Death at Hungerford Stairs

by J C Briggs

  The beginnings of Fikey’s smile vanished and reappeared momentarily on Sam’s lips. Bastard. Sod ’im, bleedin’ mind reader. ’Ow did ’e know Fikey was goin’ ter ask for a fee? That was the trouble with Fikey – no self-knowledge. Out o’ pocket and worse, known as a friggin’ blower. Oh, shit. He thought of the Chinaman coming for him with a great curved what d’ya call it – scimitar – like self-knowledge, geography was not Fikey’s strong point. He looked at Sam. Seeing the ghost of a smile, he realised something.They wouldn’t arrest ’im – no, they’d bleedin’ leave ’im to be cut in pieces by some yeller-faced snake ’oo’d laugh as ’e did it. Could ’e ask ter be arrested? What a friggin’ joke.

  Sam knew all that was in the grimy alleys of Fikey’s mind. Let him sweat or rather not. He could smell the man again. He’d get Inspector Grove and a few constables to clear out that verminous opium den. He wouldn’t mention Fikey – he could not have the man’s murder on his conscience. Stemp wouldn’t mind, he thought as he looked at his stony face behind the counter. Stemp had not moved during the colloquy with Fikey, but Sam had felt Rogers’s desire to laugh. Stemp saw things in black and white. Fikey was a rat. If he were put down then so be it. My trouble is, he thought, I read too much. Every man’s death diminishes me, for I am involved in mankind.

  Fikey was looking at him, wondering what this hatchet-faced man was thinking. ’Ard as nails, he thought, the bleeder. Soddin’ crushers – hang yer soon as look at yer.

  ‘Well, Chubb – you have been most helpful, most public spirited. We must leave you in peace. I should put up your shutters if I were you. Dangerous times we live in.’

  Fikey did not answer. Sarky git, he thought. They went out, leaving Fikey to worry about hordes of yellow-faced Chinamen brandishing their great curved knives. Sam thought with satisfaction that Fikey would not sleep that night. And, although he had not found Michel, Titfer had been found – the giant had more than likely killed him. He had seen the crushed throat – same as the labouring man. And he had been reminded to shut down the opium den. It was time to go to Zeb’s to see if there were any news of Mrs Hart.

  Dickens and Scrap were at Zeb’s shop with Effie. Zeb and Occy were still searching, as was Feak who had had the bright idea of going for his mother. Mrs Feak was there too. She had not seen Mrs Hart, but they had looked in the yards and courts near Mrs Feak’s house, and she had come to Zeb’s in case they found her, in case she was needed. Good people, thought Sam, as the smell of Fikey Chubb dissolved.

  ‘Mrs Feak, good evening,’ he said. ‘You have not seen her?’

  ‘No, Mr Jones. I wonder how far she can ’ave gone. She ain’t strong. She won’t last out there in this cold night.’

  They all thought of her waxen face and starved frame. If they did not find her tonight, she would die.

  ‘Rogers and Stemp will help. Will you stay here with Effie?’

  ‘I will.’

  ‘Mr Dickens and I will go out again now. Scrap, perhaps you ought to go home. Mr Brim will be wondering where you are.’

  ‘’S’all right, Mr Jones,’e knows I’m wiv you. Shall I come with yer?’

  ‘I’d like you to help Mr Rogers, if you will. They’ll need you to do your usual listening and you can get into places they can’t.’

  Scrap looked puzzled and a little disappointed, but he accepted Sam’s request and went off with Rogers and Stemp. Sam took Dickens by the arm and led him in the opposite direction.

  ‘Where are we going?’ asked Dickens.

  ‘Waterloo Bridge – she might have jumped. We can ask the tollkeeper – he might have seen her or she might be hanging about there, waiting.’

  ‘That is why you did not want Scrap with us.’

  ‘Yes, I don’t want him to see her if she has drowned. If he finds her with Rogers and Stemp, Rogers will keep him from the worst.’

  They walked back to Bow Street and down into Wellington Street which led directly on to the bridge. The Bridge of Sighs, Thomas Hood called it in his poem, the bridge notorious for suicides, especially young women who had nothing left but the prospect of an unwanted child and the workhouse. All night the turnstile clicked, and the halfpennies were given over to the tollman who knew if one would not stop for the change what she might do.

