The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  Suddenly, I cannot define exactly what it was, perhaps a tensing of his person, a change in the openness of his face, Ashbee was on his guard. I could hear Inspector Field’s words—“We don’t want to scare him off”—echoing in my mind. Dickens also must have sensed it. He immediately changed the subject.

  “If memory serves,” Dickens began (and Ashbee visibly tensed), “you mentioned at our first brief meeting that you were also a writer” (Ashbee relaxed as he realized that Dickens no longer wished to discuss Paroissien’s murder).

  “You have an excellent memory, sir,” Ashbee was again his congenial self. “Yes, perhaps I did mention my amateur scribbling.”

  “Perhaps I could read some of your best work sometime,” Dickens tendered the polite offer which sooner or later every writer tenders to every other writer. It is an offer which never means what it purports to mean. It is not really an offer to read your competitor’s work. Rather, it is a challenge. “Are you good enough to let me see your work? Are you confident enough to know that I will not be laughing hysterically at you as I read?” are the real questions hidden in that seemingly innocuous offer to read another writer’s work.

  “I would be honored,” Ashbee answered guardedly, “although I cannot predict if the subjects of my writing will be congenial to your tastes. My book is unusual, often unsettling in its realistic descriptions.”

  “Oh, no fear of that,” Dickens laughed. “I have eclectic tastes.”

  That strange, grotesque grin once again twisted Ashbee’s face. It was as if he were enjoying some ironic private joke.

  “When I get a substantial piece of my work in order, I should be pleased to have you read it. I would value your opinion.”

  “What is the nature of your work?” Dickens politely probed.

  “It is an extended analysis of London life. For lack of a better title, I am calling it The Memoirs of a Victorian Gentleman.” Again, that quirky grin, as if some joke were being played at our expense.

  “Aha, sounds quite interesting,” Dickens responded.

  I could tell immediately that his enthusiasm was feigned. From the title it sounded like a very conventional sort of book, the kind of thing that Thackeray and the lace-curtain crowd of Berkeley Square novelists might assay. I could tell that Dickens found the title boring, because he dropped the subject in the subterfuge of relighting his already-lit cigar.

  “Well,” Dickens emerged from a veritable cloud of blue smoke which he had puffed up around his head as a diversion, “we do not want to monopolize your whole afternoon with our intrusion, but I do have one more request, Lord Ashbee, which I hope you will see fit to grant.”

  “Please, my friends call me Henry. What is it? I am at your service,” Ashbee answered graciously.

  “Henry,” Dickens picked up his invitation to familiarity, “could you give us a brief tour of your house and collections? One hears rumours of the treasures you have collected. I am sure Mister Collins shares my aesthetic curiosity.”

  “Yes, absolutely,” I immediately assured our host.

  “Of course, nothing easier,” he arose with a certain arrogance and pride in this opportunity to display his wealth and taste.

  The following thirty minutes were a feast of unrivalled splendor. Each painting, each statue, each sculpted marble fragment, each tapestry captured our senses in a new and exciting way. Seeing such exquisite pieces exhibited in the warmth and richness of his sumptuously appointed rooms was an experience so much more personal than viewing similar works in the cold public rooms of the British Museum or the National Gallery. And his collection rivalled those collections. The paintings on the walls were signed by Poussin, Claude, Van der Veldes, Ruisdael, Hobbema, and the English painters West, Copley, Stanfield and Gainsborough. There were two priceless Canalettos, a striking Titian, a Watteau. The sculpture and statues must have been the spoils of every temple and palace in Ancient Greece and Imperial Rome. He saved his most interesting (and perhaps revealing) gallery room for last. It was a small room with every inch of wall space taken over by small (none larger than twelve inches square) pictures and miniatures—oils, watercolors, sketches, line drawings, cartoons. “I call this my grotesque room,” he announced. “It is like walking into an opium dream.” It was, indeed, a room of turmoil, violence and horror. The room was dominated by the work of his favorite English painter, J. M. W. Turner. There must have been eight or ten small oils or watercolors of fires, tigers, storms and roiling seas. The rest of the room was hung with the grotesque representations of real and mythic monsters of painters like Hogarth, Daumier, Blake.

