by J C Briggs
Later, he thought, I did not take off my coat. Because Sydney was there. Plume did not take off his coat.
Chapter 13: Mr Thackeray’s Advice
I woo’d the fair, and won the sweet consent.
But brief, alas! the spell, for suddenly
Peal’d from the tower the old familiar chimes,
And with their clear, heart-thrilling melody,
Awaked the spectral forms of darker times …
An Old Haunting. Dickens read the words again from Edward Lawson’s poem. Regret, loss, disappointment. Could the man who had written these words be a murderer? The poet as murderer? It seemed a contradiction. Yet, King David murdered the messenger who brought the news of the deaths of Saul and Jonathan, and he wrote his psalms. And Thomas Wainewright, whom he had seen in Newgate years back, had been an artist and literary man. The painter of The Milkmaid’s Song had poisoned three members of his own family.
Anyone might be a murderer, given the right combination of circumstances. Murder was so often the crime of someone who, before the deed, had never been a criminal — the serving maid with an illegitimate child; the jealous husband, lover, or wife. Someone to whom opportunity presented temptation — the temptation, perhaps, to kill a man who had wronged you, to rid yourself of the corruption that the hated one bred in your blood.
Time to go and see what could be heard at The Crown in Vinegar Lane where the Punch club gathered. His way took him back to Bow Street and into Catherine Street where, opposite the Drury Lane Theatre, there was a narrow court in which lay The Crown next to The Whistling Oyster — a place of legendary fascination. Mr Pearke, the landlord had heard an oyster whistling. He had identified the phenomenal bivalve which had been given its own tub of brine and oatmeal on which to feast, and to captivate the crowds that came to witness its fluting. Douglas Jerrold had said that it was, no doubt, crossed in love and whistled to keep up appearances — to show it didn’t care. What its fate had been, no one knew and Pearke could not say. Eaten, Dickens supposed, or turned into sauce. A lesson of life — the wheel of fortune could turn even for an oyster. It was easy to fall.
He looked at them in the window — they looked tempting, laid one deep in circular marble basins, if rather brooding like so many haunted eyes — what, he wondered, did oyster sellers do when oysters were not in season? Did they commit suicide in despair, or wrench open tight drawers and cupboards and hermetically-sealed bottles for practice?
‘Crossed in love?’ a voice observed.
He turned to see the diminutive Douglas Jerrold, who was just about to go into The Crown, when he had seen Dickens looking meditatively at the window of The Whistling Oyster.
Dickens looked down from his modest five foot nine to Jerrold’s five foot. What a pair Jerrold and the six foot three Thackeray made when you saw them together, Thackeray looking like a giant in the company of a gnome.
‘Does your mother know you’re out?’ he asked smiling down.
Jerrold laughed. How could he not, the author of so many witty squibs at his friends’ expense? It was he who had named the untidy journalist, Stirling Coyne, “filthy lucre”.
‘Just a lone lorn creature — in the manner of your Mrs Gummidge.’
Hm, Jerrold thought, when Dickens did not answer. Something on his mind, I daresay. For all his high spirits, there was sometimes a melancholy about Dickens. You caught it occasionally when he didn’t know you were looking. That finely cut face, mostly all light, made of steel, Jane Carlyle had said, had a — lostness — that was it. He wondered — how much of the boy, David Copperfield, was in him? That bitter toil in the bottle factory — was that Dickens’s own experience? Well, one couldn’t ask. ‘Coming in?’ he asked. ‘Or is the oyster to be the subject of a Christmas story?’
‘I once thought of a title for a comic novel — Oysters in Every Style or Openings in Life.’
‘Or, When One Door Opens,’ laughed Jerrold, turning to the door of the inn.
They went in to the warm room where Dickens saw Thackeray’s unmistakeable towering height. He sat next to Mark Lemon with whom he was always at ease, close friend and editor of Punch. There were familiar, good-humoured faces: Hal Bayliss, president of the Punch Club; his old friend, Clarkson Stanfield, the painter; and Edwin Landseer; Ebenezer Landells, the engraver; and Jerrold, of course, already showing off his sparkling wit.
