Drood (61 page)

“Not yet,” said Field and set that corpulent forefinger of his alongside his nose. “Now, you may be wondering why I have called you for this meeting on such a bitter cold day, Mr Collins.”

“Yes,” I lied.

“Well, sir, it is with some regret that I have to declare that our long working relationship is at an end, Mr Collins. It grieves me to do so, but my resources are limited—as you might imagine, sir—and from this point on, I shall have to focus those resources on the End Game with the monster Drood.”

“I am… surprised, Inspector,” I said while wrapping my red scarf higher around my face in order to hide a smile. This was precisely what I had expected. “Does this mean that there will be no boy waiting near Number Ninety Gloucester Place to carry messages back and forth between us?”

“It does, alas, Mr Collins. Which makes me remember the sad fate of poor young Gooseberry.” Here the old man amazed me by removing a huge handkerchief from his coat pocket and blowing his glowing red nose repeatedly.

“Well, if our working relationship
must
end…” I said as if filled with reluctant sadness.

“I am afraid it must, Mr Collins. And it is my opinion, sir, that Drood no longer has use for our mutual friend Mr Charles Dickens.”

“Really?” I said. “How have you deduced that, Inspector?”

“Well, first of all, there is the fact of last June’s anniversary of the Staplehurst meeting passing without Drood making any effort to contact Mr Dickens, or vice versa, sir.”

“Certainly your cordon of trained operatives made such a rendezvous impossible for Drood,” I said as we turned our backs to the wind and began our walk back over the bridge.

Inspector Field coughed a laugh. “No chance of that, sir. Where Drood wants to go, he
goes
. Five hundred of the Metropolitan force’s finest would not have prevented him from meeting with Dickens that night—in your very house, sir, if necessary—if he had
wanted
to be there. Such is the diabolical nature of the foreign monster. But the final and absolutely convincing factor in deducing that Mr Dickens is no longer of service to Drood is the simple fact that the writer is in North America now.”

“How is that a convincing factor, Inspector?”

“Drood would
never
have let Mr Dickens go so far if he still had use for him,” said the old detective.

“Fascinating,” I murmured.

“And do you know what that use
was,
Mr Collins? We have never spoken of it.”

“I had never considered the matter, Inspector,” I said, happy that the frigid air on my exposed cheeks would hide the blush of a liar.

“Drood was considering having Mr Dickens write something for him, sir,” announced Inspector Field in a tone of revelation. “Under coercion, if necessary. I would not be surprised if Drood caused the entire tragedy of the train wreck at Staplehurst precisely to put England’s most famous novelist under his thrall.”

This was nonsense of course. How could even the “foreign monster” of the old detective’s imagination have known that Dickens would not be killed in the terrible plummet of first-class carriages from the incomplete trestle? But all I said was “Fascinating.”

“And can you guess, Mr Collins,
what
it is that Drood would have had Mr Dickens pen and publish for him?”

“His biography?” I ventured, if only to show the old man that I was not a complete dunce.

“No, sir,” said Inspector Field. “Rather, a compilation of the ancient pagan Egyptian religion with all of its wicked rites and rituals and secrets of magick.”

Now I was surprised. I stopped and Inspector Field stopped next to me. Closed carriages passing had their side lamps lit, even though it was only mid-afternoon. The taller buildings along the river here were mere blue-black shadows with lamps burning in them as well.

“Why would Drood have a novelist write up the details of a dead religion?” I asked.

Inspector Field smiled broadly and tapped his nose again. “It ain’t dead to Drood, Mr Collins. It ain’t dead to Drood’s legion of London Undertown followers, if you take my meaning, sir. You see that, sir?”

I looked towards where the inspector was pointing, northwest along the river’s edge.

“The Adelphi Theatre?” I asked. “Or the site of the old Warren’s Blacking Factory beyond? Or do you mean Scotland Yard itself?”

“I mean all of it, Mr Collins. And more—stretching down to Saint James Palace and back up Piccadilly to Trafalgar Square and beyond, including Charing Cross and Leicester Square back along the Strand to Covent Garden.”

“What of it, Inspector?”

