She knew what he was talking about. He knew that she had brains. ‘I’ll stay,’ she said. And then she took a chance and whispered to him, ‘But if the cook is found murdered, then you’ll have to keep the police away from me.’
He patted her on the arm. ‘Good girl,’ he said. ‘Now, do you think you could bring a cup of tea up to my mother? She’s in a bit of a state.’
Sesina nodded. ‘What about you, Mr Wilkie, and Mr Charles?’
He patted his waistcoat pocket, bulging as usual with the little flask he kept inside it. ‘No tea for me, Sesina,’ he said with a grin. ‘I can think of something better. Come on, let’s see about that tea.’ He led her back into the kitchen. ‘Mrs Collins is a bit upset and I’ve asked Sesina to bring her a cup of tea,’ he said to the cook. He bent down and picked up Sesina’s apron from the floor. ‘What do you think I’d look like in this, Cookie,’ he said to Mrs Barnett and she and Dolly split their sides laughing, just like he was ten years old again. Twenty years they had worked in the same house. Go mad with boredom to even think about it! Sesina thought to herself.
‘Go on with you, Mr Wilkie.’ The cook was in a good humour now and she didn’t even look at Sesina when she took the apron and put it on again. The pair of them were holding their sides laughing at his jokes as she busied herself with a tray and a set of cups.
‘Put it in her sitting room; I’ll persuade her to take it in there,’ he said over his shoulder as they came up the drawing-room stairs so Sesina turned and went into the small sitting room beside Mrs Collins’ bedroom. She took a little time, fixing the table and closing the curtains, checking on the fire and then she thought she’d go and see what was happening in the drawing room. Very quiet it all was when she came up to the door. Couldn’t hear a sound. Wondered whether to knock, but then decided not. She’d just pop in, whisper in Mrs Collins’ ear and then take herself off. Best not to interrupt anything.
And so she turned the handle.
As soon as Sesina came in, she knew that there was something wrong. Mr Charles was standing there, standing facing that inspector; white as a sheet, he was, standing there, just looking, stricken-like, at the inspector. Mr Charles was a tall man, much, much bigger than his brother Wilkie, but, nonetheless, Sesina thought that when she looked at him that there was something about him that reminded her of those calves at Smithfield Market, something about his eyes, something that told you that he knew he was heading off to be slaughtered. Poor fellow. It was that sick look! Sick and frightened and hoping for nothing.
And his mother, standing there at the end of the room. She, thought Sesina, as she looked down at the woman, she knew. She’d know; know what the poor fellow was thinking. Knowed that he’d got no hope of nothing.
‘Just let me go through this again,’ the inspector was staying. A sneaky sort of fellow; pretending to be all nice, pretending that he wasn’t gloating or nothing. Oh, no, not him, but he was of course. Could hear the sound of it in his voice. Remembered once going to a rat catching with her friends, Isabella and Rachel Meyers, and all the geezers in the audience suddenly roared with excitement and you could smell the excitement in the air. Sesina could hear that note in the inspector’s voice, just like he was a ratting terrier with his teeth snapping.
‘You received a summons from Mr Edwin Milton-Hayes. That was right, wasn’t it? He summoned you to give him some assistance, wanted you to help with finishing off a picture before this evening’s display of them.’
The inspector stopped, but Mr Charles said nothing. Just bent his head, like he was getting ready for a noose to be put over it. Mr Wilkie opened his mouth, but the inspector, not looking at him, but seeing everything out of the corner of his eye, held up one large hand.
‘Just a minute, please. Yes, Mr Collins, go ahead, tell me about the argument between yourself and Mr Edwin Milton-Hayes. He invited you into the house, didn’t he? Of course, he did. Invited you to come and see that picture. Were you alone, or were you with someone? Perhaps Mrs Molly French came too. Would that be how it happened?’
Charley opened his mouth, closed it again, looking a bit like a stranded fish on the edge of the river. Looked sick and bewildered. Didn’t know what to say.
Mr Wilkie did, though. ‘Don’t answer that silly question, Charley,’ he said. ‘The inspector likes to play those little tricks, don’t you, inspector? Why should Mrs French be called upon to help with the painting of a picture?’
