The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  He sat Meg and Bess by the fire, which was burning low, and directed me to a nearby chair. A brandy bottle materialised out of thin air and a clipped “Glasses, Wilkie,” propelled me to the cabinet. He poured for the three of us, poked up the fire, then settled, half-standing, half-sitting, on the edge of his capacious desk. He waited while the women sipped.

  “Bess, what is it? What has happened?” he finally broke the silence.

  The brandy had somewhat restored Scarlet Bess to her senses, but I usurped her turn to speak: “Bess and Meg came to me for help, Charles,” I lied. I had not mentioned my arrangement with Irish Meg, our shared domicile, to Dickens, but, nonetheless, I was rather sure that he had guessed at our relationship. Meggy glared at me for this denial. Fear of her speaking out spurred me on: “It seems Thompson has been taken up, though it is all quite confused.”

  Dickens ignored my nervous intrusion. He moved to one knee in front of Scarlet Bess. “Bess,” he quietly prompted (I had seen him act the same reassuring fatherly part with the Ternan girl eight months before), “Bess, tell me what has happened.”

  “’Ee’s in terrible trouble now, ’ee is, Mister Dickens,” she stammered. “With ’is past they’ll ’ang ’im sure this time. They think ’ee mordored some poor girl. My Tally ’O’d niver mordor no poor girl, Mister Dickens. Fieldsy’s gone an put ’im in Newgate.”

  “Newgate!” Dickens gasped. It was that word that seemed to drive home the gravity of the situation. “This is serious”—he looked to me, then shifted his gaze to Meggy. “Go on, Bess”—he took her firmly by the shoulders as she began, once again, to shake with sobs.

  “’Ee’d jus’ niver do sech a thing.” Her voice was soft and pleading. “All I knows is ’ee’s been tyken up for a mordor an is in Newgate since las’ night.”

  “You told me he was with you all last night.” My voice was surprised. “How could he be with you and still be taken?”

  She stared blankly at me. Meg glared, fire darting from her eyes to lick at my indiscretion. You are not helping in this matter at all, her look warned. I stifled any further impulse toward accusation or truth.

  Dickens rose from his position between Bess and the fire, patted her gently on the shoulder, and moved to my side. Silently, with a hand on my elbow, he drew me up out of my chair and across the room into the bay window, well away from the women.

  “Charles, what should we do?” I kept my voice down.

  “Is this all we know, Wilkie?”

  I nodded a silent assent.

  “Did Field arrest him?”

  “That is what she seems to think,” I answered.

  For Dickens, there was not a moment’s hesitation: “Then, of course Wilkie, we must help him now. God knows he has helped us in the past, and Field as well.”

  For Dickens, this was not about murder or the reliability of either Tally Ho Thompson or Scarlet Bess, nor was it about guilt or innocence. It was simply about friendship and loyalty between men of the streets, simply about the paying back of old debts. After all, as I look back at it now after twenty years, Tally Ho Thompson had helped Dickens find and save his Ellen. He had helped Dickens, like some swashbuckling Sam Weller or some trick-riding Sancho Panza, play knight-errant.

  In mere moments the four of us were crowding back into that hansom cab under the uncomprehending gaze of its drowsy driver and its sloe-eyed horse.

  “The Protectives Station in Bow Street. Quickly,” Dickens gave the order this time.

  We clattered out of Wellington Street and straight up the Strand to Bow. The bells of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields pronounced a doleful ten of the clock and the traffic was thick on both sides as the theatres were just letting out. We weaved our way between coaches and made Bow Street after a respectable interval. No one spoke during this short traverse. As we rolled through the traffic, I observed the return of that same coiled tenseness that had possessed Dickens during that long night eight months ago spent in hot pursuit through the rain and fog of London’s streets after the fleeing Ashbee and his young captive, Ellen Ternan. I had observed then Dickens’s violent agitation at the thought (and reality) of Miss Ternan in danger, as well as his tenderness when she finally was delivered from that danger. Choosing discretion, however, I had not inquired of her since. I knew that she (under an agreement struck between Dickens and Inspector Field) had never been charged or put on trial for the death of Paroissien the rapist. I also knew that she had been placed, under a fictional name (again by the arrangement of Dickens), in Urania Cottage, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts’s Home for Fallen Women. But that was all I knew of Ellen at that time and Dickens never proffered one word about her. It was only recently, when Field and I talked away that afternoon in the public house under the shadow of the Abbey on the day of “the Inimitable’s” state funeral, that I learned how Dickens visited her there every week as if he were John Jarndyce and she were his ward of the court. But again I digress. This second commonplace book feels burdened by the past. Tally Ho Thompson’s incarceration had suddenly called in all those past debts. This time Dickens was not off to play St. George, but rather was acting like a biblical father setting out to rescue his prodigal son.