The talk turned to William Macready’s recent Hamlet at the Haymarket, his penultimate performance of the role. Dickens had thought it very fine and he said so. It had been a good house and an enthusiastic audience, some for whom it would be the last time they saw the greatest actor of his age. George Lewes said he had preferred Macready’s Macbeth which he’d seen in October.
‘Nothing,’ Lewes argued, ‘could be finer than the indications he gave of a conscience wavering under the influences of superstition and fate.’
Thackeray agreed and quoted: ‘Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands — an image that makes you feel that blood.’
They talked about murder, speculating about the murder of the fashionable Doctor Plume. Mark Lemon turned to Dickens, saying in a low voice, ‘Do I see by your face that you are involved in this — with the good Superintendent?’
Dickens nodded. He did not like to make public his work with Jones, but he saw Thackeray looking at him with speculation in his eyes — or so he thought. Thackeray’s spectacles glinted in the candlelight. It might just have been a trick of the light, but Lemon had seen something in Dickens’s face when he asked about the murder. Perhaps Thackeray had. Sometimes, Dickens thought that Thackeray watched him with unusual intensity. John Forster, Dickens’s close friend and a friend of Thackeray’s, maintained that Thackeray studied him because he wanted to know how Dickens did it — how he managed to produce so many best-sellers.
Towards the end of the evening, those at table broke into smaller groups. Dickens could hear snatches of conversation about Plume. He was wishing he could hear more clearly when Thackeray came and sat by him.
‘You are concerned in the matter of the doctor’s murder?’ he asked. He has seen something, thought Dickens. I ought to be more careful.
Dickens told him about Lady Pirie’s request that he should see Miranda Deverall, how he was convinced that she had not killed him, and that he had been to the police to report what he had found. He did not mention Jones.
‘Were the police interested?’
‘They want to know more about Plume.’ He took the plunge — might as well ask. ‘Did you know him?’
‘No, but Edward Lawson did.’ Thackeray’s voice had a grim edge and Dickens knew why. Soft you now, he said to himself.
‘His wife was Plume’s patient?’ He framed it as a question. Everyone knew about Lawson’s wife and the asylum, but Dickens wanted to be careful. It wouldn’t do for Thackeray to know that Lawson might be a suspect.
‘Yes — he couldn’t stand the man — blamed him for…’ Dickens saw the pain in his eyes. There was a silence and they could hear the laughter. Jerrold had no doubt made a joke, judging by the roar of amusement.
Dickens waited. It was the nearest he had come to real intimacy with the man he had known since 1836, when Thackeray had come to show him sketches that might serve for Pickwick Papers. Dickens had not liked them. Thackeray had praised his work and they had become friends of a kind, but each was secretive in his way. Each had secrets, and each, perhaps, feared that the other with his novelist’s acuteness, might divine them.
Thackeray saw how his rival waited, and he came under the spell of those deep, searching eyes. ‘I know what he feels,’ he said. ‘You understand me?’
Dickens nodded, but did not speak.
‘You should see him. Lawson can tell you what kind of man Plume was.’
‘I don’t know him well enough.’ Dickens felt again that sense that he was betraying a trust — Thackeray’s this time.
‘Tell him I sent you — he’ll want to tell you. And he won’t
want an innocent girl to be hanged. He’s a good man.’
With that they parted and Dickens went away, somewhat easier in his mind. Thackeray had given him his blessing, as it were. He had an entrée to Lawson’s house, but he was conscious of deception, too. Thackeray had not known that Lawson might be accused — or had he? Dickens stopped by the window of the oyster shop again and looked at the eyes shining in the gaslight. He thought of Thackeray’s eyes behind the lenses of his spectacles. Perhaps he had seen.
Then he felt guilty — and sorry, for, in that moment of intimacy when Thackeray had referred obliquely to his wife, Dickens felt he had betrayed him. Murder did that.
He would get a cab, he thought, walking out into Catherine Street, feeling suddenly weary.
