The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  The maitre d’ at The Player’s Club, with his thin pencil moustache and black frock coat, gushed like a Parisian fountain when Dickens entered: “Oh Meestair Deekens, welcome back to zee Player’s Club. Eet has bean a long time, Meestair Deekens. Welcome back.” The person nodded to me in total non-recognition and said “Zanck you, sir” when he took my hat and gloves. Someday, I thought, they will recognize me as well as him.

  Upon entering the dining room, we created quite a stir. No one disturbed our dinner, but a low hubbub of gawking and pointing took possession of the room. When we had finished, Dickens suggested we retire to the smoking lounge for our brandy and cigars. While retrieving his prop newspaper from the cloakroom, Dickens whispered, “Now let us join the rabble!”

  “The rabble” were more than eager to close ranks around us. Within seconds upon entering the smoking lounge, we were surrounded by greeters, professed acquaintances, devoted readers, and all manner of actors, writers and theatre patrons. Dickens recognized a few, pretended to recognize many, made new and fervent acquaintance with a multitude, and smiled and shook hands with all. All the while, he kept on prominent display his copy of the Times with its gory headline. Men bowed in and bowed out after shaking the great man’s hand but a few, who felt, because of prior acquaintance, that they held a greater claim to his company, lingered. Ultimately, we were invited by two well-known actors, Mister Grahame Storey of the Adelphi and Mister Earle Davis of Drury Lane, to join their group.

  We were ushered to chairs of honor in a circle of six near one of the three glowing fireplaces. Without question, Dickens was the center of attention, and the newspaper trumpeting the murder of Lawyer Partlow lay prominently displayed on his lap as the snifters arrived and the cigars were lit. It could only be a matter of time before someone in this doting circle noticed it and commented upon it. We were not disappointed.

  “I see you are reading about the unfortunate affair of Solicitor Partlow’s death,” Storey of the Adelphi gravely intoned, right on cue.

  “Yes,” Dickens replied, tapping the newspaper in his lap with the back of his cigar hand. “I’ve been out of town two weeks. Was wading through the backed-up papers at the Household Words office before coming out tonight, and this one caught my eye. First I’d heard of it. Terrible thing!”

  “Quite, quite,” Davis of Drury Lane said, nodding through the blue smoke of a Turkish cigarette.

  “Great surprise to all of us,” another agreed.

  “Indeed,” assented other voices.

  “Poor man was an acquaintance of mine,” Dickens announced sadly. “Met him with the Covent Garden crowd.”

  “Poor man indeed,” Storey harrumphed with a sarcastic tone.

  Consulting his newspaper, Dickens pushed the point: “Says he was here drinking the night of his death.” Dickens cocked a mischievous eye and remarked with an evil grin, “Why, any one of you here might have been the last to see him alive.” He paused for effect. “Perhaps the murderer is in this room right now.”

  They stared at Dickens, aghast.

  “Really, Charles,” I said, stepping in to lighten the mood, “you’ve been reading too many of your own novels.”

  At that, everyone laughed, but he had succeeded in planting the seed of suspicion which made them think back to their own comings and goings that evening.

  “Besides,” Dickens raised his brandy snifter, “no actor could have done this. Actors only murder people on stage. Theirs is the act of murder which makes no allowance for the reality of murder.”

  “Oh, yes, I quite agree,” said a rather precious middle-aged gent of delicate stature and features, an actor—as evidenced by the way he flourished his cigar—wearing black polished leather pumps. “No actor could have done it. Smacks too much of common robbery if you ask me.”

  “I remember he was sitting right over there by the card tables,” added another actor, Cazamian by name, who was either a Hungarian or a specialist in singing roles, clearly evidenced by the blue and green silk scarf meticulously wrapped about his precious vocal chords.

  “Yes.” Storey, with a rather petulant edge on his voice, continued the reconstruction. “With a whole group of Covent Garden people, if memory serves me. The new Macbeth was all they could bear to discuss. You’d think Macready was the only actor in London.”

  “It was the Covent Garden crowd all right,” Cazamian affirmed, “Partlow and Paroissien the stage manager, and some of the minor actors.”

