The Detective and Mr. Dickens

by William J Palmer

  I stood, mouth agape, a motionless spectator.

  Thompson, wrestling her roughly across his body, extricated himself from her fists.

  Meggy, inadvisedly, grabbed handfuls of Scarlet Bess’s blazing hair, and dragged that virago across the stones away from Tally Ho Thompson, who righted himself, displaying the most inexplicable reaction that I could imagine.

  He arose laughing, gasping out great shouts of hilarity, as the two whores rolled on the ground, pummelling each other and tearing at each other’s hair. Curiously, Thompson made no motion to intervene. He simply stepped back, and watched them fight.

  Irish Meg got in the first yanks and chops, but Scarlet Bess was much taller and stronger, and, when she righted herself after Meg’s initial mastery from behind, proved more than a formidable foe. When she got to her feet, and turned to fight, her face was so twisted with pain and jealousy and rage, that she looked like one of the damned in Scarlatti’s disturbing illustrations of Hall’s English translation of Dante’s Inferno.

  She descended upon Irish Meg like some rabid animal, clawing, tearing, flailing her fists madly. Meg was not prepared for so fierce an onslaught, and was driven to the ground. She did, however, manage to grasp her attacker about the legs, and drag her down to the paving stones as well.

  I advanced upon the two women rolling about on the ground. Each was struggling to regain her feet. As Scarlet Bess got to her knees, Irish Meg lunged up, and managed a rather stiff handful of the front of Bess’s gown. The whole top of the larger woman’s dress came away in Meg’s hand and, when released, fluttered in tatters at Scarlet Bess’s waist. The result was the complete exposure of Scarlet Bess’s more than impressive breasts. Thompson’s eyes went wide, and an angelic grin spread across his face. I, once again, felt anchored in my boots, knowing not what to do.

  Instinctively (out of a momentary modesty), Scarlet Bess hugged herself, all arms and elbows, in the attempt to cover the rolling milky expanse of her exposed breasts. With Bess’s arms thus involved, Irish Meg seized the opportunity to scramble to her feet, and, standing over the other, drew back and hit her in the face with her closed fist.

  Scarlet Bess reeled backward, her arms splaying out as if she were being mounted on a cross. She shook her head once, twice, and then, much to Meg’s surprise, struggled to her feet, bare breasts gloriously unattended, to once again square off. Now her face was no longer twisted in jealousy and hate, but had gone cold and murderous. She advanced upon Irish Meg, claws crook’d before her, fangs bared.

  Meg, wisely, decided to retreat. She turned to run, but was not quick enough. With a wild dive, Scarlet Bess grasped two handfuls of the back of Irish Meg’s skirts and dragged her to the ground.

  In a frantic effort to escape the mad virago’s grasp, Meg attempted to crawl away on her hands and knees, but succeeded only in causing the whole bottom portion of her gown to tear away. Since, as befits her profession, she typically wore few, if any, fitted underclothes (and this being an “if any” evening), there she was crawling away across the stones gloriously naked from the waist down. I must admit that an irresistible heat began to gather in my body as I observed these two women, their clothes in such total disarray. A crowd began to gather, coachmen, postilions, the other whores. No one seemed in the least inclined to intervene.

  Cockney yells of “The big ’un ’ull taker ’er!” and “The Irish wench fights for her life!” and “A bob says hits the one with the bouncin’ bubs!” and “tuppence on that bare white arse!” They were actually placing wagers on the outcome of this catfight.

  I looked at Tally Ho Thompson.

  He grinned back stupidly at me.

  “We must do something!” I shouted above the din of the crowd. “This is barbaric.”

  “What ho, barbaric!” he pushed through the crowd to my side.

  “We must stop them,” I persisted. “They’ll kill each other.”

  “No such chance,” Thompson talked through his ever-present smug grin. “Wenches only kill their men and their ’usbands.”

  He seemed quite proud of this observation. My amazed silence evidently persuaded him to continue to wax philosophical.

