Drood (43 page)
Inspector Field stoppped. I stopped. After a moment, he said, “Your point, Mr Collins?”
“My point, Inspector, is that Charles Dickens, although chronologically fifty-four years of age, is a child. A mischievous child. He manufactures and plays the games he enjoys and—through his fame and force of personality—bullies those around him to play the game as well. We are now involved, you and I, in Charles Dickens’s Game of Drood.”
Field stood there, scratching the side of his nose while seemingly lost in thought. He suddenly looked very old to me. And not at all well. Finally he said, “Where were you on nine June, Mr Collins?”
I blinked at this. Then I smiled and said, “Didn’t your agents inform you, Inspector?”
“Yes, sir. In truth, they did. You went to your publisher’s offices in the late morning. Your new book was released that day. Then you went to several bookshops from Pall Mall along the Strand to Fleet Street, where you signed several copies of the volumes for certain friends and admirers. That evening you dined…
there
…”
Field was pointing his cane at the Albion, opposite Drury Lane Theatre.
“. . . with several artists, including one older gentleman who was a friend of your father’s,” continued the inspector. “You returned home a little after midnight.”
He had managed to wipe the smile off my face and it irked me that he had. “The point of this intrusive and unwarranted recitation, Inspector?” I asked coldly.
“The point is that both you and I know where
you
were on the ninth of June, Mr Collins. But neither of us knows where Mr Dickens was on that important anniversary.”
“Important anniversary?” I said and then remembered. It was the first anniversary of Dickens’s near thing in the railway accident at Staplehurst. How could I have forgotten?
“Mr Dickens was at Gad’s Hill Place that day,” said Inspector Field without looking at any notes, “but took the four thirty-six PM express to London. Once here he began one of his long walks, this one in the general vicinity of Bluegate Fields.”
“Opium Sal’s,” I ventured. “The entrance to Undertown through the crypt in the cemetery he called Saint Ghastly Grim’s.”
“Not this time, sir,” said Inspector Field. “I had seven of my best agents following Mr Dickens. We felt that the odds were great that the author would contact Drood on this first anniversary of their meeting. But your friend gave my men and myself—I was involved in the tailing that night—quite a merry chase. Just when we were sure that Dickens had gone to ground, he would pop out of some ruin or slum, hail a cab, and be off. Eventually he left Bluegate Fields and the dock areas there and came quite close to where we stand at this moment.… To Saint Enon Chapel north of the Strand near the eastern entrance to Clement’s Inn, to be precise.”
“Saint Enon Chapel,” I repeated. The name rang a faint bell. Then I remembered. “The Modern Golgotha!”
“Exactly, sir. A charnel house. The vaults under Saint Enon had so filled with unclaimed corpses that in 1844, after I had begun work in the Police Bureau but before I became Chief of Detectives, the commissioner of sewers sealed it off while creating a drainage tunnel beneath the building. Still the bodies festered there for years, until the premises were purchased by a surgeon in 1847 with the purpose of removing the remains to—I believe he called it—‘a more appropriate place.’ The exhumation continued there for almost a year, Mr Collins, with two giant heaps accumulating in the alleys above those vaults—one heap a pile of human bones, the other a mountain of decaying coffin wood.”
“I went to view that as a young man,” I said, turning slightly to look off in the direction of St Enon. I remembered the stench then on that cool February day I had viewed the awful spectacle. I could not imagine what the smell would be like on a hot and humid summer day such as this one.
“You and some six thousand other Londoners came to stare,” said Inspector Field.
“What does Saint Enon Chapel have to do with Dickens and June nine?”
“He managed to vanish from our view near there, Mr Collins,” said Field, tapping angrily at the cobblestones with his heavy brass-headed stick. “Seven of my best agents and myself, perhaps the finest detective London has ever known, in pursuit, and your writer gave us the slip.”
I had to smile again. “He is enjoying this, Inspector. As I said, Dickens is a child at heart. He loves mysteries and ghost stories. And upon occasion he has a cruel sense of humour.”
“Indeed, sir. But more to the point, somehow your friend knew about a secret entrance to that very drainage tunnel dug in 1844 when all the thousands of leaking and rotting corpses were still there. We found the tunnel eventually—it opens into scores of leaking, stinking holes where hundreds of squatters are living beneath the streets of London—and that in turn opens to another labyrinth of tunnels, sewers, and caverns.”
