The Detective and Mr. Dickens (23 page)

Like a puppet whose strings had been pulled, I, of course, nodded my assent, though I must admit that Dickens was much more sanguine about the dangers involved than was I.

“Well, you want us to pay a call upon Lord Ashbee, I take it.” Dickens was completely reanimated.

“Exactly.”

“We were introduced briefly that night at The Player’s Club,” Dickens said, turning to me for corroboration, “and he expressed the desire of furthering our acquaintance, did he not, Wilkie?”

“Yes, quite emphatically,” I answered. “I am certain we will be welcomed if we call upon him.”

Inspector Field fairly beamed.

Rogers, I noticed, sulked silently in the background.

Dickens, however, was all business. For him this was no longer mere novelist’s research. He was in deadly earnest, and the girl was the reason.

“How do you want us to play this scene?” Dickens-the-actor asked.

“Very carefully. We do not want to scare ’im off. It will be enough to know that ’ee is still in the city. If you can gain access to ’is lordship’s person, that will be more than I ’ave been able to accomplish. I simply want you to observe ’im. Perhaps mention the death of Partlow, the turmoil surroundin’ the Covent Garden company. Of course, you must use your own judgment as to what will be appropriate.”

“I could suggest that I would like to interview him as an active patron of the arts for an article in
Household Words.”

“Yes, that might catch ’is interest, open ’im up a bit.”

“Open him up about what?” I was puzzled. “You have just cautioned us, Inspector, not to scare him away and yet you want us to ‘open him up’?”

“Simply observe ’is reactions, Mister Collins. ’Ee will not reveal ’imself in ’is conversation. You can be sure of that. But ’is face will react. ’Ee may exhibit nervousness in ’is gestures. You must be closely observant, and perhaps you will come away with some sense of the man, of whether ’ee is involved in this case or not. That is all. Simply observe. It is the little things, the twitches that give ’em away. Those twitches carry no weight in the court of the land, but for the true detective they are everythin’.”

Dickens smiled. Field’s oration came to be known among the three of us in later years as his “Simply observe” speech. Field was charging Dickens to go out and function as a novelist in the real world, to write a character from the observation of real life. In a way, it was a challenge from the detective to the novelist, as if Field were saying, “Are you really the genius of characterization that all of England acknowledges you to be? Then be deuced certain you get this character right.”

“Well, then, when do we make our little social call?” Dickens asked.

“This very afternoon if possible. Right away if convenient.”

“Done!” Dickens cried, and both Field and he broke out in a short laugh.

I looked at Rogers. Even his dour countenance could not help but surrender to a timid and momentary grin.

A hansom cab was called. Our coats were buttoned against the gusting wind, and we embarked upon our latest assignment of deception.

Lord Henry Ashbee’s mansion of white stone with wooden gables sprawled at the head of a long drive. The house was composed of two wings with a small fountained garden in the middle, and rose to a height of four storeys, including the gabled attics. It sat in the middle of a heavily wooded park. In the summer, with the trees fully clothed in foliage, it would be totally invisible from the high-road.

Recognized immediately as gentlemen by the servant who answered the bell, we were admitted to the foyer. The servant took away Dickens’s card on a silver tray. The hallway was dominated by a wide grey marble staircase which rose to a capacious second-floor balcony.

Ashbee fairly exploded out of one of the side doorways, descending upon us hand outstretched.

“Mister Dickens. Mister Collins. What a genuine and pleasant surprise. I am most pleased that you remember me from our brief meeting. I can honestly say that it is for me a genuine honor to welcome into my home a writer whom I so admire, and who has provided me with so much reading pleasure.” As he spoke, he pumped our hands with unbridled enthusiasm, but his words were in no way fawning. He delivered the speech of welcome with a quiet sincerity mixed with enthusiasm, which put Dickens and myself at ease. What I observed was either a man genuinely delighted to receive us, or an extremely competent actor.

