The Murder of Patience Brooke (29 page)

‘We need to get Jonas Finger here immediately. Crewe will know that Louisa and Jenny have escaped, and that they could give evidence against him – at least we will have evidence of abduction, and of Crewe’s relationship with Blackledge. And, there may be something in the room he rented which might give evidence. We need some men. I’ll organise that now.’

The superintendent sent four of his constables to Chapel Yard. Finger was known to them as a receiver of stolen goods, a pimp, a thief, a coiner – in short, a man who would do anything for money. Two were to arrest Finger, and to use whatever force was necessary, and the other two were to make sure that no one left the house.

By the time Dickens and Jones reached Chapel Yard, Jonas Finger was shouting the odds, demanding his rights and swearing ferociously at the two constables. He was a big, coarse brute of a man with black hair and eyes to match, strong as a bull, fighting with the constables who were struggling to restrain him.

Sam stepped forward. ‘You can stop that, my lad.’

Dickens heard the steel in his voice and saw the steel in his eyes, and so did Finger who stopped struggling suddenly though his mouth still snarled. ‘Wotcher want? Yer ain’t got nuffink on me. I’m a respectable householder, I am. Yer can get these brutes off me.’

Sam laughed. The two constables were hanging grimly on to Jonas Finger. One of them was a young man only just tall enough for the regulation height. Finger could have made two of him. The other was Stemp who had found the body of the little girl. His anger was palpable – he was not going to let go. Sam continued, ‘So you say, Jonas Finger, and you can tell it all to the magistrate. I’m arresting you as an accomplice in the abduction of two girls. And you can tell me where Teddy is – I want him as well.’

Jonas Finger looked sick suddenly, but he blustered on, ‘I dunno no Teddy, an’ I dunno nuffink abaht any girls.’

‘I have witnesses, Finger. They’ve told me all about it, and I have a dead girl you might want to tell me about.’ Sam was brisk, his voice cutting through the bluster. ‘Accomplice to murder, you might be – unless I can find your friend, Teddy.’

‘Dunno where ’e is. An’ I dunno abaht any dead girl. ’Oo ’e brings ’ere’s ’is own business – nuffink ter do wiv me. Yer can’t pin no murder on me.’

‘I shan’t be pinning anything on you – Teddy lodges here. You knew about those girls and you know about him so I’ve cause to suspect you. So, you’ll be coming down to Bow Street to tell me all about it. You’ll be on remand for some time, Finger, so you will have plenty of time to think about what you want to say to me. Which room is Teddy’s?’

The fight went out of Finger. He was sweating now and frightened, his rat’s eyes darting. Whether he knew about murder, Sam did not care. It was enough that he could give evidence about Crewe, and he would talk, Sam had no doubt. He was a bully and a rogue, and loyalty was no part of whatever code he lived by. He wouldn’t swing for Teddy and he wouldn’t care if Teddy went to the gallows on his evidence.

‘Upstairs, on the right,’ Finger told them sullenly.

One of the constables was sent back to Bow Street for the police wagon while the other two guarded the subdued Jonas Finger. Dickens and Sam went into the house and up the rickety stairs. It was a shabby place smelling of rot, bad food, smoke and sweat, and something that Dickens felt was evil, a sense of a place where terrible things had happened.
Is there any cause in nature that makes these hard hearts?
he thought. Shakespeare’s question in
King Lear
, and there was still no answer. What had made Edmund Crewe into the monster he was? What had made him relish these vile places, he who had enjoyed the splendour of Crewe Hall and the marbled elegance of Cavendish Square and its like?

The room was not as vile as the outside stairs and hall. There had been some attempt to make it fit for habitation. The bed was draped with a velvet cover and the linen looked clean. There were a couple of velvet chairs and a round mahogany table. There were thick velvet curtains, presumably obscuring the window. There was the gin bottle of which Louisa had spoken, tipped over with the lees of the gin spilled on to the bare boards. They could smell it and something else – the sweet, cloying smell of opium. There was a gold-framed mirror over the fireplace very like the one at the Albany. What had Crewe seen, thought Dickens, when he had looked at himself in the two mirrors? Was the self that he had watched in this tarnished glass a different self from the one in the polished surface of the Albany mirror?
Look here upon this picture and on this.
The divided self, he thought, two men in one, the self in this mirror like
a mildew’d ear, blasting the wholesome brother
.

