Free The Final Recollections of Charles Dickens by Thomas Hauser Page B

myself to the door.
    â€œThe great thing is to be on the right side,” he said, laying a hand upon my shoulder. “We are not as different from one another as you might pretend. Be one of us.”
    A hackney carriage brought Catherine and myself to our respective homes, stopping first at her father’s residence and then my own. It was a lumbering square vehicle with small windows. The straw with which the seating cushion was stuffed protruded from the canvas in several places.
    â€œYou spoke inappropriately tonight,” Catherine chided as the carriage neared her father’s residence.
    â€œI did not.”
    â€œYou were needlessly confrontational, and you flirted with Mrs. Wingate for the entire evening.”
    â€œThat is untrue.”
    â€œIt is perfectly true. I had my eye upon you the whole time.”
    I was unsure as to what I should say next and uncertain whether the carriage ride would end with my being embraced or scratched. Either possibility seemed equally disagreeable.
    The preceding days had brought turmoil to my emotions. The visit to Florence Spriggs and all that surrounded her had taken my thoughts back to the year I had spent in the blacking warehouse. With that came ruminations on the uncertainties of fate and the thin line that separates one kind of life from another.
    More unsettling, I was aware that, during the conversation at dinner, Amanda Wingate and I had been more as husband and wife should be in their thoughts than Catherine and I had been.

CHAPTER 6

    Shortly after Catherine and I dined at the Wingate home, I posted a letter to Geoffrey thanking him for a lovely evening and offering assurances that I still intended to make him the subject of a sketch by Boz. My work at Doctors’ Commons had acquainted me with certain aspects of finance and law. But after further investigation of Wingate’s dealings, I understood only that there was a business in which people invested money and Wingate then reinvested their money in various financial instruments by means of a complicated series of assignments, conveyances, purchases, and settlements.
    Meanwhile, there were reporting duties to discharge at The Evening Chronicle , and I was writing the first installment of The Pickwick Papers.
    Two weeks after my meeting with Benjamin Ellsworth, I went back to the station house as he had suggested. Iexpected little or no satisfaction. Ellsworth came downstairs to greet me and introduced me to Bartholomew Dawes, whose name I recognised as the constable whose report had exonerated Wingate of the horrific crimes committed against Florence Spriggs and James Frost.
    Dawes was heavily moulded with half-whiskers, a sallow complexion, and dark eyes set deep in his head. The yolk of an egg had run down his coat, and yolk of egg does not match any coat but a yellow coat, which his was not. I saw also that he had a gold pocket watch and ring of a kind beyond what one would expect his station in life to warrant. He made it clear in greeting me that a smile was not part of the bargain for his salary.
    There is a vast quantity of nonsense about how a bad man will not look you in the eye. I do not believe that convention. Dishonesty will stare honesty out of countenance every day of the week if there is anything to be gained by it. That said, Dawes and I were introduced, and our mutual inspection was brought to a close when he averted his eyes.
    Ellsworth led me upstairs to his office and offered me a chair opposite his desk. There were more papers than had been there before. Otherwise, the room seemed unchanged. We were alone.
    â€œI have been to see Miss Spriggs,” he said.
    I had not expected that.
    â€œHow did you learn where she lives?”
    â€œI have my ways. I am not as slow of mind as you might think me to be.”
    â€œHow do you view the situation?”
    â€œMiss Spriggs spoke in a manner bearing the imprintof truth,” the inspector answered. “I told her that