Dan Simmons - Drood

“And why no note this year, Mr Roffe?”

“Neither Smalley nor I had any idea where to contact him, Mr Collins.” The old man looked woeful at this last revelation. I realised with a strangely sad certainty that young Dickenson was almost certainly this old man’s only client—the only client of this dedicated husband to the law who worked in this tiny room from the time the lamps were lit before sunrise until long after that unseen sun had set.

“Could you tell me who Mr Dickenson’s final guardian was… until he came of age two months ago?” I asked.

Mr Roffe actually laughed. “You’re jesting with me, Mr Collins.”

I gave him Sergeant Cuff’s flintiest stare. “I assure you that I am not, Mr Roffe.”

Confusion passed across the old man’s features like cloud shadows across an eroded field in winter. “But surely you must be, Mr Collins. If you come on the behalf of Mr Charles Dickens, as you say you do, then you surely must know that—upon the request of Master Edmond himself—legal guardianship and all control of Master Edmond’s financial affairs passed from me to Mr Charles Dickens in early January of the present year. It is, I assumed, why you are here and why I could speak so freely of a former client’s… Mr Collins, why are you here?”

I HARDLY NOTICED the traffic or streets I was passing as I walked towards Dorset Square and home. Nor did I notice the squat, stolid presence that had fallen into step alongside me until he spoke. “Just what exactly do you think you are doing, Mr Collins?”

It was Field, of course—the accursed inspector! — with his face looking redder than ever, whether from the cold wind or from advancing age and drink, I neither knew nor cared. He had a small bundle tucked under his left arm, but because of the wind, his left hand still had a firm grip on the brim of his silk top hat.

I stopped amidst the flow of other men holding fixedly to their hats, but Inspector Field released his hat brim and gripped my arm to move me along as if I were one of the countless tramps he’d found on his night-watch.

“What business is it of yours?” I demanded. My mind was still spinning from the revelation in the old barrister’s office.

“Drood is my business,” growled the inspector. “And he should be yours . What is the import of your seeing Dickens two days in a row and then running back to London to speak to an octogenarian lawyer?”

I wanted to blurt it all out— Charles Dickens insinuated himself into the position of becoming Edmond Dickenson’s legal guardian before he murdered the boy! He had to murder him before September because … — but managed to remain silent and glowering at this real detective. Both of us had death-grips on our hats as the winter wind howled up the Thames at us.

None of this made real sense to me. My certainty—whether from laudanum or not—had been that Dickens had murdered young Dickenson for the sheer sake of the experience of murder, not for any pecuniary motive. Had Dickens been hurting for funds? He had earned almost five thousand pounds during his spring reading tour and certainly had received a healthy advance against sales for the special Charles Dickens Edition for which he was currently finishing his forewords.

But if he had not murdered young Dickenson for money, why become the boy’s guardian and draw suspicion to himself? It went against Dickens’s own lecture in the graveyard at Rochester Cathedral, which I now understood to have been a form of bragging after the fact, a lecture about murdering almost at random, of one’s never falling under suspicion because one would have had no motive.

“Well?” demanded Inspector Field.

“Well what, Inspector?” I snapped back. The beneficial effects of the morning’s laudanum had long since worn off, and the rheumatical gout was hurting my every joint and sinew. My eyes were watering from both the rising pain and rising cold wind. I was in no mood for criticism, but most especially not from some mere… retired policeman .

“What are you playing at, Mr Collins? Why did you send my boy off to a warm bed and overpriced breakfast this morning in the wee hours? What were you and Dickens and the man named Dradles doing in the crypts at Rochester Cathedral yesterday?”

I decided to let Sergeant Cuff answer. One old detective refusing another. “We all have our little secrets, Inspector. Even those of us under twenty-four-hour watch.”

Field’s already reddened face grew even more crimson, turning into an ancient vellum map of tiny burst veins. “Bugger your ‘little secrets,’ Mr Collins. There’s no d— ned time for them!”

I stopped in the middle of the pavement. I would not, under any circumstances, allow myself to be spoken to this way. Our working relationship was at an end. I clenched my hand on my stick to allay its shaking and had opened my mouth to say this, when suddenly the inspector thrust an unsealed envelope at me. “Read it,” he said gruffly.

“I don’t care to…” I began.

“ Read it, Mr Collins.” It was more growled command than gentleman’s request. It left absolutely no room for debate.

I removed the single sheet of thick paper from the envelope. The handwriting was bold, almost as if it had been produced with a brush rather than a pen, and the letters were more printed than written. It read, in its entirety—

MY DEAR INSPECTOR—

TO THIS POINT, WE HAVE GAINED AND SACRIFICED ONLY PAWNS IN OUR ENJOYABLE LONG GAME. NOW BEGINS THE END GAME. PREPARE YOURSELF FOR THE IMMINENT LOSS OF MUCH MORE IMPORTANT AND PRECIOUS PIECES.

YOUR FAITHFUL OPPONENT, D

“What on earth can it mean?” I asked.

“It means precisely what it says,” Inspector Field said through gritted teeth.

“And you interpret the signature ‘D’ as ‘Drood’?” I said.

“It can be no one else,” hissed the inspector.

“It could stand for ‘Dickens,’ ” I said lightly, even as I thought, Or for “Dickenson” or “Dradles.”

“It stands for Drood,” the older man said.

“How can one be sure? Has the phantom ever written you a direct note in this fashion?”

“Never,” said Inspector Field.

“Then it could be from anyone or…”

The inspector had been carrying a rolled-up canvas-and-leather bundle, rather like a countryman’s portmanteau, under his left arm, and now he unrolled it and removed what looked to be a torn and befouled dark cloth. He handed the cloth to me as he said, “The note came wrapped in this.”

Holding the strips of cloth gingerly—the rags were not only begrimed, I realised, but absolutely soaked through with what appeared to be newly dried blood, and the already ragged material had been serrated into strips as with a razor—I began to ask him what the importance of a few foul rags might be, but stopped myself.

I suddenly recognised the bloody cloth.

The last time I had seen these rags, more than twelve hours earlier, they had been on the back of the boy named Gooseberry.

Iwent to stay at my mother’s home near Tunbridge Wells for most of December of 1866. I decided to remain there with her until I celebrated my forty-third birthday on 8 January. It is fine to spend time with one’s mistresses, but—please trust me on this fact, since almost all men feel this way but few are courageous or honest enough to admit it—at very difficult times or on one’s birthday, there is no place more welcome and comforting than at one’s mother’s side.

I recognise that I have said little to you about my mother in this document, Dear Reader, and I must confess to you that this was a deliberate omission. In this winter of 1866–67 and through most of the coming year, my beloved mother was quite well—indeed, most of her contemporaries and most of mine found her more active, energetic, and engaged with the world than many women of half her age—but as my story must soon relate, her health was to deteriorate quickly before the end of 1867, and she would greet the end in March of 1868, my own annus horribilus . It is still difficult for me to think about that time, much less write about it. The death of one’s mother must be the single most terrible day in the life of any man.