened when they were children.”
“I’ll be blowed,” Mr. Nickerson whispered. “I’ll be blowed.”
Charles was suddenly fed up with the entire situation. “Sir Silas, I know this might be outside of your responsibilities, but we had robberies in the neighborhood before Miss Haverstock was murdered, and I can’t help but think Mr. Nickerson was involved somehow. In my dealings, he has proven himself to be quite dishonest, and I would hate to have him allowed to continue in his present sphere of responsibility.”
“You’ve nothing on me, sir. Why, I did what Mr. Ferazzi told me!” Mr. Nickerson shouted.
Sir Silas nodded. “But you don’t deny the accusations, Mr. Nickerson. I’m sure all this will be taken into consideration as the heiress’s guardianship is resolved by the courts.”
“Not only that, but I don’t know why Miss Jaggers would be Mr. Ferazzi’s heir. They were not related,” Charles explained, “and Mr. Ferazzi told me he’d spent his lifetime intent on destroying the entire Haverstock family.”
Sir Silas’s gaze went shrewd. “Miss Jaggers is part of that family?”
“Exactly, sir. If there is a will naming her as Mr. Ferazzi’s heir, and Mr. Nickerson has such a document, I would investigate the relationship between the two of them.” Charles thought of that shining girl, Evelina Jaggers, a newly minted heiress. First, Miss Haverstock had died, and now Mr. Ferazzi, and the deaths had freed her to be rich. How could she be entirely innocent?
“You must be mad,” Mr. Nickerson exclaimed.
Sir Silas turned to him. “Are you any relation to the Haverstocks?”
Mr. Nickerson stiffened. “What does that matter?”
“Just answer the question,” Sir Silas ordered.
Charles glanced at each man in turn, holding his breath.
Mr. Nickerson passed his fingers over his mouth and wiped away a sheen of moisture at one corner. “Wot we have is a situation of extreme delicacy, wot wi’ a lady who wasn’t very proper, but’oo my father loved.”
“Was that father a Haverstock?”
Mr. Nickerson laced his fingers over his midsection. “Yes, but I never did Mr. Ferazzi any’arm.”
“Except forging his will,” Charles snapped.
“You can’t prove it, Mr. Dickens.” Mr. Nickerson’s upper lip twisted. “Miss Jaggers is the only heir he’s got.”
Charles wondered why he felt sorrier for the suicidal murderer than he did for the victim’s ward, but Miss Jaggers was not one to elicit sympathy. Had he sensed evil in her from the start?
* * *
The next morning, Charles rose from his bed early, though it had been nearly dawn when he retired. He went down the lane at a trot, his sore knee reminding him of the previous night when he had run after a remorseful killer.
Instead of heading toward town, he went in the opposite direction, toward the Hogarths’ house. One of Kate’s brothers opened the door and escorted him to the dining room, where Mr. Hogarth sat with an early newspaper and a pot of tea. A rack of toast waited nearby.
“If it isn’t Charles,” his editor exclaimed, setting down a butter knife. “What brings you here so early?”
“I needed to tell you that I won’t be able to come into the office today. I have to testify at another inquest. I’m sorry for it.”
“Who died?”
“Mr. Ferazzi. I was a witness to his suicide. He admitted to killing Miss Haverstock.” Charles heard an exclamation and saw Kate coming through the kitchen door with a basket of hard-boiled eggs.
“Truly?” Kate asked. “The mystery is solved?”
“Part of it,” Charles confirmed. “But in order to get any sleep, I was unable to finish searching Miss Haverstock’s fireplace.”
“We’ll look tonight,” Kate promised.
“You will not,” her father interjected as he tapped on a brittle eggshell with a knife. “You will be helping your mother with her party this evening. You are attending, are you not, Charles?”
“Of course,” Charles agreed, though he had completely forgotten about it.
Kate looked stricken. “What if the treasure disappears?”
“There might not be a treasure,” Charles said. “And it’s possible the Agas uncovered it while I was at the police station. For now, I need to get such writing done as I can at home this morning, and then go to the inquest.”
“I’ll see you tonight, though,” Kate said.
Charles smiled warmly at her. “Yes, and again, Mr. Hogarth, I am very sorry.”
“Canna be helped,” said the editor. “Sit down and eat, Charles. There is plenty for ye.” He fluttered his copy of The Observer.
“Anything exciting?” Charles asked.
“I thought ye might like to take Kate to Cupid in London,” Mr. Hogarth said. “At the Queen? Mrs. Nisbett is claiming to have fixed the theater’s ventilation problem.”
“I’d be happy to write an article,” Charles promised. “Tomorrow?”
Kate smiled and wiped her hands on her apron, then vanished back into the kitchen.
“What do you think about this election of David Salomons to be a sheriff of London?” Mr. Hogarth asked.
Charles perused the article as Mr. Hogarth poured tea for him. “This alleged screaming of agony by the lord mayor of having the election of a Jewish man after a Catholic is troubling. It seems that the men in power fight what the citizens don’t mind.”
