Drood (28 page)
“Do you want to tell me where I am headed
now,
Inspector?” I demanded angrily as I turned left and began striding briskly towards the west on Oxford Street.
“I would imagine that you are headed to the British Museum, Mr Collins, there possibly spend time in the Reading Room, but more likely to peruse Layard’s and Rich’s Ninevite and the ethnographical collection from Egypt.”
I stopped. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing.
“The museum is closed today,” I said.
“Yes,” said Inspector Field, “but your friend Mr Reed will be waiting to open the side door for you and to give you a Special Visitor’s ticket.”
Taking a step towards the husky sixty year old, I said very softly but very firmly, “You are making a mistake, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” I squeezed the head of my cane until I imagined that I could feel the brass bending. “Your blackmail will not work with me, Mr Field. I am not a man who has much to hide. Either from my friends and family or my reading public.”
Field raised both hands as if shocked by the suggestion. “Of course not, Mr Collins! Of course not! And that word… blackmail… is far from anything that can pass between two gentlemen such as ourselves. We are simply exploring areas of mutual concern. When it comes to helping you avoid potential difficulties, I am your obedient servant, sir. Indeed, that is my profession. A detective uses information to help men of parts, never to harm them.”
“I doubt if you could convince Charles Dickens of that,” I said. “Especially if he were to discover that you are still having him followed.”
Field shook his head almost sadly. “My aim is
precisely
to help and protect Mr Dickens. He has no idea of the danger he is in because of his intercourse with this fiend that calls himself Drood.”
“From what Mr Dickens tells me,” I said, “the Drood he has met is more a misunderstood figure than a fiend.”
“Indeed,” murmured Field. “Mr Collins, you are young. Relatively young, at least. Younger than Mr Dickens or myself. But do you remember the fate of Lord Lucan?”
I stopped by a lamp post and tapped the paving stones with my stick. “Lord Lucan? The Radical M.P. who was found murdered years ago?”
“Horribly murdered,” agreed Inspector Field. “His heart ripped out of his chest as he was staying alone at his estate—Wiseton, it was called—in Hertfordshire, near Stevenage. This was in 1846. Lord Lucan was a friend of your literary acquaintance and Mr Dickens’s old friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton, and Lord Lucan’s estate lay only three miles from Lord Lytton’s own Knebworth Castle.”
“I’ve been there several times,” I said. “To Knebworth, I mean. But what can this ancient murder have to do with anything we are discussing, Inspector?”
Field set his corpulent forefinger alongside his nose. “Lord Lucan, before he assumed his title after his older brother’s death, was a certain John Frederick Forsyte… rather the black sheep of his noble family, even though he had received a degree in engineering and privately published several books based on his travels. There were rumours that, in his youth, Lord Lucan had married a Mohammadan woman during his extended stay in Egypt… and perhaps even fathered a child or two while he was there. Lord Lucan’s terrible murder occurred less than a year after the man calling himself Drood first arrived at our London docks in 1845.”
I stared at the ageing detective.
“So you see, Mr Collins,” Field said, “it is quite possible that you and I could be of great assistance to one another should we share all information we have. I believe your friend Mr Dickens is in great danger. Indeed, I
know
that Mr Dickens is in danger if he continues to meet with this fiend called Drood. I appeal to your responsibility as the great author’s friend to help me be his protector.”
I caressed my beard for a moment. Finally, I said, “Inspector Field, what do you want of me?”
“Only information that may better allow us to protect your friend and to apprehend the fiend,” he said.
“In other words, you want me to continue to spy on Charles Dickens and to report to you on everything he tells me about this Drood.”
The old detective continued staring at me with those penetrating eyes. If I had not been looking for his nod, I would not have noticed it, so imperceptible was it.
“Is there anything else?” I asked.
“If you could convince Mr Dickens that your company would be required on another nocturnal expedition into Undertown, all the way to Drood’s lair this time, that would be of great help,” said Field.
“So that I could personally show you the way when it comes time to apprehend the man,” I said.
“Yes.”