  “Yes, and as the night went on it became a rather drunken and ugly scene,” Davis (who I finally placed as having acted an excellent George Barnwell, which I had seen some weeks before at Drury Lane) remembered.

  “Quite true. They ended up with their own private corner, because their abusiveness drove everyone who remained over to the far side of the room,” Storey recalled, showing little sympathy for the deceased.

  I exchanged a quick glance with Dickens. I nodded toward Storey and Dickens assented with a small return nod.

  “Shocking, isn’t it?” Dickens’s voice was low and contemplative. “That the excesses of drunkenness would lead to the murder of a gentleman.”

  Mister Storey frowned. He tried to control himself but he could not. “Gentleman indeed!” he barked.

  To our surprise, a number of the others nodded in assent of this indignant slur on the deceased Partlow’s membership in that privileged class.

  Dickens merely raised an eyebrow and stared hard at Storey, waiting.

  “Referring to Partlow as a gentleman is severely stretching the margins of the class, if you ask me,” Storey explained.

  “Hear, hear,” Silk Scarf supported that statement.

  “Man partook of every vice available within the confines of London,” Davis interjected gruffly. “Frequented establishments so low that no gentleman would ever enter them, yet he bragged of his profligacy when in his cups. Not surprised at all that someone murdered him.”

  “If you ask me it wasn’t drink which led him to his murderer.” Storey was clearly the head surgeon in this vivisection of Partlow’s character.

  “What then?” There was mischief in Dickens’s voice. “Bad manners?”

  “Too much of the evil smoke, I would venture,” Storey intoned.

  “Evil smoke?” Dickens inquired.

  “Known opium addict,” Davis explained, sarcasm lacing his voice. “One of his large coterie of ‘gentleman’s’ vices.”

  Dickens was conducting this forum masterfully. They were revealing information without gaining the slightest knowledge of his purposes.

  “Opium? My word!” Dickens the actor projected his surprise and chagrin. “You feel that murder lurked inevitably, then, in the depths to which Solicitor Partlow had sunk?”

  “Well put, sir.” A new voice, belonging to a tall, strikingly handsome, richly dressed gentleman, intruded upon the gossipy circle around the hearth. All that marred the tall gentleman’s appearance was the twist of a sneer which remained on his mouth even after he had removed his cigar from its center. “No one in England has written more eloquently of the depths to which a gentleman can sink than yourself, sir. Ah, Sir Mulberry Hawk, the evil Steerforth, Ralph Nickleby. Well put indeed, sir!”

  I could see that Dickens was pleased at this well-read intruder’s knowledgeable flattery. The man pressed between chairs into the center of our circle. Dickens rose graciously to meet him.

  “I was leaving after a dinner in one of the private dining rooms, and Sylvere, the maitre’d, apprised me of your presence in the club. I could not pass up the opportunity to make the acquaintance of the finest novelist in England. Mister Dickens, I am Henry Ashbee. I wish that I could write as you do.” The man was a whirlwind.

  “Thank you, Mister Ashbee. Meeting a reader as knowledgeable as yourself would be a distinct pleasure for any writer. Will you join us?” I could see that Dickens was struck with the man.

  “I’m sorry but I have an engagement. Gentlemen,” he said, as he gave his sneering smile
all around, “I apologize for intruding on your conversation, but I could not leave the house without meeting Mister Dickens. I am an amateur writer, and I could not let pass the opportunity of meeting a true professional. Please excuse me.” And with that, he was gone.

  “Bright chap, Ashbee,” Davis’s words fought their way through another cloud of thick blue Turkish smoke, “bit mysterious, though. No one seems to know much about him. He is a lord, yet he is known to be interested in business. Travels often to Hamburg and Paris. Fancies self a connoisseur of the arts. Ahhh…” (this drawn out meaningfully) “They say Ashbee is a great collector, ahhh…of exotic things, you know.” Davis’s economical characterization seemed to satisfy the assembled company, as evidenced by grave nods all around. As for me, I didn’t have the slightest idea what the man was talking about. Exotic things indeed?

  “Collects books, they say,” Storey said, having to have the last word. “I’ve heard his rare editions of Cervantes are priceless.”

