by M. J. Trow
‘He was still alive?’ Grand blinked. This was not how George Sala had told it.
‘Of course,’ she sniffed. ‘Only those repulsive Spiritualists talk to the dead.’
‘Did he answer?’
‘Yes.’ Her eyes filled with tears. ‘Yes, he did. And I suppose they were the last words he ever spoke to anyone on this earth. He said, “Yes, on the ground”.’
Their eyes instinctively turned to the carpet.
‘I called Brunt and we got him on to the sofa, there.’
‘Brunt?’
‘The gardener.’ Grand looked puzzled and she smiled, despite the sorrow she was living with. ‘Oh, I can see that you have read somewhere that the gardener’s name was Bob Cratchit. Well, we did have a gardener with that name once, and of course, as soon as it became famous, all the gardeners here at Gads Hill were called that, for nostalgia’s sake.’ She looked around. ‘Nostalgia will be our lot, now, for ever, I suppose.’
While she composed herself, Grand looked around. The sofa looked as untouched as the rest of the chalet, as though the whole place was already a museum.
‘Isaac went for a doctor, the nearest one, I mean. Steele. But it was too late. We sent for Dr Beard and Dr Steele waited until he arrived. I suppose the two of them compared notes; I don’t know. Katie and Mamie arrived later – it must have been midnight by then.’
‘Katie and Mamie?’
‘Charles’s daughters. They insisted on putting hot bricks by his feet, just over there on the sofa.’
Grand noticed that the woman was moving around the room, touching the furniture where her brother-in-law had been. ‘His feet were like ice by then, of course. The whole thing was pointless. They were in shock. They weren’t behaving rationally.’
She turned to face Grand. ‘He died at six o’clock,’ she said. ‘A single tear ran down his cheek and he just stopped breathing. We put flowers in the dining room where the body was laid out – geraniums red and lobelias blue. Charles always loved them and Brunt was such a dear.’
‘Who else turned up during the day?’ Grand asked.
‘Er … John Forster, of course, Charles’s greatest friend in all the world. Charley, Charles’s eldest, the Snodgering Blee. He was distraught, as you’d imagine. Oh, and George Sala turned up. God knows how he got himself involved.’
God and George Sala, Grand thought to himself, but he said nothing. ‘And the funeral?’
‘Tomorrow, Mr Grand. Close friends and family only. The ghouls, you see. They mustn’t be allowed anywhere near.’
‘No,’ Grand said softly. ‘No, of course not.’
There were things about Georgy Hogarth’s memories of Dickens’s last day that Matthew Grand was unhappy with. The woman had given him the time of day, had answered his questions firmly and with resolve. Perhaps a little too firmly; perhaps with rather too much resolve. Little things didn’t add up. Sala’s version was not the same as Georgy’s. There were no screams, no hysteria. There had been other women in the house – Catherine the cook and Emma the maid, but there was no mention of them in the housekeeper’s account and no sign of them today. There was a groom, George Butler, but he too was invisible on both occasions.
Grand was still pondering all this as he crossed the lawn. The sun was still high and his shadow was sharp on the grass lovingly mown by Cratchit; Grand had no idea who Bob Cratchit might be, but he had labelled the gardener thus in the filing system in his head and preferred this to Brunt, who didn’t sound half as pleasant. There was no sound now, only Grand’s own footfalls padding on the green. Yet there were sounds: the rustle of leaves, the snapping of a twig. Someone or something was trailing Grand through the shrubbery to his left. It wasn’t Cratchit, who was sitting alongside a heavy roller with Isaac, the two of them munching on hunks of bread and cheese. If it was the invisible groom, why was he creeping about in the shrubbery and why was he watching Grand? There were ghouls in Kent County; Grand was ready.
The American had promised Inspector Tanner of Scotland Yard that he wouldn’t carry his pistol, as it had been known to frighten the ladies. Did Grand realize, the inspector had asked him, that this was England and not the Wild West? Yes, Grand realized that, but the carrying of arms was an American’s God-given right; it was enshrined in the Constitution. Inspector Tanner had narrowed his eyes and told Grand, with a wink of one of those eyes, that as far as he was concerned, Constitution was a hill in London. And there the matter had dropped. But Matthew Grand felt naked without his pocket Colt, even here in suburban Kent, and he eased the leather catch on his shoulder-holster, just in case.
