Murder by Ghostlight, page 12
‘I see.’ He understood that she would not want to spoil the sticks by burning them. She was a neat, serious little girl. Katey will want to burn it, he thought. She was the fiery one. Lucifer Box, he called her, while Mamie was Mild Glos’ter
‘Is there invisible sealing wax?’ Katey asked, a glint of mischief in her eyes.
He turned to his desk and palmed a stick of wax. ‘If you look on my desk you will see two sticks of wax with what seems like a space between. But in there is the invisible stick. Don’t breathe too hard or it will melt into thin air.’
They looked, and held their breath. To be sure there was a space, just big enough for a stick of wax.
‘And,’ said Dickens, ‘all you have to do is toss it into the air like this.’ He picked up the imaginary stick, threw it up in the air, caught it and opened his palm. ‘Abracadabra – it turns into a visible stick of red sealing wax!’ And there it was. ‘Very convenient, eh?’
The two girls clapped and laughed.
Mamie pointed out, ‘It is lunchtime, Papa. Are you coming in now?’
‘I am.’
They danced ahead of him out of the library to the dining room where Aunt Georgy was waiting. Mrs Dickens was upstairs with Henry, the baby, just over a year old, and the little boys, Francis, Alfred and Sydney, were in the nursery upstairs. A quiet lunch, thought Dickens, sitting down on one of the green leather-covered chairs. Through the bay window with its crimson damask curtains he could see the leaden sky. Still, he would go out, keep his promise to buy the inks and wax. And he would take Eleanor a gift – a first edition of A Christmas Carol, bound in red cloth with gilt-edged pages. She would like that.
At Bow Street, Superintendent Jones was reading a letter from Inspector Hardacre. Clement Bell had still not been found. There had been no trace of him at Liverpool. Of course, he might have gone under a false name – he was an actor, after all. Marion Ginger had told them nothing more. Clement Bell had not contacted her; of course not, thought Sam, he had abandoned her now that he had no further use for her, just as he had abandoned his wife. The letter made mention of Edwin Bell:
On the night of the murder, Edwin Bell was in the audience watching his brother play the role of Alfred Evelyn. His wife had not accompanied him to the theatre. She was staying in the country, and there was no reason for the servants at home in Chorlton to be concerned as Edwin often stayed in an hotel if he was to be at a late function, or to be in his office early. No one missed him – he was a partner in the law firm in John Dalton Street – he could come and go as he pleased.
Edwin had told his wife that Clement would be in Mr Dickens’s play at the Queen’s Theatre. She assumed that they would meet as Clement did not often come to Manchester. Edwin rarely saw his brother, but they were not estranged. He did not often talk of Clement, though she did say that Edwin felt his brother might have done better to take up the law rather than journalism at which he was not, apparently, very successful. Still, his wife had money from her father. The settlements at the marriage were such as kept the father in control rather than the husband, which suggests to me that Clement was not entirely to be trusted. Perhaps, as we thought, he had debts which he had to conceal from his wife and father-in-law.
I did find out something interesting from the friend who accompanied Edwin Bell to the theatre. Edwin seemed tense and somehow angry, the friend said. He muttered something which sounded like the word ‘blackguard’ when Clement Bell came on, but that was all. I wonder if Edwin had some idea that Clement wanted money from him. Anyhow, the friend left Edwin at the end of the play. Bell said he was going to see his brother, and that he was going to have it out with him. The friend got the impression that there was bad blood between them. Of course, this does not fit with what Edwin’s wife told me about the brothers’ relationship, but men don’t tell their wives everything. However, it does fit the account Tom Watson gave us of the high words spoken …
It did, thought Sam. Perhaps Edwin had suspected that his brother was leading a double life. He may even have wondered about his relationship with Oriel Greenwood. He may have known something about Marion Ginger. But it was all supposition. Edwin could tell them nothing now, and Clement might be far away in America – or anywhere. Dickens had made enquiries about him, but had found out nothing useful. Bell seemed such an unremarkable man. People knew him in the offices of various periodicals and newspapers and at a few clubs, but no one could say more than that he was pleasant, good humoured, and seemed happy enough with his wife.
