Death at Hungerford Stairs (30 page)

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 – almost 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.'

‘Something will turn up – which I am, I may say, hourly expecting and in case of anything turning up, I shall be extremely happy if it should be in my power to improve your prospects. Farewell, Mr Jones, God bless you.'

With Mr Micawber's orotund rhetoric ringing in his ears, Sam went into the police station smiling. Dickens marched away whistling the College Hornpipe.

He went home to have lunch and to think about what he would discuss with John Forster, his closest friend – apart from Sam, he thought. He had a scheme for a new periodical magazine. His notion was a weekly journal to be priced at three halfpence or two pence. He wanted it to appeal to the imagination and represent common sense and humanity at the same time, to contribute to the entertainment of all classes of readers – Posy included, Rogers, Feak, Mrs Feak, Sam, Elizabeth, Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton – the queen herself. The hardest workers were to be taught that their lot was not necessarily excluded from the sympathies and graces of the imagination. This was to be discussed with Forster tonight – and he needed to think of a title.
Mankind
, perhaps. No,
The Household Face
or better still,
The Household Voice
– yes, he rather thought the
Voice
was it.

He picked up his pen – time to answer the letters and to ponder the progress of David Copperfield. He thought again with sadness of the drowned figure of Mrs Hart and how he had thought of the river running to the wide ocean. He thought of the Yarmouth coast where storms raged and the wild wind whirled over the heaving sea.

Household Words
– that was it, a very pretty name. That would be the name for the new periodical – with thanks to Mr Shakespeare. He would have to send a note to John tomorrow. He thought of the title as he was walking along Chancery Lane after dining with John. All was settled about the new publication, and he was ready to make a general announcement of the intended adventure.

In the meantime, Liverpool. What if they were aboard the
Cambria
? He could imagine himself and Sam scouring the cabins. When news came that Maria Manning might be aboard the SS
Victoria
, a fast frigate had been despatched to catch the ship and apprehend the murderess – it had not been Maria Manning but a perfectly respectable American lady whose name was Rebecca Manning. He just hoped they would not put to sea before he and Sam could disembark – he had horrible memories of the sea voyage to America from Liverpool; the weather so violent, the ship flung on her side in the waves, beaten down, battered and crushed by the monstrous sea – no, he thought, let us find her before the ship sails.