‘Inspector Field! You are a long way from your home patch. What brings you here?’
I knew him then. An acquaintance of Dickens. One of the many who courted the great man and who were flattered by any recognition from him.
The inspector wore an expression of one who is bringing goods. He jerked his thumb at the door behind him. ‘Dragged something out of the river not half an hour ago. Care to have a look? Might interest you. Come in, Mr Dickens, and you, Mr Collins.’
He led us across a paved and cobblestoned yard and into a small, icily cold, stone house at the back of the police station, only big enough to hold a marble slab and an iron pump. There was a girl there, quite dead, lying on the marble slab, her eyes widely opened, river water oozing from a faded red and green print dress, descending drip by drip into the drain below the slab. I gazed at the body in horror. The last dead body that I had seen was that of my own dear father, but he had been a tired, ill, old man. This was a girl younger than myself. Pretty, too. Smooth skin, lovely dark hair rippling out from an oval face, large black eyes, widely opened and staring up at me.
‘What happened to her?’ I blinked, wiped my glasses with an unsteady hand.
‘Strangled and then thrown in the river. The surgeon hasn’t seen her yet, but look at her neck. Been broken. That’s what killed her, I’d say. Not the river. Legs broken, bruises on her arms. Been beaten and strangled, that’s what I think, anyway. The old story. She’s dead now and that’s the end of her.’
‘Who did it?’ The girl’s face was unmarked. A pretty girl with dark hair. Someone had spread it out across the slab. The men who brought her in, I supposed. ‘Who could do a thing like that?’ I said the words half to myself and half to Inspector Field. Dickens was wearing one of his forbidding looks, his dark eyes angry, his mouth compressed. I saw him reach over as though to close the dead girl’s eyes and then withdraw his hand.
The inspector shrugged. ‘Probably not worth going to much trouble to find out, Mr Collins. Could be any one of hundreds. The Hungerford Market stays open until late. Lots of ships tied up at the wharf. Lots of sailors and porters around. Lads up from the country. Looking to do a bit of buying and have a bit of fun before going back home tomorrow morning. These girls, lots of them, do end up in the river. Not worth the manpower to find out who they are or where they come from. We’ll put up a few posters, of course. But no reward; no information; that’s the usual thing, unless there’s bad blood between a couple of men, or women either. But you might get a story out of it, Mr Dickens; that’s what I was thinking.’ He offered that remark ingratiatingly, his large protruding eyes fixed eagerly on my friend, rather like a dog proffering a stick. ‘Gives you an idea, doesn’t it?’
Dickens, I remembered, had recently written about Inspector Field in Household Words. The man now probably thought of himself as a partner in the book-writing business. He looked ready to supply a plot, but Dickens said nothing, just looked at the girl sadly and thoughtfully. It took him several minutes to rouse himself, and then he just nodded to the disappointed policeman and strolled out. This time he turned back to the river, and began to walk so rapidly that I had trouble in keeping up with him.
‘A man would be better.’ He muttered the words below his breath and then once again, aloud. ‘Yes, a man. But there should be a girl, too. A girl and her father.’
‘What do you mean?’ I found him an interesting study when he was like this. Dickens, the family man; Dickens the entertaining host; Dickens, the would-be actor; Dickens the businesslike manager of his periodical, offering me a job, none of these were as intriguing to me as the novelist dreaming over the book at the back of his mind. He turned to look back as though surprised by my presence. His brow was knitted and I got the impression that he had been trying to put some unpleasant matter from his mind, but that it had persisted, had conquered his effort to think about a new book.
‘I know that girl, Wilkie,’ he said unexpectedly.
‘You know what she might be like, might have been like. You know how she could fit into a story.’ I could hear the eager note in my own voice. I was on the lookout for any useful tips into the novelist’s art. But I had lost my friend’s attention again. Dickens was muttering to himself. ‘A waterside character?’ There was a question in his voice.
‘Is she going to be in one of your books?’ I dodged a boy carrying a broken and rusty sieve with some small pieces of coal lying on it.
