Dan Simmons - Drood

“Mr Collins,” said the inspector after honking into a handkerchief, “my guess is that you wanted to meet with me for some reason other than to enquire into the fate of my unlucky young associate. What is it, sir?”

I cleared my throat. “Inspector, you know that I am embarked upon a new novel that requires research of the most unusual kind.…”

“Of course,” interrupted the private policeman. “That is why I pay one of my most useful operatives—the esteemed Detective Hatchery—to spend every Thursday night in a crypt awaiting your return sometime the next morning. You assured me that your trips to King Lazaree’s opium den were for relief from pain, not research. And I must say, Mr Collins, that my paying Detective Hatchery’s hourly wage for that service, not to mention his unavailability for a full night and day in terms of my own service (for even detectives have to sleep, sir), has not been… balanced, shall we say… in terms of your promise to report on the whereabouts and activities of Mr Charles Dickens.”

I stopped and clutched my stick with both hands. “Inspector Field, you certainly cannot be suggesting that it is my fault that Dickens is on yet another reading tour in the provinces and thus is out of my effective radius of investigation!”

“I suggest nothing,” said the inspector. “But the truth of the matter is that the esteemed author returns to London for at least one day and night a week.”

“To read at Saint James’s Hall!” I said in some heat. “And occasionally to do some work at his office at Wellington Street North!”

“And to visit his mistress in Slough,” Inspector Field said drily, “although my operatives tell me that he is now looking for another house for Miss Ternan—and possibly her mother—in the suburb of Peckham.”

“This has nothing to do with me,” I said coldly. “I am neither a gossip nor keeper of my fellow gentleman’s affairs.” I regretted that last choice of word as soon as it was out of my mouth. Pedestrians were beginning to stare at us as they passed, so I began walking again and Inspector Field briskly joined me.

“Our arrangement was for you to see Dickens as frequently as possible, Mr Collins, and thus to accumulate—and to convey to us—any and all information you received on the murderer who calls himself Drood.”

“And so I have done, Inspector.”

“And so you have done, Mr Collins… to a very meagre degree. You did not even spend Christmas with Mr Dickens, although he was at home in Gad’s Hill for the better part of two weeks and came into the city repeatedly.”

“I was not invited,” I said. I meant my tone to be chilly, but it emerged as almost plaintive.

“Which you cannot help,” said Inspector Field in a tone of sympathy that made me want to break my cane over the crown of his balding old head. “But you also have not availed yourself of obvious opportunities to join Mr Dickens either on his tour or during his London sojourns. It may interest you to know, sir, that Dickens continues to elude my operatives at least once every two weeks and disappear into slum basements and old church crypts, not to reappear until he takes the train to Gad’s Hill the next day.”

“You need better operatives, Inspector,” I said.

The old man chuckled at this and blew his prodigious nose again. “Perhaps,” he said. “Perhaps. But in the meantime, I wish not to chastise you, Mr Collins, nor to complain of an… imbalance… in the performance of our contractual agreements, but merely to remind you that our common interests lie in running this monster Drood to ground—or to above ground—before more innocents have to die by the creature’s hand.”

We had reached the bridge. I stopped at the railing and looked at the line of wharves, hovels, derricks, and low-masted rivercraft running in both directions. Rain squalls whipped the surface of the Thames to rows of white crowns.

The inspector pulled the plush collar of his out-of-date jacket up over the back of his neck. “Now please tell me the reason for this meeting, Mr Collins, and I will do my utmost to accede to your requests for further… ah… research assistance.”

“I admit that my purpose was not merely to pursue research,” I said, “but to offer you a suggestion that may be of inestimable assistance in your efforts to find this Drood.”

“Really?” said Inspector Field, the bushy eyebrows rising under the brim of his top hat. “Please go on, Mr Collins.”

“In the novel I have almost finished outlining,” I said, “there is a section that shall require a detective—one of great intelligence and experience, I might add—who knows all the techniques employed to track down a missing person.”

“Yes? These are common procedures in both my former and current aspects of police work, Mr Collins, and I will be pleased to offer professional insights.”

“But I did not wish this assistance to benefit me alone,” I said, looking at the grey waves rather than at the grey inspector. “It occurred to me that a London man who has gone missing might be your missing link in tracing the chain of contacts and circumstances back to Dickens and Drood’s contacts since the Staplehurst accident… if such contact actually exists.”

“Really? Who might this missing man be, Mr Collins?”

“Edmond Dickenson.”

The old man scratched his cheeks, tugged at his side-whiskers, and, inevitably, set that plump forefinger alongside his ear as if awaiting further information from it. Finally he said, “That would be the young gentleman whom Mr Dickens helped save at Staplehurst. And the same young man whom you reported as having sleepwalked at Gad’s Hill Place a year ago this past Christmas.”

“Exactly the same man,” I said.

“How has he disappeared?”

“That is precisely what I would like to know,” I said. “And it might be precisely what you need to know in order to close the connection to Drood.” I handed him a folder of notes I had taken on my conversation with the solicitor Mr Matthew B. Roffe of Gray’s Inn Square, the address of Dickenson’s last known London dwelling place, and the approximate date when the young man had ordered Mr Roffe to transfer the duties of guardian-executor, for the last few months such a role was required, to none other than Charles Dickens.

“Fascinating,” Inspector Field said at last. “May I keep these, sir?”

“You may. They are copies.”

“This may indeed be of some service to our common cause, Mr Collins, and I thank you for bringing this man—missing or not—to my attention. But why do you think that Mr Dickenson might be important in this investigation?”

I opened my gloved hands above the railing. “Is it not obvious, even to a non-detective such as myself? Young Dickenson was perhaps the only other living person who we know —through Dickens’s own testimony—was in the immediate area with Drood at the Staplehurst site. Indeed, it was Drood, according to Dickens, who led my friend to the young man, who was trapped in the wreckage and who would have died had it not been for Dickens’s— and Drood’s! — intervention. There is also, I would suggest, the inexplicable interest that Dickens took in the orphan in the months after the accident.”

Inspector Field rubbed his cheeks again. “Mr Dickens is widely known to be a public altruist.”

I smiled at this. “Of course. But his interest in young Dickenson bordered on the… shall I say… obsessive?”

“Or self-interested?” asked Field. The wind had arrived from the west, and we were both now holding our hats with our free hands.

“How do you mean, sir?”

“How much money,” asked the old man, “was under trust to whomever the guardian of Edmond Dickenson was until the young man reached his majority last year? Did your investigations, Mr Collins, happen to extend to visiting young Dickenson’s bank and having a chat with the manager?”