I spent the night in my mother’s house and woke at eight on the following day, with a strong conviction that some time in my sleep I had seen the face of the man who had strangled Isabella. I watched sleepily as the servant put the finishing touches to the blazing fire, wondering what I should do to spend the morning before meeting my friend. I could work on my book, I supposed, but somehow I had lost interest in it for the moment. I needed to allow my thoughts to mature.
‘What’s the day like, Annie?’ I asked.
‘Raining, sir,’ she said and drew the curtains to prove it to me, I suppose. Now that my eyes were properly open I could see that she herself looked wet from her trip to the coalhouse, her hair still slightly dripping.
‘I think that I’ll have another little doze,’ I said, moving further down in the bed. ‘Don’t bother about breakfast until I ring.’
I slept instantly and dreamt of clues while I was sleeping, of one large calling card that had the word ‘CLUE’ in large capital letters upon it, but which I found impossible to turn over. And the torment of the dream was that I knew this held the secret to everything that was puzzling about Isabella’s murder. When I woke again it was only ten minutes later by my bedroom clock. But now I was fully awake and the rain had stopped, leaving a miasma of fog behind it.
I rang the bell, ordered breakfast in the dining room and pondered over the word, clue, as I washed and dressed. I had come across a reference to it during my desultory readings at the Temple Inns. The original word was ‘clew’, meaning a ball of thread and like the ball of thread that led through the labyrinth, the ‘clew’ led one to the solution. Perhaps today little Sesina would have something for me, something that would lead us to the heart of the mystery, lead us to the secret that Isabella had thought, poor girl, would make her fortune.
I was not an early riser normally, but I was so eager to solve the mystery of poor Isabella Gordon’s murder that I was within the Adelphi Arches soon after ten o’clock. The place was busy. Fish carts, meat carts, men wheeling barrels, housemaids flapping mats, it was a hive of activity and made me feel somewhat guilty about my lazy life when I seldom bothered to change from pyjamas and dressing gown until about noon in the day.
I lingered for a while. And then a cart came up, driven by a surly-looking butcher, taking his ill-humour out on his horse. I hate cruelty to animals and I stepped forward to remonstrate with the man. He pulled up. Not because of me. He hadn’t seen me. He jumped down and hammered on the door of number five. I abstracted a handful of hay from an egg cart and fed it surreptitiously to the unfortunate horse, stroking the poor fellow’s ears, while the butcher was waiting; his face to the door.
And there was little Sesina, looking trim and neat. She saw me. I was sure of that. I saw her eyes go to me instantly before she started to berate the man.
‘Very tough, that last lot of beef, Bob. No good at all. The missus was ever so angry about it. Said to tell you that she won’t put up with such poor stuff.’
An angry man. His voice came across to me. The voice of a man who had little control. ‘Don’t you give me that malarkey; you cheeky little mot. Look what happened to the other mot with the smart tongue.’ There was a heavy and threatening note in his voice.
‘I heard that, my man.’ I stepped forward instantly, leaving the horse to munch in peace.
He stiffened. He didn’t swing around. Didn’t stare aggressively at me. He just stayed very still for a moment.
And then he nodded; no, more bowed his head. ‘Sorry, sir,’ he said and sidled past me.
‘And don’t let me see you mistreat that poor animal of yours again.’ I felt rather brave saying that. I don’t think that I would have dared if he had not shown himself to be such a coward in the face of a few words. He behaved almost as though he were afraid of me, averting his eyes from me and muttering a few excuses. I watched him go back, mount to his seat, shake the reins of the horse and turn it to go back, all in a strangely different manner to the way in which he had arrived. I had no illusions about myself. Soft voice, soft hands, a bare five and a half foot tall, a good five or six inches shorter than that brute. Why had he taken so much notice of my words?
Had Dickens and I been misled by Sesina’s strong conviction that Isabella had left the house through the front door on her last night? And that, perhaps, she had left in the company of one of the gentlemen in the house; that there was something strange about the snapped wire of the bell. I had noted the wires running along the hall, above the hallstand and had thought the ringing of the bell might have been a signal. But what if we were wrong. What if Isabella had a spare key to the basement door and had gone out that way, locking the door behind her?
Surely, it was more natural, more understandable that she had been murdered by one of her own kind? This butcher, for instance. I looked towards Sesina. I would question her about this man, I thought. She turned away, looking back into the house, still holding the dish in her hands. I wondered what the poor, homeless people who sheltered under these arches thought of the riches of food that were daily brought to these back doors.
‘Just bringing the meat in, missus. And then I’ll do the mats.’ Sesina called into the house. She gave me a quick wink, which amused me and then went back inside, shutting the door behind her. I made my way into the shadows of the archway and stood there. The unfortunate poor woman that Dickens and I had spoken to was still there. No baby in her arms now. I tried not to speculate about the baby. I fumbled in my pocket and silently gave her half a crown. She said nothing in return, just kept the coin in the palm of her hand, gazing at the money in a dazed fashion. The children looked at me in silence. The boy was coughing badly.
