by M. J. Trow
‘We have reason to believe, Miss Ternan, that Mr Dickens was poisoned.’
Nell sat down hurriedly, her hand to her mouth. ‘No,’ she whispered. ‘That can’t be.’
‘You knew that Mr Dickens took laudanum?’
‘For his gout, yes, but always in small doses. Not enough to kill him.’
‘We believe that an extra-large dose was given to him on the day before he died.’
‘Where?’ Nell asked, sitting upright and lacing her fingers tightly together.
‘Er … probably the chalet,’ Batchelor told her, ‘at Gads Hill.’
‘I suppose …’ she began. ‘But, no, it couldn’t be.’
‘What couldn’t be?’ Batchelor asked.
‘Charles took me once to an opium den, a frightful place in Bluegate Fields. He needed to see for himself, he said, because it was part of the plot of Edwin Drood. Some Americans came with us, some friends he had made on his American tour.’
‘Did you get the impression that that was Mr Dickens’s only visit to such a place?’
‘I did,’ Nell said.
‘Then we’re back to Gads Hill,’ Batchelor shrugged.
Nell stood up. ‘Would you come with me, Mr Batchelor?’ she asked, and he followed her along a winding passageway into a second drawing room, smaller than the first and crammed with books, most of them by Charles Dickens Esquire.
‘Do you like it?’ she asked, waving her hand around the room.
‘Very nice,’ Batchelor said. He was not much of a connoisseur of interior décor but, having suffered in many a teeming garret where the cockroaches were larger than he was, he could at least appreciate cleanliness.
‘Charles adored it,’ she said, quietly, as the memories flooded back. ‘He saw it as his retreat. More than Gads Hill, it was a magic place to hide from the world. Tell me, Mr Batchelor, are you a fan of Charles’s work?’
‘Certainly,’ Batchelor said. ‘I’ll let you into a secret, Miss Ternan; I used to be a newspaperman.’
She gasped and recoiled.
‘Oh, don’t worry.’ He held up his hand. ‘That was then, I assure you. Now I wouldn’t give journalists the time of day. No, I only mention it because I have had to wrestle with the written word. And when you’ve done that, you realize what a genius the master was.’
‘Indeed,’ she said, with a strange look on her face. ‘That’s just as well, Mr Batchelor; because you are standing on the very spot where a genius fell.’
If Batchelor had not been a man, it would have been his turn to gasp and recoil. As it was, he just let his jaw drop. Instinctively, though, he stepped to one side, as if the great man still lay sprawled on the carpet.
‘Charles was with me for the two days before he died,’ she said. ‘He had dinner with the Prince of Wales and the King of the Belgians and came straight here.’
‘But … Miss Hogarth …’
‘Georgy and I came to an arrangement years ago,’ Nell said. ‘You know, I suppose, that she loved Charles too?’
‘I had heard a rumour,’ he said.
‘She told the world nothing,’ Nell went on, ‘because that was what Charles wished. When he was supposedly at Broadstairs, at his offices in Wellington Street, at Gads Hill, he was usually here with me. So it was on the eighth of June. He became unwell a little before breakfast. I wanted to send for the doctor.’
‘Beard?’
‘Anyone,’ she said. ‘But Charles wouldn’t hear of it. He knew he was dying. He said he was expecting it, but not this soon. His overriding anxiety …’ Nell paused, her fingers pressed to her lips as the memories of Dickens’s last day flooded her mind, ‘… was that he should not be found dead here. He must go to Gads Hill. I sent Georgy a telegram and she sent Butler …’
‘The groom.’
‘Yes. He came in the closed chaise. The dear man must have lashed the horse almost to death to get here so quickly, and somehow we bundled poor Charles into the cab.’
‘You went with him?’
‘No.’ A tear rolled down Nell Ternan’s cheek. ‘He insisted I didn’t. It was the last time I saw him alive.’ She sighed, fighting her demons of regret, and she pulled herself together. ‘Georgy sent me a telegram later that night. Dear Charles was still alive then, barely, but the family had gathered and I felt I couldn’t intrude.’
Batchelor waited until he felt she could go on. ‘What did he mean?’ he asked her. ‘That he was expecting it, but not this soon? He wasn’t such an old man.’