‘No, I didn’t say that.’ He laughed suddenly and unexpectedly. ‘Poor thing. She’d have liked it, I dare say. No, I was thinking of something else.’ Suddenly he looked sharply at me as though noticing me for the first time. ‘I was talking about a man. A riverside character,’ he repeated the words, but this time with a satisfied air as though they had taken shape within his mind. He strode on, waving his umbrella in the air as if taking swipes at invisible insects.
I grimaced as I tried to keep up. One of the problems with Dickens was that the more thoughts that crowded into his mind, the faster he walked. I wished that I had longer legs. ‘But the girl, Dickens, the girl, that girl in there, you said that you knew her.’
Suddenly Dickens focused, swung around, his eyes alert. ‘So I did. Yes, I do. She was one of my girls, the girls in Urania Cottage, the ones that I was training up to emigrate and start a new life out in Australia. You remember, Collins, I told you all about it. I wonder what happened to her. A clever girl. Smart one, too. Not biddable, though. She was all wrong for Urania Cottage. We had to let her go. She was corrupting the others, getting up a rebellion against the matron. Even tried to argue with me. There was no reasoning with her.’ A look of sadness, almost of regret, passed across his face, to be replaced by a look of anger.
‘But this girl … what is her name?’
‘Isabella Gordon; that was her name. I remember her well,’ said Dickens. ‘No, she wasn’t right for Urania Cottage. Didn’t want to start a fresh life. Wanted to go out at night, to go shopping by herself, to have some fun, if you please. She was disturbing all of the rest. Interfering with their teaching. Trying to get them to rebel, also. Spoiling their chances, as well as her own. “Well, young lady,” I said to her, “you seem to have misunderstood this place. You’ll have to go if you don’t radically change your attitude.” And so she went. And her friend, Sesina, followed her the following day. Bless my soul, that must be about two years ago now.’ He wriggled his shoulders as though trying to banish an unpleasant thought or regret.
It was interesting, I thought, how he referred to the dead girl. Despite everything, she still belonged to him. Something quite paternal in his voice. I knew that hours and hours, so very much of my friend’s time and energies, were bound up in this Urania Cottage experiment where girls about to be released from prison were selected as suitable to be given a chance of a completely new life in a completely new environment. ‘One of my girls,’ he had said.
‘I wonder what happened to her in the meantime. Where did she go? And where has she been living? What do you think, Dick?’ I mused on the girl while my companion looked straight ahead with compressed lips and narrowed eyes. ‘I’d like to find out where she went. What happened to her? Who strangled her? People shouldn’t get away with strangling girls and throwing their bodies into the river. And the police not bothering about it unless there is a reward offered.’
I eyed my friend. ‘You must be able to find out something, Dick. What about the other girls out in Urania Cottage? Wouldn’t one of them know something? I bet they would! I know women. They always tell each other secrets. Let’s go out to your Urania Cottage. It’s not too late. Let’s see what we can find out about the poor girl. You know something, Dickens, I think that girl will haunt me if I don’t find out who did this to her.’
‘Haunt you! Why haunt you?’ He didn’t like that. If there was any haunting to be done, Dickens would have to be the focus of it. ‘Well, as you like,’ he said, with the air of one giving into pressure, although I guessed that he himself w
as eager to trace the dead girl’s killer. ‘Yes, we’ll go out to Urania Cottage. You can meet my Mrs Morson. I’ve talked about her to you, haven’t I? A woman of strong character. I recognized that the instant I met her. I can always trust myself to pick out the right person for a job.’ A touch of the bombastic Dickens, there, but then that look of sadness came over his face again. With the tip of his umbrella he swiped viciously at the head of a nettle that poked out from the stones.
‘She was sorry about Isabella, too,’ he said after a minute. ‘Thought that the poor little thing might have been reclaimed, but no, the pull of her past life was too strong. She was sucked back, Wilkie. That’s all I know about her. It happens often enough. Almost inevitable. Just like the river sucks back what it has released on to its banks at low tide. We lose so many of them, so many of these girls. I try not to think of it or wouldn’t sleep so well at night. She had to go, had to rebel. And now, look what has become of her.’ His face darkened. ‘Come on, Wilkie. At least I might have the satisfaction of catching the man who did this.’
