FOUR

‘’Ere, there’s a copper …’ But Mrs Rackstraw got no further than that.

‘Chief Inspector Adolphus Williamson, to be more precise.’ The large man with the greying beard barged unceremoniously past the housekeeper, his bright eyes focused on James Batchelor.

‘An honour, Chief Inspector.’ Batchelor stood up and extended a hand, but Williamson did not take it. ‘Mrs Rackstraw, some tea for the chief inspector.’

Williamson looked the woman up and down and his first suspicions of her were confirmed. ‘No, thank you,’ he said, and he plonked himself down on a rather excruciatingly uncomfortable horsehair sofa.

‘I’m guessing you’re Grand,’ the copper said, looking at the tall American as the unwanted housekeeper snorted and left.

‘I am Matthew Grand,’ Grand said. He had been writing up reports for most of the morning, listening to the sounds of Alsatia drifting in through the window. His coffee had gone cold. ‘What can we do for you, Chief Inspector?’

Williamson had acquired the knack of all Scotland Yard detectives over the years, of reading upside down what was written on other people’s desks. ‘“No stone unturned”,’ he said.

Batchelor looked at him. ‘Do you have a stone,’ he asked, ‘that we can help you with?’

‘Oh, I can do that by myself, thank you,’ Williamson smiled. ‘It’ll be a cold day in Hell before the Yard has to resort to amateurs to help them.’

More or less what ex-Chief Inspector Field had said, Grand thought to himself. ‘So, this visit …?’ He was trying to move the conversation along.

‘… Is by way of a warning,’ Williamson said. ‘A Dr Beard contacted me.’

‘Ah.’

‘He says that you, Mr Batchelor, all but accused him of murdering the late Charles Dickens.’

‘I did no such thing,’ Batchelor retorted, indignant. ‘I just don’t like brick walls.’

Williamson chuckled and leaned back, trying to come to terms with the horsehair. ‘Well, I’m with you there,’ he said. ‘Tell me, then, as one professional to another, what makes you think Dickens was murdered?’

‘Professional?’ Batchelor muttered crossly. ‘A moment ago we were amateurs.’

‘We don’t think Dickens was murdered,’ Grand lied. ‘But our client does.’

‘And who would that be?’ Williamson wanted to know.

‘Aha,’ Batchelor wagged a finger at him. ‘Sorry, Chief Inspector – client confidentiality. If Beard can clam up about his patients, we can do the same about our clients.’

‘Private enquiry agents!’ Williamson scowled. ‘There’ll come a time when you people will need a licence to operate. But until then, there is such a thing as obstructing the police in pursuance of their enquiries.’

‘Are you making enquiries, then?’ Grand asked. ‘About Dickens, I mean.’

Williamson smiled. ‘I am now,’ he said.

‘Well, perhaps you’ll get further with Beard than I did,’ Batchelor said.

‘Count on it.’ The chief inspector rose with some difficulty from the glassy embrace of the horsehair and turned to the door. ‘I’m not expecting our paths to cross again,’ he said, ‘but if they do, you won’t enjoy the experience.’

‘Give our regards to Inspector Tanner,’ Grand said.

‘Oh, that’s right.’ Williamson clicked his fingers. ‘I knew I’d come across your names somewhere. Dick Tanner used to speak quite highly of you two.’

‘Used to?’ Batchelor frowned.

‘Oh, you haven’t heard. Poor old Dick’s rheumatism got the better of him and he had to retire. This would be … ooh … a few months back now. He’s keeping a pub in Winchester.’ Williamson’s pleasant face disappeared and he let his eyes burn into them both. ‘So, if you were hoping there was a friendly face at Four Whitehall Place, gentlemen, I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad news. By the way, it’s not for me to say, but in the interests of impressing clients, that woman of yours needs work.’

There was a curious hush in the close that day. The precincts of Westminster Abbey were thronged with people, most in respectful black. No one spoke. Even the pigeons seemed to sense the occasion and kept their billing and cooing to a decent minimum. Three carriages rolled up to the west door, but there was not an ostrich plume in sight and all the horses were bay.