  The gaslamps blazed like inquiring eyes on the face of Bow Street Station.

  “Stay here,” Dickens ordered our seemingly catatonic cabman. “We will need you yet again tonight.”

  “Not a tuppance ’as ’oi seen yet, guv,” the man complained, startling us all with his first words, nay, signs of sentience.

  Dickens passed him up a handful of shillings. “You are ours for the night. You will be well paid,” he assured the driver who, after clutching the money in his ragged paw, slipped back into his customary doze.

  Serjeant Rogers sat in command at the front desk in the act of dispatching two constables on business when the four of us streamed through the front door of the station house. He was his same ruddy, bewhiskered, officious self, a thick block of granite with the disposition of a jealous schoolboy. He didn’t like Dickens and me because he considered no one but himself qualified to consult with Inspector Field on any criminal matter. Field was Rogers’s private park and he considered us poachers.

  “Mister Dickens,” he barked, ignoring me, “yee’ve caught hus hon hay busy night.”

  “We must see Inspector Field right away”—Dickens faced him down—“about this Thompson affair.”

  “Yes, huv course, hi hunderstand.” Rogers was backing slowly toward the door of the bullpen attempting to placate Charles with repetitious gibberish. “Hi’ll tell him, hi’ll hask him, hi’ll tell him you har here—”

  But Dickens was not in the mood for waiting to be announced. As soon as Rogers turned the knob on the bullpen door, Dickens swept swiftly in. The three of us followed. Dickens was addressing Field before Rogers could get out even a word of explanation.

  “William, how good to see you. It seems a year rather than but a Christmas month.” Dickens charged so quickly across the gaslit room with his hand outstretched for a shake that Field was at first slightly startled and then amused. It was as if the top had been popped off of some magic box and all that identifiably Dickensian energy had been released into the room.

  “Dickens, ’ow are yew?” Field took Charles’s outstretched hand.

  “Concerned is what I am.” Dickens was intent upon cutting right to the heart of the matter. “This Thompson affair, a bad business. I feel indebted to the scoundrel.” At that, Scarlet Bess, beside me, burst into tears and Irish Meg reached to console her. “Can you tell me what has happened? Why is he in Newgate, of all places?”

  “Because Newgate’s where we takes the murderers.” Field’s face went grim, his voice became even, his crook’d forefinger went up to scratch at the side of his right eye.

  “But surely…I mean, you can’t believe…surely Thompson couldn’t have…” Dickens’s voice trailed off beneath the firm set and grim determination of Inspector Field’s face.

  “Nothin’ else I can
bleeve, as things stand.” Field directed Dickens to an easy chair by the glowing hearth and motioned for Bess to take the other. Meg sat on the arm of Bess’s chair, her hand on her charge’s shoulder. Field fetched a straight-backed chair for me. He stood over us, his sharp eye darting from one to the other.

  Field chose to deal with Bess first, and quite bluntly: “Bess, I’m sorry, but this time it looks bad for ’im. It’s murder ’ee’s charged, an’ the marks against ’im is strong.” At that cruel pronouncement Bess shook with sobs.

  Field ignored her display of emotion, figuring rightly that her hysterics were destined to continue yet a while. He turned to Dickens and me: “I realise yew two gentlemuns are drawn ta the romantick aspects o’ our friend Thompson—ex-’eyewayman, ex-’ousebreaker, ex-swellmobsman, ex-every sort of criminal game’s ta be played—but fact remains that even tho’ ’ee’s actin’ at bein’ an actor, ’ee’s still got a ’eyewayman’s ear an’ a ’ousebreaker’s foot an’ a pickpocket’s eye out for the main chance.”

