Dan Simmons - Drood

Dickens broke off. I had nothing to say. A heavy waggon lumbered by out of sight on the highway below, pulled by four large horses by the sounds of it.

“But it is your use of the detective—Sergeant Cuff—that I find close to brilliant,” Dickens said suddenly. “ That is what makes me consider writing my own novel of mystery, preferably with such a keen mind at the centre of it. Cuff is wonderful… his lean build, his cold, penetrating gaze, and his almost mechanically perfect mind. A wonderful invention!”

“Thank you, Charles,” I said softly.

“If only you had used him properly!”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You draw him brilliantly, introduce him brilliantly, and he behaves brilliantly… right up to the place where he wanders off the track, disappears from the narrative for an aeon’s length, makes all the wrong assumptions despite so much evidence to the contrary, and then becomes unavailable, going off to Brighton to raise bees.…”

“To Dorking to breed roses,” I corrected with a strange surge of déjà vu.

“Of course. But the character of Sergeant Cuff—this idea, as I said, to have a private rather than public detective the centre of a novel of mystery—is wonderful. I believe that readers would resonate wonderfully to such a master of deduction, perhaps as lean and commanding as Cuff, eccentric, almost totally unemotional, if his background and character were fleshed out a bit more. I shall enjoy seeing whether I can create such a character for my Mystery of Edmond Dickenson, should I ever get around to writing such a thing.”

“You can bring back your Inspector Bucket from Bleak House, ” I said morosely. “He was most popular. I believe we discussed the fact that there were images of Bucket on tobacco cards.”

“We did. There were,” chuckled Dickens. “He was perhaps the most popular character in the book, and I admit to enjoying his scenes very much. But Inspector Bucket was a man of the world and a man in the world… he lacked the mystery and appeal of your lean, cool, detached Sergeant Cuff. Besides, since the original for Bucket, Inspector Charles Frederick Field, is no longer among the living, I should, by all propriety, consign his copy to the grave as well.”

For what seemed like a long time I could not speak. I had to concentrate on breathing and not showing through my expression the riot of thoughts and emotions that was surging through me. At long last I said, as calmly as I could, “Inspector Field is dead?”

“Oh, yes! Died last winter while I was on tour in America. Georgina noticed it in the Times and clipped the obituary for me, knowing that I should like it in my files.”

“I’ve heard nothing of this,” I said. “Do you happen to remember the date of his death?”

“I do,” said Dickens. “It was nineteen January. Two of my sons—Frank and Henry—were born on fifteen January, you may recall, so I remembered the date for Field’s death.”

“Extraordinary,” I said, although I have no idea whether I was commenting on Dickens’s memory or Inspector Field’s death. “Did the obituary in the Times say how he died?”

“In bed, at home, of ill health, I believe,” said Dickens. The subject of the inspector obviously bored him.

January 19 would have been the day after—or perhaps the night of—our expedition into Undertown. I had been unconscious until 22 January and in no shape to read the newspapers carefully for some time after that. No wonder I had missed the notice. And no wonder I had never come into contact with Field’s men in the months since. Undoubtedly the inspector’s private investigations office had been closed, the agents disbanded and scattered to other work.

Unless Dickens was lying to me.

I remembered my insight the previous year that Dickens, Drood, and Inspector Field were all playing some complicated three-way game, with me caught as pawn in the middle. Could this be a lie as part of some ploy on Dickens’s part?

I doubted it. It would be too easy for me to check with someone I knew at the Times to see if the obituary was real. And if there had been a death in January, there was a grave for poor old Charles Frederick Field somewhere. I could check on that as well. For a mad moment I wondered if this were another ploy by Inspector Field himself—faking his own death so as to be safe from Drood’s minions—but that was too far-fetched even for the events of the past three years. I shook that idea out of my head.

“Are you well, my dear Wilkie? You suddenly look terribly pale.”

“Just this vicious gout,” I said. We both stood.

“You will stay for supper? Your brother has not been well enough to attend regular meals, but perhaps tonight, if you are here…”

I looked at my watch. “Another time, Charles. I need to get back to the city. Caroline is preparing something special for us tonight and we are going to the theatre.…”

“Caroline?” cried Dickens in surprise. “She has come back?”

I shook my head, smiled, and tapped my forehead with three fingers. “I meant Carrie, ” I said. I was lying there as well. Carrie was spending the entire week with the family for which she governessed.

“Ah, well, another time soon,” said Dickens. He walked me outside and down the stairs and through the tunnel.

“I’ll have one of the servants drive you to the railway station.”

“Thank you, Charles.”

“I am glad you came to Gad’s Hill Place today, my dear Wilkie.”

“As am I, Charles. It has been most edifying.”

I DID NOT go directly back to London. At the station, I waited until Dickens’s man and his pony cart were out of sight and then I boarded the train to Rochester.

I had not brought any brandy so I waited until the cathedral graveyard seemed well and truly empty—the afternoon summer shadows creeping long from the headstones—and then I strolled briskly back to the lime pit. There was no sign of the puppy on the turgid grey surface. A moment’s searching in the grass brought up the branch I had used before. Three or four minutes of stirring and poking brought up the remnants—mostly bone and teeth and spine and gristle, but also some hair and hide left. I found it difficult to bring what was left of the little carcass to the surface with the stick.

“Dradles thinks this mi’ be the instrooment Mr Billy Wilkie Collins needs,” said a voice directly behind me.

I jumped so violently that I almost tumbled forward into the pit of quick-lime.

Dradles steadied me with a rock-hard hand on my forearm. In his other hand, he was carrying a barbed iron staff that looked to be about six feet long. It may have once been part of the cathedral’s iron fence in front, or a decoration on a steeple, or a lightning rod from one of the spires.

Dradles handed it to me. “Stirs easier wi’ this, sir.”

“Thank you,” I said. Indeed, with its length and barbs, it worked perfectly. I turned the puppy’s carcass over, decided that five or six days in the lime pit would be required for a larger form, and used the iron staff to press what was left of the little shape back under the surface again. For a second I had an image of myself as some sort of grisly cook, stirring my broth, and I had to suppress the urge to giggle.

I handed the iron staff back to Dradles. “Thank you,” I said again.

“Dradles urges the ge’mun to think nothing of it,” said the filthy mason. His face seemed as red this cool evening as it had during the heat of the daytime labour some days before.

“I forgot brandy today,” I said with a smile, “but I wanted to treat you to a few drinks at the Thatched and Twopenny the next time you go.” I handed him five shillings.