Dan Simmons - Drood

Dickens pauses before speaking as if struck by an important thought. He sets his brandy flask down carefully on the weathered stone. For some reason, he has put his spectacles on—as if discussing his never-to-be-finished book might require some reading aloud to me—and the moon’s now twice-reflected glow turns the lenses of his spectacles to opaque silver-white disks.

“You want to finish the book,” he whispers.

“What!”

“You heard me, Wilkie. You want to approach Chapman and tell him that you can finish the novel for me—William Wilkie Collins, the famous author of The Moonstone, stepping in to carry on the work of his fallen friend, his deceased onetime collaborator. William Wilkie Collins, you will tell dear mourning Chapman and Hall, is the only man in England—the only man in the English-speaking world—the only man in the entire world! — who knew Charles Dickens’s mind sufficiently that he, William Wilkie Collins, can complete the mystery so tragically truncated when the aforesaid Mr Dickens disappeared suddenly, almost certainly taking his own life. You want to complete The Mystery of Edwin Drood, my dear Wilkie, and thus quite literally replace me in the hearts of readers as well as in the annals of great writers of our time.”

“That’s absolutely absurd,” I shout so loudly that I cringe and look around in embarrassment. My voice has echoed back from the cathedral and its tower. “It’s absurd,” I whisper urgently. “I have no such thought or ambition. I have never had any such thought or ambition. I write my own immortal books— The Moonstone sold better than your Bleak House or this current tale! — and as a mystery tale The Moonstone —as I was pointing out to you tonight—was infinitely more carefully plotted and thought out than is this confused tale of the murder of Edwin Drood.”

“Yes, of course,” Dickens says softly. But he is smiling that mischievous Dickens smile again. If I had a shilling for every time I have seen that smile, I would never have to write again.

“Besides,” I say, “I know your secret. I know the ‘Great Surprise,’ your clever plot hinge, upon which this rather transparent tale—by my professional standards—obviously hangs.”

“Oh?” says Dickens affably enough. “Please be so kind as to enlighten me, my dear Wilkie. As a newcomer to this mystery business, I may have failed to see my own obvious Great Surprise.”

Ignoring his sarcasm and idly pointing the pistol at his head, I say, “Edwin Drood is not dead.”

“No?”

“No. Jasper attempted to murder him, that is clear. And Jasper may even think that he succeeded in his efforts. But Drood survived, is alive, and shall join forces with your oh-so-obvious ‘heroes’—Rosa Bud; Neville and his sister, Helena Landless; your Muscular Christian, Minor Canon Crisparkle; and even that new sailor character you drag in so late…” I rack my memory for the character’s name.

“Lieutenant Tartar,” Dickens offers helpfully.

“Yes, yes. The heroic rope-climbing Lieutenant Tartar, so instantly and conveniently fallen in love with Rosa Bud, and all these other… benevolent angels… shall conspire with Edwin Drood to reveal the murderer… John Jasper!”

Dickens removes his spectacles, considers them with a smile for a moment, and then folds them carefully away in their case and sets the case back in his jacket pocket. I want to shout at him, Throw them away! You will have no more use for spectacles! If you keep them now, I will simply have to fish them out of the lime pit later!

He says softly, “And will Dick Datchery be one of these… benevolent angels… helping the resurrected Edwin to reveal the identity of the attempted murderer?”

“No,” I say, unable to hide the triumph in my voice, “for the so-called ‘Dick Datchery’ is actually Edwin Drood himself… in disguise!”

Dickens sits on his headstone and thinks about this for a moment. I have seen this silent motionless statue of the always-in-motion Charles Dickens before, but only when I have put him in checkmate in one of my few victorious chess games against him.

“You are… this extrapolation is… very clever, my dear Wilkie,” he says at last.

I have no need to speak. It must be almost midnight. I am both anxious and eager to get to the quick-lime pit and to finish the night’s business and then to go home and take a very hot bath.

“But one question, please,” he says softly, tapping at his flask with his manicured forefinger.

“What?”

“If Edwin Drood survived the murder attempt by his uncle, why does he have to go to all these labours… staying in hiding, enlisting allies, disguising himself as the almost comedic Dick Datchery? Why does he not just come forward and tell the authorities that his uncle attempted to murder him on Christmas Eve? Attempted, perhaps, even to the point of dumping Edwin’s presumed-dead but in-truth-unconscious body into a pit of quick-lime (from which he must have awakened and crawled out as the acidic substance began to eat upon his skin and clothing… a delicious scene, I admit to you, as one professsional to another, but not, I also confess, one that I had cause to write)… but surely then we have no murderer, only a crazy uncle attempting murder, and no reason for Edwin Drood to remain in hiding. There is then no murder of Edwin Drood and precious little mystery.”

“There are reasons for Drood to stay in hiding until the proper time comes,” I say confidently. I have no idea what they might be. I take a long drink of laudanum but make sure that I do not close my eyes for even an instant.

“Well, I wish you luck, my dear Wilkie,” Dickens says with an easy laugh. “But you should know this before you attempt to complete the book according to the outline I never wrote… young Edwin Drood is dead. John Jasper, under the influence of the same opium-laudanum you are drinking at this moment, murdered Edwin on Christmas Eve, just as the reader suspects at this point halfway through the book .”

“That’s absurd,” I say again. “John Jasper is so jealous of his nephew over Rosa Bud that he murders him? But what then… we have half the novel ahead to fill with nothing but… what? John Jasper’s confession?”

“Yes,” says Dickens with a truly evil smile. “That is precisely correct. The remainder of The Mystery of Edwin Drood is indeed—or at least the core of it shall be—the confessions of John Jasper and his alternate consciousness, Jasper Drood.”

I shake my head but the dizziness only grows worse.

“And Jasper is not Drood’s uncle, as we are given to believe,” continues Dickens. “He is Drood’s brother .”

I mean to laugh at this but it emerges as a particularly loud snort. “Brother!”

“Oh, yes. Young Edwin, you must remember, is planning to go to Egypt as a member of a troupe of engineers. He plans to change Egypt forever, perhaps make it his home. But what Edwin does not know, my dear Wilkie, is that his half-brother ( not his uncle), Jasper Drood (not John Jasper) was born there… in Egypt. And he learned his dark powers there.”

“Dark powers?” I keep forgetting to aim the pistol but now bring the muzzle up again.

“Mesmerism,” whispers Dickens. “Control of the minds and actions of others. And not merely our English parlour-game level of mesmerism, Wilkie, but the serious sort of mind-control which approaches true mind reading. Precisely the sort of mental contact we have seen in the book between young Neville Landless and his beautiful sister, Helen Lawless. They honed their mind abilities in Ceylon. Jasper Drood learned his in Egypt. When Helen Lawless and Jasper Drood finally meet on the field of mesmeric battle—and they shall—it will be a scene spoken of in awe by readers for centuries.”