by J C Briggs
Perhaps it was money I wanted. He supposed he could give me something. I felt only rage at his contempt for me. He felt himself so safe that he even turned from me and took up his cigar. He went to the door and opened it. It was time for me to go. He did not, he said, expect to see me again.
He turned his back on me and I seized the paper knife. Such rage I felt. I plunged it into his back and he fell where, no doubt, he was found. I left him there and slipped away into the lane.
I went back to my lodging, and I lay awake all night. I could not feel sorry for what I had done. It would be an unexplained murder. No one had seen me at Plume’s house. He would never have mentioned me to anyone, and I had never spoken of him. But, of course, I read that a young woman had been accused of the murder. I knew I should give myself up — would that I had!
I needed to wait — just for a week, perhaps. I had something that I must do, as I told you, as you saw for yourselves.
I hear you, Mr Dickens. You say that I was deceiving myself — of course, I was. I was no different from the young man who had persuaded himself that Rose’s disappearance was for the best. For all my good works, I was still the same weak, self-centred, cowardly man I had been then. And I was arrogant. Only I could save the other Rose. I made myself believe it.
I went to search for Kitty, to find out about the girl in Newgate. I had some idea of writing a letter to the police, telling them that the accused girl was innocent. Then I would have my week. But, I could not find her. I went to the Brimstone house where she lodged. I did not mean to kill Mr Brimstone, only to threaten him with what I knew so that he would tell me where Kitty was.
He was locking the back door of the house when I spoke to him. When he turned, he looked at me in terror. He fought me like a madman. Terror, and that savage instinct for survival made me a beast. I took out the knife to ward him off, and in the struggle, I stabbed him.
That is my story, Mr Dickens. There is no excuse. No forgiveness. The moment I agreed to cover up Rose’s death, my fate was sealed, and I deserve my death. It shall come soon, I hope, very soon, that even-handed justice.
Frederick Willoughby Sefton
‘This even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poisoned chalice —’ Dickens began, almost completing Macbeth’s words.
‘What!’
‘To our own lips — dear God — no!’
Chapter 39: Opium
Jones was on the landing before Dickens got to the door. He heard his feet clattering downstairs. He ran after him.
Jones was shouting to the constable he had left outside the cell. ‘Where’s Pinch?’
‘Call o’ nature, sir,’ a cheerful voice answered. ‘Back in a minute.’
‘Open the cell door — now!’
Dickens caught up with Jones as the constable opened the door. Sefton lay on his bed — it looked as though he was asleep. But, they saw that his face was pale and ghastly. His breath was hurried. Jones touched his forehead. It was bathed in perspiration. He felt the pulse — small, quick and irregular. He bent down and sniffed at the pale lips.
‘Opium.’ Jones shouted again. ‘Semple get in here — now!’
Semple came in. ‘Sir?’
‘Get to Brydges Street, bring the doctor — quick as you can.’
Jones turned back to the bed and lifted the blanket. It was there — the vial of opium clasped in Sefton’s hands.
Constable Pinch came in. ‘Sorry, sir, I just —’ then he saw the man on the bed and the vial in his hands. ‘Oh, Gawd, sir, what’s ’appened — I was only gone a few minutes — oh, Gawd!’
‘Never mind all that. Charles, try to rouse him. There might be a chance — speak to him — shake him.’
Dickens shook Sefton’s shoulder. ‘Sefton, wake up, Sefton —’
‘What happened before you went out — how long’s he been asleep?’
‘About an hour — I dunno exactly — after you’d gone with the letter, sir, ’e said ’e’d like ter sleep. Asked ’im if ’e wanted anything, but ’e sed ’e was tired. I sat outside. ’Eard ’im go off like — breathin’ like someone asleep.’
‘You didn’t see him take anything?’
‘No, sir — ’e must ’ave ’ad it ’idden — the bottle. I only went out ’cos I thought ’e was asleep. I ’aven’t been gone more than five minutes, sir.’
Pinch looked scared to death, his young face, white. Jones looked thunderous.
‘Stay here — I need you to witness what we do. Write down everything that happens.’ He saw the young man’s terrified face. ‘All right, Pinch. Not your fault, I know.’
