The Murder of Patience Brooke: Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones Investigate
128
The Murder of Patience Brooke: Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones Investigate
128eBook
Available on Compatible NOOK devices, the free NOOK App and in My Digital Library.
Related collections and offers
Overview
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9780750957595 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | The History Press |
| Publication date: | 08/04/2014 |
| Series: | Charles Dickens & Superintendent Jones |
| Sold by: | Barnes & Noble |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 128 |
| File size: | 446 KB |
| Age Range: | 8 - 12 Years |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
The Murder of Patience Brooke
Charles Dickens and Superintendent Jones Investigate
By J.C. Briggs
The History Press
Copyright © 2014 J.C. BriggsAll rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-7509-5759-5
CHAPTER 1
THE SINGER
Thrown on the wide world, doom'd to wander and roam, Bereft of my parents, bereft of my home.
The singer's voice was a high, horrible, falsetto: mocking and caressing at the same time.
The woman leaning against the railing on the steps seemed to sway. Her head fell forward; suddenly, shockingly, blood gushed from her throat, soaking her dress, dropping in fat red gouts on to the step.
The singer vanished into the curling loops of fog, the voice fading, the last note dying away then lost in the dark.
* * *
Fog. Fog in the kitchen, creeping like an inquisitive guest, fog tiptoeing around the cupboards and the chairs, bending into the copper in its brick setting, folding itself under the table and peering out of the window, looking at itself trying to get in. Mrs Georgiana Morson, resident matron of Urania Cottage, Charles Dickens's home for fallen women, aware of the pinching cold of the flagstones, standing amazed with her candle in her hand, wondered how it had got in when she had shut the door at ten o'clock. In the light of one candle, the fog looked sinister, an uninvited visitor. Mrs Morson felt somehow afraid of its yellowish ghostly presence. But she was not too afraid to go forward across the large, square, stone-floored apartment where she saw that the door was open and that more fog was swirling in. Her practical thought was to close the door and shut it out.
It was as she was shutting the door that she saw that there was someone outside on the steps which led up to the garden. It was the figure of a woman – an unusually tall one; she appeared to be standing against the railings, her head bowed, her hair falling about her shoulders and her dress open, revealing naked shoulders and the full white bosom upon which there appeared to be some ruby-coloured jewels. Mrs Morson speculated that she might be someone looking for sanctuary – there was something about the figure which suggested exhaustion, as though she had reached the end of her endurance. Young women came to the Home recommended, but once or twice one would turn up unannounced, hoping for help, having, perhaps, run away from some bully of a man.
Mrs Morson held up her candle. In the flickering light, she saw how one of the red jewels seemed to tremble, and slide down the white skin. Then another and another so that they formed a scarlet pool gathered in the V of the dress. She went up the first step to look more closely; then she saw that the woman was not simply standing against the railings but that she was tied to them. She lifted up the chestnut hair which tumbled about the shoulders, and realised that the red was not jewels but blood; and that the metallic smell was blood; and that the blood had soaked into the woman's dress; and that it was a great apron of blood, clinging to the limbs, and staining the white lace of the underskirt. And her eyes travelled down to the sticky pool of it next to her own foot, and she saw the naked feet of the woman shod in red. She looked up again at the white throat encircled by a slash of scarlet, up again at the white face. It was one she knew. It was the face of Patience Brooke.
Mrs Morson stepped back; she saw now that the woman was not unusually tall, she was hanging from the railings and had only seemed to be standing upon the third step up. Mrs Morson had seen death – her doctor husband had died early and she had nursed him, but he had died in his bed, her holding his hands. A child had died at a few months old – a terrible time but an explicable death from scarlet fever. She had delivered the dead child of a servant girl. She had once seen a man die in the street. Passing a crowd one afternoon, she had seen through a gap a policeman supporting a man whose legs were mangled and whose head was a mass of blood. Nearby was the wagon that had run him down. But she had never seen a murder, and Patience Brooke had been murdered.
