The Detective and Mr. Dickens (22 page)

“Quite right. Quite so.” Field tapped the arm of his chair with his forefinger. “Yet it is true and real, I am certain. What ’appened next is not speculation, and verifies this whole scenario.”

Dickens subsided back into a wounded silence. Field softened his voice as if he sensed that there was more at stake in this case for Dickens than the gathering of authentic material for his next novel.

“It is from this point in the night’s events that the signs posted in that dead man’s bedchamber present a much clearer picture.”

The man stood unwavering in his sense of his own rightness.

“Aye, the signs,” Rogers nodded in iteration of his superior’s authority and credibility.

“The stage manager took ’er by force in that bed. She put up a struggle. The actual rentin’ and drivin’ of the bedclothes to the floor signal ’er futile resistance. ’Ee deflowered ’er. ’Er virgin blood mixed with ’is spendin’s pooled in one spot on the foundation sheet, a bright red stain laced with dirty yellow streaks. It formed an almost perfect ’eart-shaped sign. That is the shape formed by the female body lyin’ on its back. Perhaps she was unconscious for some time after ’ee finished with ’er, for she did not move as these fluids drained from ’er body. Perhaps ’ee remained atop ’er body preventin’ motion or flight.”

Field described it as if the girl was no more than a prop which he could maneuver across his stage at whim.

Dickens’s face remained dead and impassive throughout.

“Paroissien left the room, threatenin’ to return and resume ’is perverse attentions. No doubt ’ee proceeded to the water closet to relieve ’imself. ’Ee did not, ’owever, clean ’imself. ’Ee did not wash the virgin blood from ’is sexual member.”

I remembered the distasteful thoroughness of Field’s inspection of that appendage.

“Terrified by the threat of ’is return, the Ternan girl ’urriedly searches the room for a weapon to defend ’erself. She finds ’er weapon and waits beside the doorway, through which ’ee must re-enter. The weapon, a large pair of sewin’ shears, is ready in ’er ’ands. Paroissien, wearin’ only ’is shirt, returns through the door, realizes the girl is not in the bed, ’alts puzzled. In ’er panic, she does not ’esitate. With both ’ands she stabs into the man’s back. ’Ee never saw ’is killer. ’Ee pitched face forward on the floor. ’Ee may ’ave been killed instantly by the first thrust. It may ’ave pierced ’is ’eart. Nevertheless, she was on ’im as ’ee fell, stabbin’, stabbin’, in a frenzy of fear, stabbin’ ’im five more times.”

Dickens simply could not maintain his unnatural detachment any longer. “That’s absurd.” He was attempting to speak forcefully, but his voice wavered out of control. Field and Rogers stared at him in surprise. His voice was a thin rasp: “She could not have done this evil thing. She is too young and innocent. She hasn’t the strength. You cannot be serious.”

Field’s face rarely betrayed any emotion, yet I thought I detected a softening around Field’s mouth and eyes, an understanding. I feel that at that moment Field realized that Dickens was in love with the girl.

“You cannot know this, all of this,” Dickens struggled on. “That room was splashed with blood. You cannot prove that he had his way with her. There was no such murder weapon in that room, no sewing shears.”

Field spoke softly: “True. There was no murder weapon in the room when we arrived. She took it away with ’er. Do you remember the drawer that ’ung open in the washstand? Sometimes it is not so important what
is
in an opened drawer as what
is not
and ought to be. There were needles, spools of thread, fabric patches, swatches of dark wool, but no shears for the cuttin’ of these ’ousehold fabrics. Those shears were the murder weapon. The wounds were not made by a knife. Those wounds were too large, too wide. They were made by a thick, blunt, pointed object. The doubled blade of a pair of sewin’ shears.”

“No. No. I can’t believe it. She is but a child,” Dickens said in a low distraught whisper. “How do you know that she was the only one there? Could not someone else have been there?”

“There are, of course, other possibilities,” Field said calmly. “Another person or persons could ’ave been in the room with ’em.”

“What do you mean? Who?” Dickens strained forward in the chair.

