The Murder of Patience Brooke (10 page)

‘Mr Godsmark, we are here to ask if you know anything about a young woman, Patience Brooke, who is missing from Mr Dickens’s Home. You knew her, I believe.’

‘Oh, yea, I had met the unfortunate woman. I bade her to leave her sinful ways though she be damned as they all are. I have seen them. That is a house of sin, Mr Dickens, and all are damned that inhabit therein. If she has left that house, having heeded my words, then I praise the Lord in His holiness. The years of the wicked shall be shortened –’

‘You would like to see them dead, Mr Godsmark,’ Sam interrupted.

‘To everything there is a season – a time to be born, and a time to die. God shall bring everything to judgement – not I.’

‘Perhaps that lady could tell us something?’ Sam knew that she would not, but it was something to stop the man’s mouth.

Godsmark beckoned to the woman in black who had stood silent but watching Godsmark with obvious admiration. She came forward, a gaunt, jagged woman, in her rusty black, thin as an iron railing, and as hard, thought Dickens. All her features, hair, eyebrows, nose, mouth, lean cheeks were one hue – the colour of damp yeast.

‘This is Mrs Tender of my congregation. She looketh well to the ways of her household and eateth not the bread of idleness.’

Nor any bread at all, thought Dickens, looking at the starved frame. As tender-hearted as the kitchen poker. She inclined her narrow head, but said nothing, the lipless mouth a long thin crease in the colourless face. Sam, knowing it was all hopeless, made one last valiant attempt.

‘You have not seen the girl?’

‘Her house is the way to hell, going down to the chambers of death.’ The voice was a hoarse whisper, and on the word ‘death’ the long mouth clamped shut.

They heard the door open. A pretty young woman of about fifteen or sixteen years came in; she was dressed in black and wearing a close-fitting white cap. She looked at the strangers, puzzled, and a faint blush coloured her cheeks.

‘My child,’ said Godsmark, predictably. ‘Alice Brown, my niece.’

‘Uncle, our meal will be prepared soon.’ She looked at Godsmark warily, twisting her red, chapped hands. Dickens wondered what she was afraid of.

The calculating lizard eyes flicked a glance at the superintendent. ‘If that is all?’

‘Yes, thank you, sir. We will leave you in peace.’

‘Go thy ways, and walk in the paths of righteousness.’ Godsmark followed the girl to the door, and Mrs Tender, whose long mouth seemed designed more for the posting of letters than eating, turned back to her hymnals.

Dickens gave in to temptation. ‘He that winketh with the eye causeth sorrow: but a prating fool shall fall.’

The door closed with a smart rap. Dickens and Jones hurried out just in time to hear the squeaky hinge declaiming once more: ‘Job Grime, the eye of God sees all. Be not among winebibbers, among the riotous eaters of flesh.’

Whoever the unfortunate Job Grime was, he hurried by, his face averted from wrath. The door to the house opposite opened and Godsmark went in to his meal. They leaned on the black wall, giving in to laughter.

‘Oh, Charles, I’d have given a thousand pounds to have remembered “a prating fool” – a stroke of genius.’

‘Pity we could not see his face. I take it you don’t think he is our man.’

‘I wish he were. I’d march him to the scaffold myself. But, no, on balance – despite his relish in the short days of the wicked. But here is Alice Brown – we could ask a few questions.’

The superintendent stopped her. ‘Miss Brown, may we have a word with you?’

‘I am going to the pie shop. I must not be long.’ She looked back anxiously at the house.

‘This will not take much time. Does your uncle speak of the girls from the house in Lime Grove?’

‘He says they are wicked, sir, and a warning to young women. He says that those who fall from the paths of virtue are damned.’

‘Have you heard him speak of Patience Brooke?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Does you uncle go out much at night?’

She was puzzled at the turn of the questions, but answered willingly enough. ‘Yes, sir, he visits the poor of our congregation to give them instruction if they have not come to chapel.’

‘What time does he come home?’

‘I don’t know, sir. I am sent to bed early.’

‘Last Friday night,’ Sam trod carefully, ‘was your uncle out of the house at his visiting?’

‘Yes, sir, but I had to send the boy to find him. My aunt, she has lost her wits, fell out of her bed. I heard the bump. I was frightened. I had not strength enough to lift her so I sent for Uncle and he came.’

‘At what time?’

‘It was near ten o’clock, sir, for after he came, I heard the church clock strike the hour.’

‘Are you happy at your uncle’s?’ asked Dickens.

