by Tim Mason
Decimus fell silent again.
“Thank you, Mr. Cobb. That will be all.”
The clock on the mantel tick-tocked with agonizing slowness before Decimus finally turned and left the Hunterian Professor of Anatomy to contemplate his own transgressions.
Along the river Thames, the ebb tides each day brought forth swarms of ragged creatures who waded into the filth and sewage exposed by the receding waters, searching for anything of value that might be salvaged and sold. Mudlarks, they were called. Many were children. Not surprisingly, they stank.
One of these, a small boy called Button, opened his eyes reluctantly, awaking to a new day on the riverbank. Button was roughly ten years old, skinny, short, and cross-eyed. His hair was a tangled, matted mess. He yawned and turned over in the barrel that had been his bed in the night, surveying the prospect before him with a sigh. Fog clung to the river’s surface. The tide was receding, but who could spot a treasure in the muck, if there were any, with the fog hanging so low? Button considered having another go at sleep, but an uncomfortable vacancy in his belly sent a stronger signal to his brain. The boy crawled out, had a stretch and a pee, and waded in.
He moved slowly and cautiously. The Thames was dangerous and unpredictable. Where there were shallow waters yesterday, a treacherous underwater ditch may have opened today. Riverboats, large and small, were out there, somewhere, but entirely invisible. In a fog like this noises could be misleading, sounding close at hand when their source was actually far off, and distant when they were looming dangerously near. As Button’s feet stirred the fetid river bottom, gulls swooped and dived, screaming just above his head.
His foot struck the leather pouch before he’d gone five yards. Coated in slime, it had lodged against a rotted spar on the bottom. Groping about, Button found that the pouch had a handle or strap. He seized it in one hand and grabbed the body of the pouch with the other, gently easing it free from the jagged wood. The boy did a preliminary grope inside. It was heavy, filled with silt and muck and some wadded, muddied papers at the bottom. Button drew a sudden breath and abruptly stood upright. The ship’s spar had also caught a man. The hand, which seemed to cling to the splintery wood, looked more or less hand-like, but the mass of swollen flesh it led to, floating sluggishly near the surface, was a bloated parody of humanity. The head lolled, bobbing slightly in the shallow water. An eel had attached itself where the left ear used to be. The insignia on the distended jacket was still visible. Button couldn’t read, but he had seen these same words before, on the facade of a massive building off Moorgate Street: electric telegraph company.
“Blimey,” said Button.
He looked round furtively, made certain he was curtained from view by the fog, and then quickly started going through the bloated corpse’s pockets. He considered himself a businessman. He liked to think he knew to the farthing what he was apt to get for the merchandise he flogged riverside. He knew all the potential buyers by name: the low-life receivers of scavenged or stolen goods who would in turn sell them to others, who would sell them to others still. The merchandise, if it had any genuine worth to begin with, would rise in price and respectability with each sale. Button knew the large leather pouch he’d pulled from the Thames signified, by his standards, a life-changing fortune. For this reason, the boy made the bold and foolish decision to eliminate the middlemen.
He cleaned the wad of soggy, muck-smeared blue papers that he had taken from the bottom of the pouch, wiping them with a rag. These he hid in a tin box beneath his sleeping barrel. Then he eased the big leather pouch into the filthy cloth carry-all he wore when scavenging. He moved furtively inland with his leather treasure hidden in the bag, searching for a pump in a quiet back street. He found what he wanted in the stable yard of a small priory in Southwark. The fog was now his friend, shielding him from covetous eyes. Button cleaned the pouch with assiduous care, using the water sparingly, daubing at the leather with a bit of cloth, all the time trying to decide how much his asking price should be. When he was satisfied with the merchandise, he put himself under the pump and had a good scrub. The dense fog had lifted only slightly by the time Button crossed the river and presented himself at the imposing front door of the Electric Telegraph Company, Nos. 12–14 Telegraph Street, off Moorgate.