The strange expression had returned to Nell Ternan’s face. ‘No, Mr Batchelor, Charles didn’t mean the grim reaper, except in the most general sense. Someone wanted to kill Charles Dickens and he knew why.’
‘He knew why but not who?’ Batchelor’s pulse was racing. At last, after weeks of brick walls and obfuscation, here it was. And he only felt a little smug, having solved the case ahead of Williamson, ahead of Field and without Grand.
‘If he knew that,’ Nell said, ‘he didn’t confide in me.’
‘The “why”, then,’ Batchelor perched on the edge of a sofa, on the edge of a solution. ‘I’ll settle for that.’
Nell smiled. ‘He was a loving man, was Charles Dickens,’ she said. ‘Kind and considerate. He was a loving friend to his friends, a loving father to his children, a loving lover to me. So loving, in fact, that he put the people he loved into his books. I was Estella in Great Expectations, Bella in Our Mutual Friend. I was even, unfinished though it is, Helena Landless in Edwin Drood.’
‘That was nice of him,’ Batchelor said, ‘to write so lovingly of you.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Except that he didn’t.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Batchelor frowned. ‘I don’t follow.’
‘Charles Dickens never wrote a word,’ she said.
It took a while for James Batchelor to say another and, when he did, it merely turned out to be, ‘What?’
‘Oh, he longed to be a writer, certainly, and he tried hard in that respect, God knows. But he couldn’t do it. The words just would not flow.’
‘So …?’ Batchelor was confused.
‘So he got his friend Trollope – the elder, I mean, not that idiot son of his, to write for him. Old Trollope was a postman, when it comes right down to it; needed the money. He didn’t really care if it was his name or Dickens’s on the weekly instalments. After Trollope, Wilkie Collins wrote one – I forget which – and then, of course, Gabriel Verdon took over.’
‘Verdon?’ Batchelor mouthed.
‘Only a very few of us know,’ Nell said. ‘Reputation was everything to Charles, which is why I had to linger in the shadows. Had it come out that Fagin, Martin Chuzzlewit, Nicholas Nickleby – all of them – were the creation of somebody else, Charles would have been ruined. He wrote up the instalments when he felt threatened, so that Verdon’s handwriting would not become apparent. And, of course, he wrote some of the short stories, even a play, I believe, with Wilkie Collins. He could manage shorter pieces, but full-length novels were simply beyond him. And he gave some of the ideas for the plots, although not that in his later works, if I can use the word “his” at all.’
‘So that’s how he could be so prolific,’ Batchelor said as realization dawned.
‘Exactly. A man who gives so much to charity, who gives his time to good causes, who goes on holidays with his friends and family, who spends so much time with me – such a man could never have written the millions of words attributed to Charles. Gabriel Verdon did all that – the angel Gabriel, as Charles called him. More angelic than he knew.’
She closed to Batchelor and dropped to her knees, cradling his face in her hands. ‘Oh, Mr Batchelor, I beg of you. Don’t let this become public knowledge. Those of us who know have kept this secret for years – Charles’s secret; our secret. Think of the millions around the world who read him, who hang on his every word. Charles Dickens is a god to them, a literary genius above all others. You cannot destroy that. You cannot!’ And she collapsed on his knees
, sobbing wretchedly. He lifted her up and sat her on the sofa beside him.
‘Miss Ternan,’ he said softly. ‘Nell. Please don’t worry,’ and he teased an errant lock of hair from her face. ‘If it lies within my power, none of what we discussed today will ever reach the outside world. You have my word on that.’
FOURTEEN
‘You gave her your word and yet you’ve told me,’ Grand teased, passing Batchelor a much-needed brandy.
‘Don’t enlarge your part, Matthew,’ Batchelor scolded. ‘You’re not the world, just a speck in the floating detritus of eternity.’
Grand sucked his teeth in mock admiration. ‘What a loss you are to journalism,’ he said. ‘Stuck in this God-awful day job.’
‘Puts a different complexion on things, doesn’t it?’ Batchelor winced as the brandy hit the spot. ‘All that outpouring, all those dazzling characters and wonderful stories – most of them Gabriel Verdon’s.’ Grand was still puzzling it out. ‘So why did Verdon have to die?’
