Drood (51 page)

And thus the early outlines of my magnum opus began to take shape.

I had known for some time that the plot would revolve around the mysterious disappearance, in England, of a beautiful but cursed diamond brought from India—a diamond sacred to some Hindoo thuggee sort of cult—and that the mystery would unfold in a series of accounts from various viewpoints (rather as Dickens had done in
Bleak House,
but, more pertinently, as I had done to better effect in
The Woman in White
). Because of my preoccupation—“distraction” might be the better word—with the whole Drood issue at this time, the story would hinge upon such themes as Eastern mysticism, mesmerism, the power of mesmeric suggestion, and opium addiction. The solution to the theft (as I knew from an early point in my envisioning of the tale) would be so shocking, so unexpected, so clever, and so unprecedented in the nascent field of detection fiction that it would astonish all English and American readers, including such supposed practitioners of such sensationalist serial authorship as Charles Dickens himself.

As is true of all writers of Dickens’s and my level of accomplishment, I was never free to pursue just one writing project. (Dickens, while he prepared for and then travelled on tour, had written his usual Christmas novella, was editing
All the Year Round,
was completing elaborate forewords for the special edition of his works, and was generating ideas for novels even while writing actual stories such as his strange “George Silverman’s Explanations,” kindled, he told me later, by Dolby’s and his coming across the ruins of Hoghton Towers between Preston and Blackburn. That ruined old manse happened to crystallise all the disparate, floating fragments of ideas Dickens had been playing with for some time, but rather than support a novel—which he needed in order to offer something for serialisation in
All the Year Round
—it provoked this strange story of a neglected childhood so very similar to Dickens’s own. [Or at least to what he
thought of
as his childhood of neglect and want.]

So it was with my own multiple and often overlapping literary and dramatic efforts that spring of 1867. My rewritten
The Frozen Deep
had failed the previous autumn at the Olympic Theatre, this despite the fact that my revised version was, I believe, much improved, after I had rewritten the character and passions of Richard Wardour, the character Dickens had—I was about to write “played” but “occupied” might be a more precise word—making the man both more adult and believable, freeing the character from Dickens’s pathos and overly sentimental gestures.) But my hopes for a theatrical breakthrough remained high, and that spring—when my health and research commitments allowed—I travelled back and forth to Paris to consult with François-Joseph Régnier (whom I’d met through Dickens more than a decade earlier) of the Comédie-Française, who was eager to adapt
The Woman in White
to the stage there. (It was already the rage in Berlin.)

My own goal was to sell Régnier and the French theatre-goers (and thence English theatre-goers) on an adaptation of
Armadale,
which I was certain would be warmly and enthusiastically received, despite what Dickens had considered its controversial aspects.

Caroline, who loved Paris beyond her limited means of expressing such emotion, all but begged to go with me, but I was firm: it was a business trip and there would be no time for shopping, explorations, or any social engagements outside the strict regimen of theatre business.

That month I wrote to Mother from my hotel in Paris—
“I have breakfasted this morning on eggs and black butter, and pig’s feet à la Sainte Mènéhould! Digestion perfect. St Mènéhould lived to extreme old age on nothing but pig’s trotters.”

Régnier and I attended a new opera at which the theatre was packed, the intensity was astounding, and the experience was electrifying. Also electrifying were those “very special little periwinkles”—as Dickens and I used to call the attractive young actresses and demimondaines so available in a culture where the night life was as rich and varied as the food—and with a bit of guidance from Régnier and his friends, I blush to say that I did not have to spend an evening or night alone (or even with the same periwinkle) the whole time I was in Paris. Before returning to London I remembered to pick up a handpainted card of the city for Martha—she loved such trifles—and a lovely chiffon robe for Carrie. I also purchased some spices and sauces for Caroline’s kitchen.

My second night back at Melcombe Place after my return from Paris, I may have taken too much (or too little) laudanum, for I found it difficult to sleep. I was tempted to go to my study to work, but the inevitable confrontation with the Other Wilkie (even though he had shown no recent signs of violence in his attempts to seize my papers or pens) dissuaded me. Instead, I was standing at the window of my bedroom (Caroline had found reasons to sleep in her own room) when I saw a familiar shadow near the lamp post at the end of the street near the square.

