But there he was. Standing at the foot of the steps to the hall door. Smoking a cigar and gazing across at Regent’s Park. Turned when she came up, though. Eyed her, just as though he had expected her. Looked at her Sunday clothes, and at the couple of bags that she was carrying and then he nodded his head.
‘You’re off, then, Sesina.’
‘Yes, Mr Dickens.’ No harm in saying that.
‘Got any money?’ He put his hand in his pocket. Would take out one of his sixpences. Or perhaps it might even be half a crown.
She couldn’t resist it. Showed him the four five-pound notes. And looked for astonishment on his face.
But just a smile and a nod.
‘You worked it out, then.’ That was all that he said. But she felt disappointed. Not going to let on, though.
‘Worked it out, Mr Dickens,’ she repeated in her most innocent manner.
He took one last suck from his cigar, extinguished the flame on the pointed edge of the railing and flung it down onto the paved surface of the area. Someone would have to sweep it up, afterwards. Not her, though, she told herself with a feeling of pleasure. Not her. Dolly would have to do it. He saw the half-smile on her face and he gave another nod.
And then he lifted his umbrella, and when the cab stopped he opened the door and stood there holding it.
‘Get in, Sesina, I’ll drop you off wherever you are going.’
She thought of saying ‘Australia’, but he would take that seriously and so she got in and said loudly and clearly, ‘Drury Lane’. And then she sat down, like a lady, and looked across at him.
He said nothing, but he wore the expression of one who is thinking hard. Paid the cab, once they arrived, added a tip, but got out with her and seemed ready to walk by her side. She shrugged her shoulders and walked on. He’d find out sooner rather than later. That was him.
He stopped her, though, before they reached the theatre, touched her on the shoulder and turned to face her.
‘Of course! Now I understand! Somehow I always felt that she had her finger in the pie, but I couldn’t quite work out how. Young Mr Charley didn’t have the guts to do it himself, but he’s just the type to go crying home to his Momma. And, of course, now that I come to think of it, Mr Wilkie remarked on the strange affair of only one picture being present at the murder scene. Winter of Despair should have had its partner, whether it would have been Taken in Adultery or Den of Iniquity or The Night Prowler. The fact that only Winter of Despair was mutilated seemed to show that the partner picture had been shown to the murderer on a previous occasion. But why had the murder not taken place then? He drew one conclusion; obviously you drew another, and in view of those four five-pound notes, and your interview with my hostess, I would reckon that yours was the correct one. Tell me, Sesina, how did you guess?’
Sesina thought for a moment. She should, she thought, tell him to mind his own business and then walk off, but the desire to impress him was too strong within her. She smiled a little.
‘I don’t suppose that you have seen Mrs Collins in her dressing gown, sir,’ she said innocently. ‘Ever so slim, she is.’
He picked up on her meaning instantly.
‘Of course,’ he said. ‘So that’s how it happened. Mr Milton-Hayes blackmails young Charley, asks him for a large sum of money, too large for his mother to find – she is subject to the trustees and Coutts Bank; her husband was a careful man – she’d have to tell them why she needed so much. They would not have paid it out, not for blackmail. And so she dressed up; that’s what you are hinting, aren’t you, Sesina. Dressed up as a young man. Always the actress, that’s her. Played the part of a lifetime. And you saw her, did you?’
Sesina smiled. She had got him intrigued. ‘I followed Mr Charley to Mr Milton-Hayes’ house,’ she said. ‘He was in a terrible state. The hall door in Dorset Square was open and he left it open. I was behind him when he saw the body. The man was only just dead. The blood was still trickling. Mr Charley, well, he just lost ’is head. Turned and ran. And I went after him, kept up with him. And then, on Park Road, I spotted, just ahead of us, a lad wearing Mr Charley’s cricket cap. Later on, I guessed who it was. You see, he keeps all his things since school, keeps them on a shelf in his wardrobe. She was just ahead of us, dressed like a young lad, running fast, ducked into an alleyway.’ Sesina faced him defiantly, noting the excitement in his eyes and how he gnawed the side of his forefinger. ‘Nothing could ever be proved against her, sir,’ she said. ‘I’ve got what I want and I won’t give evidence against her. If you try to make me give evidence, I’ll tell the judge I made up a story just to give you an idea for a book – I can convince any judge, sir.’
He chuckled and then broke into a laugh. ‘I can guess that. I remember how well you can lie. Even if I went straight to Inspector Field himself, you’d deny every word of this conversation and so would she deny ever having left the house. And, do you know, Sesina, I wouldn’t do it. I didn’t have much of a mother myself and most of the mothers that I know are fairly useless, but, by Jupiter, that worthless young Charley has a mother who would lay down her life for him and who am I to interfere? Keep in touch with me, Sesina!’ And, with a flourish of his umbrella, he was off, striding down Drury Lane.
Sesina took out her glowing reference and went into the theatre and towards the manager’s office. Mr Dickens hadn’t acknowledged her cleverness, but he would seek her out again if he needed help. She knew him. He liked people with brains. People like her.
There was a girl there, ahead of her, a very young girl, quite nervous, talking to the manager.
