“Have you had reason to change your opinion since you observed these things, Mr Collins?” I found Field’s soft but somehow peremptory and insinuating voice as irritating as I always did.
“They were not my opinions, Inspector. Simply my professional observations at the time.”
“But you no longer believe that a man or woman—say, someone trained in ancient arts of a long-forgotten society—could levitate ten feet in the air to peer in Charles Dickens’s window?”
Enough. I had had enough of this.
“I never believed in such a thing,” I said harshly, my voice rising. “Fourteen or fifteen years ago, as a much younger man, I reported on the… events… of certain drawing-room mystics and on the credulity of those gathered to watch such things. I am a modern man, Inspector Field, which in my generation translates to ‘a man of little belief.’ For instance, I no longer believe that your mysterious Mr Drood even exists. Or, rather, to state it more positively and in the affirmative, I believe that both you and Charles Dickens have used the legend of such a figure for your own different and disparate purposes, even while you have each endeavoured to use me as some sort of pawn in your game… whatever that game may be.”
It was too long a speech for a man in my condition, at this hour of the morning, and I buried my face in the glass of steaming sherry.
I looked up as Inspector Field touched my arm. His florid, veined face was set in a serious expression. “Oh, there’s a game all right, Mr Collins, but it’s not being played at your expense. And there are pawns—and more important pieces—being put into play, but you ain’t a pawn, sir. Although it’s almost certain that your Mr Dickens is.”
I withdrew my sleeve from his grasp. “What are you talking about?”
“Have you wondered, Mr Collins, exactly why I have placed so much importance on finding this Drood?”
I could not resist a smirk. “You want your pension back,” I said.
I thought this would anger the inspector and therefore was surprised by his quick, easy laugh. “Bless you, Mr Collins, that’s true. I do. But that’s the least of my goals in this particular chess match. Your Mr Drood and I are on the verge of becoming old men and we’ve each decided to put an end to this cat-and-mouse game what we’ve been playing these twenty years and more. Each of us has enough pieces left on the board to make our final move, it’s true, but what I believe you do not appreciate, sir, is that the end of this game must… must… result in the death of one or t’other of us. Either Drood dead or Inspector Field dead. There’s no other way for it, sir.”
I blinked several times. Finally I said, “Why?”
Inspector Field leaned closer again and I could smell the warm sherry on his breath. “You may have thought I was exaggerating, sir, when I said that Drood has been responsible, personally and through those mesmerised minions he sends out, for the deaths of three hundred people since he come here from Egypt more than two decades ago. Well, I was not exaggerating, Mr Collins. The actual count is three hundred and twenty-eight. This has to end, sir. This Drood has to be put a stop to. So far, all these years, in my service to the Metropolitan Police and out of it, I’ve been skirmishing with the Devil—we’ve each sacrificed pawns and rooks and better in this long game—but this is the true End Game, Mr Collins. Either the Devil checkmates my king or I check his. There’s no other way for it, sir.”
I stared at the inspector. For some time I had been doubting Charles Dickens’s sanity; now I knew for certain that there was another insane man affecting my life.
“I know that I’ve asked for your help with no other offer in recompense than my assistance in keeping the knowledge of Miss Martha R—— from your lady Caroline, sir,” said Inspector Field. I thought that was a very polite way to describe his blackmailing of me. “But there are other things that I can offer in exchange for your help, sir. Substantial things.”
“What?” I said.
“What is your biggest problem in life at the moment, Mr Collins?”
I was tempted to say “You” and have done with it, but I surprised myself by uttering another syllable. “Pain.”
“Aye, sir… you’ve mentioned the rheumatical gout you’re suffering from. And it’s visible in your eyes, if I may be so bold as to mention it, Mr Collins. Constant pain is no trifling thing for any man, but especially for an artist such as yourself. Detectives depend on deduction, as you well know, sir, and my deduction is that you’ve come this awful March night to Opium Sal’s and this filthy neighbourhood just in some hope of further assuaging your pain. Is that not so, Mr Collins?”
“Yes,” I said. I did not bother telling Field that Frank Beard, my doctor, had recently suggested to me that the “rheumatical gout” I’d long suffered from might very well be a virulent form of a venereal disease.
