Roscarrock spread his hands, palm downward on his desk. “Go on,” he instructed.
“There were several letters in his locker all written to him by the same female hand and signature together with a small portrait. A portrait of a young lady. A rather attractive young lady.”
“Well?”
“The letters were signed each time ‘your own adoring P.’ In one letter, dated on the very evening we left Chatham, this lady, P, writes to Jardine that she fears for his life while on board the Deerhound. She suspects that her husband has discovered the affair and means to find an excuse to kill him. She begs him to find an excuse to absent himself from the ship at the earliest opportunity. There is some emotional material about them eloping to some foreign place together.”
Roscarrock drew his finger along the side of his nose thoughtfully. “The letters signed with the initial P, you say? I don’t think that will get you far. By coincidence, I know the names of the wives of three officers begins with P. Midshipman Hope is married to a young lady named Penelope. Lieutenant Gervaise’s wife is named Peggy, and Lieutenant Unstead’s wife is Phoebe….” Roscarrock suddenly paused as if a thought had struck him.
Midshipman Hart was nodding excitedly. “Lieutenant Unstead already challenged Lieutenant Jardine to a duel in Chatham. It was stopped by the Provost Marshal. The cause of the duel was that Lieutenant Jardine had insulted Lieutenant Unstead’s wife. Lieutenant Unstead’s wife is named, as you say, Phoebe.”
Roscarrock inclined his head as though unwilling to admit the possibility. “It is still a theory. How can you prove it?”
“By the miniature portrait, sir.”
“So far as I recall, no one on board, except Jardine, ever met Mrs. Unstead, so we have no knowledge of her features.”
“Then all we have to do is wait until we return to Chatham and then compare the portrait with the features of those of the officers’ ladies whose names begin with P. I will wager, however, that the features match those of Mrs. Unstead. Then we will have our assassin.”
Captain Roscarrock regarded the eager young midshipman with a serious expression. “Mr. Hart, I think you have done well. However, we cannot let a word of this slip out, because if it was thought that you had this evidence, your own life would not be worth that of a weevil in a ship’s biscuit. Do you have these letters and the portrait?”
Midshipman Hart reached into his uniform jacket and drew out a sheaf of papers and a small silver-framed oval object.
“I was going to give them to you, sir, so that you could lock them away until we return to Chatham.”
He handed them across.
Roscarrock gave them a cursory glance. “One thing, Mr. Hart.” He smiled softly. “Although you suspect Lieutenant Unstead, would it not be more appropriate to suspect all officers, for you might be doing him an injustice?”
“Indeed, sir. I am trying to keep an open mind in case I am wrong.”
“Why, then, am I not among your suspects? I could well play the part of a jealous husband.”
Midshipman Hart smiled and shook his head. “I did entertain the notion, sir, but then I dismissed it.”
“Dismissed it? On what grounds, pray?” demanded Roscarrock in amusement.
“I found out from your steward, sir, that your wife’s name begins with the letter M and not P.”
Roscarrock’s smile broadened. “You believe in attending to minutiae, Mr. Hart. You are right. My wife’s name is Mary. You will go far in the service. Very well. I shall keep these letters and the miniature portrait under lock and key until we are safely home in Chatham. Do not mention a word of such a find. Until we reach our home port, it might be wise to let it be known that your inquiries have been resolved and there is nothing suspicious about Jardine’s death.”
“Aye, sir.”
Roscarrock turned and placed the letters in his locker with the miniature portrait.
There came the sound of a ship’s bell.
“Nearly time for the burial service,” sighed Roscarrock. “Ask Mr. Gervaise to pass the word.”
Captain Roscarrock had been wrong. The fog was patchy and did not thin immediately. It lay around the Deerhound for two hours more after the committal of the bodies to the sea. Roscarrock impatiently paced the quarterdeck for a while, awaiting its clearance, but it hung with persistence. Now and then, Roscarrock heard officers exchanging a whisper and a chuckle. Crewmen passed to their duties, smirking. The reason was obvious. The news that Lieutenant Jardine had been killed in an accident was spreading round the ship. No glory for Lieutenant Jardine, just a casualty of bad fortune. It seemed that Midshipman Hart had spread the word that there was no more to the curious manner of the gunnery lieutenant’s death than ill fate.
