The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “But how can you be so sure he didn’t commit suicide?” Dickens asked. “Perhaps he felt how close your investigation was getting to him, perhaps he despaired that he could escape justice for poisoning those two young women.”

  “’Ee didn’t poison those wimmin,” Field insisted patiently, “an’ ’ee didn’t commit suicide.”

  “How…how can you be so sure?” Dickens persisted.

  “’Is eyes.”

  We all stared at Field, no one, not even Rogers, able to interpret that cryptic declaration. I, and the others, all looked down at the corpse. There seemed nothing unusual about its eyes. They were the wide-open, empty eyes of a dead man.

  “An “is neck, an’ thet note, an’ this ’ole muddle o’ a room.”

  “Please, I am at sea in all this,” Dickens pleaded for explanation for all of us, even Rogers, who was equally adrift.

  “’Is eyes were wide open when I cut ’im down,” Field explained patiently. “I’ve seen more than fifty ’angin’s an’ their eyes always roll all the way back in their ’eads when they choke. They don’t bulge out an’ stare at yew like this ’un does.”

  “He’s right.” Rogers leapt at this opportunity to toady. “Hafter the hangin’s, the hundertakers has ta roll the hanged man’s heyes hout with his finger. Hi’ve seen hem do hit.”

  “This ’un wos dead afore ’ee wos ’ung.” Field took up the narrative again. “’Is neck proves it.”

  We all bent to inspect the hanged man’s neck, but I saw nothing out of the ordinary. No one else seemed to either. Like supplicants to some riddling Sphinx, we all turned back to Inspector Field.

  “The rope burn”—he directed our attention with his commanding forefinger—“’tis too narrow an’ reg’lar. There’s no wide rubbin’ o’ the sort yew git when a dyin’ man struggles an’ kicks on the end o’ the rope.”

  “Hit’s has hif he didn’t fight hat hall.” The light dawned in Rogers’s voice as if he were emerging from the Dark Ages. “Has hif he niver danced Jack Ketch’s jig.”

  It certainly could have been more sensitively put, but Rogers’s vulgar version struck a vivid image in the air and expressed what all the rest of us were thinking.

  “An’ then, lastly, there’s the note,” Field dangled his final lure of evidence before us.

  “And what, pray tell,” Dickens’s voice dripped with sarcasm, “is wrong with the note? It certainly seems clear enough.”

  “Look ’ow ’tis written,” Field prompted Dickens, who read the note through once more.

  “I am sorry,” Dickens did not pronounce those words as an apology, “but I do not see anything out of the ordinary in this note. He says he killed Palmer’s wife. He admits to a Sodomite love for Palmer. He declares that he can not continue to live. That is all that it says.”

  “’At’s wot it says all right.” Field chuckled. “But ’tis not wot it says but ’ow it says it which is important. Yew, a great writer, ought ta know that.” Field could not resist ending with a friendly taunt.

  Dickens threw up his hands in frustration: “What? I cannot see it, I’m sorry. What?”

  “Look ’ow ’tis written.” Field had become the patient teacher. “Is ’at the style o’ a foreigner? Would the man yew interviewed at Bart’s write such a note? The last sentence”—WITHOUT HIM I CANNOT LIVE; we all looked at it over Rogers’s shoulder—“is inverted as a foreigner speakin’ in an unfamiliar tongue might, but the second sentence”—He mourns her death, and rejects my love, we all read it again—“words like mourns an’ rejects, an’ punkchooated jus’ so, an’ not inverted a’tall. Would a foreigner write like that?”

  “You are absolutely right.” Dickens’s head was nodding up and down like one of the swinging ducks in Captain Hawkins’s Shooting Gallery. “’Tis all too neat, is it not?”

  “An’ wouldn’t ’ee write ’is suicide note in Portuguee if Portuguee is the langwidge ’ee speaks?” Inspector Field was but warming to his task. “An’ why would ’ee print it in big letters like that, an’ not in ’is own ’and. A’cause, like that ’tis in nobody’s ’and. Those printed letters are unidentifiable. A suicidal man doesn’t care if ’is ’andwritin’ is recognised. ’Ee don’t care about nothink, an’ ’ee an’t thinkin’ straight either. This bloody note is jus’ too bloody sane an’ correct.”

