The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  I wasn’t nearly as amused by Rogers’s officiousness.

  Continuing, Field leaned conspiratorially into us. “It’s a little game we play with the watermen. The body should come down on the tide if our informant ’as got the times right,” he said, and glanced eloquently to the woman by the fire. “A waterside prostitute. Says she saw it all. Says body went in off the stairs above Blackfriars. We figure the Thames river rats will save us the price of a dredger. One in particular we keep in our pay. We’re waitin’ for word of ’im.”

  “How did it go in?” Dickens asked eagerly. No detail could be too insignificant for his novelist’s curiosity.

  For my part, I was captured by the woman. Her neck was white and her full breasts almost completely exposed by the low-cut, loosely laced bosom of her dark, blood-coloured dress. She stared fixedly at the flames as if contemplating throwing herself into them. The shimmering blaze sent flickering shadows across her face which softened her mien, and ripples of orange light sparked in her thick mob of ungoverned curls.

  From across the room, she seemed beautiful to me. Dickens has frequently cautioned me about my tendency to idealize.*

  “She saw it all,” Field answered Dickens’s question.

  He led us across the bullpen to hold audience with the fire-woman.

  “This is Meggy Sheehey, also known as Irish Meg,” Field introduced the woman, who raised her eyes from the fire with disdain. “This is Mister Dickens and Mister Collins.”

  “Aye…Mister Dickens, eh? Oy’ve ’eard o’ you, all right, oy ’ave.”

  “We’re lucky to ’ave Meg this time.” Field played to his audience. “We’ve got ourselves a reg’lar eyewitness come for’ard voluntarily.”

  “The bloody bastards did’na pay me. That’s the only reason I follered ’em. To make ’em pay. Fieldsy knows that. All’s for a price, Fieldsy. For a price. Don’t forgit.”

  Field frowned at her familiarity. “We’re not so sure Meg didn’t ’ave something to do with this man’s goin’ in, are we Meg? That scene’s still possible. You’re goin’ to watch your langwidge, ain’t you Meg?”

  Her lips clamped tight, and she slumped back in the chair, subdued.

  “Now,” Field ordered, bending down and crooking his forefinger lightly under her defiant chin, “tell your story from start to the throwin’ in.”

  “Oy wos workin’ the street outsoyd the door o’ The Snug Harbor verry late las’ night. On a suddin, five swells, all drunk, climb out o’ a ’ansom cab. They muss’a bin piled atop each other. Wos a strange sight. Five swells in that place near the river at that time o’ night. The Snug, she’s a sailors’ pub, she is. But there wos five fine ’uns, standin’ there in the street big as life. Wos a strange sight, allright.”

  As if the strangeness of it all had suddenly parched her whole being, the fire-woman reached for her glass, which was sitting on the small deal table at her right hand. Field caught her meaning immediately, and produced a half-full bottle of gin out of a cabinet. Her glass filled, Irish Meg returned to her tale.

  “The five swells didna go inta The Snug. Smart o’ ’em. Instead they spotted me. I gave ’em me terms. They walked me to a bench near the river. Two o’ ’em used me. The other three jus’ watched. Two o’ ’em used me but only one paid proper. The others, the one wi’ the fat, curlin’ nosebrush, laughed and spit on me as I knelt there. They were an ugly crew, all drunk, and at each other the ’ole time. They staggered away along the river. I follered ’em, keepin’ my distance.”

  At this point in her narrative, Rogers stuck his head in and called Inspector Field from the room to consult. The woman seized the occasion to take a long pull from her gin glass. Satisfied, she grinned slyly up at us and dropped all pretension. “Wot are you gents?” she asked boldly. “Swells come to sniff about in London’s dustbin? Swells brought round to watch the animals perform? You know, gents, for a price you can perform with the animals.” With a wink, she brazenly threw back her shoulders to display the full white expanse of her breasts and with both hands she formed the most indecent of gestures. With the thumb and forefinger of her left she formed a circle through which she drove her straightened right forefinger with a pumping motion. She was the second prostitute to whom Field had introduced us, yet she was utterly different from Scarlet Bess. This one seemed to have an ironic sense of humor, seemed to enjoy taunting these two voyeurist swells, whose witness to her degradation she obviously resented. When Field came back into the room, Irish Meg gave a short laugh at our discomfiture, and dove back into her story.

