August 12, 1852—Morning
I lay awake thinking back upon all these things until day broke. Irish Meg and I were awake long before Ellen Ternan. We were both ravenous and soon found ourselves facing each other across our dining table with all the fragments of our meagre pantry spread in disarray between us. The remains of a loaf of bread, a small rotting parcel of cheese, some broken bits of roast, a pitcher of water, a pot of mustard, and a small cabbage had been hurriedly assembled. A pot of hot tea was brewing at the hearth.
“I tell you, Wilkie, I wanted to scratch her eyes out last night,” Irish Meg opened our colloquy, “and now she’s dead. I don’t hardly believe it. She threatened every woman in that room. Any one of them could have killed her. I didn’t really care wot Liza Lane said about me, but she wos so hateful to the others. Miss Angela wouldn’t hurt a flea and just wants to help other women, and Nellie hasn’t done anything wrong.”
“This Eliza Lane, she said terrible things about everyone. How did she know all those things?” My curiosity drove our conversation. “Did people talk about their private lives that openly in your meetings?”
“No. Not really. But people can know things about all of us just by watchin’ close. But she seemed to know everything. It makes me so angry. Wot I wos in the past seems to haunt me like some phantom.”
“What do you mean, things can be watched?” I asked in all innocence.
“All you has to do is listen to me talk and you knows I ain’t from the same company as Miss Angela or Barbara Smith. I give myself away, Wilkie. But we’re not the things Liza Lane said we are. Women shouldn’t say such things about other women. Her truth’s all twisted, it is.”
“Twisted?”
“I don’t know. She wosn’t like that in other meetin’s, all violent and agitated. But the look on her face this time…like she wos under some spell, her eyes all blank. Strange!”
A long pause ensued as we picked over our morsels of food and digested our thoughts.
“Wot are we to do, Wilkie?” Meg demanded, as poor Nellie wandered into the pantry rubbing her eyes and looking as forlorn as if already condemned to the gallows. We both turned to stare at her, somewhat embarrassed that she had caught us talking about her in her absence. But Nellie seemed unaware of what we had been discussing and joined us at the table.
I tried to think of something to say, some solution to Nellie’s (and our) predicament. Her scarf, her whereabouts the night of the murder unaccounted for, her past—sooner or later all of those facts must surface in this case and demand explanation. I knew that she could not remain with Irish Meg and me in our rooms hiding out. She must return to her normal pattern of life, or else the appearance of guilt and flight would surely condemn her.
“Nellie, you must go home.” I finally broke the awkward silence. “You must not allow the Protectives, this Inspector Collar, to suspect that you are trying to avoid him. We must not invite unwholesome speculation. We must gain some time until Field and Dickens can find the real murderer.” It all seemed perfectly reasonable to me. Collar appeared a rather slow-witted policeman, certainly not a match for the redoubtable Field.
That seemed to settle it. For once Irish Meg seemed willing to abide by my advice. Poor Nellie was so confused that I am convinced she would have done anything that anyone suggested. The women combed and dressed themselves for going out. I performed a rudimentary toilette in the pantry and changed out of the shirt I had slept in. Sleepy Rob,* who had become a morning fixture on our street, almost my (and Dickens’s) private driver, was dozing on the box of his double hansom at our very doorstep. I roused him with a sharp tap of my stick to his wheel and directed him to Miss Ternan’s lodgings.
I certainly could not have foreseen what awaited us in Macklin Street. As we turned the corner into that thoroughfare, I noticed a black Protectives post-chaise occupied by two men, one, the driver, on the box, the other sitting waiting in the carriage, pulled up directly in front of Miss Ternan’s doorstep.
By sheer reflex, whether out of guilt or fear or some unaccountable protective instinct, I swiftly stuck my head out of the opposite window of our cab and ordered Sleepy Rob to “Drive on” while simultaneously pushing, rather roughly I fear, Miss Ternan to the floor out of sight.
It was Inspector Collar and his man sitting in wait upon Miss Ternan’s return. As we drove by on the opposite side of the street, a bright green scarf of fabric being pulled and knotted in Collar’s hand caught my eye like sunlight glistening off the barrel of a pistol.
I was horrified at what I had done. Meggy and I were now officially harboring a suspected murderess. My immediate sentiment was to turn back, to give her up, but I knew that Irish Meg would never allow it.
“Oh, Wilkie, that wos close,” Meg exclaimed.
“Oh God, they know.” A dark cloud of despair passed over Miss Ternan’s face, and I was sure she would once again burst into tears, but she did not.
At the end of the street, I leaned out the window and directed Sleepy Rob to drive us to Wellington Street and Dickens.
*In the affair of “the Medusa Murders” recounted in The Highwayman and Mr. Dickens, Sleepy Rob the cabman had played a pivotal role in saving Dickens from harm.