The Angel Read online

  The lights burned blue in Alsatia that night, and Grand and Batchelor were sitting alongside each other in their respective armchairs, looking at a blank wall. Blank, that is, except for pieces of paper pinned to the plaster with tacks.

  ‘Right, James.’ Grand blew cigar smoke to the ceiling. ‘You first.’

  Batchelor winced as the brandy hit his tonsils. If truth were told, he didn’t really like the stuff, but George Sala was paying, so what the hey? ‘Basics,’ he said. ‘Let’s start at the beginning. Charles Dickens.’

  ‘Great writer,’ Grand ruminated. Perhaps that was a little too basic, but it was a beginning.

  ‘Prolific,’ Batchelor agreed. ‘Caught the conscience of the nation.’

  ‘Actor of sorts,’ Grand added. ‘Wowed them at every point of the compass from Basingstoke to Milwaukee.’

  ‘His Little Nell got them weeping,’ Batchelor nodded, lighting up his own cigar. ‘His murder of Nancy had them terrified.’

  ‘What’s the common denominator there, James?’ Grand was letting his eyes wander over the random jottings on the wall. He was wondering how much longer he could go before someone realized that he had never read a word that Dickens wrote.

  ‘Death,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘Which brings us to Dickens’s dark side. You’ve read more of his stuff than I have,’ Grand said, without a word of a lie. ‘Is there anything specific in his writing that could account for his murder?’

  Batchelor sighed. ‘Well, it’s difficult,’ he said. ‘The man wrote so much. Still, if you’d shown me, say, The Pickwick Papers and Edwin Drood, I’d have said they were written by two different people.’

  ‘What do they call that?’ Grand asked.

  ‘Genius?’

  ‘Nearly everybody we’ve met would say so.’

  ‘Ah,’ Batchelor wagged a finger at him. ‘Now we’re getting somewhere. Of those we’ve seen so far, the family, still in mourning, sees him as a saint.’

  ‘The professionals,’ Grand moved on. ‘You saw two of them – Beard and Ouvry.’

  ‘Like all doctors,’ Batchelor said, ‘Beard’s watching his back, sitting there like a giant clam.’

  ‘There’d be a lawsuit against the man in the States,’ was Grand’s opinion.

  ‘Why? Because he wouldn’t tell me anything?’

  ‘Because you learnt more about Dickens’s health from the cuss’s solicitor. I wouldn’t mind if Beard had filled us in on Dickens’s financial situation.’

  ‘But dear old Barney was helpful,’ Batchelor reminded him.

  ‘He was,’ Grand nodded. ‘Which just underlines precisely how unhelpful Beard was.’

  ‘All right,’ Batchelor said, after a pause. His cigar had gone out and he had to wrestle with it. ‘Let’s stick with the medical thing. Everybody at Gads Hill seems to be falling over themselves giving the late lamented pick-me-ups. There’s Mrs Brownlow/Gamp’s McMunn’s Elixir …’

  ‘Georgy Hogarth’s homeopathic cocoa …’ Grand threw in.

  ‘Everybody’s beef tea,’ they chorused.

  ‘So,’ Grand was piecing it together, ‘if Dickens was poisoned, the how isn’t too difficult. It’s the why that’s bothering me.’

  Batchelor nodded. ‘And the why will give us the who.’

  Another pause. Another silence. Through the open window, the Alsatia night had at last fallen silent too. The rattling hansoms had gone home, taking the theatre boulevardiers with them. Now only the staccato tap of E Division’s boots on the pavement beat the London refrain at the dead of night.

  ‘Georgy Hogarth.’ Grand put his accusatory toe in the water.

  ‘Say on.’ Batchelor was all ears.

  ‘She’s what? Mid-forties, I’d say.’

  ‘Funny age?’ Batchelor queried.

  ‘The funniest, in my experience,’ Grand nodded. ‘Spinster housekeeper. It’s a definite type. But …’

  ‘But, in love with her ex-employer, would you say?’

  ‘That would be my guess, yes. But it was unrequited.’

  ‘Because …?’

  ‘Because she was his sister-in-law. She’s a respectable woman. There was somebody else.’

  ‘Precisely.’ Batchelor was finally puffing away again. ‘The tale of the gossiping groom.’

  ‘Remind me,’ Grand said. ‘The way you told it, the man seemed kinda keen to dish the dirt on his old master.’