I immediately pulled on a long wool coat over my dressing gown—it was a bitter night—and hurried to the corner.

The boy extracted himself from the shadows and came towards me in the dark without so much as a summoning gesture on my part.

“Gooseberry?” I said. It pleased me that my speculations on Inspector Field’s contrivances had proved correct.

“No, sir,” said the boy.

As he came into the light, I saw my error. This lad was shorter, younger, a bit less ragged, and his eyes—although too small and too close together in his narrow face for good looks, even for someone poor—were not the bulging, wandering, nickname-earning disasters that Gooseberry’s had been.

“You’re from the Inspector?” I said gruffly.

“Yes, sir.”

I sighed and rubbed my cheeks above my beard. “Can you remember a message well enough to deliver it verbally, boy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Very well. Tell the Inspector that Mr Collins wishes to meet him tomorrow at noon—no, make that two PM—at Waterloo Bridge. Can you remember that? Two PM, Waterloo Bridge.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Deliver the message tonight. Off with you, then.”

As the boy ran away, the loose sole of one ill-fitting boot slapping against the cobblestones, I realised that I had not thought to—had not wished to—ask his name.

T
HE INSPECTOR WALKED
briskly to the middle of Waterloo Bridge at precisely two in the afternoon. It was a raw, cold, windy day and neither one of us wanted to conduct the conversation out in the elements.

“I’ve not had time for my luncheon,” rasped Inspector Field. “I know an inn nearby with excellent roast beef served all through the afternoon. Will you join me, Mr Collins?”

“An excellent idea, Inspector,” I said. I had partaken of brunch at my club two hours earlier, but I was still quite hungry.

Sitting across the table from the inspector in our booth, staring at him in the wan light as he sipped eagerly from his first mug of ale, I found him looking older and rougher than I remembered from our last visit. His eyes seemed weary. His dress was a trifle in disarray. His cheeks showed more tiny rosettes of burst veins, and there was a line of grey stubble along the wild profusion of his whiskers that suggested a man of lesser circumstances or less prominence than a former Chief of the Scotland Yard Bureau of Detectives.

“Is there any news?” I asked when our food had come and after an interval of intense attention to our beef and gravy and vegetables.

“News?” said the inspector, taking a bite from his bread and a sip from the wine we had ordered to follow the ale. “What news do you await, Mr Collins?”

“Why, of the boy called Gooseberry, of course. Has he got back in touch with you?”

Inspector Field only stared at me, and his grey eyes were cold within their nest of wrinkles. Finally he said softly, “We shall not hear again from or of our young friend Gooseberry. His flayed body is in the Thames or… worse.”

I paused in my dining. “You seem very sure of this, Inspector.”

“I am, Mr Collins.”

I sighed—not believing for a second this fantasy of young Master Guy Septimus Cecil being murdered—and applied myself to the roast beef and vegetables.

Inspector Field seemed to sense my silent disbelief. Setting down his fork and still sipping his wine, he said in a hoarse whisper, “Mr Collins, you remember the connection I told you about concerning the relationship between our subterranean Egyptian friend Drood and the late Lord Lucan?”

“Of course, Inspector. You said that Lord Lucan was the absentee English father of the Mohammadan boy who later became our Drood.”

Inspector Field held one fat finger up to his lips. “Not quite so loud, Mr Collins. Our ‘subterranean friend,’ as I so affectionately call him, has ears everywhere. Do you recall the manner of Forsyte’s—that is, Lord Lucan’s—murder?”

I admit that I shuddered. “How could I forget? Chest torn open. Heart missing…”

The inspector nodded, motioning me to quiet again. “In those days, Mr Collins—1846—even the new Chief of Detectives could, and regularly did, accept positions as ‘confidential agent’ for people of importance. Such was my situation late in 1845 and throughout much of 1846. I spent much time at Lord Lucan’s Wiseton estate in Hertfordshire.”

