protruded from beneath his tall black hat.
“I’m Police Constable Dixon,” he said.
I’d had but one previous experience with the law, when a sheriff’s officer had come to the parsonage to order that Branwell either pay his debts or go to prison. I feared the power of the law, and the Metropolitan Police seemed as menacing a breed as the London thieves, swindlers, and cutthroats they were sworn to apprehend.
“Your name and place of residence, please?” Constable Dixon penciled the information I gave him into a notebook. “Visitin’ town, then, Miss Bronte? A pity you should witness a crime.” His manner was sympathetic but businesslike. “Now I know as this’s been a terrible shock for you, but we need your help catchin’ the individual what killed that poor woman. Tell me everything as happened.”
I nervously eyed the truncheon he wore at his waist. The crowd listened while I described what I’d seen, and the constable recorded it. He said, “Did you get a look at the perpetrator, miss?”
Reliving the incident, I trembled as I shook my head. “The alley was dim, and I am nearsighted. But he wore dark clothes and a dark hat.” I suggested timidly, “Shouldn’t someone go looking for him?”
“Well, now, miss, London’s a big city, and there’s plenty of men what fit that general description,” the constable said. “Can you recall anything else about ’im?”
I exerted my memory, in vain. “No, sir. But I did know the murdered woman.” Interest stirred the crowd. “Her name was Isabel White.”
“A friend o’ yours, then?” Constable Dixon said, writing.
“Not exactly,” I said, although my sense of comradeship with Isabel made me feel that I had lost a friend. Tears and sour bile rose in my throat, and I gulped them down. “My sister and I rode on a train to London with her.” I described Isabel’s strange behavior, adding, “Perhaps the person she feared followed her here, then killed her.”
“And would you know who that person might be?”
“Miss White didn’t say.”
“This is an interestin’ theory, miss,” Constable Dixon said, his polite tone laced with condescension. “But likely this was a robbery, and a thief killed the lady because she resisted when ’e tried to take ’er pocketbook. ’E must have got it anyway-there wasn’t nothin’ on ’er.”
“But I cannot believe he was a common thief,” I protested. “He looked to be dressed like a gentleman.”
“Ah.” Constable Dixon nodded sagely. “Then ’e must’ve been a swell mobsman.” Seeing my puzzled expression, he explained, “Swell mobsmen is criminals who get themselves up fancy and loiter about the banks. When they sees someone take out lots of money, they follows the person and robs ’im. Likely, that’s what happened to Miss White.” The constable closed his notebook.
I was unconvinced. Although I knew nothing about solving crimes, and I recognized the audacity and danger of telling the law what to do, I felt compelled to say, “Miss White told me that she was governess in the house of a Mr. Joseph Lock of Birmingham. Perhaps he could help you identify her killer.”
Irritation flushed Constable Dixon’s face. “Perhaps he could, miss; then again, perhaps not.” His expression deemed me a foolish, hysterical female. “The police ’ave enough to do without chasin’ all over England.”
“Then you won’t investigate Miss White’s death any further?” I said, alarmed by his apparent intention to dismiss the murder as the work of a stranger impossible to locate. Tremors wracked my body, Anne blotted perspiration from my forehead, and I feared I would be sick at any moment.
“I shall refer the matter to my superiors,” Constable Dixon said pompously, “and if they think any investigatin’ is in order, it shall be done. Now, if you’ll excuse me, Miss Bronte?” He touched the brim of his hat in farewell, adding, “You’d best get yourself to bed. You’re lookin’ a bit poorly.”
I must interrupt my account of what happened to me after Isabel White’s death and direct attention towards another segment in the tapestry of my story. Reader, look away from poor Charlotte Bronte huddled on her chair, and focus your mind’s eye upon the crowd in Paternoster Row. Do you discern one man who observes the proceedings with particular interest? He is perhaps thirty-five years of age, his lean, strong figure clad in dark coat, trousers, and hat. The features of his lean, swarthy face have the proud sharpness of a falcon’s; they are framed by unruly black hair. Do you see his eyes-a brilliant, crystalline grey in hue-fixed hard upon me?
