Drood (86 page)

I’m not sure who these “younger comrades” at the magazine were, since I had refused greater participation, his son Charley was allowed to do little but respond to letters and pursue the odd line of advertising, and, although Wills had returned to his post, he was capable of little more than sitting in his office and staring into middle space while doors kept slamming in his ruined skull. Wills would hardly have been counted as a “younger comrade” in any case.

All the Year Round
was—as it had always been—an extension of the mind and personality of Charles Dickens.

As if all this office work and his readings in Scotland and continued rehearsals for the many Murders of Nancy yet to come were not enough, Dickens was spending many hours every day obeying the request in the will of his late friend Chauncey Hare Townshend, who’d asked in his dying delirium that the Inimitable collect his (Chauncey’s) various and scattered writings on the subject of religion. Dickens did this doggedly and to the point of even deeper exhaustion, but on Christmas Eve, over an indifferent brandy, I heard Percy Fitzgerald ask him, “Are they worth anything as religious views?”

“Nothing whatever, I should say,” said Dickens.

When Dickens was not in his study working during my week’s stay at Gad’s Hill Place, he was taking advantage of the clement weather to take walks of twenty miles and more per afternoon rather than his usual paltry twelve-mile winter outings. Percy and a few others attempted to keep up with him on these forced marches, but my rheumatical gout and Egyptian scarab would not allow me to take part. So I ate, drank brandy, wine, and whiskey, smoked the Inimitable’s rather disappointing cigars, increased my laudanum intake to make up for melancholy, read the books that Dickens and Georgina always set especially for their guests in each guest room (De Quincey’s
Confessions of an English Opium Eater
had been left un-subtly on my night table, but I had already read it and, indeed, had grown up knowing De Quincey), and generally lazed away the days before New Year’s Eve, for which I had planned a dinner party at Gloucester Place for the Lehmanns and Charley and Kate and Frank Beard and a few others.

But my week at Gad’s Hill was not totally wasted.

Charles Fechter did not have a complete Swiss chalet hidden in his pocket this particular Christmas, but he had brought a rough scenario for the play called
Black and White
that he had first proposed, in the most general outlines, some months earlier.

Fechter could be a tiring and tiresome friend; he was always in the middle of some sort of pecuniary disaster and his ability to handle (or retain) money approached that of a particularly careless four-year-old. Still, his story idea about an octoroon French nobleman who contrives to get himself on a Jamaican auction block to be sold as a slave seemed to me to have great potential. Perhaps more to the point, if I were to write the play based on his outline, Fechter promised to help me avoid the problems in theatrical pacing, economy of plot, conciseness in dialogue, et cetera from which—according to Dickens and my right-eye scarab—
No Thoroughfare
had suffered.

Fechter was as good as his word on this promise and would be, for the next two months, quite literally at my elbow more often than not as I worked on
Black and White
—the actor excising, condensing, making dialogue more precise and “alive,” fixing awkward entrances and exits, pointing out missed opportunities for exciting stage moments. We began our joint (and not unenjoyable) labours on
Black and White
over Dickens’s brandy and cigars in our host’s library on those days around Christmas 1868.

And then the visit ended and we all temporarily went back to our respective efforts—Dickens to killing Nancy, Fechter to scrounging for parts and plays worthy of what he considered his great talent, and me back to the great, empty pile that was Number 90 Gloucester Place.

My brother, Charley, came to my New Year’s Eve dinner party despite his worsening stomach condition. To cheer everyone up, I treated Beard, the Lehmanns, and Charley and Kate (who had been chipper but formal in my company since my unfortunate visit to her on 29 October) to a pantomime at the newly reopened Gaiety Theatre just before the dinner party proper.

My New Year’s Eve dinner party should have been a success: I had helped Nina Lehmann find a new cook, and this person had been on loan to prepare a fine French meal for us; I had supplied plenty of champagne and wine and gin; the pantomime had put us in a generally relaxed mood.

But the long night of forced amusement was a dismal failure. It was as if each of us had somehow suddenly become capable of peeking through the veil of time to see all the bad things that would happen to us in the year to come. And our obviously strained attempts at revelry were not aided by my servants George and Besse’s equally obvious eagerness to finish their duties and be away in the morning to Besse’s parents’ respective Welsh deathbeds. (Their daughter, Agnes, was upstairs in bed with a vicious case of croup, so did not add her usual plodding clumsiness to the evening’s service.)