It was my turn to nod. “It is a very hard thing, Inspector, to become an informant on one’s closest friend—especially when that friend is of the temperament and position of power of Mr Charles Dickens. He could destroy me, professionally and personally.”
“But you are doing this in his own best interests…” began the inspector.
“So we have ascertained,” I interrupted. “And perhaps someday Dickens might see it that way. But he is a man of strong emotions, Inspector. Even if my… spying… were to save his life, it is quite possible that he may never forgive me. Even try to ruin me.”
The detective continued to watch me closely.
“I simply want you to understand the risk I take,” I said. “And why such a risk requires me to request two things in return from you.”
If there was a smile, it appeared and disappeared too quickly to be caught by the human eye. “Of course, Mr Collins,” he said smoothly. “This is, as I said, a transaction between two gentlemen. May I know the nature of your two requests?”
I said, “Inspector, did you happen to read Dickens’s novel
Bleak House
?”
The older man made a rough noise. For a second I thought he was going to spit on the sidewalk. “I… looked at it… Mr Collins. In a passing way.”
“But you are aware, Inspector, that many people believe that you are the original for the character named Inspector Bucket in that novel?”
Field nodded grimly and said nothing.
“You are not pleased with the depiction?” I asked.
“I thought the character called Bucket was a caricature and a travesty of proper police behaviour, procedure, and decorum,” growled the old detective.
“Nonetheless,” I said, “Dickens’s novel—which I thought rather dreary and stodgy to that point, especially in the person of the cloying and saccharine narratoress named Esther Summerson, did seem to come alive in the penultimate chapters as our Inspector Bucket took charge of the murder case regarding Lawyer Tulkinghorn, as well as in his fruitless but exciting pursuit of Lady Dedlock, Esther’s true mother, who was to die outside the city burial ground.”
“Your point, sir?” asked Field.
“My point, Inspector, is that as a professional novelist myself, I see the potential for real interest in a book which has, as its protagonist and central character, a Scotland Yard or private detective not so different from Inspector Bucket, except… of course… more intelligent, more insightful, more educated, more handsome, and more ethical. In other words, Inspector Field, a fictional character not so different from yourself.”
The older man squinted at me. His corpulent forefinger was resting next to his ear as if he were again listening to its whispered advice. “You are too kind, Mr Collins,” he said at last. “Too kind altogether. And yet, perhaps, in some modest way, I could be of help for your research into such a character and such a novel? Offering advice, perhaps, on the proper investigatory methods and police procedures, so as to avoid the sort of travesty shown in Mr Dickens’s novel?”
I smiled and adjusted my spectacles. “More than that, Inspector. I would benefit greatly from having access to your… what would you call them?… murder files. I presume you keep such things, as ghastly as they must be?”
“Indeed we do, sir,” said Field. “And they would indeed be of inestimable benefit to a literary gentleman wishing to achieve, as they say, verisimilitude, in the writing of such a work. This is an honourable request and I agree to it without hesitation.”
“Good,” I said. “My second condition also should not cause you any problems, since I am sure you will be carrying out the surveillance I wish access to whether or not I should be the one making the request for it.”
“What surveillance is that, sir?”
“I want to know everything that you and your operatives can learn about the actress Ellen Ternan. Her whereabouts. The location of her lodgings—hers and her mother’s—and whether Dickens is paying for them. The way she makes her money and whether those funds are sufficient to support her in the circumstances which she currently enjoys. Her comings and goings. Her relationship to Charles Dickens. Everything.”
Inspector Field continued to bathe me in the blank, flat, mildly accusatory gaze which—I was sure—he had levelled at a thousand felons. But I was not a felon—not yet—and I did not wilt under its power.
“An odd request, Mr Collins, if you do not mind me saying so, sir. Unless you were to have your own
personal
interest in Miss Ternan.”
“None whatsoever, Inspector. I can assure you of that. Rather, I am convinced that Miss Ternan connects to this… mystery… that you and I are attempting to unravel, even as I am convinced that the best interests of Charles Dickens may have been compromised by this woman. In order to protect my friend… and perhaps myself… I need to understand more about her life and their relationship.”