The anxious look shadowed her face again, and he noticed the faint red on her neck rising to her cheeks. ‘They gave me a home, sir, and I must be grateful. My aunt is bedridden, and I have much to do to care for her. My uncle can be stern, but I am sometimes deserving of correction. I must go now – he will be angry if I am too long.’ She was impatient to be gone, shifting from one foot to the other.

‘Thank you, Alice. You may go now.’

‘Thank you, sir.’ She scampered away into the darkness.

‘I wonder what form his anger takes,’ said the superintendent. ‘A beating, I shouldn’t wonder – deserving of correction, indeed.’

‘I expect he enjoys it. It is interesting that the aunt has lost her wits, as the girl said. It leaves her very much in his power.’

‘And he is a man of appetite, I think.’

‘Yes, there was something about his mouth that repelled me, plump and voluptuous. And his hands – that thick whiteness was somehow horrible.’ Dickens shuddered.

‘And the girl’s hands were red and work-worn, and the nails bitten down – signs of too much drudgery and anxiety. Poor girl, I wonder whether she will escape his clutches.’

‘Clutches is the word. He is a lascivious knave, a fool, a canting hypocrite but not a murderer, I think,’ said Dickens.

‘No, indeed. I am not sorry, in a way. I do not think I could stomach him again.’

‘I have thought of something,’ said Dickens.

‘What is in your mind?’

‘The name Alice Brown made me remember something. You said we must try to find out how Patience came to the Home. I was thinking whether she had met someone who had once been with us. The name made me recall Alice Drown, a girl who left us. She vanished over the garden wall, dressed in her Sunday cloak and bonnet. She was not troublesome like Isabella. She was too good-natured for that – a big, laughing, blowsy girl. I knew in my heart that the place was too small for her – too confined. When I mentioned the races at Goodwood to her, she said she wished she could go, too. She had a fancy for cold chicken and champagne, if you please. She had been in prison for theft of a hat – with red feathers, she said, as if she regretted the feathers more than the sentence. But, before that she had been on the stage. Patience must have met someone from the home – Alice is one possibility; there are few others whose fate we do not know.’

‘But could we find her?’

‘She had a brother –’ Dickens paused as if he were about to produce a rabbit out of a top hat – which he was – ‘Edward Drown – I remember because of the singularity of the name, and the contiguous singularity of his calling – he is or was – a longshoreman.’

Sam laughed, ‘Are you sure you did not make him up? He could be a character in one of your books.’

‘No, I am sure I did not, though I rather wish I had. I remember writing the name in the casebook I keep about the girls – Edward Drown or Drown-Ed, as I thought of him. And, I remember where he lived – Jacob’s Island – he was a longshoreman down there. Surely we can find him?’

‘We will look. We will engage the services of the river police – it’s not a place we should go unaccompanied. We should go towards the end of the day, when he might be at home. It’s a grim place and dangerous – apart from the risks of cholera,’ he gave an ironical smile, ‘there are the prigs, the fences, the cracksmen, the murderers and the laggers who infest the place. But, you know it, of course.’

‘Research, of course; I wasn’t fencing the family silver! I went with the river police – and you are right, it’s a sinister place – just the place for Bill Sikes. But, I don’t think Drown is a criminal. As far as I recall, Alice Drown said he was a respectable man who earned an honest living.’

‘That will make him easier to find then. Now, I will tell you what I was thinking. First, I would like you, when you can, to talk to the Reverend Goodchild. I want to know the truth about Francis Fidge, if we can find it. I feel him on my conscience. He is an unhappy man, and I would like to leave him alone to find whatever peace he can. Secondly, as I am a man and not a spirit, I am hungry and my mind dwells on that pie shop Alice Brown spoke of.’

They walked away from Sepulchre Lane to a street with a few shops. They saw Alice Brown buying her pies, and waited across the road until she came out. As they approached the door, Dickens said, ‘I used to sing the song of the cat’s meat man when I was a boy – it was one of my most successful turns; the words are engraved on my memory –
Fango,
dango, with his barrow and his can
!’ He grinned at Sam, ‘Not that I was suggesting –’

‘Yes, you were, but this looks a respectable place. You will join me?’

Sam handed over a penny apiece, ‘My treat,’ he said with a grin. They ate the eel and mutton pies when they reached the precise temperature at which they were delicious to swallow, and they were good with tender chunks of meat and golden crisp pastry. They went back into the cold air to find the omnibus which would take them back to London.

‘I dine out tonight,’ said Dickens. ‘When shall we begin our search for Drown-Ed?’

‘Tomorrow, I think. Are you able to go down to the Home then?’