‘That’s Mamie and Katie,’ George Sala murmured out of the corner of his mouth. ‘Charles’s daughters.’

The great journalist stood with Grand and Batchelor on the corner of Great Smith Street, towards the back of the spectators, who all looked as if they had turned up for one of Mr Dickens’s famed performances, the ladies fluttering fans under their parasols. The Dickens daughters clung to each other, pale and tearful, but determined not to break down; it was what their papa would have wanted.

‘John Forster,’ Sala kept up the running commentary, ‘the tall one with the eyebrows and dundrearies.’

‘Dickens’s friend?’ Batchelor checked.

‘And—’ Sala aimed a well-placed spit into the gutter – ‘biographer. I understand he was also his go-between with publishers; a man of Dickens’s stature wouldn’t wrestle with a chimney sweep, if I may borrow a phrase from the late, lamented Mr Peel.’

‘I thought you were his biographer, Mr Sala,’ Grand said, a knowing look on his face.

‘I am unofficial, dear boy,’ the journalist told him. ‘That gives me a certain carte blanche. I also work faster than he does, so my version will be on the streets before his.’

‘Who’s that?’ Grand asked. ‘The blubbing one.’

‘That’s George Dolby, Charles’s stage manager. Handled all his lecture tours.’

‘He seems pretty cut up,’ Batchelor said. ‘That other chap seems to be holding him up.’

‘The other chap is his son, Charley Dickens, apple of Charles’s eye. Hopeless writer, of course, but there it is. No, Dolby’s an odd one.’

‘In what way?’ Grand asked.

‘Any way you choose.’ Sala lit a cigar and tossed the match to the tarmacadam. ‘The man has an appalling speech impediment. Given to dancing the hornpipe in railway carriages. Charles found it all very endearing for some reason. I would have had him committed, myself. Very emotional, is George. I doubt you’ll get much out of him for a while.’

‘He seems to have managed to get himself a very attractive wife, nonetheless,’ Batchelor remarked.

‘Wife?’ Sala almost swallowed his cigar. ‘Dolby hasn’t got a wife.’

‘Well,’ Batchelor pointed. ‘There’s a rather slender and elegant woman walking alongside him. I can’t see who she is through that veil, and so I suppose she might well have a face like a rhinoceros, but the rest of her looks comely enough to make that moot.’

Sala peered closer. ‘Who is that?’ he said. He closed his eyes and did some elementary arithmetic, using his fingers. ‘I really can’t place her. But she obviously is some distant member of the family, someone they couldn’t refuse entry.’

‘Could it be his wife, sneaking in?’

‘Not with a waist that size,’ Sala spluttered. ‘I wouldn’t say Catherine is fat, but she could make two of the mystery lady. No, it’ll be a cousin or something. But certainly not Mrs Dolby. Perish the thought!’

‘So, let me get this straight,’ Grand murmured in the rising hum of the crowd. ‘You think one of them murdered Dickens?’

The three watched as Georgy Hogarth was helped down from the last carriage by Dr Beard. The last man out of the third carriage was Frederic Ouvry, Dickens’s solicitor. He looked as all solicitors look at funerals; pale, and mourning a good client gone west. Sala shrugged. ‘That’s what I’m paying you a goodly sum to find out,’ he said. ‘The children, no. They all loved their papa and this has come as a genuine blow to them, I’m sure. No, it’s those who are not here you should be interested in. And possibly Ouvry; I never trust the legal profession. Shakespeare was right when he said let’s kill all the lawyers.’

‘You’ve given us rather a wide field, Mr Sala,’ Grand felt obliged to point out.

‘Three carriages,’ Sala nodded. ‘That’s all Charles wanted. He’d always said that – no fuss, no feathers. So, there’s no Catherine, for instance. No servants, but you wouldn’t expect that. Oh, there’ll be plenty at the commemoration, of course. The abbey will be packed.’

‘It was only the other day he had breakfast with Mr Gladstone,’ Batchelor said.

‘And dinner with Mr Disraeli,’ Grand chimed in.

‘Then there’s the Prince of Wales and Leopold of the Belgians,’ Batchelor added.