  Dickens and Jones looked about them but there was no sign of Mrs Hart. They paid their halfpence each to the tollman. Dickens thought of him as Charon ferrying the damned across the Styx, though he was cheerful enough despite the cold, bundled up in his shawl. They went to stand and look down at the river. If she came this way, they could stop her.

  Dickens looked down at the water boiling below, swirling under the arch, and he thought of Mrs Hart’s unresisting body sucked down into the blackness – that portal of Eternity. But, as someone had once told him, you had to mind how you jumped – from the side of the bay was best and then, his informant said, you would tumble true into the stream under the arch. The same man had told him of the young woman who sprang out of a cab going at speed then ran along the pavement and jumped, of the young man who cried out cheerfully ‘Here goes, Jack!’ and was over in a minute. He looked down to the water stairs and saw there a figure simply standing. He nudged Sam whose eyes followed his pointing finger. But then the gleam of a lamp showed the outline of a man – not her.

  They could wait all night, they could scour the stairs, the wharves, the piers, and they could never stop. Yet they might never find her. She might already be gone, thought Dickens, into that dark water, drifting with the tide. What dreadful silence down there under the swell, fathoms deep where bleached bones were gathered. This river, so broad and vast, so murky and silent seemed to him such an image of death in the midst of the great city’s life. They stood silently, wondering and the words of Hood’s poem with its insistent rhythm and rhymes sounded eerily in his head:

  Mad from life’s history,

  Glad to death’s mystery,

  Swift to be hurl’d –

  Anywhere, anywhere

  Out of the world!

  ‘Where is she? Living or dead, where is she?’ he burst out. Sam shook his head.

  ‘Time to go,’ said Sam. ‘You go home, Charles. I will collect Scrap and take him to Crown Street then I will go home. We can do no more for her.’

  ‘You are right. We’ll take a cab and I’ll drop you off at St Giles’s. Let me know tomorrow if there is news – about anything.’

  ‘I will.’

  They walked away to the nearest cab stand. Beneath the arch the black water rolled on, rushing and swishing as it hastened towards Blackfriars Bridge, thence to Southwark, under London Bridge, past the Tower and Traitor’s Gate, through the Pool where the great ships waited, tethered like huge dragons, straining to be free, to spread their vast wings on the sea, past Cuckold’s Point where the pirates hung, washed by the hurrying tide, down through Limehouse Reach, whirling into the West India Dock Basin, out again into Greenwich Reach and away, away to the wide, empty ocean.

  24

  FOUND

  I have supp’d full with horrors, he thought, as he contemplated his desk where the morning’s letters were waiting. Even Dickens, whose energy was prodigious, felt the relief of a respite from the search. Paris, Brighton, the search for Mrs Hart had left him weary.

  He looked at the manuscript of David Copperfield on his desk. He knew where he was going with that. Little Em’ly would run away with Steerforth whom David had taken to Yarmouth, and Mr Peggotty would vow to search the world for her. Whereas, undoubtedly, life was messier than art. The omniscient narrator could place his characters where he would. The murderer would be caught, the criminal brought to justice. He had put Fagin in the condemned cell in Newgate; Sikes in a terrible irony had been hanged by his own rope as he attempted to escape. The missing would be found, restitution made and lovers could be united. But life, ah, life!

  However, he reflected, even if they did not find Victorine and Michel, they had stopped them perhaps – not perhaps – a
lmost certainly. And Mrs Hart? She was dead, he knew it. He thought of Kent in King Lear who begged that the king should pass: He hates him that would upon the rack of this tough world stretch him out longer. Racked with grief, she had felt so too. She was out of it now, somewhere.

  He turned to his letters. One from Oliver Wilde giving him optimistic news of Theo who was awake though very weak. He was to be taken to the country, to Kent – with his wife. They were to go to Mrs Outfin’s brother-in-law. Her sister was married to a clergyman, the Reverend Sydney Farthing. Good people, Oliver wrote, who would look after them both and make no judgement on Katie Fitzgerald. Another letter came from Mrs Morson telling him that Kip, though quiet, had settled in. He could picture from her words the silent boy brushing and brushing the horse, the steady rhythm of his work giving him a kind of peace. The next was from Captain Pierce. Davey was well though he still did not speak. He played with the old white dog in the garden. Captain Pierce was to move to the country. The boy would be better out of London, away from the place that contained all his unspeakable memories, away from the streets where he wept when he saw a child begging, away from the brawling women and drunken men from whom he shrank in terror. A farm or smallholding, Captain Pierce had written, near the sea. A new life where there would be tranquillity and outdoor work. Good, thought Dickens. Two saved. Three and four if you counted Theo and his wife.