Sesina looked at Mr Dickens. Time he put his oar in. Not slow to speak up in the usual way of things. Saying nothing, now. Just looking at poor Charley and then back at the inspector again.
‘I just want to know the truth, Mr Collins,’ said the inspector. ‘I would like Mr Charles Collins to answer my questions.’ The inspector tried to sound all reasonable. He pretended to face Mr Wilkie, but Sesina could see how his eyes slid sideways and how he kept close tabs on the poor young idiot. Go on, tell some lie or other! The words were shouting in her mind and she wished that she could pull a wire and ring a bell inside that noddle of his, put him on his guard.
The inspector looked around, beckoned and someone came forward from the shadow near to the window. The young policeman. Sesina’s heart sank. He had a bag with him. Seemed to know what the inspector wanted. Bent down, pulled something out. The painting coat! Held it up. Covered in stains, smudges of paint of all colours: red, blue, yellow, green and all the other colours but Sesina’s eyes went immediately to the large plaque of dark clotted blood.
‘You recognize this painting coat, Mr Collins?’ The inspector was speaking to Mr Wilkie now and Sesina could see how that comical round face of his with its little spectacles suddenly went a deadly white.
‘It looks like my father’s painting coat. I think I even recognize a scrap of blue paint from that seascape over there, behind your head, inspector.’
Good try, thought Sesina, but she knew that it wouldn’t work.
‘You don’t paint pictures, yourself, Mr Collins, do you?’
The inspector was going on talking to Mr Wilkie, but he never took his eyes off poor Charley.
‘No, I don’t at the moment, inspector. Tried it, would do the odd picture for fun, perhaps.’ Mr Wilkie took off his spectacles, wiped them, put them back again and reached across as if to take the coat. Sesina held her breath. Could he persuade the inspector that it was his, now?
‘But this is not your coat, is it? I can see that it has two names on it, the one stitched under the other. The top one is William Collins, and the other, below it, is Charles Allston Collins. So this now, ever since the death of your father, has been the property of Mr Charles Collins, worn whenever you painted, isn’t that right, Mr Collins?’ Now he had turned away from Mr Wilkie and back to his brother.
‘That’s right!’
‘And you had it with you when you went up into Mr Milton-Hayes’ painting studio?’
The poor fellow gaped like a fish on the end of the hook.
‘That is correct, is it not?’ The inspector lifted his voice a little. Making it sound like a threat and poor Charley went all white and winced like someone had slapped him across the face.
‘That is correct,’ he said in a sort of strangled whisper.
‘I wonder,’ said the inspector, all polite now, ‘whether I could trouble you to come down to the station with me, Mr Charles Collins. I would like you to make a statement. Perhaps your servant could fetch your coat and your hat.’ He gave a nod in Sesina’s direction, but still kept his eyes fixed on Mr Charles.
Sesina didn’t move. Who was he to be throwing orders around? Not my master. Don’t pay me wages, do you, Mister? And so she just looked down at the carpet. No one else moved or stirred neither.
And then the poor, silly clown had to do for himself. Put his hands over his face. Clapped them to his eyes just like he had a sudden terrible pain. Began to cry. Big, loud sobs. Just like a child. Bent his head down. His brother went over to him. Put an arm around his shoulders. No good. Should have
put a hand in front of his silly mouth.
Sobs or no sobs, the words came out clear as a bell. ‘All right, inspector. I killed him. Now stop torturing me.’
The inspector took a step forward. One step, two steps and then Mrs Collins spoke up. Not usually too gentile, used to be poor when she was young – she told Sesina that once – but this time she was more gentile than any of them.
‘My son is just trying to protect me, inspector. I am the one who killed Mr Milton-Hayes. I am ready to make a full confession.’
NINE
Wilkie Collins, Hide and Seek, 1854:
The horror and misery of that moment is present to me now, at this distance of time. The shock I then received struck me down at once; I never have recovered from it, and I never shall.