“But you couldn’t find Dickens?”
“We did, sir. We saw his lantern in the maze ahead of us. But at that point, we came under attack—hand-thrown and slingshotted stones, many as big as your fist, sir.”
“The Wild Boys,” I said.
“Precisely, sir. Detective Hatchery actually had to fire his weapon before the attackers—mere shadows, emerging from side tunnels and flinging at us, then retreating into deeper shadows—fled and we could continue our pursuit of your friend. But by then it was too late. He gave us the slip in the flooded labyrinth.”
“It sounds to be very frustrating, Inspector,” I said. “And exciting. But what, exactly, is your point?”
“My point, Mr Collins, is that it seems rather doubtful that Charles Dickens—
the
Charles Dickens—should go to such absurd lengths to lose us while traipsing through the Undertown of London all night… unless there
is
a man named Drood waiting for him.”
I was able to laugh. I was unable
not
to laugh. “I would suggest just the contrary, Inspector. It is the fun of the pursuit and the fiction of the mystery he has created that brings Dickens to waste so much time leading you on this wild goose chase through the tunnels under London. Had he not been aware that your men would be following him, I assure you that he would not have come to London that night.
There is no Drood.
”
Inspector Field shrugged. “Have it as you wish, sir, but we appreciate your continued cooperation in helping us track down the murderer and mastermind whom you do not believe exists. Those of us in police work who have come up against Drood and his agents
know
him to be a real and frightening force.”
There was nothing to be said to that.
“Was your query about the brigands in Birmingham the only reason you asked for this meeting, Mr Collins?”
“No, actually,” I said, shuffling unconsciously in my embarrassment. “I wished to take you up on an offer you made to me.”
“Ninety Gloucester Square and Mrs Shernwold?” said Field. “I am working on that, sir. I remain confident that you and your… Mrs G——… shall have the place by this time next year.”
“No,” I said. “The other offer. When you said that I might borrow the good services of Detective Hatchery should I wish to go back to Saint Ghastly Grim’s Cemetery, move the slab in the crypt, and find my own way down to King Lazaree and his opium den in the catacombs there. The rheumatical gout has been all but intolerable in recent weeks… the laudanum helps almost not at all anymore.”
“Detective Hatchery will be at your service whenever you wish,” the inspector replied crisply with no discernible tone of censure or victory in his voice. “When would you like him to report for duty, Mr Collins?”
“Tonight,” I said. I could feel my pulse accelerate. “Tonight at midnight.”
O
ctober of 1866 turned especially cool and rainy. I split my days and nights between my club, my home, and King Lazaree’s underground den, with many weekends given over to being a guest at Gad’s Hill Place.
One rainy Saturday afternoon there, while under the mellowing influence of my laudanum, I told Dickens about various ideas I had concerning my next book.
“I am thinking of something in the line of the supernatural,” I said.
“Do you mean a ghost story?” asked Dickens. We were in his study, enjoying the warmth of the fire. The Inimitable had finished his day’s work on his annual Christmas story and been persuaded by me that the rain was too cold for his usual afternoon walk. Wind whipped raindrops against the bow windows beyond his desk. “Something involving spirit rapping?” he continued, frowning slightly.
“Not in the least,” I said. “I was thinking rather of some adroit mixture of the themes I mentioned to you some time ago—detection, theft, mystery—along with some item that has a curse on it. The reality of that curse would, of course, be decided by the reader.”
“What kind of item?” asked Dickens. I could tell that I had piqued his interest.
“A gem, I believe. A ruby or sapphire. Or even a diamond. I can see the plotting arising from the effects of the cursèd stone on each person who acquires it by fair means or foul.”
“Interesting, my dear Wilkie. Very interesting. The gem or diamond would be carrying some ancient family curse?”
“Or a religious one,” I said, warming under the influence of the mid-day laudanum and Dickens’s interest. “Perhaps if the stone had been stolen from some ancient and superstitious culture…”
“India!” cried Dickens.
“I had been thinking Egypt,” I said, “but India would serve. Might serve very nicely, I think. As for a title, I’ve jotted down
The Serpent’s Eye
or
The Eye of the Serpent
.”