  ‘He did,’ Batchelor agreed. ‘Stick around, Matthew my boy. Butler’s the Jack’s-as-good-as-his-master type. I always said it was a mistake on Mr Disraeli’s part to extend the vote.’

  ‘Now, James,’ Grand scolded. ‘No politics in the Mess. It’s Dickens’s mess we’re concerned with now.’

  ‘Right.’ Batchelor was remembering his conversation with the groom. ‘“Miss No-Better-Than-She-Should-Be in Nunhead”,’ he said.

  ‘I can’t keep up with you literary types,’ Grand chuckled. ‘I thought that was a character in The Water Babies.’

  Batchelor laughed. ‘We’ve got problems enough with Dickens,’ he said, ‘without bringing Charles Kingsley into this. I think we can assume that Dickens was having an affair.’

  ‘Georgy Hogarth admitted as much,’ Grand remembered. ‘But what’s the big deal? Dickens was divorced or separated, or however his domestic land lay. No reason why a man shouldn’t take up with a lady friend in that situation.’

  ‘Matthew, Matthew,’ Batchelor patronized. ‘This is London, dear boy, or at least the fringes of it. No one’s seen the Queen for nine years and most married men have never seen their wives naked.’

  A vision of the naked Victoria swam briefly before the eyes of both men; then they shook themselves free of it and moved on.

  ‘Think Washington society at its most puritanical,’ Batchelor said. ‘Then add on the snobbishness of the Old Country. Dickens was a national treasure. We all need our plaster saints. He’d have to keep any hanky-panky very close to his chest.’

  ‘So,’ Grand was going further, ‘in the cause of cherchez-ing la femme, we’re looking for some woman Isaac didn’t like; we’re looking for Stella.’

  ‘We may well be,’ Batchelor said. ‘And I’ve heard the name somewhere – and not at Gads Hill.’

  ‘She, I take it, was the mystery woman we saw at the funeral, the one with Dolby.’

  ‘I thought she was his wife.’ Batchelor was confused.

  ‘Sala said that Dolby wasn’t married. Perhaps he’s having an affair – Dolby, that is. No. wait, though,’ Grand was thinking it through logically. ‘I wouldn’t imagine he would take his fancy bit to a private funeral.’

  ‘No, stands to reason,’ Batchelor said. ‘We’ll need to talk to him next, sort that out.’

  ‘What about the wife?’ Grand saw the perplexed expression on Batchelor’s face and read his mind. ‘Not Dolby’s wife, if he has one. No, Dickens’s wife.’ He flicked through the pages of the notebook on his lap. ‘Er … Catherine.’

  ‘Yes, we must talk to her, too. But as for a motive there, I don’t see it. She and Dickens had been separated for years. Oh, I can believe she had it in for Georgy; after all, the woman is her sister and she ran away with her old man, to all intents and purposes. But the fact that Dickens was getting his leg over somebody else after all this time … No, it doesn’t make any sense. And she’s employed Charlie Field to investigate. Would she do that if she was behind it all?’

  ‘Helluva determined suicide,’ Grand said. ‘What else did the groom tell you? And, by the way, is it just me, or is having a groom called Butler just a tad convoluted?’

  ‘Mrs Brownlow,’ Batchelor shrugged, ‘Bob Cratchit, the Snodgering Blee. Nobody’s what they seem in the world of Charles Dickens. So, come on, Gradgrind, what are you thinking?’

  ‘Didn’t Butler say, “You don’t know where Dickens was nor what he did on the day he died”?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ Batchelor agreed. ‘But we know where he died, in the chalet, according to …’

 
‘According to Georgy Hogarth, yes. But I was there,’ Grand reminded him, ‘not two days after the unhappy event. I’ve never seen a room so spotless.’

  ‘Emma will have cleaned up,’ Batchelor said.

  ‘I suppose that’s it,’ Grand muttered. But neither of them was happy. ‘It’s not much to give Sala, is it?’ he said.

  ‘No,’ Batchelor agreed. ‘Call it.’ He tossed a coin in the air.

  ‘Heads,’ said Grand.

  ‘The Queen it is, God bless her,’ Batchelor said. ‘Who do you want, Dolby or Sala?’

  ‘Dolby every time,’ Grand said. ‘George Sala brings me out in spots. Oh, and James,’ he leaned towards him. ‘You might point out that a retainer is not set in tablets of stone. There are such things as expenses.’