Field rubbed his lower lip with that curved and corpulent finger. “You think, Mr Collins, that Miss Ternan might actually be a co-conspirator with the monster Drood? An agent of his?”
I laughed. “Inspector, I don’t know enough about the woman even to speculate. Which is why further knowledge of her, her sisters, her mother, and her relationship with my friend Dickens is essential if we are to enter into this pact.”
Field continued to pat and press his lip.
“Then we understand each other, Inspector?” I said.
“I believe we do, Mr Collins. I believe that we understand each other very well indeed. I agree to your conditions and hope to provide you with all of the information you need.” Field extended his calloused hand.
I shook it.
A minute later, resuming my walk towards the British Museum, Field hurrying alongside me, I told him everything that Charles Dickens had told me the day before on our walk to Cooling Marsh and back.
W
inter came in hard, stripping the leaves from all the trees near Gad’s Hill Place by November, sending Dickens from his summer chalet into his front-of-the-house study with its green porcelain fireplace and crackling fire, killing the scarlet geraniums in his garden, and sending low grey clouds scudding over the low grey stone of the buildings and streets of London where I resided.
With winter came deeper bouts of illness for both Dickens and myself. The more famous writer continued to wrestle with his terrors from the Staplehurst accident and with constant exhaustion, with kidney pain that had pursued him since childhood, and with the deadness in his left side from his “sunstroke” in France in September. Clearly there was something more seriously wrong than the author would admit. Dickens and I shared a doctor—our mutual friend Frank Beard—and though Beard would rarely discuss his other patient, I sensed a deep concern.
I had my own problems, which included the terrible rheumatical gout and its accompanying pain, fainting spells, aching joints, a growing obesity which left me disgusted with myself even as I failed to reduce the size of the meals I enjoyed, flatulence, cramps, an assortment of other digestive disorders, and terrible palpitations of the heart. No one seemed aware of Dickens’s physical disorders, but all the world seemed to know of mine. A Frenchman wrote me through my publisher to say that “he had betted ten bottles of champagne that I am alive, against everyone’s belief,” and if I were still breathing, he begged me to inform him of the fact.
I wrote to my mother that autumn—
Here is “forty” come upon me
[I was, in truth, forty-one that previous January]
—grey hairs shrinking fast… rheumatism and gout familiar enemies for some time past, my own horrid corpulence making me fat and unwieldy—all the worst signs of middle age sprouting out on me.
And yet, I confided to her, I didn’t feel old. I had no regular habits, no respectable prejudices.
Dear Reader, I have not yet told you anything about the most important woman in my life.
My mother, Harriet Geddes Collins, had met my father, the artist William Collins, when they were both in their mid-twenties. My mother was also descended from a long line of artists; she and both her sisters drew constantly and one of my mother’s sisters had entered the school of the Royal Academy in London. Harriet Geddes and my father had first crossed paths at a ball given by some artist acquaintances of my father’s for their girlfriends, subsequently seen each other several times in the London of their day, confirmed in 1821 that neither had cultivated other attachments, and were married in Edinburgh in 1822. I was born a little less than eighteen months later, on 8 January, 1824. My brother, Charles, was born in January of 1828.
One of my father’s friends was the poet Samuel Taylor Coleridge, and I clearly remember the day when I was a young boy and the poet came to our home, found my father gone, and stayed to weep to my mother about his increasing dependence upon opium. It was the first time I had seen or heard a fully grown man weep—Coleridge was sobbing so hard he could not catch his breath—and I shall never forget my mother’s words to him that day: “Mr Coleridge, do not cry; if the opium really does you any good, and you
must
have it, why do you not go out and get it?”
Many has been the time in recent years, as I wept my own bitter tears because of my growing need for the drug, that I have called back my mother’s voice on the subject.
My father had come home just after this advice was given to Coleridge, and I remember the poet’s cracked voice as he said, “Collins, your wife is an exceedingly sensible woman!”