Mr. Hogarth nodded and passed him the cream jug. “We need different sorts of men in power, otherwise thinking will never liberalize. I am glad Mr. Salomons was elected. I hope the lord mayor does not succeed in preventing him from taking office. Salomons is considered a man of great ability.”
“Better to openly be Jewish than to hide it,” Charles said.
“Did the religious issue have anything to do with Miss Haverstock’s death?”
Charles took a piece of toast from the rack and stared at it, considering. “Perhaps not, but her mistreatment at an early age by her friends might have stemmed from her religion as much as from her personality, and her later behavior seems to suggest a constant pattern of secrecy. I was surprised to learn that Mr. Ferazzi was also of that faith and background.”
“As ye can see, it hardly matters,” Mr. Hogarth said. “Religion and race are no marker of ability.”
“Nor background, as long as you can find an education,” Charles said. “I want to persuade all the mudlarks to leave the river. Maybe the examples of Mr. Ferazzi and Miss Haverstock, no matter how tragic in the end, will help persuade Lucy Fai
r and her little band. Their starts in Limehouse did not preclude them from being financially successful and living to old age.”
Mr. Hogarth chuckled. “A murder victim and a suicide, role models for a group of wild children?”
Charles sighed. “I know, but what else have I to work with?” He coated his thin round of buttered toast with strawberry preserves and stuffed it into his mouth. “I’d better return to my desk.”
“Not going to keep hunting for that treasure?” Mr. Hogarth lifted a bushy gray brow.
“No, sir. I have the discipline to finish my work.” Charles picked up three of the eggs, forced a smile while juggling them, and left.
He was glad to learn he was still in good graces with Kate’s father, despite not having spent much time at the Chronicle over the past few weeks, but his time had been entirely too broken into bits. What could he do in order to be entirely his own master? The discipline of reporting on meetings had begun to chafe him.
* * *
Charles yawned through the inquest, which didn’t reveal anything new or exciting. Miss Jaggers and her swain did not appear. After his hand was shaken by everyone who’d seen his mad chase through Chelsea, he returned home, ready to spend the evening in more lighthearted pursuits.
“I’ve been neglecting Kate terribly,” he confessed to Fred as he looked through his meager wardrobe an hour before the party. “I should do something to amuse her.”
“You should perform for her,” Fred said. “You refused to join in at our parents’ rooms that night, and I remember she pouted and said she wanted to see you dance.”
Charles narrowed his eyes at Fred. “I don’t want to make a fool of myself.”
“Go in disguise,” Fred suggested.
Charles rubbed his chin. “I could be in character. That would disguise any imperfection.”
“You can do a hornpipe,” Fred said. “What will you wear?”
“I’ll borrow your cap,” Charles decided, “and wear simple workman’s clothes. That will do for a sailor well enough.” He grinned and clapped his brother’s shoulder. “Will you play the fiddle for me? Stay outside in the garden and start the song when I burst in through those French doors they have?”
“Of course,” Fred promised. “We’ll flare up and have the best time!”
* * *
The party began after the dinner hour. Charles and Fred sneaked in through the apple orchard and around the vegetable garden. A gate led into the back of the property, which had a lawn edged by flower beds.
“There is your stage.” Fred pointed at the French doors, which were open to the early evening air.
Mrs. Hogarth’s roses were still in full bloom. Charles took a deep breath of the delightful fragrance as Fred opened his violin case and took out his instrument and bow.
“Stand by that bush over there.” Charles indicated a spot in front of a massive purple-flowered rhododendron. “The sound should carry.”
Fred bounced into place and set the cheap instrument against his shoulder, then placed his bow. Charles stood next to him, peering into the room at the very edge of the opened doors.
Quite a crowd had gathered in the drawing room. He recognized John Black and Thomas Pillar from the Chronicle, along with the Agas. Lady Lugoson, ethereally beautiful as ever, sat in the corner, speaking to Mrs. Decker, another neighbor they had met last winter. Charles saw Breese Gadfly sit down at the Hogarths’ cottage piano. He waved his hands wildly, and somehow Breese saw him. His friend raised his eyebrows, and Charles shook his head.
Charles shook out his arms and tilted his hips from side to side, warming up his joints. He hoped his knee, which seemed recovered, could take the strain of the dance, but he planned to do it only for a couple of minutes, before grabbing Kate’s arms and swinging her into the dance for a moment before he ran out again.
He nodded to Fred, who put his fingers to the strings and commenced the first notes of the famously rollicking tune of the “College Hornpipe.”
Charles dashed into the space between the open doors and paused until all eyes were upon him. Robert Hogarth called something out, but Charles’s ears were deaf to anything but the music. He began his dance, imitating the work of a sailor upon a ship. His hands pulled a rope, swabbed a deck, and did some sort of cleaning before he grabbed his laughing Kate and swung her around in a circle. As soon as she was breathless, he sped out the doors again while Fred still played, to the general laughter and huzzahs of the crowd.
