Drood (74 page)

I stifled the giggle that rose in my throat now.

At the second-storey door, the staircase behind and beneath me, only dimly illuminated by my flickering candle, seemed so steep as to be vertical. It—and perhaps lack of breakfast and the after-effects of my three glasses of morning laudanum—gave me a sense of vertigo.

Something sounding far too much like claws on plaster or wood scrabbled above me.

“Show yourself!” I cried into the darkness. I confess that this was mere bravado, a hope that George, Caroline, Besse, and the girl, Agnes, might hear me. But they were, presumably, two storeys below me now. And the doors were
very
thick.

I began climbing even more slowly, the pistol directly in front of me and swinging from side to side like an absurdly heavy weather vane in variable winds.

The scrabbling was not only louder now, but it seemed to have a
direction.
I could not tell if it came from the third-storey landing, where the staircase turned back in the opposite direction, or from somewhere between me and that landing. I made a mental note to have at least one window set into the thick brick-and-masonry outer wall there at the landing if no place else.

I took three more steps.

I cannot tell you, Dear Reader, from where the apparition of my woman with green skin and yellow tusk-teeth had originally come from, only that she had been with me since my early childhood. I remember her entering our nursery when Charles was sleeping. I remember seeing her in the attic of my father’s house when I had been so imprudent as to explore that dark and cobwebbed space when I was nine or ten years of age.

They say that familiarity breeds freedom from fear, but that is not quite the case. The green-skinned wench—her face was not of any living woman I had ever known, although I sometimes thought that she reminded me a bit of the first governess Charley and I had ever had—gave me the shudders every time I encountered her, but I knew from experience that I could fight her off when she lunged at me.

But no one else has ever heard her before. She’s never made a sound before.

I took another three steps towards the third-storey landing and stopped.

The scraping and scurrying were much louder now. The sound seemed very close above me, although now the pale circumference of candlelight extended almost to the landing itself. But it was very loud and—I understood George’s fear now—very ratlike indeed. Scrabble-scrape. Silence. Scrabble scrabble scrabble scrape. Silence. Scrabble scrabble.

“I have a surprise for you,” I said, cocking the massive pistol one-handedly with some difficulty. I remembered Hatchery saying that the large bottom barrel was a sort of shotgun. I wished now that he’d given me shells for it.

Two more steps up and I could see the landing. It was empty.

The scrabbling came again. It seemed to be
above
and even
behind
me.

I raised the candle over my head and peered straight up.

The scrabbling had turned to wild screaming and I stood there, frozen, listening to the screaming for a full minute or more before realising that it was coming from me.

Turning to flee, I pounded down the stairs, reached the second- storey door, shook it while screaming, looked up over my shoulder, screamed again. I fired the pistol at least twice, knowing that it would do no good. It did not. Running and clattering down the stairs again—the first-storey door also locked from the other side—I screamed as something moist and foul dripped from… from above… and then I was hurtling down the stairway again, ricocheting from wall to wall. I dropped the candle and it went out. Something brushed my hair from above, curled along the back of my neck. Whirling in the absolute darkness, I fired the revolver twice more, tripped, fell headfirst down the last dozen steps.

I do not know to this day how I managed not to lose the pistol or shoot myself with it. Screaming more loudly now, I lay in a heap at the bottom of the steps and pounded at the ground-floor door.

Something strong and thin and very long wrapped itself around my right boot and ripped it off my foot. If I had buckled the boot properly before coming in, I would have been dragged back up the staircase with it.

Screaming again, I fired a final shot up into the darkness, tore open the door, and—blinded by the light—fell forward onto the long boards of the kitchen floor. Flailing wildly with both feet, I kicked the heavy door shut behind me.

George ran in despite my earlier commands for no one to be in the room. I could see Caroline’s and the other two female faces staring white and round and open-mouthed from the doorway to the hall.

I almost pulled George down to the floor as I fiercely grabbed his lapel and whispered wildly to him, “Lock it! Lock the door! Lock it! Now!”