  “There can’t be,” he continued, “no better show than two mad ’ores in a good fight. Hit ’as ev’rything! Sex. Violence. Flesh. Blood. Where else can you see a broad white arse like that ’un” (as Irish Meg careened by on her hands and knees) “stickin’ out with its owner payin’ no attention to hit (or to yew)? This is just where it really gits good,” he protested, “when they start pullin’ each other’s bubs, an’ slappin’ each other’s bums, an’ tearin’ out great swatches of ’air.”

  I glared at him in disbelief. I considered shaking that stupid unconcerned grin off his face. He must have caught the displeasure in my look, because he quickly changed his careless stance.

  “Seems a shame we’re goin’ to ’ave to step in,” he admitted grudgingly, “but I guess we will.”

  At that very moment, Irish Meg lunged at Scarlet Bess’s face with the probable intention of clawing out her eyes. She missed her mark but her sharp nails raked down across her adversary’s neck and bared breasts, leaving long reddening welts which turned almost immediately to scarlet lines of blood. Driven to madness by the sight of her own bleeding breasts, Bess struck out at Meg with a downward chop of her closed fist which caught that worthy on the side of the neck and drove her with great force into the cobbled ground.

  Irish Meg, much the smaller of the two, was stunned, able to rise only to one knee.

  Scarlet Bess, blood streaming from her raked breasts, fell upon her, pummelling with both fists.

  It was then that Thompson and myself made the mistake of stepping in.

  We first attempted to pull Bess off of the seemingly dazed and defenseless Irish Meg. No sooner had we disentangled the two, than Irish Meg leapt to her feet and, in complete control of her physical powers yet carried away by blind rage and pain, vaulted onto Tally Ho Thompson’s back. Feeling this mad beast clawing at him from behind, and afraid for his sight, my ally Thompson immediately abandoned his hold upon Scarlet Bess, and swung sharply away in the attempt to throw his tormentor from her position of dominance astride his back. In so doing, however, he left me at the mercy of his raging mistress. In but a moment, I found myself outmanned. Bess was a full head taller, and every bit as strong as I.

  I attempted to maintain my hold on her arm, but she swung me around as a bargeman swings his bowline. I held on tenaciously, but the violent centrifugal force spun us both to the ground. She landed heavily atop me in a most indecorous manner. The fact of the matter is that as we tumbled both of her arms surrounded my head and crushed it to her naked chest. As a consequence, I was pummelled about the ears by the unrestrained mounds of her wildly swinging breasts.

  Thompson was faring no better. Unable to shake off the enraged Meg clinging to his back and clawing blindly at his face, he was dancing as if on fire. Slapping frantically behind him with one hand at the white flesh of his tormentor’s bare derriere, and desperately fending off with his other her attempts to claw out his eyes, he resembled a berserk windmill.

  Ultimately, the blind violence of these initial grapples gave way to a brief surcease. All four of us wrestled out of each other’s grasps, and struggled to our feet. Scarlet Bess glared down at me from what seemed a quite imposing height. Letting loose a volley of curses, the two enraged whores renewed their hostilities. For some reason they had forgotten their hatred for each other, and made Thompson and myself the fresh objects of their rage.

  Bess charged down upon me. I backed away, raising my hands in an attempt to placate her. Moving close upon me, she stopped abruptly, and, giving a slight feint with her hands, which caused me to raise my arms to ward off the expected blow, she suddenly kicked out with her right foot, landing an excruciatingly sharp blow to a most vulnerable area of my lower abdomen. Her kick doubled me over with pain, and I felt my knees buckling irretrievably beneath me. I collapsed to t
he ground with an instinctive movement in which my knees sought my chest as a means of protecting my already bruised vulnerability. At last, Scarlet Bess did not hesitate to kick me once again sharply and ignominiously in the backside.

  As I looked up from my humiliating position amongst the paving stones, I saw Thompson sparring with Irish Meg a few feet away. He was attempting to hold her off with a series of sharp pushes to her shoulders. Yet, even as he seemed to be gaining a toehold against Meg’s mad rushes, unbeknownst to him Scarlet Bess was descending fiercely upon him from his blind side.

  The force of her rush carried all three to the ground in a heap of flailing arms, kicking legs and scandalously cursing female tongues. I righted myself, and hobbled to Thompson’s aid. The two women were atop him. For some unexplainable reason, Thompson was laughing maniacally. I bent to pull Irish Meg off, sharp pains shooting upward all the way to my chest as I did so, when the whole fiasco took an unpredicted turn.

