‘So you don’t believe the business about the brother.’ I mused a little on Isabella. Pretty, clever, educated. ‘That handwriting,’ I said aloud.
‘She copied that from Mrs Morson, some of the girls did. But not many could do it as well as Isabella. Poor girl.’
‘So why has she gone to the trouble of researching Mr Cartwright?’ I asked.
Dickens laughed. ‘I can guess,’ he said. ‘She picked up a hint, poking around in his bedroom; that would be Isabella. Picked up a hint that he was from Yorkshire. Mrs Morson had read to the girls some of my book Nicholas Nickleby – the girls all relished the part where the wicked schoolmaster got thrashed by Nicholas the hero; I remember Mrs Morson telling me that. And so our Isabella might have decided to do a little blackmail. Found something, threatened to go to the school, to St Bartholomew’s, nice school that. Yes, that would be her. Doing a bit of blackmail, I wouldn’t doubt. You remember, Wilkie, how taken aback he was at our American friend’s little joke, about his cane. He may well have got the job by a recommendation from his friend and they may have suppressed the Yorkshire connection. St Bartholomew’s wouldn’t have wanted any schoolmaster with a record of violence and Yorkshire, helped by yours truly’s book, did have a very bad reputation for ill-treating boys. Perhaps Isabella threatened to tell the school that he had been in some sort of scandal in a Yorkshire school.’
‘But the cards, the book that she was going to write?’
Dickens shrugged his shoulders. ‘She was going to write another Nicholas Nickleby. I suppose that I should take it as a compliment.’ He had an amused smile on his lips.
‘Poor girl,’ I said. And his face hardened.
‘I’ll see that the fellow who did that gets hanged,’ he said with a quick swish of his umbrella, which alarmed a couple of gentlemen passers-by until they saw who it was and then they just whispered excitedly to each other.
‘What about Inspector Field?’ I asked the question tentatively and then when he looked at me with some surprise, I said hastily, ‘I wondered whether we should mention it to him.’
His face relaxed into amusement. ‘My dear Wilkie,’ he said, ‘Inspector Field is a very busy man. I think that we’ll sort out this little matter ourselves, don’t you?’ And then he began to walk very rapidly, swinging his umbrella and staring fixedly ahead. From time to time a passer-by would suddenly stop, swivel his head around, nudge a companion, but Dickens took no notice. Fame, he would say, if ever I pointed out the excitement that his presence on a street could cause, fame, my dear Wilkie, is nothing. Money, now, that is important! The labourer is worthy of his hire, that’s something that you must keep in your mind and I foresee a brilliant future for you. Give the people what they want, give, but don’t forget to take, also.
Tavistock House, where the schoolroom was large enough to hold seventy people, all invited to witness one of his plays, was a very notable reward for his industry. I brooded over this while we walked briskly down the hill. My father had been a rich man, had made more money from his paintings than ever did the recently deceased Turner, though many would whisper that the latter was the better artist. But the landscapes and seascapes that my father had turned out so capably were prettier sights on a drawing-room wall than ever was a Turner. And my father’s industry had meant that his wife and his two sons lived their lives amid ease and plenty and after his will was read, I knew that there was no urgency upon me to earn my living. Fame, though. That was what I wanted. Fame and the satisfaction of producing a notable piece of writing. I thought about this as we went along and decided not to rush into writing my next book. I would give it time to mature in my mind. Perhaps write something different. The Dead Secret, I thought. That would be a good title. The secret would be about the parentage of a girl; she finds out that she is not whom she had thought; that her mother is not her mother and that her father is not her father, either.
‘Dickens, I have such a good idea,’ I said eagerly.
‘Don’t talk about it,’ he said and his voice was kind, not dismissive. ‘The trouble with you, Wilkie, is that you let out too much. You talk too much about your ideas. And then when you go to write them down your find that they have seeped away from you. Keep that idea of yours wrapped up safely in your mind until it matures. Expose it to the air, now, before you have written your book and it will tarnish.’