So thus it was I awoke with a roaring headache on New Year’s Day noon, rang for George to bring me tea and draw a hot bath for me, and then—when no one came—remembered with a curse that the three had already left for Wales. Why had I let them go when I needed their services?

Plodding around the cold house in my robe, I found all vestiges of last night’s party tidied up, everything cleaned and put away, the teakettle ready to be put on to boil, and an assortment of breakfast choices ready for me on the kitchen counter. I moaned and made only the tea.

The fireplaces had all been set but not lighted, and I had to fumble with forgotten flues before I had flames going in the parlour, study, bedroom, and kitchen. The sunlight and unusually warm weather that had made the entire Christmas week seem so strange had fled as the new year came in—it was grey, windy, and sleeting outside when I finally parted the drapes to peer out.

After finishing my mid-day breakfast, I considered my options. I had told George and Besse that I would probably spend the week at my club, but a query at the Athenaeum two days earlier had informed me that there were no rooms to let to members until the sixth or seventh of the month.

I could always return to Gad’s Hill Place, but Dickens was performing his murder before the unsuspecting public for the first time at St James’s Hall on Tuesday, 5 January, and then resuming his tour to Ireland and beyond—this abominable New Year’s Day I was suffering through was a Friday—and I knew his household would be in a buzz of preparation and rehearsal until then. I had
Black and White
to write, Fechter was in London right then, and the distraction and isolation of Gad’s Hill were the last things I needed.

But I needed servants, food prepared, and the company of women.

Still brooding about this, I wandered the empty house, finally looking into the study.

The Other Wilkie was there in one of the two leather chairs by the fire. Waiting for me. Just as I had expected him to be.

I left the study doors open, since there was no one else in the house that day, and took the other chair. The Other Wilkie rarely spoke to me anymore, but he did listen well and sometimes he nodded. Other times he might shake his head or give me a bland, noncommittal look that I knew from Caroline’s comments about my own expressions meant disagreement.

Sighing, I began telling him about my plans to kill Charles Dickens.

I had been going on in a normal voice for ten minutes or so and had just gotten to the part about Mr Dradles finding the empty space between the walls of the crypt under Rochester Cathedral and the efficacy of the lime pit on the puppy’s carcass when I saw the Other Wilkie’s opiate gaze shift up and focus on something over my shoulder. I quickly turned in my chair.

Agnes, George and Besse’s daughter, was standing there in her robe and nightgown and tattered slippers. Her round, flat, homely face was so pale that even her lips were white. Her gaze moved between the Other Wilkie and me, then back and forth again. Her small hands with their bitten nails were raised like a puppy’s paws. I had no doubt whatsoever that she had been there for a while and had heard every word I’d said.

Before I could speak, she turned and ran to the stairs, and I heard the slap of her slippers on wood continue on towards her room on the third floor.

Panicked, I looked back at the Other Wilkie. He shook his head more in sadness than in alarm. His expression alone told me what I had to do.

E
XCEPT FOR THE FIREPLACES
, the house was now dark. Outside, the Christmas week that had been so warm was ending on a New Year’s Day night ice storm. I kept rapping on Agnes’s door.

“Agnes, please come out. I need to speak with you.”

No response but sobbing. The door was locked. Candles were lit in her room, and from the shape of the shadows glimpsed in the crack under the door, she had pushed some heavy bureau or washstand up against that door.

“Come out, Agnes, please. I didn’t know you were here, in the house. Come out and talk to me.”

More sobbing. Then—“I’m sorry, Mr Collins… I ain’t dressed. I ain’t well. I didn’t mean to do nothing wrong. I ain’t well.”

“Very well, then,” I said calmly. “I’ll speak to you in the morning.”

I went back down to the dark parlour, lighted some candles, and found the note I’d missed earlier in the day. It was from George and had been left on the mantel:

Mr Collins, Sir:

Our daughter Agnes is sick. She was coming with Besse and me to Wales but we did think better of it early this Morning, as the Poor Child has Fever. It would Not Do, we think, to bring High Fever to two Death Beds.

