Read The Detective and Mr. Dickens Online
Authors: William J Palmer
The Detective and Mr. Dickens (33 page)
A silence fell over the bullpen. The fire crackled in the hearth. We had heard exactly what we had expected to hear, and yet, somehow, none of us had been fully prepared for the brutal reality. I looked at Irish Meg, and I felt like a rapist myself. As I think back upon it now, I realize that Field staged all of this to force Dickens to accept the reality of it all. When Dickens resumed, it was in the woman’s role.
| A: | My daughter was in another world. She could barely speak. |
| Q: | And then what? |
| A: | I went up to his rooms. |
| Q: | Alone? |
| A: | Yes. |
| Q: | Why? |
| A: | My God, she was sobbing into the cushions of the cab. |
| Q: | Why did you go up? |
| A: | I went up to his rooms to accuse him of his treachery. |
| Q: | Treachery? That is a word used in plays. You care nothing about “treachery”; it is your way of life. You knew exactly what “treachery” Paroissien had planned for your daughter, before you ever sold her to him. |
| A: | I didn’t sell her! |
| Q: | You did. (Field’s voice was even and cold.) The truth now. Why did you return to the stage manager’s rooms? |
| A: | To curse him. |
| Q: | Just being in the same room with you is a curse! You went back to collect more money, did you not? You went up there to collect your daughter’s clothes, and to hide or carry off all evidence of the crime she had just committed. Isn’t that why you went back to Paroissien’s rooms? |
| A: | No. No. (The woman was waving her hands wildly before her face.) I didn’t know he was dead. She never said a word. |
| Q: | You entered his rooms. Was the door open? What did you see? |
| A: | He lay dead on the floor in his own blood. |
| Q: | And you fled with your daughter? |
| A: | What else was I to do? |
| Q: | Call for a constable perhaps? |
| A: | The police are so new. One doesn’t think to… |
| Q: | Especially if one wishes to flee from a murder scene. |
| A: | I am concealing nothing (the woman was trying to regain her actress’s hauteur , and not succeeding). |
| Q: | Did you not remove the murder weapon from the stage manager’s rooms? A large sewing shears? Did you not remove it along with your daughter’s clothes? |
| A: | (The woman’s face went grey and stiff.) No. (It was a whisper.) No. (Louder.) No, I took nothing! (She spat the words at Field.) How dare… |
| Q: | Ternan! (Field’s voice froze her in the midst of her tirade.) Did your daughter murder Paroissien? Did she stab him with the cutters? |
| A: | (There was a long pause.) She did not say. |
| Q: | Tell the truth, woman! |
| A: | (Defiant, and, I might add, convincing.) She said nothing to me about the murder. I was fully surprised when I entered the man’s rooms. I entered, passed through to the bedroom, and saw him. That was all of it. I gathered my daughter’s clothes and ran. Ellen said he raped her, that is all! |
| Q: | You lie! |
| A: | (Almost calm.) I do not. |
| Q: | Your daughter murdered him. |
| A: | Perhaps…perhaps not. |
| Q: | You say? |
| A: | Someone else could have come in. After my daughter fled, anyone could have entered, and killed the pig. More than half an hour passed between her leaving and my return, perhaps longer. Someone could have waited until Ellen left, then entered to make it look as if she killed the man. |
| Q: | She did it! |
| A: | She is not more than a child. (The actress resurrects herself, the role of the pleading mother.) A weak girl. She could not stab a man to death, drive him to the floor, and kill him. She has not the strength. |
| Q: | Did you kill him then? (Field mocked her.) You entered the room after she fled. You are older, stronger. If she is so weak, how did she escape her rapist? |
| A: | (The woman ignored Field’s baiting. She sat silent, refusing to answer.) |
| Q: | (Once again, Field walked away.) Where is your daughter now? |
| A: | I don’t know. |
| Q: | That isn’t good enough. |
| A: | I don’t know. |
| Q: | And I say that you do. She is with her, as you put it, “protector,” is she not? With Lord Ashbee? |
| A: | Yes, she is, but I don’t know where he has taken her. |
| Q: | You just gave your daughter to him, in her state, after all that has happened? |
| A: | He is the only protector we have. I had no one else to turn to. We had talked before about Ellen becoming his ward, he the patron of her career. |
| Q: | Her career as a kept whore! |
| A: | No. He said nothing of that sort, nothing indelicate. |
| Q: | You are an artful liar. What he said meant nothing. You knew his plans for your daughter. You sold her to him. |
| A: | No. That is not how it was. He said that he had seen my daughter on the stage. He said that she had great talent and beauty. He said that he had heard Stage Manager Paroissien and others, men of power in the theatre, discuss my daughter in the most lewd terms. He said that she needed a “protector,” I swear it is his word, more powerful than all of the others. “I can be that protector,” he said. |
| Q: | I’ll wager that he did, and with relish. (Field was talking to the fire rather than to the subdued Mrs. Ternan.) |
| Q: | What did you do when he offered to be her “protector”? |
