The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens (9 page)

Night came. The shadows were broad and black. Christopher lit an oil lamp that emitted a smokey yellow glow.

Two women emerged from the shadows. One was haggard with a lingering tinge of long-ago beauty. Something in her said without words, “I am younger than you would think to look at me.” The other looked only of misery. She was the one who spoke.

“Put your hand under my dress. Touch me where I am wet. Only five pence each.”

“Be gone with you,” Christopher told her.

“Do you want me gone, sonny boy? Or would you rather my hand inside your britches?”

The streets were poorly lit with a spot here and there where lamps were clustered in a square or around some large building. Then the wind began to howl, and a heavy rain fell. Pools of water collected in deep brown mud.

Finally, we came to a place where I turned to Christopher and said, “I know the road from here. You need walk with me no further.”

“Will you be safe?”

“There is nothing to be taken from me. My pockets are as empty as those of anyone I might pass.”

We embraced.

“You have my word. I will do my best to bring you justice.”

“Do that for my sister, and you shall not be friendless while I live.”

I walked on alone through the cold wet streets of London. Before long, I was in a more decent part of the city where the street lamps were more frequent and shone more brightly. But I did not go home. Instead, I walked for hours in solitary desolation.

The rain stopped. The darkness diminished. There was no day yet in the sky. But there was day in the resounding stones of the streets, in the wagons and carts of labourers hurrying to work in pursuit of their family's daily bread.

The spires of churches grew faintly tinged with the light of the rising sun. Its beams glanced next onto the streets until there was light enough for men to see each other's faces. Church bells chimed, sharp and flat, muffled and clear. Those who had spent the night on doorsteps and stones rose and went off to beg. Shops opened. Commerce came to the markets.

All the while, I saw Florence Spriggs before me. I felt her suffering more deeply in my soul than all the suffering I had known or imagined before.

Wingate had cut her like meat and branded her with his hatred. He had taken the face that James Frost loved and turned it into a mask of horror. His unspeakable cruelty had deprived James of life and left his beloved with nothing more than the vision of a future that should have been and would never be.

A towering rage was building inside me. The flames kept rising. They would not subside. I made a vow.

If I did nothing more in my entire life, I would wreak Biblical justice upon Geoffrey Wingate and bring him to ruin.

Book 2

CHAPTER 5

I rested on the day after my journey into the slums of London. Then I confronted the issue of how to fulfill the pledge I had made to Florence and Christopher Spriggs. The best first step seemed to lie in bringing the matter to the attention of the police.

As I write these words in 1870, there is a unified, properly trained police force in London that serves as a model for police work throughout England. It was not always so. At the start of the nineteenth century, England relied on local watches and a parish constable system for the maintenance of order. As social and economic conditions changed, the machinery of law enforcement eroded. Crime grew rampant, particularly in London, and disorder was often prevalent.

Responding to the crisis, in 1829, Parliament passed the Metropolitan Police Act. There would be one police
force in London, replacing the numerous inefficient local commands. The sole exemption from its jurisdiction was the original City of London—an area twenty blocks squared—that remained under the control of a command known as The City Police.

Headquarters for the new Metropolitan Police Force were established at Four Whitehall Place. The public was allowed to enter through a rear entrance on a street called Great Scotland Yard. The city was divided into seventeen districts, each having a superintendent, four inspectors, sixteen sergeants, and one hundred forty-four constables. Appointment to the force was by merit only. Constables were required to be under the age of thirty-five and at least five feet seven inches tall. A short hardwood truncheon was the only weapon they carried. The first recruits reported for training on 21 September 1829. On 25 September, night patrols began. Day patrols were instituted shortly thereafter.

Jurisdiction over the murder of James Frost and the mutilation of Florence Spriggs lay in the district where the crimes occurred. That was the station house I went to in the hope that my standing as a journalist would carry more weight than the word of a woman who had once practiced a less honourable profession. I stated my purpose to the constable on duty at the front desk and was brought to a small room upstairs.

The furniture was old. Stacks of papers were piled on shelves with tiers of boxes placed against the wainscot. Two desks with once-green baize tops that had grown withered and pale were in the center of the room. A man about thirty-five years of age sat behind one of the desks in a high-backed leather chair. He was stout with
dark hair cropped close and intelligent eyes. Unlike the constable, who wore a dark blue long-tailed coat with blue pants, he was dressed in regular business attire.

