August 11, 1852—Morning
“It is a woman.” Inspector Collar spoke aloud, rather anti-climactically, what all of us were thinking.
“So it is,” Field agreed thoughtfully, his crook’d forefinger working at the corner of his right eye as if at a scab.
“It’s Eliza Lane,” Meg restated her identification.
“So it is, yes.” Angela Burdett-Coutts, who I think had gone into a temporary state of shock, seconded Irish Meg’s identification.
Dickens looked at Field, but Field said not a thing. He was waiting.
Collar looked briefly at Irish Meg, who was dressed respectfully enough, like a young working woman, but dismissed her in favor of Miss Burdett-Coutts.
“Who is this Eliza Lane? And wot would she be doin’ on these premises so late at night.”
“Oh, she was here last night. She was very angry at all of us,” Angela Burdett-Coutts spoke in a rush.
“Yes, she wos,” Irish Meg seconded Angela Burdett-Coutts. “She all but cursed us, every one.”
“Angela, slow down. Here, sit,” Dickens ordered, and with that solicitous gravity which he assumed whenever his Saint George protectiveness toward a vulnerable woman came upon him, he pulled a wooden desk chair across the marble floor.
After a proper hesitation in respect of the shaken woman’s nerves, Inspector Collar pressed on.
“Wot wos that, again, Miss uh, uh…” He broke stride on her name.
“Angela Burdett-Coutts,” Dickens prompted him rather testily, impatient, perhaps, that Field was just standing in passive attendance while this booby of a policeman blundered about the scene of the crime.
“She, Eliza, poor thing, was angry at all of us.” Angela Burdett-Coutts gathered up her voice. “She broke in upon last evening’s meeting of the Women’s Emancipation Society and accused us all of ugly things.”
“And now she’s been murdered.” Inspector Collar seemed to have a genuine talent for restating the excruciatingly obvious.
Dickens and Field exchanged eyebrow-raising looks which silently commented upon the torpid deductive powers of Inspector Collar.
Said inspector, however, with rather surprising dispatch considering the abundantly evidenced slowness of his intelligence, gathered the crime scene’s obvious available information.
From Angela Burdett-Coutts he obtained the names of all the members in attendance at the previous night’s meeting of the Women’s Emancipation Society.
Next he turned to the day guard, one Mortimer Fix, who had discovered the body upon arriving for duty that morning. “I knew summat was wrong when I arrived an Frenchy wosn’t on the doors,” the man commenced his narrative. By his speech, he was clearly a refugee from the country who had taken on the aggressive bluster of the city streets. “Nobody wos on the doors. The doors wos wide open an unlocked. That’s when I knew summat wos wrong.”
Field rolled his eyes at Dickens.
Irish Meg and Angela Burdett-Coutts listened politely. Irish Meg was standing next to Angela’s chair with her hand on that lady’s shoulder. As I glanced at them, the thought flashed in my mind of how very far my Meggy had come. A mere fourteen months before she had been a foulmouthed, gin-swilling whore of the streets, yet here she stood offering a consoling hand to one of the most powerful women in the land.
“I come right in,” Mr. Fix picked up his story, “an there wos no night guard to be found nowhere on the premises. Then I saw the body an I knew summat wos wrong.”
A long silence ensued as Inspector Collar slowly ruminated upon the details of the day guard’s story.
“The night guard, this Frenchy you called him”—Field stepped in quietly and took over the interrogation—“who is he? Wot do you know about him?”
“He can read, he can,” Mr. Fix declared. “He’s always got his nose in a book when I comes in the mornin’s.” The man seemed especially pleased with this revelation, as if it were the capping evidence in the case.
“His name, do you know his name?” Field was displaying a remarkable patience.
“His name?” Mr. Fix’s face twisted up quite painfully as if he had been asked to solve the riddle of the Sphinx.
“Yes, his name?” Collar reasserted himself.
“Don’ thinks I knows his name”—Mr. Fix’s face still writhed in perplexity—“just Frenchy it always wos.”
“He is a Frenchman then?” Inspector Collar jumped to his next question, perhaps fearful that Field would once again usurp his interrogation.
“No sir, no sir.” Mr. Fix was quite adamant on this point. “Englishman just like me an you, but lived in Paris, come here from Paris he did.”
“Aha!” Inspector Collar meaningfully caressed his chin with his right hand.
“You never heard this Frenchy’s real name?” This time Dickens intruded upon the interrogation, drawing severe looks from both Collar and Field, and an absolutely murderous stare from Serjeant Rogers.
“I did once, I think, sir.” By the painful twisting of his countenance it was clear that Mr. Fix was trying his very hardest to remember. “A B it wos, I think. A B sir, I’m summat certain.”
