Drood (20 page)

“I am not sure that I…”

“No, no, sir, no reason for you to recall my presence there. It was 1851, sir. Mr Dickens had hired me, on a private basis you might say, to provide security for his performance of Lord Lytton’s play
Not So Bad as We Seem
at a benefit by the Duke of Devonshire. You were an aspiring actor then, I believe, sir, and Mr Dickens—on the advice of Mr Egg, I do seem to recall—invited you to play the part of Smart. ‘A small part,’ I remember Mr Dickens saying to you during that first rehearsal, ‘but what there is of it, decidedly good!’ As were you, Mr Collins. As were you. Decidedly good. And I saw several performances, sir.”

“Why, thank you, Inspector. I…”

“Yes—oh, may I be seated? Thank you very much. Beautiful stone egg here on your desk, Mr Collins. Is it onyx? Yes, I believe it is. Fascinating.”

“Thank you, Inspector. To what do I owe…”

“You remember, I am sure, Mr Collins, that the Duke of Devonshire provided Devonshire House for that first performance of Lord Lytton’s play. It was all for the good of the Guild of Literature and Art, as I recall. Sir Edward was president of the Guild at that time. Mr Dickens was vice-president. You may recall that I—and a few carefully chosen associates of mine—were hired to be present in what we call plain clothes because Lord Lytton’s estranged wife, Rosina was her name, I believe, had threatened to disrupt the play. I saw the first note she sent Lord Lytton. She promised to pose as an orange-seller and to pelt the stage with fruit, as I recall.” Inspector Field chuckled and I worked to return a smile.

“In another note,” he continued, “she promised to throw rotten eggs at the Queen, who did attend despite the threats, I am sure you recall, sir, you having the memory of a writer after all. Her Majesty the Queen was there with Prince Albert that evening of the first performance and witnessed your first public appearance anywhere with Mr Dickens. Sixteen May, 1851, that was—seems like just last week, does it not, sir?—and you had your own special guests that night, Mr Collins. Your brother Charles, I do believe, and your mother… Harriet, I believe her name is, and I hope her health is good, Mr Collins, I surely do, and I seem to remember that she lives with your brother Charles and his wife, Kate, Dickens’s eldest daughter, I do believe, when your mother is staying in town. At Clarence Terrace, I think the address is. A lovely neighbourhood. And a wonderful lady, she is. Oh, and you had other guests that night of the Command Performance fifteen years ago, I seem to recall. Edward and Henrietta Ward… a cigar? Why yes, sir. I don’t mind if I do.”

The offer of a fine cigar had served to stem the verbal flow, and the silence continued as we each trimmed our cigars, lit them, and savoured the first minute of smoking them. Before the detective could get his second wind, I said, “Your memory does your profession and yourself credit, Inspector Field. But I should ask—to what do I owe the pleasure of your visit?”

He removed the cigar from his mouth with his left hand and allowed the corpulent forefinger on his right hand to touch first the side of his nose, as if he were sniffing something out, and then to tap his lips, as if the finger were helping to form his next words. “Mr Collins, you should know that the ‘Inspector’ before my name now is a pure honourific, as I am no longer employed by the Scotland Yard Bureau of Detectives. Haven’t been since the year after I protected the integrity of
Not So Bad as We Seem,
to be one-hundred-percent accurate.”

“Well, I am sure the honourific is well deserved and should be and will be maintained by all who know you,” I said, not bothering to point out that the “Inspector” title was plainly there on his card.

“Thank you, Mr Collins,” said the florid detective, exhaling a great cloud of smoke. With the doors to my study closed and the window open only a small bit, as was my habit due to the noise from the streets outside, the little room was quickly filling up with blue smoke.

“Tell me, Inspector,” I said, “how can I be of assistance today? Are you writing your memoirs? Is there some small gap in your otherwise voluminous and incredible memory which I could help fill in some way?”

“Memoirs?” chuckled Inspector Field. “Now
that
is an idea… but bless you, no, sir. Others, such as your friend Mr Dickens, have written about my… well, exploits would not be too bold a word for them, would it, sir?… about my exploits before, and I suspect that more will write about them in the future, but no memoirs on my docket for now, sir.”

“How
can
I help you, then, Inspector?”