  The last room into which he led us was the library. Its shelves were lined with a wealth of richly bound volumes in leather, green baize and gold leaf representing the greatest works of English and Continental literature. Ashbee proudly directed our attention to his complete set of the works of Charles Dickens occupying a prominent portion of a shelf right at eye level, a prestigious location in any library. “I hope, Mister Collins, that your work will soon accompany those of Mister Dickens on my library shelves,” Ashbee politely declared.

  Yet, I could not help but feel that something was wrong about this room. It felt crowded. Throughout the house, Ashbee’s priceless art collection was displayed in spacious, well-lit rooms, yet the library was small and dark. And there was no desk, no reading chairs. But something else had captured my attention when we entered.

  Ashbee had led us on a leisurely tour of his house and art collection with evident delight and pride in exhibiting each treasure. When we entered the library, however, he did a strange thing. He fairly leapt from the doorway to the opposite wall to straighten a small picture. As we entered behind this spasm of sudden movement, he was turning to us with a somewhat embarrassed smile which twisted off into his directing of our eyes to Dickens’s novels in their place of honor. He pointed with pride to the rare collectors’ volumes in his library, editions of Cervantes and Voltaire and Galileo and Pascal, a Gutenberg Bible, and an enormous three-decker of Richardson’s Clarissa. In a more modern vein, he owned full collections of the works of Rabelais and Sir Walter Scott.

  After savouring the delights of his library, he ushered us out, carefully closing and locking the door behind. “The servants, you know,” he explained. “They are not allowed in there. Books are too small and portable, too much of a temptation.”

  In the large entrance foyer he once again assured us of how much our surprise visit had pleased him. A cab was summoned from the high-road and we made our escape.

  As we left the Ashbee estate, I sensed that Inspector Field and his surveillance minions were somewhere nearby. I surveyed the passing landscape, but, if they were there, it was beyond my powers to detect their presence. There was some sporadic traffic on the high-road, but no sign of Field’s black post-chaise.

  “Seems a nice enough chap,” I remarked to Charles as our cab started down the high-road toward the city. “Quite hospitable. Certainly serious about his art collecting, is he not?”

  Dickens turned to me with a look of utter amazement on his face as if I were some barking idiot newly escaped from Bedlam.

  “You did not, for one moment, believe all that twaddle about transcending the vulgar and the everyday through art, did you?” he scoffed.

  “Why, I…”

  “The man is hiding something,” Dickens said, slapping the padded seat for emphasis. “No sensualist, as he deems himself, exists for purely aesthetic motives. Man’s lower appetites are much stronger than his aesthetic sense. Aesthete indeed! He protests too much.”

  I was, needless to say, shocked at Dickens’s vehement denunciation. I saw no grounds for it. I wondered if Dickens had taken a personal dislike to the man. My brief ruminations were abruptly terminated in a pounding of galloping hooves, a rush of black bulk and a harsh shouted order—“REIN IN!”—to our cabman.

  Inspector Field intercepted us in his speeding post-chaise about two miles from Lord Ashbee’s estate. He waved our cabman to
the side of the high-road, and we made our report right there.

  “Well,” Field began jovially, “’ow did you find Milord this afternoon?”

  Rogers loitered dourly at his side.

  “We found him at home, quite pleased to accept our call, expansive and gracious in giving us a tour of his house. Quite hospitable,” Dickens answered Field’s opening foray.

  Disappointment momentarily darkened Field’s face. I must admit that, after what Dickens had only moments before stated to me, I was somewhat surprised at the positive evaluation which Dickens gave. I had failed to catch the irony in Dickens’s voice, the teasing look in his eye.

  “All of which leads me to believe,” Dickens went on after that brief pause for effect, “that the man is guilty as Thackeray’s Jesuit.”*

  At this sudden pronouncement, Field’s equanimity returned: “Oh, I see, the literary man must ’ave ’is fun with the poor servant of ’is Majesty. That’s your game, eh?”