Mrs Morson stood, still as stone, unable to tear her horrified eyes from the brutal gash in the white throat. Her heart seemed to have ceased its beating; the silence gathered round her like a cloak, stifling her so that she could hardly breathe. Time itself stopped as she stared at the figure. There was a sudden, terrible movement when the head nodded and the chin knocked against the chest, and was still again. The silence broke when time restarted; Mrs Morson heard the distant chimes of the clock of St Mark's. She listened as each stroke sounded through the foggy air. It was eleven o'clock now. She must act quickly. Her horror at what she had seen was superseded by her natural practical resolution and her quick understanding that this could not be known until she had sent for Mr Dickens. No one must see. The girls were in their beds and had been since nine o'clock – not likely to come down until morning. Davey was in his cot in the little room off the kitchen, fast asleep she hoped, but she must wake him and he must take the message. Mr Bagster, the gardener whom she would normally have sent for, was away at his daughter's at Kensal Green. But first, she must cover Patience. Time later to think what it all might mean. She went back through the kitchen and into the passage that led to the front of the house. There was kept an assortment of cloaks; she took one which she draped over the hanging woman.
Now paper and pencil. These were kept on the table for lists and notes. She wrote her message:
Mr Dickens, you must come immediately. Patience Brooke is dead this night. Bring our friend, Superintendent Jones, if you can. G. Morson.
Now she must wake Davey. Opening the door to the little room off the kitchen, she saw that he was huddled under his blankets, his head buried in his pillow. There was something about the hunched form that suggested fear. What might he have heard – or, worse, seen? Mr Dickens could ask him later. Now, he must take the horse and trap and go. She approached the cot and touched his shoulder. The boy remained still. He was not asleep.
She whispered to him. 'Davey, you must help me. I do not know what has happened but I need your help, however afraid you are. You must go to Mr Dickens and bring him.' The name of Mr Dickens roused him as she knew it would. He stared at her with those transparent hazel eyes. He was afraid.
'Get dressed. I will wait in the kitchen – but be quick, I beg you.'
In a minute or two, he was ready. 'Take the note. Go to Wellington Street first. We must hope he is there – if not, go to Bow Street, send in the note for Superintendent Jones.'
She opened the door on to the fog and on to the shrouded form by the railings. Davey hurried up the steps, keeping his head averted, and then he was dissolved into the fog. He would go out of the side gate into the private lane to the stable. She waited in the stillness, straining to hear the sound of the stable door opening and the clink of the harness which must be followed by the sound of the trap and its horse. It must. Davey would not run away, would he? She did not know what had frightened him but he could have nothing to do with the figure at the railings. He could not. Of that she was sure. He would go for Mr Dickens whom he revered – the man who had rescued him. He was intelligent, sensible – if he had to go to Bow Street, surely someone would send the note in for the superintendent. She did not dare think that Davey would come back alone. The silence seemed to congeal around her. The stillness was solid. She realised she was holding her breath, waiting.
Then she heard it. The stable door creaked. Mrs Morson let out a ragged breath. The faint metallic clink meant that Davey was harnessing the horse and putting it into the traces. She held her breath again and heard the sound of wheels and then the clip-clop of the horse's hooves as he walked down the lane. She imagined Davey squinting through the fog, hunched over the reins, making his way to the road where he would turn right and on to London. He was turning now and the clip-clop sounds were faster, then fainter. She waited still until the sound faded away and she was left in the misty darkness with dead Patience on the steps where the blood pooled into a sticky, black wetness.
She went back into the kitchen, not wanting to close the door on the dead one outside, but if she left it open she knew that she could not stop her gaze from turning on the shrouded thing. She closed the door. The candle was nearly burnt down now, but there was a faint glow from the great black range. She lifted the iron lid and put on more coal from the scuttle bedside the range. In the darkness she sat thinking of Patience Brooke and her terrible death and mysterious life.