Perhaps that was the point. Clement Bell adopted this perfectly ordinary, decent character to conceal the man within. Murderers did that. Look at Greenacre – a grocer and sweet manufacturer hanged for the murder and mutilation of his sweetheart. And Wainewright, poet, artist and critic. Who would have thought that a man like that would murder his uncle, his mother-in-law and sister-in-law? Dickens said that he had seen him in Newgate where that once polished young man had untidy hair and a dirty moustache – well that was prison for you. Money was the cause in both cases – want of it was a powerful motive.
But all this speculating didn’t do much good. Besides, there were other cases to be dealt with. There had been a spate of robberies in and about Bedford Square; a child had been found murdered in a squalid alley in Seven Dials – oddly the newspapers were not so interested in this as in the theft of plate from the Cavendish house.
But they had made progress – some of the plate had turned up at Fikey Chubb’s. Fikey, well-known to Sam, called himself a respectable businessman. In truth he was a fence, and Stemp, one of Sam’s most trusted constables, liked to keep his eye on Fikey which was how he came upon the silver plate. Fikey, of course, had no knowledge of how it came to be stashed behind his counter. Sam smiled as he thought of the interview with the sweating Fikey – a man whose stench could pollute the Thames. Fikey had pleaded a frame-up, of course. Some bleeder had planted it all. A friggin’ disgrace, it woz when a man o’ business woz ’arrassed like ’e woz. Yer couldn’t trust anyone. Sam had asked if there was a particular anyone not to be trusted, a question to which Fikey had scowled and declared ’e dint know no bleedin’ perticulers. And there Sam had left it, abandoning Fikey to a cell where he could think upon his acquaintances, particular or not as the case may be. Constable Stemp had taken Fikey to the cell, holding him by the scruff of his neck, like the rat he was. Fikey was frightened of Stemp. Sam had had to open all the windows in his office to rid himself of the smell of the man.
Alas, there had not been any progress in the case of the murdered child, and that was because no one claimed her. And as there were an estimated thirty thousand children roaming the streets, filthy, half-naked, half-starved, most thieving for their living, and not enough places in the Foundling hospital, the workhouses or the ragged schools, it was not surprising that one murdered child was of no interest to most. She had probably been orphaned or simply abandoned, left on the street to make her own way. They may never know.
A Mrs Belinda Timmins, a respectable woman who lived off Parker Street, had come to ask about the dead girl. Her own six-year-old daughter, Polly, had vanished from the backyard of their house. Mrs Timmins had gone out to call her in and had found the door to the yard open, and Polly gone. She couldn’t have opened it herself, Mrs Timmins insisted. ‘Someone ’as took ’er, I knows it.’ Sam had taken her down to the mortuary where the dead child lay; clean now, he had thought, so innocent in the white gown, but, underneath it, he knew there were bruises which no amount of washing could remove – the stains left by the murderer who had vanished into the labyrinth of alleys in the city.
Mrs Timmins had forced herself to look. It was not her Polly; she didn’t know the child, but ‘oh, Gawd, wot a terrible thing’. Sam did not know whether to be glad for her or sorry. Granted it was not Polly, but then where was she? Mrs Timmins who had spared a moment to lament the death of an unknown child, returned to her own grief.
Such things happened: children were taken from their homes, from the street while they were on an errand or coming from school, spirited away, sometimes found dead, sometimes never found. He thought of the empty place at the table, the empty bed or cot and the horror of never knowing to what end your child had come. He had put Inspector Bax on the case – he hoped that Polly Timmins’s disappearance did not mean that there was some gang at work.
He looked back at Inspector Hardacre’s letter. He suddenly felt a kind of rage against Clement Bell – what business had he, a comfortably off young man with a wife and child to come, to turn murderer? It was greed, no doubt, or envy, resentment. It was not poverty or misery or despair – you could understand that, if not forgive it. He recalled a man who had killed his wife and two children, and who had stayed in a foetid cellar with the bodies for weeks. He was found when the neighbours called a policeman – the stink had been unbearable. The man had died in the hospital at Newgate – because he did not want to live. Poverty and hopelessness had killed them all, Sam had thought at the time, unable to condemn the man as a murderer. But greed, the want of something that belonged to another when you had enough, that was insupportable.
