Dan Simmons - Drood

“Mrs Wells said that she was well—no, not well, hurting, coughing some, but well enough to eat with an appetite and enjoy her tea of an afternoon and to be read to and to chat with Mrs Wells—yesterday evening,” managed Charley. “And this morning… I came from London to surprise her… and discovered this. ”

“This is oft the case with the old waiting and willing and wanting to depart this world,” muttered Dr Eichenbach. “No warning. No warning.”

As Eichenbach, who was more deaf than not, was chatting in the corner with Mrs Wells, I whispered urgently to Charley, “I want my doctor to see her. Frank Beard will come at once.”

“I have been trying to get in touch with her most recent physician, Dr Ramseys,” Charley said softly.

“What was that?” called Dr Eichenbach from his corner near the fire. “You’re calling Dr… who?”

“Ramseys,” said Charley with a sigh. “Evidently a new local physician who took it upon himself to call on Mother in the past few weeks. I am quite sure that Mother had no reason to go to him… that is, to go outside your circle of excellent advice and care.”

Eichenbach was frowning. “Dr Ramsey?”

“Ram seys, ” said Charley with the loud over-articulation so preferred by the frustrated speaking to the near-deaf.

Eichenbach shook his head. “No Ramsey or Ramseys practising around Tunbridge Wells,” he said. “Nor in London, as far as I know, except for old Charles Bierbont Ramsey, and his practice now is restricted to Lord Leighton’s family. Besides, his speciality is venereal diseases—it’s all he’s interested in—and I hardly doubt that Mrs Collins called him out here for that sort of consultation. And what kind of name is Ram seys? He sounds like a committee.”

Charley sighed again. “I believe that Dr Ramseys was visiting family in Tunbridge Wells when he heard of Mother’s illness. Isn’t that right, Mrs Wells?”

The old woman looked flustered and her gnarled hands flapped again from her shawl. “Truly, I do not know, Master Charles. I only heard about Dr Ramseys from your dear, dear mother. I never spoke to him.”

“But you saw him?” I asked. The scarab stirred in my skull at the same instant a cold hand closed around my heart.

“Only once,” said the sincere old woman. “And from a distance. He was leaving one afternoon last week while I came down the path across the meadow.”

“What did he look like?” I asked.

“Oh… I certainly could not say, Master Wilkie. I just glimpsed a tall, thin man walking away from me down the lane. He dressed very formally but rather—I should be one to speak! — rather in an old-fashioned manner, as the young people would say. He wore a black cut-away and had a top hat on of the older sort, if you understand what I mean.”

“I am not certain I follow your meaning, Mrs Wells,” I said in what I hoped was a steady voice. “How was the top hat old-fashioned?”

“Oh, you know what I mean, Master Wilkie. The sort with a slightly wider brim, a lower crown—more of the kind of riding hat one saw on gentlemen when I was a girl. And quite obviously made of beaver, not silk.”

“Thank you, Mrs Wells,” said Charley.

“Oh… and his veil, of course,” added Mrs Wells. “Even from a distance, I could see the veil. Your mother mentioned it later.”

“Actually, she did not mention it to me,” said Charles. “Why was Dr Ramseys wearing a veil?”

“Because of the burns, of course. Terrible burns, said Harriet… that is, Mrs Collins. Your dear mother. Dr Ramseys did not want to frighten people on the street.”

I turned my head and closed my eyes for a minute. When I opened them, I could see only Mother’s straining face and the gaping, moistureless mouth in which her dry tongue lolled like a misplaced bit of rope. Her bulging white eyes looked like two eggs pressed beneath human eyelids by some terrible exertion of force.

“Mrs Wells,” Charley said softly, “would you be so kind as to go fetch the neighbour boy who sometimes runs errands for Mother? We need to send a telegram to Dr Frank Beard in London. Wilkie shall write it out here and the boy will carrry it.”

“This late, Master Charles? The telegraph office will close in less than an hour.”

“Then we need to hurry, don’t we, Mrs Wells? Thank you for your help. Mother would thank you if she could.”

CAROLINE AND I had parted with harsh words.

Inexplicably, unbelievably, she had asked questions, demanded answers, and created obstacles to my going out the door even after I had shown her the telegram from my brother.

“Where were you last night?” she persisted. “Where did you get those terrible clothes that Agnes burned? What was that awful smell on them? When will you be back from Tunbridge Wells? What shall we do about the dinner party this evening? The theatre tickets? Everyone was counting on…”

“First, take down and throw away these damned garlands,” I snarled. “And have your dinner party. Go to the theatre with all my male friends. It certainly won’t be the first time you’ve entertained and been entertained at my expense when I could not be a part of it.”

“What does that mean, Wilkie? Do you not want me to honour our dinner obligations with your friends? Do you not want me to use those tickets to your play, after you have promised a dozen people that they would see it tonight from the author’s box? What would you have me do?”

“I would have you,” I growled, “go to the Devil.”

Caroline froze in place.

“My mother is dying,” I said flatly and harshly and finally. “And as far as the question of with whom you choose to dine and go to the theatre, you can go with the Devil as far as I am concerned.” I turned the full rage of my countenance on her. “Or with your plumber.”

Still frozen, Caroline G — blushed from her hairline to her bodice. “What… do you mean, Wilkie?”

I threw open the door to the fog and cold and laughed in her face. “You know d— ned well what I mean, my dearest. I mean Mr Joseph Charles Clow, son of the distiller on Avenue Road, one plumber by trade, seducer—or seducee—by avocation. The same Mr Clow whom you secretly fed at my table and with whom you’ve clandestinely met five times since Christmas Day.”

And I went out and slammed the door in her flushed and terrified face.

TUNBRIDGE WELLS HAD BEEN EERILY SILENT and snow covered and filled with disturbingly white, thick fog when Charley arrived in a sleigh to pick me up at the station that afternoon, and it was even more oppressively silent and foggy at ten o’clock that night when a heavily bundled Frank Beard materialised out of the freezing mist from the same sleigh, handled yet again by the always-ill but seemingly indefatigable Charley. I had stayed with Mother and the sleeping Mrs Wells as my brother went to pick up our friend and physician. Dr Eichenbach had long since gone home.

Frank Beard clasped my hand a moment in silent commiseration and proceeded to examine Mother while Charley and I waited in the other room. The fireplace had burned low and we decided not to light other candles or lamps. Mrs Wells slept on the divan in the far corner. Charley and I spoke in whispers.

“She wasn’t like this last week when you saw her last?” I asked.

Charley shook his head. “She complained of aches and pains and her breathing problems.… You know how she goes on, Wilkie… went on… but no, there was no hint of this terrible… whatever it is.”

Beard came out after a while and we woke Mrs Wells for what he had to say.

“Harriet appears to have had a very serious brain haemorrhage,” he said softly. “As you can see, she has lost her ability to speak, her control of voluntary muscles, and—quite possibly—her reason. Her heart also sounds compromised. Physically, she otherwise seems…”