Patience Brooke had come from nowhere. Mrs Morson had employed her. Mr Dickens had met her and had agreed. It was unusual, for most girls came through official channels. George Chesterton, Governor of Coldbath Fields Prison, had given some of his female prisoners a letter written by Dickens which offered the chance of a new kind of life, a quiet home, a means of being useful, peace of mind, self-respect and the possibility of being restored to society, albeit in another country; some came from the workhouse and others from ragged schools or orphanages. But Mrs Morson knew – or thought she knew until this moment – that Patience Brooke was not a girl from the streets for whom the Home, so named by Mr Dickens, was a chance of redeeming a wrecked life. She was not a fallen woman. She had stood on the doorstep one day in her neat, shabby grey dress and black bonnet under which the chestnut hair was tidily coiled. Mrs Morson wondered at the significance of that hair tumbling over naked shoulders. Patience Brooke had brought nothing with her – nothing at all, not even a handkerchief. With her thin pale face and her quiet manner, she reminded Mrs Morson of the governess, Jane Eyre, in the novel she had read. It was clear that she was educated and Mrs Morson employed her to help her teach the girls in the mornings. Patience Brooke told not a thing about her past; in that she was like Davey though for a different reason – Davey simply could not speak; Patience would not.
It was unusual for Mrs Morson to act without consulting Mr Dickens first, but she knew that Patience would elicit his sympathy and curiosity and so she did. Mr Dickens seemed fascinated by her. He told Mrs Morson how intense his anxiety was to know her secret, but Patience resisted, which testified to her strength of character, for she revealed nothing to Mr Dickens; she even avoided him, as if fearful that one day he would prevail, such was his power.
That Patience had a secret, Mrs Morson did not doubt, and that it was a terrible one, the cloaked figure on the steps outside confirmed. Mrs Morson sat in the darkened kitchen. She heard the clock of St Mark's strike twelve, every chime echoing through the stillness. The house was silent. She wondered where Davey was now. He had been gone for just over an hour; he ought to be there soon. Mr Dickens must be there, he must. Then they would go for Superintendent Jones. Restless now, she went to the door and opened it as if to check that Patience was there – she was. Mrs Morson regarded the dark shape. How long must she wait? Another hour or two or more? The thought was almost unendurable but she had endured before. She remembered the long hours of darkness when her husband was dying and the long days of anguish that followed his death.
She turned back to the kitchen and again fed the dying fire, but she did not light a candle. Feeling a chill, she looked again at the door. This time it was open and that dreadful fog, more of a misty vapour now, drifted in, turning back on itself as if beckoning someone outside to come in. Mrs Morson felt terror. It was the worst moment, worse even than finding the body, for Mrs Morson who had loved Patience Brooke experienced only horror at the thought of her coming in. She strode to the door and shut it, restraining herself only just in time to stop it slamming. She stood motionless, her breath suspended, her heart knocking at her ribs until the stillness and silence settled again and she sat once more, waiting.
CHAPTER 2DICKENS AND JONES
Charles Dickens was in his office in Wellington Street looking out at the fog. It seemed to be lifting now though there were greenish wreaths of it still twining round the gas lamps so that the long line of street lamps was blurred as if seen through tears, and wisps of vapour lingered in the air like fading ghosts. The street was empty. Dickens had watched until his friend Forster had disappeared across the road on his way to his lodgings at Lincoln's Inn Fields, along the Strand to Chancery. He was restless and unsettled – it was a Friday, a day of omen.
Dickens and Forster were old friends – friends from 1837. They shared a similar history, both born in the same year, 1812, into poor circumstances, Forster the son of a Newcastle butcher who had worked his way up to being literary editor of The Examiner and editor of The Daily News. When Forster told him that Charles Dilke had once seen Dickens as a boy working in a warehouse near the Strand, Dickens felt it as a blow, as if Dilke had exposed him as a fraud, a man who was not as he had presented himself. It was as if a disguise had fallen from him to reveal to the world a shabby boy, grubbing for a living in a factory which was exactly as it had been – while his family had lived in the Marshalsea where John Dickens was imprisoned for debt. It was as if the velvet jackets, the flamboyant waistcoats, the plaid trousers had been stripped from him to show the rags beneath yet he had been impelled by some desire he could not restrain to tell more whilst at the same time he found it unbearable. He had given Forster a manuscript detailing the first part of his life, a part he had never revealed – the story of his time as a boy at the blacking factory, a time of humiliation and misery. He felt like the haunted man of his Christmas story for1848.