‘Not to mention Mr Motley, the American ambassador.’ Grand felt he had to fight his country’s corner.

‘All right, gentlemen,’ Sala smiled. ‘You’ve convinced me. You’ve done your homework and you’re earning my over-generous retainer. Now all you have to do is catch me a killer.’

There was a collective sigh from the crowd and the hats came off. The hearse rattled to the west door, pulled by dappled greys, snorting and tossing their heads in the heat. The pallbearers slid down from their perches noiselessly and prepared to manhandle the hearse’s contents through the side door.

Something caught Sala’s eye and he whipped the cigar out of his mouth before swiping an urchin around the head. ‘Get that cap off, you little ruffian. There’s a great man in that coffin.’

The boy winced at the pain of the slap and stood, bareheaded and shamefaced, cowering before the gentleman, muttering how sorry he was. Grand and Batchelor, however, were watching something else. As the bearers disappeared into the darkness with their sad load, there was a commotion at the west door. A verger was trying to close it as the mighty organ thundered in the vast cavern of the abbey. He was struggling with a top-hatted man and some of the conversation drifted to Great Smith Street.

‘But I’m a close friend,’ they heard. ‘I’ve just forgotten my ticket, that’s all. I could’ve gotten in through another door, you know.’

But the verger was insistent and the west door closed. There were boos and hisses from the crowd nearest to the would-be intrusive ghoul.

‘Wasn’t that …?’ Batchelor frowned, pointing.

‘… an American accent,’ Grand nodded. ‘Yes, it was. Not one of my countrymen’s finest moments.’

‘No matter,’ Batchelor said. ‘Looks like he’s about to have his collar felt by one of A Division’s finest.’

A large policeman in his new Roman helmet was marching resolutely towards the American, who still seemed to be trying to find a way in. The cigar dropped from George Sala’s mouth and he began patting his coat feverishly. ‘Never mind the bloody American,’ he snarled. ‘That little ruffian’s half-inched my wallet!’

There were three possibilities, and it was an enquiry agent’s law that not until the third would James Batchelor strike lucky. He’d left his wallet at home and had kept his eyes peeled all evening. This was Shadwell, where the river, dark and deadly, lapped the stair and the lighters swung at anchor, their lights blurred in the Thames fog.

The heat of the day still clung to the alleyways, their cobbles scummed with grease, and yet more of it blasted out through the open doors of the Brass Monkey. A painted lady jostled Batchelor on the threshold and smiled at him, her teeth black, her breasts threatening to escape from her bodice. She smelled of beer, cheap perfume and unwashed clothing in almost equal measure; the scent of the street. ‘You good-natured, dearie?’ she purred, insinuating herself against him with practised hips.

‘Most of the time,’ Batchelor smiled back, ‘but not tonight. I’m looking for a man.’

The harlot backed away. ‘Bit o’ brown, eh? Well, what you do in your own time is up to you, o’ course. But believe me,’ she peeled her blouse down to reveal her right breast, ‘you don’t know what you’re missing.’

‘Oh, I’ve a pretty good idea,’ Batchelor said, and sauntered down the steps to the greasy floor. The Monkey was full that night. There were two ships in from the West Indies and the place was crammed with blacks and mulattos, most of them the worse for drink, stumbling over each other at the bar. Girls glided from lap to lap, tickling ears, licking necks, lifting wallets. Above the row, the reedy screech of a piano accordion and the rattle of bone dice could be heard. There were whispered conversations in cramped corners, deals done in darkness. But there he was, propping up the bar as usual. That waistcoat and that cravat were unmistakeable. And, true to form, there was a girl on each arm.

Batchelor fought his way through a crowd of lascars and stood staring at him.

‘Well, of course,’ the man at the bar was saying, ‘there was absolutely nothing I could do. Science has not yet vouchsafed that particular secret. I remember it vividly. “Barney,” he said – and these were the last words he ever spoke – “Barney, I go to my grave knowing that I could not have been in better hands.”’

The girl between Barney and Batchelor frowned. ‘’Ere, I thought he was a German.’

‘Who?’ Barney took a massive swig of his beer.

‘Your patient.’ The other one nudged him in the ribs. ‘The Prince Consort.’