  SIX

  Grand wasn’t quite sure what he was expecting from the offices of Dickens’s tour manager. Totting it up quickly in his head, even at ten per cent – and he knew that there would be other emoluments on the side – the man should be living in a gold-plated mansion. So the little room at the very top of a winding and rickety stair in Denmark Street rather took him by surprise. The door bore someone else’s name painted on the glass, half-heartedly rubbed out with something sharp, and ‘Dolby’ was written in pencil on a piece of paper gummed in the middle of the pane. Grand knocked and heard sounds from inside the room but no one answered. He tried the handle and the door was open, so he peered in.

  A thin man, with receding hair and thick glasses, was sitting behind an enormous desk. The desk itself was covered with what looked like reams of paper, and tottering piles of envelopes were precariously balanced in a series of labelled wire trays. It looked like chaos, but Grand guessed, quite rightly, that Dolby could put his hand on anything, within seconds, as long as no one moved so much as one piece.

  ‘Mr Dolby?’ Grand asked, still peering round the door.

  ‘Yes, yes, do come in and shut the door. Draughts are an-an-anathema to my filing system. Um … you don’t have a cold or anything, do you?’

  In the hottest June anyone was able to remember for many a long year, this seemed to Grand to be unlikely, but he was a polite man and answered sensibly, ‘No, no cold.’

  ‘You don’t suffer from sneezing fits at all?’ Dolby looked anxious.

  ‘No, no. Ah … I see. Sneezing would also mess up your filing system.’

  Dolby smiled and rubbed his hands together. ‘You understand,’ he said. ‘Good man. Not everyone does, you know. Some people,’ and he became confidential, ‘some people try to tidy my desk.’

  ‘Shocking!’ Grand was suitably outraged and also seized his opportunity. ‘Wives, for instance. Shocking for that, or so I’m told.’

  ‘Oh, no,’ Dolby said. ‘I don’t have one of those to trouble me. Charles left me no time for things such as wives, dear me, no. Look here, Mr …?’

  ‘Grand. Matthew Grand.’

  ‘Mr Grand. Hello. How’d’ye do? Would you mind, Mr Grand, if we went elsewhere? Charles’s untimely … umm, well, you know … has left me with rather a lot of work. Cancelling here, adjusting there. You understand, I’m sure.’

  ‘Adjusting?’ Grand was confused. ‘Surely, cancellation is the only option?’

  ‘Well, no,’ Dolby admitted, as he ushered Grand out and shut the door with infinite care. He listened for a moment at the door, but there was no sound of slithering correspondence, so he led the way down the stairs. ‘There were some venues that, believe it or not, were happy to have an actor reading Charles’s immortal lines. Cheaper. Much cheaper, of course. And we could leave those bookings intact. But I felt it only …’

  ‘Respectful?’

  ‘Respectful, yes, thank you. Respectful. I felt it only respectful that we had a few …’

  ‘Break?’ Grand was beginning to enjoy this game. If only they had had a bottle handy, to spin, it would have been a lot of fun.

  ‘Respite,’ continued Dolby. ‘It wouldn’t have been proper to just go ahead as though nothing had happened. I believe, though, that the business will be able to continue, without dear Charles.’

  ‘It must be a lot of work for an actor, though,’ Grand said. ‘Having to learn all of Mr Dickens’s new works all the time?’

  ‘No, not really,’ Dolby said, pushing open the door of a coffee shop in the Charing Cross Road and taking a seat just inside the door. ‘Excuse me sitting here,’ he said suddenly. ‘But the pro …’

  ‘Proprietor?’

  ‘Yes, him. He doesn’t really like me much.’

  ‘Any particular reason? We could always go elsewhere.’ After all, the Tivoli Restaurant was just down the road, and George Sala was still paying. Grand was beginning to find this little man rather fun to be with, in a twitchy sort of way. He took a lot of keeping up with, that was for sure.

  ‘Well, last time I was in here, I put a rubber snake in a coffee urn. Gave him quite a turn.’ He gave a reminiscent chuckle. ‘Brought the house down. He didn’t like it, though. He had a heart attack.’

  ‘It would give anyone a bit of a turn,’ Grand observed.

  ‘No,’ Dolby said. ‘It really did give him a heart attack. Nothing serious, as it happened. In my opinion he should be grateful to me; he had no idea he had a dicky ticker until then. He could have dropped dead any moment.’ He took off his glasses and wiped his eyes, which had watered with the memory of bringing the house down. ‘Where were we?’