“A bit sensational,” said Dickens, steepling his fingers and extending his legs towards the fire. “But intriguing as well. Would you work your idea of a ‘Sergeant Cuff’ into this tale?”
I blushed and only managed a shrug.
“And would opium figure in this book as well?” he asked.
“It might,” I said defiantly, all warmth at his earlier interest now fled. I had heard through several mutual friends of Dickens’s absolute disapproval of my Lydia Gwilt’s praise of the drug in
Armadale
.
Dickens changed the subject. “I presume you are using as a model here the Koh-i-noor diamond that was exhibited in the Crystal Palace here at the Great Exhibition and presented to the Queen in June of 1850.”
“I have made some rough notes about that artefact,” I said stiffly.
“Well, my dear Wilkie, there were certainly rumours that the Koh-i-noor was indeed cursed after it was exacted as tribute to the crown by the ‘Lion of the Punjab,’ that heathen Maharaja Dhulip Singh. Just the true story of how that diamond was smuggled from Lahore to Bombay by Governer General Lord Dalhousie himself, even while the Mutiny was still active, should give enough material for two or three exciting novels. It’s said that Lady Dalhousie herself sewed the diamond into a belt which Lord Dalhousie wore for weeks until he handed the Koh-i-noor over to the captain of a British warship in Bombay Harbour. They say that he chained two fierce guard-dogs to his camp bed each night to wake him if thieves or Thugees entered his tent.”
“I’d not heard this,” I confessed. My thought had been to write about a ruby or sapphire sacred to an ancient Egyptian cult, but Dickens’s true tale of the Koh-i-noor made my hands twitch in anticipation of taking notes.
We were interrupted then by an urgent pounding on the door to Dickens’s study.
It was Georgina, in tears and almost beside herself with agitation. When Dickens calmed her, she explained that the Irish bloodhound—Sultan—had attacked yet another innocent victim, this time a little girl who was the sister of one of the servants.
Dickens sent her out to soothe the victim. Then he sighed, opened a cupboard door, and removed the two-barrelled shotgun I had last seen ten months earlier on Christmas night. He then went to his desk and pulled several large shells from a lower-right-hand drawer. Outside, the rain had ceased pelting the window glass, but I could see dark, fast clouds moving low above black branches that were quickly losing their leaves.
“I’m afraid that I have shown too much tolerance with this dog,” he said softly. “Sultan has a good heart—and he is totally loyal to me—but his aggressive spirit was forged in the fires of hell. He refuses to learn. I can tolerate anything—in dog or man—save for the refusal or inability to learn.”
“No more warnings?” I asked, rising to follow him away from the fire and out of the room.
“No more warnings, my dear Wilkie,” said Dickens. “This hound’s inevitable death sentence was pronounced by a power much higher than ours when Sultan was only a pup at his mother’s teat. Now there remains only the execution of that sentence.”
T
HE EXECUTION PARTY
was, fittingly, all male: besides Sultan, Dickens, and myself, the fourteen-year-old Plorn had been summoned from his room. My brother, Charles, and his wife, Katey, had just arrived for the weekend, and Charley was invited along but declined. A weather-faced old blacksmith from across the road had been reshoeing two horses in Dickens’s stable and joined the procession. (It turned out that the blacksmith was an old friend of the condemned—he had enjoyed the killer’s antics from the time Sultan was a puppy—and the old man was honking into his handkerchief even before the execution party set out.)
Finally there were Dickens’s oldest son, Charley, just up for the day, and two male servants, one the husband of the female servant whose sister had been attacked. One servant trundled the empty wheelbarrow that would bear Sultan’s carcass back from the killing grounds and the other gingerly carried a burlap bag that would be the condemned’s shroud in a few minutes. The women of the household and other servants watched from the windows as we walked out through the backyard, past the stables, and into the field where Dickens had burned his correspondence six years earlier.
At first Sultan bounded around with enthusiasm and excitement, unbridled by the new muzzle he was wearing. He obviously thought that he was on a hunting expedition.
Something was going to die!
Sultan leaped around from one trudging, high-booted, waxed-cotton-coated man to the next, his paws sending out ripples in the puddles and kicking up mud. But when the humans would not meet his gaze, the dog stood at the end of his leash—held by Charley Dickens—and cast an observing eye on the open shotgun under his master’s arm and upon the empty wheelbarrow that had never been a part of any other grouse-hunting trek.