I struggled to understand. “You were called in by Lord Lucan’s family to solve the murder. But you were already attending to the case in your role as Chief of…”

Inspector Field had been watching my face and nodded. “I see that you now understand the chronology, Mr Collins. Lord Lucan—John Frederick Forsyte, father of the bastard who became the occultic shaman Drood—had hired me nine months before his murder. His need was security. Using private agents of my hire at the time, I attempted to provide it. Since the Wiseton estate already had adequate walls, fences, dogs, doors, latches, servants, and experienced gamekeepers wise to the ways of poachers and would-be trespassers, I thought the security was adequate.”

“But it was not,” I said.

“Obviously,” grunted Inspector Field. “Three of my best men were
in
Wiseton Hall at the time of the… atrocity. I had been there myself until nine o’clock that night, at which time my duties brought me back to London.”

“Incredible,” I said. I had no idea what point the old inspector was attempting to make.

“I did not advertise the fact that I had been working in a private, confidential capacity for Lord Lucan at the time of his murder,” whispered Inspector Field, “but detection is a small professional field, and word leaked back to both my superiors and the detectives who served under me on the Force. It was an unpleasant period for me… at a time that should have been the apex of my professional career.”

“I see,” I said, although in truth I saw nothing but a man admitting to his own incompetence.

“Not quite,” whispered the Inspector. “It was a full month after the murder of Lord Lucan, the official investigation still under way, of course—Her Majesty herself had expressed interest in the outcome—when I received a small package at my office in the Metropolitan Police Detective Bureau at Scotland Yard.”

I nodded and sliced off a large shred of beef. It was a bit chewy, but otherwise quite good.

“In the package was Lord Lucan’s heart,” rasped Inspector Field. “Treated somehow—by some lost Egyptian art—so as not to decay, but most assuredly a human heart and, according to several forensic physicians with whom I consulted, most assuredly that of John Frederick Forsyte, Lord Lucan.”

I set my knife and fork down and stared. Eventually I managed to swallow the suddenly tasteless wad of beef.

The old inspector leaned closer across the table. His breath was strong with ale and beef. “I did not tell you, Mr Collins, what arrived with Gooseberry’s bloody shirt and the note from Drood. I sought to spare your sensibilities.”

“His… eyes?” I whispered.

Inspector Field nodded and sat back in the booth.

T
HIS EXCHANGE KILLED
both appetite and conversation, at least for me. Inspector Field lingered for coffee and dessert. I drank the last of my wine and waited, lost in my thoughts.

It was a relief when we stepped outside into the cold wind. I welcomed the fresh air. I was not certain that I had believed Inspector Field’s horror story about either Lord Lucan’s wandering heart or Gooseberry’s packaged eyes—a writer of sensationalist fiction knows another possible piece of sensationalist fiction when he hears it—but the topic had upset me and brought on a rheumatical gout headache behind my eyes.

We did not part immediately upon leaving the inn but walked back towards Waterloo Bridge together.

“Mr Collins,” said the inspector after honking into a handkerchief, “my guess is that you wanted to meet with me for some reason other than to enquire into the fate of my unlucky young associate. What is it, sir?”

I cleared my throat. “Inspector, you know that I am embarked upon a new novel that requires research of the most unusual kind.…”

“Of course,” interrupted the private policeman. “That is why I pay one of my most useful operatives—the esteemed Detective Hatchery—to spend every Thursday night in a crypt awaiting your return sometime the next morning. You assured me that your trips to King Lazaree’s opium den were for relief from pain, not research. And I must say, Mr Collins, that my paying Detective Hatchery’s hourly wage for that service, not to mention his unavailability for a full night and day in terms of my own service (for even detectives have to sleep, sir), has not been… balanced, shall we say… in terms of your promise to report on the whereabouts and activities of Mr Charles Dickens.”

I stopped and clutched my stick with both hands. “Inspector Field, you certainly cannot be suggesting that it is my fault that Dickens is on yet another reading tour in the provinces and thus is out of my effective radius of investigation!”

“I suggest nothing,” said the inspector. “But the truth of the matter is that the esteemed author returns to London for at least one day and night a week.”

“To read at Saint James’s Hall!” I said in some heat. “And occasionally to do some work at his office at Wellington Street North!”