“It bothers you even as we speak, Mr Collins?”
“My eyes feel like bags of blood,” I said truthfully. “I feel that every time I open them, I run the risk of haemorrhaging pints of blood down my face and into my beard.”
“Terrible, sir, terrible,” said Inspector Field, shaking his head. “I don’t blame you for a moment for seeking some relief from your laudanum or the opium pipe. But if you don’t mind me telling you so, sir, the grade of product at Opium Sal’s simply will not do the trick.”
“What do you mean, Inspector?”
“I mean that she dilutes the opium far too much for someone who is in your level of discomfort, Mr Collins. And it is not a pure product to begin with. It is true that a judicious combination of your laudanum and the opium pipe might have salutary—perhaps even miraculous—effects on your affliction, but these Bluegate Fields and Cheapside opium dens simply don’t have the quality of drug to help you, sir.”
“Where, then?” I asked, but even as I spoke, I knew what he would say.
“King Lazaree,” said Inspector Field. “The Chinaman’s secret den down in Undertown.”
“Down in the crypts and catacombs,” I said dully.
“Yes, sir.”
“You simply want me to go back to Undertown,” I said, meeting the older man’s gaze. There was a dim, cold light filtering through the red-curtained windows of the Globe and Pigeon. “You want me to try again to lead you to Drood.”
Inspector Field shook his balding and grey-cheekwhiskered head. “No, we’ll not find Drood that way, Mr Collins. Mr Dickens undoubtedly told you the truth last autumn when he said that he’s been returning regular to Drood’s lair, but he’s not gone back through the nearby cemetery. We’ve had men posted there for months. Drood has told him of some other route to his underground world. Either that or the Egyptian Devil is living aboveground all this time and has revealed one of his locations to your Mr Dickens. So your writer friend don’t need to enter Undertown by that route any longer, Mr Collins, but you can if you wish the relief of King Lazaree’s pure opium.”
My glass was empty. I looked up at the inspector through eyes suddenly grown watery. “I cannot,” I said. “I’ve tried. I cannot move the heavy bier in the crypt in order to gain access to the stairs.”
“I know, sir,” said Inspector Field, his voice as professionally smooth and sad as an undertaker’s. “But Hatchery will be most glad to help you whenever you wish to go down there, day or night. Won’t you, Hib?”
“Most glad, sir,” said Hatchery from where he stood nearby. I confess that I had almost forgotten that the other man was present.
“How would I get word to him?” I asked.
“The boy is still waiting on your street, Mr Collins. Send word through my Gooseberry, and Detective Hatchery will be there within the hour to escort you through the dangerous neighbourhoods, open the way to the staircase for you, and wait upon your return.” The infernal inspector smiled. “He will even loan you his revolver again, Mr Collins. But you should have nothing to fear from King Lazaree and his patrons. Unlike Opium Sal’s shifty clientele, Lazaree and his living mummies down there know that they are allowed to exist on
ly upon my sufferance.”
I hesitated.
“Is there something else we can help you with in exchange for your help in finding Drood through your Mr Dickens?” asked Field. “Some problem at home, perhaps?”
I glanced askance at the old man. What would he know of my problems at home? How could he know that my daily and nightly fights with Caroline had sent me to Sal’s as surely as my need to lessen the pain from my gout?
“I’ve been married for more than thirty years, Mr Collins,” he said softly, as if having read my mind. “My speculation is that your lady is, even after all this time, demanding marriage… even as your other lady in Yarmouth is demanding to return to London to be near you.”
“D—— n you, Field,” I cried, banging my fist down on the heavy, worn planks of the table. “None of this is any of your business.”
“Of course not, sir. Of course not,” said the inspector in his oiliest voice. “But such problems can be a distraction to your work as well as to our common goals. I am trying to see how I could be of help… as a friend would.”
“There’s no help for this,” I growled. “And you are no friend.”
Inspector Field nodded his understanding. “Still, sir, if you don’t mind advice from an old married man, sometimes a change of place buys a period of peace and quiet in such domestic disagreements.”
“Move, you mean? We’ve talked about it, Caroline and I.”