  Dickens laughed. There was a rapport between them.

  “I do not know what occasions my doubts,” Dickens said, turning serious, “but I am certain that we only saw the surface of that house, of the man. He is deeper. There is something going on there, behind the aesthetic facade.”

  “What do you mean?” Field quietly drew him further up the intuitive path, whose gate he had opened.

  “I am convinced that Ashbee was hiding something, that there were things which he did not wish Wilkie and me to observe, subjects he did not want us to pursue in our conversation.”

  “’Idin’ what? What subjects?”

  “I don’t rightly know. He seemed somewhat nervous when we mentioned Paroissien’s murder.”

  “Did you notice anythin’ specifically amiss,” Field probed, “out of place, unusual?” He was keenly interested now, on the scent.

  I waited. Charles was managing this show. I must admit that I honestly felt that I had nothing to say.

  “He said he was a writer,” Dickens began. “He said he was writing a book, yet how strange that we saw no place where a writer would work—no desk, no study, no place in his library.”

  Field looked blankly at Dickens as if to say, “That is all?” I feel that it was almost out of desperation that he turned to me. “Did you ’ave this same feelin’, Mister Collins?” he asked. “Did you notice anythin’ out of the ordinary?”

  “Not really,” I said, disappointing him. He shot a quick glance at Rogers, which I interpreted as meaning what a waste of time these two are!, but to my own surprise, I did not subside into my hitherto silent state. “There was this somewhat strange business with a crooked picture frame in the library. It was probably nothing. And the library, it seemed so small and cramped,” I finished lamely, “so unlike the rest of the house.”

  “What strange business? What did ’ee do?” Field’s animation had temporarily returned.

  “He virtually raced to straighten it as we entered,” Dickens cut in.

  Inspector Field’s forefinger, emphatically crook’d, jumped to the corner of his eyebrow and scratched once, twice, thrice.

  “What did ’ee do when you mentioned Paroissien’s murder?” Field asked with relish.

  “He exhibited surprise, even shock,” Dickens answered. “Freely admitted that he knew the man. Acted as if our announcement of the murder was the first he had heard of it.”

  “Acted?” Field’s forefinger scratched once more.

  “It was as if his reaction was being held under tight rein,” I ventured my agreement with Dickens’s observation. “I sensed that he did not wish to talk about the murder.”

  Dickens nodded his assent to my characterization.

  Field and Rogers listened hungrily, like two birds of prey. “In other words,” Field said, staring at us so hard you would have thought he was trying to look right through us, “you think ’ee’s in it? You think ’ee was ’idin’ somethin’? You think ’ee was lyin’?”

  Dickens and I looked at each other. It was as if the man was interrogating us.

  “Why yes, I suppose so,” I said, “but I cannot be certain.”

  “I am more certain!” Charles said with a decisiveness which surprised me. We had been together during the whole visit to Ashbee’s manse, and he had seen and heard no more than I. “I sensed from the moment Paroissien’s name was mentioned that Lord Ashbee was uneasy, suspicious.”

  “That’s it then!” Field said. “You two gentlemen ’ave done yeoman service for the Protectives. We will pursue this further. I will maintain my surveillance upon the Ashbee estate.”

  “And,” Dickens said, interrupting Field’s retreat toward the post-chaise, “you will keep us informed? If possible you will summon us to continue as observers of the actual unfolding of the case?”

  “Yes,” I added, “we are so deep into it now that you must allow us to follow it through to the end.”

  Field hesitated.

  Rogers scowled.

  “Yes, of course,” Field finally consented.

  With a curt farewell, Field and Rogers remounted their dark police carriage, and were carried off at a gallop. Dickens and I re-entered our cab, and enjoyed a more leisurely ride into the city.

  As we drew near our respective lodgings, Charles ordered the cabman to drop me first. As I began to step out, Dickens stopped me with a gentle hand on my arm. He was quite serious, even contemplative.