  “You have mentioned all the things that Tally Ho Thompson has been in times past,” Dickens already was pleading the client’s case as if he were one of those Old Bailey barristers he so despised, “but you have not mentioned the crime of murder. Really Field, Thompson has never hurt anyone, never fired a shot in anger, you cannot believe that he could murder some poor young woman.”

  “Not only does it look as if ’ee murdered that ’un”—Field said as he stared at Dickens—“but ’er mistress as well.”

  “What!” Dickens was so startled that his voice jumped.

  Bess’s head jerked out of her wet handkerchief as if tugged at by a rope. She stared wide-eyed at Field in disbelief, shaking her head from side to side in denial even as the tears streamed down her face. “No!” her lips formed the word, but its sound died in her throat.

  “My God!” I exclaimed.

  Field’s crook’d forefinger once again scratched at the side of his eye as he stood over us three ambushed auditors.

  “’At’s right,” he ultimately continued, “we’ve got two bodies an’ we caught Thompson cold leavin’ the scene o’ the second murder.”

  Two bodies? I was reading Dickens’s mind as our eyes met. Bess had said nothing about a second corpse.

  “Thompson wos there,” Field assured us. “Inside the dead woman’s ’ouse. We caught ’im comin’ out the garden door.”

  An awkward silence pooled between Dickens and Field. Charles was thinking hard on this turn.

  “You caught him in the act of leaving the house, the scene of the murder?” Charles spoke slowly as if testing the words even as he was saying them.

  “We did indeed.” Field nodded. He did not, however, seem at all proud of the capture as a sterling piece of detective work. His “we did indeed” was more a cautious admission of fact than a proud acceptance of credit.

  “Why were you there?” The question seemed to come to Charles slowly as if fed by some distant ventriloquist. In fact, Dickens was simply thinking through the event aloud. “How did you know to be on the scene at the very moment the crime was committed?”

  “I wosn’t there when we caught ’im. They called me to the scene soon after. Two street constables caught an’ ’eld ’im. Knowin’ Thompson I’m surprised two wos enough,” Field made a weak attempt at joking.

  “But why were they there?” Dickens probed again.

  “Report o’ a disturbance. First they found the dead girl ’alf out o’ an alley. Then a street lad pointed out the ’ouse she come from to the two constables just as Thompson wos sneakin’ out.”

  “Can you tell us what happened?” Dickens was no longer interrogating Field, but was asking, quietly, as a friend.

  “Per’aps yew should ask Thompson,” Field suggested in a voice that intimated he really didn’t wish to explore the subject any further. Field was acting strange, not at all like the open ally of whom we had become so fond. For some reason he seemed utterly disinclined to dispense with any information, yet he had quickened with his suggestion that we talk to Thompson.

  Dickens caught Field’s tone as well and retreated from pressing for more information. “Yes, perhaps we should. Can we see him?” I think both of us sensed at that very moment that this case was proving much more delicate and complicated than Scarlet Bess had led us to believe.

  To our great surprise, Field’s face broke into a small grin at Dickens’s request: “Yes, yew can see ’im…tonight if yew wish…summat irregular, but I can write yew an authority.”

  Dickens looked at me and I at him in further surprise. There was an instability in Field’s demeanour. At one moment he was aloof and defensive and at the next he was grinning in easy accommodation. Something strange was going on which neither Dickens nor I quite understood.

  Field summoned Rogers from the front of the station and within moments the document of passage was in Dickens’s hand. Strangely, after handing Charles the piece of paper, Field stuck out his hand for a farewell shake and detained Dickens’s hand with his other. “Dickens, gauge Thompson’s story well. I want ta know what yew think on it,” I overheard his charge.

  He has got us working for him once again. That shadow of an insight fluttered across my mind but was summarily dispelled as Field shook my hand with a gruff “Good evenin’, Mister Collins,” and placed a consoling arm around Bess’s shoulder muttering, “Chin up, Bess, ’ee’s not ’ung yet.”

  In swift moments, Field’s letter of passage in hand, we shook our cabman awake, entered our hansom, and were underway toward Newgate.

  * * *

  *Doctor Smith, some ten years later, became famous for concocting a fizzy mixture that when dissolved in water proved indispensable for the release of stomach gas in pregnant women. In the Victorian era, Smith’s Seltzer became such an apothecary shop staple that it was used by that population unburdened with child yet afflicted with that state’s discomforts.