I nodded my head. What had worked so well for him should, would, I vowed, work for me. And so, in silence, we walked down the hill and on until we reached the crowded pavements of Fleet Street. I did my best to keep my mind away from my idea and on Isabella and her quest after her parentage.
We had planned to dine together, probably at his favourite restaurant, Rules, where the head waiter would always find a place for Dickens, no matter how crowded the room was. And I knew, as soon as we entered Maiden Lane from Covent Garden, that Dickens would suddenly shut down that section of his mind and turn his attention back to the dead girl and our quest after information about her.
But not before. Now he was brooding on his book, again. I knew that by the expression on his face, by the way that his lips moved as he walked rapidly along the pavement. At some minute soon, he might turn to me as though seeing me for the first time and make some facetious remark. Until then I knew enough to keep very quiet and to allow his mind to work. Probably though, he would wait until we reached Rules.
And so I was surprised when he suddenly stopped in the middle of the pavement, just beside a coffee shop.
‘Isn’t this the place that those two young newspaper journalists were talking to you about? The place where they get their supper, usually?’
‘That’s right.’ I was surprised that he had been listening into our conversations. He had seemed, during the dinner party, to be much occupied with the lawyer and the schoolmaster, each sitting on either side of him. ‘Yes,’ I said looking upwards, ‘this is the place.’
‘Let’s go in.’ He was through the door before I could reply.
‘Two for his heels,’ yelled a voice as we pushed open the door of the upstairs room. It was still early in the evening, but Benjamin and Jim were at their supper, a tankard of steaming purl beside each and a plate of bread and beef in the middle of the table. But most of the table was occupied by a cribbage board and a pack of cards, spread out.
‘Go,’ groaned Ben as Jim inserted another peg on his side of the board.
‘Good evening, gentlemen. Mind if we watch your game?’ Dickens carried over a chair and placed himself at the table. ‘Another bowl of purl, and two more tankards,’ he said to the waiter who drifted up looking as though he hoped we weren’t going to be too much of a nuisance to him, took another look at Dickens and then straightened himself with a look of recognition in his eyes. ‘Yes, sir, certainly, sir, any food, sir?’
‘No, no food.’ Dickens cast a quick look at the dry beef and unappetizingly curled slices of bread. He had told me once that he had been poor when he was young and that I had been lucky to be the son of a rich man, a man whose pictures were purchased by royalty. Nevertheless, he was as fastidious as an earl in his tastes. He took some of the purl, though, when Jim ladled it out for us into the two extra tankards and we watched their game patiently, listening to the cries of ‘hauling lumber!’; ‘one for his nob!’; ‘muggins!’; ‘Raggedy Ann!’ until the final call of ‘Up Sticks!’ meant that Jim had won the game.
Jim gravely shook hands with himself, with a muttered, ‘Well done, Jim, boy!’ Then he patted himself on the back, proposed a health to himself and emptied a tankard in his own honour while his friend mopped imaginary tears with an imaginary handkerchief. Dickens watched with an amused gaze. Surreptitiously, he slid his notebook and pencil from his pocket and made a note beneath the screen of the tablecloth.
The two of them might well know quite a bit about the servant girls, I thought. They were just the type. About seventeen or eighteen, I reckoned, and wondered whether they reminded Dickens of the time when he had been a newspa
perman of about the same age as these two youngsters.
‘Ever play cribbage with Isabella or Sesina at your lodgings?’ enquired Dickens. It seemed an innocent question. He had told me once that the girls in Urania Cottage played cribbage which he thought was a harmless game when played with buttons and good for their arithmetic. He had personally selected some cribbage boards for the place.
Ben and Jim, however, were a little alarmed at that question. Neither replied. Over the rim of the tankard, Ben’s large, pale-blue eyes slid across to his companion. Jim took another gulp from his tankard and raised the ladle invitingly at us. I took a little more, but Dickens shook his head.
‘Excellent stuff,’ he said, taking a sip, a very small sip, and then another with the air of a connoisseur. He didn’t repeat his question, but just waited patiently for the two young journalists to finish their drink.
‘Didn’t see much of them,’ said Jim after a minute.