He bent his head to finish his paperwork. It was time to go to Mr Brim’s stationery shop; it was Eleanor Brim’s birthday – she would be eleven. Sam’s wife, Elizabeth, had proposed a small party, small because Mr Brim was ill in bed. This time, Elizabeth said, he might not recover from the consumption that was killing him – and what then? Elizabeth had already promised Robert Brim that she would look after his children. There was no one else, and she would also take care of the shop which would be left to the children. Sam did not know if it would work, but he had thought of someone who might run the shop when Elizabeth was too busy. Elizabeth had thought it a splendid idea. In the meantime, he hoped that the serious little girl could enjoy her party. She would – Mr Dickens, their best customer, was coming, and Constable Rogers.
When Sam and Rogers arrived at the shop in Crown Street, they found Dickens already there, and Eleanor opening her present, the sight of which drew a smile of joy. Sam saw Elizabeth look at the child with such love that it made his heart turn over.
Dickens, whose observant eye missed nothing, said, ‘Blimey, it’s the perlice – ’ide the swag, my dears. Scarce, scarce.’ No longer Mr Dickens but the villainous Fagin, he continued, ‘You’ll ’ave to get up early in the morning to win against the Superintendent for all e’s a rum lookin’ cove.’
Everyone laughed; Sam went to wish Eleanor a happy birthday. Tom Brim was playing with a spinning top on the floor, and Poll, the dog, was eying it suspiciously. Scrap, the messenger boy was there, too, in charge of the cake and lemonade. Eleanor studied her picture and smiled delightedly when Dickens recited the first verse from memory and with comic actions. Dickens, who sang for his children before bedtime, sang especially for Eleanor one of the old Irish melodies he had sung years ago in Chatham with his sister Fanny:
What the bee is to the floweret,
When he looks for honeydew,
Through the leaves that close embower it,
That, my love, I’ll be to you.
There was quiet for a moment as the song died away, but Dickens, ever alert to the need for a change of mood, lifted Tom onto the counter and began the round game, ‘I love my love with an A, because she is —’
Tom thought a moment, and then came up with the deliciously absurd, ‘An apple,’ which led to all sorts of mad flights of fancy. The loved one was, by turns, beastly, crazy, dastardly, eleeomosynary – the last supplied by Dickens who swore that it was a true word, and had he a dictionary in his pocket which as a writer he ought to have had, he would have proved it. Eleanor declared that Mr Dickens would never cheat, but she warned him that he must not do it again – only ordinary words were allowed. The mischief-maker could not resist another when it was next his turn.
‘I love my love with an S, because she is —’ he paused for dramatic effect. Sam took out his pocketwatch. ‘She is – spoffish.’
There was an outcry. It was not an ordinary word – it was extraordinary. In fact, Eleanor insisted it could not be true. But it was, Dickens asserted. He knew it to be true for he had made it up himself. It meant, he told them, a busy, bustling sort of person. They agreed that it was a useful sort of word.
‘Spoffish, spoffish,’ cried Tom Brim, delighted with the word, and so it had to be allowed. And Tom was allowed the privilege of the last word of all, and he loved his love with a Z because, of course, she was zooey. No one had the heart to suggest that it was not a proper word, especially after Mr Dickens’s contributions.
After the cake had been eaten, and the lemonade drunk with toasts to Eleanor, and after Dickens had conjured Sam’s watch from his pocket, it was time to go, and for Eleanor to take her presents to show Papa who was waiting upstairs. Dickens did not forget the inks and sealing wax for his girls.
Dickens and Jones stood on the pavement outside with Scrap, who had noted Sam’s gesture to him.
‘Lookin’ fer someone, Mr Jones? Want me ter ’ave a listen out?’
Scrap, Mr Brim’s errand boy, acted for Dickens and Jones, too. He had been useful to them in two earlier cases: his sharp eyes had found a man with a crooked face, and he had a good pair of ears; he knew the streets, and the urchins who might know of a stranger. ‘Newspaper offices, Fleet Street way – do you know it round there?’ asked Sam.
‘Yers – goes up ter Cloth Fair, that way about. Mr Brim does business wiv a stationer’s there, and one in Cock Lane. ’Oo’s the cove?’
‘Name of Bell – Clement Bell. Not a cove to mess with, Scrap, so just listen in case anyone mentions him.’
