The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “It’s jus’ for one night.” Field knew already that he had won. Now he was only palliating me. “I wants ta see if our Doctor Palmer is on the lookout for new money in the way o’ a wife.”

  “Tally ’O’s an actor now. Yew two go onstage in Mister Dickens’s plays.” Meg was beaming at the fun of it. “Now’s my chance ta be an actress too.”

  “The play’s the thing, eh mate?” Thompson clapped me on the shoulder and I recoiled from his presumptuous familiarity. “We thought o’ my Bess, but she don’t keep ’er ’ead the way Meggy does, an’t the actress Meggy is, don’t play the rich bitch near as well.”

  Meggy beamed at his compliments, looked at me doelike then mischievous. Give it up, luv. Let me ’ave me fun, she was telling me with her eyes and the coy pursing of her mouth. She knew I would do whatever she asked. I do not know why they all even bothered. Wilkie Collins, convenient doormat, ever ready to follow his masters and do their mad, heedless bidding. I vowed that someday I would rebel against my role as pawn in the risky gambits of Dickens and Field, but, alas, this was clearly not that day.

  “All is in readiness, Wilkie.” Dickens, in his enthusiasm for their outlandish plan, had nonchalantly cast aside the main issue, that of Irish Meg’s participation. “I have imposed upon young Jekyll to invite us to view the match race. Spectators can double back upon the course in their carriages.”

  “An’ I ’ave reserved rooms for meself, me sister, an’ me ’orse at the ’Ounds Club the night afore the race.” Thompson was veritably brimming with the whimsy of it. “’At’s when we makes our run at Palmer.”

  “An’ Rogers an’ I shall stay close, we will,” Field assured me.

  They were all mad. It was a contagion that Thompson spread like some plague carrier spitting death across Europe. My consternation, my skepticism, must have shown in my face because they all looked at me as if I were a ghost at the banquet table, putting a damper on their fun.

  “I admit,” Field went on the defensive, tried to answer the skepticism he had read in my mien, “that I ’old little ’ope that Palmer will break down an’ confess or lead us ta the poison or ’and over any new evidence on which we can bring ’im ta justice. But we ’ave no witnesses”—this was, indeed, an argument of desperation—“an’ I am determined ta follow through, ta try ta entrap ’im, ta lead ’im ta contemplate yet another murder for gain. If ’ee is greedy, we can git ’im.”

  It was a long speech for Field, the apologia of a man brought to the end of his tether. Ridiculous as it may seem, I felt sorry for him.

  “I’m ridin’ this road ta its end,” Thompson unexpectedly declared—serious, for God’s sake!—his jaw set, his heedless jokester’s grin nowhere to be found, “a’cause she wos a good lass.” None of us had ever experienced this grim, vengeful version of Tally Ho Thompson before.

  “What?” I was startled by Thompson’s intensity.

  “Who?” Meggy’s hands went to her hips like a governess about to punish her charge.

  “Just what do you mean by that?” Dickens was bursting with curiosity.

  “She wos a good lass.” Thompson shrugged. “Palmer’s wife.”

  “Wot do yew know about Palmer’s wife?” Field glared at him. “Yew said yew only took ’er ridin’ once or twice.”

  Dickens looked at me, raising his eyebrows and rolling his eyes in one of those “well that’s odd” looks. It was me who had, for the sheer contrariness of it, speculated that there was more to Thompson’s involvement with the late Missus Palmer than merely the horse riding.

  Thompson closed up like a Portsmouth clam, but Inspector Field was having none of that.

  “Jus’ wot are yew sayin’, Thompson?” Field had that murderous look of the night streets upon him again. This is no longer a game, that look announced. Field did not like his familiars withholding anything from their master. Suddenly that powerful right hand leapt out and clasped the lapel of Thompson’s foppish red riding coat. “Tell it, all o’ it, yew ’ear, or I’ll clap yew back inta Newgate so fast the streets won’t even know yer gone.”

  “She wos a good lass. I liked ’er.” Thompson hesitated.

  Field let go of the front of Thompson’s coat, but, with a scratch of his crook’d forefinger to the side of his eye, ordered our somewhat rattled highwayman to “go on with it, the ’ole tale.”

  Thompson stretched his hesitation with a quick guilty glance at Meg.

  Field was exhibiting miraculous patience. I expected him, at any moment, to lunge for his knobbed stick and begin beating the confession out of Thompson.

