Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

“IMAGINE IT,” FIELDS SAID, SHAKING HIS BEARD INTO A WILD mess. “Taking up the newspaper this morning with my coffee, I read that this pettifogger lawyer with whom you consulted-Sylvanus Bendall-is dead on the street. His throat is cut ear to ear, his head hanging by a thread! The police are dizzy about it. The public who had our corrupt detective department abolished are calling for them reconvened. The mayor is blaming the railroad tracks for bringing strangers into the city!”

It was early in the morning and Fields was pacing the plush rug of his office, throwing his hands up as he spoke. It was as if he were pointing to the various illustrated portraits and photographs on the walls of the firm's past and present. These were the artists who had brought literature to the masses, who had changed minds about politics and prejudices, who had rebuilt bridges between England and America all through the pages of their novels and poems.

Osgood was sitting quietly in one chair beside another recently vacated by Officer Carlton.

“Bendall was not telling me the whole truth about Daniel Sand's death, Mr. Fields,” replied Osgood, after waiting to see if Fields would say more.

Fields stared at Osgood as though he had never seen him before in his life. “So you think that is why Bendall was killed?” he asked sarcastically. “I very much doubt the reason had to do with Daniel Sand, a seventeen-year-old lad, an ordinary clerk.”

Osgood did not want to overstep the limits of his position. In the requirement of their trade to be decisive, the younger man knew about himself that he could sometimes be too quick to accept an idea heartily before fully understanding it, and other times might disagree too readily. But he could not shake his opinion.

“Bendall was there when Daniel died. The advance sheets of the installments Daniel was to pick up, which we were to use to publish in serial, disappeared, although the driver believed he had seen him holding a bundle.”

“We already know young Sand was in a flight of opium, Osgood. He could have dropped the bundle into a gutter without even knowing it. As for Bendall, a man's throat can be sliced open for nothing more than a watch chain and one gold button! Even in this,” Fields paused theatrically, “the seventieth year of the nineteenth century!”

“What about the fact that Dickens writes of opium users in the very first pages of Drood , and that is how the police say Daniel died. Is it a coincidence?”

“How could it not be? Daniel was an opium eater, and so are many more every day. That is why Dickens turned to write of it in the first place, surely, because of the many who have lost themselves in the clouds of such drugs, here and in England! Dickens has always been conscious of social ills from his earliest novels. Do you think the omnibus driver wanted to stop Daniel from his charge? Hang Daniel Sand-he is not your concern anymore. Nobody expects anything more from you.”

“I know. And yet something is-”

“Osgood, pray consider…”

Osgood would not yield. “ Something is not right about all this, Mr. Fields. The police explanation from the first seemed wanting. I trusted Daniel Sand as I would my own son!”

Fields frowned. “In our calling, our authors are our children, Osgood, and it is our duty and our only duty to protect them. Do you not think I could have imagined having my own children, if Annie were more disposed to it? But what time would I have, and what would be sacrificed?”

Osgood changed his tactic. “If I can devote a little of my time to make inquiries. For his sister Rebecca's sake, if for nothing else.”

“Think about it, Osgood! What if you had been with Sylvanus Bendall when this happened? You could have been left for the dogs and vultures, your head could be in the police station today, too, with that lobster-eyed coroner poking his fingers through your brain. Indulge me: what is the name of this place?”

Osgood assumed a contrite posture. He knew what Fields meant by the question, and even the eyes of the lofty portrait gallery seemed to wait for an answer. From the left, the face of Mr. Longfellow, their first truly national poet, patient and good in his remote gaze. From the right, the eyes of Emerson's strict ministerial countenance, with a hint of a smile in the pupils, knowing and demanding better from the world just like his famed essays. Straight ahead, the glare of manly Tennyson, holding in it private, dreamy confessions of epic verse. Above the standing desk, the eyes looking down from the sad Hawthorne's fantastically intellectual head.

Osgood answered Fields's question dutifully, “Fields, Osgood and Company.”

Fields lit a cigar and convulsively puffed out circles of smoke. “Now look around, my dear Osgood. Stop for a minute and look. We could lose all of this. Everything you see, everything Bill Ticknor and I built up, and that you, my dear old friend, you will be called on to command if our house can but survive this period.”

“You are right,” said Osgood.

“An unfortunate mystery, the human spirit. Why Daniel Sand chose the path he did, we cannot know; why he would leave his poor sister alone. But you must leave him behind. Remember that there are two things in this life that are never worth crying about: what can be cured and what cannot be cured.”

Then Fields paused, before saying, “I know precisely how you shall engage again in what's before you. You will sail for London to address the Dickens problem.”

Osgood was taken by surprise. “But who will take charge of things here if we are both away?”

Fields removed a packet from his desk and handed it to his junior partner while shaking his head. “Not we. I am to stay right where you see me. As for any appointments you have here, I shall entertain them for you.”

“You have been preparing for your trip, Mr. Fields! Gathering letters of introduction, sending word of your arrival…”

“You can use them in my stead, and besides, your honest face is your letter of introduction! To be perfectly candid, Annie has not wanted me to go ever since she heard of it. She wants me the rest of the summer to stay weekends in Manchester-by-the-sea-says it will be wholesome for me. Besides, you know what a dead-gone sailor I am. My last trip to England I won the favor of being the sickest on board-even worse than the cows. Come, no arguing. Remember what our dear Hawthorne used to say: America is a country to boast of, and to get out of!’

Perhaps The Mystery of Edwin Drood had exerted a wild influence over him, making him see spectres of ill doings where there were none. There was no mystery about poor Daniel Sand, no connection between that terrible accident-which all men and women risked stepping out into the busy Boston streets-and the vicious murder of Sylvanus Bendall! There was only sadness and loss in real life, not given boundaries and significance by serial installments.

A CASUAL VISITOR TO Boston could be forgiven for thinking that everyone in the so-called Hub of the Universe spent that afternoon hurriedly preparing for James Osgood's journey across the ocean. There was an avalanche of arrangements to be made by him and on his behalf both for the home front and for his travels. To see Osgood himself hurrying from destination to destination all a-fluster would have shocked those who knew the ever-composed publisher.

In the exclusive neighborhood of Beacon Hill, inside his three-story brick house at 71 Pinckney purchased with his earnings from the Dickens tour, Osgood gave detailed instructions to his help for the maintenance of his quiet abode and its second master, Mr. Puss, his rather self-satisfied and snobby orange and white longhair cat. Mr. Puss, who was usually content to lie among Osgood's books in the carpeted library, was almost startled out of his normal trance by the rush of the servants polishing boots and preparing suits for the publisher's luggage.