  His son, Charley, came in to talk about the interview for Eton which would take place early in December. Dickens was proud of him – Charley with his cheerful, open face, fine-featured and handsome with large, bright eyes – not unwillingly to school. Charley who wore his heart on his sleeve. A child of uncommon capacity with remarkable natural talent, Dickens thought. Eton – he remembered someone asking his own father where his son had been educated. The reply was that he might be said to have educated himself. And so he had. But Charley would not. Those luminous eyes were clear, innocent as yet, and he would not be troubled by the presence of some small ghost beside him with blackened hands.

  ‘Well, Charley, what do you think of our going down to Eton in a week or two? Do you like it?’

  ‘I think so, Papa.’

  ‘Mr King speaks highly of you, of your work on the Latin poets. He says you know your Virgil and Herodotus – I am proud of you, my boy.’

  ‘Thank you, Papa.’

  ‘And, afterwards shall we have a treat? What would please you best?’

  ‘The Zoo at Regent’s Park – there is the new reptile house which we have not seen yet – we could go, Papa, just we two.’

  ‘So we could – it shall be as you desire.’ Not as I desire, thought Dickens who did not care at all for reptiles – still, he could look the other way – and he was pleased that Charley should want a day alone with Papa.

  Charley went off to school with Walter, and Dickens went up to the nursery to see Alfred, Francis, Sydney and the baby, Henry, who was now eleven months old. Henry was sitting on Georgina’s knee, gazing solemnly at Alfred and Francis playing on the carpet with their horses and soldiers. Dickens picked him up and looked at the little face, grave as a judge’s.

  ‘Oh, Mr H,’ he said, ‘what shall you be?’

  Sydney, aged two, was playing by himself with a model ship. The Ocean Spectre, Dickens called him. Perhaps a sailor’s life for him. What would they all do, he mused, the Responsibilities? The girls would marry, he supposed. Heavens, what a thought. He could not imagine whom Katey would marry – Lucifer Box, he named her, for her fiery temper. Yet, she would be a beauty. And Mamie whom he called Mild Gloster, more equable than Katey – perhaps she would not marry. She might stay with her father to look after him in his old age – he grimaced at the thought of old age – sans teeth, sans eyes, sans everything. He hoped not.The girls were upstairs now. He ought to go and see with what delights they had decorated their room. He encouraged them in all their artistic pursuits, drawing, painting, music, dancing – Katey had talent, he thought.

  But Sydney brought over his ship to show Papa and the other two, not to be outdone, came with their horses, and for an hour or so he gave himself over to being a father and a good-humoured one too, getting down on to the carpet to discipline the soldiers and the cavalry, preventing the outbreak of war when a ship ploughed into the troops to scatter them and Sydney crowed with laughter to see the soldiers fall. Then, back to his letters. At least half a dozen to write. That was a small bag compared to some days – and his letter to The Times on public hanging had brought plenty of epistles, preaching his wrong or his right.

  Here’s a knocking, indeed, he thought as he went on to the landing. Whoever it was must be in a hurry. John, his manservant, was before him and opened the door to reveal Constable Feak, his hand raised in the act of knocking again.

  ‘You rang,’ said Dickens. Feak looked mortified, his bony face suffused with red. Dickens could have bitten back the joke. ‘Only my jest, Feak,’ he said. Poor lad – too late, he had seen the bell.

  ‘Oh, sorry, sir, it’s just that Superintendent Jones sent me. Mrs Hart’s been found – down at Arundel Stairs – drowned.’

  ‘I’ll come. John, fetch me a coat, will you? Who found her?’

  ‘Zeb Scruggs an’ Occy. After you an’ Mr Jones went, we looked all over an’ when we went back to Zeb’s, me mam – Mrs Feak, that is, she said ’ad we thought of the river. Well, o’ course they ’ad but they didn’t wanter – yer know – think that she’d –’

  ‘I understand. Thank you, John. Tell Miss Hogarth that I will be back at lunch time.’

