by G. M. Best
‘And the ill-treatment? I know how frequently Bill hit her.’
‘Nancy usually deserved it and women seem to like men better for beating ’em. It’s been my experience that as long as the bruises hurt, women will think only of the chap who gave them. It’s the same with dogs. Treat ’em mean and they do exactly what’s wanted. That’s why Bill’s dog was such a terror when Bill used to put ‘im to fight other dogs in taprooms and backyards. Many a good bit of cash Bull’s-eye won us when he was in his heyday. Mind you, I’d have wrung its neck had I known its stupid following of Bill would lead to his discovery and death.’
‘But Bill did not kill Nancy?’
‘Lord no. Bill weren’t afraid of murder but I’ve told ye he luvved her. In all the hue and cry after she was found dead, me and Tommy Chitling and that old returned transport Johnny Kags took refuge together. You can imagine our surprise when Bull’s-eye jumps in at the open winder, covered with mud and half-lame, but we assumed Bill had long since gone and left him. However, Bill afterwards turned up, banging at our door. The others were all for keeping him out but I insisted we let him in. It was me who opened the door and I hardly recognized him. It was not just that the lower part of his face was hidden partly by three days’ growth of beard and partly by his handkerchief. The truth was he was more like the ghost of Sikes than me old mate. He was a ghastly white colour and his cheeks were drawn, his eyes sunken, and his body wasted. He feared we might not let him stay because of the danger of harbouring him, but I told him he could stop till he thought it safe.
Bill swore his innocence over Nancy’s death and told us he’d come back and risked his life so he could catch the real killer. That’s the God’s truth and I believed him. A mate does not lie to a mate. But then that stupid loud-mouthed Charley Bates arrived and began shouting out ‘Murder!’ and ‘Down with him!’ Bill grabbed him by the throat and tried to silence him, repeating to him what he had told us, that he had not been responsible in any way for Nancy’s murder. Charley wouldn’t listen and, when some peelers arrived to investigate the noise, he managed to free himself sufficiently to scream out once again, urging them to break down the door. Bill had to make ‘is way out quick by climbing up on the roof – and you know the rest.’
Here was the confirmation I wanted that Tommy Chitling had indeed told me the truth. Bill really had not killed Nancy. The question was whether Crackit knew who had.
‘Who killed her, Toby?’
‘I wish I knew, ’cos he wouldn’t live long if I got hold of him. I’ve given the matter plenty of thought over the past few years but, if you want the truth, I’m no wiser now than I was then. You see, Bill gave us no clue. I’m not sure even he knew what had happened to her.’
‘But surely you must have some ideas of your own?’
‘The only thing that’s crossed my mind since is that Charley seemed very quick to want Bill caught. His screams almost did for all of us and certainly did for Bill. I think it’s just possible Charley might have had his own reasons for wanting Bill out of the way? If so, he might know more about what really happened to Nancy.’
‘It’s an interesting thought. The rest of you clearly accepted Bill’s account of his innocence. Why did Charley alone insist on believing he was Nancy’s murderer? It is indeed possible that he had his own reasons for wanting Bill wrongly hanged for her murder. Why have you not followed this up with him?’
‘For the simple reason I’ve not been able to find Charley since that day. I can assure you he’s not anywhere here in London, or else by now I’d have found him. The story is that he headed up north. No one’s heard of him since.’
My search for the truth seemed to be blocked once more. Searching London was bad enough but searching the entire country was beyond what was possible. I realized I would have to look for other leads than Charley Bates to help me discover the truth. I hastily slipped Crackit some money in acknowledgement of his time and took my leave. As I left, he shouted after me:
‘If you find out who killed her, let me know and I’ll see justice done, no questions asked. Nancy was a fine gal and Bill was me best mate. I don’t forgit me old mates.’
10
BUMBLE’S STORY
After Toby Crackit had confirmed Tommy Chitling’s version of events, I decided my best chance lay in seeking out another of my childhood monsters to see if he could cast any light on my origins and therefore on the tragic events which had led to Nancy’s death. I knew it would not be easy to trace the whereabouts of Mr Bumble but I felt that he perhaps offered me the one real chance of shedding some further light on my ancestry. I knew he and his equally abominable wife had been deprived of their positions as workhouse masters because of their deception and crimes. Mr Dickens had taken some delight in recording how they became paupers in the very institution they had once run and so my enquiries naturally started there. However, I found that their stay there had been a short one because, like many of the destitute, they were soon moved on.