  The police arrived.

  Two constables of the Protectives, in their black hats and brass-buttoned black coats, rushed in through the crowd with their truncheons drawn in preparation for the worst specimen in street violence, public mayhem and murder. What they found was two half-naked whores purposefully assaulting two rather badly disheveled gentlemen.

  “Halt!” shouted the larger, plumper of the two constables, brandishing his truncheon. We stopped our fighting, and faced the two constables.

  “Cover thyselves, women!” the thin, long-faced constable, staring wide-eyed at Meg and Bess in all their fleshly glory, ordered haltingly.

  “With what, you bloody poof?” Irish Meg spat back as she stood, wearing nothing below her waist, save her short stockings and pumps.

  The two constables were struck dumb by her outburst. With the most comical looks on their faces they stared first at us, then at the crowd. One of the whores from the crowd of on-lookers retrieved Meg’s tattered skirt and tossed it over the heads of the two Protectives to her. Without ceremony, before everyone, she wriggled into it. In the meantime, Bess was hugging the tatters of her bodice around her wounded breasts.

  The fat constable looked at the thin constable. The thin, lantern-jawed constable shrugged helplessly. Without even attempting to gather any explanations, the two constables, brandishing their truncheons to cut a path through the harmlessly curious crowd, marched all four of us off to—where else?—Bow Street Station.

  Proceeding at a brisk march under the prodding of constables Lomas and Hovde, as I later ascertained their names, we arrived at Bow Street with little delay. So quickly, indeed, that I barely had opportunity to marshal my wits, and consider how I was going to explain myself to Dickens and Field, whom I knew would be there, though hardly expecting my arrival in custody.

  There was little need for concern on my part, however. When the four of us entered the station, Rogers was on the desk. When our two dutiful escorts began to announce us, Rogers, with a smug look of triumph on his insufferable face, abruptly arose and disappeared into the bullpen. Inspector Field and Charles returned with him immediately to confront the four of us lined up in our various degrees of disarray.

  Field looked at Dickens.

  Dickens looked at Field.

  They both looked at that super-efficient monster, Serjeant Rogers.

  And, in a moment, they all three burst into uproarious laughter.

  Thompson, whose insolent grin had never been subdued throughout any of these proceedings, was, to my amazement, laughing right along with them.

  At this turn of events, Meg and Bess, glancing toward each other as if for permission, began to emit small giggles.

  I alone found the situation no laughing matter. The unmentionable pain inflicted by Scarlet Bess’s kick was just beginning to subside. I knew I would be sore for days. I was thoroughly embarrassed at having been arrested in such low company. And now my closest friend and patron was laughing at my discomfiture. Worst of all, I was forced to observe the satisfaction that puppet, Rogers, was taking in my humiliation.

  “Why Wilkie, I thought you were returning to your rooms for a quiet evening with a book and a glass of sherry,” Dickens taunted.

  “You seem to ’ave become tangled up in one of London’s nighttime adventures, Mister Collins,” Inspector Field added.

  “I was but an innocent stander-by when this whole misunderstanding occurred,” I protested much too soberly for their giddy mood.

  At that, Meg burst out with a mocking laugh and a garbled comment of derision that sounded like “insentmybloody-whitearseewas!”

  Field dismissed Constables Lomas and Hovde with a “well ’andled, men,” which seemed to satisfy their curiosity as to their superior’s strange reaction to their prisoners. Then Field quickly reinstituted the businesslike atmosphere of the stationhouse which had been usurped by the intrusion of this French farce.

  “Thompson,” Field barked, without ever raising his voice, “explain the situation to your meddlesome mistress. Make it clear I’ll brook no more interference from ’er. Then send ’er ’ome.”

  “Meg, sit on that bench!” he ordered sotto voce with a quick stab of his decisive forefinger.

  Thompson took the thoroughly intimidated Scarlet Bess aside.

  “Mister Collins,” Inspector Field said, turning lastly to me, “no doubt you will wish to join Mister Dickens and myself. We were just about to dive down into a most interestin’ document.”