The constable introduced the man to me as Inspector Benjamin Ellsworth and left the room. I recounted what I knew of the murder and slashing. Ellsworth listened with a reserved, thoughtful air. On occasion, he interrupted my recitation with a question, emphasizing his query with a forefinger put in juxtaposition with his eyes or nose. His manner was steady. I rather liked him.

“If I may ask,” he inquired, “what is your interest in this matter?”

“My interest?”

“You have told me of a conversation you had recently with a woman who acknowledges that she was a prostitute. It is a horrifying tale, but I do not understand fully how you came to know her or what your motives are in pursuing the matter.”

I explained as best I could my position as a reporter for
The Evening Chronicle
, how I had been asked to write about Geoffrey Wingate, and the investigation of his business affairs that led me to outrage.

Ellsworth rose from his chair and began rummaging through one of several boxes marked “1831.” After a search of several minutes, he found what he was looking for, returned to his desk, and spread a sheaf of papers out in front of him.

“The incident occurred in spring 1831,” he said, perusing the pages before him. “That was before I arrived in this district. The matter was investigated by Sergeant Bartholomew Dawes, who found that Florence Spriggs was the mistress of Geoffrey Wingate. James
Frost had known Miss Spriggs at an earlier time in their lives. In a fit of jealous rage, Mr. Frost inflicted horrible damage on the face of Miss Spriggs. Christopher Spriggs, the victim's brother, is believed to have shot Mr. Frost dead in retaliation. Sergeant Dawes spoke with a witness who saw a man whose description was similar to that of Christopher Spriggs running from the site of the murder. Sergeant Dawes said further that Mr. Wingate is a respectable gentleman and that he believed Miss Spriggs and her brother created a fiction after the murder and slashing in order to extort money from Mr. Wingate.”

Rage underscored by the pounding of my heart coursed through my veins.

“That is an abomination.”

“I understand your sentiments, Mr. Dickens. But as an inspector, I have been taught a simple rule. Take everything on evidence. Take nothing on its looks. Miss Spriggs may have a feel of honesty about her. But by her own admission, she practiced a trade that was dependent upon her ability to deceive men with regard to her true feelings and nature. You think that the study of facial expression comes by nature to you and that you are not to be taken in. That is an error. The fact that you give a great deal of time to the reading of Latin, French, whatever, does not qualify you to read the face of another. You cannot accept all that she tells you as truth.”

It took a moment for me to gather my thoughts. Then I spoke.

“Florence Spriggs and Geoffrey Wingate are of different classes, but that is the least of their differences. They are as unalike as good and evil.”

“Let me look further into the matter. If you return in two weeks time, I will tell you what I have learned.”

After I left the station house, I made a decision that might have been foolish. Fueled both by outrage and a reporter's curiosity, I felt compelled to visit Geoffrey Wingate.

The most common form of public transportation in London is the omnibus, a vehicle drawn by horses that follows a given route. Passengers get on and off as often as the patterns change in a kaleidoscope, although they are not as glittering and attractive.

I disembarked the omnibus near Wingate's residence, walked the final two blocks, and made several turns in the street with the hesitation of a man who is conscious that the visit he is about to pay is unexpected and might also be unwelcome. Finally, I approached the front door, grasped the brass lion's head that guarded the house, and slapped it firmly against wood.

A servant opened the door. I handed him my card.

“Would it be possible for me to have a few minutes with Mr. Wingate?”

“Do you have an appointment, sir?”

“No. But we have met before.”

I was escorted into the foyer. Several minutes passed.

The servant returned with Amanda Wingate.

“Mr. Dickens, it is so nice to see you. To what do we owe this unexpected pleasure?”

“I thought I might speak further with your husband
about his business. I can come back another time if it is inconvenient for Mr. Wingate to see me now.”

Amanda brought me to the parlour, waited until I was comfortably seated, and disappeared from view. “Geoffrey is with a client,” she said on her return. “But if you join me for tea, he will be available in less than an hour.”

All the while, she stood perfectly erect, her figure drawn up to its full height. She was the most beguiling woman I had ever seen. As on the day when we met, her clothes had a certain character of tightness, as though everything with two ends that were intended to unite were such that the ends were never on good terms and could not quite meet without a struggle. There was an untamed quality about her.