He turned slowly alongside the stable block and ducked behind the buttress. A large, brown-suited man, surprisingly light of foot, followed him, and Grand leapt out, the Colt gleaming in his fist, the muzzle cold against the man’s forehead.
‘Well, you don’t see many of those in Higham of a Monday.’
‘Who are you and why are you following me?’
The man’s hands were instinctively in the air, but he lowered one slowly. ‘I’m going to reach inside my coat,’ he said, ‘That’s where I keep my card.’
Grand had not moved. The hammer was back on the pistol and he eased the weapon slightly to accommodate the man’s movements. He edged out a white card and passed it to Grand.
‘Inspector Charles Field, Chief of Detectives,’ Grand read aloud.
‘Oh, sorry,’ Field smiled. ‘That’s an old one. Allow me to update you.’ He reached again inside his coat and produced a second card.
‘Field and Pollaky,’ Grand read, ‘Thirteen Paddington Green.’ He frowned. ‘You’ve crossed Pollaky out. Deceased?’
‘Might as well be,’ Field said. ‘We parted company, Ignatius and I. Investigational differences. Can I put my hands down now and can you put that pea-shooter away?’
Grand eased the hammer forward and slipped the gun into his holster.
‘One good turn deserves another,’ Field said, letting his hands fall.
It was Grand’s turn to produce a card.
‘Well, well,’ Field said. ‘Competition. It’s what made Britain great, after all. Are you Grand or Batchelor?’
‘Grand,’ Grand said.
‘From the colonies, by your accent.’
‘I can see why you were chief of detectives,’ Grand said, straight-faced. ‘But none of this explains why you’re following me.’
‘Charles Dickens and I go way back, Mr Grand. You’ve read Bleak House, of course?’
‘Well, I …’
‘Inspector Bucket in that opus? Well, that’s me, that is. Oh, Charles always denied it, of course. I don’t suppose you’ve read any Blackmore?’
‘Um …’
‘R.D. Blackmore? Lorna Doone chappie? No, well, he’s not a patch on the master, of course. He’s written this load of tosh called Clara Vaughan. There’s only one decent character in it – Inspector John Cutting. That’s me as well.’
‘So, you’re a fictional detective, Mr Field?’
Grand didn’t know what hit him. He felt a slap around his head, his coat was wrenched open and he was suddenly staring down the bore of his own .32.
‘I wouldn’t underestimate me, Mr Grand, not if I were you. Now, I don’t appreciate having a gun pulled on me in the pursuance of my enquiries.’ He clicked back the hammer.
‘Easy with that,’ Grand shouted. ‘It’s got a hair trigger.’
‘No, it hasn’t,’ Field said. ‘It’s one of the clumsiest guns Colonel Colt ever churned out. Handy, I concede, to slip into your coat. Short barrel, etcetera. I was confiscating these things when you were still shitting yellow. Now,’ he let the hammer go and spun the pistol, handing it butt-first to Grand. ‘Now that we’re on a more equal footing, so to speak, suppose you tell me what you’re doing here.’
The garden of the Olde Oak was empty that evening. Empty except for the two private detectives who sat there, each of them nursing a pint of the landlord’s finest. The pub was, in fact, shut,
but ex-Inspector Field knew the man of old, had got something on him from the good old days and, when it came to Mr Field, nothing was too much trouble.
‘You’re a cagey one, Mr Grand.’ Field wiped the froth from his thick lips. ‘We’ve sat here now for half an hour and you’ve told me precisely nothing.’
‘Goes with the territory, Mr Field,’ Grand said.
‘All right,’ Field leaned back in his chair, lighting up the clay pipe he produced from his coat. ‘I’ll put my cards down, then, shall I?’ For the briefest of moments, his puffy face lit up with the flare of the lucifer and he blew smoke rings to the sky. ‘I think that you think that some ill befell old Charles Dickens and you’re investigating his murder.’
Grand smiled. ‘Now, why would you think that?’ he asked.
Field looked around him to make sure the trees did not have ears. Far beyond those trees the setting sun was kissing the mellow stones of Rochester Castle and the Medway was solid with lighters and barges laden with the goods of the empire, glowing in the evening. The old and the new stood side by side in that part of Kent, just as the old and the new detectives sat opposite each other in the Oak’s garden. ‘Because I think it too.’