Cigar firmly clamped between his teeth, Field leaned forward, planted his elbows on my desk, and freed his corpulent forefinger to point first up, then down, then to prod the desk, and finally to point it at me. “It came to my attention, Mr Collins—came to my attention too late, I regret—that you and Mr Dickens were in Tiger Bay and the Undertown searching for a certain personage named Drood.”

“Who told you that, Inspector?” My voice was cool. This former Scotland Yard detective had already exhibited too much curiosity and intrusion to suit me.

“Oh, Hib Hatchery, of course. He works for me. Hatchery is an operative of my Private Enquiry Bureau. Did not Mr Dickens tell you that?”

I remembered Dickens saying something about Inspector Field having moved on from police work and not being available for our outing, and of Field having recommended Hatchery, but I had not paid much attention to the comment.

“No,” I said. “I don’t believe he did.”

Field nodded and his finger seemed to move of its own volition to a place alongside his beak of a nose even as his other hand removed the cigar from his mouth. “He is, sir. Hatchery is a good man. Not imaginative, perhaps, as the great inspectors and detectives must be, but a good man. A dependable man. But when Dickens contacted me about finding someone to escort him into the… ah… difficult parts of the city again, I assumed that it was another little slum-jaunt of his, of the sort I escorted him and you on and him and the American visitors on, sir. I was out of London for a while, on Private Enquiry Bureau business, and did not hear until I returned recently that Drood was the object of Mr Dickens’s pursuit.”

“I would hardly call it pursuit,” I said.

“Search, then,” said Inspector Field, breathing blue smoke out. “Enquiry. Investigation.”

“Is there something about Charles Dickens’s interests that concerns
you?
” I asked. My tone was not sharp, but it was meant to put a former policeman in his place when it came to the interests and actions of gentlemen.

“Oh, yes, sir. Yes, Mr Collins. Indeed there is,” said the inspector, sitting back in the chair until it creaked. He was inspecting his still-burning cigar and frowning slightly. “Everything about this Drood person concerns and interests me, Mr Collins.
Everything.
”

“Why is that, Inspector?”

He leaned forward. “Drood—or the monster that calls itself Drood—appeared and began its depradations upon my watch, Mr Collins. Quite literally upon my watch. I had just become Chief of the Detective Branch of Scotland Yard, taking over from Inspector Shackell… it was 1846, sir… when Drood’s reign of terror began.”

“Reign of terror?” I repeated. “I do not remember reading in the newspapers about any such reign of terror.”

“Oh, there’s lots of horrors that happen in those dark parts of town you and Mr Dickens went voyaging into in July that don’t end up in the newspapers, Mr Collins. You can be assured of that.”

“I’m sure you’re right, Inspector,” I said softly. The cigars were close to being smoked in their entirety. When they were, I would claim the press of creative business and show the retired old policeman to the door.

He leaned forward again and this time his active finger was pointed at me. “I need to know what you and Mr Dickens discovered about Drood that night, Mr Collins. I need to know
everything.
”

“I do not see how that is your concern, Inspector.”

Field smiled then and it was a broad enough smile to rearrange his ageing face into an entire new complexity of wrinkles, folds, and planes. It was not a warm smile. “It
is
my concern, Mr Collins, in ways that you cannot and could not ever comprehend. And I
will
have this information in all its details.”

I sat straight in my chair, feeling the pain from my rheumatical gout fuel my displeasure and impatience. “That sounds like a threat, Inspector.”

The smile grew wider. “Inspector Charles Frederick Field, either of the police Detective Bureau or of his own Private Enquiry Bureau, does not make threats, Mr Collins. But he
will
have the information he requires to carry on his battle with an old and implacable foe.”

“If this… Drood… has been your foe, as you put it, for almost two decades, Inspector, you hardly need our help. You must know much more about… your foe… than Dickens or I ever will.”

“Oh, yes, sir,” agreed Field. “I do. I would blush to say that I know more about the creature you call Drood than does any man now living. But Hatchery informs me that Mr Dickens has had
recent
contact with the entity. And out of Undertown. At the Staplehurst accident, to be precise. I need more information about that and about what the two of you saw in Undertown in July.”

“I thought the arrangement, or at least Detective Hatchery explained it as such, was for you police and private detectives to leave the denizens of Undertown alone as long as they continue to leave us surface dwellers to our own devices,” I said drily.