You will understand that seeking a homeless person in London is like searching for a needle in a haystack, but one that is seething with corruption and disease. There were times when I almost gave up the task especially as my search led me to places whose foulness defied belief. I started to think that even the pernicious Mr Bumble did not deserve to end his days amid such soul-consuming wretchedness. But, as with Toby Crackit, my perseverance eventually paid dividends.
When at last I traced his whereabouts, I discovered that he was scraping an existence in a foul district, which was hopelessly ill-drained. The rotting floors of the houses rested on soil that had absorbed every kind of soluble filth. Alongside the houses was a stagnant lake thickened by human excrement. On its surface floated dead cats and dogs exhibiting every stage of disgusting decomposition. The whole area round about had become like a gigantic putrid sponge. The buildings themselves were stained with every indescribable hue that long exposure to the weather, damp, and rottenness can impart to tenements built of the roughest and cheapest materials. Although the place was not a thieves’ stronghold, because its rubbish-strewn streets were not sufficiently narrow, I remained on my guard because the area’s many arched passage-openings lent themselves to ambush. It was no place for a stranger to wander about, especially after dusk when the only light came from the handful of candles that here and there flickered behind translucent blinds to announce beds for any travellers fortunate enough to afford them.
I eventually found the house where I had been told I would find Mr Bumble situated off a fairly wide slum courtyard, which was covered with mud and slime. It was cluttered with coster carts and water-barrels containing water that looked little better than that in the nearby lake. Poles on which to dry clothes hung from every casement, but the tattered and soot-covered garments that hung from them seemed scarce worth the dismal effort. In the moistly crumbling walls of the courtyard open doorways gaped where doors had been long since removed for firewood. At some of these unwholesome entrances children crouched like maggots in a mouldy cheese, their faces aged before their time and their bodies warped and misshapen by a mixture of cruelty and neglect. A number of prostitutes of the poorest sort lay sprawled asleep in some of the other doorways, some partly exposing their naked charms to any beholder. In the yard itself half-drunken hags checked themselves in the midst of pots of beer or pints of gin to see whether I was a prospective customer and to yell out what they were prepared to offer in return for a pittance. Sounds of drunkenness and quarrelling issued from windows that had mostly been reduced to containing only fragments of glass.
The house I wanted still had, amazingly, its large green entrance door, though it was worm-eaten and hanging from its hinges and smeared with excrement and indescribable other filth. I moved towards it, avoiding the evil-smelling gutter that ran across the courtyard and watching carefully where I trod on the uneven pavement to avoid garbage and worse.
Undeterred I entered, conscious that I might be placing not only my possessions
but my life in danger by entering such a place. An ill-lit passageway led to a kitchen filled with a fog of smoke through which the sunlight from a hole in the roof cut a narrow shaft. The beams that hung down from the roof and ran from wall to wall were blackened by the smoke, as was the flue of the chimney, which stood out from the bare brick wall like a begrimed buttress. The windows were patched with stiffened paper and stuffed with the foulest rags. A rude iron gas pipe stood in the centre of the room to offer additional light, whilst a wooden bench projected from each of its walls.
In front of this primitive seating were ranged a series of tables on which rested a number of dozing men. Some inmates were grouped round the fire. Some were kneeling to toast herrings, of which the place smelt strongly, while others were drying the ends of cigars they had picked from the streets. A few were simply drying out themselves and the smell of vomit and urine from their foul clothing did little to enhance the polluted atmosphere of the kitchen.
The men were as motley and ragged an assemblage as I had ever seen. Their hair was matted like sheep’s wool, their skin sallow and in many instances showing signs of infection, and their chins were grimy with their unshorn beards. The ill-fitting rags that acted as their clothing had obviously been collected from the city’s refuse and they were so filthy that it was virtually impossible to discern their original colour. Some were in smock-frocks, some in waistcoats that had long ceased to be fashionable, and others in strange unidentifiable motley costumes. A few had acquired striking if dirty garb. One was dressed in what looked like an old military jacket but which had wooden buttons, another wore what I could only imagine had originated in a circus, while a third had on his feet an incongruous pair of lady’s lace-sided boots, the toes of which had been cut off so that he might get them on.