  Myself, Meg, Dickens, that stupid Rogers, we all stared wide-eyed at Tally Ho Thompson, waiting like greedy gossips in the tea-tent on Market Day.

  The veins in Field’s neck began to bulge and I think Thompson realised that he had no choice but to confess.

  “She said ’er ’usband ’ated ’er. Said ’ee didn’t even live with ’er, loved ’is ’orses more,” Thompson began in apologia. “I felt sorry for the lass. We ’ad this one time together, ’at wos all.”

  “Yew slept with ’er!” Irish Meg was all shocked propriety and matronly rage. It was really quite comical, considering.

  “Yew mussn’t tell Bess.” Now Thompson was the desperate man pleading for understanding. “I felt sorry for ’er. ’Er ’ole family wos in the country an’ they thought Palmer a good match despite the stiff dowry. Business people at Henley they are. An’ ’ee beat ’er, she said that. She wanted some’un jus’ ta prove she wos alive. We went ta a ’otel on ’Eyde Park. I’d niver been ta ’er ’ouse,” he said that last as if he thought that Field might still suspect him of murdering her. “I only slept with ’er that once. ’At’s why I niver went back ta ride with ’er. ’Twas not the play kept me away. Yew see…I luvs Bess, in my way.”

  Tally Ho Thompson was, indeed, a marvel. For all of his talent, his looseness, his maddening heedless view of the world and life as some comical careening game, there was this powerful instinctive rightness about him. Dickens and I have more than once laughed as we referred to our highwayman, actor, womaniser, thief of a friend as one of the truly “honest” men of our acquaintance, a sort of Robin Hood “honesty” that always seems to do the right thing no matter how at odds with conventional thinking it may be.

  * * *

  *Collins’s first memoir (or secret journal) ends with this scene of Dickens’s amateur performance of Bulwer-Lytton’s play before the Queen. As a joke on Collins, Dickens had dressed Irish Meg, Scarlet Bess, and Tally Ho Thompson up as gentlefolk and seated them in the midst of the Queen and her court.

  A Devil’s Wager

  February 3, 1852—night

  “All our interviews tell us ’ee luvs ta gamble an’ ’ee ’ates ta lose.” Field was referring to Palmer on the eve of that desperate endgame by which he hoped to trap his prey. It occurred to me that he might, as well, have been describing himself. Inspector Field, through the many years I have observed him ply the detective’s art, has always been a stolid man who refused to give up. Even though all of his witnesses to murder were dead, even though all of the evidence of the case pointed to Rodrigo the Spaniard, Field remained determined to pursue Palmer, to expose the poisonous truth. No wonder Dickens was so relentlessly drawn to the man. William Field was a veritable avenging angel who, indeed, loved to gamble and hated to lose, and he was down to the turning of his final cards, his stake riding upon my Meggy and Tally Ho Thompson.

  They had taken up their residence that afternoon as brother and sister, rich young Irish gentry, in adjoining rooms at the Hampstead Hounds Club. While Thompson had busied himself seeing to the accommodations of his horse and the preparations for the match race the next day, Meg had prepared herself for the seductive drama of the evening. Though I was not present, both Thompson and Meggy told their versions of their little play to Inspector Field within my and Dickens’s hearing. Thus, I am satisfied that, curious as you, dear reader, will find it to be, it actually did happen in precis
ely this way.

  They all sat down to dine in the private salon of the club just after eight. Palmer knew Thompson as Harold Aloysius Gilbride of the County Cork Gilbrides and called him affectionately, as one always treats one’s pigeons, “young Harry.” My Meggy was introduced that evening as Harry’s sister, Megan Theresa Gilbride. Thompson, to all evidence, convincingly passed them off as an extremely rich Irish brother and sister off together on the first leg of their Grand Tour.* Being the heir to one of the largest farms and finest, though modest, racing stables in Ireland, young Harry Gilbride never travelled anywhere without his racer, Magillicuddy, a sleek bay who, he consistently bragged, “niver balks an’ kin outrun the divvil on summer’s ’ottest day.” Guiliano, the Italian tout, was also in attendance, but certainly not earning any retainer upon which Palmer obviously kept him. Cut from whole cloth out of Inspector Field’s fictive imagination, the Gilbride-Farms-and-Stables fiction, which a truly knowledgeable trackman would surely have questioned, was swallowed whole by Guiliano. Two other men joined them, card players, horse gamblers, a young Lord Billy Buckler and an aging roue Mister Robert Patten of Fleet Street. Five men and my Meggy dining in that private salon in that men’s hunting club out there on that blasted heath—and Dickens and Field raised their eyebrows at my lack of enthusiasm for their little play!