Eventually, Roscarrock returned to his cabin and set himself to wait for the fog to clear. It was another hour before Midshipman Hart knocked on the door and touched his hat. “Mr. Gervaise’s compliments, sir. The fog is clearing rapidly now. There is a nor’-northwesterly wind beginning to blow.”
Roscarrock stood up. “Excellent. Take a run up aloft and scan the horizon. I don’t think the Frenchman has remained nearby, but we don’t want any surprises. I will come on deck immediately.”
Hart touched his hat again and turned out of the cabin.
Roscarrock reached for the brandy bottle and poured a generous glass from its amber contents.
Time seemed to pass interminably.
There was a sudden commotion on deck.
He raised his glass and swallowed quickly.
There was a cry: “Pass the word for the captain!”
Almost immediately one of the youngest midshipmen knocked at his door, a lad no more than fourteen years old.
“Mr. Gervaises compliments, sir,” came his childish piping treble. “Would you come on deck immediately, sir?”
Roscarrock grabbed his hat and followed the boy on to the quarterdeck.
He glanced around as he came out of the companionway. “What is it, Gervaise? Is it the Frenchman?”
Gervaises face was pale. “Young Hart, sir. He came on deck, sprang into the stays, and went scrambling up the mainmast to the crow’s nest. He was up there before I could warn him! Didn’t I mention earlier that the chain shot had frayed the rigging and splintered the spars there? All above the mains’1 was unstable. Young Hart just slipped, lost his footing, and came crashing down to the main deck.”
He indicated toward where a group of sailors were gathered around something that looked like a bundle of clothes.
Surgeon Smithers rose from his knees by it and glanced upward toward the captain. He stood his head in a studied fashion. “Neck clean broke, Cap’n,” he called.
Roscarrock turned back to Gervaise. “Was there no way the boy could have been warned before he went up the main rigging?” he demanded.
Gervaise shook his head. “What was the boy climbing up there for anyway?”
“I told him to go aloft,” replied Roscarrock. “I wanted a sweep around with the fog clearing to see if the Frenchman was anywhere in sight. I didn’t realize that he would go for the mainmast. I thought everyone had been warned that it was unstable. I presumed that he would use the mizzenmast crow’s nest, which would give a good clearance of the horizon, but…”
“Poor little sod,” muttered Lieutenant Unstead roughly. He had been standing behind Lieutenant Gervaise. “One more body to go over the side, I suppose. Fll get the sail-maker to stitch up another canvas and shot.”
An hour later the sloop was tacking across the wind, moving painfully slowly north-northwest across the bight toward the waiting British fleet.
Captain Richard Roscarrock sat at his desk and unlocked the cupboard, drawing forth the small miniature. He gazed down at the young, soft face, with the golden ringlets and pert red lips that smiled out from it. He stared in disapproval for a moment and then returned it, taking out the sheaf of letters that had been so emotionally addressed to Lieutenant Jardine and signed “your own adorin
g P.”
They were outpourings of a desperate and naive love. Hart had been right. The last letter had alerted Jardine to the young woman’s suspicion that her husband had found out about their affair and was a threat to Jardine’s life. It was clear that the husband, whose name was not indicated in the letter, was a fellow officer on board the Deerhound.
Roscarrock gave a low sigh, folded them up, and returned them to the locker.
He drew some clean sheets of paper toward him and reached for the pen and ink.
He addressed his letter to Mrs. Mary Roscarrock, care of the Rat and Raven Inn, Chatham. Then he paused a few moments for thought before beginning: My dearest wife, Polly… He paused and smiled grimly to himself. It was a good thing young Hart’s education had been lacking in that he had not realized Polly was used as a diminutive of Mary.
