Dan Simmons - Drood

It took me even longer to wrestle the stones and bricks back into place and to trowel new mortar between them. The simple masonry was a skill my uncle had shown me and I had been proud of it when I was a boy. It certainly came in handy now.

Then I shovelled the coal back into place, stowed all tools and the apron and gloves, went upstairs, washed up carefully, packed a week or two worth of clothes—including two of my freshly ironed evening dress shirts—into a steamer trunk, went into my study and packed all of the writing materials and resources I would need (including the manuscript holding the beginnings of Black and White ), went up to Agnes’s tiny room and left her note where it would easily be found by her parents, made a final check of the house to be sure it was locked up with everything in its proper place—there still was no sound from the back stairway, of course, and, I trusted, never would be—and then I went outside with my large trunk and leather portfolio and locked the front door behind me.

The driver hurried off the cab to wrestle the trunk down the steps, over the kerb, and into place in the boot of the carriage.

“Thank you so much for waiting,” I said, out of breath myself but in a good mood. “I had no idea packing would take me so long. I hope the cold and inconvenience haven’t bothered you.”

“Not a bit, sir,” the driver said cheerily. “I had myself a bit o’ a nap up on the box, sir.” From the looks of his red cheeks and red nose, he’d availed himself of something more than a nap.

He held the door while I stepped up and into the carriage. Once in place above, he opened the trapdoor and called down, “And where to this afternoon, sir?”

“The Saint James Hotel,” I said.

It was a bit of a luxury—Charles Dickens put up guests such as Longfellow and the Fieldses there when they visited London, and he sometimes stayed there himself, but it was more than I usually wished to pay for mere rooms. But this was a special occasion.

The little trapdoor closed with a thud. I raised my gold-headed stick, rapped sharply on the ceiling of the cab, and we rolled away.

It later dampened my spirits only a little when I remembered that I had forgotten to take back the £300 before closing the servants’ staircase door forever.

On Tuesday evening, 5 January, Dickens murdered Nancy in St James’s Hall for the first time in front of the paying public. Dozens of women screamed. At least four fainted. One older man was seen staggering out of the hall, gasping for air, helped out by two pale friends. I left before the riotous applause began, but it still chased me down the snow-covered street filled with carriages and cabs waiting for the audience to emerge. The breath of the muffled drivers huddled on their high boxes mixed with the larger clouds of exhalations from the horses to rise like steam into the cold glow of gas lamps.

THAT SAME AFTERNOON of 5 January, I had returned home from the hotel for the first time since my departure. No terrible stench from the servants’ stairway greeted me in the foyer. I had not expected there to be and not merely because I had been away for only three days.

There would be no bad smell from the stairway. I was sure of that. I had fired five bullets in that stairway, but it had been a useless, hopeless thing to do so. The target of those bullets cared nothing for bullets; it had already devoured the woman with green skin and tusks for teeth without leaving so much as a swatch of her dress material or a chip of ivory. There would be nothing of Agnes in there.

I was in my bedroom, packing some fresh shirts into my valise (I was returning to the hotel, where Fechter had joined me for the past few days), when I heard footsteps in the hall and the soft clearing of a throat.

“George? You’re back so soon? I’d forgotten when you were returning,” I said happily, looking at the man. His face was clouded with some emotion to the point of being grey.

“Yes, sir. The missus is staying on two more days. Her mother passed first—we was expecting her father to, but it was her mother. He was goin’ when I left, but we couldn’t just leave you here without your loyal domestics, sir, so I come home.”

“Well, I’m sorry to hear that, George, and…” I looked at the note he had in his hand. He was pointing it at me as if it were a pistol. “Why, what is that, George?”

“A note from our little Agnes, sir. You ’aven’t seen it?”

“Why, no. I thought Agnes was in Wales with you.”

“Aye, sir. I figured you ’adn’t seen our note to you on the mantel in the parlour, since it was still where we’d left it. You probably never knew Agnes was in the house with you that night, sir. That is, if she was in the house that night… if she left that morning, before you woke and left, and not during the night.”

“Left? Whatever on earth are you going on about, George?”

“’Ere, sir,” he said, thrusting the note at me.

I read it and feigned surprise, all the while thinking, Is this a trap? Has the stupid little girl managed to change her handwriting or do something in this note to alert her parents? But the words were just as I had dictated to her. The misspellings seemed sincere.

“Another opportunity?” I said, lowering the note. “Whatever does she mean, George? She’s gone and taken employment elsewhere without talking to me? Or to you and Besse?”

“No, sir,” George said solemnly. His dark-eyed stare seemed to bore into me. He did not blink. “That note isn’t what it seems, sir.”

“It’s not?” I put the last of my clean linen in the valise and snapped it shut.

“No, sir. They ain’t no t’other opportunity, Mr Collins. Who’d hire a lazy, clumsy child like our Agnes? That’s not right, sir. Not right at all.”

“Then what does this mean?” I asked, giving him back the note.

“The soldier, sir.”

“Soldier?”

“The young rascal of a Scottish-regiment soldier who she met in market in December, Mr Collins. A corporal. Ten year older ’n Agnes he were, sir, with shifty little eyes and soft hands and a moustache like a greasy caterpillar what crawled up on his lip to die, sir. Besse, she seen our girl talking to ’im and got between ’em quick, you can imagine. But somehow she seen him again when she was out doin’ chores. She admitted to such before Christmas, when we found ’er cryin’ like a mooncalf in ’er room.”

“You mean…”

“Aye, sir. The silly, stupid child’s run away with that soldier as sure as Besse’s mum’s in the cold ground an’ her papa now too, most likely. Our little family’s all gone and scattered now.”

Lifting the valise, I clasped George on his shoulder as I headed for the door. “Nonsense, my dear man. She’ll be back. They always come back after their first love’s disappointment! Trust me on this, George. And if she doesn’t… well, we’ll hire someone to track her down and talk sense into her. I happen to know several detectives in private consultation. There’s nothing to worry about, George.”

“Aye, sir,” he said in a tone as grey as his complexion.

“I’ll be at the Saint James Hotel for a few more days. Please be so kind as to bring my mail there each day and to have the house all aired and ready by Saturday, with a meal planned for that evening—Mr Fechter and others may come for a stay.”

“Aye, sir.”

We descended the stairs together.

“Be of good cheer,” I said and patted him on the back a final time before stepping out to the waiting cab. “All shall turn out for the best in the end.”

“Aye, sir.”

ONE CAN ONLY imagine how difficult it was for Dickens, with his Staplehurst-shattered nerves worsening rather than improving, as he again plunged into an exhausting tour which required travel by rail almost every day. Katey had informed me through my brother that the day after his St James’s Hall readings on 5 January, Dickens had been too exhausted to get out of bed and take his usual cold shower-bath. Within a few days he had to do his final readings in Dublin and Belfast, and he decided to take Georgina and his daughter Mary with him to make it feel more like a festive occasion rather than a farewell. He was almost immediately confronted with a near-tragedy that took a terrible toll on his nerves.