I stood mouth agape in amazement. Not only had the man remembered me, my watch, and my person from a single meeting fifteen months before, but he had just convinced me with utter certainty to the time and place when my watch was stolen, and of its probable thief.
“Good show, Field,” Dickens smiled broadly.
“You remember Rogers,” Field addressed Dickens, presenting the constable who had been standing silently by his side throughout my interrogation.
“Of course, of course,” Dickens said, shaking hands jovially.
I had no recollection of Rogers being with Field at the hanging in Horsemonger Lane, yet Dickens and he were shaking hands like old friends. Then it dawned on me. This wasn’t the first time he had visited this station house, as he had led me to believe.
Dickens and I were graciously tendered the two remaining easy chairs before the fire, and Field supplied us each with a steaming cup of ferocious black coffee brewed in a hanging pot on the hearth. We sat warming by that fire for more than an hour while Dickens plied Field with questions. That worthy talked earnestly of his work, described the cases he was pursuing at the moment. It was the intellectual exercises that Field performed on the track of a criminal that Dickens wanted to understand.
Myself and most of the rest of London would be allowed to share Dickens’s interest in the subject over the course of that year. By midsummer, Dickens’s series of articles on the Metropolitan Protectives would begin appearing in Household Words. The third of those articles, titled “The Science of Detecting,” would be a composite account of Dickens’s conversations with Field that very night. Another, titled “A Night At the Station house,” would describe the premises and procedures of the Bow Street Station. But, as we sat by that cozy fire, those articles were still some five months in the future. For Dickens’s part, it was no secret that he was pumping Field for information, and, on Field’s own part, it was clear that he was willingly allowing himself to be pumped. I don’t think Field ever envisioned how famous he would become when Dickens put his pen to work later that year in the Household Words articles, and then still later when Dickens used Field as the template for the first full-fledged professional detective in English fiction.
“Inspector Field.” The desk constable opened the door and interrupted our congenial host. “She’s entered Rats’ Castle no more than ten minutes past. Looks to be spendin’ the night.”
“Thank you, Bush.” Field sent the Constable back to his post.
“What is it?” Dickens inquired.
“A break in a case we are presently pursuin’. A woman we want to talk with ’as been spotted enterin’ one of ’er regular ’aunts.”
Whether it was the fire of curiosity in Dickens’s eye or Dickens’s almost extra-sensory ability to transfer his own thoughts into the minds of others, Field immediately proffered the invitation which Dickens craved.
“Gentlemen, would you be interested in accompanyin’ us? It is a raw night, but you might find this interestin’.”
“On the contrary, it is a fine night!” Dickens laughed, as he literally bounded to his coat and hat and walking stick.
Field and Rogers secreted truncheons in the inner pockets of their greatcoats, and Rogers took a large bull’s-eye down off its shelf. He tested the light once to make sure, and then led us out into a cold, heavy fog.
“The one we are after is a master thief, ’eyewayman and ’ousebreaker named Tally Ho Thompson,” Field explained. “’E got ’is name from ’is fancy ’orsemanship when ’ee was workin’ the roads up ’round Shooter’s ’Ill. ’Ee’s been in and out of our grasp three times in recent weeks, and now ’ee seems to ’ave disappeared off the face of the earth. But ’ee’s a reg’lar rogue with the ladies, and one of ’is favorites, one Scarlet Bess, ’as just checked into Rats’ Castle for the night. If we press ’er ’ard, mayhap she’ll tell where ’ee is. I doubt it. She’s an old ’and. Not easily tricked is Scarlet Bess Nisbet.”
Somewhere above us and to the right, in the grey blanket of fog, a church clock struck eleven.
“Saint Giles Church,” Field informed us with a certainty which the darkness of the night, the thickness of the fog, and the labyrinthine confusion of the streets immediately called into question. How can he know that’s Saint Giles, I scoffed.
“Aye, Saint Giles,” Rogers, swinging his bull’s-eye, agreed, “we’re almost to the rookery. Look sharp!”