Ashbee ushered us into his parlor, and, when we politely refused his offer of brandy (it being too early in the day), he dispatched his manservant for chocolate coffee. He offered us cigars, which we accepted. “Freshly imported from the West Indies,” he assured us. What I observed was a man intent upon every touch of hospitality.

Ashbee cut an impressive figure. He was between thirty and forty years of age, tall, slim, handsome of face, noble of carriage, with rich, wavy brown hair brushed carefully around the edges of his face. Unlike the vast majority of men of the age, Ashbee chose to face the world cleanshaven. His dress and carriage marked him as a gentleman. His was a noble, youthful figure. Only his eyes and the cruel twist to the side of his mouth seemed flaws in his congenial appearance.

“Gentlemen, I am pleased to welcome you. Might I ask what occasions this surprise visit?” Lord Ashbee began.

“Two reasons, really,” Dickens answered. “A desire, since our initial meeting of the other evening, to further pursue our acquaintance. A novelist does not often meet a reader who can quote chapter and verse. Secondly, I wish, only with your consent of course, to exploit you as a source in an article which Mister Collins and myself are preparing for
Household
Words
, an article on the survival of the arts—painting, the theatre, literature—in modern London, the conflict of patronage with the demands and growing power of the popular audience…that sort of thing. I was hoping you might offer your views of the modern art scene.”

I marvelled at the smoothness and forthrightness with which Dickens lied. I had been rehearsing with him as an actor for nearly six weeks, but I had never observed him in such mastery of his part.

“Ah, the arts,” Lord Ashbee said, slouching contemplatively in his chair and bringing his hands together in front of his face, the thumbs meeting on his lips, and the fingertips forming the effigy of a Gothic cathedral.

“May I be frank?” he continued. “I am sure that you would not place my comments in an embarrassing light.”

“I assure you, sir,” Dickens leaned forward, “you will be quoted accurately and with no editorial manipulation. You have my word.”

“That is enough,” Ashbee smiled, but that twist at the right corner of his mouth distorted the trust which that smile should have expressed. “My view of the arts is a quite simple one. I am a sensualist.”

He must have noted the surprise pass over both Dickens’s and my countenance at his use of that word. A “sensualist” was not something that a respectable gentleman at midcentury readily admitted to being.

“Ah, I see I shock you,” he said, his twisted grin dancing. “I don’t mean to shock. I don’t use that word in its vulgar sense. I am a sensualist in that I live for the stimulation which beauty can bring to all of my senses. It was on the Continent—in Paris, in Rome—that I learned the sensual pleasures of surrounding oneself with beauty. No, not vulgar sensuality, but the joy of possessing and looking at sublime paintings and works of sculpture, of reading and hearing the most elevated language in the hands of the finest writers and actors. I have no motives for my artistic patronage other than personal pleasure. I am a collector of beauty: that which is lasting, like my Greek and Roman statues; that which is entertaining and thoughtful, such as your novels; that which stirs the emotions of an evening, such as Macready’s plays.”

It was, it seemed, an honest and heartfelt speech.

“Yes, of course, I understand you now.” Dickens was too acquiescent. “You govern your life by your aesthetic sense?”

“Yes. Well put. That is it indeed. I feel that London offers a variety of opportunity for such aesthetic appetites.”

“What would you say are the most attractive aesthetic opportunities which London offers?”

“
You
certainly are one, sir,” he smiled with a sudden grotesque animation, his handsome face marred by that cruel twist. “English literature, your novels, the marvelous poetry of Wordsworth and Byron, and Lord Tennyson, is at its highest point since Shakespeare. The English theatre is, to my mind, the best in all of Europe. Even English painting is beginning to show the daring, the fire, of the French. A painter like Turner could not have come to prominence in the last century—too radical. Yet now he carries the day. Have you seen his latest seascapes? Striking. If only the English could learn to paint the nude as the French can.”

It was a
tour de force
.

