Mrs Peters, however, just rose to her feet and prepared to accompany us out. No books appeared, no requests were made. When we reached the door, Dickens hesitated again, but then contented himself with repeating our thanks. We were halfway down the path, facing the two inadequate holly bushes, when she spoke once more, her voice crisp and assured.
‘Why don’t you write about any nice sensible women who do a job of work in your books, Mr Dickens? After all, women can manage to write and to keep ledgers just as well as men. Not all of us want to spend our days cooking and cleaning and running houses for men, like your heroines seem to love to do.’
There was a moment’s silence. An abrupt pause. Dickens, hat still in hand, looking back at this intrepid lady with a startled look on his face.
I jumped into the breach. Dickens, I guessed, would be flabbergasted and furious. ‘I’m writing a book about a working girl, Mrs Peters,’ I said hastily. ‘I’ll send you a copy if I ever manage to get it published.’ I put my hat back on, raised an umbrella in salute and ushered my friend out through the holly bushes and hurried him down the hill before he exploded.
He didn’t though. Forgot it immediately, which wasn’t like him. He had something else on his mind. He walked ahead of me, very rapidly, as was his way when he was thinking hard and he did not speak until we had stopped before a church, St Alphege’s Church, rebuilt by Nicholas Hawksmoor a hundred years ago according to the board in front of it. ‘We might get an answer to the puzzle here,’ he said to me in a low voice. ‘And, if I’m not wrong, this might be the man to help us.’ An elderly clergyman was strolling through the graves and now he came up to us, his friendly smile turning to a broad beam.
‘Do my eyes deceive me,’ he said ecstatically. ‘Is it really Mr Dickens? Do come and look over our beautiful church, Mr Dickens. It would do me the greatest honour to allow me to show you around. And if you have a moment to spare I have a twenty-shilling copy of David Copperfield back in my house – a work of pure genius, sir – never enjoyed anything in my life so much – laughed and cried over it, sir, I do assure you! It would only take a minute to fetch it. And I would be so delighted if you would sign it.’
That’s more like it, I thought with a flash of amusement and wasn’t surprised when Dickens whispered in my ear, ‘Pop down and tell Mary Ann to get in out of the cold, Wilkie, there’s a good fellow. We’ll get the next boat, tell her. Give her a sixpence, will you, like a good chap.’
And then he was off, removing his hat politely and admiring the smoke-laden gloomy walls and listening attentively to the tale of the rebuilding of the old medieval church. When I looked back, I saw that they were both headed towards the presbytery, where, no doubt, the cherished David Copperfield would be produced.
But by the time that I returned, after releasing the obliging Mary Ann, and checking the times of the Greenwich to London steamers, they were both back inside the church, looking through the old registers. Dickens, I noticed, had a finger marking a spot halfway down a page that started in January of the year 1828.
‘Bless my soul, I was only four years old in that year,’ I said. Dickens, however, was not interested in reminiscences of my past.
‘Make a lovely place for a wedding, Wilkie, wouldn’t it,’ he said, looking around him casually. ‘Must get a couple of my characters married here. Did you know that King Henry the Eighth, the old tyrant, himself, was baptized here? What a historic spot!’ And, still casual and unconcerned, his eye passed down the line of weddings and even more casually he turned back the page.
‘Married in 1827, Wilkie,’ he said when eventually we parted from the friendly vicar after an examination of the baptismal registers dating back to the mid-sixteenth century. ‘Married in 1827, Annie Brown and Andrew Gordon. Occupation: Refiner of Brimstone at Greenwich Powder Mill.’ He said no more until we boarded the steamer and made our way to the bows.
‘So the woman, Annie Brown, was married in 1827, to a man with a good job, had a baby in 1828, not an illegitimate baby, you note, Wilkie. Born a respectable year after marriage. So what happened in the eight months after the baby’s birth? She had cared well for the little mite. Mrs Peters told us that. She made a note that the baby was well cared for and looked well-fed. And then this Annie Gordon appeared at the workhouse, having taken off her wedding ring, left the baby to be called for, left her own string of beads, and her husband’s knife – a damaged knife, no good to him, but it could be described and identified very quickly when they came back to claim the child. But why did she want to leave the child in a workhouse? Most people knew what a place like that would be like. Why leave a well-cared-for, and probably well-loved child in a workhouse?’