“I believe, Mr Collins, that you and the lady have several times walked to look at a fine home on Gloucester Place.”
I was no longer surprised or shocked to hear that Field’s men had followed us. I would not be surprised to learn that he had secreted a dwarf into the walls of our home on Melcombe Place in order to take notes on our quarrels.
“It is a fine home,” I said. “But the current resident, a Mrs Shernwold, does not wish to sell. And I’d be strapped to find the funds for it at this time anyway.”
“Both of these impediments could be eliminated, Mr Collins,” purred Inspector Field. “If we were working together again, I could all but guarantee that you and your lady and her daughter could be moved into that fine residence on Gloucester Place within a year or two, even while your Miss R—— could be reinstated on Bolsover Street, if you wish, with our help in meeting her travel and other immediate expenses.”
I squinted at the old man. My head hurt. I wanted to go home to breakfast and then bed. I wanted to pull the bedcovers over my head and to sleep for a week. We had moved from blackmailing to bribery. On the whole, I believe I had been more comfortable with the blackmail.
“What do I have to do, Inspector?”
“Nothing more than we have already discussed, Mr Collins. Use your good offices with Charles Dickens to find out where Drood is and what he is up to.”
I shook my head. “Dickens is completely absorbed in his preparations for his imminent reading tour. I am sure he’s had no contact with Drood since Christmas. Besides being frightened by what he thought he saw outside his window that night, Dickens is buried now in details. You have no idea the amount of preparation such a tour involves.”
“I am sure I do not, Mr Collins,” said Inspector Field. “But I do know that your friend will begin his tour with an opening night reading in a week, on the twenty-third of March, at the Assembly Rooms in Cheltenham. Then, on the tenth of April, he will appear at St James’s Hall here in London, followed immediately by readings in Liverpool, then Manchester, then Glasgow, then Edinburgh.…”
“Do you have the entire itinerary?” I interrupted.
“Of course.”
“Then you would know how impossible it would be for me to get Charles Dickens’s attention during the tour. All authors’ public readings are exhausting for the author. A Dickens reading is exhausting for the author and for everyone around him. There is simply nothing in the world like a Charles Dickens reading, and he promises this tour to be even more intense.”
“So I have heard,” Inspector Field said softly. “Somehow, Drood is involved in this reading tour of your friend’s.”
I laughed. “How could he be? How could a man of such appearance travel with Dickens or be seen at his readings without comment?”
“Drood is a man of infinite guises,” Field said. His voice was hushed, as if Hatchery or Miss Darby or the boy Billy could be the Egyptian criminal in disguise. “I guarantee that your friend Dickens is—consciously or unconsciously, deliberately or as an instrument of Drood—carrying out that Devil’s purposes on this tour.”
“How could he…” I began and stopped, remembering Dickens’s odd insistence that he would be magnetising the entire audience during each reading. Mesmerising them. But to what dark purpose?
This was all absurd.
“Still,” I said wearily, “you know Dickens’s schedule. And you know he has only a small entourage travelling with him.”
“Mr Dolby,” said Inspector Field. “His agent Mr Wills.” Field went on to name the gas man and lighting expert and even those agents sent in advance to inspect the theatres and arrange for ticketing prices, advertising, and such. “But surely, Mr Collins, Dickens would enjoy seeing his dear friend during such an exhausting tour. I know that he plans to see Macready at the Cheltenham opening. Could you not arrange to spend a few days of travel with your famous friend, attend one or two of his readings?”
“That’s all you want of me?”
“Your help in these small things—a simple matter of observing and chatting and reporting—could be invaluable,” purred Inspector Field.
“How on earth do you plan to make ninety Gloucester Place available to us, even by next year, if Mrs Shernwold is reserving it for her missionary son and absolutely refuses to sell?” I asked.
The inspector smiled. I half-expected to see canary feathers protruding from between those liver-coloured lips. “That will be my problem, sir, although I expect no problems at all. It is a privilege to help someone aiding us in the public service of ridding London of its least notorious but most successful serial murderer.”
I sighed and nodded. If Inspector Field had extended his hand then to seal our dark deal, I’m not sure if I could have touched him. Perhaps he sensed as much, for he merely nodded—the deal was set—and looked around.
