Dan Simmons - Drood

It was one such afternoon in mid-April, precisely two months to the day since Mother had died, that Caroline entered my study behind me.

I had paused in my writing and—pen still in my hand—was staring out the wide windows at the street. I confess that I was wondering how I might get in contact with Inspector Field. Though I remained certain that Field’s operatives must be watching me, I had never seen one, despite my cleverest efforts to catch one out. I wanted to know what was happening with Drood. Had Field and his hundred-plus vigilantes burned the Egyptian murderer out, shot him down like a dog in the sewer the way Barris had shot the Wild Boy in front of me? And what of Barris? Had Inspector Field disciplined the blackguard for pistol-whipping me?

But it had occurred to me just the day before that I had no idea where Inspector Field’s offices might be situated. I remembered that the first time he had visited me at 9 Melcombe Place, the inspector had sent up a card—certainly his business address would be on it—but after rummaging through my desk and finally finding it, the card read only:

INSPECTOR CHARLES FREDERICK FIELD

Private Enquiry Bureau

Besides wanting to know what had happened in Undertown, I also wished to engage the inspector and his operatives on some work of my own: I wished to know when and where Caroline was meeting the plumber Joseph Charles Clow (for I had no doubt they were meeting secretly).

It was with these thoughts in my mind and my gaze turned to the street that I heard Caroline clearing her throat behind me. I did not turn.

“Wilkie, my dear, there is something I have been waiting to discuss with you. It has been a month now since your dear mother passed on.”

This required no comment and I gave none. Outside, a junk waggon rumbled by. The old nag’s flanks were covered with scabs, and even now the grizzled driver laid the whip on. Why, I wondered, would a rag-and-bone waggon have to hurry anywhere?

“Lizzie is reaching that age where she is ready to be introduced to society,” continued Caroline. “Ready to find a gentleman to be her husband.”

I’d noted over the years that whenever Caroline wished to talk about her daughter—Elizabeth Harriet G— as her daughter, she was “Lizzie.” When she talked about her as our shared concern, she was “Carrie”—the name the girl actually preferred.

“It will be so much easier for Lizzie, in terms of matrimonial prospects and social acceptance, if she comes from an established and stable family,” Caroline went on. I still had not turned towards her.

On the sidewalk across the street, a young man in a suit too light in colour and thinness of wool for the fickle spring season, paused, looked over at our house, checked his watch, and moved on. It was not Joseph Clow. Could it have been one of Inspector Field’s agents? I doubted if any of the inspector’s men would be so brazen, especially since I was quite visible sitting in the ground floor bow windows.

“She should bear the name of her father,” said Caroline.

“She does bear the name of her father,” I said tonelessly. “Your husband gave her that even if he granted neither of you anything else.”

I’ve mentioned to you, Dear Reader, that Caroline was indeed my inspiration for The Woman in White . When, in the summer of 1854, my brother, Charley, and my friend John Millais came upon this apparition in white robes rushing from the garden of a North London villa in the moonlight—it was Caroline, of course, fleeing from her brute of a husband, who had, she told me at the time, been keeping her prisoner by mesmeric means—I, alone of the three of us men, had pursued her. And I had believed her about her drunken thug of a wealthy husband, a certain George Robert G—, and about how her life with one-year-old Carrie had been one of imprisonment and mental torture.

Some years later, Caroline had informed me that George Robert G— had died. How she received this information I did not know nor ask (even while recognising how improbable it was that she had received it at all, since she had been living in my home all those years since the night she’d fled weeping across Charlton Street in the moonlight). But I accepted the news as fact and never asked her about it. For all these years, we had both pretended that she was Mrs Elizabeth G—— I had given her the name Caroline when she had come under my care—who had been victimised by her husband with both mesmerism and a fireplace poker.

The probable truth, I had thought at the time—and had no reason to change my mind about the matter now fourteen years later—was that Caroline had been fleeing from a pimp or client turned violent that summer night in 1854.

“You see the advantages to Carrie over the next few years if our girl can say and show that she is from an established family,” Caroline went on, speaking to my back. Her voice had a slight quaver to it now.

The “our girl” made me angry. I had always treated Carrie with the same love and generosity as if she had been my daughter. But she was not. She never would be. This was a sort of blackmail going on, a strategy I had reason to believe that Caroline had known well in the time before I rescued her, and I would have none of it.

“Wilkie, my dearest, you must admit that I have always been understanding when you have told me that your frail and aged mother was the absolute encumbrance to you marrying.”

“Yes,” I said.

“But with Harriet’s passing, you are free now?”

“Yes.”

“Free to marry if you like?”

“Yes.” I kept my face turned to the window and the street.

She waited for me to say something else. I did not. After a long moment in which I could clearly hear every swing of the pendulum in the tall clock in the hallway beyond, Caroline turned and left my study.

But I knew this was not the end of the conversation. She had another and final card to play—one she thought foolproof. And I knew she would play it soon. What she did not know was that I had a full hand of cards to play myself. And more up my sleeve.

SCRABBLINGS. THERE ARE scrabblings.”

“What?”

I had been wakened much earlier than usual—a check of my watch showed it to be not yet nine o’clock—and I was alarmed by the phalanx of faces hovering over me: Caroline, Carrie, my servant George, George’s wife, Besse, who acted as our parlourmaid.

“What?” I said again, sitting up in bed. This invasion of my bedchamber before breakfast was intolerable.

“There are scrabbling sounds,” repeated Caroline.

“What are you talking about? Where?”

“In h’our stairs, sir,” said George, his face red with embarrassment at being brought into my bedroom. This was obviously Caroline’s doing.

“The servants’ staircase?” I said, rubbing my eyes. The previous night had not been a morphine-assisted one, but my head ached anyway. Abominably.

“They’ve been hearing it on every storey of the house,” said Caroline. Her voice was as loud and grating as a Welsh calliope. “Now I’ve heard it as well. It’s as if there’s a great rat in there. Scrabbling up and down.”

“Rat?” I said. “We had the exterminators here last autumn when we did all the work on the house and updated the plumbing .” I put deliberate emphasis on the last word.

Caroline had the good grace to blush, but she did not desist. “There’s something in the servants’ staircase.”

“George,” I said, “haven’t you looked into this?”

“Aye, sir, Mr Collins, I ’ave. I went in, sir, and oop and doon following the noise, sir. But each time I got close, it… I haven’t found it, sir.”

“Do you think it’s rats?”