“Imagine a huge glass pyramid there, Mr Collins. Imagine all of London from Billingsgate to Bloomsbury to Regent’s Park being huge glass pyramids and bronze sphinxes.… Imagine it if you can, sir. For Drood certainly does.”

“That’s mad,” I said.

“Aye, Mr Collins, it’s as mad as a hatter’s Sunday, sir,” laughed Inspector Field. “But that’s what Drood and his crypt-crawling worshippers of the old Egyptian gods want, sir. And it’s what they mean to get, if not in this century then the next. Imagine those glass pyramids—and the temples, sir, and the secret rites in those temples, with mesmeric magic and slaves to their mental influence—rising everywhere you look in that direction come the twentieth century.”

“Madness,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” said Inspector Field. “But Drood’s madness makes him no less dangerous. More so, I would say.”

“Well then,” I said as we reached the end of the bridge again, “I am well out of it. Thank you for all your care and protection, Inspector Field.”

The old man nodded but coughed into his hand. “There is one last detail, sir. One unfortunate by-product of the end of our working relationship, as it were.”

“What is that, Inspector?”

“Your… ah… research, sir.”

“I don’t quite understand,” I said, although I understood perfectly well.

“Your research into the Undertown opium dens, sir. Your Thursday trips to King Lazaree’s den, to be precise. I am sorry to tell you that I can no longer offer Detective Hatchery as your personal guide and bodyguard.”

“Ahhh,” I said. “I see. Well, Inspector, think nothing of that. I was ready to terminate that aspect of my research at any rate. You see, what with the play I am putting on and the novel I am more than half done with, I simply do not have time or further need for that research.”

“Really, sir? Well… I admit that I am relieved to hear it. I was worried that Detective Hatchery’s reassignment would be an inconvenience for you.”

“Not at all,” I said. In truth, my weekly public house meetings with Hatchery before my descent to King Lazaree had long since turned into weekly dinings out. At one of these in November, Hatchery—my spy now—had warned me that Inspector Field soon would be relieving him of his duty of being my bodyguard during my weekly outings.

I had been prepared for this and had asked him—quite diplomatically—if he, Hatchery, were free to do detective duties outside Inspector Field’s investigative agency.

He was, he said. Indeed he was. And, in fact, he had made sure that his renewed duties with Inspector Field would not include Thursday nights. “For my daughters, I told him,” said Hatchery to me over our cigars and coffee.

I had offered him a generous sum for continuing his protective duties without telling his superiors. Hatchery had accepted at once and our handshake had sealed the deal, his gigantic hand enveloping mine.

So it was on this mid-December day in 1867 that Inspector Field and I also shook hands and walked in opposite directions on Waterloo Bridge, assuming—at least on my part—that we should never see each other again.

T
HAT SAME WEEK
that I swept Inspector Field out of my life, I honoured another appointment, this time one that I had set, by going to the Cock and Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street to dine. Deliberately arriving late, I found Joseph Clow already seated and, though dressed in an ill-fitting serge suit, looking decidedly ill at ease in the surroundings that must have been far more refined—and expensive—than those he was used to as a plumber and distiller’s son.

I called the wine steward over and ordered, but before I could say anything to Clow, the thin, furtive little man said, “Sir… Mr Collins… if this is about my staying for dinner that evening in October, I apologise, sir, and can only say that your housekeeper, Mrs G——, had invited me as a reward for my finishing the upstairs plumbing ahead of schedule, sir. If it wasn’t proper for me to do so, and I see now it mightn’t have been, I just want to say that I am very sorry and…”

“No apologies, no apologies,” I interrupted. Setting my hand on his rough-weave sleeve, I set the tone immediately. “I invited you here, Mr Clow… may I call you Joseph?… to apologise to
you
. I am sure that my look of surprise that night two months ago could have been… must have been… mistaken as one of disapproval, and I hope that my entertaining you to a fine meal here at the Cock and Cheshire Cheese will go some small distance towards making amends for that.”

“No need, sir, no need…” Clow began again, but again I interrupted.

“You see, Mr Clow… Joseph… it is as Mrs G——’s employer of long standing that I speak to you now. Perhaps she told you that she has been in my employ for many years now.”

“Yes,” said Clow.

We were interrupted by the arrival of the waiter, who recognised me and greeted me effusively. Realising that Clow was at a loss to choose from the menu items, I ordered for both of us.