They looked at the bed where Jenny Ding had lain terrified, listening to Louisa tempting Finger to drink more and more. Underneath it was hidden a locked box chased with silver, made of walnut. It was fastened with a little padlock. Sam wasted no time, but flung it to the floor where its lid split creating a gash which Sam prised apart with his knife, breaking the shining wood. Inside, there were notes, a velvet pouch in which there was a string of pearls which shone palely in the half darkness of the room, and there were papers. A letter in an envelope addressed to Mr Edmund Crewe at the Albany. Dickens wrenched open the velvet curtain to let in some light.

‘Pray,’ said Sam. ‘Pray that this is evidence.’ He opened the envelope, scanned the letter inside and handed it to Dickens. The letter was to Crewe from Blackledge written from Ducat’s:

My Lord,

I am glad to have been of service to you in the matter of your financial needs. Be assured that any alteration to the Crewe papers will not be found out. I have been careful and Mr Ducat has expressed his trust in me. I thank you for the recompense you made me for my work.

You mentioned that you would be glad to find a discreet lodging in the area of Lincoln’s Inn and that you wish this to be a private matter. I have found what you need at the house of Jonas Finger in Chapel Yard off Eagle Street. He is somewhat of a rough man but he will understand your needs. The house is, I am afraid, not what you are used to but the room he has to let may be made comfortable enough for a gentleman and any visitors he might care to entertain. Should you wish to take the rooms I can make all the arrangements necessary.

I hope I may be of service in the future.

Your humble servant,

Alfred Blackledge.

‘He thought Crewe was a lord. He must have been impressed by that. Little did he know that his lord would be the agent of his death,’ Dickens sighed.

‘It ties them together, and there is some suggestion of fraud here which we will ask Mr Ducat to look into. He won’t like it if the Crewe family takes its business elsewhere, but that’s too bad. The rest, however, is all euphemism. Finger will understand his needs, will he? I bet he did. And Blackledge – visitors, indeed. Still, we’ve got something, and Finger will talk. It’s time we got hold of Mr Crewe. Before we go, let’s have a look to see if there is anything else.’

Sam investigated under the bed and pulled out a suitcase which was not locked. Inside were the clothes they had seen at Lantern Yard, the rough workman’s trousers, the coarse shirt and waistcoat. There was a velvet smoking jacket and a soft shirt with ruffles, the one he had worn last night and the dark trousers and waistcoat – his dress for the Cavendish Square Ball. Placed side by side on the bed, the two outfits were a simulacrum of the two men in one. There were ropes, too, and their purpose was easy to guess. There was the paraphernalia of the opium addict, the pipe, the opium, too, and crumpled up in the corner, a girl’s flimsy shift stained with flecks of blood.

‘It’s enough. Let’s go and get him – if we are not too late.’

The suitcase and the broken box with their contents were given to the constable outside to take back to Bow Street. Just as they were leaving for the Albany, Rogers arrived to tell them that Louisa and Jenny were safely stowed away.

Of course, as they had half expected, he was gone. They stood again in the narrow hall with its gilded mirror. The servant was nervous; he knew there was something wrong. His master had gone out to supper after the visit of Dickens and Jones. Since Mr Crewe was to attend a ball in Cavendish Square, the servant was not surprised that he did not come back before midnight. His instructions were always to wait up, all night if need be, and so he did, dozing intermittently until morning. At six he had thought he might come, but it was not unusual for Mr Crewe to stay out all night, for several nights, in fact. Then he came at about eight o’clock.

‘How was he dressed?’ asked Sam sharply.

‘In a suit – just a day suit.’

‘Not in evening dress? Not the clothes he had gone out in?’

‘No – he had changed – somewhere.’

‘Where?’

The boy did not know – his master had another lodging, he was sure, but he did not know where. He was frightened by the superintendent’s brusqueness, torn between his fear of his master and the authority of this intimidating policeman.

‘When did he go out?’

‘About an hour ago – I’m not sure.’

‘Did he take anything with him?’

‘Yes, just a small case – I don’t know what was in it. He was angry, impatient. Told me to mind my own business when I asked if he was coming back.’

Sam asked him if Crewe might have gone to the family house, but the young man did not think so – not if he had been out all night. He could not tell them anything more. His face with its anxious frown suggested he might know or suspect something about his master, but they had not time to question him further. They could come back. The boy might run away. However, they had to risk that.