‘You do?’
‘That’s why I was at Gads Hill today. Checking on things.’
‘Have the family called you in?’ Grand asked. ‘Miss Hogarth didn’t mention you.’
‘Catherine,’ Field said.
‘The cook?’
‘The wife. Mrs Dickens.’
‘I’d heard they were separated.’
‘By a literary mile,’ Field said. ‘Oh, I never cottoned to Catherine much, but Charles was less than kind to her. Told all and sundry that she hated her children and that the children hated her.’
‘Not true?’
‘Not a bit of it.’
‘Then, why …?’
‘Why would Dickens make it up?’ Field laughed. ‘Come on, Mr Grand, the man made his living by doing that.’
‘Was there somebody else, in Dickens’s life, I mean?’
Field’s pipe had gone out and he relit it slowly. ‘What have you heard?’
‘Miss Hogarth,’ he said. ‘Rumours …’
‘Hmm,’ Field clicked his fingers to order another round. ‘Single, attractive housekeeper seeks lecherous old writer for frolics and fun.’
‘Was that how it was?’
‘No.’ Field roared with laughter. ‘God, no. Oh, I daresay if Charles had set his cap at Georgy in the first place, rather than Catherine … But all that was years ago. Georgy was just a slip of a thing. And Charles wanted to slip his thing elsewhere …’
‘You mean …?’
‘Mr Grand,’ Field said, leaning closer and speaking quietly. ‘You and I are men of the world. Or at least, I am. I used to be one of Charles’s night guides; did you know that?’
‘Night guides?’
‘When I was in Lambeth, and later, when I joined the Detective Branch, Charles would go on patrol with me around the streets. Many’s the time Sergeant Thornton and I would have to drag him out of places, if you catch my drift.’
‘Places?’
‘How long have you been in this great country of ours, Mr Grand?’ Field asked.
‘Five years, why?’
‘Well,’ Field waited until the host had brought them two more pints and taken away their empties. ‘What with that length of time and your professional calling, I’m surprised you haven’t noticed the one outstanding thing about Great Britain.’
‘I’ve noticed many things,’ Grand said. ‘But, in particular …?’
‘In particular, its outstanding hypocrisy,’ Field chuckled. ‘I know gentlemen with loving families, who go to church on Sundays and give handsomely to charity. Those same gentlemen can be found of a Friday night in Wapping, or Whitechapel or Westminster, making a selection from a wide range of little girls and boys who should be tucked up safe in their own beds. I’m sure I don’t have to draw you a picture.’
‘You mean, Dickens …’
‘No, no, no,’ Field frowned. ‘Nothing like that. He had the odd lady of the night when he was younger, like we all did. Sucker for a pretty face, was Charles. But no, it was the danger he loved, the dark alleys, the rattling kens, the opium parlours …’
‘Opium?’
‘Oh, yes. Deadly stuff, that is. You’ve never come across it?’
‘No,’ Grand shrugged. ‘Can’t say that I have.’
‘Read your Dickens, Mr Grand,’ Field advised. ‘It’s all there. Fagin’s based on an old Jew we both knew, Ikey Solomon. Bill Sikes – well, he’s a mixture of many a villain in my old manor. And as for Nancy … well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?’ And he patted the side of his nose. ‘No, Charles and I go way back. And I’m proud to call him friend. So, when Catherine Dickens, estranged or not, calls me in, I’m bound to do my bit for the old hack, ain’t I? And here you are, doing the same thing.’
‘Indeed.’
‘Just one question, Mr Grand. You know who I’m working for. How about you?’
For a moment, Grand hesitated. Then he threw caution to the winds. ‘George Sala,’ he said.
‘Who?’ Field blinked.
Grand smiled. George Sala would be mortified that this doyen of detectives had never heard of him.
Field screwed up his face, thinking. ‘What say we pool our resources, so to speak? You’ll never interest the Yard in this – since I left, they haven’t got a detective force, not really. What say we work together? Trade information? I’m between sidekicks, as you colonials say, at the moment, so time is money and I’m spending too much of mine on shoe leather. You and whatsisname – Batchelor – can be my legs.’