  “Wilkie,” he said, “she was there. I could sense her presence.”

  His almost obsessive gaze disconcerted me.

  “Do not be deceived by Ashbee,” he warned. “That man is not what he seems. We must save her from him.”

  He had conjured himself into St. George all right, preparing to ride forth with his lance at the ready.

  * * *

  *This is probably a reference to a character in Thackeray’s Henry Esmond, which was not yet published but parts of which Dickens might well have recently seen in manuscript form.

  A Voice from the Shadows

  May 9, 1851—late afternoon

  What immediately follows has no relevance to the Partlow/Paroissien case. The meeting I am about to describe was never brought to the attention of either Charles or Inspector Field, but, I must admit, it has great relevance to my participation in that case. Since I never mentioned it to either Dickens or Field, I suppose it might be construed as a clandestine meeting. Nothing could be further from the truth. I neither planned nor sought this meeting, but I did acquiesce to it (thus, I am not altogether blameless). In fact, if I am honest, I must confess that I secretly hoped for just such a meeting. To put the clearest possible light upon it, I chose not to mention this meeting to either Dickens or Field, because I was not proud of it at all, and if it occurred again, I am sure that I would handle the whole affair quite differently.

  I probably would not report this meeting at all, if it did not ultimately have relevance to the story I am trying to record in this memoir. Perhaps, when this story finds its audience in another time and place, it and I will not be judged so harshly as I feared I would be, if this meeting came to light under the censorious gaze of my own age.

  As I write this secret memoir, I cannot help but feel that it should be as meticulously plotted as a novel. But real life doesn’t happen like a novel. Sometimes things which are not part of the plot occur in the midst of heated plot development. What is the writer to do? Simply forget some events and only emphasize others? Or, report the events of reality as they occur? That is why I am writing of this meeting, because it helps me to understand what my story is all about, and why I am writing it down after all these years.

  That afternoon of Dickens’s and my visit to Lord Ashbee’s impressive collections, I stepped down from our hired cab at the end of my narrow street, and waved as St. George clattered away. I was pleasantly drained yet exhilarated at our afternoon’s adventure as I walked to my lodgings at number seventeen. I lived in two small rooms with a pantry, off Longacre on West Dickson Street, a cozy suite of b
achelor digs. The afternoon was closing fast, the sun blinking feebly through the grey overcast.

  “Mister Collins, sir?” came a voice from the shadows of a crevasse between two stone buildings.

  It was Irish Meg Sheehey’s voice. When she stepped out into the waning light, she was like a luminous apparition painted on some sensual Renaissance canvas. Her fiery hair, her dark eyes, her dusky skin, the heave of her bosom, caused by the low cut of her dress and her careless laces, all contributed to an impression which for days had haunted my heated imagination.

  “Mister Collins,” she repeated. “I must speak with you.”

  “Why Meg, hello, yes, it is almost dark, speak to me, of course, yes, I’m surprised to see you, Meg,” I stammered on like a flustered twit.

  We stood there in the street in silence for a long moment, our eyes meeting. All I could see was the soft heave of her chest against the taut laces of her dress, the seductive invitation in her eyes, the bold cock of her head. What I failed to see was the fear and pain behind her eyes, her desperation. It was a long and riveting look. When it was finished, we both knew that it was no longer possible for either of us to lie to the other. It was as if in that long, penetrating look we had stripped each other naked. The normal hypocrisy of everyday life somehow seemed out of place in that quiet street with those soft shadows gathering around us like bedclothes.

  “Yes, Meggy,” it seemed so proper to call her that as if we had become chums, “what can I do for you? What is it? Are you in distress?” And I have called Dickens St. George!

  “No sir, but can I ’ave a few words with you, sir?” she answered quietly. “I needs to talk to someone.”

  “Yes?” I was too confused by my own emotions to realize that she had not yet stated her business, because she was waiting for me to invite her in out of the public censure of the street. “What is it?” I repeated, and I stood there, thoroughly insensible to the look of the whole affair to whatever passersby there might be.