‘Oh, he was, he was,’ Barney assured them. ‘But all that heel-clicking stuff was just for the public, you know. Now,’ he put his arms around both girls, ‘that really is enough about me. How are you girls going to make a middle-aged man very happy?’

The smile froze on his face as he caught sight of James Batchelor. He dropped the women, spun on his heel and dashed for the back door, hacking his way through the lascars and treading on somebody’s dog in the process. The animal yelped in pain and yelped again as James Batchelor jumped over him.

The night air was warm, but at least the smell of the Monkey had not followed him. The alley was deserted except for a couple thrusting against each other in a doorway. Batchelor tipped his hat to them and crashed around a corner, the squeal of cats and a human scream telling him that Barney had come to grief. Around that corner, where the tenements rose black and forbidding into the night, Matthew Grand was standing with one boot on the neck of a collapsed tippler, who lay face down, groaning.

‘Barney, Barney,’ Batchelor helped the man up. ‘When are you going to learn?’

‘Oh, it’s you, Mr Batchelor.’ Barney tried to grin, but his mouth was full of something from the gutter and he had to spit that out first. ‘I didn’t recognize you.’

‘Liar,’ Batchelor said, picking up Barney’s hat and handing it to him. ‘You’ve met my friend Mr Grand, I see.’

‘Yes,’ Barney scowled. ‘I have bumped into him from time to time.’

‘We’d like a word,’ Grand said, and rammed his man up against the wall.

‘Look, I’m clean,’ Barney assured them. ‘Straight up. Ever since that unfortunate business, I haven’t practised. I swear.’

Grand rummaged in the man’s coat pocket. String. Fluff. Tuppence ha’penny. Then he tried the waistcoat. ‘Ah,’ he smiled. ‘Bonanza.’ He peered to read the dog-eared card in the bad light. ‘Dr Barnwell Johnson, MD. Ladies’ Troubles A Speciality.’ He looked at Batchelor. ‘You’re a literary man, James,’ he said. ‘What is wrong with that sentence?’

‘Well,’ Batchelor stroked his chin, wrestling with the problem. ‘Let’s see … I’ll assume the name is correct, but the credentials certainly aren’t; not since you were struck off the medical register, eh, Barney, for conduct unbecoming. But it’s the last bit that bothers me, Matthew.’

‘Me too,’ Grand nodded, frowning solemnly.

‘You see, abortion – and there’s no nice way of putting that – is illegal in this great country of ours.’

‘And ours,’ Grand nodded, not wishing to be outdone.

‘That’s on account of people like you preying on unfortunates and quite possibly killing them into the bargain.’ Batchelor wasn’t smiling now.

‘All right,’ Barney sighed, his shoulders slumped in defeat. He rummaged in his trouser pocket. ‘I haven’t got much.’

‘We don’t want your money,’ Grand told him. ‘What would an enquiry agent do with money, when all’s said and done?’

‘What we want,’ Batchelor tapped Barney’s temple and made him flinch, ‘is what’s inside there, before the gin washes it all away.’

‘How do you mean?’

Batchelor checked that the alleyway was empty before he carried on. ‘You may have been struck off, Barney, but I happen to know that before that catastrophic occasion, you knew your stuff.’

‘You flatter me.’ Barney half bowed. ‘But, yes, as a matter of fact, I do.’

‘Let’s suppose,’ Grand said, ‘that we have a dead man.’

Barney looked at him in surprise. He didn’t like the direction this conversation was travelling.

‘A man,’ Batchelor joined in, ‘who to all intents and purposes has died of a stroke.’

‘How old is this man?’ Barney asked.

‘Fifty-eight,’ Batchelor said, perhaps a little too quickly. ‘Give or take.’

‘To all intents and purposes?’ Barney queried.

‘Could there be another cause?’ Grand came right out with it.

Barney thought for a moment. ‘There could be,’ he mused. ‘Who’s the doctor?’

Grand chuckled. ‘Come on, Barney,’ he said. ‘You know better than that.’

‘No, it’s just that … well, there are, or so I’m given to believe, some rather unscrupulous people in my profession. If your doctor is bent, he could say what he liked, couldn’t he? And who would be the wiser?’

