The Murder of Patience Brooke (22 page)

They dined on oysters, turbot and beef with a good bottle of claret. Dickens explained that he wanted to find Crewe in relation to a girl missing from Urania Cottage and that he was working with Superintendent Jones of Bow Street about whom Mark Lemon knew.

‘Helping the police with inquiries, eh?' said Lemon.

‘I am,' said Dickens, ‘thinking of setting up in the detective line with a large brass plate. Terms: ten guineas to find your lost cat, dog – or child – if you should want it back.'

Mark laughed and regaled him an advertisement he had put in
Punch
. ‘I could not resist it. Listen to this: “Wanted: a place of solitary retirement by a person thirty years of age who wishes to exclude himself from all society and live as a hermit for any period not exceeding seven years, on suitable terms!” It's true as I sit here – from the
North British Advertiser
.'

‘I wonder if the suitable terms means that he pays or the employers pay. What would be the duties of a hermit? Do you suppose he inhabits a grotto, emerging daily for the edification of noble persons who visit the spacious park? I think I might advertise myself – seven years solitude would mean more than a bit of peace.'

‘Charles, you would not last a month – you would miss the entertainment of your witty friends, like me for instance!' Lemon's round, falstaffian face beamed.

They talked of
Punch
, of friends, of crime and punishment, the time when Dickens had been accused of being a felon by a pickpocket who had tried to steal Lemon's watch. In court, the criminal had tried to turn the tables on his accusers. He identified them as a couple of swell mobsters, and insisted, much to Dickens's amusement, that he had met Dickens in prison doing six months. Then it was time to go.

They found at Boodles in St James's Street a young friend of Lemon, Oliver Wilde, who knew Edmund Crewe. ‘He does not come here so often now – doesn't always pay his debts, y'know.'

They did know.

Oliver Wilde told them that there was a club popular with young bloods, The Polyanthus, and offered to accompany them. It was not far, just across Piccadilly in a side street off Dover Street. Wilde could introduce them to the club where they might take a glass of champagne, and Dickens could see if Crewe were in the gaming room. Dickens repeated a vague tale that he wanted to identify Crewe in connection with a matter of some delicacy – Wilde did not seem surprised so they set off to The Polyanthus.

‘It's all right, Tyce,' Wilde said to the servant, ‘I've brought two friends for a drink. Champagne, if you will.' At the entrance to the gaming room, Wilde pointed Crewe out to Dickens and went to sit in the salon with Lemon.

For the first time, Dickens saw the man whom they believed had murdered Patience and Blackledge. He was, as Rogers's parlourmaid had described, attractive, fair-haired; in fact, he was more than just attractive. His oval face was finely modelled, the lips full, almost feminine, and the high cheekbones giving the face the look of a sculpture. His hair was swept back from his high forehead in waves and he looked, despite being seated, as though he would be tall and strong. There was nothing which marked him out as a murderer, nothing, at this distance at any rate, of the unwholesomeness of Blackledge. Were you to identify one of them as a killer, you would have chosen Blackledge rather than this fair young man with his ready smile. He was smiling as he lost his game, carelessly throwing his cards on to the table, grinning ruefully at his companions and raising his glass ironically to the winner. Unlike Blackledge, Crewe was right-handed. The long hand that now held a champagne glass had held the knife at the throat of Patience Brooke, had pressed the point into the soft flesh, and drawn the swift blade from left to right.

Dickens turned away, sick at heart, and went into the salon to join Mark Lemon and Wilde. Dickens hoped that they might hear some gossip. Crewe came in and lounged with two of his companions on comfortable sofas from where they called for champagne. Crewe declared that he was ready to go home, that he had a particular engagement the next day with a young lady. The others laughed.

‘Caught her, yet, Crewe – is she ripe for plucking?' This from a slight, dark young man with fine features beginning to coarsen, no doubt from drink.

‘I'll beg you not to discuss my future wife so basely, Lovelace, I may have to call you out – and I'm a better shot than you are.' He aimed an imaginary pistol at Lovelace who fell back on his sofa as though hit.

The third of the group, a red-headed burly young man, worse for drink, was more aggressive. ‘She's not accepted you yet an' I don't think she will. What's her father say – does he know about your money situation, eh, Crewe?'