  “So…” Dickens was thinking this all through as he went, “so what do you think really happened here, Field?”

  “I’m not sure I know,” Field admitted right away, but Dickens had offered Field the detective the opportunity to once again become Field the playwright, composer of bloody revenge tragedies in the Ford and Webster way,* and Field was not at all inclined to turn down that offer. “I think Palmer drugged ’im, then poisoned ’im, then ’ung ’im ta make it look like a suicide.”

  “It does look like, his face I mean, like that curious ‘curare’ death rictus which the others had,” I interjected as they stalked the text of that corpse, that room.

  “Yes, that is exactly wot bothers me the most.” Field stared down at the stone face of the dead man. “If ’ee’s a suicide, then all the Medusa Murders fall right inta line. But if ’ee’s not a suicide, if ’ee’s been poisoned too, then the book is still open on all o’ this.”

  “But you are certain that this is not a suicide, are you not?” Dickens was puzzled, since Field had just offered four different arguments against suicide.

  “Oh yes,” Field assured us, “I bleeve this is murder…an’ yew bleeve all my reasoning on it, don’tchew?”

  “Why, of course, why shouldn’t we?” I was becoming more and more puzzled by the insecure turn our conversation was taking.

  “Because it is all circumstantial, all too speculative upon Inspector Field’s part,” Dickens spoke slowly as if he had just realised the import of Field’s dilemma. “This suicide ties everything up all clean and neat, does it not?”

  “’At’s right!” Field tapped the desk against which he sat lightly with his demonstrative forefinger. “Yew would wear well in my line, Dickens!”

  “What is so clean and neat?” I must admit that I was utterly confused. “Why do you still talk on this as suicide if you have ruled it out?”

  “Because we cannot prove to a court, Wilkie, that it is not suicide,” Dickens spoke like a great teacher’s apt pupil instructing the class dunce. “Because Doctor Vasconcellas’s death seemingly solves all.”

  “Don’tchew see, Mister Collins”—Field looked around in a kind of mild despair—“all the proof for solvin’ yer Medusa Murders is right ’ere in this room, ’as been dropped right into our laps by this suicide. Evrythin’ ’as been neatly tied up in a bow for us like the last chapter o’ one o’ Mister Dickens’s three-decker novels. Only thing is, in the detectin’ line, that an’t the way it normal ’appens.”

  “He is right, Wilkie.” Dickens had quickly picked up the resignation in Inspector Field’s voice. “Suddenly, just with this suicide of Doctor Vasconcellas, all the questions seem answered, all the mysteries seem solved.”

  “Except you two do not believe any of it.” I was beginning to understand.

  “Except ’oo gits the money o’ it all?” Field’s voice was hard as saber steel.

  “And who gets off free as the American colonies?” Dickens formed a chorus with Field.

  “Palmer does,” I answered their chorus of questions as if I had just been delivered the news by an angel.

  “Aye, Palmer does,” Field’s voice had gone grim again. “Damn, ’ee’s guilty an’ we ’ave no way in Gawd’s world o’ provin’ it.”

  * * *

  *John Ford is the author of ’Tis Pity She’s a Whore (1629) and John Webster wrote The Duchess of Malfi (1613).

  The Fire-Woman

  February 2, 1852—evening

  As the snow melted and the faked suicide of Doctor Rodrigo Vasconcellas the Sodomite sank in, and was widely speculated upon in the most outlandish ways in the Grub Street broadsides, the
whole case of the Medusa Murders seemed to hang fire. Two, three, four days passed. I made my daily pilgrimage to the Household Words office, but Dickens was possessed of no new intelligence on the case. Beyond that, however, he seemed uncharacteristically calm about it, not the least bit impatient or concerned that Field was not more aggressively pursuing it. It struck me as curious at the time, but I thought little about it. He would work calmly away for hours upon his new novel or the editing of the magazine, not jumping up to pace the room, not frantic for Field’s summons, not the obsessive Dickens I had come to expect as this case had strengthened its hold upon him. Actually, I found not having to deal with this restless agitation rather restful and welcome. What I am sure of now, looking back, is that Dickens’s calm in those intervening days was counterfeited, all for my consumption. I am certain that he was in conspiracy with Field on another aspect of the case that they did not wish me privy to. It comes clear to me now that Field did not want my interference in this next dangerous gambit, and thus had instructed Dickens to keep me in the dark.