‘Yes, we’ve considered that,’ Batchelor said. ‘Are still considering it, in fact. But we want to get behind the medical mumbo-jumbo. For a bent doctor to get away with a wrong diagnosis like that, he’d have to have some science on his side. In case somebody asked some awkward questions, that is.’

‘Somebody like us,’ Grand underlined the point.

‘Hm,’ Barney was lost in thought. ‘I’m not sure I can help.’

Grand sighed, holding up the ex-doctor’s card. ‘I wonder who’s on duty at the Yard, tonight, James; that nice Chief Inspector Williamson?’

‘Laudanum,’ Barney blurted out. ‘That’d be my best guess.’

‘Laudanum?’ the detectives chorused.

‘Doesn’t Mrs Rackstraw take that for her gout?’ Grand asked.

‘I used to have it when I was a toddler,’ Batchelor remembered. ‘Mama swore by it.’

‘Yes,’ said Barney, ‘but your mama was trying to get you to go to sleep, I assume, not kill you. Although …’

‘Oh, ha,’ Batchelor snorted.

‘Better let us do the jokes, Barney,’ Grand advised. ‘I’m still holding all the cards,’ and he waved one in the air. ‘Laudanum’s a poison, right?’

‘It isn’t a poison as such.’ Barney struck a pose, his chin in the air, his thumbs in his waistcoat sleeves. ‘But, like so many things in our pharmacopeia …’ all three men looked at each other, impressed that he could get the word out both accurately and first time, ‘given in the wrong quantities, it’s as sure as a bullet. Surer, in fact. A bullet can miss. An opiate will get you every time, enough of it.’ He became confidential. ‘What you’ll have to do is find out what your corpse had to eat in the days leading to his death. And what the symptoms were beforehand.’

‘What should they have been?’ Batchelor asked. ‘In laudanum poisoning, that is.’

‘Well,’ Barney ruminated, enjoying himself now, as if he were back in his old surgery again, before …

‘In about half an hour after ingesting the dose, headache and weariness. Lethargy, followed by sleep. The patient may appear a little flushed, the breathing would be slow. The pupils would be contracted and the skin warm and moist …’

‘Which it would be anyway.’ Grand was thinking aloud. ‘He was in a stuffy room on a hot day.’

‘Eventually, the face becomes pallid, the breathing difficult to detect. The actual cause of death is slow asphyxiation and heart failure.’ He looked from one detective to the other, both of them locked into their thoughts. When neither of them said anything, Barney went on. ‘Of course, there’s a snag.’

‘There is?’ Grand asked.

‘The smell and the taste. Both absolutely revolting.’

‘How revolting?’ Batchelor queried. ‘Would everyone find it so?’

‘Well, not so much the smell, perhaps, which is poppies, but the taste is horrible.’

‘I remember,’ Batchelor grimaced. ‘Mama always used to give me a spoonful of jam afterwards, to take away the taste.’

‘It’s quite common in suicide,’ Barney told them, ‘but I’ve never met it in murder.’ He chuckled. ‘And if I know you boys, that’s what we’re talking about, I assume.’

Grand smiled, patting the man on the cheek. ‘You don’t know us, Barney,’ he said, ‘not like we know you.’ He evaded the former physician’s attempt to get his card back. ‘No,’ Grand said, ‘I think I’ll hang on to this. You never know when a good doctor is going to come in handy.’

They took a cab back to Alsatia, one of the few still running at that time of night, its lights bobbing over the cobbles of the dark streets.

‘We know Dickens ate with Gladstone and Disraeli in the days before he died.’

‘Hedging his political bets, I’d say,’ Grand commented. ‘And with the Prince of Wales and the King of Belgium.’

‘King of the Belgians,’ Batchelor corrected him.

‘Whatever,’ Grand brushed the nicety aside. ‘I’m assuming they’re all right; no poisoning symptoms, I mean.’

‘I think we might have heard about it by now,’ Batchelor said, ‘considering the status of those gentlemen. And besides, if Barney is right and if it is laudanum, the timing is all wrong. It takes a matter of hours – or less, if I understood him right. So it can’t have been in any of those dinners. He would have died on the way home, or at the most shortly after he got back.’