And now in the way that he did these things, my mercurial friend was filled with a driving energy. Grasping my arm, he hurried me along until we reached the Strand.
THREE
Sesina guessed who it was when she saw the profile through the glass of the front door. Hair swept back, that high, broad forehead, jutting chin outlined with a small beard; she had opened the door often enough for him at Urania Cottage to recognize him instantly. He had always brought trouble there, she thought venomously, and it wouldn’t be any different now. She switched her expression to one of sweet innocence, checked it in the mirror of the hallstand and then unfastened the door and stood there silently, dropping a pretty curtsy and waiting for the gentlemen to speak. Perhaps the bastard mightn’t remember her.
There were two of them there. She liked the look of the second fellow better. Didn’t have those piercing eyes. A nice amiable fellow with strong glasses, a goofy-looking smile, going a bit bald, but sweet-looking, sweet as a chocolate drop. Chubby-looking cheeks, like a little lad. Didn’t say anything, just gave her that smile, more like a little grin, really, and she found it hard not to smile back at him. But of course it was Mr Dickens who spoke and of course he was on the ball, as usual.
‘Well, well, well, so who have we got here? If it isn’t the pint-sized Anna Maria Sisini herself. So you’re working here then, are you?’
He knew it all the time. He had been expecting to see her. She was sure of that. In spite of his words, there was no trace of surprise in his voice. He was just pretending, just play-acting as usual. She curtsied again. Isabella had been missing now for over forty-eight hours. There had been that story about getting new lodgings, but somehow Sesina had never believed that it would really happen. Not much chance that the poor cow was alive, she thought. That’s the way that life goes. You takes a chance and you pays the price. She waited. Let him do the talking; let him tell what brought him there. She looked into the dark eyes defiantly for long enough to show him that she wasn’t afraid of him. The other fellow, well, she could see him look from one to the other, but she wasn’t going to waste any time on him. He’d be like them all. Like Mrs Morson, like the Baroness Coutts, herself, like the prisoner governor, all of them obedient towards ‘the manager’. And, of course, ‘the manager’ would expect her to fall into line, just like everyone did for him. All except Isabella, of course, she told him straight. ‘I’m not a black slave from Africa, Mr Dickens, so don’t you treat me like one.’ Sesina giggled to herself when she remembered that.
Poor old Isabella. She’d been missing for two days now. Not likely that she’d ever see Isabella again. Sometimes, she had half-wondered if Isabella had got her money and taken herself off. St John’s Wood. Isabella had a great fancy to live in St John’s Wood. More likely, though, that she’d been picked out of the river, like many before her.
‘Well, then, Sesina, perhaps you could ask your mistress to see us.’ It must be Isabella. He didn’t ask about her. He surely would once he had seen her. Knew that they had been friends, knew that they had left Urania Cottage at the same time. Poor Isabella. Must be a goner. Someone must have told him that she had been fished out of the river.
Why was he involved?
Unless, unless, Isabella had spoken the truth … unless, there was money somewhere … he was keen on money, was Mr Dickens. Mrs Morson was always saying that they couldn’t waste anything, that she had to do her accounts. He’d come along and check them, too. Pretending that the girls were family and then making them scrub and cook and dust and mend and work the mangle and spend hours with the iron. Not much of a family, that, and him as rich as the Lord Mayor of London.
‘The mistress, sir?’ She could act dumb. That’s the way that he liked girls – act dumb and he patted you on the head. Act clever and he got rid of you. That was what Isabella had said and she was probably right. He’d got rid of them, the two of them, didn’t he? They had been the smartest girls in Urania Cottage.
‘Yes, your mistress.’ Beginning to sound impatient, now. That was like him. Never did have much patience.