Sesina was back out again in a flash. She had a couple of mats with her and started to bang them vigorously against the railings by the river. I went to join her, not standing too near, but making an appearance of someone who is observing the boats. There was a police launch there, moving rapidly down the river. A rope behind it. Towing something. I turned away. I didn’t want to know.
‘Didn’t find anything, I’m afraid, sir. That was a good idea about the bed, but there was nothing there.’ Sesina had moved a little nearer to me. She did not look towards me as she said the words, but bent down to add the last mat to the ones which she had already shaken.
I slipped her sixpence, anyway, as she passed me. Not the girl’s fault. We still had the other two cards to go on, poor Isabella’s pathetic attempt at making a book, perhaps in imitation of the man who had rescued her from the streets and seeing that she had an education. It had been quite a feat. I took the two cards from my pocket and brooded over them. The handwriting was beautifully formed, the handwriting of a gentlewoman. This Mrs Morson who managed Urania Cottage must have had a great influence over the girls if they modelled their handwriting on hers.
I walked away towards the Temple Inn, called into the porter’s office to see whether there were any letters for me, did a little reading in the library, looking up old law cases, looking for inspiration that would bring me a few steps further along the dreary path of the book that I was trying to write. I had not planned it properly. I could see that. I had been lazy, had thought that the idea would carry me on, but now I found myself, like a traveller in a moorland who has no map and no real destination in mind. I took a sheet of paper and neatly numbered it one to thirty, down the left-hand margin. I would do no more, I resolved, until material sufficient for a booklet, was sketched in beside each one of these numerals. Thirty booklets, each published fortnightly in Dickens’ magazine, Household Words and then put together to make a book – a book that would make me famous.
But somehow inspiration eluded me.
I pulled another piece of paper towards me, folded it in four, took a soft pencil and began to draw. The eyes were the first thing that I drew, not dead eyes, but large, dark eyes, looking directly at me, their creator. I tried to put in the light that must have been there when she was still alive. And then the hair,
not so difficult. Hair remains when the light is extinguished from the eyes. Black hair, easy to do with a pencil. I had an India rubber beside me but I made no use of it. My pencil twirled over those lustrous curls. I was no artist, not like my father or my younger brother; competent, would be all that I would class myself, but today I was inspired. I sketched the outline of a pair of slim shoulders beneath those tumbling skeins of hair. And then the dress. I had no colours with me, but I remembered the patterned strip on the flounces at the end of each sleeve and along the hem of the dress.
And last of all I drew the mouth. The girl looked out from the page at me with a half-smile, half enchanting, half appealing, asking a question.
We were a silent pair, both Dickens and myself when we met at two o’clock. He would have been up at seven in the morning, splashed under his famous cold shower, the most vigorous in the whole of London, he used to boast. Then he would have eaten his breakfast, in silence, probably thinking about his morning’s work. And at nine o’clock, as punctual as any clerk, he would go into his study, shut the baize-lined door, shut out the world, and get on with his creations until the hour of two struck. And then he walked for the afternoon, thinking his way through the next instalment.
And so today when we met, we walked along in silence. Me thinking hard about the complexities of my plot, building scene upon scene; how I could sculpt it by bringing in the surprises one by one. And Dickens, immersed in the final stage of his new novel, Bleak House, was thinking also. He was walking rapidly along, his lips moving in a silent pantomime of speech. From time to time, I was tempted to confide in him a sudden new and original twist that I contemplated in the story of the deaf circus girl, but a glance at his face stopped me. I knew better than to interrupt him. There would be only one girl in Dickens’ mind at the moment and that would be his creation, Esther Summerson. And yet as soon as we climbed the steep heights of Snow Hill, I could see that he had banished his imaginary world from his mind and was now looking around him with great interest. By the time that we walked into the yard, he was alert and keen, observing the coaches which were lined up, the stables with the patient heads of horses looking out, the coffee room above where the travellers could be glimpsed. There was a bar at the back of the yard and he led me towards it with the air of a man who knew the place intimately.
There were a number of coachman in an outer room, not much better than a stable, protected by a roof, propped on rough beams, but open on to the yard. We could see them inside there, seated on long forms, around a heavy table, downing pints of beer and Dickens went straight towards them, producing a half crown from his pocket, throwing it into the air and catching it neatly. The silver caught the light from the gas lamp and sparkled. There was a sudden turning of heads. One man got up and came towards us. Dickens gave him a keen look, but raised his voice slightly so that all could hear him.
‘Good afternoon to you all,’ he said briskly. ‘I’m looking for a man who spoke with a girl, dark hair, wearing a green and red dress. May have been a few weeks ago.’
‘She would look a little like this,’ I said, producing my sketch from my pocket book and handing it to Dickens.
‘A lot like that.’ He nodded vigorously. ‘A very good likeness, indeed.’ He showed it to the man who now stood beside us.
I looked eagerly at the fellow. He had glanced at the sketch, but now his eyes were on the half-crown.
‘Don’t remember her myself, sir,’ he said, still retaining the sketch in his hand. ‘I could try to find out, sir, if I can take the drawing with me.’
Dickens instantly handed over the half-crown. A man of decision, always.