‘What?’ Grand laughed, clicking his fingers for two more pints. ‘And you can be our brain?’
Field laughed softly. ‘Something like that,’ he said.
FOUR
‘’Ere, there’s a copper …’ But Mrs Rackstraw got no further than that.
‘Chief Inspector Adolphus Williamson, to be more precise.’ The large man with the greying beard barged unceremoniously past the housekeeper, his bright eyes focused on James Batchelor.
‘An honour, Chief Inspector.’ Batchelor stood up and extended a hand, but Williamson did not take it. ‘Mrs Rackstraw, some tea for the chief inspector.’
Williamson looked the woman up and down and his first suspicions of her were confirmed. ‘No, thank you,’ he said, and he plonked himself down on a rather excruciatingly uncomfortable horsehair sofa.
‘I’m guessing you’re Grand,’ the copper said, looking at the tall American as the unwanted housekeeper snorted and left.
‘I am Matthew Grand,’ Grand said. He had been writing up reports for most of the morning, listening to the sounds of Alsatia drifting in through the window. His coffee had gone cold. ‘What can we do for you, Chief Inspector?’
Williamson had acquired the knack of all Scotland Yard detectives over the years, of reading upside down what was written on other people’s desks. ‘“No stone unturned”,’ he said.
Batchelor looked at him. ‘Do you have a stone,’ he asked, ‘that we can help you with?’
‘Oh, I can do that by myself, thank you,’ Williamson smiled. ‘It’ll be a cold day in Hell before the Yard has to resort to amateurs to help them.’
More or less what ex-Chief Inspector Field had said, Grand thought to himself. ‘So, this visit …?’ He was trying to move the conversation along.
‘… Is by way of a warning,’ Williamson said. ‘A Dr Beard contacted me.’
‘Ah.’
‘He says that you, Mr Batchelor, all but accused him of murdering the late Charles Dickens.’
‘I did no such thing,’ Batchelor retorted, indignant. ‘I just don’t like brick walls.’
Williamson chuckled and leaned back, trying to come to terms with the horsehair. ‘Well, I’m with you there,’ he said. ‘Tell me, then, as one professional to another, what makes you t
hink Dickens was murdered?’
‘Professional?’ Batchelor muttered crossly. ‘A moment ago we were amateurs.’
‘We don’t think Dickens was murdered,’ Grand lied. ‘But our client does.’
‘And who would that be?’ Williamson wanted to know.
‘Aha,’ Batchelor wagged a finger at him. ‘Sorry, Chief Inspector – client confidentiality. If Beard can clam up about his patients, we can do the same about our clients.’
‘Private enquiry agents!’ Williamson scowled. ‘There’ll come a time when you people will need a licence to operate. But until then, there is such a thing as obstructing the police in pursuance of their enquiries.’
‘Are you making enquiries, then?’ Grand asked. ‘About Dickens, I mean.’
Williamson smiled. ‘I am now,’ he said.
‘Well, perhaps you’ll get further with Beard than I did,’ Batchelor said.
‘Count on it.’ The chief inspector rose with some difficulty from the glassy embrace of the horsehair and turned to the door. ‘I’m not expecting our paths to cross again,’ he said, ‘but if they do, you won’t enjoy the experience.’
‘Give our regards to Inspector Tanner,’ Grand said.
‘Oh, that’s right.’ Williamson clicked his fingers. ‘I knew I’d come across your names somewhere. Dick Tanner used to speak quite highly of you two.’
‘Used to?’ Batchelor frowned.
‘Oh, you haven’t heard. Poor old Dick’s rheumatism got the better of him and he had to retire. This would be … ooh … a few months back now. He’s keeping a pub in Winchester.’ Williamson’s pleasant face disappeared and he let his eyes burn into them both. ‘So, if you were hoping there was a friendly face at Four Whitehall Place, gentlemen, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. By the way, it’s not for me to say, but in the interests of impressing clients, that woman of yours needs work.’
There was a curious hush in the close that day. The precincts of Westminster Abbey were thronged with people, most in respectful black. No one spoke. Even the pigeons seemed to sense the occasion and kept their billing and cooing to a decent minimum. Three carriages rolled up to the west door, but there was not an ostrich plume in sight and all the horses were bay.