Field shook his head. “Drood don’t leave us alone,” he said softly. “I know for a fact that the creature has been responsible for more than three hundred murders in London alone since I first crossed his trail twenty years ago.”

“Good God,” I said. The shock was real. I felt it coursing through me like a full glass of laudanum.

The inspector nodded. “I need to have the information from your amateur search, Mr Collins.”

“You will have to ask Mr Dickens for any information,” I said stiffly. “It was
his
outing. Drood was of
his
interest. I assumed from the beginning that our ‘outing’— as you put it—with Detective Hatchery was part of some research that Dickens is doing for a future novel or story. I still assume that to be the case. But you will have to speak to him, Inspector.”

“I went to speak to him as soon as I returned to London after my long absence and heard from Hatchery the reason for Dickens having hired him,” said Field. He rose and began pacing, walking back and forth in front of my desk. His corpulent finger was first at his mouth, then to his ear, then alongside his nose, then touching the stone egg on my desk or the ivory tusk on my bookshelf or the Persian dagger on the mantel. “Mr Dickens was in France and unavailable. He has just returned and I interviewed him yesterday. He gave me no information of any use.”

“Well, Inspector…” I said, opening my hands. I set my cigar on the edge of the brass tray on my desk and rose. “You see then that there could be nothing I could add to help you. It was Mr Dickens’s research. It is Mr Dickens’s…”

He pointed at me. “Did you see Drood? Were you in his presence?”

I blinked. I remembered being awakened from my slumber on the subterranean brick wharf—my watch showed that it was twenty minutes after the sunrise above, after the time at which Hatchery had said he must leave—when Dickens returned in the flat-bottomed boat with the two tall and silent oarsmen. He had been gone for more than three hours. Despite the real danger, despite the real risk of being attacked and eaten by the wild boys, I had dozed off while sitting cross-legged there on the damp bricks, the loaded and cocked revolver still on my lap.

“I saw no one of Mr Drood’s alleged description,” I said stiffly. “And that is all the information I intend to impart on this subject, Inspector Field. As I said and shall repeat to you for the last time, it was Mr Dickens’s outing, his research, and if he chooses not to share the details of the evening, then I am, as a gentleman, bound to a corresponding silence. I wish you good day, Inspector, and also wish you good luck on your…”

I had come around the desk and opened the door for the ageing inspector, but Field had not budged from his place standing by my desk. He smoked the cigar, looked at it, and said quietly, “Do you know why Dickens was in France?”

“What?” I was sure that I had heard wrong.

“I said, Mr Collins, do you know
why
Charles Dickens was in France this week past?”

“I have no idea,” I said, voice almost brittle with irritation. “Gentlemen do not pry into other gentlemen’s travel or business arrangements.”

“No, indeed, they do not,” said Inspector Field and smiled again. “Dickens was in Boulogne for a few days. More specifically, he divided his time between Boulogne and the tiny village a few miles south of Boulogne, a place called Condette, where for some years, since 1860 to be precise, Mr Dickens has leased the former modest chalet and gardens of a certain Monsieur Beaucourt-Mutuel. This chalet in Condette has been the frequent residence of a certain actress, now twenty-five years of age, named Ellen Ternan, along with her mother. Charles Dickens has enjoyed their company at Condette—some of the visits have been up to a week in length—more than fifty times since he purportedly leased, although in truth purchased, the chalet in 1860. You may want to close the door, Mr Collins.”

I did so but remained standing by the closed door, thunderstruck. Counting Ellen Ternan, her mother, Dickens, and myself, there were no more than eight people in the world who had any hint of the chalet in Condette or the reason for Dickens’s many visits there. And were it not for my brother Charles’s being married into the Dickens household, I would never have learned about it myself.

Inspector Field resumed his pacing, his finger by his ear as though he were hearing facts whispered to him from the digit. “Miss Ternan and her mother live full-time in England, now, of course, since the Staplehurst accident in June. We can assume that Mr Dickens was winding up their affairs—and his own—at the chalet in Condette during his recent four days in Boulogne. To do this, Mr Dickens had to retrace—precisely— the same route that he took when the Staplehurst accident occurred. We both know, Mr Collins, that this could not have been easy on Mr Dickens’s nerves… which have not been strong since the accident.”