Murder was a betrayal of trust: the lover with his hands round the slender neck of a woman who leant against him, or twisting the loop of hair three times around the little throat; the poisoner holding the cup to the tired man’s lips; the man who came into the room, and with one hand accepted the cigar while the other concealed the knife — or the woman. The missing Mrs Hodson. Would she have accepted a cigar? Hardly. Though, when he thought about it, he remembered a time in Geneva when he had smoked cigars with a collection of ladies. Lady Walpole, he recalled vividly, smoking away like a Manchester cotton mill. He had never seen a woman smoke before. So, perhaps Mrs Hodson might have been a smoker. He imagined Inspector Hardacre offering her a cigar as he questioned her. She’d turn up, no doubt, if the Inspector in Manchester had anything to do with it
The cab dropped him near Devonshire Terrace. He went in through the iron gate. He stopped for a moment before putting his key in the lock. Air, he thought, let me have air. He could smell the cigar smoke on his clothes. He looked up into the night sky, but there were no stars. Husbandry in heaven, their candles are all out.
He thought of Thackeray quoting from Macbeth, and the talk of murder.
Now does he feel his secret murders sticking on his hands. Somewhere, but where — and who? Nemo — the man with no name. Yet.
Chapter 14: Plain Clothes
Scrap was a master of disguise. When Dickens had first encountered him, he had been a thatch-haired urchin of the streets with an engaging smile and ragged trousers. But, he was a friend of the Brim children by that strange alchemy which draws children together, however wide the social gap. He was their unofficial protector, having rescued their dog, Poll, from a potential dog-snatcher. He had always been about the stationery shop, especially when Mr Brim had been confined to his bed with that creeping disease of consumption which had eventually killed him. Scrap worked at the shop which was managed now by Mollie Rogers.
Dickens was fond of Scrap. He was smart and brave and utterly loyal, and he worked for his money. Virtue showed quite as well in rags and patches, as she did in purple and fine linen. That was Dickens’s belief. And, he was, as all the other boys Dickens came across or assisted, his other self, the shabby boy who had laboured in the blacking factory and had thought he would never be rescued: the crippled boy for whom he had found employment at his publisher’s; the shoe-black boy placed in a ragged school; Davey, the mute boy whom he had taken to Mrs Morson at the home for fallen women; Kip Moon, whose parents and sister had died; countless others to whom he had given so many sixpences.
And now Scrap was in search of an Italian boy and glad to do it for Superintendent Jones. He went from Norfolk Street to the stationery shop in Crown Street, where Mollie watched him searching through his box.
The box, or rather, THE box — a receptacle for all those things which Scrap treasured. Not that there were many: a few shells from the sea shore where he had been with the Superintendent, Elizabeth and the Brim children. There was a rusty pen knife, a ball of string and a tarnished silver button he’d swapped once for an apple. There were some instalments of Mr Dickens’s David Copperfield which he had bought out of the money Mr Dickens had paid him — not that Mr Dickens knew. He could read a bit — he had learnt from bill posters and scraps of newspaper. He had told Mrs Jones what he wanted to do, and she had begun to teach him properly. One day — soon — he was going to surprise Mr Dickens.
There was a little earthenware pot of Warren’s shoe-blacking, the use of which would be divulged shortly to Mollie, and a miscellaneous collection of articles of clothing: an old cap, a canvas waistcoat and a shirt the colour of strong tea — it might have been white once, and a grimy, threadbare woollen scarf.
‘What are you doing, Scrap, with these old clothes? You don’t need them now,’ Mollie observed.
‘Disguise. Wot Mr Jones ses is undercover work — it’s wot’s called plain clothes. I can’t go searchin’ fer clues lookin’ like this.’ He gestured to his neat suit and shiny boots. ‘Gotter blend in, yer see, Mollie.’ He took the top off the blacking pot. ‘Bit dry, but it’ll do.’
‘You’re never goin’ to black them new boots!’
He looked at her pityingly. Mollie woz awright, but she dint know much.
‘Nah, course not — just yer watch.’
He dipped the fingers of one hand in the paste and rubbed it over both hands, making sure that the nails were sufficiently encrusted. Mr Dickens would have recognised the paste and the black nails. His own hands were like that once — he’d scrubbed at them, but the blacking would not come off. Scrap, too, had discovered he preferred to be clean. But, work was work, an’ Mr Jones needed ’im. He sniffed at the shirt — not too bad — and exchanged his jacket for the canvas waistcoat and the scarf. He blacked parts of his face and neck, tousling his hair into spiky points before arranging the shabby cap.