So with your permission, Sir, we leave Agnes behind under your Care and Protection until next Tuesday, when I (George) hope to Return to Your Service, no matter what the Disposition of Besse’s parents’ Fates be.

She can cook for you, Sir. (Agnes) After a fashion. And though that will not be up to Your Standards, she will keep the place Clean if you choose not to spend all the time at Your Club. At the very least, Mr Collins, she will let the Burglars, as she Recuperates and carries out her Humble Duties, know that the House is not Empty in your Absence.

Yours O’bdtly,
George

How had I not noticed the paper hours earlier when I had wrestled with the flue and lit the fire? I started to throw the note into the fire but then thought better of it. Careful not to wrinkle it, I set it back on the mantel where I had found it. What to do?

Too late for that now. I needed to deal with this first thing tomorrow. And for that I needed money.

I
WOKE AT
dawn on Saturday, the next morning, and thought about the situation. As the grey light grew stronger in the room—I’d left the heavy drapes pulled back the night before for just that purpose—I noticed that there was a tidy stack of the Other Wilkie’s notes on the straight-backed chair near the door. I hadn’t noticed them the day before, but they had probably been written that night, since Frank Beard had been kind enough, in the early morning hours after our New Year’s Eve dinner party, to inject my morphine before he’d left. Most of my Droodish dreaming and dictation occurred while under the influence of morphia.

There was no immediate urgency. I kept telling myself this. Whatever the dull-witted girl had overheard was safe within these walls until her parents returned—or at least until George came back.

It fascinated me, as I lay there in the big bed with the light coming up, how little attention I had paid to Agnes’s presence over the years. At first she had simply been the extra little mouth to feed (but not to pay)—a side condition to my hiring of George and Besse, who were themselves a compromise as servants: never terribly efficient, but always very cheap. With the money I had saved with George and Besse’s wee salary over the years, I had always been able to hire a fine cook when necessary. Actually, the rent I received from the stables behind the big house there at Number 90 Gloucester Place paid for Agnes’s parents’ salaries with a good bit left over.

Agnes—with her chewed fingernails, flat, round face, constant clumsiness, and slight stammer—had been so familiar a part of the background here (and at Melcombe Place before this) that I simply thought of her as part of the furniture. For years she had also existed for me less as a servant than as a counterpoint to Carrie’s intelligence and good looks, although the girls had played together when they were younger. (Agnes had been too dull and unimaginative a playmate to hold Carrie’s interest once both girls were out of their nursery years.)

But what to do now that the girl had seen the Other Wilkie and overheard me describing my plans to murder Dickens?

I needed money, that was certain. The sum of £300 came to mind. Lying there visible and tangible in bills and gold coins, it would be a staggering fortune to the simple-minded girl, but not so much as to seem abstract to her; £300 seemed about right for what I was to propose.

But where to get it?

I’d spent the last of my cash and written too many personal cheques over the past few days, obtaining tickets for the pantomime, purchasing gin and champagne for the party, and paying Nina Lehmann’s new cook for the feast. The banks were closed until Monday, and although I knew the manager of my bank, it simply would not do for me to show up at the door of his home on a weekend, asking to cash a personal cheque for £300.

Dickens would loan that amount to me, of course, but it would take half the day for me to get to Gad’s Hill Place and back. I did not want to leave Agnes alone here for that length of time. She had no one with whom to speak with her parents and Carrie gone, but there was no guarantee that she would not write and post a letter in the time I was absent. That would be disastrous.

And I also did not want to raise Dickens’s curiosity as to why I needed £300 that weekend.

The same applied to other people in London who might have loaned me that amount of cash on a moment’s notice—Fred or Nina Lehmann, Percy Fitzgerald, Frank Beard, William Holman Hunt. None would let me down, but all would
wonder
. Fechter would never ask me
why
I needed that particular sum and would never worry about where it went or if he would ever get it back, but Fechter was—as always—broke himself. Indeed, I had made so many personal loans to him in the past year and poured so much of my own money into “theatrical expenses” (as yet unrecouped), first for
No Thoroughfare
and now, already, for
Black and White
(even though the writing for it had just begun), that I was in some financial difficulty myself as the new year began.