‘Wouldn’t do to have all the drivers coming out here around us in the yard,’ he said in an undertone to me as the man went back towards the seated coachmen. ‘Management wouldn’t like it,’ he added. ‘This man will do the work for us.’ He reached into his waistcoat pocket and produced another half-crown. This time he didn’t toss it up and down, but held it concealed in his hand. This time he would require hard information.
We could see our friend inside the dimness of the bar. He was moving from one to another. As far as I could see, he hadn’t produced the sketch. It still seemed to be in his pocket. I watched him, narrowing my eyes to distinguish his tall figure among the other shapes. ‘I hope he is not going to cheat us,’ I observed uneasily.
‘Shouldn’t think so. Had an honest look about him. Earn good money, coachmen. No need to cheat.’ Dickens’ eyes, also, were narrowed as he gazed fixedly at the bar where the coachmen were busy filling up their stomachs, while their horses munched hay in their stables. And then he stiffened. The tall figure of the first man had moved towards the yard and was followed by another, a much smaller figure with bright red hair.
In a moment they were outside. Didn’t come towards us though. The tall man had stopped first. Took a half-smoked cigar from his jacket pocket and handed it to the other. And then, while the cigar was being lit, quite casually, he produced my sketch, holding it under the light of the gas lamp. The man stopped, match still kindled and looked intently.
‘Is that her, Sam?’ he asked. To my disappointment the man seemed to hesitate, screwing up his eyes and tilting his head to one side.
‘That’s her,’ he said eventually and looked over towards Dickens. I saw his eyes go to the closed hand.
‘Thank you, my friend.’ Dickens moved forward and subtly dismissed the tall man. We were left with the smaller and red-headed man who was still staring at the sketch. Then he shrugged and handed it back to Dickens, who passed it over to me.
‘So you remember her,’ observed Dickens.
‘Nice little girl, taking ways, she had. Trying to trace her little brother. He had been stolen from a school in Yorkshire. That’s what she told me. Had been brought to London by a man, about three months ago. A man with red hair, mutton chop whiskers and a big scar, right down his left cheek. That’s what she told me. Wanted to know whether I had remembered him, was asking lots of us that question. Some of the lads were joking her, but I took it serious when she asked me if I had ever taken a man like that from Yorkshire to London. In September, that’s what she said.’
‘And had you?’ Not a muscle had moved on Dickens’ face but I was excited. A man with red hair, mutton chop whiskers and a big scar, right down his left cheek. A perfect description of Mr Frederick Cartwright, the schoolmaster who lodged on the second floor of number five Adelphi Terrace.
‘Yes, I had, sir.’ The man had a nice straightforward manner about him and I felt that his evidence could be trusted. ‘Yes, I remembered the scar. A very bad one, it was, like a mouth almost, right across his cheek. He was anxious to get to London. Wouldn’t enjoy a drink with the other passengers. After me all the time, that’s what he was. “How much longer, driver?” pestering me, like. That’s when I saw that scar move, open and shut like a mouth, it did. It was him, grinding his teeth. You’ve got a fair old temper and it’s led you into a bad fight sometime, a fight with knives, my fine fellow, I was saying that, in my mind, of course, sir.’
‘And the boy?’
‘Well, I had to disappoint her, there, sir. No, no boy, I told her. Take many of them up to Yorkshire, but I disremember any coming back and that’s the truth, I’m afraid.’
‘And this was a few weeks ago, was it?’
The man seemed uncertain. His eyes were still on the half-crown in Dickens’ hand. ‘Wouldn’t have thought it was as long ago as that.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Could be, I suppose.’ He sounded a bit doubtful.
Dickens opened his hand and gave him the money. ‘And would you remember the name on the waybill, by any chance?’
The man, honest fellow, shook his head. ‘Sorry, sir, get so many of those people up and down the country, week in and week out.’
‘If I gave you a letter, C; two letters: Car …’
‘That’s it, sir, Carson, no, that’s not right, Carter; that would be it.’
‘Near enough, W
ilkie, don’t you think,’ said Dickens as we walked away. ‘Carter, Cartwright, not too great a difference for a man who transports hundreds of people up and down the country week in, week out, as he says himself. But where does that leave us?’
‘She was looking for her brother?’
‘Do you know, Wilkie, I wonder if that was a little romance that she made up. A great girl for romancing. The lies that girl told me, well, Isabella, I said to her once, perhaps you should write a book, Isabella. You’re the world’s best at making up stories. Never met anyone to beat you.’ Dickens chuckled a little, but then became serious. ‘I looked up her history in the book that I keep at Urania Cottage. She said she was apprenticed to a shoemaker, well, that may or may not be the truth, but if it was, well, when you talk about apprentices, Wilkie, in the case of these parish children, it’s a bit like slavery. Isabella ran away as soon as she could, got herself to London; you can imagine how she managed to keep body and soul together on the streets of London. She was in prison when I met her. Educated, you know, that was one of the first things that I noted about her, could read well, write well, spell and everything. Nothing but trouble in the cottage though. Why bless my soul,’ said Dickens warmly, ‘I do think that girl could have started the French revolution single-handed, just to amuse herself in a period of wet weather. Herself and that little Sesina. Great friends they were, birds of a feather.’
Season of Darkness Page 10