THE PASSING SHADOW
“And talk of Time slipping by you, as if it was an animal of
rustic sports with its tail soaped.”
-”The Passing Shadow” in Our Mutual Friend
The two men sat opposite each other, either side of a dark oak table in the dark, tiny snug of the Thameside tavern. There were no windows in the curious threecornered little room. A gas burner, jutting from the wall above the solitary table, gave a curious flickering light, reflecting reddish on the red oak paneling. The elder man was in his early fifties, small of stature, immaculately dressed and coiffured, his curly hair receding from a broad forehead. A small “goatee” beard and mustache gave him the appearance of an intellectual, perhaps a professor. The other man was younger, in his thirties, fair of skin, with wide blue eyes and auburn hair. His handsome features had an indefinable Irish quality about them, although when he spoke, his soft, wellmodulated tones were clearly those of someone educated in England.
There had been a momentary silence between them while a young girl had brought a tray into the snug on which reposed a decanter of port and two glasses. She had placed it on the table between them and left with a bobbed curtsy, for she was well aware of the identity of the older guest that now sat gazing moodily at the cutglass decanter as the gaslight caused it to flicker and flash with a thousand points of light.
“I think that you are worried, esteemed father-in-law.” The younger man broke the silence with a smile.
The elder man turned with a disapproving frown and commenced to pour the port into the glasses. “You know that I hate being addressed as father-in-law,” he reproved.
The young man shrugged. “Since I married your daughter, Kate, I have been at odds as to how to address you. Since I am called Charles and you are called Charles, it would sound like some echo in the conversation if we hailed each other with that mode of address.”
The elderly man’s eyes lightened with humor. “In that case, let us agree. I shall call you Charley, and you may address me as Charles; otherwise, we shall have to resort to the formal Mr. Collins and Mr. Dickens.”
He pushed the port across the table, and his son-in-law dutifully raised the glass. “Your health, Charles,” his son-in-law toasted solemnly.
“Yours, too, Charley. I hope your new novel sells well.”
“StraithcairnP” The young man laughed whimsically. “Alas, I will never succeed as a novelist like my brother Wilkie. He has made more out of his Woman in White than I have made out of both my novels. My art lies in illustration, as you know. I am more of an artist than writer, as was my father.”
“Although I believe that your grandfather wrote?”
“Indeed, he did, sir. But had to leave his native Ireland to come to this country in order to earn a living as a picture restorer. Being no man of business, he failed to provide for his family.”
“In that, we share a common background, Charley. That is what endears me to you. Moreover, I respect your critical opinion.”
“Which brings us neatly to my point. You are clearly worried. I suspect it is about this novel that you have been working on of late. I was wondering why you have brought me to this unfamiliar Lime-house region, away from our usual London haunts, where we might bump into friends and colleagues.”
Dickens sighed. “Unfamiliar? My godfather, old Christopher Huffman, sold oars, masts, and ships’ gear just round the corner from here in Church Row. It was in old Huffman’s house there that my father once placed me on the table and told me to sing to the assembled company-to show me off. No, Charley, this place is not so remote for me. Over twenty years ago, I used some of this very area as background”-he waved his hand to encompass the surroundings-”as description in my book Dombey and Son.”
Charles Collins was silent for a moment.
“But you are worried,” he pressed.
Dickens compressed his lips for a moment and then nodded slowly. “You are discerning, Charley. Yes. I am worried.”
“About the new book?”
Again, his father-in-law nodded.
“Care to tell me what the book is about?”
“I have a character who has been left a fortune provided that he marries a girl. I’ve called the girl Bella. Bella Wilfer. My character, I’ve called him John, has been out of England for fourteen years. Now, while the fortune is attractive, John has decided to return to London under an assumed name to assess the situation. If John doesn’t marry Bella, then a man called Boffin stands to inherit the fortune. John gets a job as Boffins secretary. John becomes the mutual friend of Boffin and the Wilfers. In fact, I have titled my draft Our Mutual Friend. The upshot is that John and Bella fall in love, and John declares his real identity and inherits the money.”