  “I follered all the way to Blackfriars Bridge. They moved slow—a couple stopped to piss in the shadows. Then they started yellin’ at each other. ’Bout some girl. The little man yappin’ her name. Helen, I think it was, or somethin’ like. Right before Blackfriars Bridge a fight broke out between the big man with the whiskers and the little man. Two others grabbed the big man, but the little man had a big knife. ’Ee stabbed the big man in the belly while t’others ’eld ’im. T’other man just watched, then sicked-up all over the ground.”

  “You say you can identify the men,” Field pressed.

  “Oh, I knows ’em allright. I sees the whole thing. ’Ow the big man falls on the ground and don’ move. ’Ow the rest on ’em gather roun’ him pokin’ and rollin’ ’im over. ’Ow they whisper together. ’Ow they pick ’im up, carry ’im to the steps and push ’im in. Oh, I sees it all, allright.”

  “And you’re sure you can recognize all of their faces?”

  To my great surprise it was Dickens’s voice which had taken up the interrogation. In the excitement of her story, his curiosity had made him blurt out the question without thinking.

  “Theer faces ain’t all I’d rekernize o’ ’em,” Irish Meg laughed at her vulgar joke. Dickens couldn’t suppress his own grin. Field laughed out loud.

  “Remarkable,” Dickens exclaimed.

  “With gin and a promise of good pay, Meg can, at times, be remarkable indeed,” Field flattered her.

  “Oh, oy’m a pricey ’ore, oy am,” Irish Meg saluted us.

  At that very moment Rogers poked his head back in, and announced that the signal had arrived from the river.

  Dickens’s eyes flashed with anticipation.

  “Now Dickens, Mister Collins, Meggy girl,” Field jabbed his forefinger at each of us in turn, “we are off!”

  * * *

  *Years later, in a cautionary letter, when Collins was caught in the throes of his obsession with the real “Woman In White,” Dickens would remind his friend of his tendency “to be carried away like a paper boat on the tide.”

  Under Blackfriars Bridge

  April 12, 1851

  We marched in Rogers’s tow through the dark labyrinth of streets, until the sour smell of the Thames and the dark shapes of warehouses, skeletal docks, and the naked masts of ships signaled our arrival in the shadowy waterside neighborhood.

  Out of one of those shadows suddenly stepped an apparition. Inspector Field confronted it. “Good evenin’ to you, Mister Marcus,” he said. “Ben keepin’ the watch as directed?”

  “Lor’, if it ain’t Insperrer Field hirrselferrer.” This Marcus seemed overwhelmed either by the great honor of being greeted by that personage or by the heavy cargo of gin he had already taken on that evening.

  Rogers immediately thrust forward his flaming eye and illuminated this spectral figure. His clothes were all rags and he shook uncontrollably from the cut of the sharp river wind or, perhaps, from the effects of the gin. His head was wrapped in a sailor’s knit cap which, pulled down tight around his face, caused him to resemble a grinning skull. “Yee’re quite the loose rogue tonight, ain’t ye, Mister Marcus?” Rogers threatened.

  Field, impatient, moved between Rogers and this riverside skull. “Loose rogue perhaps, but on the watch, right Mister Marcus?”

  “Yetherrer. Onna watcherrer all night. Irs arful colderrer, Mirrer Insperrer. Need my money, shurr. Need to girr waarrrmmerrer.”


  At the mention of money, Field’s forefinger became unfriendly and began tapping the sepulchral Marcus on the chest. “You’ve been skulkin’ ’ere all evenin’, Marcus. What ’ave you done ta earn your gin?”

  “I dorm spend ir on gin,” the skull, abashed, protested.

  “It’s all you spend it on, wretch,” Rogers spat.

  “Give us your report,” Field ordered.

  I watched Dickens as he hung on every word and I could tell that he was recording it down to the very sound and inflection of the drunken informant’s slurred speech. I could see Dickens sitting at his desk later, and opening a lock in his mind, and all of it flowing out to become characters and scenes in one or another of his novels. As for me, I watched it all from the background in the company of Irish Meg.

  “’Orrible ain’t ’ee,” she moved closer and whispered to me. When I looked at her in the dim backlight of Rogers’s bull’s-eye, her eyes were sad, as if she were seeing something in a mirror that frightened her. She was no longer taunting me with obscene gestures; rather, she seemed to want someone to talk with, and for some reason she had chosen me. I didn’t answer her overture.