‘I’ve been wrestling with that one all the way back from Nunhead,’ Batchelor said, ‘and I haven’t the first idea. Did somebody find out that he was the real Dickens, as it were? An outraged fanatic who lost his temper and killed him? Did somebody else at Chapman and Hall learn the truth and have a row with him?’
‘Had to be somebody on the inside,’ Grand said. ‘All that business with the keys. I can’t believe anybody could walk right in to Chapman and Hall, just like that.’
‘So, you’re Henry Morford?’ Henry Trollope beamed. ‘Should I have read anything of yours?’
Morford grabbed the man’s arms and quoted from himself, ‘“Thrilled ye ever at the story, how on stricken fields of glory, men have stood beneath the murderous iron hail?”’ He waited for a response, but got nothing but the ticking of Chapman and Hall’s clock. ‘The New York Times can barely function without me,’ the American went on, undeterred.
‘So,’ Trollope was still smiling, though for the life of him he didn’t know why. ‘You’re here because …?’
A distant look came over Henry Morford’s face and he held his head high. ‘I just wanted to stand in the office of the publisher of the world’s greatest writer,’ he said. ‘You know, for posterity’s sake.’
‘Er … I see,’ Trollope said. All his life he had been used to the adulation of crowds; perhaps if Henry Morford knew the truth about Charles Dickens, he wouldn’t have been so impressed. There was a sudden commotion and Frederic Chapman hurled himself into the room with a woman in tow. Her hat sat at a rakish angle across her head and both of them looked shaken.
‘Well, there she is,’ Morford beamed broadly, displaying a fine set of teeth. ‘Beulah, honey, where’ve you been?’
‘You know me, Henry,’ she smiled just as broadly, straightening her hat. ‘In this maze of passageways, I just got lost. This kind gentleman, I say, this kind gentleman …’
‘… was about to call the police.’ Chapman was clearly seething. ‘Caught her ferreting about in the offices. What the Hell’s going on?’
‘Er … Mr Morford,’ Trollope felt obliged to explain.
‘Henry Morford, sir,’ the journalist half bowed and handed Chapman his card. ‘I’m guessing you must be Sir Frederic Chapman.’
‘No, I …’ The accolade had not come Chapman’s way as yet, but he lived in hope.
‘Beulah and I are over from the States and we heard about Mr Dickens’s death. Well, I am a devoted fan; we both are, aren’t we, Beulah?’
‘Sure are,’ she winked at Chapman, ‘I say, we sure are.’
‘You’ll have to forgive us kinda barging on in here, but we just couldn’t resist. We Americans are pretty impulsive folks, you’ve probably heard.’ He held his wife to him, hugging her around the shoulders. ‘I told Beulah that it was likely Mr Trollope and Sir Chapman would be this way, but she will go exploring. I’m sorry about that, Sir Chapman.’
‘Er … just Chapman,’ Chapman said, subsiding a little. He looked at Beulah again and she certainly did seem a little on the simple side. Perhaps he had misjudged her.
‘Well, that’s mighty democratic of you, Chapman,’ Morford said, ‘and thanks for letting us tread on this hallowed ground. We’ll see ourselves out.’ There were handshakes all round. ‘Now, you stick with me, Beulah, y’hear? Can’t have you getting lost again.’
Everybody laughed and the Americans made for the stairs and the Strand.
‘Well?’ Morford asked out of the corner of his mouth as Chapman and Hall’s door closed behind them.
‘All the safes are Chubbs,’ she hissed back. ‘Fort Knox’d be an easier nut to crack. What now? Wellington Street?’
Morford looked around him to get his bearings. St Clement Danes and Temple Bar loomed one way; Charing Cross and Trafalgar Square the other. ‘If we have to,’ he said, ‘but since we’re in the Strand, why don’t we pay a courtesy call on those enquiry agents? One of them’s a goddamned Yankee, for Christ’s sake.’
‘I do love your railroads,’ Grand remarked to Batchelor, ‘and you know that I do, so you’ll understand that I am not being rude to a very well-meaning body of plate-layers when I say I never want to take this train again.’ The train to Higham had gone over yet another set of bone-jarring points and Batchelor could only nod in agreement, his teeth still rattling in his head.