Now, in a bitter cold spring of 1849 – more like winter – he had started his new novel, David Copperfield. The starting of a new novel was a kind of agony. He was irritable and wanted to be solitary yet he desired the streets, walking about at night into the strangest places, seeking rest and finding none.
He ought to be at home; there was a new baby, Henry, to look to and Catherine to care for but he was dissatisfied and disquieted. He looked at himself in the glass as if to check that he was still there. He saw the self he gave the world. On 7th February he had reached his thirty-seventh birthday; he was still young, and he thought there was still much to do. If someone had been at his shoulder, looking at the reflection in the mirror, they would have seen a face looking back, characterised by a broad forehead with rich brown curled hair brushed to the side. The eyes, large and brilliant, could light up a room, shining with good humour and tenderness. But, looking into those eyes they might see there two deeper, darker points of melancholy, and their lustre spoke often of restlessness as tonight. There was, he thought, a kind of sickness in him, such a sense of loss sometimes that he felt he was foundering. He turned back to his desk and took up his goose-quill, but wrote nothing.
The knocking woke him. It was loud and insistent. His heart misgave. A message from home? The child ill? He looked out of the window to where a horse and trap stood in the street under the gas lamp. Recognising it, he took his candle, hurried downstairs to open the door and found Davey holding out a piece of paper. The boy's face expressed fear and agitation. Having read Mrs Morson's message, Dickens told Davey to wait while he went inside for his coat. He came out again to find Davey already with the reins in his hands. It was no use asking the boy for more information. Davey could not reply. He was mute but not deaf so Dickens reassured him.
'We will go for Superintendent Jones as quickly as we can – we must go to Bow Street. Then we will get to Mrs Morson. She is a good, sensible woman, Davey. There is nothing to fear.'
Was there not? Dickens thought. Patience Brooke dead; the urgency and brevity of Mrs Morson's message and her sending Davey all pointed to something dreadfully wrong. And, he had to hope that Superintendent Jones was at Bow Street and not further north at his home in Norfolk Street.
They travelled along the dark street not speaking. Dickens could feel the weight of the boy's fear as if it were something actually leaning against him. Davey knew something though it might only be that the girl was dead. He had responded to her quiet gentleness and she had taught him to read and write. Dickens looked at the white face – poor Davey of whom he had become fond. Dickens had found him curled up in a doorway like a lost dog, a child of the streets who seemed to have no name nor anyone to whom he belonged. There were hundreds like him and Dickens could not rescue them all. He had done what he could, finding employment for a crippled boy at his publisher's, placing a shoe-black boy in a ragged school. All these boys were his other self, the one who would have slaved on in the blacking factory had he not been rescued. This boy who could not speak, and whose transparent hazel eyes had gazed at him in wonder from the doorway, stirred his immediate compassion. Here was a boy who needed not just a place in a school or an office; here was a boy who needed safety and the care of a mother. Mrs Morson needed a boy to do the odd jobs, to chop the wood, bring in the coals, to look after the horse and the stables. Dickens would take him to her. Dickens had much liking and respect for the matron of the Home who mothered the fallen girls and referred to them as the family. Most of those girls loved her too and wept when they left. She, a mother of three children, would care for the boy; he would not be a slave.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Murder of Patience Brooke by J.C. Briggs. Copyright © 2014 J.C. Briggs. Excerpted by permission of The History Press.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
Table of Contents
Contents
Title,Quote,
1 The Singer,
2 Dickens and Jones,
3 The Man with the Crooked Face,
4 To London,
5 Bow Street,
6 Dickens at Home,
7 At Shepherd's Bush,
8 Francis Fidge,
9 Godsmark,
10 A Face in a Crowd,
11 Constable Rogers has an Idea,
12 At Norfolk Street,
13 Jacob's Island,
14 Alice Drown,
15 A Pair of Black Eyes,
16 Blackledge,
17 Memory,
18 Lantern Yard,
19 Brick Holes,
20 Rake's Progress,
21 Missing,
22 A Present for a Good Girl,
23 The Actor,
24 Footsteps in the Fog,
25 Jonas Finger,
26 Who is He?,
27 Pursuit,
28 The Fall,
Epilogue,
Historical Note,
About the Author,
Copyright,