‘So,’ Grand leaned back as the hansom rattled under Temple Bar. ‘One of us is going to have to go back to Georgy Hogarth.’

‘The housekeeper.’

Grand nodded. ‘She’s the only one likely to have a working knowledge of what Dickens ate in the run-up to his death. And the cook, I guess.’

‘Well, that has to be you,’ Batchelor shrugged.

‘Why me?’ Grand asked.

‘Well, from what you told me, Georgy took quite a shine to you. Tall, dark, American – that sort of thing. And it’ll give me a chance to talk to the staff.’

‘Ah,’ Grand nodded. ‘The missing menials. Now we’re getting somewhere.’

As the train rattled south from Charing Cross, Grand retracing his steps, Batchelor looking about him at every new, passing mile, they were quiet. They both had their jobs to do and experience had taught them that planning was futile. Whenever questioning anyone, they had found, open minds were the only kind to take into the room. Prejudging never did anyone any good, but especially not an enquiry agent with a reputation still to make. The train remained mercifully Moptrucket-free, although Grand was still miffed that Batchelor refused to believe the name, saying that it couldn’t possibly exist outside of one of Dickens’s own tales. But soon they were at the station and, with no brougham to take them there this time, strolling off in the direction of Gads Hill Place.

Having seen the house before, Grand watched for Batchelor’s look of delight when the building emerged at the end of its short carriage drive. It was symmetrical almost to the point of obsession; every window, every roof tile placed just in exactly the right place to please the eyes. While Grand bounded up the steps to ring the bell, Batchelor made his way around the building, looking for the missing menials.

Grand pulled the bell and heard it jangle deep in the house. After just a few seconds, he heard the tap of a woman’s heel on tile and Georgy Hogarth opened the door. Her housekeeper’s welcoming smile was just a little slow in coming but, when it was in place, Grand took his chance.

‘It’s good of you to see me again, Miss Hogarth,’ he swept off his hat and waited. It had been five days since the funeral and there was to be a commemoration service – two, in fact: one at the abbey and one at the cathedral in Rochester. If someone had murdered Charles Dickens, would his murderer turn up in either place, like a bad penny? Ghouls, Georgy Hogarth had said the last time she and Grand had met; there would be ghouls aplenty in those cloisters, rubbing shoulders with the great and the good, numbered with either the quick or the dead.

‘Do I understand,’ Grand asked her, ‘that the commemoration services are open to all?’

‘They are, Mr Grand.’ She stepped aside and ushered him in, closing the door gently behind him. The hall was beautifully cool and dim after the heat and glare of the sun outside. ‘Charles was universally loved, you see.’ She showed him into the drawing room again and sat him down, taking her seat by the empty fireplace. ‘Will you take some tea with me? I’ll ring and Catherine can send something up.’

‘No,’ Grand said, perhaps a little too quickly. He knew that Batchelor would probably be already in the house, talking to the domestics, and the last thing he wanted to do was to interrupt that. More importantly, he didn’t want some chatty tweeny to bring news of a visitor in the kitchen; he didn’t know Georgy Hogarth well, but she didn’t look the sort of housekeeper to leave that kind of thing uninvestigated. ‘No. I’m really fine at the moment, thank you.’

‘Well, then,’ she said, clasping her hands in her lap. ‘The purpose of your visit?’

‘Tell me, Miss Hogarth, and I apologize for this question in advance: was Mr Dickens in the habit of taking anything for his health? A tonic of some kind; say … laudanum?’

Georgy blinked. ‘I believe he took a little elixir for his headaches. I understand a lot of men do.’

Grand understood that too.

‘You must understand, Mr Grand,’ she went on, using the same word again, trying to control the conversation, ‘that dear Charles had bouts of illness on and off throughout his life. A sensitive man like him, a writer … Catherine used to say …’

‘Catherine, the cook?’

Georgy Hogarth looked a little nonplussed for a moment, and then realized that she had already mentioned the cook’s name. This man missed nothing; she would have to remember that. ‘No. Catherine, my sister; Charles’s wife.’