The uniformed doorman, without even seeing what Button had in the bag, slammed shut the big brass door. Button made his way round to the tradesmen’s entrance and gave the porter there a peek at the contents of the carry-all, whereupon he was yanked into the building and shoved into the porter’s small office. Before he knew what was happening, a trio of terrifying, black-frocked businessmen had appeared and were staring at him, talking in rapid whispers among each other. Button soon was pulled from that office and marched up two flights of steps into a room so large it staggered him. The ceiling, high above, was a series of massive skylights. Below, the room was filled with women seated at high benches, row after row of them, all of them bent over polished wooden boxes that clicked and chattered incessantly. Beneath the sound of the clicking was the low murmur of women’s voices. There was a high platform in the middle of the room where a solitary man sat, overlooking all.
While his precious leather pouch was passed from one fierce man to the next and closely examined, one of Button’s captors strode off to the high platform. The solitary man, after listening for a moment, looked up sharply. Mr. Apfel, manager of the Moorgate branch of the ETC, climbed down from his perch and soon stood over Button, eyeing the boy darkly. Apfel was florid and well fed, with neatly trimmed whiskers and pomaded wavy hair. He pinched the bag’s opening and turned back the top lip, examining through thick spectacles the numbers embossed just inside.
“How did you come by this?”
“Seven pound, not a shilling less,” said Button, his good eye fixed boldly on the wavy-haired man, while his wandering eye seemed to seek a way out.
Apfel adjusted the glasses on his nose and looked down on the boy incredulously. “What’s that you said?”
“I want seven quid for it,” said Button, thrusting forth his chest. “You know it’s worth ten.”
Apfel nodded, seeming to ponder the offer. Then he backhanded Button, knocking him to the floor. The chattering of the machines continued, but the women’s low voices were suddenly stilled.
“Go out into Moorgate Street,” said Apfel to one of the men, “and fetch in a policeman. Do it quickly, please, the girls have been disturbed.”
A black-frocked man quickly made for the stairs as Button struggled to his feet, his fists clenched for battle. “I got friends, you know,” he said with murder in both his good eye and his bad.
“No, you don’t,” said Apfel, and Button knew the man was right.
Steam rose from the tub in the kitchen at No. 2 Bow Street. Jane Field dabbed at her husband’s head with a hot, wet cloth, removing bandages as gently as she could.
“He was my right-hand man,” said Field. “He was a pillar.”
“Poor dear Mr. Kilvert,” said Jane. “Whatever will you do without him?”
“I do not know, my dear. It is a loss I cannot yet fathom.”
“You’re all the colors of the rainbow, Mr. Field.”
“It was entirely my doing. I sent them on ahead. Why didn’t I keep us all together? Why did I not have a plan? I had none, Jane, and now my friend is dead.”
“You did your best, Charles. You always do.”
“He was with me from the beginning. He saved my life more than once. I’m not . . . Jane, I’m not clever like Mr. Bucket. I wish I was. Oh, God, I wish I was.”
Field wept then, and Jane let him. When he was done, she gave him a thick towel, and he stepped out of the tub.
“You have yourself a lie-down,” she said, “and I’ll bring you up a nice cup of tea.”
Naked and dripping, Field climbed the stairs, dabbing at himself with the towel.
There was a shriek as he passed the ground-floor landing. Field turned and saw Bessie Shoreham
just behind him, one hand covering her mouth and the other holding up a brown envelope.
“Go away,” said Field, glistening.
“But, sir!” she cried, waving the envelope above her head. “This just arrived by messenger for Master!”
“Do go away! Now!”
Bessie dropped the envelope on the landing and fled.
A little more than an hour later Charles Field awoke from a light doze. He ached in every part of his body. He noticed a teapot and a plate of biscuits on his bedside table and an envelope lying on the tray. He reached for it as his wife entered.
“Tea’s cold, I’m afraid, dear—you were asleep by the time I brought it up.”
“Never mind, Jane, I’m feeling better for having rested,” said Field, opening the envelope with a thumb.
“I found that on the landing,” said Jane. “Police commissioner’s seal.”
The message inside was brief.