  He went with Feak to the waiting cab. Feak told him that Zeb and Occy had gone to the river. They had looked around the bridge and the stairs and had come to the same conclusion that Dickens and Jones had, that they could search all night and might never find her. They went home and agreed to try again this morning. They had asked the tollkeeper, they had looked at the pier and walked along the muddy shore upstream and down as far as they could. They had walked along the Strand as far as Arundel Pier where they had found her – or rather a dredgerman had.

  From the top of the stairs, Dickens saw Sam, Rogers, Zeb and Occy and a stranger. They were all looking down at a figure stretched out on the mud at the foot of the stairs. He went down with Feak.

  The stranger was speaking, ‘She muster gone in ’bout five in the morning when the tide was in – she’d go in at the bottom of the stairs ’ere. Known it before.’ A man who knew the river, judging by his muddy appearance, his oilskin cape and tarred sou’wester.

  He was a dredgerman, a fisher up of coals, metals, ropes, bones – and sometimes bodies. Now his boat, a peculiar craft named a Peter boat with no stern but the same fore and aft, was tied up by the stairs. The dredgerman, Noah Hatch, a short, square, strongly built middle-aged man, was coming in to shore when Mrs Hart was caught up in the ropes of the dredging net. It was shallow enough for him to get in the water and drag her out.

  Dickens looked down. Mrs Hart’s face white as bone looked up at them, but her eyes were closed. Her threadbare dress was wet and muddy, and her dark hair was all pushed back from the face as if, thought Dickens, that had been the last action of her desperate hands. It streamed over the mud. Of course, she had left her bonnet behind. She was not bruised or broken. It was as though she had simply lain down in the water to die. He thought again of Ophelia who had drowned, too – pulled to a muddy death – and of her song of bonny sweet Robin.

  ‘But why did the tide not take her?’ he asked the dredgerman.

  Noah Hatch’s eyes were thoughtful and compassionate. ‘Look, sir, see ’ow ’er skirt is caught on that chain there. She went in, I reckon, closed ’er eyes, and she didn’t know that the chain held ’er so that she rolled up and down on the swell of the tide. Wanted ter die, I suppose, just lay there till the cold took ’er. Knowed ’er, sir?’ He looked at Dickens’s sorrowful face.

  ‘Yes, she had just lost her only son. She had nothing left to live for.’

  They all looked down at the
dead face. There was a kind of repose in it. Nothing could touch her now.

  Dickens and Jones walked away, leaving Feak and Rogers to arrange for the body to be taken away. Occy and Zeb went ahead to break the news to Mrs Feak and Effie who were waiting at the shop. There was nothing more to say about Mrs Hart. They walked back to the Strand, up Charles Street and back to Bow Street.

  ‘What will you do now?’ asked Dickens.

  ‘To Liverpool tomorrow. I need to find out if Victorine and Michel are on the passenger lists of the Cambria or the America though, God knows, I have such doubts. It must be done. I need to see for myself.’

  ‘Do you want me to come? Barkiss is willin’– muffle me up in my shawl, provide me with a bottle of brandy and a sandwich – and I am yours to command.’

  ‘You are a busy man, Charles – I should like your company above all things but –’

  ‘But me no buts, nay, I am with thee – to the world’s end, if we must. I never will desert Mr Micawber!’

  Sam had to laugh and agree. ‘Well then, it shall be so – and I will bring the brandy and little Miss Posy will provide the sandwiches of the rarest beef.’

  ‘Ah, Posy – she is doing well?’

  Posy was the little maidservant found selling a pitiful bunch of artificial flowers in the street. Dickens had rescued her and placed her with Sam and Elizabeth.

  ‘She is – changed beyond recognition from that poor scrap of a creature you brought to us – getting on with her reading and writing. The Finchley Manual of Industry is her daily study as well as the society papers. And, she has grown a little.’

  ‘Good – I shall come to see her as soon as I can.’

  ‘When all this is over.’

  ‘When, Harry, when?’

  ‘Tomorrow, perhaps. I will meet you at Euston Station for the eight o’clock express.’