And, it wasn’t, thought Jones — it was mine. Sefton wasn’t searched well enough. I should have thought — a doctor. But, there wasn’t time for blaming now. He turned back to Dickens who was still trying to rouse Sefton.
‘Sefton!’ Jones shouted. Dickens looked startled. But Jones tried again. ‘Got to wake him before coma sets in — if it does, he’ll die.’
At the third shout, Sefton’s eyes opened. He looked at Dickens. ‘Better as it is.’ His voice was slurred and his eyes closed again.
Jones looked at the vial and sniffed it. The opium had been dissolved in alcohol. Of course, the doctor had known what he was doing. Opium dissolved that way worked more speedily, and it would be of pharmacopoeial strength — say two drachms. He must have taken it before Pinch went out — must have. Pinch hadn’t seen. How long? He’d left Sefton over an hour ago — Pinch said he’d gone to sleep soon after. Death could follow in a few hours — that much he knew. He turned back to the bed. Sefton was breathing stertorously now. Dickens was still trying.
They lifted him to a sitting position, shaking him all the time, but his eyes remained closed. It was no use. They laid him down again and watched as the breathing became slow and hoarse, the lips turned livid. Jones felt the pulse again — much more feeble.
Doctor Luke Strong came in from his practice in Brydges Street. As Divisional Surgeon, he was responsible for the health and welfare of the police, but he had frequently helped out Jones if there were a death in custody. He was shrewd and experienced and had learned his forensic medicine at Guy’s Hospital under the tutelage of Alfred Swaine Taylor whose Manual of Medical Jurisprudence had first appeared in 1844. Jones trusted Doctor Strong — he would make a good witness at the inquest, authoritative and succinct — and truthful. Not a man to waste words.
Doctor Strong greeted them briefly — he knew Dickens, too. Then he looked at the man on the bed. Jones handed him the vial which had contained the opium.
‘He’s a doctor — Doctor Frederick Willoughby Sefton — and a murder suspect, too. Plume.’
‘Knew him — charlatan.’ He sniffed at the little bottle. ‘Dissolved in alcohol.’ He examined the bottle. ‘Hm — a hefty dose. He knew what he was doing.’
‘We tried to wake him — he spoke once then relapsed into coma, as you see him now.’
‘When did he take it?’
‘Over an hour ago — say an hour and twenty minutes. It’s quick, though, isn’t it?’
Doctor Strong looked at the dying man. ‘Unusual, rare, but not impossible — I know of a case where insensibility occurred in fifteen minutes, and there are cases where death followed the consumption of the drug within two hours. There’s nothing we can do for him now.’
All three gazed at the man on the bed. Doctor Strong felt the pulse — it was scarcely perceptible now. The hand was cold to his touch. Then came the loud mucous rattle from the throat. The body convulsed slightly and the breathing stopped.
Dickens looked at the white face. Nothing remained of him — he felt Sefton’s absence as an almost tangible thing. Over the dark bridge from life to death, he had passed, silently, swiftly, and, before he had said “Better as it is”. It was, Dickens believed. Should Sefton have paid for Plume’s death on the gallows? To be jeered at by the crowd for whom his death was a holiday, a festival of cruelty, brutal mirth and callousness so odious that a man sh
ould feel ashamed of the shape he wore. That’s what he had written about the hanging of the Mannings — and Mrs Manning, that chubby, bland-faced Swiss had murdered for gain, had shot her victim and then watched as her husband finished him off with his chiselling tool. Then they’d eaten roast goose, all unknowing that theirs was cooked, as well as Patrick O’Connor’s.
But, what did this death mean for Sam? That was an equally vexed question. For Sam whose prisoner had died in his cell.
Jones was speaking to the Doctor. ‘He should have been properly searched. It’s my responsibility.’
‘But, you wouldn’t normally strip a man naked. He had hidden it, no doubt.’
Dickens interrupted. ‘He knew we were there at the hospital where we found him — he saw me. He said he was expecting us. Perhaps he secreted the opium when he had finished the operation he was performing.’