“Or, they could ’ave been surprised in the act of love.”

“What do you mean?” Dickens sank back. “Why would others be there?”

Field stared levelly at him.

Dickens slowly lowered his eyes, shaking his head in disbelief, and murmuring “no, no,” beneath the threshold of hearing. After a long moment, his head came back up, his eyes still struggling with that disbelief.

“Watching?” It was more a plea than a question.

“Yes, possibly, or…” Field’s voice was quiet, level, cold.

“Oh God, Wilkie, what a perverse dose of reality we have walked into this night.” He was turning to me for relief from the relentless truths that Inspector Field sent raining down upon his sensibilities. “Who could possibly make up such a godless party?”

“Perhaps the old bawd who sold her daughter. Perhaps Ashbee. Perhaps someone of whom we have no information at all. Anythin’ is possible.” Field, I feel, was simply musing aloud, with no real conviction in his voice, yet Dickens seized that straw.

“Ashbee?” Dickens pressed him. “Why Ashbee?”

“No one else is involved in this case.”

“You feel Ashbee, a gentleman, would stoop to this?”

“I have unearthed some rather unsettlin’ rumors concernin’ Milord Ashbee,” Field replied.

“Then, if he or the old witch were there, they could have killed Paroissien. She may be innocent.”

“No…,” Field replied sadly, “I fear she is no longer innocent.”

Dickens glared. Field met his eyes with a steady gaze.

“Unless Paroissien left the front door open by some prior arrangement, they were not surprised. There were no marks of forced entry. Unless the mother, the others, entered with Paroissien and the girl, there was no one else there. There is no sign of any other person ‘avin’ ever been in that bedchamber.” Field spoke with quiet decisiveness.

Dickens’s eyes were dead.

“I am certain that Miss Ternan killed Paroissien. But, I am not certain that a crime ’as been committed ’ere. She could well ’ave been defendin’ ’erself against further violence.”

Hope fluttered feebly in Dickens’s countenance. “Yes, could not Paroissien have been killed after the girl left the rooms, if, indeed, she ever entered them? Could it not have been one of those actors? He was universally disliked at the theatre.”

“I would be surprised if that were the case,” Field replied. “Both Fielding and Price were being followed tonight. If they went anywhere near Paroissien’s rooms, I will know it. The girl was there, and ’er virginity was taken. That ’eart-shaped spot of blood on the bed sheet can only be ’ers. The dead man’s blood never reached the bed.”

As strenuously as he was trying to control them, all of Dickens’s emotions of horror, of loss, of love and pity and hate and fear and utter repulsion plagued his countenance. I looked upon Dickens’s face, and a dark thought cast a jagged shadow across my imagination. Was Dickens so stricken because the girl was no longer a virgin? Did he mourn the loss of a lustful dream no different from that of the two murdered men who preceeded him in their fascination with this Medusa child?

“Are you a’right, Mister Dickens?” Field addressed his stationhouse guest with genuine concern.

“Yes,” Dickens replied slowly. “Yes. I am simply shaken by this evening’s events. It is all so…so shocking.”

Suddenly, he started up and faced Inspector Field and Serjeant Rogers with an intense air of supplication in both his posture and his voice.

“I…we…we must find her, save her!”

Milord in the Afternoon

May 9, 1851—late morning

Events progressed in a rush following the murder of Paroissien. Field could not afford to allow the trail of the Ternan women, the suspected murderess and her pandering mother, to grow cold. He had to find the girl before she could flee the country. Sentinels were dispatched to monitor the railway carriages and the ports of departure for America and the Continent. Field, like a great spider, was putting out his threads, spinning a complex web of surveillances, spies, informers. Dickens—driven by a tempest in his soul, driven perhaps by a paternal desire to protect his innocent child-woman; or perhaps by guile, by lust, by shame for his whole gender, driven by myriad confused motives—also needed to find her, needed, in his romantic imagination, to ride out like some latter-day St. George to slay the dragons and rescue her.