‘They’d clean the room while we were out at work,’ said Ben.
‘And we’d always eat out,’ added Jim.
‘So I understand,’ said Dickens soothingly. ‘Really good purl, this.’ He held up his tankard and admired the steam oozing out from it, inhaling it with a smile of appreciation on his lips, then putting it down after taking another small sip.
‘I suppose the only time then that Isabella would have to talk to you would have been when she brought you your breakfasts. Which of you was it that helped her to find the workhouse?’
It was a shot in the dark, uttered very quickly. Dickens had put down his tankard and was looking straight across the table, first at one and then at the other. Neither was a match for Dickens. Jim looked accusingly at Ben and Ben succumbed.
‘She was talking to me about it, one morning. Just after she brought up my water for shaving. She said that she was very young when she was taken away but she remembered the look of the place.’
‘Did you think that she was telling the truth?’ Dickens asked the question quietly.
‘Never thought about it at all,’ said Ben. He looked across at his friend. ‘What did you think, Jim?’
‘No reason to lie to us,’ said Jim with a shrug.
‘True,’ said Dickens. He gave a little nod to himself. I guessed that Isabella had told him a different story when he interviewed her before she came to Urania Cottage. He had told me once that he always checked the girls’ stories, checked police records, gaol records, but early life was not easy to check and most girls made up some fantasy about poor, but honest and loving parents who died from a fever necessitating their children to scatter around the streets of London.
‘And what were her memories?’ he asked.
‘Well, ships, that’s the funny thing; she remembered ships. Ships going up and down.’
‘By the sea? At the seaside?’
‘We thought the river, didn’t we, Benny?’
‘That’s right, Jim. We did. From the way that she described the place. She talked about the ships being enormous and very near. She said that she was frightened of how huge they were. She was only little then, about three or four, she thought. Well that’s what she told us, anyways.’
‘And a very steep hill; she remembered that, didn’t she, Ben, and rolling down the hill and being beaten for getting her pinafore dirty.’
‘And so in the end, we came up with Greenwich. Jim had gone there to do a piece about the naval college and he described it to her and she thought that was the place that she had been in when she was small.’
‘And her brother?’
‘Didn’t say nothing about a brother, did she, Benny. Don’t remember nothing about that. She just talked about other girls, the girls that she knew in Urania Cottage and about the time she had before she went there. Made up a lot of it, I’d say,’ said Jim, with a wry, man-of-the world air. He fingered a wisp of whisker lovingly. I grinned, passing a hand over my mouth to hide the involuntary twitch of my lips. Not that long since I was his age, I thought, more idle than he, but I remembered also worrying about whether my whiskers would ever grow.
‘There is a workhouse there, at Greenwich; I know that. Did she ever go there?’
‘Went on her day off. Very pleased with herself the next day, wasn’t she, Benny?’
‘Said that she was going again on her next day off. I remember that,’ said Benny.
‘And she found out something about her family, did she?’
‘Some sort of stuff about her being just left temporary like. About her mother had promised to send for her.’
‘The workhouse most like says the same thing to everyone. Makes it sound better,’ said Jim wisely.
‘But Isabella believed it,’ I put in. I thought about it for a moment. It seemed very sad to think of Isabella being full of excitement about the discovery of a mother who had abandoned her. ‘I wonder why she was going to go back again. Perhaps it was to see someone who would remember her mother, some member of the staff who had their day off when Isabella arrived. Did she say anything about why she was going back again?’
They looked at each. There was a slightly furtive, slightly guarded look about them both since Dickens had asked them about Isabella. Up to then they had been two typical young men, just having an evening meal in the coffee house, but once the subject of the dead girl had come up, they had been uneasy.
‘No, I don’t remember, do you, Jim.’ Benny buried his nose in the comforting scent from his tankard. Jim fiddled with the pegs in the cribbage board, arranging them in a zigzag pattern. Dickens beckoned the waiter.
‘Some more purl,’ he said.
That did the trick. They both relaxed and began to boast about how streetwise they were, knew everything to be known about London. Could tell any out-of-town person where to go, no matter whether he wanted a hat or an eel pie.