| A: | I thought it a jest. Gentlemen make game of actresses. |
| Q: | Did he pursue the subject? |
| A: | Yes, he mentioned it twice more. He suggested that he could get both of us better parts. Finally, he offered me money. |
| Q: | You did sell your daughter for a whore! |
| A: | No, I refused. I rejected his offer. He said that he wished to protect my Ellen from men like Partlow and Paroissien, who would use her badly. He wanted Ellen to live with him, and he would guide her career. |
| Q: | And he offered you money? |
| A: | Yes. |
| Q: | And you refused? |
| A: | Yes. |
| Q: | Yet she is with him now, is she not? |
| A: | I had no other choice. I did not take her to him until we needed a powerful protector, and there was nowhere else to turn. He promised me that she will never be put in prison, and that he will never turn her out into the streets. |
| Q: | Where is your daughter now? At this moment? |
| A: | I don’t know. |
| Q: | Would you care to guess? |
| A: | The country. The Continent perhaps. I do not know. |
| Q: | You know. Perhaps you don’t think you know but you do. (Field paused to slowly scratch the side of his eye with his meditative forefinger.) Now, quickly, tell me every place where you have met with Milord Ashbee. |
| A: | I and Ellen have dined at his Notting Hill estate. He has entertained us at his Kensington mansion, and, one night after the play, a whole party retired to a large set of rooms in Soho. Those are his places in the city. I have never been to his country house. |
| Q: | (Field’s voice is even and menacing.) You are an insolent old slut. You belong in jail. You will end there forever, if I have any say in the matter. You are a monster of your sex. (Field turns and opens the door) Take her away. Take down a full description of each of Ashbee’s houses and their location. Hold her in custody. |
With those orders, Dickens placed the small sheaf of papers from which he had been reading on the desk and held his hands out palm up in a gesture of
finis
.
“Bravo,” Field stood clapping his hands and laughing. “Quite a performance. I wish I ’ad questioned the hag nearly as well as you made it seem I did.”
“What is our next step?” I asked.
“We must find the girl, free her from this rake,” Dickens insisted, with an urgency that revealed much more, I am sure, than he wished.
“We must find our murderer,” Inspector Field corrected.
“’Ow ’sat goin’ ta git done?” Irish Meg asked, asserting her right to join the conversation on an equal footing with everyone else.
“I’ll bet a bob Fieldsy’s got a plan,” Tally Ho Thompson said, adding his shilling’s worth.
“Indeed I ’ave,” Field said, re-establishing his control, “a plan of patience.”
Dickens looked at me in disappointment.
“We must wait and watch, until Ashbee and the girl resurface. The old bawd ’as described the neighbour’oods and the ’ouses of Ashbee ’ere in the city. Tonight we must find those ’ouses, and establish surveillance. Then, we must be patient and wait for our principals to return. Mark this, they
will
return…and soon, I wager.”
The evening had proved so embarrassing, had been filled with so much madness and melodrama that I had completely lost track of time. I reached into the watch pocket of my vest to consult my gold repeater. “My God, it’s gone,” I could not help but exclaim. “My watch, it’s gone.”
I vaguely remember Field answering my outburst with a short cough, meant, I feel now, to camouflage an irrepressible impulse to laughter. “Isn’t that the second you’ve lost this year?” His face was struggling as he posed that question.
He did not care in the least that my watch was missing. Nothing had gone properly for me this evening. I had made an utter fool of myself, and now I had lost my gold repeater, which had cost me almost five pounds.
Dickens sat silent but, I sensed, sympathetic to my loss.
Meg tried to be helpful, suggesting I think back to when I last had the aforesaid timepiece in my hand.
Thompson said nothing.
Finally, Inspector Field burst out laughing.
I was indignant. “Just what is so funny?” I demanded.
“It’s very funny, Mister Collins.” Field spoke through the grin which he could not control. “You are such a green ’un! Thompson,” and he turned to that worthy, holding out his hand, “give Mister Collins back ’is watch.”
Tally Ho Thompson, with a disgusted shrug, reached into a side pocket of his coat, and produced the gold repeater. “Sorry, Guv,” he said. I didn’t know whether he was addressing me or Inspector Field. “Just couldn’t let such a fine opportunity pass. Snatched it whilst we were wrestlin’ with my Bess back at the theatre. Nothin’ personal.”
Everyone laughed.
Thompson was right. None of this was personal. Dickens and myself were merely slumming, playing a game. Nothing personal. And yet, I could not help but think that for all of us—Field, Dickens, myself—this whole game of
cherchez la femme
had become quite personal indeed.
Confessio Amatis
May 10, 1851—Midnight
This memoir continues upon its careening pace. It is my memory of Charles, but I realize now that it has become more than just that. Dickens was responsible for whatever success I now enjoy as a writer. I write of him herein, yet I also write for myself. What I write now is most difficult of all.