George did so, throwing the totally inadequate tiny bolt home. There was no sound from the other side. My panting and gasping seemed to fill the kitchen.

Getting to my knees and then to my feet, the pistol still raised and cocked, I pulled George back tight against me and hissed in his ear, “Get as much lumber as you need and as many men as you need. I want all the staircase doors nailed shut and then boarded over within the half hour. Do you understand? Do… you…
understand?
”

George nodded, pulled himself free from my grip, and ran out to get what he needed.

I backed out of the kitchen, never taking my eyes from the far-too-frail door to the stairway.

“Wilkie…” began Caroline, setting her hand on my shoulder but then jerking it away as I jumped.

“It was rats,” I gasped, uncocking the pistol that was suddenly too heavy for me to hold. I tried to remember how many bullets I had fired but could not. I would count the remaining ones later. “It was only rats.”

“Wilkie…” Caroline began again.

I shook her off and went up to my bedroom to vomit into the basin and find my flask.

CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

C
aroline played her trump card on Wednesday, the twenty-ninth of April, the day before the
Russia,
carrying Dickens and Dolby on the last leg of their long voyage, was scheduled to drop anchor in Queenstown Harbour.

Caroline knew that I was in a good mood, although she had no idea of all the reasons why. Those reasons were clear enough to me. When Charles Dickens had sailed for America the previous November, he had been the master and I the eager apprentice; now
The Moonstone
in serial form was the hit of the nation, crowds at the Wellington Street offices of
All the Year Round
were larger with each number released, and commoner and nobility both were hanging on each new instalment to see just who had stolen the diamond and how. And I was secure in the sure and certain knowledge that even the cleverest reader among them would never be able to guess.

When Charles Dickens had sailed for America the previous November, my play
No Thoroughfare
—and it was, indeed,
my play,
after all the rewrites, revisions, and fresh ideas I had poured into it since the previous autumn—had been just a dream in early rehearsal. Now it was a bona fide hit and had already run at the Adelphi Theatre for more than one hundred and thirty sold-out evening performances. There were eager negotiations under way for a Paris production.

Finally, Mother’s death, while saddening me (and horrifying me with its insectoid aspects and uncertainty of cause) had also liberated me. Now, at the age of forty-four, I had finally and fully become a man unto myself.

So Caroline sensed that despite the incident of the servants’ stairway (after two weeks I still would not go into the kitchen or any part of the upper hallways near the heavily nailed, boarded over, and fully sealed doors), and despite frequent relapses and the continuing pain that required larger doses of laudanum and morphine just to allow me to work a few hours each day, I was in the best mood I had enjoyed for years.

Dickens had left in November thinking of himself as the Master and me as protégé; he was returning (ill and disabled, from all accounts) to find me as the popular-selling novelist, successful playwright, and fully independent man I now was. We would meet this time as equals (at the very least).

And, I was increasingly convinced, we both carried Drood’s scarabs in our skulls. That fact alone brought a grim new equality to our relationship.

C
AROLINE CAME TO ME
that Wednesday morning while I was in the bath. Perhaps she thought this was when I would be at my most mellow… or at least at my most pliable.

“Wilkie, my dear, I have been thinking about our earlier conversation.”

“Which conversation is that?” I asked, even though I knew full well. My spectacles had steamed over and I reached for a nearby towel and squinted while I wiped the lenses clear. Caroline became a great white-and-pink lumpy blur.

“The one about Lizzie moving into society and about the future of our own relationship under this roof,” she said, sounding very nervous indeed.

I, on the other hand, was completely calm as I set the tiny spectacles back on my nose. “Yes?”

“I have decided, Wilkie, that for our Lizzie… Carrie… to have the proper advantages in life, her mother really must be married and she part of a stable family.”

“I could not agree more,” I said. The steam from my bath rose to the ceiling and curled to all sides. Caroline’s face was flushed red with it.

“You do?” she said. “You agree?”

“Absolutely,” I said. “Please hand me that towel, my dear.”

Speechless, she handed me the towel and I proceeded to pat my rather pleasing rotundity dry.

