Inspector Bucket’s Job

One of the most natural of story-tellers, and also one who took most naturally to the “detective”or “mystery” form was Charles Dickens. His lovers can easily recall examples, not only in the so-called detective stories such as “The Mystery of Edwin Drood,” but in the shape of exciting threads that wind through and color some of his broadest efforts, such as “Little Dorrit.” One of Dickens’ great admirations was Inspector Field, a London detective. He reported him in a series of articles, describing his own adventures in the slums with police guards. He saw in him the good-natured, native shrewdness, the kindliness towards the distressed, yet the inflexibility of vengeance itself with the criminal, that one would expect from the tender-hearted author himself were he to turn detective. With such “Real Life” to work from, no wonder Dickens put one of the best detective stories of all time into his lengthy novel of “Bleak House,” from which it has been selected for the following pages. The “Inspector Bucket” of this story is none other than Inspector Field, and the episode in Chapter VIII is a vivid and literal rendering of Dickens’ own visits to the dreadful depths of the London slums with his friend of the police.