Dan Simmons - Drood

I accurately guessed his prediction of the play’s wild success there to be wishful thinking and his stated plans to stay for two more weeks a simple lie. Scarab or no scarab, I knew that Drood would draw Dickens back to London for the 9 June anniversary of the Staplehurst accident. Of this I had no doubt whatsoever.

Accordingly, I activated my own modest network of spies. To Fechter in Paris I sent a confidential letter asking if he would telegraph me the instant Charles left the city to return home. Explaining that I was considering a small but pleasant surprise for the Inimitable that required me to know his return time, I requested that Fechter keep the telegram a secret between us. (Since the actor now owed me more than £1,500, I felt certain he would honour my request.) Next, I asked a similar confidential favour of my brother, Charley, who, with Katey, was spending several weeks at Gad’s Hill recovering from a bout of moderately severe stomach pains. (Charley and Katey did employ one servant, but she was undependable and a poor cook. The amenities at Gad’s Hill Place were infinitely more suitable to a convalescent than the younger couple’s cramped and overheated home in London.) For Charley’s place in my espionage net, I simply asked him to send me a private note letting me know when Dickens arrived home at Gad’s Hill and another when he departed for London, which I was sure he would do soon after arrival.

And I also knew that London, per se, would not be the Inimitable’s actual destination after touching briefly at Gad’s Hill Place upon his return from France. Dickens would again be going to Peckham to see Ellen Ternan. It was from Peckham, I was sure, that Dickens would come back to the city to meet with Drood on the Anniversary.

I also did my own small bit of spying. An older female cousin of mine—more of my mother’s generation than my own—lived in Peckham, and after years of being out of contact with the old maid, I visited her twice in May. The ostensible reason was to console her after Mother’s passing, but in truth I spent time during each trip to Peckham walking or taking a cab past the Ternans’ home—paid for by Dickens under the assumed name of “Charles Tringham,” you may remember—at 16 Linden Grove. I also took time to stroll by the dark apartment Dickens kept—secretly—near the Five Bells Inn at New Cross, only about a twenty-minute walk (at Dickens’s pace) from 16 Linden Grove.

The two-storey home that the author had provided for Ellen and her mother could have comfortably housed a well-to-do family of five with the appropriate number of attendant servants. The house—it was more small manor than cottage—was surrounded by a well-tended garden which, in turn, was surrounded by empty fields, giving the suburban home an almost resplendent country feel. It was evident that the reward for being an intimate but secret friend of the world’s most famous author was substantial. It occurred to me that Martha R— might not be so pleased with her small rooms on Bolsover Street should she ever see the home provided for Ellen Ternan and her mother.

Both times I visited my cousin in Peckham, I traced the shortest distance from the Ternans’ house to Peckham’s railway station.

My final guess was that Dickens would be leaving Paris a day or two after the premiere of his play.

I was wrong only on that final guess. As it turned out, both Dickens and Fechter were half-mad with tension on the evening of the June 2 premiere of L’Abîme and although Dickens attempted to enter the theatre, he found he could not do it. So rather than attend the performance, the writer and the actor clopped through the streets of Paris in an open cab all evening, returning frequently to a café near the theatre where Didier, the translator, would emerge between acts to inform the two nervous men that—so far—the play was a riotous success.

During the last act, Dickens tried to enter the theatre again—lost his nerve again—and ordered the cab to take him to the station so that he could catch the late train to Boulogne. At the station, Fechter and Dickens hugged farewell, congratulated each other on their success, and then the actor returned alone to his hotel, stopping only to send the telegram I had requested of him.

The next day, Wednesday, the third of June, Dickens was home at Gad’s Hill Place and my brother sent me a note that the author would be leaving the following morning, “for London.” I’d left my servant George at the Peckham station with instructions to follow Dickens (whom he knew from the writer’s many visits to my home) at a discreet distance (I had to explain the meaning of “discreet” to George). Should the Inimitable notice George, I’d prepared a note to my cousin that my employee was delivering as an explanation for my none-too-bright man’s presence on that street, but as it turned out, Dickens was oblivious to being followed the short distance. As per his instructions, George confirmed that Dickens entered the Ternans’ home, waited two hours in the vicinity (discreetly, one hoped) to confirm that the author did not go on to his own lodgings near Five Bells Inn, and then George took the train into town and came straight home to report.

None of these machinations would have been possible, of course, if Caroline G— had still lived with me at Number 90 Gloucester Place. But she did not. And her daughter, Carrie, was gone most days and many evenings in her employment as governess.

But if I were to intercept Dickens on his way to meet Drood—and this was one annual rendezvous with the Egyptian that I was not going to miss—then I had to do the final detective guesswork on my own. (Here was when I most wished that I once again had the aid of Inspector Field and his many agents.) Dickens had returned to Gad’s Hill Place late on Wednesday, 3 June, had travelled to Peckham to visit Ellen on Thursday the fourth, and presumably would not be meeting with Drood until the following Tuesday, the ninth.

Or would he follow his usual summer schedule and come into town on Monday and stay in his Wellington Street flat above the magazine office through Thursday?

Dickens was a creature of habit, so that would suggest he would come to town on Monday morning, the eighth. But in this case he had written me earlier from France to tell me that he would, in all likelihood, be staying in Paris until at least the following week, so this made it much more likely that he planned to stay with Ellen Ternan until Tuesday, 9 June, while letting none of us—Wills, Dolby, anyone—know that he was back in the country or city.

Finding Dickens at Charing Cross Station would be difficult. Doing so in a way that made it look as though I had come across him by accident would be even more difficult. The crowds, even on a Tuesday evening, would be large, the confusion general. I needed to lure Dickens away to dinner for the conversation I envisioned. During that long conversation, I would talk him into taking me with him when he met with Drood later that night. To convince him to join me for dinner for that long conversation would require me to run into him earlier, either at Peckham Station or on the train itself.

But then again, Dickens might not be leaving from Peckham if he was not staying with the Ternans but was coming in from his place near Five Bells Inn. The closest station there was New Cross. I had to take a risk on this and choose Peckham or New Cross… or go to the safer alternative of Charing Cross.

I decided it would be Peckham Station.

But when on 9 June would Dickens be travelling into town?

For the first two anniversaries of Staplehurst, Dickens had escaped Field’s agents and apparently met with Drood late at night. It had been after midnight that I saw him in my study, talking to Drood and the Other Wilkie.