‘And if I wanted a ticket for a play?’ asked Dickens with a little smile.
They fell over themselves telling him about the cheapest place to go and to uncover their knowledge of ticket touts.
‘What about a birth certificate?’ Dickens’ tone was casual and he buried his nose in the tankard of purl.
‘Easy, Somerset House,’ said Jim.
‘And you directed Isabella there.’ Dickens crumbled some bread in his fingers and then wiped them with his pocket handkerchief.
‘That’s right,’ said Jim carelessly and he tossed back some more purl.
Dickens got to his feet. ‘Well, gentlemen, we’ve disturbed you at your evening meal. Isabella was an inmate in a charitable home which Miss Coutts set up for girls and as her assistant in the work I have an interest in the girls that stayed there. I trust you’ll forgive our questions, when you know the reasons behind them.’
‘And that’s very good purl,’ I added seeing they looked even more uncomfortable after that little speech.
They were glad to get rid of us; that was apparent. And when we went through the glass door and I turned to shut it properly, I could see both heads, the dark and the fair one, close together, and both young faces were very serious.
‘I wonder whether Isabella had sworn them to secrecy,’ I said to Dickens as soon as we were on the busy pavement.
He didn’t answer. I glanced at him, wondering whether he had heard and knew by the expression of his dark eyes that he was thinking very hard.
‘Fancy a trip on the river steamboat tomorrow afternoon, Wilkie?’ He didn’t wait for me to answer but went on, ‘We could visit the place where Isabella might have spent her childhood. I think that I could get something out of them. I know something about that poorhouse and workhouse, I know about the precious villain who set it up. We’ll call into Adelphi Terrace first, though, and see if we can get anything more out of Sesina. Wouldn’t be surprised if that young lady knows more than she is saying.’
‘I got the impression that she is very keen for everything to be done to find the murderer of her friend,’ I said a little stiffly. I thought that Dickens was a bit schoolmasterly with Se
sina. ‘She might confide in me more readily than in you,’ I added.
‘God bless my soul, Wilkie,’ he said impatiently, ‘you don’t know those girls like I do. Up to all sorts of tricks, every single one of them. There were times when I was coming back from Urania Cottage that I had to laugh. Gave the cabby a fright a couple of times. Thought the world had exploded somewhere in the region of his knees. I was thinking of all the lies that I had heard and laughing to myself so hard!’
TEN
Sesina stared at the card. One or two of the words were blotted out by the smudge of smuts smeared across its surface. It had been many a long year since a fire was lit in that damp little bedroom, but the chimney was still encrusted with soot. Still, it was readable. She pondered over the words. Despite all the stains and the splodges, almost all of the black ink of the ornate curled copperplate letters stood out clearly.
My mother had to get me away from him. She couldn’t keep me. He’d have killed me too. If he doesn’t pay me to keep my mouth shut I’ll go down to that school. One more …
The last word was missing. Sesina turned over various possibilities for it in her mind and then shrugged her shoulders. Let Mr Clever Dickens work it out. After all he spent most of his time writing books and writing articles for newspapers – sob stuff, the sort of stuff that would make well-off people keep reading and reading as they sat comfortably on soft chairs in front of roaring fires; sort of spice on the roast beef, she always thought, makes you appreciate what you’ve got when you read about people in misery. Of course, what rich people didn’t know was that they had fun sometimes. That girl that Mr Dickens wrote about, lying there in front of the workhouse, taking his five shillings and then going off silently without saying nothing, that girl, most like, just laughed her head off when she got around the corner. She had done it herself sometimes. Didn’t mean that it wasn’t real, being hungry and cold; but a bit of laughing made it seem better. And knowing what rich people were like; that’s how to get money out of them. Bare feet better than dirty broken shoes, Isabella said to her once. And a clean face, too. Rich people don’t like dirt, don’t like torn clothes, think that you should wash and mend. But they like to tell their rich friends how they gave money to a barefooted girl. Or write about it in the newspapers, of course. Like Mr Dickens!
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