Some of the men appeared pitiable in their poverty, but others scowled in such a manner as to leave me in doubt as to whether they had any of their humanity left within them. And on the bench at the furthest end of the kitchen was one whose squalor and wretchedness produced only nausea in me. His eyes were sunk deep in his face, his stubbled cheeks were drawn in, and his nostrils were pinched with evident want. His clothes were black and shiny at every fold with grease, and they hung on his skeleton frame like a loose bag. I had never beheld so gaunt a picture of famine. And this living scarecrow was Mr Bumble.
I sent for some meat to be placed on the table before him, and, with a glance at me, he dipped his nose in the plate and then began painfully tearing the food asunder with his arthritic fingers before slowly chewing it between gums that had long since lost most of their teeth. When he had finished, I looked at him and asked him whether he dared ask me for more. He looked at me most warily and then I saw that he gradually recognized who his unexpected benefactor was. In a weak voice far removed from the bellow that had so terrified me as a child, Mr Bumble croaked his welcome.
‘Is it really, you, Master Oliver? It’s many a year since we met and you’ve become such a fine young gentleman.’ He grimaced in what he took to be a friendly smile but which to any onlooker bore more resemblance to a corrupt leer, and then he added, ‘Mr Limbkins got it wrong when he said one day you’d be hung.’
My mind went back to our first meeting when I was a mere boy and he came to fetch me from Mrs Mann’s cottage and place me in the workhouse. Mr Bumble then had been a very different figure, fat and choleric and proud of his position as beadle of the parish. He had shown no sympathy for the frightened little creature I then was, but paraded me before the workhouse board like a pariah.
When, driven by hunger and the threats of the other boys, I had dared ask for a second helping of the thin and meagre gruel provided for our nourishment, it had been Mr Bumble who had willingly seen to my punishment, repeatedly applying the cane and plunging me into dark and solitary confinement. He had taken cruel pleasure in telling me I was a bastard orphan whom nobody could ever love. And when he sold me to one of his friends, Mr Sowerberry, so I could become the undertaker’s slave, and I wept with fear, he again showed not an ounce of pity for a desperately lonely boy. He simply told me I was one of the most ungrateful and worst-disposed lads he had ever known.
It came as no surprise that when I attacked Noah Claypole, Sowerberry’s assistant, because of his cruel and vicious taunts, it was Mr Bumble who returned to sadistically beat me with the parochial cane and urge starvation as a method of bringing me under control. ‘Meat, ma’m, meat,’ he had roared at Mrs Sowerberry, ‘You’ve overfed him, ma’am. You’ve raised a artificial soul and spirit in him, ma’am, unbecoming a person of his condition. If you had kept the boy on gruel it would never have happened.’
Mr Bumble interrupted my reverie as he tried to ingratiate himself by rewriting history. ‘I always had your interests at heart, Master Oliver,’ he mumbled. He reached out to grasp my hand. I could not help recoiling from his skeletal touch and, sick though he was, he recognized my obvious distaste. ‘Come now, Master Oliver, you owe more to me than you think. If it had not been for me and my late wife you would never have come into your inheritance.’ I looked at his frame, so obviously nearing extinction, and wondered how the calculating greed I saw in his face could fire up so fiercely. Did he not realize how close he was to meeting his Maker and being held to account for all his actions? He witnessed my instinctive abhorrence and muttered defensively: ‘When a man’s lost his position, he may as well go the whole hog, bristles and all, and this low lodging is the entire pig.’
‘Tell me all that you know about my ancestry and your part in my becoming Mr Brownlow’s heir and I will see you are suitably rewarded,’ I replied.
Mr Bumble clutched my arm and whispered, ‘The truth is not always to our liking, Master Oliver.’
I stared into his rheumy eyes and said coldly, ‘It is only the truth I now want to hear. If I detect one lie in what you say, expect nothing from me.’ Seeing my resolve, he proceeded to tell me what I had most feared to hear.