  Newgate

  January 9, 1852—midnight

  Despite his predilection to doze, our cabman nonetheless flogged his four-legged partner down the near-deserted Strand into the more-deserted Fleet Street. Dashing across Ludgate Circus, he careened into Old Bailey which dead-ended into the sullen, black walls of Newgate Prison. We clattered up to the looming iron gate. A small door cowered in its right corner. A tiny grated window peeked suspiciously out near the top of the door. The sound of our wheels on the paving stones drew a pair of black-browed eyes to the window grate as our cab reined in. To those hooded eyes staring out of that tiny window Dickens addressed himself.

  In Dickens’s wake, we looked quickly around, and then at each other. The great stone walls, blackened with the soot and grime of the city, or perhaps by the fire during the riots of ’eighty,* rose above us. The outer walls of a prison, windowless, are frightening in their bleakness, their impenetrable gloom, their rejection of hope. The look of panic upon Meg’s face sent a shudder through me. This was one of the places where Meg had always feared she would end. “Eyther Newgate or the river, ’at’s where I’m bound…if I don’t quit the streets,” her voice echoed in my mind out of a not-so-distant past. A look of utter terror at the prospect of entering such a villainous place sparked in Meg’s eyes and flared in the spasmodic tightening around her mouth as she looked up at those dead walls.

  Upon looking up at the grim walls, Scarlet Bess erupted into renewed fits of sobbing. I left Meg to console her and caught up with Dickens at the turnkey’s grate. He was just passing our letter of passage through to a hand that I assumed was attached to those dark-browed eyes which had greeted our arrival. As the gaoler examined the document, Dickens looked back over his shoulder at me. That unmistakable fire of excitement blazed in his eyes. I realised that he was having a smashing time spending this cold raw night in this squalid narrow street knocking on this grimy, wretched door. Newgate Prison, I envisioned Dickens thinking, what better place to find entertainment of a winter’s evening, eh Wilkie?

  If indeed t
hat was what the almost demonically happy look upon Dickens’s face meant, I for one could not share his enthusiasm. It was as if the smell, the damp, the taint of that prison was floating down over me, polluting my very skin, closing around my throat like some paralysing drug. If Newgate Prison excited Dickens, it threatened me, made me want to wash its taint off my hands and face.

  “Seems hin horder,” came the turnkey’s evaluation of our letter of passage. With iron grinding, his small entrance door in that great iron gate set in those high gloomy walls stretching out down those two narrow, dark streets, swung open. “Henny paper signed with Hinspector Field of the Protectives’ mark his hevidence heenough for me,” the man added as Dickens and I stepped through. We had to wait a moment for Meg and Bess to follow and, all the while, the turnkey was looking us up and down as if taking our likeness for the walls of the National Portrait Gallery. “Tall smooth-faced specimin with stick hackompanied by short thick specimin with hundersized spectacles,” our host muttered, unheeding that we heard his accurate though not very flattering description. He wants to remember us, I thought, but I was not, at that late hour in that intimidating place, thinking clearly enough to deduce why.

  Helping Bess through that prison door, that look of panic again flashed in Meg’s face. But she was there in the name of friendship, pursuant to her strange sisterhood of the streets with Bess. She had decided to see it through no matter how frightening. Once marshalled inside the prison gate, the black-browed turnkey committed us to the custody of a brother gaoler of bloated body, shaggy mane, and dogged mien who proceeded to march us across a cold, dull yard. In the corner of that space, chilling in the dim moonlight, stood a high gallows. That gallows tree in the prison courtyard actually signalled an advance in English culture. Condemned prisoners of Newgate used to be carted to Tyburn Hill for their rendezvous with Jack Ketch. In the last year, however, hangings had ceased being public spectacles and had been moved inside the prison walls.* All of our eyes measured that perverted cross as we passed through the yard. Our dogged Serjeant of the Door stopped abruptly to open yet another door in the opposite wall. As a consequence of his sudden stopping, all four of us, marching in a column, suddenly piled comically up upon one another’s heels. Our shaggy dog of a gaoler simply shook his jowls at our clumsy antics and led us on into the maw of the prison proper.