The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  “Rodrigo!” That was but my own tiny squeak of surprise.

  “None other.” Field nodded.

  “For God’s sake!” Dickens took up my indignation.

  “Rodrigo may have had nothing to do with it at all. Palmer could have imitated his voice, hung him, and faked the suicide. Lured him in and trapped him the way he did Thompson.

  “Palmer’s a slippery ’un ’ee is, but ta the judges all o’ thet is jus’ fiction.” Field shrugged.

  “Just fiction!” Now Dickens was thoroughly indignant.

  “Our only ’ope”—Field was calm, preternaturally composed, considering the magnitude of the defeat he had suffered this day—“wos ta so anger an’ bestir Palmer as ta make ’im give hisself away, drop some incriminations our way, or confess, or summat, then yew two could ’ave testerfied. It would o’ made all our other little bits o’ evidence stand up.” Field paused. His crook’d forefinger scratched regretfully at the side of his right eye. “But ’ee would not do it.”

  “What about Tally Ho Thompson?” I persisted in overlooking the obvious and posing the transparently naïve question.

  “Wot about ’im?” Field gave a weary little grin. “Lawyer Jaggers o’ the Temple ’ud grind ’im up an’ bake ’im in a pie.”

  “What?” I said, aghast.

  “How?” Dickens was exasperated.

  “Yer an ex-’eyewayman, a thief. Yew were robbin’ Doctor Palmer’s ’ouse when the bodies were found. Yew ’ad a’ready drawn a sword against Dick Dunn afore ’ee wos murdered. Yew’d slept with Palmer’s wife afore ’er death. ’Oo’s goin’ ta tyke the word o’ the likes o’ yew. ’At’s wot Jaggers ’ud sigh o’ Thompson. Thompson ’ud be lucky the judges didn’t take ’im up for the murders on the spot ’isself.”

  “It does seem better to leave Thompson well out of this,” Dickens acquiesced. “But is there nothing to be done? There is evidence to present, is there not?”

  “The piece o’ glass from the sewer in ’is basement floor didn’t tell us wot ’ee threw out. The broken jar could o’ ’eld curare poison or cheap gin. Mebbe ’ee didn’t even pour anythin’ down that ’ole in ’is floor thet night, but I’ll wager ’ee did. I wager ’at’s why ’ee ran back there like thet, ta destroy thet poison.”

  “His gambling debts? The insurance scheme?” Dickens was grasping at straws.

  “’Ee killed ’er.” Field was quiet as he spoke, yet grim and determined. “I knows thet. Yew two know thet. Look for the one ’oo profits from ’er death an’ thet is yer murderer.”

  “But arguing that is not enough”—Dickens was struggling toward the state of resignation which Field seemed already to have reached—“is that it?”

  “Jaggers argues thet Thompson kills ’er while robbin’ the ’ouse, or thet Rodrigo kills ’er a’cause ’ee loves ’er ’usband. Witnesses confused. Judges confused. Too menny murderers. No one kin see for the confusion. Case is tossed in confusion. The Queen’s Bench makes for a very confusin’ place.”

  “England’s bleakest house!” Dickens said it softly, almost a whisper, as if affirming its truth to himself, utterly unaware that we were still participating in this befogged street-corner conversation.

  Field looked at me and I at him, both momentarily puzzled by Dickens’s sudden departure into self-absorbtion.

  Dickens recovered himself almost immediately. “This is not at all a satisfactory ending to your case, is it?” His voice was more consoling than inquiring as he addressed Inspector Field.

  “Life’s a mess an’ don’t end like novels do.” Field shrugged once again.

  There seemed little more for us to say to one another. We stood there against that blank stone wall as an awkward silence, like the fog, settled between us.

  “The gentle art of poisoning is not hitherto a highly developed form of insurance fraud,” Dickens groped for some words to cheer Field up, “but I will wager it shall be in the future.”

  Field’s eyes shot up, stared levelly first into Dickens’s eyes and then into mine. “’Ee will try it agin’.” Field tapped his stick decisively upon the bricks of the walkway. “Mayhaps some other poor girl will die. They acquires a taste for murder, they do. S’like an addiction. Palmer got away with murder, ’ee did, but ’ee will try it agin,” and a fierce determination edged Field’s voice. “An’ I’ll be there when ’ee does.”

  With one final sharp tap of his stick to the stones, he stomped off into the fog.*

  * * *

  *As all readers of this second of Wilkie Collins’s recently discovered commonplace books have no doubt noticed, there is a striking coincidence in that one of Inspector Field’s prime suspects herein, Dr. William Palmer, and this editor’s name, working 140 years later, are one and the same. Notwithstanding romantic arguments on the mysterious operations of that force known as destiny, the facts of history tend to override the whimsy of fate. I consulted the noted Scottish genealogist, Mr. Alistair McKenzie, Ph.D., who, he assured me, is himself a descendant of the legendary Alistair McKenzie noted as the principle inventor and practitioner of the great international game of golf. After some research, for which I am somewhat grateful, Mr. McKenzie assured me that my own family is descended from a clan of ancient horse thieves and footpads who specialized in preying upon pilgrims en route to Canterbury, while the notorious Dr. William Palmer of Collins’s memoir is descended from the Staffordshire Palmers, a respectable farming family of that district. But the coincidences do not stop with those identical names. While editing this second commonplace book in the summer of 1991 at the University of North Anglia, I took a weekend holiday to London. Caught in a sudden downpour on a Sunday afternoon in Regents Park, I took refuge in Madame Tussaud’s Waxworks right outside the York Gate on Marylebone Road. While browsing there waiting for the rain to stop, I wandered into the Gallery of Murderers where who should confront me, brandishing a dripping vial of poison in his right hand, but the one and the same Doctor William Palmer. The legend on the wall next to his wax effigy trumpeted that he was reputed to be England’s most notorious poisoner, responsible for the deaths of six known victims over a period of seven years. Whether or not the Medusa Murders victims were included in this accounting was not stated. What caught my eye, however, was the history of his final murder for which he was brought to trial in 1855, convicted, and sent to the gallows on June 14, 1856. The arresting officer on the case was none other than Inspector William Field of the Metropolitan Protectives. My curiosity about Doctor William Palmer, my unwelcome and notorious namesake, whetted by that chance bit of research in Madame Tussaud’s, I consulted more conventional research sources and found an article titled “The Decameron of Murderers” in Dickens’s own news periodical All The Year Round on the very date of Palmer’s hanging, June 14, 1856, which recounts the lengthy trial of Doctor Palmer. Though the article is unsigned, it could only have been written by either Dickens or Collins because it alludes to the mysterious deaths of Palmer’s first wife and maid, which were not the crimes for which Palmer was tried and found guilty. Who knows? Perhaps Field, Dickens, and Collins pursued Palmer all those years until they finally brought him to justice. In fact, the testimony of Inspector Field at Palmer’s trial as described in the All The Year Round article intimates that, in the four years following the events of this second Collins journal, Palmer became for William Field the identical sort of nemesis and obsession that another notorious doctor would become for another great English detective in the later years of the century. Perhaps one of Collins’s later journals will recount further confrontations with Doctor Palmer, but that is the stuff of another case and would be getting too far ahead of ourselves and the editing of the remaining secret Victorian journals of Wilkie Collins that have thus far been discovered.

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