Dan Simmons - Drood

I raised my eyebrows slightly, smoked, and waited. I expected some new fabulation, so Dickens’s actual words were a surprise.

“You remember the personage I have referred to as Drood,” said Dickens.

“Of course,” I said. “How could I forget either your telling of the creature’s purported story or our expedition two summers ago into the tunnels under the city?”

“Indeed,” Dickens said drily. “I think that you do not believe me when I speak of Drood, my dear Wilkie.…” He waved away my hurried objections. “No, now listen a moment, my friend. Please.

“There are many things I have not told you, Wilkie… many things I could not tell you… many things you would not have believed if I had told you. But the existence of Drood is real enough, as you almost discovered in Birmingham.”

Again I opened my mouth, but found I could not speak. What did he mean? I had long since convinced myself that my waking nightmare-vision during Dickens’s reading more than a year earlier in Birmingham had been a laudanum-dream brought on by the terrible confrontation with the thugs in the alley in that same city. The blood I had later found on my shirt collar and cravat had, of course, come from a reopening of the slight wound inflicted when one of the thugs had laid his knife to my neck that very afternoon.

But how could Dickens know about my drug-induced dream? I had told no one, not even Caroline or Martha.

Before I could formulate a question, Dickens was speaking again.

“Instead of wondering about the reality or non-reality of Drood, my dear Wilkie, have you ever wondered about your friend Inspector Field’s true motivations in his obsession with capturing or killing the man?”

I blushed at the “your friend Inspector Field.” I always assumed that Dickens knew little or nothing about my continued contact with the ageing detective—how could he know? — but I was often surprised by what Dickens actually seemed to know or had somehow managed to surmise.

Then again, if Drood were real—which I was not for a second ready to concede—it was possible that Dickens came by his information through that phantom and his agents, much as I was now doing through Inspector Field and his agents.

Not for the first time in the past two years, I felt like a pawn in some terrible chess game being played in the dark of night.

“You’ve told me your thoughts about Inspector Field’s so-called obsession,” I said. “You said that he thought such a coup would result in his pension being reinstated.”

“That hardly seems adequate motive for the inspector’s recent draconian… one might say desperate … measures, does it?” asked Dickens.

I thought about that. Or at least I frowned, squinted, and projected an image of thinking. In truth, I was most aware at that moment of the rheumatical gout gathering in a sphere of spreading pain behind my right eye, creeping around behind my right ear, embedding tendrils of itself deeper into my skull with each passing moment. “No,” I said at last. “I guess it does not.”

“I know Field,” said Dickens. The fire crackled and coal embers collapsed in upon themselves. The study suddenly felt appallingly warm. “I’ve known Field for almost two decades, Wilkie, and his ambition surpasseth all understanding.”

You are speaking of yourself, I thought, but said nothing.

“Inspector Charles Frederick Field wants to be Chief of Detectives again,” said Dickens. “He fully plans on being head of Scotland Yard Detective Bureau.”

I laughed despite my growing pain. “Surely this cannot be the case, Charles. The man is ancient… in his mid-sixties.”

Dickens scowled at me. “We have admirals in the Royal Navy in their eighties, Wilkie. No, it’s not Field’s age that is laughable, nor even his ambition. Merely his means of reaching his goal.”

“But,” I said quickly, realising that I had offended Dickens with talk of old age, “you yourself told me that Inspector Field was out of favour with all of the Metropolitan Police for irregularities he committed as a private enquiries man. They denied him his pension, for heaven’s sake! Certainly he could never reclaim his former position in the newer, larger, more modern London police force!”

“He might, my dear Wilkie. He might… if he were to bring to justice the purported mastermind of a nest of murderers whose crimes ran to the hundreds of victims. Field learned years ago how to use the city newspapers and he would certainly do so now.”

“So you agree with the inspector, Charles, that Drood is a murderer and a mastermind of other murderers?”

“I agree with nothing that Inspector Field has said or imagined,” said Dickens. “I am trying to explain something to you. Tell me, my dear Wilkie, do you enjoy Plato’s Socrates?”

I blinked through my growing headache at this dizzying change of subject. Charles Dickens was, as everyone knew, a self-educated man and somewhat sensitive about the fact, despite his rigorous attempts at self-education throughout his lifetime. I had never heard him bring up Plato or Socrates before and could not guess at any connection these philosophers might have to the topics of our conversation.

“Plato?” I said. “Socrates? Yes, of course. Marvellous.”

“Then you will forgive me if I put to you a few Socratic questions in our mutual quest of discovering and bringing out an innate—but perhaps not obvious—truth.”

I nodded.

“Assuming that the man we are referring to as Drood is more than an hallucination or cynically created illusion,” Dickens said softly, setting down his brandy glass and steepling his fingers, “have you wondered, my dear Wilkie, why I have continued seeing him over the past two years?”

“I had no idea you had continued seeing him, Charles,” I lied.

Dickens smiled sceptically at me from behind the pyramid of his long fingers.

“But if you had continued his acquaintance… for argument’s sake,” I went on, “then I would assume your earlier explanation to me would be the reason.”

“Learning the finer and higher arts of mesmerism,” said Dickens.

“Yes,” I said. “And details of his ancient religion.”

“All worthy goals,” said Dickens, “but do you think such minor curiosity would justify the very real risks one would have to take? The hounding by Inspector Field’s zealous agents? The repeated descents into Undertown? The mere proximity to a madman who—according to our esteemed inspector—has killed hundreds?”

I had no idea what Dickens was asking me now. After a laudanum-fuzzy moment of what I hoped was taken as deep contemplation, I said, “No… no, I think not.”

“Of course not,” said Dickens. He was using his schoolmaster voice. “Have you ever considered, my dear Wilkie, that I might be defending London from the monster’s wrath?”

“Defending?” I repeated. The rheumatical gout had now encircled my head and enveloped both eyes and my cranium with pain.

“You have read my books, my friend. You have heard me speak. You have visited the homes for the poor and for the lost women that I have helped start and have funded. You know my views on social issues.”

“Yes,” I said. “Yes, of course, Charles.”

“Then do you have any idea of the anger seething and fomenting there in Undertown?”

“Anger?” I said. “Drood’s anger, you mean?”

“I mean the anger of the thousands, perhaps tens of thousands, of men, women, and children driven into those subterranean vaults, sewers, basements, and slums,” said Dickens, his voice rising to the point that Caroline might have heard it from downstairs. “I mean, my dear Wilkie, the anger of those thousands in London who cannot eke out a daily living even in the worst slums of the surface and who are driven down into the darkness and stench like rats. Like rats, Wilkie.”