‘Yes, I suppose he could have done, but, still I ought —’
‘You couldn’t have known,’ Doctor Strong stopped Jones. ‘He was a doctor, a gentleman — as I say, it is not customary for you to strip such a man. He wasn’t violent or dangerous, I suppose.’
‘No, certainly not. He was perfectly quiet.’
‘Then, I do not see how you could have prevented this.’
‘Let’s hope the coroner thinks so.’
‘I’ll give my evidence — and Mr Dickens, here, and your constable. Presumably his pockets were emptied.’
‘Yes.’
‘There you are then. Now, leave me to finish my examination. I’ll get him taken down to the mortuary.’
Jones and Dickens went back upstairs. Sefton’s letter lay on the desk. The strange eventful history of a murder.
Jones picked up the papers, straightened them and put them down again.
‘Better as it is?’ asked Dickens.
‘You know I think so, but, I am a policeman —’
‘And a good one, too, Samivel.’
‘Thank you. But, it shouldn’t have happened — not here, not under my nose. A matter of professional pride, I suppose — not really important in matters of life and death.’
‘You’re not worried about the inquest?’
‘You mean that I might be censured? Not really — I’ll get over it, promise the Commissioner to be more vigilant in future. No, it’s a feeling of unfinished business. What if it had been some really hardened murderer — someone we wanted to see punished by the full weight of the law? We’d feel he’d got away with it — or she. Mrs Manning, for instance.’
‘She wasn’t a gentleman.’ Dickens smiled at him.
‘No — she wasn’t a lady, either. Strong is probably right — we wouldn’t have stripped him — no cause. Well, I daresay, I’ll settle to it, but it all seems such a dreadful waste.’
‘It is. Streaky bacon — life, I mean.’
Jones smiled back. ‘Oh, yes, what you said about your books — what Scrap said.’
‘Yer gotter ’ave the good and bad bits. Philosopher, is Scrap.’
‘So, he is. Would that I could understand what it’s all about.’
‘There’s a destiny that shapes our ends, rough-hew them how we will. Leave it to Heaven, Sam. For now we see through a glass darkly.’
Jones thought about the advertisement for spectacles which had promised that every object would become clear and distinct. He had not believed it. Dickens was right. Imperfect vision — he’d have to be content with that.
Chapter 40: Star Witness
At the inquest on Frederick Willoughby Sefton, Charles Dickens stole the show, as it were — for which Superintendent Sam Jones was much obliged. It took the heat off him.
The coroner’s jury, the witnesses, the spectators, the coroner himself, listened with open-eyed curiosity and admiration as the celebrated writer explained his part in the case of the two doctors, Sefton and Plume, for it emerged — to sensational effect — that the man who had died of opium poisoning in a cell in Bow Street Police Station was the man who had murdered the fashionable Doctor Plume.
Mr Dickens, dressed in sober black, delivered his evidence without flourish, though he had been tempted to employ all his dramatic flair when he saw the audience before him, waiting for him to begin. What power that was — to hold an audience in the palm of your hand. He could have made theatre of it — the miserable cell, the flaring gas lamp, the hoarse breathing of the dying man, the policeman’s strained face, the discovery of the vial of poison, the sickly smell of opium, then the breathing slowing, the last convulsion, the rattle in the throat. What a story. Then, he caught sight of Sam Jones, the white face of Mary Shepherd, the stern countenance of Doctor Hawkins.
He spoke quietly and simply, but his audience was still mesmerised. His eyes held them. Each member of the jury felt certain that Charles Dickens meant him to understand particularly the pathos of the story of the young girl who had been falsely accused of murder. They heard about his conviction that she was innocent — they were convinced, too. Charles Dickens described the death of the young doctor — how he and the Bow Street Superintendent had tried to save him, but they were too late.
Doctor Strong gave his evidence — his terseness and confidence brooked no opposition. The Coroner asked about the search of the prisoner. Why had the opium not been found — surely some dereliction of duty on the part of the police? Doctor Strong gave him a look. The Coroner seemed to shrivel.
The dead man might have been a suspected murderer, but he was a gentleman. It was Doctor Strong’s experience that such prisoners were not stripped naked. The Coroner opened his mouth like a sheep about to bleat, but Doctor Strong was too quick for him. He had examined the prisoner, he went on, and had discovered a pocket in the waistband of the trousers. It was his opinion that the accused had secreted the opium there. Doctor Strong closed his lips like a man who felt he had said more than enough.