  “Well,” Dickens said, extinguishing his cigar in the burnt-orange glass dish atop the three-footed, bear-toed ash receptacle, which stood at attention like a dwarf orderly in the command of Dickens’s ranking leather armchair, “Wilkie, we too must excuse ourselves and move on. It is getting late and I must work tomorrow.”

  “Gentlemen,” I prefaced my handshakes, “it has been my pleasure to make each of your acquaintance.” As these exchanges were proceeding, I observed Dickens lean across to Storey. I moved closer and overheard Charles’s request.

  “Might I have a word with you in private? I say, I need your help.”

  “Of course. Of course,” Storey stammered, reeling from the honor.

  As the others reseated themselves, we withdrew with Mister Storey of the Adelphi in tow. We crossed the marble floor of the foyer beneath the crystal chandelier and occupied a small anteroom near the front door which was furnished for the purpose of writing and dispatching messages via the street porter whom the maitre’d kept on call.

  “I must tell you that I have not been completely straightforward in my conversations here this evening,” Dickens confided. “I feel I have exploited you, and I fear I would like to continue to do so.”

  Mister Storey of the Adelphi stared.

  “I apologize for not being more candid,” Dickens went on, “but I certainly could use your help.”

  “Of course, of course, more than happy to assist,” Storey mumbled.

  I was somewhat taken aback by Dickens’s forthrightness. I didn’t feel it wise to reveal that we were spying for Inspector Field here in this private gentlemen’s retreat. I feared that Dickens was about to betray our ungentlemanly conduct, yet what could I say? He had taken charge of the charade from the moment we had entered the club.

  “By the most bizarre of coincidences,” Dickens explained to Mister Storey of the Adelphi, “I am writing a novel set in the world of actors and the London theatres which involves just such a murder. For that reason, the murder of Solicitor Partlow arouses my curiosity. Could you fill in some of the detail for me?”

  On Storey’s countenance, weak and unwelcome suspicion contended with a strong desire to please and show himself to advantage with Dickens.

  I let out my breath in a subdued expression of relief at Dickens’s novel subterfuge. I assumed that Mister Storey would have refused us as spies but could never withhold mere information which could assist in the alchemic act of turning life into art. Dickens’s invention carried the day.

  “You were here that night and observed the deceased gentleman in question. What is your true opinion of his state?” Dickens probed.

  “I observed Partlow the whole evening,” Storey replied with some heat. “He is, was, one of the most insufferable boors, one of the most disagreeable of the Club’s members. He was very drunk, loud, even obscene.”

  “Obscene?”

  “As I remember, just before they left, a loud and obscene argument, terrible graphic language, concerning some tart some members of the group had shared, broke out. Partlow and Paroissien, the stage manager at Covent Garden, actually leapt to their feet in anger. But someone settled it all. Actually, I think that chap Ashbee was one of the party.”

  “Do you remember who else was in the group?”

  “Certainly Paroissien. He and Partlow were frequently in company together. Word has it they shared the same vices.”

  “Such as?” Dickens coolly extracted a small pad and pencil from his inside coat pocket as if prepared to note down Storey’s every word.

  “All of the usual ones—strong drink, prostitutes, gaming—but it is rumored that he also partakes of the more unusual. He is said to be an opium addict and I have heard that he hires women to flagellate him and that he fancies young boys. I must caution you, however, that I am only repeating rumour, though widely dispersed rumour.”

  Dickens slowly shook his head in quiet moral indignation.

  “You said there were others besides those two. Do you know who they were?”

  “No. Though I vaguely remember someone saying that they looked like two of the supporting cast of the new Macbeth. One was a thin, sallow-looking chap, the other large and loud and with a beard.”

  “You don’t know their names?”

  “No, I don’t.” Storey of the Adelphi said this last somewhat slowly as if a sudden suspicion began to seep into his consciousness.

  Dickens sensed this sudden drawing back on the part of his auditor. “No matter,” he smiled, lightly dismissing their whole discussion. “Could hardly put all this opium taking and these exotic appetites in one of my novels anyway. There would be a public outcry.”