‘Oh, the housekeeper!’ She made her voice sound surprised. ‘These are lodgings, sir. Mrs Dawson is the housekeeper, and the cook.’ She put that in so that Mrs Dawson wouldn’t sound too important. She was dying for him to tell what had brought him there. Isabella was dead; that was pretty sure. But how did Mr Dickens and this friend of his get involved? She stood back and he came in, giving that look of his around the hall and up the stairs.
‘I know the man who owns this terrace, Collins.’ Talking to his friend now, just like she was a hallstand or something. ‘An American. He lets out most of the houses, but I suppose this one is just a lodging house. I had lodgings myself in one of these houses in Adelphi when I was a young man.’ Without even looking at her, he took a calling card from his wallet, made as though to hand it to her and then took it back and scribbled a few words on the back of it with his pencil before he handed it to her.
‘Give this to the housekeeper, Sesina,’ he said and she took it from him. Mr Charles Dickens, Tavistock House, Tavistock Square. She would read the rest while she was waiting for Mrs Dawson to tell her to come in.
A friend of Mr Donald Diamond he had written on the back. Trust him to know the landlord! Knew everyone who was anyone in London. That would be him.
‘What does he want?’ Mrs Dawson was taken aback. Not used to having people calling to see her at this time of the evening. One of the lodgers might put his head around the door, but that would be that. As for the landlord, well, Sesina had only seen him a couple of times during all the time that she and Isabella had worked in number five, Adelphi Terrace. But Mrs Dawson would know the name of Charles Dickens. Everyone in London knew him. She would have to see him, like it or not.
‘Says he’s a friend of the landlord, Mrs Dawson.’ Could read that for herself on the back of the card, silly old cow, but she was busy, scurrying around, putting away the gin bottle and the glass, taking a peppermint out from a box in the drawer and chewing on it while she straightened her cap in the looking glass. Been like a cat on hot bricks ever since Isabella had disappeared.
‘Well, show him in, girl, show him in.’ Mrs Dawson wouldn’t make the connection with Isabella, of course. She didn’t know anything about them really. Just before she had been turned out of Urania Cottage, Isabella had stolen some of Mrs Morson’s writing paper and Sesina had written out references for both, sitting up in their bedroom, giggling, the two of them, and planning a life away from Urania Cottage. One good thing about the place, after all, had been learning to write so very well. They could both do an exact copy of Mrs Morson’s handwriting and so Sesina wrote a reference, in a beautiful copperplate script, from an imaginary lady who was just about to depart to India and so had to dismiss two hardworking housemaids – the India business had been Isabella’s idea and it had been a good one. Not surprising if there had been no reply to the request
for references. By the time that Mrs Dawson had given up hope of hearing from this Mrs Robert Doncaster, Isabella and Sesina had been well settled into the house on Adelphi Terrace. Not a bad place either with the lodgers out all day and nothing but breakfast to serve for them.
Mr Dickens and his friend were standing looking up the stairs when Sesina came back.
‘How many lodgers here in this house?’ He looked at her sharply. Was always expecting you to tell a lie. That was him.
‘Four, sir. One on the first floor, one on the second floor and two together on the top floor.’
‘All single men?’ He gave one of those glances of his up the stairs, just like he used to do at Urania Cottage.
‘That’s right, sir. Could you step this way, sir. Into the parlour.’
‘Parlour and dining room on the ground floor, then there are three more floors above this one, Collins.’ He said it just like he was going to buy the place, looking sharply up the stairs and then down towards the basement. Sesina walked ahead of them and rapped on Mrs Dawson’s door. ‘The two gentlemen, to see you, ma’am,’ she said, making sure to close the door very firmly with a very definite click and then cautiously edging it open again so that she could listen to their conversation.
‘I came to ask whether you employed a girl named Isabella Gordon here.’ Very curt, his voice. He’d be different if Mrs Dawson was a real lady. Not that she cared about Mrs Dawson! No better than she should be. Isabella said that she had found out a few juicy little pieces of information about Mrs High-and-Mighty Dawson!
‘That’s right, sir.’ Mrs Dawson sounded very nervous. ‘Yes, she works here as a housemaid.’
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