“I did not know… all this time… I was not sure…” spluttered Caroline.

“Nonsense,” I said. “Your well-being… and Carrie’s, of course… have always been my primary concern. And you are correct. It is time for a marriage.”

“Oh, Wilkie, I…” She could not go on. Tears ran down her steam-reddened cheeks.

“I presume you are still in touch with your plumber,” I said, tossing aside the towel and pulling on my velour robe. “Mr Clow. Joseph Charles Clow?”

Caroline froze. The flush seeped out of her cheeks. “Yes?”

“And I assume that Mr Clow has proposed marriage to you by now, my dear. In fact, I presume that you were going to mention that fact to me in this very conversation.”

“Yes, but, I did not… I have not…”

I patted her arm. “There is no need for further explanation between two such old friends,” I said merrily. “It is time for marriage—for Carrie’s sake, as well as your own—and our Mr Clow has proposed it. You must accept at once.”

Caroline was pale down to her fingertips now. She took two blind steps backwards and bumped into the washbasin.

“I shall have Besse pack your clothes at once,” I went on. “Your other belongings, books and so forth, we shall send along in due course. I shall have George go fetch a cab as soon as you’re packed.”

Caroline’s mouth moved twice before a word came out. “Lizzie…”

“Carrie, of course, shall stay with me,” I said. “This has already been arranged between Carrie and myself. It is her choice and it is final. However passionate and compliant your plumber… Mr Joseph Charles Clow… may be, and however well-regarded his distiller of a father might have been, your plumber’s actual, hopeful, but sometimes struggling bourgeois existence is not appropriate for Carrie at this point in her life. As you have pointed out, Caroline, she shall soon be entering society. She has chosen to do this from this fine home, from Number Ninety Gloucester Place, secure in the company of writers, artists, composers, and great men. She shall visit you frequently, of course, but this shall remain her home. I’ve discussed this not only with Carrie but with your current mother-in-law, and they both agree.”

Caroline had lowered both hands to the basin’s counter behind her and seemed to be holding herself upright only by the force of those straight, stiffened, and quaking arms.

I did not reach out to touch her as I brushed past to step into the hall, and it seemed that Caroline could not then have lifted an arm under any circumstances.

“I believe your decision is wise, my dear,” I said softly from the doorway. “You and I shall always be friends. Should you or Mr Joseph Charles Clow ever need assistance of any sort, I will endeavour to put both of you in touch with the kind of people who may be capable of helping, if they are inclined to do so.”

Caroline continued to stare at the space where I had been standing next to the tub.

“I’ll have Besse commence your packing,” I said. “And I will send George down to the thoroughfare for a cab sooner rather than later. I don’t mind paying the driver to wait a while if necessary. It’s best to begin a journey like this in the morning, when one is fresh.”

A
S I MENTIONED EARLIER,
Dickens’s and Dolby’s ship, the
Russia,
arrived in Queenstown Harbour on the last day in April, but none of the Inimitable’s friends rushed to Liverpool to welcome them. Telegrams from Dolby had made it clear that Dickens wished “a few days of solitary acclimatisation before resuming his duties and old habits.”

I translated this as meaning that the exhausted author would not be going straight to Gad’s Hill Place, nor would he stay in London (although he passed through there by train on May 2), but rather would continue on straight into the waiting arms of Ellen Ternan in Peckham. It turned out that I was perfectly correct in this assumption. I also knew through casual comments from Wills at the Wellington Street offices that the actress and her mother had returned from Italy only two days earlier.

How very convenient for the Inimitable.

It was another four days before Dickens made himself available for a welcoming from Wills, Frank Beard, and me. He took the train in from Peckham for an early dinner with Fechter and the rest of us, and then we all went to the Adelphi so that Dickens could finally see
No Thoroughfare.

I had been more than prepared to express sympathetic concern and even shock at Dickens’s aged, exhausted state after the American tour, but Beard spoke for both of us at the station when the physician cried out, “Good Lord, Charles! Seven years younger!”