Dickens returned his notebook to his pocket. “Exactly the sort of comments I was looking for,” he assured Lord Ashbee. “Art is indeed a touching of the personal passion. The theatre, that is where my sensual stimulation is found. I hold our London stage in that same high regard which you have expressed.”

It was conversation of a high caliber among gentlemen of rank and education and aesthetic taste. I held my tongue and tried to observe closely, but I found myself being carried away in the ideas and idealism. Dickens, however, with patient cunning, was steering the conversation toward the theatre and the murders.

“Macready’s company at Covent Garden carries the field right now, I believe,” I said, making my first clumsy foray into the conversation. “Have you seen his
Macbeth
, sir?”

“Yes,” Ashbee said, turning to me, “a quite authentic and moving interpretation but for the sensationalism of the final act. Playing a bit too much to the stalls, there, I felt.”

“Shocking, the events of last evening. I have heard that Covent Garden is to be closed temporarily, performances suspended,” Dickens followed up, and I sank gratefully back into my chair.

“What events?” I felt that a slowing of his voice, a quick moving of his cigar to his mouth before his question, revealed a slight discomfiture.

“Oh, you haven’t heard?” I spoke up again. I was becoming positively garrulous. “Last night, Macready’s stage manager, a Mister Paroissien, was brutally murdered in his lodgings. Terrible thing!”

“Yes,” Dickens said, stepping right in. “I will do an article on it for the
Household Narrative
, our news tabloid. I plan to call it ‘A Death Offstage.’”

“My God, Paroissien.” Either Ashbee was a very good actor or he was genuinely shocked by the news. “The man was an acquaintance of mine.”

“I’ve heard he was a real taskmaster backstage,” Dickens carried right on, “but stabbing him six times in the back is a bit extreme even for an actor’s bruised ego.”

Like vultures, we all laughed at Dickens’s morbid wit, but Lord Ashbee’s heart didn’t seem to be in this conversation.

“The police feel that it was some angry member of the cast of
Macbeth
who did it,” I spoke up again. “They are looking for any irregularities at the theatre, interviewing the actors and backstage people.”

“Curious, is it not?” Dickens struck a philosophic note. “Murder onstage and murder off. Real life imitating art. Isn’t it supposed to be the other way around?”

“Yes, curious indeed,” Ashbee agreed, but he said no more.

“My friend Macready is really quite upset about it,” Dickens feebly tried to keep this topic of conversation alive.

Suddenly, I cannot define exactly what it was, perhaps a tensing of his person, a change in the openness of his face, Ashbee was on his guard. I could hear Inspector Field’s words—“We don’t want to scare him off”—echoing in my mind. Dickens also must have sensed it. He immediately changed the subject.

“If memory serves,” Dickens began (and Ashbee visibly tensed), “you mentioned at our first brief meeting that you were also a writer” (Ashbee relaxed as he realized that Dickens no longer wished to discuss Paroissien’s murder).

“You have an excellent memory, sir,” Ashbee was again his congenial self. “Yes, perhaps I did mention my amateur scribbling.”

“Perhaps I could read some of your best work sometime,” Dickens tendered the polite offer which sooner or later every writer tenders to every other writer. It is an offer which never means what it purports to mean. It is not really an offer to read your competitor’s work. Rather, it is a challenge. “Are you good enough to let me see your work? Are you confident enough to know that I will not be laughing hysterically at you as I read?” are the real questions hidden in that seemingly innocuous offer to read another writer’s work.

“I would be honored,” Ashbee answered guardedly, “although I cannot predict if the subjects of my writing will be congenial to your tastes. My book is unusual, often unsettling in its realistic descriptions.”

“Oh, no fear of that,” Dickens laughed. “I have eclectic tastes.”

That strange, grotesque grin once again twisted Ashbee’s face. It was as if he were enjoying some ironic private joke.

“When I get a substantial piece of my work in order, I should be pleased to have you read it. I would value your opinion.”