I was too preoccupied to notice him and did not learn until later that he was there. His name is John Slade, although some people-including myself-knew him by various other names. Mr. Slade, having listened to the exchange, watched my sister lead me into the Chapter Coffee House. His countenance betrayed no reaction to what he had witnessed. He hurried from Paternoster Row, hailed a hansom cab, and rode along Fleet Street and the bustling Strand, through Covent Garden, and alit in Seven Dials. Along the narrow, tortuous cobbled streets, soot- blackened windows gazed like blind eyes from grimy, crumbling tenements. Deep open gutters reeked of excrement; rats and stray dogs foraged in rubbish tips. Seven Dials is a place of despair, and none live there but the desperate.
Mr. Slade cast his brilliant grey glance around him. Toothless old women sat on stoops; waifish children swarmed; beggars and vagrants wandered, and a man wheeled a cart full of bones and rags. After ascertaining that no one was watching him, Mr. Slade walked up the steps of a tenement and through the open door. A dim hall stank of urine and cabbage. Rude speech, babies’ cries, and the clatter of crockery emanated from the many rooms. He climbed the rotting stairs to the attic and tried the door. When he found it locked, he took from his pocket a picklock, opened the door, and entered the room, shutting himself inside.
A sloped, bare-raftered ceiling and stained plaster walls enclosed a bed, a chair, and a dresser. Light seeped through a small, grimy window. Mr. Slade spied a carpetbag patterned with red roses standing on the worn floorboards. He dumped the contents on the bed. He briefly examined, then set aside, a woman’s garments. Wrapped in a fringed, India silk shawl he found a ticket for a ship scheduled to sail for Marseilles the next day. He searched the dresser, then looked under the bed and the mattress and behind the furniture; he scanned the walls and the ceiling for cracks, and he tested the floor for loose boards.
He found nothing.
Mr. Slade cursed under his breath. Then he made the bed, replaced the furniture, and repacked the carpetbag. He departed the room, locked the door, hurried outside, and caught another cab to a tavern near Exchange Alley.
The Five Coins Tavern is a haunt of minor bankers and merchants; it occupies an ancient brick and plaster building with crooked timbers. A sign over the window depicts a jester juggling coins. That day, a lone customer sat at a table, a glass of wine before him. As Mr. Slade approached him, the man looked up. He was of middle age, with high, square shoulders, colorless hair, arched eyebrows, and a nose as sharp as an accusation. He pulled a gold watch from his embroidered waistcoat, then looked at the timepiece and pointedly at Mr. Slade.
“Sorry for my tardiness, Lord Unwin,” said Mr. Slade. He sat opposite the other man.
“You had better have a damned good excuse,” Lord Unwin said in an affected, aristocratic drawl.
The publican came over, and Mr. Slade ordered whiskey. When he and Lord Unwin were once again alone, Mr. Slade said, “Isabel White has been killed.”
Lord Unwin’s eyebrows arched higher. “Well, you did suggest that such at thing might come to pass. How, precisely, did it happen?”
Mr. Slade described the stabbing in Paternoster Row. The publican brought Mr. Slade’s whiskey and departed. Lord Unwin raised his wineglass and said, “May she rest in peace.”
He and Mr. Slade drank. Lord Unwin sat silent for a moment, his manicured hands encircling his glass, his head bowed, then he fixed his shrewd, colorless gaze on Mr. Slade. “A case of murder means an official inquiry.”
“Not this one,” Mr. Slade said, and explained how the constable deemed Isabel White’s stabbing a botched robbery not worth investigating.
“How fortunate that the law is so cooperative.” Lord Unwin smirked. “It wouldn’t do for anyone to connect us with Isabel White and draw the wrong conclusions.”
“No one will,” Mr. Slade said. “As far as I know, there’s no evidence of any business between us and Isabel White.”
Lord Unwin’s eyes narrowed. “What about the book?”
“The police didn’t find it on her. Nor was it in her room. It’s gone.”
“If it exists at all, and is more than just a figment of your imagination.” Lord Unwin’s thin lips twisted into a sneer.
