Dan Simmons - Drood

I cleared my throat. To be honest with you, Dear Reader, I found some allure hovering about the wench, despite the heat and stench of the night, my male companions’ gazes, and even her ruined smile and ignorant language.

“Come,” said Dickens, turning and striding off into the night. “We are wasting our time here, Wilkie.”

DICKENS,” I said as we crossed yet another creaking, narrow bridge over yet another reeking, foetid stream, the lanes ahead of us mere alleys, the dark buildings there more medieval than any we’d yet seen, “I have to ask, does this… excursion… really have anything to do with your mysterious Mr Drood?”

He stopped and leaned on his stick. “Absolutely, my dear Wilkie. I should have told you at dinner. Mr Hatchery has done more for us in this regard than merely escort us through this… unseemly… neighbourhood. He has been in my employ for some time now and has put his detective abilities to good use.” He turned to the large shape that had come up behind us. “Detective Hatchery, would you be so kind as to inform Mr Collins of your discoveries to date?”

“Certainly, sir,” said the huge detective. He took off his bowler, rubbed his scalp under the explosion of tight curls, and squeezed the hat into place again. “Sir,” he said, addressing me now, “in the past ten days I ’ave made enquiries of the various railway ticket takers at Folkestone and other possible stops along the way—although the tidal express did not make no stops along the way—as well as discreet enquiries of other passengers, the guards on the train that afternoon, the conductors, and others. And the fact is, Mr Collins, that nobody named Drood or resembling the very odd description Mr Dickens gave me of this Mr Drood had a ticket to ride or was in one of the passenger carriages at the time of the accident.”

I looked at Dickens in the dim light. “So either your Drood was a local there at Staplehurst,” I said, “or he didn’t exist.”

Dickens only shook his head and gestured for Hatchery to continue.

“But in the second mail carriage,” said the detective, “there was three coffins being transported to London. Two of them had been loaded at Folkestone and the third had come over on the same ferry what brought Mr Dickens and… his party. The railway papers showed that this third coffin, the one what had come from France that day—no record of from where in France—was to be released to a Mr Drood, no Christian name listed, upon arrival in London.”

I had to think about this for a minute. There came muted shouts from the direction of the “dress lodgers’ ” houses far behind us. Finally, I said, “You think Drood was in one of those coffins?” I looked at Dickens as I posed the question.

The author laughed, almost delightedly, I thought. “Of course, my dear Wilkie. As it turns out, that second mail carriage derailed, displacing all of the parcels and bags and… yes… coffins, but it was not thrown into the ravine below. That explains why Drood was descending the hillside with me a few minutes later.”

I shook my head. “Why would he choose to travel by… my God… by coffin? It would cost more than a first-class ticket.”

“A little less, sir, a little less,” interposed Hatchery. “I checked into that. Cargo rates for transporting the deceased is a little less than first class, sir. Not much, but a few shillings lighter.”

I still could make no sense of it. “But certainly, Charles,” I said softly, “you’re not suggesting that your bizarre-looking Mr Drood was a… what? A ghost? A ghoul of some sort? The walking dead?”

Dickens laughed again, even more boyishly this time. “My dear Wilkie. Really. If you were a criminal, Wilkie—known to the port police as well as to London police—what would be the easiest and most effective way that you could get from France back to London?”

It was my turn to laugh, but not with any delight, I can assure you. “Not by coffin, ” I said. “All the way from France? It’s… unthinkable.”

“Hardly, my dear boy,” said Dickens. “Merely a few hours of discomfort. Hardly more uncomfortable than normal ferry and rail travel today, if one must be perfectly candid. And who bothers to inspect a coffin with a week-old corpse rotting in it?”

“ Was his corpse a week old?” I asked.

Dickens only flicked the white fingers of his glove at me, as if I had made a jest.

“So why are we going towards the docks tonight?” I asked. “Does Detective Hatchery have some information on where Mr Drood’s coffin has floated?”

“Actually, sir,” said Hatchery, “my enquiries in this part of town has led us to some folks who say they know Drood. Or knew him. Or have done business with ’im, as it were. That’s where we’re ’eaded now.”

“Then let’s press on,” said Dickens.

Hatchery held up a huge hand as if he were stopping carriage traffic on the Strand. “I feel it my duty to point out, gentlemen, that we are now entering Bluegate Fields proper, although there is precious little proper about it. It ain’t even on most city maps, officially speaking, nor New Court, where we’re ’eaded, neither. It’s a dangerous place for gentlemen, gentlemen. There’s men where we’re going as will kill you in a minute.”

Dickens laughed. “As would those ruffians we encountered a while ago, I presume,” he said. “What is the difference with Bluegate Fields, my dear Hatchery?”

“The difference is, gov’ner, that them what we met a while ago, they’d take you for your purse and leave you beat senseless by the road, p’hraps even to the point of death, aye. But them what’s up ahead… they’ll slit your throat, sir, just to see if their blade still ’as an edge.”

I looked at Dickens.

“Lascars and Hindoos and Bengalees particular and Chinamen by the gross,” continued Hatchery. “Also Irishmen and Germans and other such flotsam, not to mention the scum o’ the earth sailors ashore a’hunting for women and opium, but it’s the Englishmen ’ere in Bluegate Fields you have to fear most, gentlemen. The Chinee and other foreigners, they don’t eat, don’t sleep, don’t talk mostly, just live for their opium… but the Englishmen ’ereabouts, they are an uncommonly rough crew, Mr Dickens. Uncommonly rough.”

Dickens laughed again. He sounded as if he had been drinking heavily, but I know he only had some wine and port with dinner. It was more the carefree laugh of a child. “Then we will just have to entrust our safety to you once again, Inspector Hatchery.”

I’d noticed that Dickens had just given the private detective a promotion in rank, and from the way the huge man shuffled modestly from foot to foot, it appeared that Hatchery had interpreted it that way as well.

“Aye, sir,” said the detective. “With your pardon, I’ll take the lead now, sir. And it might be’oove you gentlemen to stay close for a while now.”

MOST OF THE STREETS we had already passed through were not marked and the maze of Bluegate Fields was even less delineated, but Hatchery seemed to know exactly where he was going. Even Dickens, striding next to the huge detective, seemed to have a sense of his destination, but the detective answered my whispered question by listing, in his normal tone of voice, some of the places we had been or were soon to see: the church of St Georges-in-the-east (I had no memory of passing it), George Street, Rosemary Lane, Cable Street, Knock Fergus. Black Lane, New Road, and Royal Mint Street. I had noticed none of these names posted on signs.

At New Court, we left the stinking street, passed into a dark courtyard—Hatchery’s bullseye lantern was our only illumination— and proceeded on through a gap that was more hole in the wall than formal gateway into a series of other dark courtyards. The buildings seemed abandoned, but my guess was that the windows were merely heavily shuttered. When we stepped off pavement, the ooze of the river or seeping sewage squelched underfoot.