“Would you like Miss Darby and the boy to burn us some more sherry, sir? It’s a wonderful preparation for sleep.”
“No,” I said, trying to get to my feet and suddenly feeling Hatchery’s huge hand on my arm, effortlessly lifting me out of the booth. “I want to go home.”
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
Ichose to join Dickens for a few days well into his tour.
Inspector Field had been correct in saying that Dickens would welcome the idea of my joining him for a bit of time on the road. I sent a note to Wills, who—exhausted as he must have been from travelling every day with the Inimitable—flitted back to London every few days from the tour to carry on his own and Dickens’s business affairs at the magazine with Forster (who disapproved of the entire idea of the reading tour), and within a day I received back that rarest of things for me—a telegram—which read,
MY DEAR WILKIE Ń THE TOUR IS SUCH FUN! OUR DOLBY HAS TURNED OUT TO BE THE PERFECT TRAVEL COMPANION AND MANAGER. YOU WILL ENJOY HIS ANTICS. I CERTAINLY DO. JOIN US AT ANY TIME AND TRAVEL WITH US AS LONG AS YOU WISH. AT YOUR OWN EXPENSE, OF COURSE. LOOKING FORWARD TO YOUR COMPANY! Ń C. DICKENS
I had wondered how the Staplehurst accident was affecting the Inimitable’s almost daily railway journeys, and I discovered this a few minutes after we had departed the station in Bristol on our way to Birmingham.
I was sitting directly across from Dickens in the compartment. He was sitting alone on his bench. George Dolby and Wills occupied the seat beside me but they were chatting, and perhaps I alone could see that the author was becoming more agitated as our carriage got up to speed. Dickens’s hands fiercely gripped first the head of his walking stick and then the sill of the window. He would glance out the
window as the vibrations increased, then look away quickly, then glance out again. His face, usually darker than most Englishmen’s due to the effects of the sun during his daily walks, grew paler and was moist with perspiration. Then Dickens removed his travelling flask from his pocket, took a long pull of brandy, breathed more deeply, took a second pull, and put the flask away. Then he lit a cigar and turned to chat with Dolby, Wills, and me.
The Inimitable preferred an interesting—even eccentric, possibly even dashing—wardrobe for his travel: a pea jacket over which he tossed an expensive Count D’Orsay cloak; his grizzled and weary visage, his lined skin bronzed by sun (the pallor had faded with the brandy and was now almost gone), peeking out from beneath a felt hat worn rather jauntily to one side. I’d overheard the bearlike Dolby tell the scarecrow-thin Wills at the Bristol station that the hat “makes the chief look like a modernised gentlemanly pirate with eyes in which lurk the iron will of a demon and the tender pity of an angel.”
I think Dolby had also been partaking of some brandy that morning.
The conversation was lively—we were the only passengers in this first-class compartment, the rest of the small entourage having gone on to Birmingham before us. I had heard from Dickens that during the first days of the tour, Wills had put Dolby through very thorough cross-examinations on how the business manager would handle his work. During those first city readings, Dolby had gone ahead with the gas and lighting men and only Wills had travelled each day with Dickens. Now, with Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, and Bristol behind them—and no major problems in any of those cities, so thorough was Dolby’s work—the big business manager was travelling with Dickens, much to the Inimitable’s obvious delight. The rest of the tour consisted of Birmingham, Aberdeen, Portsmouth, and then home to the final performances in London.
Dolby, whom a later client—an American writer named Mark Twain—would describe as “a gladsome gorilla,” reached into the large wicker basket he had brought aboard, set linen on the tiny folding table he had thought to provide for the centre of our compartment, and proceeded to present a buffet luncheon of hard-boiled-egg sandwiches with anchovy, salmon mayonnaise, cold fowl and tongue, and pressed beef, with Roquefort cheese and cherry tart for our dessert. He also set out a rather good red wine and kept a gin punch chilled by filling the compartment’s washstand with ice. As the rest of us finished this repast, Dolby warmed coffee over a spirit lamp. Whatever else the huge, whiskered man with his infectious laugh and rather endearing stammer might be, he was certainly efficient.