Matthew Pearl - The Last Dickens

“To have a decent man express his dedication to me flatters any woman. But I hope you would not believe of me that I would ever pre-tend to be in love with an English citizen in order to free myself from a decree, and trade one prison for another. Do you think if I loved a man, I would allow paper constraints, words in some law book, to stop me, no matter the consequences?” In the passion of her speech, a curl of her raven hair had fallen from her bonnet and clung to her lip.

“Perhaps I,” Osgood said, then paused as though he had lost track of his tongue. “I know after you lost Daniel I thought too much of shielding you.”

Rebecca nodded her thanks for his honesty and held out her arm. “I'm famished, Mr. Osgood. Will you walk me inside?”

She had not told him what their failure meant for her, that her life in Boston, and her time at the firm, would have to come to an end. Osgood, grateful for her reply, took her arm under his, and could feel his heart beating against the soft leather of her gloved hand, believing they had all the time in the world.

INSURANCE INSPECTORS AND WORKMEN WERE MOVING IN AND out of what still remained of the main auditorium of the Surrey Theatre on Blackfriar's Road. What had been London's grandest theater had been reduced to a gloomy shadow of itself in a few short hours. The floor and walls were still smoldering. Tom Branagan entered and crossed through a labyrinthine series of charred and dirt-begrimed halls until he reached the carpenter's room.

“This is where it started?” Tom asked.

“Who's there?” answered a workman, before he saw Tom's blue coat and bright buttons of the police uniform. “Oh, another bobbie? That's how it seems, yes, gov'n'r. We've already had the inspectors around investigating whether it's the work of an incendiary.”

“Did they tell you what they concluded?” Tom asked.

“There's always hazards around the theater-sparks everywhere, fabrics that could ignite with a fiery look at them. The police didn't tell me nothing. Shouldn't you already know, gov'n'r?”

“They don't tell me,” admitted Tom. “It's the constable's duty only to take out exposed property after a fire. To prevent robbery while the debris is cleared away.”

The workman, realizing Tom's lack of authority, turned his back on him.

Digging through the black piles of rubble and old props, Tom found a placard. On it, there was listed the upcoming season of plays.

“ The Mystery of Edwin Drood, ” Tom said. “That is being done at this theater?”

“Aye, was about to open. Not anymore, 'course. Not with the theater burned and Grunwald dead.”

Tom shivered, remembering the name from Forster's complaints. “Grunwald?”

“The actor. They found him trapped in the green room with his young assistant. The manager said he was practicing the new lines in front of the mirror every night this week. Well, good thing the fire was in the middle of the night instead of the middle of a performance, gov'n'r, or we'd all have been roasted alive like them.”

“New lines? Right before it was to open?” Tom asked.

“They had just changed the ending to suit Grunwald. Now who knows when anyone will get to see it! Grunwald-he threatened to quit if they didn't allow him, I mean Edwin Drood, to survive in the end. Finally, the manager agreed, and forced Mr. Stephens, the writer, to give them a new conclusion over the grousing of Mr. Forster. Oh, that Grunwald had been going about telling everyone he knew. Why, that was just a few days ago, though now it seems another life altogether.”

Tom stared at the poster, then at the mass of ruins all around him.

The workman, now that he had become more talkative, seemed reluctant to stop. “That Grunwald, he used to say nobody could understand his position who hasn't walked in the shoes of Edwin Drood, a man who only wanted to belong to a family. He said he was born for the role and would not permit Drood to die. He was a man obsessed, but then he was an actor. Rest his soul.”

“Good God,” Tom said to himself.

“What's that, gov'n'r?” the workman asked, cupping his ear.

Tom dashed out of the carpenter's room past a row of tired firemen.

AT QUEENSTOWN, IN IRELAND, WHERE THE LIVERPOOL-TO-BOSTON-line made port, Osgood was surprised to be brought a lengthy cable by one of the Samaria's stewards. It was addressed from a police station house in London.

“It is from Tom Branagan,” Osgood said, showing it to Rebecca in the ship's library. “Arthur Grunwald was up to his neck in schemes. Look!”

Rebecca read the cable. Tom explained what the theater workman had revealed about Grunwald changing the ending of the play. Moreover, after his visit to the scene of the fire, Tom proceeded to search Grunwald's lodgings, where he found a pile of drafts and revisions of the very letter to “my dearest friend” in Forster's possession about not finishing Drood.

“You had said the day you went to the Dickens auction that Mr. Grunwald was there,” Rebecca said.

Osgood nodded. “It must have been Grunwald who left the letter in one of the boxes at the auction, so when it was found it would seem to have been overlooked in the crates and boxes of Dickens's belongings. He did not want any other ‘discoveries’ to distract from his own ending of Drood. ”

“If that letter you saw was forged… then what we believed before we left London could have been right,” Rebecca exclaimed. “Dickens still may have written the second half first, after all!”

“Yes,” Osgood said excitedly.

“Then Mr. Branagan was right, too. We should have stayed in London to continue our hunt!” Rebecca exclaimed. “We must wait here in Queenstown for the next ship passing through to Liverpool and return at once.”

“Hold, Miss Sand. There may be something else.”

Osgood put aside the cable and picked up the quill pen given to him by Forster. He turned it over in his hand, studying the soft feather and the sharp blue-stained nib. He poked his own fingertip with the sharp point.

“Have you ever been to the Parker House, Miss Sand?”

“I had delivered some papers to Mr. Dickens and Mr. Dolby during their stay,” Rebecca said.

“Do you remember what ink was provided on the writing desks there?” Osgood asked.

Rebecca thought about it. “I took some notes written by Mr. Dickens back to the firm. They were written in iron gall ink, if I recall it.”

“Yes, iron gall, a black purple color,” Osgood said, nodding. “That is what they keep in all the Parker rooms for the guests. Dickens wrote his manuscripts in blue, as we saw of The Mystery of Edwin Drood. And the nib of this pen that he used for the book shows us, it is dried blue accordingly. Miss Hogarth told us that the Chief liked to use the same pen the entire way through the process of writing a novel.”

“Yes,” Rebecca replied, uncertain of Osgood's train of thought.

Knowing he was not yet being clear, Osgood put a hand up for her patience. He took up a magnifying lens from the shelf and lowered it onto the quill pen, squinting as he examined it. Then he stood, sat back down, and moved the moderator lamp to throw the light from a different angle.

“Do you have a knife?” Osgood asked.

“What?”

“A knife,” Osgood repeated.

“No.”

“No, I suppose you wouldn't. Can we find one?”

Rebecca exited the library. A few minutes later, she returned with a small pocketknife secured from the captain.