Had he grounds for that suspicion? The Coroner dared. His voice was a little hoarse — an asthmatic sheep, thought Dickens, but he admired his courage. The sheep-dog, however, seemed to growl.
‘Smelt it.’
The Coroner thanked Doctor Strong, who then stood down.
Superintendent Jones came to the witness box to give his evidence. He confirmed Mr Dickens’s testimony regarding their attempts to rouse the prisoner. Constable Pinch would be able to support their evidence. He had been present and had made notes in his book.
The Coroner, disarmed by the humble demeanour of the Superintendent, returned to the matter of the search. The Superintendent explained. The accused had been made to empty his pockets. His manner had been quiet; he had confessed to the murder of Doctor Plume and another man, Arthur Brimstone. He had requested that he should be able to write down his story — the Superintendent had agreed, given him paper and pencil, and left him under the eye of Constable Pinch. The Superintendent had returned to the cell when the prisoner had completed his statement. He had noticed nothing about the prisoner which would have made him think that he was about to take his own life. Pinch had offered him tea or water; the prisoner had declined, expressing his desire to sleep. Pinch had heard the prisoner’s breathing. Something in the statement that the prisoner had written made the Superintendent suspicious. He and Mr Dickens had rushed down to the cell, but they were too late.
The Coroner explained to the jury that he would read only portions of the letter written by the dead man. Some of the contents were evidence that would be given at the inquest into the death of Doctor Lancelot Plume — the earlier inquest having been adjourned while the police gathered their evidence. Before they reached their verdict, they must consider the moral history of the deceased, his worldly condition, whether he had met with losses, whether he had been solitary in his habits, his disposition of mind. He read the confession of the dead man. Then he recalled Mr Dickens to the witness box.
‘You recognised some words at the end of the letter?’
‘I did. They were from Shakespeare’s play, Macbeth. The prisoner used the word
s: this even-handed justice —’ he allowed himself a pause. Might as well bow out with a flourish — ‘I knew the rest —’ another pause — just enough: this even-handed justice commends the ingredients of our poison’d chalice to our own lips. He didn’t bow — he heard Jones’s voice in his head. ‘No need to overdo it.’ He simply stood still.
There was silence. His audience was spell-bound — as good as Mr Macready. Jones wanted to applaud. And, it was enough for the jury. Suicide.
Chapter 41: Towards the Future
November went out like the last guttering of a candle — the cheapest of tallow ones. Dickens was glad to see it go. December days came in, burnt at both ends, nights at odds with mornings, which was which.
Dickens looked out onto the bleak, raw day. The garden looked sodden, the bare trees dripping after a night of wind and rain. The house felt damp. Even his study fire had an apologetic look, a woebegone thing spluttering in the grate. About the house, children honked like disconsolate geese — at least half a dozen noses were blocked and more eyes streamed.
‘Oh, bisery, bisery in de dose,’ he had remarked to Frank. Nearly seven, but, Dickens thought, looking a little elderly that morning with a shawl round his shoulders. Frank managed a watery smile. Little Sydney frowned. The Ocean Spectre’s far-seeing eyes seemed to have shrunk into his head, but his look was reproachful — clearly such snufflings and wheezings and sneezings were not matter for levity. Sydney’s look had suggested that Pa might be better employed finding a cure for all their ailments rather than mocking them.
Dickens gave the fire a vigorous poke — it looked hurt, sighed a little, and made up its mind to a few tremulous flames. He went to his desk. There were letters to be answered — always ramparts of letters bristling on his desk, whether at his office in Wellington Street or here, at home. He couldn’t normally bear to leave anything unanswered. But, he recognised the writing of his brother Fred — he didn’t want to open it. It would be about money. Fred — in debt — wanted Dickens to be his guarantor for a loan. He had refused once — back in October or September. Why was it that refusing made him feel immediately guilty? He wasn’t in debt, but he had to pay everybody else’s debts, it seemed. But Fred had a way — like their father — of wounded reproach which somehow put you in the wrong.