Report to me directly. If it is at all possible for you, assault no one on the way. It will give me great pleasure to sack you in person. Yours, et cetera.
“Dear?” said Jane. “What is it?”
Field forced a smile as he climbed out of the bed. “Duty, Jane. Duty.”
The magistrate had to lean well over his bench to see the diminutive Button standing below. Button glared up at the judge, his intended ferocity mitigated by the wandering eye. Mr. Apfel of the Electric Telegraph Company stood nearby, impatiently awaiting justice.
“As I understand it, Mr. Apfel,” said the magistrate, “the boy tried to sell some of your own property back to you.”
“That’s right, sir.”
“He is rather a small boy, Mr. Apfel, wouldn’t you say?”
Apfel shrugged, as if to say the size of boys was not a subject within his purview.
“What I am wondering is, why you didn’t merely take back your fine leather bag and boot the lad out the door?”
“Sir, the bag was assigned to one of our deliverymen who went missing days ago.”
“And . . .?”
“He’s gone, sir! Vanished! One of our best men!”
The magistrate leaned back in his chair. “You suspect this boy . . .” The judge leaned forward over his bench again. “You say your name is Button, son?”
“Wot they all call me,” said the ten-year-old.
“Yes. Mr. Apfel, you suspect Button here did away with your man?”
“Given how vicious these wastrels can be, I’d say it’s entirely possible! In any event, who did it is not my concern, sir, it’s yours.”
“Indeed.” The judge peered down at Button. “Where’d you get the bag, boy?”
“River.”
“Ah, yes.”
“The man was already drownded when I found ’im, sir, I never touched the man.”
There was a sudden stillness in the room. “The man?” said the magistrate.
“He were swelled up, that thick!” said Button, extending his arms. “So you see, I didn’t nick the thing at all, it’s mine! How much do I get for it?”
In the course of the afternoon it was a question raised time and again by young Button, who was forced to lead a crew of constables to the site on the south bank of the Thames. Even as the police officers, with kerchiefs tied round their mouths and noses, used grappling hooks to haul the telegraph deliveryman to shore, the boy kept shouting.
“You see? I di’n’t steal the bag, I found it, so it’s mine!”
Something was wiggling about the corpse’s head.
“Are you stupid, is that it?” shrieked Button.
The eel detached itself and snaked off, revealing a gaping left ear hole.
“Crikey,” muttered one of the men.
“If I di’n’t steal it, it’s mine, all right?” Button’s high voice was growing hoarse. “How thick are you lot, for God’s sake!”
24
Sir Richard Mayne, seated behind the great desk in his office, studied his senior detective’s battered face with interest. Field stood opposite, his hands clasped behind his back, staring over his superior’s head out the window behind, wary of making eye contact, wary of the anger he felt simmering beneath his surface.
“Have you lost your mind?” asked Mayne. “Is that it?”
“Not yet, sir. Not altogether, in any case, I hope.”
“Look, you simply cannot go messing about with people of this rank and caliber, Field! The chancellor of the university wants me to bring you up on charges! I mean, what in God’s name do you think you are doing?”
“We lost Kilvert, sir.”
“Lost is the appropriate word, I would say. I hold you responsible for a good man’s needless death, Mr. Field.”
Since the inspector was of the same opinion, he said nothing.
“Come, Charles,” said the commissioner in a gentler tone, “I am as cut up about Kilvert as the next man. So find his killer and bring him to justice, and leave the gentry alone!”
“And if the gentry are involved? There’s a connection here, sir, if only I could see it. Patchen, Rendell, Gates, Kilvert. The Queen.”
“The Queen, oh yes!” The commissioner shook his head and sighed. “Charles, you have your strong points. I hope you’ll not take it amiss if I say that you didn’t get where you are today by thinking, and this is no time to begin.”
Field felt the heat rise to the top of his head.
“Stick to what you know best, Charles. Intimidation. The strong arm. Putting the fear of the hangman into the heart of the wrongdoer. This is your métier, my good man.”