Crewe's good humour turned to anger, and Dickens saw, as the young man stood up and seized the red-headed man by his lapels, that his face was dark with temper. ‘Shut up, you brute – I tell you it's all right. She loves me and my money ain't your business. Look to your own, Carew.' He shook Carew roughly and slouched back moodily on to the sofa. Carew looked equally sulky.

Lovelace offered, ‘Shall we go on, then, somewhere less public, somewhere we can have a bit of fun?'

Crewe said bad-temperedly, ‘I've told you I'm going home. You two go where you like – to the devil, if you will.'

He rose and made his way out of the salon to the hall where he was helped into his greatcoat by the obliging Tyce to whom he gave a coin. He went out, stumbling a little down the steps. Dickens and Lemon rose to go. Wilde finished his champagne and stood, too. He indicated that he would go into the gaming room. ‘I pay my debts,' he said. They bade him goodnight and went out.

Crewe had not gone far. He was leaning against the wall getting his breath. Dickens and Lemon stood uncertainly on the steps. Would he take a cab or would he walk? It looked as if he would walk. He turned into a narrower street. Dickens was struck, as always, with the contrast between the smart streets they had traversed, Piccadilly, Pall Mall and St James's Street and the squalor that was so close, the smell that was under the nose of the wealthy, a smell which they liked to believe a nosegay or two could disperse. Riches and poverty, vice and virtue, innocence and guilt all crowding together in the teeming city. Crewe shambled on; from time to time a woman would approach him, hoping for a customer. He waved them off, scattering coins at them in careless mockery. Once, he turned round to watch a little barefooted girl go by, and in the lurid gaslight Dickens saw his face – the face of a ruined angel. The terrible light showed what he really was.
The rake's progress
, he thought. Crewe had advanced detestably through all the stages of cruelty to murder itself, and he had murdered his own soul in the process. They followed as Crewe walked by the homeless vagrants, indifferent to the child crying in the gutter, not seeing the scrawny dog which looked at him with terrified eyes and cowered against a wall. A stout bundled-up woman walked past in a dress the colour of mud, a matching bonnet and shawl so that she looked as if she might have risen from a nearby ditch, and smelt so, too. She stared at Crewe but he pushed past her. ‘Poor creetur,' she muttered and went on. What had she seen in that beautiful face, ruined by the hideous light?

As they followed, Mark Lemon was able to tell him something of the taunting Carew whose family he knew, and to whom he could take Dickens should he wish to meet them at an evening reception. It would be easy – who would not want to meet the great Charles Dickens? It was an idea – Crewe might be there – in pursuit of his, as yet unknown, lady-love.

The narrow lanes led them at last into the light and into Burlington Gardens.

‘He'll live at the Albany, I'll bet,' said Lemon.

And he was right. They saw him turn right in front of the Albany, home to sixty-nine bachelor apartments known as sets where young men lived in rather cramped rooms, yielding space for fashion. It was enough. The two friends parted on Piccadilly, taking separate cabs to their respective homes.

It was late now; Dickens was ready to go home, but he thought, as got into his cab, that he might call at Norfolk Street. If there was a light downstairs he would knock and hope that Sam would come to the door.

Leaning across the railings which enclosed a tiny patch of garden, he knocked lightly on the downstairs window with his stick. A light showed that someone was still up. Sam was not unused to receiving callers at late hours nor was Elizabeth. Sam appeared at the door and Dickens came quietly in. They went into the parlour where they had dined two nights before. Sam had been sitting by the fire with his brandy and water. Accepting a glass gratefully, Dickens sat down in the chair opposite Sam and felt the glow of the fire warm his boots.

‘Constable Dickens reporting, sir,' he said smiling as the brandy and water slipped pleasurably down. ‘I bring great tidings. I have been out and about in clubs and cabs, taking a peek at the life of raffish young men – what larks! I never was raffish myself. I should like to have been, though. Too late now for us, Sam.'

Sam laughed. ‘You found him and you know something important.' He saw the eyes alight with knowledge, despite the tiredness round them.