‘She was a widow; she was destitute; she couldn’t care for the baby. Wouldn’t that be the solution?’
Dickens shook his head. ‘Well, why not say so? A widow would be able to leave a baby if she could not care for it. She wouldn’t have had to take off her wedding ring if that was the way. She could have been a respectable widow, much better than an unmarried mother. She could even have shown the death certificate if she had buried her husband down there at St Alphege’s Church. I had a look at the death registers but nothing for that year, so there we have a husband with a well-paid job and a wife with a well-cared-for baby. Wouldn’t have been too badly off, either. They probably had one of those cottages by the powder mills. Might even have owned it. And if he died in an accident, the company might have given her something. Why dump her baby and go off to a strange place?’
I thought about this for a while. ‘Perhaps he wasn’t dead; perhaps he had left her.’
Dickens shook his head. Still doesn’t make sense. She would be able to prove that he had left her. They’d probably have admitted her, as well. She could have stayed with her baby. Refiner of Brimstone at Greenwich Powder Mill. That was a good job, a skilled job. A man doesn’t leave a job like that very easily.’
‘I’m not sure that this is anything to do with the mystery of Isabella’s death,’ I pointed out. ‘And there doesn’t seem to have been a brother, so why was the girl so anxious to get information about that brute of a fellow, Frederick Cartwright?’
‘He couldn’t have been the father, could he? How old would you put him?’
‘Forty? Fifty? Not any younger than forty,’ I said. I was thinking hard. I had a quick look around to make sure that no one was listening. But there was nobody near to us. Most people on the boat sat in the cabin. Dickens and I had the bows to ourselves. We could talk openly. ‘But the husband of Annie Gordon was Andrew Gordon,’ I said. ‘It seems almost certain, doesn’t it, that Isabella’s father was Andrew Gordon and for some reason, the baby was put in the poorhouse. A well-cared-for and well-nourished baby, with a mother who loved it enough to leave that string of beads and the knife so as to be sure to recover the right baby when she came back. But why did she leave it in the first place?’
‘I think,’ said Dickens, ‘I might go and have a word with the canon at St Bartholomew’s Church. But, first of all, perhaps, we should have a chat with my American friend about references for his housekeeper. I wonder what her past might hold. But now, what about dinner at Rules? That suit you, my dear old chap? Seven o’clock? And I know a man who would enjoy their game pie! We’ll ask our friendly landlord to join us and pump him for information.’
THIRTEEN
Charles Dickens; Household Words:
… a middle-aged man of a portly presence, with a large, moist, knowing eye, a husky voice, and a habit of emphasising his conversation by the air of a corpulent fore-finger, which is constantly in juxta-position with his eyes or nose.
Dickens’ rich American friend wasn’t the only guest at dinner, as I saw when I joined them at Rules, punctually at seven o’clock in the evening. Inspector Field was also invited and he, also, dug into the game pie with great relish. My friend had a quick word with the head waiter when we arrived and he had placed us at a small square table to the rear of the restaurant. No
one to our backs, no table on either side. No possibility of being overheard if we wanted to discuss private matters. Dickens allocated places with his usual boisterous good humour, something that, I was learning, often overlaid meticulous planning and foresight. He himself sat with his back to the wall, his dark, bird-like eyes surveying the restaurant. Inspector Field sat at his right hand – another man who liked to be sure that nobody was to his back – and I was on Dickens’ left side. The easy-going landlord sat on the fourth side of the table with his back to the restaurant.
Dickens was always a great host, quick-witted, entertaining and interested in everyone. Once the second bottle of excellent claret had been swallowed, he invited Inspector Field to talk about his work, and about this new profession of detective.
‘I’ve been doing a little detection of my own,’ he said coolly when the man had finished. ‘You remember that girl that you showed to us, when she was dragged out of the river, the girl in the red and green dress? Well,’ he continued, ‘I know who that girl was and I know who employed her and he is sitting here beside you tonight.’ Dickens nodded to Don Diamond, then took a sip from his claret with an air of enormous enjoyment.