Field forced himself to think of his wife and count ten. “Your note said I’m sacked.”
Commissioner Mayne thought for a moment. Field had won acclaim for a number of successful prosecutions over the years. The Palmer poisonings had caught the imagination of the country a decade earlier. Field’s protection of Lord Lytton and his theatrical production, Not So Bad As We Seem, from the wrath of Lady Lytton had won favorable attention in aristocratic circles. The public knew nothing of the entire Nightingale affair, thank God, but Field’s work there had been impressive and wide-ranging, to say the least. Overriding all these considerations was the most salient argument in Field’s favor: if Mayne dismissed him, the commissioner would be known to the nation as the man who had shown Inspector Bucket the door. No, it was impossible. He would have to consider mollifying responses to Sir Richard Owen and the Earl of Derby.
“You do have legitimate irons in the fire, don’t you, Inspector Field? Ordinary criminals and the like? Apprehend them. Bring them to justice. This is all we ask of you.”
“I’m not sacked, then?”
“No, Charles, you’re not sacked,” said Mayne with an indulgent, avuncular smile.
“And if I take and pitch you out that window?”
The commissioner was silent for a moment. “It was Dickens did this to you,” he said at last. “Gave you ideas above your station, didn’t he.”
“Dickens? Not him, sir. I’d say the greater influence on my current thinking would be Mr. Karl Marx.”
“Karl Marx? Indeed.”
“Indeed, sir. Herr Marx urged me personally to stop waiting beneath your bloody table for the bleeding crumbs to fall.”
“Personally, I see. Because of your celebrity, I imagine.”
“Shall I open the window first or leave it as it is?”
“Get out.”
“Right, then.”
Field turned and left, stumbling down the stairs and out into the street, the folly of what he’d just done to himself rolling over him like a crushing wave. Oblivious to carriages and horses, he rushed across the road toward the Eagle and Child. Just coming out of the public house was a thin man with a broad expanse of forehead, bun-shaped wings of hair on either side of his head, and a beard like a tangled wire brush.
“Inspector Field!”
“Mr. Dickens!” said Field, trying to gather his wits. “How do you do, sir?’
“I’d do a damn site b
etter if you’d stop passing yourself off as one of my creations!”
“I . . . I beg your pardon?”
“Everywhere I go I hear stories of you cashiering on my good name. Mr. Bucket is an invention, do you understand? An invention! He’s a character whom I created! I mean, for God’s sake, have you nothing better to do than to leech off my fame?”
Before the inspector could take in what the great novelist had said, Dickens was gone, Field staring off after him. He couldn’t bring himself to walk into the Eagle and Child. It was as if the entire world had witnessed his public shaming. Never mind that what the man said was blatantly untrue.
It is untrue, isn’t it? God help me, it is untrue, it has to be!
He couldn’t go home, he couldn’t face his exquisite, innocent wife after what he’d just done to their lives. He couldn’t go back in and apologize to the commissioner, he couldn’t return to the building that had been his home for so many years—the best part of his life, the very best. He had exiled himself to the void, with no one to blame but himself.
Inspector Field started walking.
After searching one public house after another, Llewellyn finally discovered Field in the Fortune of War, standing unsteadily at the bar. A nearly empty bottle of whiskey stood at his elbow. Field’s head jerked up when Llewellyn said his name.
“Hallo, Sam,” he said.
“What have you gone and done, sir?”
Field shrugged and smiled wanly. “Temper got the better of me. Drink?”
“What about Josiah Kilvert’s killer, then? What about all of it? You’re just walking away?”
Mickie Goodfellow approached with a freshly pulled pint of beer. “How d’you do, Officer? Our friend here has had a few—I’ll trust you to keep him in line.”
Goodfellow set the glass before Llewellyn and moved off, down the bar.
“Like you asked, I tracked down FitzRoy,” said Llewellyn. “Works on the Board of Trade doing weather forecasting, went direct from Oxford to the Channel Islands.”
“If that nutter is calling the weather, it’s no wonder they always get it wrong.”