The Detective and Mr. Dickens by William J. Palmer & Wilkie Collins

Author:William J. Palmer & Wilkie Collins
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: mystery, detective, women sleuths, historical, victoriana, feminism
ISBN: 9781626817326
Publisher: Diversion Books
Published: 2015-04-21T20:27:19+00:00

Reading the Book of the Dead, or, “Out, Out Damned Spot”

May 8, 1851—almost midnight

Novel writing, this compulsive attempt to mirror reality, is much like detectiving, yet different. In writing a novel, the author must construct a credible plot, even if, in reality, the events upon which that plot is modeled take irrational turns. What the detective undertakes is precisely the opposite. The detective looks at the events and furnishings of the world, studies them, and constructs the plot of his story. A novelist is, from the onset, lord of the whole, and his talent for words and structures serves as a valet to the parts. A detective begins as valet to the parts, but by his ingenuity and hard work rises to become lord of the whole. There lies the difference between art and reality.

Though this is but a secret journal, it nonetheless poses all of the novelist’s problems. I am a novelist, yet this is not a novel. I am forced to play the role of the greenest of apprentice detectives. I cannot see where this tale is going. Perhaps Dickens could see further. Yet, that cold night at Bow Street Station, newly returned from that grisly scene in the murderer’s lodgings, I felt that Dickens was as far adrift as was I.

Dickens once said, on one of our night walks, “We should be able to read the world as we would read a book.” Should not I, then, have been able to read this vision of the world, which had been thrust upon us that night? The scene of that grisly crime was a text, a veritable three-decker, yet I was fully incapable of reading past page one. Thank the Lord that Inspector Field was an expert at reading the book of the dead.

“What makes you believe that Miss Ternan killed the stage manager?” Dickens was already arguing in the young woman’s defense. “I saw no evidences…”

‘‘I cannot yet prove it,” Field answered, trying to hide his surprise at the emotional strain detectable in Dickens’s manner. “Yet, in my own mind, she is the one. All the signs were there, in the room, all pointin’ to ’er.”

“What signs?” It was my voice, the faithful bulldog.

Field smiled benignly, giving two nervous little scratches to the side of his eye with his crook’d forefinger. “The signs were there, posted all about that room. You gentlemen just did not know ’ow to read ’em.”

Both Dickens and I waited for him to explain.

“Tho’ it’s neither ’ere nor there until we catch up with the principals in our little drama, this is what I am certain ’appened. We all know that Paroissien killed Solicitor Partlow over the girl. That night Partlow ‘ad struck a bargain with the girl’s mother for the sale for sexual purposes of ’er virgin daughter.” For some unexplained reason he gave particular emphasis to that word “virgin” by a quick tap on the wooden arm of his chair with his formidable forefinger.

How could he know she was a virgin? The thought darted through my consciousness no sooner than Inspector Field enunciated it.

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