‘I will write in the morning, and go down in the afternoon to see the Reverend Goodchild. Then I can go and consult my book at the Home, and check that Mrs Morson is managing. She looked very tired when I left. I said I would see about getting some help for her. I must go home then, but I will send you a report if I find out anything about Francis Fidge which is urgent. You and I might dine together on Monday in the early evening before we visit the river.’

‘Come to my house at five o’clock. We can talk more easily over supper there – if you do not object to Elizabeth hearing what we say.’

‘I do not.’

‘Remember Posy – she is – er – ambitious.’

‘Oh, court dress, is it? I have not enough faith in my legs for white stockings!’

‘I think she will accept a bright waistcoat – perhaps brass buttons – and the diamond pin might pass muster.’

Dickens laughed, ‘It shall be done.’

The green omnibus was waiting with the conductor standing on a step next to the door, steadying himself by holding on to a leather strap fixed high on the back of the bus. Inside, the bus was narrow and cramped; there was a layer of straw on the floor, damp and dirty now from the feet of the many travellers who had passed to and from town. They stepped in to join the company of passengers. There were not many at this time, a girl, perhaps the maid in a grand house, returning from a Sunday visit home with a basket of fruit; a portly man in a well-worn greatcoat; a young woman with a scrap of a baby in a dingy shawl and a pale clerkly looking young man reading a pamphlet. With a jolt, the omnibus started. It would take them from Shepherd’s Bush along the Bayswater Road through Notting Hill to Oxford Street where Dickens and Jones would go their separate ways, Sam Jones to Bow Street then home to his Elizabeth, and Dickens to dine with Mark Lemon, editor of
Punch
magazine and John Forster at Forster’s lodgings at number
58
, Lincoln’s Inn Fields.

Dickens, having furnished Miss Murdstone with her hard steel purse and jail of a bag on its heavy chain, and condemned Clara Copperfield and her son to a life of subjection to the Murdstone tyranny, tidied his papers and laid down his pen after cleaning it with Poll’s pen-wiper. He was satisfied with his morning’s work on his novel and he had written a tactful letter to Miss Coutts, whom he must find time to see. Now he was ready to go in search of the Reverend Goodchild. He usually walked in the afternoons alone or with John Forster on whom he intended to call before taking a fly to Shepherd’s Bush.

He walked down Devonshire Place towards Margaret Street, turning left into Oxford Street, along to High Holborn, and into Gate Street. At Whetstone Place, he stopped to listen to a group of handcart organists who had stationed themselves on the corner. The organ was a curiously convoluted piece of machinery with its pipes and metal reeds supplemented by bells, drums, triangles, gongs and symbols emitting a cacophony of sound not exactly pleasing to the ear. What attracted Dickens was the drama on the puppet stage where figures about fourteen inches high were clothed in exotic purples and gold, tinsel and spangles. There was Daniel in the lion’s den, a Grand Turk with his scimitar, and Nebuchadnezzar wearing a golden crown. Dickens, who loved the theatre, was entranced, though how, he wondered, had Napoleon got himself among this Eastern tribe?

Laughter and applause followed each amazing feat, especially when Queen Victoria drew her sword to lay about the enemy. How she came there, Dickens could not imagine, but he dipped into his pocket like everyone else. Looking through the dispersing crowd, he saw a face. It was a man with a crooked face. He had a fleeting impression of a pale face, dark, brushed back hair and of furtiveness. That was all. The face vanished then reappeared, its body with it, walking down Whetstone Place towards Lincoln’s Inn Fields. Dickens was sure – he started off in pursuit but the crowd was stupidly wandering in all directions, and he found himself entangled in a woman’s skirt and then almost tripped up by a dog on a piece of rope.

‘Gerrout of it!’ a rough voice cried out.

‘By all means,’ said Dickens, stepping back to avoid the snapping jaws of the man. The dog looked apologetic. He found himself eye to wall eye with a skewbald horse attached to a cart carrying an assortment of pecking hens. God, he thought, it’s like being in a malignant Noah’s Ark. Freeing himself, he pushed his way through that portion of people going along Whetstone Place. He dashed to the end of the street and looked quickly right, down to where Searle Street joined Carey Street and left towards High Holborn, but his quarry had vanished. He stood catching his breath. There was no way of knowing which way he had gone. But what Dickens did know was that his man with a crooked face was not a pedlar – he was a man in the black suit and white collar of a clerk, and it was possible that he was going to Lincoln’s Inn. Perhaps it was not Davey’s twisted face, but it would be worth investigating, a job for Constable Rogers, perhaps. He had not time now to visit John – that would keep.