‘He had quite exceptionally bright and active eyes that were always darting about like brilliant birds to pick up all the tiny things … for he was a sort of poetical Sherlock Holmes.’
I came across that comment on Dickens in G.K. Chesterton’s biography and it made an impact on me. Dickens as a detective – that was an idea. More research showed that Dickens was fascinated by crime and murder. He writes about murder and the psychology and guilt of the murderer. Bill Sikes in Oliver Twist is tormented by dead Nancy’s eyes, following him as he flees from justice, having beaten her with his pistol. Jonas Chuzzlewit buries his victim, Montague Tigg, in some woods. But the dead man will not stay dead; Jonas is haunted by the idea of Tigg coming out of his grave. The title of one of Dickens’s stories Hunted Down also points to the idea of the pursuit of justice for the victim. Dickens had a powerful sense of justice – I could well imagine him wanting to catch the murderer, especially if the victim were known to him.
He has the qualities a detective needs: he was, as Chesterton suggests, very observant. He asked always about his own characters ‘What’s his motive?’ Dickens is the man to find out the why as well as the where, when and how. Of the last three in the list: Dickens is a story–teller and murder is a story. Dickens has the skill to work out the sequence of events, to piece the together the narrative of the killing. He understands character: the witnesses, the friends, the lovers, the relations of the victim are all characters in the dreadful story which is murder.
Dickens went out with the Metropolitan Police into some of the dark and dangerous purlieus of London. He gives three police anecdotes in his periodical Household Words which show his interest in the methods of pursuit and detection - another good reason to put Dickens on the case.
In my novel Dickens could not go about London investigating murders on his own. He had to have a partner, a real policeman, so I gave him Superintendent Sam Jones of Bow Street with sufficient authority to allow the great author to work with him. Dickens and Jones – sounded right.
And Dickens’s first murder case takes place in Victorian London. What better place is there? City of Dreadful Night - fog, of course, thanks to Dickens and Bleak House, bitter cold, and dark, labyrinthine alleys – so easy to get lost in, and whose is that shadow? Filthy slums, sinister faces peering out of bleary windows, twilight, gas light, moonlight – it was irresistible as a setting.
Ah, but there had to be a plot! I read about Dickens’s Home for Fallen Women which he established in 1847 with the banking heiress, Miss Angela Burdett-Coutts. What if? What if a girl was murdered at the Home? Dickens would be involved from the start. And the research I’d done on his life could be woven in. Dickens was writing David Copperfield in 1849 when the novel is set – he was writing his past, the part that haunted him – his time as a child working at the blacking factory. And connections to his life emerge as the story unfolds.
I began with the murdered girl. I knew who had done it and why. I plotted the chapters and let it all unravel. Characters emerged, pushing their way into the story, a street boy, a poor curate, some children in a stationer’s shop, even a dog. I couldn’t stop them. Dickens became my hero; he and Sam Jones became fast friends in pursuit of justice for the dead girl, Patience Brooke.
There had to be another case – I got to like them, my characters. What if? What if the street boy disappeared? That was the beginning of the next case for Dickens and Jones: Death at Hungerford Stairs. Hungerford Stairs, the site of the old blacking factory. Dickens knows it too well.
J.C. Briggs is the author of The Murder of Patience Brooke. London, spring 1849. Charles Dickens, the famous author, turns detective. He and Superintendent Jones of Bow Street must find the man who cut the throat of Patience Brooke, assistant matron at Urania Cottage, Dickens’s home for fallen women – a man who sings as he kills. Their search takes them into the filthy slums of the Victorian capital where the fog hides grim secrets. When a little girl is found dead and another girl disappears from the Home, Dickens is forced to face deeply buried secrets from his own past in a race against time to prevent another murder.