‘I have and I do. He lives, as we might have expected, at the Albany. I saw him at The Polyanthus Club, playing cards amiably enough. He is an attractive young man, as the maidservant told Rogers, but he has a temper. He went off in a surly mood after one of his friends taunted him about the girl he wants to marry.'

‘Did he now? We assume then, that having disposed of a first wife, he now looks for a second. That's why he had to find her.'

‘I believe so, and he was annoyed when his friend rattled him about money, the implication being that he, being short of it, was looking to marry it. A living first wife might have got in the way though I wonder who knew of it. It cannot have been common knowledge if he has been pursuing another. Perhaps his marriage to Patience was kept secret – she would not have been, perhaps, a socially acceptable wife. A youthful indiscretion – one that he regretted.'

‘And Patience, too. She left him and we have an idea why – his treatment of those girls and Louisa Mapp told us enough.'

‘We have his motive, that's the thing. His motive to kill her was that he needs to marry again. But what was his motive in tearing open her dress, unbinding her hair and daubing her in that crude rouge? What was his motive?'

‘To suggest that she was a prostitute, that she was one of your fallen women and that she was killed by some angry pimp?'

‘Yes, and because she was not,' said Dickens. ‘She was virtuous and he had degraded her or tried to. Perhaps he could not – I thought there was steel in her. And she insisted to me that she was not a prostitute even though she would tell me nothing else. She resisted him. He could not break her and she escaped him. He could not support that so he destroyed her.'

They were silent for a while. Dickens closed his eyes. As the fire died down, the coals slipped making a sound like a hoarse shushing. Beneath the ash, red glowed, dimmer but still alive. Sam Jones regarded his friend, his eager, restless vitality dimmed in sleep. What a man, he thought as he looked at the face in repose with its broad forehead, firm nose and sensitive mouth. A genius, and a good man. He thought how Charles's life had touched so many others as if threads unwound from his fingers stretching out endlessly. Yet, Sam sensed an aloneness in the still figure. Perhaps we are all like that in sleep. He had watched Elizabeth sleeping after Edith's death, and had felt he could not reach her. He had watched Scrap, too, the sleeping face just a child's when the knowingness of life had gone out of it.

Another coal shifted in the fire. Dickens woke to find Sam offering him another brandy and water. He wondered at the kindness in his eyes.

‘Tomorrow,' said Sam, ‘I will send Rogers back to the Crewe town house. He ought to ask Mollie about the rumours of marriage.'

‘Ah, the shining Miss Spoon. Did I detect a glimmer of a liking there from Rogers?'

‘I wondered about that – it won't distract him though. One of my best lads is Rogers – I hope she's a decent girl.'

‘Sounds like it from what he said. Anyway, Mark Lemon says he can get me an invitation to the house of one of Crewe's companions at The Polyanthus. It might be useful to find out who the lady is. I tell you what, I could find Oliver Wilde, Lemon's friend and ask him. I could do that tomorrow.'

‘And when we have found out, we can go to the Albany and see Crewe. It is time we came face to face with him, even though, as yet, we cannot prove he is a murderer.'

‘At least, when he knows that we know he was married, and that the fact of his marriage would come out at an inquest, it might change his mind about another marriage. From what I heard earlier, the girl's father would not be pleased to know about his impecunious state. He would be less pleased to know that Crewe was secretly married when he was courting his daughter. We might save her.'

‘True, and our visit might alarm him – he might do something foolish like try to get away. I don't know. I just wish we had evidence.'

‘Perhaps Louisa Mapp could help us – we could see her again.'

‘We will. Tomorrow, by the way, Elizabeth is to take Eleanor and Tom, and Poll, of course, back to the shop. Mr Brim is a lot better, but he is fretting about his business so Elizabeth will act as chaperone whilst Miss Eleanor serves the customers. Elizabeth can deal with the man in the white waistcoat – she told me about that – she can pay him off, if necessary. Brim will not like it – too proud – but Elizabeth will deal with that later. Scrap, of course, is to be the bodyguard.'

‘That is very good. And those children?'

‘Are enjoying their holiday, bouncing about the garden at the back with Poll and Posy who seems to have forgotten that she is a lady of position in the house. It is good to see them. Scrap is always on watch, however – takes his duties seriously.'