Though one could barely see, the streets seemed narrower, more tortuous. Turning and stopping and turning again, we ascended small inclines, and then edged gingerly downhill, always moving relentlessly to our left as if the world had started to list in that direction. Suddenly, jabbing back with his bull’s-eye, Rogers brought us to a halt.
Only then did we get the opportunity to savour the particular attractions of the neighborhood. Sickening smells hung in the air of the labyrinthine cavern formed by the narrow streets and twisting alleyways of the rookery. The creaking sounds of houses getting ready to tumble down moaned softly in the foggy night.
A voice attached to a shambling rat-like creature materialized out of the fog, and addressed Rogers and Inspector Field. “She’s in there, guv, she is,” it said, and it stuck out its filthy hand.
“You’ve earned it tonight, Mike Slater,” Field said, filling that emaciated claw with a brown coin. The man’s rodent face, startled in the light of the bull’s-eye, opened into a toothless death’s-head grin.
“’Ook it, Mike,” Rogers ordered our informant, and the man scurried back to his hole.
“I must warn you Mister Dickens, Mister Collins,” Field’s voice was almost fatherly, “you may see and ’ear things ’ere which will disgust you or frighten you or cause you to look with despair on the reality of man’s fallen state. This is an ugly, evil place peopled with thieves, murderers, prostitutes, and the worst coves in the city of London. The men are animals, and the women are perversions of all that is chaste and respectable. We must go amongst these women. They will make lewd overtures and propositions. They may even take liberties in order to influence us. You may find this encounter ’eyely offensive.”
“Let us push on. Reality is something from which no writer should ever shrink,” Dickens asserted gamely. I personally wondered whether we were in for a rather heavier dose of reality than ordered, as had been the case at the Manning hanging.
Rogers led the way with his bull’s-eye.
“Close up now, gentlemen,” Field ordered. “Keep together. We are going down. ’Eads!”
We stopped as we descended a flight of rickety steps into a black, foul-smelling underworld. At the bottom of this filthy cistern, Rogers kicked in a locked door. We entered a dim, close cellar lit by a smoky fire and a few random candles set in waxen pools on dirty tables. The cellar was full of dangerous-looking people, chiefly young men in various conditions of raggedness. There were also women present.
When Inspector Field stepped through the doorway, the whole company went silent.
“’Ow are you tonight, lads? I’ve brought some company to see you tonight, ladies. Rats’ Castle is indeed busy this evenin’.” Field was not laughing as he moved between the tables. His sharp eyes noted every grimace of guilt and hate and fear on the face of every cringing felon in the room.
Though they were upwards of thirty and he but one, they cowered before him, laughed at his jokes, answered when he spoke.
As he passed among them, a large woman in a black dress laced loosely across her breasts, bolder than the others, rose to joke with Field. She pointed a finger at Dickens and myself. “Ye’ve brought us some juicy gentlemen, ’aven’t ye Inspector, sir?” the harlot taunted.
He smiled benignly, but with a quick sideways movement clasped the arm of another young woman.
“Ah, Scarlet Bess, I thought that was you. You’re the one I’ve come to see tonight.”
When he made his swift move and pulled the woman to her feet in the center of that crowd of ruffians, they could easily have ove
rpowered him. But no one resisted his movement with Scarlet Bess in tow across the room. All present in Rats’ Castle were relieved that Inspector Field hadn’t come for them.
Bess struggled, but in Field’s firm grasp she was quickly subdued.
“Hi’e done nothink,” she protested. “Lamme go. You canna take me. Hi’ve done nothink.”
Field ignored her whining cries.
“Please, please doan let ’im take me,” she pleaded to the others as Field led her up to where we waited, with our backs to the door.
At closer view, Scarlet Bess proved a surprisingly handsome as well as exotic speciman, albeit dirty and rough. Her hair was long and brown and splashed in an unruly cascade about her face and neck. Her eyes, also brown and large, were somewhat reddened by drink. A sullen look of hate and fear twisted her full mouth. I hesitate to describe her appearance in more detail, but, heeding the dictum of Dickens my mentor that a true writer should not shrink from reality, I must go on. The one aspect of her appearance which could not be overlooked were the two capacious mounds straining at the laces of her bodice.