“Yes,” I continued, “even though Mrs G—— is still quite young, she and her daughter have been in my employ for many years. In truth, ever since Harriet—that is her daughter—was a small child. How old are you, Mr Clow?”

“Twenty-six, sir.”

“Please do me the honour of calling me Wilkie,” I said expansively. “And you shall be Joseph.”

The thin-faced young man blinked rapidly at this. He was obviously not accustomed to crossing class barriers.

“You realise, Joseph, that I have nothing but the highest regard for Mrs G——, and nothing but absolute respect for my obligation to look out for her and her delightful daughter.”

“Yes, sir.”

The wine arrived, was approved, and I made sure that Clow’s glass was filled to the brim.

“When she told me of her affection for you, Joseph, I was surprised.… I admit to being surprised, since Caroline… Mrs G——… has not spoken so highly of any gentleman during all the years she has been in my employ. But her feelings and amibitions are of the highest priority to me, Joseph. Of this you can be sure.”

“Yes, sir,” Clow said again. He looked like a man who had been struck on the head by one of his heavier plumber’s instruments.

“Mrs G—— is a young woman, Joseph,” I went on. “She was little more than a girl when she came into my service. Despite her many duties and responsibilities in my household, she is a young woman still, of an age very similar to your own.”

In truth, Caroline would be thirty-eight on her next birthday on 3 February, less than two months away.

“Of course her father’s dowry is considerable, and I would be more than pleased to add to it,” I said. “This is in addition to her modest inheritance, of course.” Her father had died in Bath in January of 1852 and there was no dowry, no inheritance, and I had no intention of adding a ha’penny to those cumulative zed sums.

“Well, sir… Wilkie, sir… it was only a late dinner because Mrs G—— said I’d worked so hard to get the plumbing done, sir,” said Clow. Then the food began arriving, his eyes widened at the quality and quantity of it, and our conversation grew even more one-sided as I continued filling his glass and pressing my strange, subtle, seemingly selfless, and totally insincere point.

M
Y MOTHER WAS ALSO COMPLAINING
and making demands on my time at this point. She had begun suffering, she said, from various indeterminate but excruciating pains. One resisted the urge to tell her that at age seventy-seven, indeterminate (and perhaps even occasionally excruciating) pains were part of the price of longevity.

My mother had always complained and my mother had always been healthy: healthier than her husband, who had died young; healthier than her son Charles, who was racked for years with stomach pains that would turn out to be cancer; healthier, certainly, than her poor son Wilkie, who suffered from a rheumatical gout that periodically blinded him with pain.

But Mother was complaining and asking—almost demanding— that I spend several days around Christmas with her down in Tunbridge Wells. This was impossible, of course, and not for the least reason that Caroline was also demanding that I spend Christmas or several days around Christmas at home with her and Carrie. This was also impossible.

The premiere of
No Thoroughfare
had been set for Boxing Day—the day after Christmas.

On 20 December I wrote to my mother:

My dear Mother,

I scratch one line—in the midst of the turmoil of the play—to say that you may rely on my coming to you on Christmas Day—if not before.

The delays and difficulties of this dramatic work have been dreadful. I have had to write a new
5
th Act—which has been completed
to-day
—and the play must be performed on Thursday next, with a Sunday and Christmas Day between!

If I
can
write again, I will. If not, let us leave it that I certainly will come on Christmas Day. And, if I am not wanted on the next Monday’s or Tuesday’s Rehearsal that I come before. Your much-bothered son has hardly got a minute he can call his own. But the writing of the play is at last complete—so my principal worry is at an end. How I shall enjoy a little quiet with you!

Send me a line between this and Christmas Day. I have got your heart-burn lozenges—and some chocolate for you which Charley brought from Paris. Can I bring anything else which will go into my hand-bag?

Yours ever afftly WC
Charley proposes crossing to you from Gadshill on Friday in
Christmas week.

As it was, I spent part of Christmas Day afternoon and evening with Mother in her cottage in Tunbridge Wells—she spent most of our time together complaining of her nerves and her heartburn, and also of ominous strangers in the neighbourhood—and then I returned to London on the earliest possible train the next morning.