  “’Ee’s bin out morrer ’an an arrerrer,” Marcus slobbered. “’Ee’s orrerdrue, orrerdrue. I’rr take yerrer ter wherrer he’rr purt in.”

  We followed our guide’s unsteady lead down through the darkness to the river. A sliver of moon cast dim shadows across its surface. Its current crept, deathly black, between its low jagged shores. To me it seemed a river of death, full of pathetic suicides and drowned bodies, a graveyard for the city’s lost.

  Marcus led us to a jumble of small boats pulled up in the mud within view of the towering iron scaffold of Blackfriars Bridge. “’Ee’ll purr in ’ere, ’Umphry wirrll,” he assured us.

  Field grabbed a handful of Marcus and escorted him away out of our hearing. In a minute or two Field returned alone and Marcus, that grinning skull, had returned to his gravehole in the city.

  We all moved into the lee of an overturned boat to escape the wind. Dickens and Field conversed in low tones. Rogers stood lookout. Irish Meg moved so close to me that I could smell the gin on her breath, feel the voluptuous rise and fall of her breathing beneath her slight wrap. I removed my long woolen scarf which had been wrapped across my chest beneath my greatcoat and placed it around Irish Meg’s neck. The shivering woman accepted it without protest, but in doing so fixed me with the strangest of looks, eyes startled. She said not a word as she wrapped the scarf around her white neck, but her eyes forced mine to retreat back to the silent, black expanse of that infernal river.

  We waited twenty minutes beneath that overturned boat. Rogers’s bull’s-eye paced back and forth along the river’s edge like the eye of some huge prowling hound. Twice he returned to report the obvious to Inspector Field: “No sign o’ ’im ’ere yet sir.”

  “’Ee knows the body’s out there. ’Ee should’ve snagged it by now,” Field spat the words toward the river.

  “’Ee’s a sure waterman,” Rogers consoled his governor, “and you know ’ee’s too afeerd to ever cross us.”

  “Aye, but we can’t wait ’ere all night,” Field said, glancing at Dickens and myself. “Let’s give these fine gentlemen a real adventure, Rogers.” He grinned at us in the light of the bull’s-eye. “Give the signal with your light, and fetch our man of the Thames Police.”

  Rogers marched off to the dark river bank, and swung his bull’s-eye over his head three times. Within moments his signal was answered by the sound of oars slapping the thick water. After another moment or two, a low dark shape slid into shore.

  We heard voices. Gruff greetings were exchanged as Field joined Rogers at the river’s edge. Dickens, the woman and myself quickly left our temporary shelter and followed. Without hesitation, at Field’s brusque “Go on, get in,” we climbed into the launch and found ourselves propelled out into the grasp of that black current. The oarsmen leaned to their work. We moved steadily upstream against the tide toward the towering iron hulk that is Blackfriars Bridge. Dickens and Field conversed. I could only catch snatches of their conversation.

  “We’ll find ’im. ’Ee’ll not get by us in the dark of midriver now.”

  Dickens nodded vigorously and said something which I could not overhear. Irish Meg Sheehey huddled at my side. “This is passin’ stoopid, this is,” she muttered as the boat rocked against the current and we were swallowed into the dark maw of shadow that is the underbridge.

  That is how Dickens and I found ourselves in a four-oared Thames Police Galley lying in the deep shadow of Blackfriars Bridge. The massive iron skeleton quartered the lowering sky above us, and, below us, its hulking black shadow seemed to penetrate all the way to the bottom of the stream.

  “We’re lookin’ for a small boat with one man at the sculls. If ’ee’s got wot we want ’ee’ll be low in the water or else ’ee’ll ’ave our goods in tow,” Field instructed us. We floated on the flood. The Thames policeman in the bow held fast to one of the bridge pilings. The river rushed swiftly by.

  We didn’t have to wait long. Field, of course, saw it first, no more than a small moving shadow on the water, but enough for Field’s forefinger to point and Field’s brusque voice to order: “There. There’s our man. Bend to ’em, lads.”

  We shot out of the deep shadow of the underbridge and caught the current, which sent us swiftly toward our target. The man, bent to the oars of the small boat for the purpose of steering, not rowing (for the rushing tide carried the boat firmly in its grasp), did not seem to notice us as we bore down upon him. To the rear of his mongrel boat, something split the water in tow. With one last strong pull, our oarsmen shipped their sculls and we intercepted him.