This declaration threw everyone into confusion. None of the detectives of either the professional or the amateur persuasion had the slightest idea what the man was trying to say. We all stared as he scratched his head and screwed up his face, trying mightily to remember.
“Birchwood it wos, or Barsad, or Bluffnose, or somethin’ like.” Mr. Fix finally tried a few possibilities. “Began with B. Barnbottom. Barbait. Beerbag.”
“And wot sort of books wos this Frenchy always readin’?” Field asked the question with a smile toward Collar, as if it were a joke.
“Ol’ leather ones, sir, and thick they wos.”
Collar seemed stumped for another question, but Field calmly prompted him.
“Perhaps a description?” Field spoke his suggestion in a very low voice as if only addressing Collar.
“Ahem, of course,” Collar blustered. “Wot did this Frenchy look like?”
“Oh, tall he is, for an Englishman I mean, nearly six feet I’d bet. An with a bushy brush on his face, so big you can’t hardly see nothin’ but his eyes.”
“Tall with a bushy mustache it is then.” Field seemed almost talking to himself.
This ended our interview of the only person who even resembled a witness in this murder case. Collar dismissed the man, made certain that he had overlooked nothing at the scene, and ordered his Serjeant Mussbabble to have the body taken away to the police surgery at St. Bart’s.
Inspector Collar was looking around as if trying to find something more to do when Field, who had quietly wandered off, spoke out from near the high entrance door.
“Strange,” Field mused, loud enough to turn everyone’s head.
“What is it?” Dickens was ever alert to Field’s detectiving instincts.
“What is strange?” a hint of panic at the prospect of Field having found something that he had overlooked quavered in his voice.
“Here, and here, and here.” Field stooped as he made his way across the floor picking up minute particles of something. “Look”—and he held out his cupped hand toward us—“little bits of cork across the floor in a trail from the door.”
With that, Field moved quickly to the corpse of the young woman.
“And yes,” he exclaimed in quiet triumph, “her boots are corks. See how the backs of the heels are crumbled. She wos murdered out in the street and dragged in, she wos.”
“In the street? Dragged in?” Collar’s head was swiveling from the doors to the corpse in confusion.
“Yes. See here. As the backs of her heels were dragged across the floor, the edges of the marble slabs crumbled pieces off. She left a trail of little crumbs of cork.”
“So she did.” Inspector Collar saw it now, and even bent to pick up a little piece of cork that Field had missed.
“Yes, that is interesting.” Dickens could not help but enter the colloquy. “But why in the world kill her outside and then drag her in here?”
Field did not answer, perhaps aware that he had already overstepped his jurisdiction in the case. He had clearly surprised Inspector Collar in detecting this trail of evidence.
Everyone looked to Collar for the answer, but none was immediately forthcoming. After a long and awkward pause as Collar contemplated the bit of cork in his hand, he finally answered. “Yes, we must look into this and all the other evidence that I am sure this crime scene holds. We shall study it very carefully. Thank you, Inspector Field.”
That seemed our signal to take our leave, and Inspector Field leapt to grease his colleague Collar with the oil of conciliation.
“Inspector Collar,” Field began with righteous deference, “thank you for lettin’ Serjeant Rogers and me observe. This seems a very interesting case, and one I would like to follow along. If there is anything we can do to help in the case, just summon us from Bow Street.”
This extraordinary speech (both for its formality and its deference) delivered, Field and Rogers moved, without any farewell to Dickens and me (as if they did not want Collar to suspect that we were acquainted), toward the great doors.
I watched Dickens, and noted the momentary surprise in his face at this unexpected snub. But he quickly gathered up his bruised dignity. He went first to Angela Burdett-Coutts and, taking her hand, assured her, distinctly within the hearing of Inspector Collar and his man, that he was totally at her service in quest of a resolution of this frightening affair. Turning next to Inspector Collar, Dickens shook that worthy’s hand heartily, all the while exclaiming what an interesting case of murder this was, how fascinated by the working of the Metropolitan Protectives he and his magazine Household Words were, and how grateful he would be to be kept informed of the turnings and developments of this case.* He was all fulsome smiles as he wrung that startled policeman’s hand.
Outside, on the steps of the bank, Serjeant Rogers was waiting.
“He wants you to follow us to Bow Street, sirs.” Rogers delivered his master’s message and, without formality, scurried off down the stone steps to join Field in the post-chaise, the driver of which immediately put whip to his horses and spirited our fellow detectives off in a rush.
*Dickens had, indeed, written four feature articles in Household Words two years before detailing the operations of the Metropolitan Protectives. “On Duty with Inspector Field” (August 1850) had been the first of those four essays.