The train pulled in with a savage jerk at Higham Station, and Grand and Batchelor alighted, the only passengers to do so. The guard, comatose as ever, waved them through like old friends and they set off up the lane towards Gads Hill Place. The hot summer had not abated at all as July approached over the horizon, and soon their boots, the bottoms of their trousers and even their hats were rimed with soft dust, kicked up by their passage. Batchelor was a townie through and through and, although no one could call London clean, he remained very suspicious of floating detritus once he was outside its limits. Grand was at home with dust; his blue uniform back in the day had often been indistinguishable from the grey of his opponents, until a quick brush-down had revealed his true colours. He spat to clear his mouth and took a swig from the water bottle he carried with him whenever on the road, through force of habit. He held it out to Batchelor, who shook his head. He knew it was probably a good idea, just not very British.
‘How antagonistic is Georgy Hogarth likely to be, do you think?’ Batchelor asked Grand.
Grand thought for a moment. ‘She has been caught out in at least one lie and I suspect has a lot more that she has told but we don’t know about. So, on the principle that no one likes to be found out, I should say … very.’
‘There’s something odd in that house,’ Batchelor said. ‘Something strange about the household, perhaps I should say. The gardener’s wife keeps having children by person or persons unknown; the groom knows far too much about his employer’s private life, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there wasn’t some blackmail involved there somewhere; the cook is demented … her kitchen is as hot as Hell.’
‘Come along, James,’ Grand admonished, and clapped him on the back, raising a new dust-cloud. ‘All cooks are mad; we of all people should know that. And … Butler, is it, the groom?’
Batchelor nodded.
‘Butler, like all grooms, knows everything. You can’t have someone carting you all over the countryside without them knowing where you go. It just isn’t possible. You can’t blindfold your coachman.’ Grand gave it some thought. ‘Not for long, at any rate. And if he was blackmailing him, it wouldn’t do any good to lie about his death, unless he expected Georgy to carry on paying him.’
‘Or Nell.’
‘Or Nell, true. And she has no doubt come out of all this very nicely. From what we’ve learned of Dickens, he was lots of things, but not mean.’
‘We could always ask Ouvry, I suppose.’ Batchelor was doubtful. They hadn’t exactly parted on the best of terms.
‘I just don’t see money as the motive here,’ Grand said, as they turned into the drive. ‘Dickens was certai
nly worth more alive than dead.’
The house looked peaceful in the hot sun. The shrubbery was rustle-free and the lawn baked in the heat. It was almost possible, to the intent listener, to hear the paint on the windows bubble and the glass to creak as the sun took its toll. But there wasn’t a sound, from the garden or the house. Not a ghoul in sight. Grand stepped up and rang the bell with a flourish.
They could hear it echo back and forth. There was no scientific reason for it, but they knew that the house was empty, just by listening to the lonely peal of the bell. There were no scurrying footsteps, no calling voice. Just a silence, which wrapped around their ears and deafened them with its intensity. A shiver ran up Batchelor’s spine.
‘Is everything all right?’ he asked Grand. ‘There should be someone in, surely?’
A crunch of boot on paving made them turn. Brunt was approaching around the corner of the house and he stopped when he saw them there. ‘Oh,’ he said, without enthusiasm. ‘It’s you.’
Batchelor stepped forward. ‘That’s right, Mr Brunt.’ He thought by using his real name rather than the Dickens-given one, he might improve the man’s mood. ‘We were just wondering where everyone was.’
‘Well, Catherine’ll be a-lying down,’ he said, looking squint-eyed at the sun to assess the time. ‘Emma’ll be … well, I dunno where she’ll be. Along of Butler, if I knows anything. Isaac’s down in the village, I s’pect.’ He stopped as though that explained everything.
‘And Miss Hogarth?’ Batchelor prompted.
‘Oh, Miss Georgy and Miss Caroline, they’re down at my cottage. Missus is whelping. They like to give a hand, but if she don’t know what’s what by now, I dunno who does.’
Grand’s eyes nearly fell out of his head. ‘Your wife’s having a baby?’ he asked. ‘What, right now?’
The gardener nodded.
‘Why aren’t you down there?’ Grand asked. He wasn’t sure how things were done in England, but where he came from, the father was usually at least in hailing distance.