  Dickens’s replacing of his small notepad (with nothing written on it) into his coat pocket seemed to put Mister Storey back at ease. After a short silence, Dickens extended his hand with an affectionate “Grahame, I can’t thank you enough. Your insights will help me create my characters.”

  Storey of the Adelphi beamed.

  We parted with Mister Storey in the foyer and retrieved our hats and gloves from the shelf in the cloak closet. Yet Dickens lingered. He was waiting for Sylvere, the maitre’d, to free himself from bidding “Adieu” to a group at the door. When the man turned and realized that Dickens was waiting to speak to him, he beamed and hurried to attend upon us.

  Dickens prefaced his discussion with “Excellent meal and fine cigars, Sylvere,” and a hearty handshake punctuated by the soft scratching of two or more coins changing hands.

  “Zank you vayrree much, Meestair Deekens,” he fawned, his right hand disappearing into the depository of his trouser pocket.

  “Sylvere, you can satisfy my curiosity. Solicitor Partlow was here the night he was so brutally murdered. I have been told that he left in a group. Can you tell me who he was with?”

  “Ah, zee Poeleece Inspectair ask mee zee same ques-teeoun,” the sly foreigner grinned at Dickens.

  Unexpectedly Dickens shook hands with the creature again.

  Not unexpectedly, the creature’s hand again immediately sought out his right trouser pocket.

  “But I am not the police,” Dickens reassured him. “I am a writer with a fascination for crime.”

  “Certainemont. Of course. But you must understand, zee membairs, zay do not like mee to talk of zair private affairs.”

  Dickens seemed positively obsessed with shaking this oily imported servant’s hand: “Who did he leave with?” There was a slight edge of impatience in Dickens’s voice.

  Efficient Sylvere spoke only after making his deposit in his trouser pocket: “Meestair Partlow wass een a party of five ven ee left. Zair wass ees friend Meestair Pairosseean and two guests ooze names I don know.” At that, the Frenchman stopped, a rapid wave of caution washing over his face.

  “And the fifth?” Dickens commanded without benefit of handshake.

  The man’s caution suddenly turned to a brief flash of fear. But that fear passed as the man jingled his pocket once for reassurance. “Zee fifth man,” he finally vo
lunteered, “wass Meestair Henry Ashbee.”

  The smiling Sylvere bowed us out of The Player’s Club into a gaslit London night. I suggested that, since it was such a pleasant night, we ought to walk, knowing that walking in London at night was Dickens’s favorite pastime. To my surprise, he ignored my suggestion.

  He stopped on the stone steps of the club, staring down at the street where three gentlemen, who had exited short minutes before us, were entering their cab. The street porter, dressed in a worn black morning suit and a top hat, dented on both sides, the upper half leaning forward precariously over his bushy eyebrows, held the hansom’s door for them. I could see why the man had caught Dickens’s attention: he was comical in his threadbare, crazily tilted mimicry of gentility. Dickens pounced on this street porter as if he wanted to lift him up with both hands and set him down whole within the pages of his next novel. I quickly found, however, that Dickens had no aesthetic designs upon this precariously hatted denizen of the London night. His designs were involved with life (and death) rather than art. Inspector Dickens was buying more information.

  No handshakes this time. No punctilio. Two coins opened their conversation. The man in the broken backed hat actually bit on each coin as Dickens spoke to him concerning the night of the murder. When Dickens finished, the man silently scratched his head, then brazenly stuck out his hand. He was a grizzled Oliver Twist asking for “More!” His outstretched hand occasioned a rather simple exchange. Dickens filled it with a gleaming half-crown and the man began to talk animatedly.

  Yes, he remembered the evening well.

  Yes, all were drunk.

  Yes, Mister Ashbee seemed to be in charge of the group.

  “Do you know where they went after they left here?” Dickens asked eagerly. “Did you overhear?”

  Suddenly the man’s well of information seemed to dry up and his Oliver Twist hand began to sidle up toward us to ask for more.

  The creature’s mercenary inclination triggered one of the rare outbursts of anger which I observed in my friend Charles Dickens during the full twenty-three years of our association. With a quick swipe, Dickens knocked the man’s crazy hat off.