August 14, 1852—Night
“I’m not sure I believe any of this”—Field turned to the rest of us, his crook’d forefinger scratching at the side of his right eye in the deepest concentration—“but for now, till we can talk further with this woman, we must find this Barsad.”
“Why do you not believe her?” Dickens, ever curious, inquired.
“For God’s sake, who knows if she is tellin’ the truth. She is this devil’s familiar. She would probably say anything to save him.” Field’s frustration resounded in his voice.
“I believe her,” Dickens said, risking Field’s wrath.
“So do I, damn her,” Field grudgingly admitted, “and it makes everything that much more difficult.”
“That it does.” Rogers had to put in his tuppence as a contribution to the proceedings.
“But no matter if we believe her or not,” Field galloped straight onward, “we must catch this Barsad and catch him now. He will run. He will dart for France. That is where they came from, he and his Marie de Brevecoeur. We must do what I said, close down the city, cut off his escape.”
“But how?” Rogers voiced what all of us were wishing to ask.
“We must put men at every way out of London. On the river. At the railway station. On the high roads.”
“But sir, we’ve never done nothin’ like that,” Rogers said skeptically. “We don’t have enough men at Bow Street.”
“We will get Collar to help, and the River Police.” Field was carried away with the grandeur of it.
“Collar?” Rogers dumbfounded.
“Collar?” Dickens skeptical.
“Collar?” Me wondering if Field was serious.
“Yes, Collar, for God’s sake,” Field barked at all of us in frustration. “I will talk to him. He will go along. Now, Miss Nightingale, you go with Rogers and me in the post-chaise. We will take this woman to Bow Street Station for safekeepin’ until she can tell us more about this Barsad cove.” He turned to Dickens and me to explain. “And you two follow along to Bow Street. Barsad will try to run. We must close down the city tonight. Close it tighter than a Scotsman’s purse.”
With that, Field and Rogers ushered their charges out and left Dickens and me to follow along.
When we arrived at Bow Street, Field’s plan was already set in motion. He had dispatched a constable to fetch Inspector Collar from St. James and was in the process of sending Rogers out in the post-chaise. That worthy’s charge was to collect all of his constables from off the streets and to roust the others out of their off-duty haunts. Collar arrived within the hour. Dickens and I listened with great curiosity to their exchange.
Field earnest: “Inspector Collar, thank you for coming. I need your help.”
Collar suspicious: “Help for wot?”
Field eager: “For catching John Barsad, who I suggest murdered the woman in the bank.”
Collar defensive: “I already have my murderer.”
Field helpful: “I think this Barsad is a better choice.”
Collar adamant: “I have solved that murder. The woman strangled her with her personal scarf.”
Field cajoling: “But can we ever be certain? I have evidence, equally strong, that Barsad could have done it.”
Collar interested: “Wot evidence?”
Field relieved, in the knowledge that the hook is set: “A new witness.”
Collar very interested: “Wot new witness?”
Field triumphant: “Marie de Brevecoeur, this Barsad’s whore. The woman who dresses as a man.”
Collar confused: “Dresses as a man?”
Field moving on: “Yes, but we must move quickly. I propose to close off the complete city of London so that Barsad cannot escape. I need your help, all the men in your station.”
Collar flabbergasted: “Close off London?”
Field impatient: “Yes; listen, you must marshal your men. We will need every one of them.”
Collar utterly at sea and sputtering: “Close off London? Close off…”
Field losing patience rapidly: “Yes. Can you not see? The Protectives have never done anything like this before. It is a first in our line. We are goin’ to close off all the ways out to catch our killer.”
Collar reluctant: “But I have already got my killer.”
Field the rationalist: “But wot if you do not? There is nothing to lose. At worst, we catch an accomplice in the murder, or another witness. This can only help your case.”
Collar again confused: “Accomplice? Wot accomplice? Wot witness?”
Field, whose face was reddening at this absurd functionary’s obtuseness, and who was beginning to look like an anxious teakettle, started to answer, but was interrupted by a furious pounding at the outer door. Since Rogers had taken the desk constable with him, I hastened to answer those insistent knocks.
Tally Ho Thompson burst in upon us, breathless, bleeding from the nose, and sporting a darkening bruise on the side of his face.
“He has taken her,” Thompson exclaimed, collapsing into one of the chairs by the cold hearth.
He looked to have run halfway across London with his cryptic message. He was utterly blown, yet his voice was all chagrin and apology. It was unlike Thompson. He was completely serious.
“He surprised me at her door when I answered his knock and hit me with a stick. He has taken her!”
“Who, man? Who?” Collar, as usual, had not perceived what Field and Dickens and I already knew with dread.
“Miz Angela. He took Miz Angela and left this on the floor.” Thompson was holding his head with one hand, in obvious pain from the blow, and listing heavily in the chair. With his other hand he passed to Field a hastily scrawled note on a scrap of foolscap.
Field read it aloud: “I have the stone bank bitch. Free passage to France with the money or I’ll throw her into the sea.”
“Wot money?” Collar was beginning to sound like Broken Bert’s parrot.
We ignored him and looked to Field.
“She is his hostage,” Field said as he stared at the note, reading it again, and yet again.
“’E is all zee zings you zay,” Marie de Brevecoeur pleaded feebly, “but ’e is not a murderer!”
Inexplicably, she chose that moment to rouse herself from her faint and defend her master and exploiter.
“No, he is not a murderer.” Field silenced her with a grim look upon his hard face. “But if this is to be believed”—and he waved the scrawled note at us—“he threatens to become one.”
Once again Field read the note slowly, aloud, not for our enlightment at all, but for the triggering of his own deductive processes.
“He is makin’ for France, he is.” Field was thinking aloud.
“‘Throw her into the sea. Throw her into the sea,’” he repeated the words of the note.
He thought a moment, his crook’d finger scratching thoughtfully at the side of his eye. Once again he was reading the text of the case.
“Bloody hell! That’s it!” He finally saw what it all meant. “He’s makin’ for Dover. The sea. To get across to France. We must cut him off before he gets out of London.”
“He left his horse tied in front of Miz Burdett-Coutts’s house when he run off with her,” said the guilt-stricken Thompson, trying to be helpful. “I rode it here, but it broke down only halfway and I had to run the rest.”
“He is on foot with Miss Burdett-Coutts in tow.” Field, as if in some sort of deductive trance, was thinking aloud again, putting it all together. Suddenly, he turned on Collar like a wolf baring his fangs. “We must seal off the city, Inspector Collar. We must block the Dover road and all other roads that feed into the Dover road outside the city. Can your men do that?” His voice was so grim that his last query was more a challenge than a question.
Collar coughed nervously twice and then answered, “Of course,” as if this sort of desperate exercise were something they did every day and for which they were prepared.
“My men shall cover the railway stations,” Field informed him. “He may try to escape tonight by coach on the high road, or he may try tomorrow to go by the Dover train. It leaves the Victoria Railway Station at nine in the mornin’.”
“But what about Angela?” Dickens’s voice was heavy with concern. “Good lord, he will be using her as his shield. Your men”—and he turned from one to the other, leaving no doubt that he was addressing both Field and Collar—“must be extremely cautious. You must make certain that no harm comes to her.”
“He will not harm her, and neither shall we,” Field reassured Charles. “He will mesmerize her if he can, to make her docile, but he will keep her close, he will. She is his safe passage!”