  It looked like a boat which had barely survived a shipwreck. It was patched and braced with bits of the rejected garbage of the Thames, the most slapped together of boats, a boat of many colors, a patchwork boat with more crazy boards and dashes of pitch than could be found on a countrywoman’s quilt.

  At the boat’s sculls sat a block of a man. His hulking shoulders conjured the African gorillas I had so recently seen with Dickens in the Zoological Gardens in Hyde Park. We floated alongside and Constable Rogers clamped onto the waterman’s ragged gunwale. A mean-looking hooked and pointed boatman’s gaff rested in the bottom of this waterman’s boat. However, when he spoke, his voice was amiable enough.

  “’Iss un’s a reel swell, ’spector,” the waterman nodded to the cargo in tow behind his makeshift boat. “More lace an’ muttonchops than yer damn Prince Regent.”

  For a long moment, Field stared at him without saying a word, but I noticed that intimidating forefinger make a contemplative scratch at the corner of his eyebrow. Meanwhile, the waterman’s dark cargo floated and bounced merrily on the flood, arms and legs rolling crazily like some comic marionette at each tug of its rope.

  “Where ’ave you been ’idin’ all evenin’?” Field demanded. “We’ve been waitin’ almost an ’our for you to deliver our package, and it’s no night for waitin’ under bridges.”

  “Yer mustachioed friend,” the waterman said, jerking a thumb toward his cargo, “got detained ’mongst the keels an’ anchor ropes of the hupstream shippin’. Found hisself in an orful tangle, ’ee did. I hackchoohally ’ad to tie hup an go ho-ver the side jus’ to cut ’im loose. Sorry, guv’ner, but theese blokes don’t always jus’ swim up an’ hook themselves to yer line like yer reg’lar little fishes do.”

  “Did you search the body? Was there identification on it?” Field’s voice sounded as if he wasn’t really interested in his own question, as if he already knew its answer, as if this were a familiar game.

  “Pleese guv’nor,” the man’s voice evidenced great dismay. “I nivver teched nothink. I knows the rules. The searchin’ is the job o’ the dirtective. All I did wos wot you said,” he protested. “Find the body. ’At’s all. ’At’s all.”

  Seemingly satisfied with the man’s protestations, Field, with
a jerk of his forefinger, ordered the man to follow the police galley to shore.

  “’Ee was out so long because ’ee searched the body, stripped it of its valuables and ’id them somewhere upstream,” Field explained. “It will take us days, maybe weeks, to identify the body. That corpse won’t ’ave a shillin’ or a scrap of identification. It’ll be lucky if it’s got the gold in its teeth!”

  Within minutes, the waterman beached his mongrel boat in the mud next to ours. We watched with morbid curiosity, as, pulling hand over hand, he dragged his grisly cargo ashore. The rope was noosed beneath the dead man’s armpits. The body was coatless and bootless. A huge dark stain covered the whole back of what, by the hint of its muddy sleeves, must have been a white evening shirt. The corpse came to rest face down at our feet.

  I watched Dickens as the waterman pulled his grisly piece of salvage to us. He stared hard at the hole ripped in the center of that dark stain.

  “My God, how could this happen?” he said in a low voice.

  “’Appens once, sometimes twice each week,” Rogers replied, brusque and unfeeling. “Man’s been stabbed,” he diagnosed the body’s ailment.

  “Stabbed indeed,” Field said, taking up the diagnosis as impersonally as if describing a large river trout recently fileted for his supper, “and, from the looks of that wound, by a large, flat, quite pointed blade. Not your usual waterside robber’s blade, eh Rogers?”

  “No sir. Not at all, sir.”

  “Who are these fine gennulmen?” the waterman demanded of Field.

  Field introduced us. “This is the famous Mister Charles Dickens,” he said, grinning as if enjoying some private joke, “and Mister Wilkie Collins.”

  “Famous fer wot?”

  “For books.”

  “Don’t know nothink ’bout books.”

  The man faced Dickens and me down, and, congenially enough in his rough way, introduced himself: “I be ’Umphry ’Owse. If I worked on land they’d call me a resurrection man, but since I works the river they calls me a fisher o’ men.” He howled at his own joke.