Field seemed to have her and the whole room, down to the scuttling rats, under his control. Yet, her calm was only momentary. In one last desperate spasm, she fell to her knees, clutching at Field’s legs and pleading for his mercy. Field remained unmoved by her histrionics. Twisting up hard on her wrist, he yanked her to her feet and thrust her through the opening left by the absence of the door which Rogers had shattered off its pegs.
I am sure that Dickens was as relieved as I to escape that pit of cutthroats. The taciturn Rogers, giving one final flash of his bull’s-eye across the restless surface of the room as a warning for its occupants to stay put, formed our rearguard.
Field, with his prize, led us up out of that underworld to a narrow back street which ultimately surfaced into a wider thoroughfare. There, he pulled up beneath the hazy light of a solitary streetlamp and confronted the woman.
“It’s Thompson I want, not you Bess,” Field said, facing her, still keeping firm hold of her wrist. “Where is your cove? Tell me and you’re free to ’ook it.”
“’Aven’t seen ’im in a fortnight.” Her voice was strange as she answered, no longer angry or desperate, but seductive. “You’ve taken me afore, Mister Field. ’Ee’s not my cove no more. What is it you want?”
“It’s Thompson I want,” Field repeated calmly.
With her free hand, the harlot suddenly clawed at the laces of her bodice. “No, hit’s this you want,” the creature crooned obscenely, as the top of her dress dropped to her waist. In the same motion, she pressed her body hard against Field’s chest.
With a swift punitive decisiveness, Field slapped her hard.
The creature recoiled away from him, the whiteness of her exposed breasts undulating in the saffron light of the fogbound gaslamp.
He dragged her into the shadows of a wall some yards away from us. “It’s Thompson I want, you little ’ore!” His voice was raised, slightly out of control. The disembodied murmuring of their lowered voices floated toward us out of the darkness.
The woman’s actions convinced both Dickens and myself that she was capable of any conceivable lewdness for the purposes of her criminal lover’s preservation. We agreed, as Lord Tennyson had said it in the violent rhythms of his great masterpiece, that she was indeed “Nature red in tooth and claw.” And yet, recollecting that scene later, we could not but feel pity and even responsibility for this woman and so many more like her who come up to London looking for a life and find instead only degradation. Our society, then and no less now, seems able to view women in only two widely separate ways, as respectable matrons or as whores. There should be some middle ground, some synthesis (as that curious German exile, Marx, who haunted the British Museum, might put it) of these opposing and limiting views of women. But in eighteen hundred fifty-one there were thousands of Scarlet Besses in London proper, and more arriving every day.
Field’s handling of this whole indelicate situation bespoke his mastery over this fallen world. He was rough with her because he understood her motives, but he never lost control of his temper, never tried to hurt her. It was as if he could identify with her hopeless plight. We learned later that Field was a bachelor who lived alone in Great Russell Street near the British Museum. Another time, he actually said in reference to a criminal bearing the odd name of John Butt: “’Ee’s not so different from me, I from ’im. I found ’im because I know ’ow ’ee thinks.” Having obtained what information he needed, Field and his prisoner emerged from the darkness. He dismissed her under our streetlamp, and the London night swallowed her up in an instant.
With Rogers and his bull’s-eye once again in the lead, we retraced our steps to the Bow Street station house. The fog had not relinquished its grip on the city. Beneath another lone streetlamp, Field paused to light a cigar. Quietly he apologized for the woman’s shocking behavior. He stated that he had obtained and would obtain more information from the woman, which would guarantee that Tally Ho Thompson would be run to ground. And then, he said a rather strange thing.
“The women of these rookeries are the ’ardest to deal with,” Field said, “the ’ardest by a stretch. There’s much more to them than the men. The men are often slow an’ ’ard an’ don’t ’ave no ’ooman feelin’s, live like animals. But the women still seem to believe in love, ’old on to that chance. Too bad. They learn ta lie, steal, do anythin’ for love. ’Ats ’ow the men turn ’em into ’ores.”