‘Girl?’ A momentary pause and a quick recovery on the part of the inspector. ‘I knew it, I knew it, Mr Dickens. Knew that would interest you. Making a story out of it, aren’t you?’
‘Quick, isn’t he, Wilkie,’ said Dickens with a smile at me. ‘Yes, I always think that servants might be the most interesting part of any household. They know what’s going on. I suppose it was a servant, Mr Pickwick’s servant, Sam Weller, who first showed me that I could write books. Once Mr Pickwick took him on, well, I never hesitated for a moment after that. The story rolled out. I saw Mr Pickwick through Sam’s eyes.’
‘Great man, ain’t he, Mr Diamond?’ said Inspector Field, as the waiter cleared away the remnants of the game pie and produced the cheese boards and the port. ‘We’re all very proud of him here in London. You wouldn’t have anything as famous as that in America, would you?’
Don Diamond immediately disclaimed any pretentions of America to have a novelist like Mr Dickens and helped himself to a handful of crackers. He seemed interested and amused by the inspector and invited him to tell about his work as one of London’s newly formed detective force.
‘You’d be kept pretty hard at it, just keeping peace on the streets and allowing the citizens to go about their lawful business, I suppose, Inspector,’ he said with a good-natured appreciation of a subject which was guaranteed to make the inspector the centre of attention at our little table.
‘Tell Mr Diamond about that time when you found the fellow, by the name of Bark hiding out in the hall just next to the Egyptian mummy, side by side, the two of them. Oh, and how you tracked down the man who stole the silver cup made especially for the Queen,’ I said.
The story of that spectacular theft from the Great Exhibition of London got so exciting that the inspector spilled some of his port while demonstrating how he set a trap for the thief.
‘I suppose, Inspector,’ said Dickens idly, as he waved the waiter away and personally refilled the inspector’s port glass, ‘I suppose that in the case of, for instance, this murder of a housemaid employed by my friend, here, Mr Diamond, you would follow the procedure of saying very little and keeping as quiet as possible while you followed up various possibilities and suspicions.’
Inspector Field blinked a little at this description of his activities during the days since the discovery of Isabella’s body. ‘That’s right, Mr Dickens,’ he said huskily.
‘It does seem, from what the other housemaid said about the basement door being locked, that this might be not an affair of a man of the streets, but perhaps there might be some connection to one of the lodgers,’ said Dickens. As usual, while praising all the food and wine to the heights, he had eaten very little himself and had drunk a bare half measure of the very excellent port. I helped myself to another glass and sat back to enjoy the play.
‘It does, indeed,’ said Inspector Field, tossing off the remains of his wine and taking out his notebook and a small, thick pencil.
‘You know what these servant girls are like; they will snoop around bedrooms and they find out things that the owners would think as safe secrets.’ Dickens nodded his admiration of the inspector’s knowledge of the servant class.
‘They do, indeed.’ Inspector Field looked wisely through the pages of his notebook.
‘But you would wait until all the evidence is complete before you pounce. That’s the way that you work, Inspector, isn’t it?’