‘Whatever airs you give yourself now, I can tell you you are not, and therefore never were, the child of Agnes Fleming, although you grew up with him who was and you looked not dissimilar to him. Agnes Fleming never even knew you because she died giving him birth. She bequeathed to the child who had killed her a gold locket, although he never received it. As you know, Martha, the nurse who attended her deathbed, stole it along with her wedding ring. Believe me, Master Oliver, your wretched mother was a very different kind of woman from Agnes Fleming. All she bequeathed to you was a distinguishing birthmark on your back. If she felt any love for you, it had to be suppressed because she was forced to hand you over to the workhouse so she could simply continue her whoring ways.’
‘Then I am Nancy’s child?’ I sobbed.
‘Yes, and she was precious quick to realize that when you entered Fagin’s lair. Nancy was a very clever girl, sometimes too clever for her own good. She came to the workhouse to make sure that you were the child she had been forced to relinquish when she was little more than a child herself. In the process she spoke to Martha, who was then near to death. It was Nancy who first heard the story of the beautiful Agnes and her rich but absent lover. It was Nancy who persuaded Martha to seek forgiveness for her actions before she died by handing over the locket and wedding ring to Mrs Corney, the matron of the workhouse. It was Nancy who persuaded Mrs Corney and me to pretend Agnes’s child was you, promising us that, once the father had been found, there would be money in it for us all.
‘The arrival of Monks played into her hands. Foolish and susceptible man that he was, it was easy for us to make him believe you were his long-lost half-brother. Twenty-five sovereigns he paid me and Mrs Corney – or rather Mrs Bumble, as she had become. That was a less good bargain! I paid a heavy price the day I married her. I sold myself for six teaspoons, a pair of sugar-tongs, and a milk-pot; with a small quantity of second-hand furniture, and twenty pound in money. I went very reasonable. Cheap, dirt cheap! She never understood that it is the prerogative of a woman to obey her
husband and she had the nerve not only to shout abuse at me if I disagreed with her but also to assault my person, scratching my face and tearing my hair. She so shamed me in front of the paupers that I lost any authority I once had.
‘The one consolation in my current condition is that I am finally rid of the harridan. You see, Oliver, the only good thing about workhouses is that they separate man and wife and the workhouse has now seen to her for good. Starved her good and proper it did, till her harsh voice wasn’t more than a whisper and she lay dying. When I heard the news, I pleaded to be allowed to see her. I think the authorities were touched by my desire, not realizing that all I wanted was an opportunity to gloat over her.
‘They granted my wish and I had the joy of seeing her skeleton figure in the bed, covered only with a poor patchwork coverlet. I was the worst thing she wanted to see and she tried to raise her feeble and emaciated arms to ward me off, but the effort proved too great. I leant over her and whispered. The nurse thought I was saying a loving farewell, but in fact I was portraying to her all the delights of the hell that I was sure awaited her. She gasped her last with my curses ringing in her ears. Since then I’ve often puzzled as to how such a cruel place could, over this matter of disposing of a wife, be so kind!’
Mr Bumble’s pleasure at whatever memories of his wife’s suffering he had evoked in his mind made him temporarily lose the thread of his story. His breath became ragged, his face turned even more deathlike, and his eyes lost their focus. I shook the frail body, yelling at him to tell me more if he wanted some money as a reward. In desperation I thrust a few coins in his hand and, villain that he was, the touch of the metal on his palm was sufficient to bring him back to the present.
He wiped away some of the dribble from his mouth and muttered, ‘Monks was a fool, Oliver. He paid us to lead him by the nose. It was so funny to see the pleasure he obtained when we dropped the evidence of your supposed birth into the river. He had not the slightest suspicion of how much he was being duped. The beauty of the plan was that it was Monks’ actions in seeking your destruction that gave such weight to the view that you must be Agnes Fleming’s child, reinforced by poor Mr Brownlow’s mistaken opinion that you and the portrait of her were so alike. As I said, in looks you were not dissimilar to Agnes’s child. It was Nancy, of course, who betrayed Monks’ existence to both Mr Dickens and Mr Brownlow, as well as to Rose Maylie.’