‘My name is Ellen Ternan,’ she was saying. ‘I wonder if there is a part for me in The Little Pickle. My sister Maria is in it and she thought …’
AUTHOR’S NOTE TO THE GASLIGHT SERIES
Whenever I read a novel that includes real people from the past, I usually wonder how much is true, and how much is the author’s imagination.
So, this is what is true. Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins are true figures from the mid Victorian age and everything that is mentioned about them, their age, their families, their habits of work and entertainment, their favourite restaurant, even, I dare to say, their speech patterns, all of these things are as true as I can ensure after years of reading their fiction – I’ve read every single one of Dickens’ novels, time after time, over a period of more than seventy years, and most of Collins’ books, also – but also reading letters, biographies and books of criticism. I am not a scholar so never was moved to add to this enormous pile, but I suppose that being such a Dickens fan, I have always had it in my mind to weave his larger-than-life personality into one of my stories. However, that idea stayed at the back of my mind until I read his letters – hundreds and hundreds of them. And one set of letters sparked off a story in my mind. They were mainly addressed to the rich and philanthropic Baroness Coutts who had financed his scheme to set up Urania Cottage, a home for girls who had strayed into prostitution. Some of the girls started a new life with the help of the training they received in Urania Cottage, but others could not stand the quiet life and the discipline and they left or were dismissed. Isabella Gordon (from Season of Darkness) was one of these.
I think it was the phrase that he used describing how she was sent to her bedroom to await the committee’s decision: ‘She danced up the stairs before Mrs Morson, holding her skirts like a lady at a ball’ which first made Isabella come to life in my mind. What had been her future after she was expelled from Urania Cottage, I wondered? And what had been the future of her best friend, Sesina, whose real name, intriguingly, was Anna Maria Sisini? Of Italian origin, perhaps. She also left Urania Cottage, ‘would corrupt nunnery’ remarked Dickens, though he laughed at the idea of his housekeeper worrying about such a ‘pint-sized’ and ‘little dumpy atom of a girl’. Dickens wrote dozens and dozens of letters about the girls to Baroness Coutts and they have provided me with all the details which I have quoted in the book when Sesina remembers their time in
Urania Cottage. The subsequent history of Sesina and of poor Isabella Gordon are, of course, just figments of my imagination.
The plot of book two, Winter of Despair, was inspired by Augustus Egg’s triptych, the first picture of which depicted the fall from grace of a woman, her expulsion from the family home and from her two daughters, the second showing the loneliness of the abandoned young girls with the moon shining in through their bedroom window and the third the mother’s subsequent ruin where she is portrayed, under the light of the same moon, as a prostitute living beneath the arches of Adelphi. Having seen this picture in the Tate Gallery when I was in London I became so interested in the set of artists known as the Pre-Raphaelites that during a holiday in Wales I bought from the marvellous second-hand bookshops in Hay-on-Wye no less than ten books about the Brotherhood and settled down to a summer’s reading about these talented young men whose every picture told a story. The leap from a picture that told a story to a picture that might tell a secret, might be used as blackmail, came to me early on in my reading, but, of course, I’ve never read anything that would suggest that any picture was used for that purpose.
My portrayal of Charlie Collins, Wilkie’s younger brother, is partly based on a few comments in Catherine Peters’ biography of Wilkie, but also from the fact that Dickens was deeply upset when his younger daughter, Katie, accepted a proposal of marriage from Charley. For some reason Dickens was deeply unhappy and very much against the marriage. There were rumours about Charley, some suggesting that he may have been homosexual, though that seems unlikely. Others that he was involved with a married woman – there is a letter from the artist Millais alluding to this – but mainly, I think, because he was a hysterical individual who did little with his talents, but lived on his mother’s money. Not a man to appeal to someone who was as driven and as hard-working as Dickens.
The details about Mrs Collins’ ambitions to become an actress and about her fond relationship with her sons came also from Catherine Peters’ biography though the ending to my book is purely a figment of my imagination. Again letters from her, and to her from her son Wilkie, give a flavour of her personality and of her devotion to her sons and her enjoyment of their artistic friends. I could hear her voice in my head as I began to write about her. Letters are such a wonderful resource for any author – the authentic voice of those who are long dead ring through them.
I wonder whether emails and text messages will survive for the biographers and story writers of the future!
Books that I have found useful while researching for this series:
Dickens:
Dickens: Peter Ackroyd
Charles Dickens: Michael Slater
The Life of Charles Dickens: John Forster
The World of Charles Dickens: Angus Wilson
Dickens: Simon Callow
Charles Dickens: A Life: Claire Tomalin
Wilkie Collins:
The King of Inventors: Catherine Peters
Wilkie Collins: Peter Ackroyd
Wilkie Collins: A Life of Sensation: Andrew Lycett
Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood:
Pre-Raphaelites: Heather Birchall
A New and Noble School: Quentin Bell
The Pre-Raphaelite Tragedy: William Gaunt
Victorian Narrative Painting: Julia Thomas
John Ruskin, The Later Years: Tim Hilton
General books about the 1850s:
The Victorian Servant: Pamela Hern
London Labour and London Poor: Henry Mayhew
The Victorian Home: Jenni Calder
Winter of Despair Page 25