‘He had changed his clothes,’ Dickens said when they were on the street again, ‘so it would not appear he had been out all night. Suppose he has gone to the town house? If he is intending to fly then he might hope for money or there might be something he wishes to collect or to take. It is worth our trying.’

‘You’re right – Sir Hungerford may know something.’

Rogers had waited outside. There was no need for him to come to Grosvenor Street, no need for Mollie Spoon to see him again and start talk in the kitchen. He went back to Bow Street, and would send to them if there were any developments.

A cab took them to the town house in Grosvenor Street. Dickens stood on the steps, wondering whether his grandmother had been here. Would his grandfather have answered the door if they had come sixty years ago when he was butler to the Crewe family? Would Sir Hungerford Crewe refer to the Dickens servants as the sneering Edmund had? God, he thought, how all occasions do inform against me. He shook off these unwelcome thoughts, standing straight, and rang the bell. He introduced himself and asked to see Sir Hungerford Crewe on a confidential matter. A powdered replica of the footman at Hanover Square admitted them to a spacious hall from where a marble staircase rose as large and cold as an iceberg to the floors above. The hall was circular, and in the niches in the walls were marble busts of Greek and Roman philosophers or senators whose blind eyes stared at them with lofty indifference. The footman disappeared to enquire if Sir Hungerford would see them.

‘Same scene, several hours later,’ whispered Dickens, making the joke to steady his nerves.

The footman returned to take them to the library where Sir Hungerford came from behind his magnificent desk to greet them courteously. He was tall and elegant, with thick, dark, straight hair, a handsome, scholarly looking man, unlike his relative, though Dickens discerned a resemblance in the long fine nose and high cheekbones. He was thirty-seven, the same age as Dickens, born in
1812
when old Mrs Dickens worked as housekeeper at Crewe Hall and the town house.

‘Mr Dickens, I am very glad to meet you, but I cannot imagine of what matter of confidentiality you wish to speak to me. I know your work well. Your books are here and read, of course.’ He smiled but then looked pointedly at Sam. No reference to any other Dickens, just to the famous writer. Dickens relaxed. The solitary, hungry boy from the blacking factory disappeared.

‘May I introduce Superintendent Jones of Bow Street? He is concerned in this matter,’ he said smoothly, confidence restored.

‘You are here on a police matter then?’ Sir Hungerford’s eyes registered alarm.

‘We are,’ said Sam who had seen the alarm and guessed its cause. There was no time for polite expressions of regret for intruding nor for delicacy. ‘We are keen to find your relative, Mr Edmund Crewe, in connection with a series of crimes in which we suspect he is involved.’

‘You had better sit down and explain precisely what has happened.’

Sam told him. He left out nothing. Sir Hungerford listened intently, his face betraying horror as every detail, including the murders of Patience Rivers, and Blackledge, the suspicions of fraud at Ducat’s, the abduction of Jenny Ding, was related to him.

At the end of it all, he asked only, ‘Have you proof of all this?’

‘Enough,’ said Sam tersely, ‘enough to make it imperative that we find him. Is he here?’

‘No, he is not. I have not seen him. His way of life is one of which I cannot approve. He is heedless, a spendthrift, a gambler, but I had not thought him capable of this.’

Dickens asked, ‘Was he married to Patience Rivers? He told us he was not, that she was his mistress, and that she left him because he would not marry her. They had a child, too.’

‘It was my belief that he had married her. She came here with her father to teach music to my sisters. That is how he met her. He told me that they were married. I did not mind – she was an educated girl, quiet and with all the qualities of a lady. It did not matter that she was of relatively humble stock. Her father, though not rich, was a gentleman in all his ways. What did it matter? Edmund was not going to be the heir. I was prepared to settle money on them, give them a house in Cheshire. I hoped he would settle down, live the life of a gentleman farmer, but he wished to stay in London for the time being, he said. They lived in a small town house we owned. The child came and I thought it time they moved to the country and I told him so. Then came the news that Patience had left him. He said she was unhappy, that she no longer loved him and that the marriage was a mistake. He told us that he had accepted a separation, that he was supporting her, but that he wanted the child to live in Cheshire. He said that he hoped she would come back. Time went on and his story was that she was living with another man, and that he had cut her off entirely.’