I didn’t know what to do for a moment. My eyes seemed to start from my head, my fingers trembled and an icy perspiration poured from my forehead. For a few moments my throat seemed to close over. I looked up at my father’s portrait above the mantelpiece. The steady brown eyes seemed to be judging me, to be looking at me with an air of sorrow. ‘Not to be trusted to look after your mother and your little brother, Willie; how can you let me down like this!’ The eyes sent the message and I flinched. My father, unlike most fathers, had never struck me, but there had been times when he had wounded me to the core with his sorrowful appraisal of me. ‘Never amount to anything. Need to have courage. Need to be a man, Willie.’
I looked an appeal at Dickens, at the man who, though there was a bare twelve years between us, had almost taken the place of my dead father, a man who was my guide, my mentor, my counsellor through the difficult path of life.
And Dickens did not fail me.
He smiled sympathetically at my mother. Not a broad smile, more a warming of the face and a softening of the eyes. And then turned back towards the policeman.
‘Reminds you of your school days, eh, inspector. The splendid mother of Zeus! What mothers won’t do for their sons! Brings tears to my eyes.’
I held my breath. Took off my spectacles, wiped them and then replaced them. The moisture had gone and now the scene was clearer. Charley sobbing, with his head in his hands, my mother standing beside him, stroking that red hair which had betrayed him. The inspector, stolid, refusing to look at Dickens, but nevertheless conveying an air of uncertainty.
And then he seemed to make up his mind, seemed to decide to ignore my mother’s words. He walked across to the picture on the chair, but Dickens was too quick for him.
‘Come, come, my dear Mrs Collins! Inspector, I’m sure that you recognize the power of mother love. But this good lady, such a loving, such a good mother to her two sons, this lady cannot be allowed to incriminate herself in this way. You, like me, can, I’m sure, separate truth from a gallant lie.’
The inspector looked from him to my mother. I held my breath. I could see that this latest turn in events bothered the man immensely. He didn’t mind arresting my young brother, but he couldn’t easily drag a lady of my mother’s age down to the police station and cast her into a cell.
‘I have my duty to do, Mr Dickens,’ he said, speaking like an automat, ‘I have a duty to my employers and to the public. I have a dead man on my hands, his body down there in the station and another man who has confessed to the murder.’ The inspector avoided my mother’s eyes and looked uncomfortably at my friend.
Dickens nodded. ‘Just so, just so,’ he said. ‘And I’m sure that we will all testify to the excellent way in which you have performed your duties. But, you see, inspector, the hour is very late. The young man is not well, in fact, I would not hesitate to say that I don’t think that he is wholly in possession of his wits. I think a lawyer might make quite a good case against the police if he were arrested now, at a moment when it might be said that he was not responsible for what he was saying. God bless my soul, I know of many a lawyer who would make mincemeat of this case just on those grounds alone. He’s not in a condition to be questioned. You know that, don’t you, inspector?’ Dickens, always quick and decisive in his thought processes, seemed to have decided that the inspector was not going to follow up on my mother’s confession and so he confined his eloquence to pleading for Charley.
A slight glimmer of hope. I held my breath. My mother stayed very still, her hand on Charley’s shoulder, her direct gaze on the inspector. I kept my eyes fixed on Dickens. His mobile, dark face was going through many changes of expression. It had now moved from confidence to pensiveness. He grimaced slightly, rubbed his chin like a man wrestling with a problem.
‘Of course, I see your problem,’ he said confidentially, speaking as though no one but he and his friend, Inspector Field, were in the room. ‘Yes, I do see your problem. You fear that the young man might take himself off in the small hours of the morning, might not be available for questioning when you turn up tomorrow.’ Dickens, an amateur actor to the bone, knit his heavy brows in a way that would signal to even the dullest audience that he was thinking hard. I held my breath.