  I followed him and Dickens sheepishly through the door to the bullpen. As I was leaving that front room of the stationhouse I could not help, like Lot’s wife, but glance backward at my fellow partners in crime. Thompson and Scarlet Bess were kissing tenderly in the far corner. Irish Meg, her head lowered, sat like an abandoned waif on a bench against the front wall.

  Inside the door, Field stopped as if having a second thought. I was the last of us through the door, and when he turned to address me, I felt like one of his criminals about to be accused. But his face broke into a mischievous grin, and he said, “Mister Collins, would you please ask your accomplice, Mister Thompson, to step in with us?”

  I turned quickly back to the duty room, quite willing to take orders from Inspector Field now that I had gotten a brief taste of the criminal life. I motioned to Thompson who was still standing against the wall with Scarlet Bess, and waited for him in the doorway. Strangely, we had become comrades in crime, and a new ease of association and communication had developed between us, the gentleman-writer and the highwayman-actor. As he moved to join me in the doorway, he guided Scarlet Bess to the bench, and sat her down next to Irish Meg, who had been sitting there forlornly the whole time. When we left the room to join Dickens and Field by the hearth, the two women were deposited next to each other in apparent peace.

  Dickens was already seated when we arrived, a small sheaf of papers resting on his crossed knees. Field was standing with his back to the fire, warming himself.

  “Mister Dickens and myself were just beginnin’ to examine the testimonies of Missus Peggy Ternan, the mother of our suspicioned murderess, when you gentlemen arrived so cleverly. What did occasion your arrival in custody, might I ask?” Field’s insatiable curiosity had certainly gotten the better of his discretionary impulses.

  “The two ’ores got in a ’air-puller,” Thompson answered without the slightest hesitation. “Over me, I suppose,” he added with the insolence that always governed his facial expression.

  “Oh, two ’ores in love, is it now?” Field mocked him. “Fightin’ over a grand gentleman like yourself?”

  “That’s it, guv,” Thompson remained totally unbowed.

  Field, seeing that he could not intimidate Thompson, glanced quickly to me. For some reason, whether out of continuing curiosity or spite, he decided to pursue the subject in this new quarter. “And you, Mister Collins, ’ow were you mistaken for a member of this ring of criminals?”

  I laughed nervously. “I happened to be passing by at the very moment the two women fell upon one
another,” I said, trying to control the tremor in my voice. “It was barbarous. Thompson and I were merely trying to pull them apart when the constables mistook us for participants in the riot.”

  “Yes, of course,” Field, realizing that he was going to get no worthwhile entertainment from either of us, said dourly.

  “You know ’ow it is, sir. ’Ores in love, you know,” Thompson got in one last taunt at his master.

  “Sit down, Thompson,” Inspector Field ordered. “I want you to ’ear what Mister Dickens is about to read. I still may be able to use you in this affair.”

  It was then that Dickens said a strange thing, which, as I look back upon it, may have been directed toward my ears only. “A harlot in love,” he said it in a soft, contemplative tone. “Have you gentlemen ever considered a harlot capable of love? Have you ever considered a harlot human?”

  The Bawd’s Testimony

  May 10, 1851—mid-evening

  If there was one skill for which Dickens had a marvelous facility, it was his continuing ability to read (and I am sure, write) shorthand or “law scribble” as the clerks and reporters in Chancery Lane had called it for centuries. It had been fifteen years since Dickens had been one of their number, yet he had not forgotten one single cipher. In the hour that followed my embarrassing arrival at Bow Street, Dickens read us aloud a dialogue narrative out of a Protectives constable’s transcript, a narrative of venality and degradation and falsehood that made the savageries of Mister Lyell’s prehistoric animal packs pale by comparison.

  Field had conducted the interrogation of Mrs. Peggy Ternan, but he called Rogers in and charged us all to listen to Dickens’s reading, to evaluate the information dragged out of the creature, and to ready any suggestions as to our next move in the case.

  “We might’s well ’ave everyone ’ere for this,” Field interjected just before Dickens was about to step off with his reading. “Rogers,” he ordered, “bring in Irish Meg. She’s in this up to ’er bubs. If Thompson’s tall lass is still out there, send ’er ’ome.”