‘Got yer, Mr Jones. I won’t do nuffink, jest listen about. Let yer know if I ’ears anyfink. Spoffish, that’s me.’ He winked at Dickens and then left them to it.
‘Bright lad,’ said Dickens. ‘What will you do when …?’
‘When Mr Brim is no longer here? Elizabeth and I have promised him we will look after the children, and Elizabeth will run the shop – but that cannot be forever. I have had an idea about that. Mollie Spoon.’
‘And?’
‘Well, she and Rogers are to be married at the end of next week – you are invited, of course – and Mollie Spoon will no longer be in service so I thought they could live at the shop, and Mollie could manage it when Elizabeth cannot be there. Scrap will still have his job, and he can, as he always does, flit between lodging there and making his occasional visits home.’
‘Capital. You have spoken to Rogers, of course?’
‘I have. He likes the idea very much. So does Scrap. A bright lad, as you say. He knows that there is no hope for Robert Brim and did wonder what was going to happen to them all. I assured him that he would still be needed by us.’
‘You do not think there is much hope of our finding Clement Bell?’
‘I am afraid not, I think we have lost him.’
‘I think so too,’ acknowledged Dickens.
They parted at Bow Street. Dickens made his way to the office of Household Words at number 16 Wellington Street North. The first edition of the new periodical was to be published in March at tuppence a copy. He wanted to see his sub-editor, Harry Wills, the thinnest man alive, Dickens thought, joking that Wills had been training all his life to go up a gas pipe. Things were going well; he had started on his preface, stating the intentions of the journal, Mrs Gaskell had promised her tale Lizzie Leigh, and there were to be articles on matters of topical interest and poetry, too.
He sat in the bow window looking at the fog thickening in the narrow street where the gas lamps were haloed in hazy greenness and the buildings opposite had almost disappeared. The office was empty now. Haunted place, he thought. The artist, Hogarth, had lived on this site where he had seen a woman in her coffin. It was time he went home. He went out into the dark street. He would not have been surprised to see Marley’s face in the doorknocker of the next office; somewhere, he imagined, looking at the fog shifting down the alleys and courts, nature was brewing on a grand scale.
Dickens walked up to Oxford Street where the traffic was moving slowly; it would come to a standstill later. His way took him to Portland Place, and into Devonshire Place where once, on a foggy night, he had been pursued by a murderer. It was quiet here in the gathering dark, and he thought of his terror that night when he had heard soft footfalls behind him. The fog seemed to be denser here, suffocating as a musty old cloak thrown over the head. For a moment he was completely lost; he could neither tell where the pavement began nor how to cross the road. He stood still, straining to hear.
And then it came, a curiously uneven footfall followed by a sound like a knock, then a slight echo. He turned to where he thought the sound came from. No one. Turned again. No one. Yet the sound came on. He felt a tightening in his throat and his hand went involuntarily to his neck. He saw in a sudden movement of the fog that he was next to a passageway between two houses and darted in. The strange uneven tread came closer – he peeked out. A man came halting by – a man with a stick, and Dickens saw briefly the gleam of a white clerical collar. He felt weak with relief and hurried on, the follower now, not the pursued. The man had vanished but, somewhere ahead of him, he heard a curious sound like laughter. An impression of a cloak swirling, a figure in a top hat. Then it was gone.
Where was Clement Bell? He pictured him crouching in the dark, waiting. Waiting for what? The chance to run? Or was he waiting to strike again?
15
A DOOR CLOSES
The brown air smelt of smoke and sulphur; the sky had vanished. The fog had continued to thicken, so deep that it was impossible to see a yard in front. The garden in King Square, off Goswell Street, was wreathed in fog. Superintendent Jones and Constable Rogers had thought it quicker to walk when the message came from a beat constable. They had crept along, their bull’s-eye lanterns creating little cones of light which illuminated the way for a few feet so that they had avoided passers-by whose faces loomed up suddenly in the gloom. It was slow going for the two men. The message had been an urgent one, but they could not stride out as they wanted. They had gone by Lincoln’s Inn up to Holborn Hill, through the eerily deserted Smithfield Market, along St John’s Street, cutting through Percival Street which took them to the quiet square of terraced houses where at number 24 lived Mrs Dora Bell.