‘I’ll tell you what I’ll do, inspector,’ he went on in his irresistible fashion, like a mountain stream in full flood, sweeping all before him, ‘I’ll solve your problem, and I know how to reassure you that all will be well.’ He looked all around and I admired how assured he appeared. ‘What I will do is that I will stay here tonight and if our hostess will permit, I will hold the keys to the young man’s room.’ He swept another look around at those who remained: my poor brother, sobbing helplessly; my gallant mother, white as the lace at her neck, her head held high; myself, uncertain, glancing up at my father’s portrait, wondering what to do to keep my brother safe and to save my mother from her desire to sacrifice herself in order to keep her youngest child from prison. Dickens waited for a moment, waited until all eyes, including those of the inspector, had turned towards him with an expression of dawning hope. He nodded gravely. ‘And if you are happy about this arrangement, inspector, then, in the morning, Mr Charles Collins will be himself and will be able to give a more coherent and plausible account of his day and of what he saw and what he found when he went to the Milton-Hayes residence. I’m sure that you’ll find that I am right, inspector,’ he went on with his usual air of quiet confidence. ‘And, of course, once morning comes, we’ll all have cooler heads and we can work out this question of who killed Milton-Hayes.’ He looked along the row of pictures on the chairs and said with a touch of grimness in his voice, ‘There may be about ten people here, painted by that man, Milton-Hayes. Ten people whose reputations, liberty and lives have been threatened by these pictures. It’s important, is it not, inspector, important for everyone’s sake that the right person is arrested.’
I could see the inspector turning this over in his mind. He had received great fame from Dickens’ article about him in the Household Words magazine. ‘Shrewd’; ‘sagacious’; ‘vigilant’, the praise had flowed out and it had done, so the rumour went, no end of good to Inspector Field; earned him great respect both from his superiors and from the criminal classes.
And now there had been a slight emphasis on the words, ‘for everyone’s sake,’ in Dickens’ voice and a raised index finger lent extra weight to his warning. The inspector frowned at his subordinate. The young policeman looked back at his superior deferentially, but I thought, from his expression, he knew that nothing was going to happen before the morning. The inspector cast an appraising look at the sobbing figure on the chair and then nodded his head.
‘Very well, Mr Dickens,’ he said. He hesitated for a moment, looking back at the pictures still propped upon their chairs and then at the artist’s satchel standing by the curtain. Dickens’ eyes followed his.
‘Thank you, inspector,’ he said gravely. ‘And to express our gratitude, Mr Wilkie Collins and I will put our heads together and endeavour to come up with a list of those who might be portrayed in these abominable works.’
I stiffened. I had no desire to place some man, or worse, some woman, in the noose, but then a quick glance
at Charley, and at my poor mother, made me hold my tongue. This murder would be all over London soon. The newspapers and the pamphlet writers would have a field day with it. Everyone in the small world of the murdered artist and the Pre-Raphaelite circle would fall under suspicion. Secrets would be uncovered. Friend would betray friend; the whole matter would be discussed in coffee houses, whispered about in studios and by the end of it all, reputations would lie in the dust and perhaps more deaths would occur in order to keep the matter a secret. Yes, the sooner the guilty person was arrested, the sooner that my young brother would be safe from arrest. I relaxed, nodded my head, and pulled the bell.
By the time that Dolly arrived, my mother was herself, directing the woman to fetch the house keys from her bedroom. When they were given to her, she, herself, took off the key and handed it over to Dickens with a calm and even slightly detached air. I smiled at her, doing my best to let her know how much I admired her courage. It was time, I thought, to get rid of the inspector and to allow my mother and my brother to get some sleep. I held out my hand and she placed the rest of the keys upon it.
‘Sesina will show you out, inspector,’ I said happily. ‘You’ll lock up then, Sesina, won’t you? And bring the keys to me. My mother is unwell.’ That was enough. The girl was clever enough to know what I meant. I wanted those two policemen out of the house, and wanted no chance of either of them coming back before morning.
And by morning, I tried to tell myself, Charley would be himself, would come up with some plausible explanation about the blood on his painting coat, and would, perhaps, even be tricked into telling the name of the true murderer, if he knew it – and I had begun to wonder whether he did. In the meantime, myself and Dickens would put our brains and our knowledge of human nature together and try to solve the problem of which of those invited guests might have murdered the man who had invited them to my mother’s dinner party and who had planned to destroy their reputations.
Winter of Despair Page 10