  When Meggy described the way she dressed for her role and how she chose to play it, it convinced me all the more that I never should have allowed her to be cast in Field’s heedless little drama. “The gown wos shiny brown satin cut verry low ’round me bubs, but with these wonderful little puff sleeves,” Meggy gushed like a schoolgirl. “An’ dimond earrings an’ a pendant ’round me neck, only pastework I knows, but Lord did they sparkle.”

  “We decided ta play the scene incestlike,” Thompson took up the story as I shot a stiletto look at Meggy.

  “Oh it wos so nasty the way I ’ung on me deer brother,” Meggy said as she laughed. I know she was just saying it to taunt me and make me jealous, to titillate the whole company listening to their tale there in the bullpen after it was all over.

  “After the supper wos cleared off, we set in at cards,” Thompson went on, “an’ Meggy sat on the arm o’ me chair an’ played with me ’air an’ ran ’er ’and o’er me neck, pettin’ me like a ’ousecat.”

  At that, I shot another angry glance at Irish Meg. She raised her eyebrows and moistened her lips with her tongue, mocking me.

  “All o’ it wos done for Palmer’s sake,” Meg cut in upon Thompson’s too-elegant narrative. “’Ee wos drinkin’ away with ’is racetrack friends an’ losin’ money ta Tally ’O on nearly evry ’and. It wos only a matter o’ time ’til ’ee started lookin’ ta me for a toss.”

  “It wos when we were pretendin’ ta be drunk an’ she put ’er tongue in me ear as I wos playin’ a ’and that she really got ’is attention. “Thompson was getting a bit carried away, for my blood, in his enthusiasm for the artistry of their performance. In fact, I sorely longed to strangle him, and then poison Field with the cheap gin we were drinking.

  “The gyme wos dwindlin’ down. A couple o’ the players gone off ta bed drunk—” Meggy took up the narrative—“when Doctor Palmer turns ta the sex part.”

  “‘Yew an yer sister seem quite close,’ ’ee says ta me,” Thompson mimicked him. “Feigning drunk, I tips ol’ Palmer a wink an’ runs me ’and up me lovin’ sister’s arm. ‘Closer’n any brother an’ sister ever been,’ I laughs an’ tips ’im another dirty wink.”

  “Besides the hundred pounds we have placed on the race,” Palmer, though tipsy, said quite seriously, “would you be interested in a gentleman’s side wager?”

  “Wot sort o’ side wager?” Thompson was curious.

  “Because I must ride my best against you, I will retire and sleep soundly this night,” Palmer began, “but tomorrow night will be an altogether different matter.”

  I’ve got ’im! Meg thought as she subdued her elation.

  “So?” Thompson coaxed.

  “My horse if I lose”—Palmer smiled evilly at them both—“against a full night abed if I win.”

  “Yew wants me ta bet me sister against yer ’orse?” Thompson feigned offense.

  “No, not at all”—Palmer glanced in amusement from Thompson to Meggy and back—“it is you I want in bed, young Harry, not her. She may watch if she wishes, but it is you I hope to win. Are you prepared to make that wager?”

  “Prepared!” After, retelling the story to all of us in the bullpen, Thompson actually jumped up and paced nervously before the hearth. “I wish I coulda seen the look on me own face when ’ee proposed that little bet. I looked at Meg an’ she looked like she’d jus’ been jilted by the Prince o’ Wales.”

  “I wos surprised, thet’s all,” Irish Meg defended herself.

  “Surprised,” Thompson teased her, “yew were madder ’n a scorned tart.”

  “I wos a scorned tart, yew jack-a-muffin.” Meg laughed. “Yew should o’ seen the look on yer pip. ’Ee looked like”—Meg turned grinning to the rest of us—“an insulted virgin, ’ee did; like ’ee wos searchin’ the room for a chastity belt ta lock ’imself into.”

  Even Thompson had to laugh at that characterisation of his own recoil at Palmer’s proposition.