  All those around me were drifting out of character, it seemed. Irish Meg was also acting strange. As I look back upon it now, my reaction was predictably comic and irrational, reflective of all of my insecurities of that confusing time. Meg certainly was as ardent as always in her sexual attentions to me, as saucy as ever in her struttings in her secret things before me, yet she was also somewhat preoccupied. It was as if she was not telling me something, holding something back, afraid to tell me something, instructed not to tell me something, or just plain lying to me. In the grips of my sexual insecurity and possessiveness, I convinced myself that she had involved herself with another man. She has grown impatient with all the interruptions and my absences on the case, I feared, and she has ventured out once again into the streets to seduce another. I have been detectiving too much with Dickens and Field, I speculated.

  She had, indeed, been acting strangely, but I, too, needed to get a grip upon my own runaway imagination. Surely I am exaggerating all of this, I told myself, and on the spot resolved to talk to Meg about our domestic life at the very first opportunity. But then, on the fifth day after Doctor Vasconcellas’s supposed suicide, I returned to the flat in the evening…and she was gone.

  I panicked. It was not a seemly thing to do, but I utterly broke down. I was sure she had left, ever a whore, run off with some whoremonger. I was, I realised, hopelessly in love with her, addicted to her.

  Tossing all discretion to the winds, stammering like a lovesick schoolboy, I ran straight back to Dickens, begging his help, pleading for him to intercede with Inspector Field on my behalf to find her.

  Dickens took it with such a preternatural calm that I should have been suspicious. If I had not been so muddled and upset, I surely would have thought his reaction strange. But it utterly escaped me as I struggled in the throes of my anxiety. Dickens could not imagine where she had gone, he assured me. “We must get Field to find her,” I implored. Finally he acquiesced, and the two of us set off for Bow Street.

  It was as if Field knew that we were coming to see him that night. He was waiting in the outer room of the station house. He did not usher us directly into the bullpen as was his usual courtesy. Equally strange was his attentiveness to me. He hardly noticed Dickens’s presence when we arrived. It was “Mister Collins, ’ow good ta see yew,” and Rogers, not sullen at all as was his usual attitude, helped me out of my greatcoat and hung it on a peg. I was, however, too distracted to notice these solicitous departures from their usual habit of ignoring my presence. From the moment we entered the station house and I spied Field, I was upon him with my fears for Irish Meg’s disappearance. With a knowing glance Dickens’s way, he brought me up short.

  “She ’as not disappeared, Mister Collins.” His crook’d forefinger scratched at the side of his eye preparatory to his hand moving, quite fatherly, around my shoulder. “She’s a good lass, that Meggy, she is,” he confided. “Now yew wouldn’t mind ’er comin’ back on duty for Inspector Field, would yew now?”

  I did not know how to answer. I was too tossed by the frantic workings of my own mind to really understand what he was saying. I looked to Dickens for help. None was forthcoming. He merely grinned, somewhat sheepishly, and shrugged. I looked back to Field who was smiling as solicitously as a coffin merchant. Rogers stood beside him, smug as a cat who had just dined on a pigeon. It was a strange, passive kind of torture they were inflicting upon me.

  They were waiting for my answer. But what was the question? Something about Meggy working for Field.

  I certainly did not know how to answer. What I did know was that I could never presume to answer for Irish Meg. Stupidly, I stared at the lot of them, uncomprehending.

  It became awkward after a moment.

  “Why don’tchew come in,” Field ushered me toward the bullpen. “I wants yew ta meet some’un.” He opened the door and stepped aside, motioning politely for me to enter before him. I was looking back over my shoulder at the assembled company as I passed through the door, thus I did not see her immediately. They were all acting so strange, so smug. It puzzled me. But their behaviour was nothing compared to the shock I experienced when I turned my head back before me as I walked into the room.

