The Detective and Mr. Dickens
Page 31
“I shall see you soon,” Dickens continued, as if not wishing the conversation to end, not wanting to let this particular adventure go. “It shall not be many nights ’ere I shall need a walk in the neighbourhood of Bow Street.”
“Good. I shall expect you.” With that, they shook hands again.
Even as the man was moving out of the door, Dickens, almost nervously, continued to babble on: “As they say in America, I shall see you if I don’t kick the bucket.”
Inspector Field stopped in mid-exit, flashed his sharp ironic grin from beneath his sharp square hat as his sharp forefinger scratched the side of his exceedingly sharp eye, and laughed, “Bucket indeed! ’Tis the bucket that kicks us, my good friend, not us the bucket.” With that, he was gone.*
* * *
*Wilkie Collins’s journal comes to an abrupt end at this point at the bottom of the final page of the leather-bound commonplace book in which he was writing. Collins makes no indication that the narrative is complete; nor is there any indication that it isn’t. Perhaps other commonplace books existed which carried further the story of the collaboration between Charles Dickens and Inspector William Field of the Metropolitan Protectives. This particular journal, needless to say, exhausted itself at a rather felicitous point. It does, however, leave the fates of Irish Meg Sheehey, Tally Ho Thompson, Scarlet Bess, and Collins himself, not to mention poor Ellen Ternan, somewhat unresolved.
More from William J. Palmer
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