Dan Simmons - Drood

Inspector Field coughed a laugh. “No chance of that, sir. Where Drood wants to go, he goes . Five hundred of the Metropolitan force’s finest would not have prevented him from meeting with Dickens that night—in your very house, sir, if necessary—if he had wanted to be there. Such is the diabolical nature of the foreign monster. But the final and absolutely convincing factor in deducing that Mr Dickens is no longer of service to Drood is the simple fact that the writer is in North America now.”

“How is that a convincing factor, Inspector?”

“Drood would never have let Mr Dickens go so far if he still had use for him,” said the old detective.

“Fascinating,” I murmured.

“And do you know what that use was, Mr Collins? We have never spoken of it.”

“I had never considered the matter, Inspector,” I said, happy that the frigid air on my exposed cheeks would hide the blush of a liar.

“Drood was considering having Mr Dickens write something for him, sir,” announced Inspector Field in a tone of revelation. “Under coercion, if necessary. I would not be surprised if Drood caused the entire tragedy of the train wreck at Staplehurst precisely to put England’s most famous novelist under his thrall.”

This was nonsense of course. How could even the “foreign monster” of the old detective’s imagination have known that Dickens would not be killed in the terrible plummet of first-class carriages from the incomplete trestle? But all I said was “Fascinating.”

“And can you guess, Mr Collins, what it is that Drood would have had Mr Dickens pen and publish for him?”

“His biography?” I ventured, if only to show the old man that I was not a complete dunce.

“No, sir,” said Inspector Field. “Rather, a compilation of the ancient pagan Egyptian religion with all of its wicked rites and rituals and secrets of magick.”

Now I was surprised. I stopped and Inspector Field stopped next to me. Closed carriages passing had their side lamps lit, even though it was only mid-afternoon. The taller buildings along the river here were mere blue-black shadows with lamps burning in them as well.

“Why would Drood have a novelist write up the details of a dead religion?” I asked.

Inspector Field smiled broadly and tapped his nose again. “It ain’t dead to Drood, Mr Collins. It ain’t dead to Drood’s legion of London Undertown followers, if you take my meaning, sir. You see that, sir?”

I looked towards where the inspector was pointing, northwest along the river’s edge.

“The Adelphi Theatre?” I asked. “Or the site of the old Warren’s Blacking Factory beyond? Or do you mean Scotland Yard itself?”

“I mean all of it, Mr Collins. And more—stretching down to Saint James Palace and back up Piccadilly to Trafalgar Square and beyond, including Charing Cross and Leicester Square back along the Strand to Covent Garden.”

“What of it, Inspector?”

“Imagine a huge glass pyramid there, Mr Collins. Imagine all of London from Billingsgate to Bloomsbury to Regent’s Park being huge glass pyramids and bronze sphinxes.… Imagine it if you can, sir. For Drood certainly does.”

“That’s mad,” I said.

“Aye, Mr Collins, it’s as mad as a hatter’s Sunday, sir,” laughed Inspector Field. “But that’s what Drood and his crypt-crawling worshippers of the old Egyptian gods want, sir. And it’s what they mean to get, if not in this century then the next. Imagine those glass pyramids—and the temples, sir, and the secret rites in those temples, with mesmeric magic and slaves to their mental influence—rising everywhere you look in that direction come the twentieth century.”

“Madness,” I said.

“Yes, sir,” said Inspector Field. “But Drood’s madness makes him no less dangerous. More so, I would say.”

“Well then,” I said as we reached the end of the bridge again, “I am well out of it. Thank you for all your care and protection, Inspector Field.”

The old man nodded but coughed into his hand. “There is one last detail, sir. One unfortunate by-product of the end of our working relationship, as it were.”

“What is that, Inspector?”

“Your… ah… research, sir.”

“I don’t quite understand,” I said, although I understood perfectly well.

“Your research into the Undertown opium dens, sir. Your Thursday trips to King Lazaree’s den, to be precise. I am sorry to tell you that I can no longer offer Detective Hatchery as your personal guide and bodyguard.”

“Ahhh,” I said. “I see. Well, Inspector, think nothing of that. I was ready to terminate that aspect of my research at any rate. You see, what with the play I am putting on and the novel I am more than half done with, I simply do not have time or further need for that research.”

“Really, sir? Well… I admit that I am relieved to hear it. I was worried that Detective Hatchery’s reassignment would be an inconvenience for you.”

“Not at all,” I said. In truth, my weekly public house meetings with Hatchery before my descent to King Lazaree had long since turned into weekly dinings out. At one of these in November, Hatchery—my spy now—had warned me that Inspector Field soon would be relieving him of his duty of being my bodyguard during my weekly outings.

I had been prepared for this and had asked him—quite diplomatically—if he, Hatchery, were free to do detective duties outside Inspector Field’s investigative agency.

He was, he said. Indeed he was. And, in fact, he had made sure that his renewed duties with Inspector Field would not include Thursday nights. “For my daughters, I told him,” said Hatchery to me over our cigars and coffee.

I had offered him a generous sum for continuing his protective duties without telling his superiors. Hatchery had accepted at once and our handshake had sealed the deal, his gigantic hand enveloping mine.

So it was on this mid-December day in 1867 that Inspector Field and I also shook hands and walked in opposite directions on Waterloo Bridge, assuming—at least on my part—that we should never see each other again.

THAT SAME WEEK that I swept Inspector Field out of my life, I honoured another appointment, this time one that I had set, by going to the Cock and Cheshire Cheese in Fleet Street to dine. Deliberately arriving late, I found Joseph Clow already seated and, though dressed in an ill-fitting serge suit, looking decidedly ill at ease in the surroundings that must have been far more refined—and expensive—than those he was used to as a plumber and distiller’s son.

I called the wine steward over and ordered, but before I could say anything to Clow, the thin, furtive little man said, “Sir… Mr Collins… if this is about my staying for dinner that evening in October, I apologise, sir, and can only say that your housekeeper, Mrs G—, had invited me as a reward for my finishing the upstairs plumbing ahead of schedule, sir. If it wasn’t proper for me to do so, and I see now it mightn’t have been, I just want to say that I am very sorry and…”

“No apologies, no apologies,” I interrupted. Setting my hand on his rough-weave sleeve, I set the tone immediately. “I invited you here, Mr Clow… may I call you Joseph?… to apologise to you . I am sure that my look of surprise that night two months ago could have been… must have been… mistaken as one of disapproval, and I hope that my entertaining you to a fine meal here at the Cock and Cheshire Cheese will go some small distance towards making amends for that.”

“No need, sir, no need…” Clow began again, but again I interrupted.

“You see, Mr Clow… Joseph… it is as Mrs G—’s employer of long standing that I speak to you now. Perhaps she told you that she has been in my employ for many years now.”