By pre-arrangement, I arrived at the
Household Words
office in Wellington Street shortly after nine that next morning. Dickens, by all evidence, had been up and at work for some time. He seemed quite busy, yet I soon realized that he was an actor in a role. We had been instructed by Inspector Field to wait, but, for Dickens, waiting was clearly (as indicated by his heated pacing of the room, as if he were some caged animal) intolerable. In midstride, he burst out: “There is no time to lose.” His voice was stretched taut with emotion. “We must find that old bawd and the child before they flee the city. We must awaken Macready. We must find out where they live and go to their lodgings.”

It was all that I could do to persuade him that Inspector Field was doing exactly that. I must confess, however, that I wondered if we would ever be given entry back into the case. It was in the hands of the professionals now. Was Dickens not already suspect in Field’s eyes due to his passionate outbursts on behalf of the young woman?

Yet, he had told us to wait…and wait we did through a long morning of pretending to ready the next number of
Household Words
for the printer. The sound of a clattering post-chaise reining in below the bow-window jolted us out of an awkward preoccupation with our own secret thoughts. We looked directly down as Inspector Field and Serjeant Rogers disembarked. Our eyes met in a look of relief, of rekindled excitement that we were still actors in the play.

In a torrent of words Field apprised us of his morning’s machinations. He had been hard at work spinning out his web, but with little success. The paths of escape by rail, by coach, by sea had been sealed. Macready had been awakened, informed of the death of his stage manager, and consulted as to the lodgings of the formidable Peggy Ternan and her
ingénue
daughter. Both Price and Fielding had been fully interrogated as to the habits, companions, and frequentings of the deceased Paroissien.

“The two women ’ave temporarily disappeared,” Field declared, “but they are still in the city. They shall resurface soon.”

Inspector Field, however, had not clattered up Wellington Street merely out of professional courtesy. No, he was not the kind of man who wasted his time in gestures of meaningless
politesse
.

“All along there ’as been one gapin’ ’ole in this case,” he began.

“What hole?” It was my voice which posed the obvious question.

“Everyone involved in this affair ’as been interviewed, ’as been placed under surveillance, except for one man, Lord ’Enry Ashbee.”

“Are you sure that Ashbee is a part of this case at all?” Dickens seemed calm. “He is, from reputation and all appearances, a gentleman of wealth and influence.”

“No. Not sure,” Field answered.

“Then why does he arouse your suspicions?”

“Because ’ee refuses to talk with me,” he hesitated effectively, “and because of the rumours about, concernin’ milordship.”

“What rumours?” I jumped in with another obvious question. Only Rogers, who I am sure was contemplating the uselessness of consorting with such rank amateurs as Dickens and myself, chose to hold his tongue.

“Ashbee certainly is a gentleman of wealth and influence,” Field said patiently, “but my information suggests ’ee is also a notorious rake, a man of many identities who samples all of the perversions of the city under cover of darkness. ’Ee was of the group the night that Solicitor Partlow was killed. And…” Inspector Field tapped his emphatic forefinger sharply upon Dickens’s desktop. “And ’ee refuses to grant me access to ’is person for the posin’ of the most routine of questions. We must get at Lord Ashbee now. I ’ave tripled the surveillance around ’is ’ouse at Nottin’ ‘Ill Gate. Though ’is servants deny it, I am sure that ’ee is in the city.”

I looked at Dickens.

Dickens, a small grin pursing his lips, returned my glance.

We both instinctively knew what was coming next.

Noting our reactions, Field decided to forego the formality of asking.

“Well, sirs, what’ll it be?” He had a sly grin on his face. “Are you ready to go back on duty for Inspector Field?”

“To be sure.”

“Yes, certainly.”

“Yes. I knew you would,” he said, smiling with genuine approval of our eagerness. “You’ve been bitten just as I ’ave. You are too far in, now, to go aturnin’ back.”

“Quite right.” Dickens, in an overflow of enthusiasm, clapped Inspector Field on the shoulder. “We want to follow this to the very end. We’ll do anything we can to help, won’t we, Wilkie?”