  By some miracle, Grand had kept up. ‘You were telling me how it isn’t really difficult for actors to learn Mr Dickens’s new work.’

  ‘Ah, yes. My word, you have quite a marvellous memory yourself, there, Mr … umm …’

  ‘Grand.’

  ‘Yes. You’ll have to forgive me. I have an atrocious memory. Now, where were we?’

  ‘Actors. Memory. Dickens.’ Grand was suddenly finding his companion rather less droll.

  ‘Yes, well, the audiences all want the usual, of course. Little Nell. Nancy. Barkis is willing. All the old chestnuts. Pickwick. Squeers. That always goes down well. So the actors only need to have a knowledge of those. And Charles of course, bless his heart, he didn’t learn it either.’

  ‘He read it?’ Grand had heard of Dickens’s bravura performances, and somehow it didn’t sound like a man reading from a book.

  ‘No, no. Charles would just tell the story. I suppose, in time, the words did become a little … samey. But he would put new bits in every now and then. Sometimes he would use any good phrases he came out with in other works. He would steal names as well, of course. Shameless for that, he was.’

  ‘I’m surprised he didn’t use yours, Mr Dolby.’

  The little man simpered. ‘He did ask, but my dear old mother was still alive then and, well …’ he lifted the glasses again and wiped away a tear, ‘she was very protective of the name and didn’t really want it on the front of Household Words. So he called his character Dombey, instead. It wasn’t the same, but I knew, and that was the main thing.’

  ‘I had heard that he had a habit of using names he came across.’

  ‘Oh, I can see you’ve met the Reverend Moptrucket. Dear, dear man, he tells that story every time.’ The handkerchief was brandished again, this time so that the little agent could trumpet into it, to clear away his backlog of unshed tears.

  Two cups of coffee had arrived, carried by a buxom girl of about nineteen. ‘Father says,’ she hissed, ‘to drink up and git out. If you wasn’t with company, he’d have Jem kick you out bag and baggage.’ Then she turned to Grand. ‘Sir.’ And with a little bob and a flounce, she was gone.

  ‘You really do tend to annoy people, don’t you, Mr Dolby?’ Grand remarked.

  ‘Yes,’ he said, with a sigh. ‘I just can’t help the joking, though. I do so love a practical joke. Charles and I would have such larks. There was one time, one time … I can’t remember exactly where it was … America, certainly.’ He looked up sharply. ‘Do I detect a slight twang in your voice, young Mr … Mr …’

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sp; ‘Grand,’ Grand said. It was nothing he had not heard before. ‘Boston, by way of Washington.’

  ‘How fascinating. Did you ever see Charles perform? He packed houses all over your home country.’

  ‘No, I never had the pleasure.’ Grand thought it was time to move on to the crux of the matter, but Dolby wouldn’t be diverted.

  ‘Anyway, this one time,’ he said, dissolving into giggles, ‘Charles and I put a raspberry cushion on every seat in the house. Cost us a fortune, mind you, but everyone who sat down made a noise, like a …’

  ‘Raspberry.’

  ‘Quite. It was hilarious.’ He took a sip of his coffee, grimaced and then sipped again. He held the cup out to Grand. ‘Does this taste all right to you?’

  Grand took it and was about to take a sip when the waitress snatched it out of his hand.

  ‘No, sir,’ she said. ‘That’s not for you. Papa has … added a little something. Since Mr Dolby is so fond of practical jokes!’ She took Grand’s cup as well and made for the swing door into the kitchen. ‘On the house,’ she said, before plunging into the steamy rear of the kitchen.

  Dolby was wiping his tongue on his ever-present handkerchief. ‘What do you think …’

  ‘Probably … soap,’ Grand guessed, although he had a good idea it was nothing of the kind. ‘Mr Dolby, I know you’re busy. What I wanted to ask you was, do you think Charles Dickens had any enemies?’ Somehow he knew instinctively that asking this odd little man about mistresses and strange women in the shrubbery and under veils at funerals was not going to get him very far.

  ‘Enemies?’ Dolby’s eyes filled with tears. ‘Charles? Oh, no. Everybody loved Charles.’ And, while he was wiping his eyes and blowing his nose once more, Grand tipped his hat and left, before another anecdote lost him another ten minutes of his life.

  ‘There’s a nob downstairs,’ Mrs Rackstraw announced. Her hands were covered in suds and there was a teacloth slung over her shoulder. She handed him a rather soggy piece of pasteboard. ‘’E give me this.’