‘Ah, yes.’ Grand played dumb. ‘I meant to ask: how has she taken all this?’

‘With resolution,’ Georgy said, ‘as we all must. You know, of course, that they are separated?’

‘Yes,’ Grand said. ‘And yet you stayed with him.’

Georgy straightened, ice in her veins for the first time. ‘What are you implying?’ she asked.

‘Implying?’ Grand was innocence itself.

Georgy swept to her feet in a soft rustle of black satin. ‘Come, come, Mr Grand, I am aware of the common gossip; what people said of us. They implied a revolting – nay, almost incestuous – relationship between Charles and myself. People are so cruel.’ She paused in front of the huge window and turned back to him. ‘And so wrong.’

Grand saw his chance and took it. ‘Was there someone else in his life?’

Georgy Hogarth looked at him, stricken. Her eyes were wide and her mouth trembled a little. ‘Mr Grand,’ she said, ‘I really must offer you some refreshment.’ She pulled the bell. She turned to the mantelpiece and looked down into the empty fireplace. He could tell that she was trying to come to a decision and that alone gave him the answer he needed.

The door opened and a pretty little maid in a white cap and apron bobbed a brief curtsy. ‘Yes’m?’ she said.

‘Ah, Emma. Umm … Mr Grand would like …?’ She turned to him.

Grand flashed his most winning smile at the girl. ‘Why, nothing, thank you,’ he said, laying the accent on thick. It worked with most women, but most of all with domestics, he had found. Although he would never have Batchelor’s natural skill with a tweeny.

‘You’re sure?’ Georgy asked, and he nodded. ‘I’m sorry to have bothered you, then, Emma,’ she said. ‘We won’t be requiring tea. Tell Mrs Brownlow I will be down shortly to discuss the menus for the week.’

With another bob, the girl was gone, closing the door carefully behind her. Grand looked at her with avid eyes – Mrs Rackstraw would have had it off its hinges.

Grand was a man on a mission, so he asked his question again.

For a long moment, she looked at him, but this time, replied. ‘There was,’ she said, ‘I cannot tell a lie.’

‘Who?’

‘I cannot tell a lie, Mr Grand, but I am under no compunction to tell you anything. I have no doubt that the more salacious newspapers are digging around as we speak. Charles will be branded an alcoholic, when all he drank was a little homeopathic cocoa. He will be called a womanizer because he found beautiful women attractive. And because he had so many men friends, he will be touted as a … I’m sorry,’ she shuddered, ‘I do not have the vocabulary for that.’

‘Homeopathic cocoa?’ Grand was a superb picker-up of unconsidered trifles. He also wanted to help her over the molehill of potential homosexual peccadilloes.

‘Yes, I brewed it for him myself. Every day. Poor Charles had gone off tea and coffee. He said it clogged his clarity of mind. And of course,’ she lowered her voice, ‘sometimes Catherine’s cooking does miss its mark somewhat.’

‘Was your brother-in-law a hypochondriac?’

‘No, Mr Grand. He was a genius. Was there anything else?’

Grand knew the rogue’s march when he heard it and he saw himself out. He just hoped that she wouldn’t go down to the kitchen to discuss the menus as quickly as she had promised and catch Batchelor there still quizzing the staff. The thought of an already irate Georgy Hogarth crashing into the kitchen to find Grand’s confederate working on her people made his blood run a little cold.

He walked off down the lawn, sloping away to the road, to the appointed place where he and Batchelor had agreed to meet. They had set their timepieces, allowing an hour to interview their respective quarries; probably not long enough for James Batchelor, but far too long, as it had turned out, for Matthew Grand. On his way, the rhododendrons shivered again.

‘Mr Field,’ Grand stopped in his tracks. ‘We can’t go on meeting like this. Why don’t you come out if you want to talk to me?’

There was a long pause, then a rustle of leaves and a spotty youth with red hair shambled into Grand’s presence.

‘Ah.’ Grand folded his arms. ‘My apologies. I mistook you for an ex-policeman.’

‘Peeler? Me?’ The boy grimaced. ‘No fear.’