‘Lull them, that’s what I reckon on doing, Mr Dickens. Lull them. Don’t let them know that they’re being watched.’ Inspector Field’s husky voice was full of passionate conviction. I laid a small bet, deep in my mind, that he had never even bothered to go around to the house where Isabella had spent the last couple of years. He would now, though. I was sure of that. It would be enough for him to know that the greatly admired Dickens was taking an interest in the matter. I wondered whether the American might think of offering a reward, but Mr Diamond had seemed to lose interest or else because Dickens, determined that his little party would be a success, had now turned the conversation to the exciting story of the gold rush where Mr Diamond had made a fortune. The landlord made a better story of it tonight than he had done at the dinner in Adelphi Terrace where he laid so much emphasis on his own cleverness of setting up boarding houses and public bars for the miners rather than going out with shovel and pickaxe. Now he told the story of the gold rush from the eyes of the miners, describing the veins of gold sparkling in the grey rock. ‘It’s not yellow, you know, gold is not yellow,’ he explained, ‘gold is very pale, more a sort of white with a bit of a sparkle in it when you see the veins of it glistening out of the rocks. Miners used to get up early in the morning, when the sun was low and would strike the side of the rock and then you might be lucky and you might find some. I did hear tell about how one man stared so hard at the bare side of the mountain that his eyes started to water and to rest them he turned and looked at a tree, an uprooted tree, half out of the mountain, it was; blown by the wind, its roots sticking in the air, still alive and green, though.’ Don Diamond popped a piece of cheese into his mouth, chewed it and swallowed it, washing it down with a mouthful of port. ‘And then he looked down at the roots, sticking out like the claws of a giant crab. And he thought that he saw something there and gee whiz, what do you know, there was a sparkle.’ He looked around at us all: Inspector Field, with his eyes popping; me with a germ of a story germinating in the back of my mind; Dickens smiling gently. And then he finished: ‘Well, he filled a bag with the stuff, took the road to Philadelphia and was never seen again.’
‘But you were never tempted to go back to digging, yourself?’ I asked the question because Inspector Fields’ protruding eyes looked in danger of popping out from his skull.
‘Nah, I’d had enough of that. Me and another fellow and his wife. We thought that we’d chuck it in. Saw too many people lose their shirts on that tomfoolery. Like playing a lottery, Inspector, you could get lucky, you hear stories of the few people who won fortunes, but probably you won’t hear the stories of the many that ended shooting themselves, or walking the whole way back to civilization, hoping to get a job on the roads. Naw, naw, Inspector, best to earn your money with a lot of hard work and common sense. Easy come, easy go, that’s the way money is. I worked for my money and now I make my money work for me. You’d be surprised to hear how much property that I own in London. Find some good houses, do them up, turn them into lodgings, pop a housekeeper in, charge a fair rent and hey presto, as the Italians say!’
The inspector began to lose interest when gold didn’t come into the story any longer so he was on his feet, making his excuses. He had to go on duty ‘down by Seven Dials’, he told his host and there was a look in his eye that seemed to be hoping that Dickens might accompany him.
But he didn’t. Dickens waved hi
m an affable farewell, but sat on in the restaurant, idly toying with his glass. The article about Seven Dials at night time, and about Inspector Fields among the poor, the destitute, the criminals; well, that article had been written, and Inspector Fields had been immortalized in Bleak House as Inspector Bucket searching through the back lanes and the festering graveyards for the fugitive Lady Dedlock. Now Dickens’ mind was on another story, the story of Isabella Gordon, who had begun life in Greenwich, had been taken in by an orphanage, farmed out to a baby farmer, named Mrs Dawson.
And then had gone back to Greenwich in order to dig through what remained of her past.
‘Don, what do you know about Mrs Dawson?’ he said in a low tone, once the inspector had left and the other three of us were walking down through Covent Garden. I remembered the matron of the workhouse in Oliver Twist and how she held the secret of Oliver’s parentage. Perhaps we would uncover the mystery of Isabella Gordon’s brutal murder.
‘Who?’ The man was startled.
‘Mrs Dawson, your housekeeper, your housekeeper in number five Adelphi Terrace, the place where the dead girl worked before she was murdered.’ Dickens sounded affable, but I knew that he was impatient. He had a very one-track mind. Once he bent his attention on anything, it became an all-consuming interest.
‘Ah, now, I know who you’re talking about. For land’s sake, man, you haven’t got enough fingers and toes to count the number of housekeepers that I employ. Yes, I suppose that there were references. I’ve an agent who finds housekeepers and they find their own housemaids and that’s the way that it goes. Why? Is there anything wrong with her?’
I could see that Dickens was turning over the matter in his mind. But after all, what was wrong with being a ‘baby farmer’? Yes, some of them had been evil, heartless women; he had publicized their cruelty and neglect in his book Oliver Twist, but that was not to say that all were like that. He would not condemn a woman unheard and perhaps risk her losing her job.
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