  “Meg saved the day on that jolter,” Thompson went on with his narrative. “I didn’t know wot ta say. Meg’s right. I wos shocked. Right off she starts laughin’ at the two o’ us, tauntin’ me. ‘Wot’s the matter, sweet brother?’ she jibes me. ‘Yew’d not balk at puttin’ me up against ’is ’orse. Are we afraid ta wager our own arse?’ At that, both Palmer an’ Meggy ’ad a good roar at my expense.”

  “Finally Tally ’O chimes in,” Meg took up the story. “‘Yer serious,’ ’ee says ta Palmer. ‘Never more,’ Palmer says back, caught up in the hilarity o’ it. ‘Done then!’ says Tally ’O. ‘Yer the one ta be done in more ways than one,’ says Palmer as ’ee trundles ’imself off ta bed.”

  “An’ ’at’s it.” Thompson shrugged, indicating the end of their story. “Palmer’s a boy-boy jus’ like Dickie Dunn an’ our dead Spaniard. That oughta be worth sumpin’.”

  “’Ee’s more than that.” Irish Meg was no longer laughing at the oddness of their story. “’Ee’s a woman ’ater, ’ee is. Yew could see it in ’is eyes when ’ee looked at me there in that card room. ’Ee wouldn’t think twice about killin’ ’is wife. ’Ee ’ates wimmin.”

  “I’ve seen ’im come in off the ’eath after a ride.” Thompson, too, had become reflective. “’Ee’d ridden ’is ’orse shameful. The animal wos all foamed, its sides bloody with spurrin’ welts, wobbly on its legs from the whippin’. ’Ee’s the kind ’oo rides a ’orse ’til it drops, then jus’ climbs on another an’ rides it ta death too.”

  “Mebbe ’at’s ’ow ’ee treats ’is wives,” Inspector Field murmured.

  “It is akin to everything else these days.” It was Dickens’s turn to add his somber comment upon the fallen human condition. “One cannot tell what is real or true just by looking at it. There are hidden secret things”—my eyes flashed to Meg’s and she caught me in my guilty look—“beneath all of the appearances that we all put up.”

  “’Ow bloody true ’at is.” Meg gave her crooked little grin.

  Not one of us disagreed with her. To do so would have been as hypocritical as casting the first stone.

  * * *

  *The “Grand Tour” was a coming-of-age tradition of the Victorian era. Young, rich gentlemen, and some heiresses, regularly took a year-long tour of Europe during which they experienced firsthand all of the great art, historical sites, architectural wonders, and cultural entertainments as well as drinking, gambling, and whoring their way through the Continent’s brothels and casinos. For an Irish heir and heiress, London would naturally be the first stop on the Grand Tour.

  Tally Ho!

  February 4, 1852—morning

  The day of the match race broke sunny and chill. Nothing, however
, could have been colder than Inspector Field’s resolve to confront Doctor William Palmer with the four murders that had fueled this investigation.

  “He is counting upon Palmer losing control.” Dickens, ever analytic and motive-conscious, appraised Field’s plan as we rode in Sleepy Rob’s cab toward our rendezvous on Hampstead Heath. “His only hope is to drive Palmer into some incriminating act or some imprudent admission,” Dickens argued. I could not help but think that it was a somewhat hollow hope.

  Field and Rogers, busy with their spyglass, were waiting for us in the black Bow Street post chaise in the meadow of Jack Straw’s Castle at the top of the heath. Greeting us enthusiastically when we reined in, Field was uncharacteristically expansive and metaphoric. “Today we write the final chapter of this novel of murder, ring down the final curtain on our little play,” he said. Clearly, he had been spending far too much time with Dickens.

  Through the spyglass, we observed that preparations for the race were already afoot on the grounds of the Hampstead Hounds Club. At half after ten, resplendent in his red riding coat, Tally Ho Thompson marched out to commune with his horse. Minutes later, appearing no worse for wear from his card-playing and imbibing of port the night before, Palmer appeared, gotten up in an all-black riding habit and black boots to match. His dress formed a fitting ensemble to the unbroken glower of his dark black eyebrows. He and Thompson greeted one another cordially enough and proceeded together into the stables. When my turn with the glass came round, I quickly scanned the porches, fenced rings, and walkways of the club for any glimpse of Irish Meg, but was disappointed. As the sun moved toward eleven of the clock, she had not yet put in an appearance out of doors. Needless to say, her whereabouts were to me the most worrisome aspect of what Field and Dickens called their “little play.”