‘You’re Isaac, aren’t you?’ Grand asked, ‘The house boy.’

‘Yessir.’

‘Do you have a last name, Isaac?’

‘Armitage, sir.’

Grand closed to him. ‘I’m Matthew Grand, Isaac,’ he said. ‘I saw you the other day …’

‘You were wi’ the vicar,’ Isaac said.

‘That’s right,’ Grand agreed. ‘Lovely man, the vicar. And I was a friend of Mr Dickens, back in the day. Sad loss, huh?’

‘You’re not from round here, are you?’ Isaac’s eyes narrowed. He was not naturally suspicious of strangers, being a simple, friendly soul, but he was suspicious of this one. The man was so big, his hat so wide and his clothes so … foreign.

‘No, I’m from Boston, originally, although I lived in Washington when I was your age. You liked Mr Dickens?’

‘Oh, yes.’ Isaac’s face broadened to a grin. ‘He was the best. He used to give me ear money.’

‘Ear money?’ Grand had only been in England for five years; there was much that was still alien to him.

‘Yeah, you know. Er … got a penny, guv?’

Grand ferreted in his pocket and passed the coin to the lad. Isaac slipped it between his fingers and, hesitantly, reached up to produce the penny from behind Grand’s ear. ‘Ear money,’ Isaac said triumphantly, and was about to pocket the coin except that Grand was already holding his hand out. ‘He did that to all the young ’uns, did Mr Dickens.’

‘Er … he did know you were thirteen, Isaac?’ Grand felt obliged to ask.

‘Fourteen, sir, if you don’t mind – that’s how come Mr D used to give me the odd nip of his brandy, too. I had a cigar last Christmas – only I threw up. No, Mr D, he was a big kid himself. I’m gunna miss him.’

‘I’m sure you are,’ Grand nodded. He put an arm around the lad’s shoulders and led him down the lawn away from the house. ‘Tell me, Isaac, did anybody come calling here at Gads Hill, in the days before Mr Dickens died, I mean?’

‘There was always people calling,’ Isaac told him. ‘He was that famous, was Mr D; everybody wanted to see him.’

‘Yes, of course, but anyone in particular. Anyone you remember.’

‘Well, there was that American bloke. ’Ere, I bet you know him. He was surprised when I didn’t, anyway.’

‘He was?’

‘Yes, he said …’ and Isaac launched into what Grand realized was meant to be an American accent, ‘… he said, “Henry Morford, at your service. No doubt you’ve heard of me.” Well, I hadn’t. And I told him.’

‘He wasn’t pleased?’

‘No,’ Isaac remembered. ‘Came over all unnecessary, he did. Anyhow, he wanted to see Mr D, but he wasn’t in.’

‘Did he leave his card?’

‘I dunno. You’d have to ask Georgy … er … Miss Hogarth.’

‘Anybody else?’

‘Well, just the usuals. That Mr Forster. Mr Trollope. Mr Ouvry. They’re always round here. Oh, there was that woman.’

‘What woman?’

‘Stella.’

‘Stella?’

‘Well, that’s what she said her name was.’

‘When did she call?’

‘Ooh, it would have been a couple of times. Three, maybe.’

‘Do you remember when this was, Isaac?’

‘Nah. One day’s very much like another at Gads Hill, Mr Grand. There’s always people here; tripping over each other, they are.’

‘Why do you remember Stella in particular?’

‘Well, I didn’t like her to be honest. ’Course, it’s not my place to say …’

‘You’re among friends,’ Grand assured him. ‘What was it about her you didn’t like?’

‘Well, she was a bit … familiar, you know. Patted my cheek and said what a nice growed-up boy I was. And she, sort of, looked me up and down, you know. Fair made the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end, she did.’

‘Did Stella stay for lunch or supper?’ Grand asked.

‘Neither as far as I know. She only ever went to the chalet, not to the big house.’

‘Tell me, Isaac. Did Miss Hogarth like Stella?’

The boy shrugged. ‘I don’t know that Miss Hogarth ever saw her,’ he said. ‘That was another peculiar thing. She only ever turned up when Miss Hogarth was out.’