Charles Collins pulled a face. “It sounds like a romantic comedy of deceit with a happy ending.”
Dickens scowled and shook his head. “No, that’s just it. It seems to lack spontaneity. It’s become a sordid tale of deceit and money. It’s full of pessimism. I seem to hear the words of that confounded woman Mrs. Lewes-George Eliot-whatever her name really is, who said that I scarcely ever pass from the humorous and external to the emotional and tragic, without becoming as transient in my unreality as… Oh, damnation!” He cut himself short. “She’s right. It reads like a dry treatise on morals, not a story.”
“Well, I have noticed that you have been growing increasingly pessimistic with life in general,” observed his son-in-law seriously.
“The story is too dry and dusty,” went on Dickens, ignoring the observation’. “I need to insert some drama, some excitement, some mystery-”
The door of the snug suddenly burst open, and a middle-age woman stood nervously on the threshold. She was a roundfaced lady who was, in fact, the proprietess of the tavern.
“Lud!” she exclaimed in agitation. “Mr. Dickens, sir, I am all of a tremble.”
The two men rose immediately for, indeed, the lady was suiting the words to the action and stood trembling in consternation before them.
Dickens came forward and took the landlady by the arm. “Calm yourself, Miss Mary.” His voice held a reassuring quality. “Come, still your nerves with a glass of port and tell us what ails you.”
“Port, sir? Gawd, no, sir.” ‘Tis gin that I would be having if drink be needed at all. But it can wait, Mr. Dickens, sir. “ ‘Tis advice I do be needing. Advice and assistance.”
Dickens regarded her patiently. “Pray, what then puts you so out of spirits? We will do our best to help.”
“A body, sir. A body. Washed up against our very walls.”
The tavern walls were built on the rivers edge, and those dark, choppy waters of the Thames could often be heard slapping at the bricks of the precariously balanced building.
Charley Collins grimaced. “Nothing unusual in that, Miss Mary,” he pointed out, adopting his father-in-law’s manner of addressing the landlady. In fact, every drinking man along the waterfront knew the landlady of the Grapes simply as Miss Mary. “Dwelling along the waterfront here, you have surely grown used to bodies being washed up?”
It was true that the Thames threw up the dead and dyin
g every day. Suicides were commonplace; there were gentlemen facing ruin in various forms who took a leap from a bridge as a way out and the poor unable to cope with the heavy oppression of penury. Among the latter sort were a high percentage of unfortunate young women, unable to endure the profession that was their only alternative to starvation. Often there were unwanted children. And there were bodies of those who had met their ends by the hands of others for gain, jealousy, and all manner of motives. The flotsam and jetsam of all human misery and degradation floated along the dark, sulky river. Indeed, there were also unsavory stories of watermen, “river finders,” who plied their trade on the river, taking drunks from the riverside taverns to drown them in the Thames, though not before emptying their pockets of anything valuable, or to sell their corpses for medical dissection. Death and the river were not mutually exclusive. In fact, many along the riverbanks were called dredgers, dredging coal or valuables lost overboard from the ships that pushed their way along the river to the London docks.
“I would send for a constable at once, Miss Mary,” advised Dickens, about to be reseated.
Whereupon the lady let out a curious wailing sound that returned him to a standing position with some alacrity. “I would be doing that, but it be young Fred who be fishing out the body, and the peelers is just as like to say ‘e robbed the corpse. Now, if you were there to see fair play… they’d respect a man like you, Mr. Dickens.”
“If I recall a’right, Fred is your nephew?”
“Me own poor departed sisters son, gawdelpus.”
Dickens smiled skeptically. “What makes you think the police would believe that this corpse had been robbed?”
The landlady blinked and then realized what he meant. She looked defensive. “ ‘E only looked to see if there were anything to identify ‘im, Mr. Dickens. The corpse, that is. Fred, I mean,” she ended in confusion.
Dickens raised a cynical eyebrow. “I presume that there was no means of identification… nor any valuables on him?”
An Ensuing Evil and Others Page 13