  The fire was blazing in the hearth as always. The easy chairs were pulled up to the heat as always. The gin bottle sat on the small table as always. Rude snoring sounds came from the holding cages as always. But in the midst of all that everyday reality stood this apparition, this goddess of beauty and wealth. She stood before the hearth, the firelight flickering behind her, in a rich blue day gown with a white lace bodice that reached up like a churchman’s collar to encircle her neck. Her rich dark hair was coiffed in a mob of wild ringlets, which cascaded around her face, caught the orange glow, and blazed out as the light from the fire behind burned through it. A diamond pendant shone against the white skin of her throat. Her dark eyes flashed above the slashes of pink that were her cheekbones and the fiery circle of red that was her mouth. It was, of course, Irish Meg, my fire-woman, standing there, once again, before that very Bow Street blaze where I had first laid eyes upon her. My heart leapt in relief, in surprise, in love, in an irrational jumble of emotions quite beyond any talent I might possess to describe.

  “Meggy!” I cried out, and ran into her arms.

  “Oh Wilkie, I loves yew.” She crushed me in her desperate embrace. “But I ’ad ta git out o’ those rooms. I owes Fieldsy this much, don’t I? Pleese let me do this.”

  Still I was confused. She looked once again like the fine lady that Dickens had, as a joke, dressed her up as for the Queen’s performance of Not So Bad As We Seem* the previous April. Holding her closely, I caught a stiff movement off over her shoulder. Tally Ho Thompson, dressed as the Irish gentleman on horseback whom I had seen through Field’s monocular five days before, was rising from one of the overstuffed wing chairs.

  I stepped one step back from her embrace, resting my hands on the white lace of her shoulders. The firelight played in her dark Medusa curls. The fire of her power over me burned in her eyes. She was my belle dame sans merci and I her hapless, hopeless knight, utterly confused by this violent collision between love and independence within the charmed circle of our arms.

  “Meggy, what are you doing here?” I stammered. “Dressed like, like…this. My God, you are so beautiful.” I pulled her back into the protection of my arms as if I could hide her beauty from all the others bent to prey upon it.

  “Fieldsy said yew’d niver let me do it, Wilkie. ’Ee said I couldn’t tell yew ’til ’twas all done.”

  “He swore me to that same secrecy,” Dickens interceded on her behalf like some Lincoln’s Inn solicitor.

  “Do what? Tell me what?” I felt as if they were spinning me in some dizzying game of blindman’s buff.

  “I’m ta be an Irish hairuss,” Meg stepped back and curtsied, quite proud of herself. “Miss Megan Theresa Gilbride come up ta see London.”

 
“An I’m ’er neer-do-well rake o’ a brother ’Arry”—Thompson stepped up beside her and bent in an actor’s bow—“rider o’ fast ’orses an’ fixed on gamblin’ away ’is ’ole in’eritance. I ben schoolin’ Meggy on the brogues the actors at Covent Garden spout.”

  “What?” I looked from one to the other of them as if they were mad.

  “They are our bait”—Field spun me around once more—“our last chance ta bring Palmer out. There is no real plan. Thompson ’as set up a race with ’im, will gamble with ’im. Meggy will try ta seduce ’im, weaken ’im with liquor. All in ’opes ’ee will say or do somethin’, anythin’ which will give us a leg up on this case.”

  “Bait? Seduce?” I was burbling like a village idiot.

  “You see, Wilkie”—Dickens tried to pacify me—“we knew you would not take it well.” He was actually making a small joke of it. The others grinned tentatively, waiting for my reaction.

  “Not take it well,” I huffed. “How dare you? She could be killed. Meggy”—I took her hand, begging now—“this is not a game. This could be dangerous.”

  “Tally ’O will be there. Yew will be close by.” She was determined to go through with it; I could tell by the set of her voice. “I’ve ’andled men in rougher ’ouses than some posh ridin’ club in ’Ampstead.” She laughed weakly, turning to the others for support.

  “She will niver be out o’ Thompson’s sight.” Field tried to calm me with his organisation. “Yew an’ Dickens will be right on the premises yerselfes the day o’ the race.”

  “Good God! He’s killed two women already.” It was a last spasm of resistance on my part. They outnumbered me. Meggy wanted to do it, to prove something—God knows what!—to herself, perhaps to me, that I didn’t own her, that I couldn’t keep her closed up in my Soho rooms with no employment other than our domestic entertainments. As I look back upon it now, that was the sum of it for her. She was proclaiming one of Burton’s territorial imperatives, a woman letting her man know what her boundaries (and his) were. But, at the time, all I could see was the danger of it; all I could feel was the fear that I might lose her. She was an addiction I clung to like an opium smoker to his pipe.