Oliver Twist Investigates by G. M. Best

the latter somewhere else. She thus ensured that his entire property fell to her and her son, Edward Leeford. Meanwhile Agnes’s father removed my unfortunate mother to a remote corner of Wales, where her shame could be well hidden. Who knows what passed between them in their isolation, but there must have been very harsh and bitter words because Agnes eventually chose to flee from her unhappy home. The result was tragic. With nowhere to go, Agnes ended up a homeless wanderer until she was tragically found lying in a street with her clothes sodden and her shoes worn to pieces. She was taken to the nearest workhouse and there she died giving birth to me. Charles Dickens in his account has the exhausted Agnes imperfectly articulate the words, ‘Let me see the child, and die’, but that was probably just his literary licence.
    My grandfather was distraught at her disappearance, and shortly afterwards he died of a broken heart, not knowing either the fate of his daughter or his grandchild. I thus grew up in the cruel poverty of the workhouse. In contrast my half-brother Edward Leeford reached his manhood surrounded by all the things money could buy and all
purchased with the wealth of my inheritance. However, at one level his life was not any happier than mine. At least I was a child born in love whereas Edward Leeford was a child conceived in hate. Certainly Mr Brownlow was quick to inform me that Edward’s upbringing had created a very seriously flawed man. He used to joke sometimes that if I was known as Oliver Twist, then my stepbrother should have been renamed ‘Edward Twisted’. There is no doubt that his profligate and debauched lifestyle soon destroyed not only much of his fortune but also his looks and his reputation.
    Edward was eventually forced to flee London society to avoid arrest for a series of crimes. He retired to some family estates in the West Indies, his face and mind scarred by the pox. When he returned to England, he did so to fulfil the dying wishes of his mother. She had made him promise to seek out Agnes Fleming and any child she might have produced because she was fearful that at some stage, if another version of Edwin Leeford’s will was discovered, they might challenge him for the return of what was rightly theirs. Assuming the name of Monks lest the police capture him for his earlier misdeeds, Edward’s enquiries eventually led him to the workhouse where my mother had died. They also led to his pursuit of me. It was his malicious wish to ensure that I should live as miserable a life as possible. Imagine therefore his delight to discover that one of his former associates, Fagin, actually knew of my whereabouts. And imagine his subsequent frustration at my escape, first to the home of his hated father’s best friend, Mr Brownlow, and then to the home of Mrs Maylie, who was the benefactress who had taken in my mother’s younger sister, Rose. She had saved her from destitution at the time of her
father’s untimely death, following the disappearance of her sister.
    As I have already indicated, I believed it was Nancy who had thwarted both Monks’ and Fagin’s endeavours to destroy me. Although Dickens viewed her as not just a whore but also a murderess, I found this difficult to reconcile with my memories of Nancy’s kindness to me and to other unfortunates. I had no wish to replace Agnes Fleming with such a woman as a mother and yet I had to know the truth. Was my likeness to Agnes Fleming only in the mind of Mr Brownlow, who had never actually met her and whose picture of her was based only on a portrait that was perhaps not even a good likeness? Was Edward Leeford equally mistaken in thinking I was his stepbrother? Was Nancy’s interest in me really kindled by the fact I was her son? And, if so, who might be my father? How and why had Mr Brownlow acquired greater wealth to bequeath to me? And what had happened to Agnes Fleming’s true son?