We bid Inspector Field “goodnight” at the station house door. He protested that Rogers should light us back to our lodgings, but Dickens steadfastly refused that courtesy. “These are my streets. I walk them every night,” Dickens insisted. Field only chuckled at that bit of braggadocio as if thinking, They are my streets, an ’ I could teach you much about ’em. Dickens extracted a promise that, when on some future evening some particularly interesting case or bit of detective work arose, Field would summon him to another evening of observation.
We Are Off!
April 12, 1851
One week later to the day, I was working late with Dickens in the Wellington Street offices, when a sharp knocking at the street door interrupted us. The knock was quite insistent and authoritative. It was well after dark.
“Ah, the knocking at the gate,” Dickens joked. “MacCready would make much of this. He is doing Macbeth this very night.”
I peeked out through the small porthole window in the door and was blinded as if by the headlight of a train bearing down upon me in a tunnel.
“Bright light…” I stammered as Dickens boldly peered out.
“It’s Constable Rogers and his bull’s-eye,” Dickens announced as he hastened to unbolt the door.
“There’s been a report of a murder. Before dawn this morning. Near Blackfriars Bridge.” Rogers spoke in haste.
“A murder!” Curiosity and excitement vibrated in Dickens’s voice.
“Aye, murder allright. Thought to be a gentlemen, stabbed and ’elped into the Thames. Whether dead or alive, we don’t know, but our nets are out.”
“Dead or alive! Heigh-ho Wilkie, did you hear that?”
How could I not have heard it.
“Inspector Field sent me to fetch ye, as promised.” Rogers could barely mask his enmity toward us as the cause of his being sent on this menial errand, and thus exiled from the eye of a murder investigation. “Please gentlemen, we must ’urry to get back before they leave for the river.”
Dickens and I dashed back up the stairs to extinguish the gaslights and pull on our greatcoats while Rogers champed in the lower hallway.
“Wilkie, this takes me back fifteen years to when I was a young reporter on the Mirror of Parliament and the True Sun. This is truly something to get the blood up.”
On foot, Rogers led us at a stiff gallop through the dark maze of West London’s streets. We passed through Covent Garden just at the moment when the crowd was the thickest, choking the narrow street a
s they waited for the doors to open at that famous theatre, but Rogers paid the crowd no attention. There was bigger game abroad this night. Breathless, we arrived at the detectives’ door of the Bow Street Station.
Inside the bullpen, Field rose from his pillowed rocker and shook our hands heartily. “So glad you could make it, gentlemen,” he said (quite comically, I thought—as if he had invited us for tea and crumpets, rather than crime and murder). I noticed a woman in a deep maroon dress warming herself by the fire. I’m sure that Dickens noticed her as well. He missed nothing. In the blaze of the fire, her appearance—the low cut of the top of her gown, the chaos of her hair—revealed why the niceties of social etiquette did not immediately apply. Yet, it was impossible to keep one’s eyes from her as she sat, unintroduced, like a threat, across the room.
“We’re waitin’ for word from the river. A body, rumored a gentleman’s, went in off the steps above Blackfriars Bridge when the tide was goin’ up.”
“Extraordinary,” Dickens exclaimed. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am that you summoned us.”
“The body will come down on the tide tonight, unless its gotten ’ung up on something. But they’re pretty good about that. They normally stick to the middle of the river where the current runs fastest.”
“What are we waiting upon?” I inquired politely. “Constable Rogers implied great urgency.” Had Rogers not left the bullpen, I probably wouldn’t have posed the question.
Field, scratching the side of his eye with that crook’d forefinger, said in a lowered voice: “Rogers ’as a tendency to exaggerate when ’ee gets a bit excited, you know—the subordinate’s eagerness not to miss out. ’Ee probably gave you a devil of a run to get back ’ere,” Field chuckled.
The Detective and Mr. Dickens Page 4