Charles tossed Fred’s sailor’s cap from his head and ran around the side of the house. Once he was at the vegetable garden, he took his neckerchief and coat from the edge of a bean trellis where he’d left them in preparation, and shrugged into his coat, then tied his neckerchief while he walked through the other side of the yard and to the front.
He went in through the front door and stepped into the drawing room. Little Georgina pointed at him, goggle eyed, and he winked at her.
“If it isn’t Charles Dickens,” John Black, one of his biggest supporters, cried and came to shake his hand.
Then all was a blur as he shook hands all around, everyone keeping up the fiction that he was just entering for the first time, despite their winks. Mrs. Hogarth put a dish of trifle into his hand, and Mr. Hogarth, a glass of wine.
When he had caught his breath and drunk his wine, Kate came with a bottle and refilled his glass, then set the bottle on the table and clutched his sleeve, her cheeks pink and her entire face a little sweaty from exertion, but happy indeed.
“Did I please you?” he whispered in her ear.
“Very much,” she said with a blush. “My old Charles is back.”
“Now that the murder is solved, I feel much better,” he said. “I hope we can sneak away later and see what is in the fireplace.”
“Tell us about the inquest, Mr. Dickens,” said a voice behind him.
Charles recognized the voice but thought he might be imagining it. He turned around and saw Daniel Jones, the blacksmith, with a much thinner face wreathed in smiles, his wife, Addie, clutching his arm. Kate laughed and cried as Charles whooped in delight.
Charles stepped forward and clasped the man’s shoulders. He could feel the bones underneath, where there had been muscle before. “You’re here! You’re free! What blessed news!”
Daniel Jones’s eyes welled up with tears. “I have you to thank, Mr. Dickens. We cannot stay, as there is nothing at the house to feed Beddie or Aunt Hannah, but I was told you were here, and we wanted to thank you.”
“With all our hearts,” Mrs. Jones said, beaming.
Charles wiped at his eyes, quite as overcome as Mr. Jones. “Oh, I have never done anything better than this. I am so happy you won’t be transported. And back at the forge, too? Despite everything?”
“Mr. Nickerson gave us permission to resume our business,” Mr. Jones explained. “I cannot wait to be back at that happy old place.”
Charles kept his thoughts to himself with difficulty, just beamed his praises and walked the Joneses to the door. “I will stop by tomorrow. We’ll bring you some of Kate’s jam.” After another round of praise and thanks, he returned to the party.
“Tell us the whole story,” young Lord Lugoson exclaimed. “It must be a corker.”
Robert Hogarth brought a chair into the center of the room, and Charles sat down.
“Come now, ladies and gentlemen,” Charles said, arranging his features. “I shall tell you a tale of wealthy young Goldy Adams and her poor but hardworking swain, Pietro Ferazzi.”
“Start at the beginning,” Lord Lugoson said. “The day you found the body.”
Kate waved her hands. “No. It was too gruesome, my lord.”
“Begin with the magazine,” Mr. Hogarth said. “Who delivered the magazine to ye in the first place?”
Charles explained the events of that June morning to the assembled crowd. “To conclude, I believe Mr. Ferazzi himself did put it under my door. The man was tortured by the past.”
&nbs
p; “If he wanted ye to discover the truth, why did he try to extort money from you?” Mr. Hogarth countered.
Charles rubbed his chin and crossed his eyes. “Another glass of wine!” he called, for the general merriment.
The roomful of people laughed as Kate filled his glass. Before he could speak again, the crowd thinned at the end of the room, and in between two senior reporters stood Miss Jaggers and Prince Moss.
Chapter 25
Prince Moss was dressed like a young gentleman, in new clothes of a fine summer-weight wool. Miss Jaggers wore deepest black, but the fabric was so superior and so well fitted to her sylphlike form that it complemented her loveliness rather than detracted. She walked up to Charles. The entire room seemed to stop breathing. Even Fred, who had come into the room carrying his violin case, sat down next to Breese on the piano bench and said nothing.
“I slipped the magazine under your door,” Miss Jaggers said in her beautifully modulated voice.
“Why?” Charles asked, genuinely confused.
“I discovered my foster mother’s body first.” Miss Jaggers’s finely curved mouth tensed. “I wanted someone to know the truth.”
Charles glanced around the room. If all the world was a stage, Miss Jaggers had found herself a prime one. “What is the truth?”
“Pietro Ferazzi stole my inheritance.” Her mouth twisted. “My foster mother had not the strength to stop him.”
“What happened?” Charles asked. Mr. Hogarth stepped toward him, but Charles put out a hand to stop him. He wanted to see this conversation through to the end.
“My parents trusted her to keep my property safe. They had no idea there was a Mr. Ferazzi lurking around the edges of her life, causing mayhem, hoping to bring her to dependence on him. He forged documents of sale and took all my properties while I was at school, leading me to a life of dependence on others.”
“I am sorry,” Kate said.
Miss Jaggers gritted her teeth. She lost some of her shining beauty. “I wanted him to pay. Him and men like him, who prey on the defenseless.”
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