Mollie laughed — he was every inch the street urchin except — ‘What about your trousers?’
‘I’s’ll ave ter go ter Zeb’s fer them. Me old ones woz nothin’ but rags — I use ’em fer polishin’ me boots. I’ll get some boots off him — old ones.’
Zeb Scruggs was an old clothes dealer in Monmouth Street, the place which Dickens had called “the burial place of fashion”.
‘Don’t forget to pick up your better ones on your way back.’
‘Right. I’ll be off then.’
Scrap made his way up through Seven Dials to Monmouth Street and Zeb’s shop. There were places far worse than Zeb’s where Scrap might have found a set of stinking rags, but he’d have had to pay. Zeb would let him borrow, or, more probably, give him the worst pair of trousers he could find in the rag heap in the yard. The second hand clothes shops were usually foul-smelling, greasy, dirty places, the rags for sale often infected with fever or pox. But Zeb and his wife, Effie, were a superior sort of dealers — the shop was clean and well-aired with a breeze passing through the open front and back doors. Zeb’s old clothes were wearable, and he gave fair prices to the sellers who were so often in desperate straits, having to exchange a usable cloak for a bit of sacking. Money for the rent — or for a loaf. It was frequently that bad. Zeb was also a translator, meaning that he and Effie were skilled at refashioning the better parts of discarded coats, dresses, skirts, trousers into something wearable — the skirts of a coat might make a child’s cape; a little dress might emerge from a larger one; the decent back of an otherwise useless shirt might make a baby’s dress.
When Scrap arrived, Zeb was paying a haggard-looking woman for a child’s dress which looked in unusually good condition. It looked almost new — poor little girl who’d had to part with this, Zeb thought.
‘She don’t need it now, Mr Scruggs. She won’t need nothin’ — not now, not ever —’ She burst into tears. Zeb waited until she wiped her eyes and was able to continue, ‘I ain’t niver goin’ ter see my girl agin. This dress woz given me by Mrs Greenaway wot I did laundry fer. It woz too small fer ’er girl. I’d like ter keep it, but yer know ’ow it is.’
Zeb knew. He knew that Mrs Larks had spent much on her sick daughter, and he had guessed when she had produced the dress that little Lucy Larks was dead. He gave her two shillings. She’d be able to pay the rent, at least.<
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Scrap watched the haggard Mrs Larks go out of the shop. Zeb studied the little dress. Too many kiddies died too young. There were them as thought the poor ’adn’t the same feelings as those with money and education. But it wasn’t true — well, for most, at any rate. He’d seen many like Mrs Larks — good, ’ard-working women who did the best they could.
‘Wotcher, Mr Scruggs.’
‘Well, Scrap, what wind blew you here — detectin’ are you?’
‘Tha’s right, Mr Scruggs. I needs some trousers. Yer got any rags? And some old boots.’
‘Out the back — help yourself.’
Scrap came back with a garment that might once have graced a military parade — though, now, the trousers were cut down and the formerly smart red stripe had faded to a dirty pink. They looked just the sort of thing an urchin might have had from his superannuated ex-soldier father who had declined into drink and debt.
‘Not bad at all,’ said Scrap with satisfaction, having exchanged his own trousers for the ex-serviceman’s leavings. He changed his good boots for some ancient, cracked things. They were too big, but he tied them with string. Wouldn’t do to ’ave them fall off if he had to make a run for it.
Mrs Effie Scruggs came in. ‘Who’s this ragamuffin?’ she asked, knowing well enough.
‘Plain clothes, Mrs Scruggs — I’m on a job for Mr Jones — wants me ter find a witness — Italian boy wot ’as a barrel-organ.’
‘But, there are hundreds of them,’ Effie said doubtfully.
‘Name o’ Joe Seppy, last seen up Weymouth Street.’
‘Where that doctor was killed?’ Zeb asked.
‘Right — Mr Jones wants me to search the alleys round there — see if anyone seen ’im.’
‘Well, you be careful,’ Effie said. ‘Do you want me to take these trousers to Mollie at the shop?’