Dan Simmons - Drood

“Sketchy?” I repeated, giving the word the disdain it deserved.

“As in perfectly captured in a few strokes,” purred the young detective, leaning even lower over his massive forearms, “but not fully filled in with details. For instance, you reported that Mr Dickens continues to say that he has no knowledge of Mr Edmond Dickenson’s current whereabouts, but did you… as we liked to say in school and the regiment… drop the bombshell on him? ”

I had to smile at this. “Mr… Detective… Barris,” I said softly, noticing Hibbert Hatchery’s apparent lack of concern with everything his superior and I were saying, “I not only dropped the bombshell, as you put it, on Mr Dickens—I dropped the entire mortar.”

BARRIS WAS TALKING about Dickenson’s money as a motive in the boy’s disappearance.

I was feeling so well that beautiful May day that I actually had been enjoying the long walk to Rochester from Gad’s Hill Place, despite having to keep up with Dickens’s killing pace, and we were about two-thirds of the way to our urban destination when I dropped the shell, mortar, and caisson on the Inimitable.

“Oh, I say,” I said as we followed the walking path along the north side of the highway towards the distant church spires, “I happened to run into a friend of young Edmond Dickenson the other day.”

If I had expected shock or surprise from Dickens, I received only the mildest twitch of one magisterial eyebrow. “Really? I would have guessed that young Dickenson had no friends.”

“Evidently he had,” I lied. “An old school chum by the name of Barnaby or Benedict or Bertram or somesuch.”

“Are those the friend’s last name or Christian name?” asked Dickens, clicking along with his walking stick touching the ground at its usual precise and rapid intervals.

“It doesn’t matter,” I said, wishing that I had taken greater care in constructing this part of the introductory fiction I’d set to trap Dickens. “Just someone I met at my club.”

“It might matter in the sense that the chap you met may have been a liar,” Dickens said lightly enough.

“A liar? How is this, Charles?”

“I am quite sure that young Dickenson informed me that he never went to university—even to drop out—nor had ever darkened the door of any school,” said Dickens. “It seems the poor orphan had a succession of tutors, each less imposing than the last.”

“Well…” I said and hurried to catch up to Dickens. “Perhaps they weren’t school chums, but this Barnaby…”

“Or Bertram,” offered Dickens.

“Yes, well, it seems that this chap…”

“Or Benedict,” said Dickens.

“Yes. May I tell this, Charles?”

“By all means, my dear Wilkie,” said Dickens, smiling and extending his open hand. Some small grey birds—doves or partridges—exploded from the hedges we were approaching and flew into the blue sky. Without breaking pace, Dickens raised his walking stick to his shoulder like a shotgun and pantomimed pulling a trigger.

“It seems that this chap, a former friend of young Dickenson from somewhere, ” I said, “was told by Dickenson himself last year that he—Dickenson—had legally changed guardians during the last months before he reached his majority.”

“Oh?” was all that Dickens said in response. It was a polite syllable only.

“Yes,” I said, waiting.

We walked a hundred yards or so in silence.

Finally I dropped my bombshell. “This same chap…”

“Mr Barnaby.”

“This same chap,” I persisted, “happened to be involved with some transactions at his friend Dickenson’s bank and happened to overhear…”

“Which bank is that?” asked Dickens.

“Pardon?”

“To which bank are you referring, my dear Wilkie? Or rather, to which bank was your friend of young Dickenson referring?”

“Tillson’s Bank,” I said, feeling the power in the two words. It was as if I were moving a knight into place before pronouncing checkmate. I believe it was Sir Francis Bacon who said, “Knowledge is power”—and the power I now held over Charles Dickens’s head had come through the knowledge obtained by Inspector Charles Frederick Field.

“Ah, yes,” said Dickens. He hopped slightly to clear a branch that had fallen in the gravel path. “I know that bank, my dear Wilkie… an old-fashioned, boastful, small, dark, and ugly place with a musty odour.”

By this point I had almost, but not quite, lost the thread of the interrogation by which I’d hoped to catch the conscience of this king.

“A sound enough bank, it seems, to have transferred some twenty thousand pounds to the account of Edmond Dickenson’s new guardian,” I said and wondered if my Sergeant Cuff would have added an “Ah-hah!”

“I should have added ‘indiscreet’ to old-fashioned, boastful, small, dark, and ugly with a musty odour,” chuckled Dickens. “I shall do no more business with Tillson’s.”

I had to stop. Dickens took a few final steps and then—frowning slightly at the interruption of our pace—also stopped. My heart was pounding in my chest.

“You do not deny receiving such monies then, Charles?”

“Deny it? Why would I deny it, my dear Wilkie? What on earth are you going on about?”

“You do not deny having become Edmond Dickenson’s guardian and having transferred some twenty thousand pounds—his entire inheritance—from Tillson’s Bank to your own bank and chequing account?”

“Not for a second could I or would I deny it!” laughed Dickens. “Both statements of fact are statements of fact, and therefore true. Come now, let’s walk.”

“But…” I said, catching up to him and trying to match him stride for stride. “But… when I asked some short time ago whether you knew where young Dickenson was, you said you had heard he’d gone to South Africa or somesuch place but otherwise had no idea.”

“Which is, of course, the absolute truth,” said Dickens.

“But you were his guardian! ”

“In name only,” said Dickens. “And only for a few weeks before the poor boy came into his majority and his full inheritance. He thought he was doing me an honour by naming me such, and I allowed him to think so. It certainly was no one’s business other than Dickenson and myself.”

“But the money…” I began.

“Withdrawn, on Dickenson’s request, the day after he turned twenty-one and could do anything he wished with it, my dear Wilkie. I had the pleasure of writing him a cheque for the full amount that same day.”

“Yes, but… why through your account, Charles? It makes no sense.”

“Of course it does not,” agreed Dickens, chuckling again. “The boy—still thinking I had saved his life at Staplehurst—wanted to see my signature on the draught that would start his life anew as an adult. All nonsense, of course, but it cost me nothing other than the energy of receiving the payment and writing my own cheque to the lad. His former barrister and advisor—a Mr Roffe, I believe—made all the arrangements with both banks.”

“But you say that you have no idea where Dickenson went…”

“And so I do not,” he said. “He talked of visiting France and then truly beginning his life anew… South Africa, perhaps, or even Australia. But I received no letters from him.”

I started to speak again and realised that I had nothing to say. When I had rehearsed this confrontation in my mind, I had imagined Sergeant Cuff surprising the culprit into an admission of murder.

Dickens seemed to be inspecting my face as we walked. He was clearly amused. “When you heard all this from this amazingly ubiquitous Mr Barnaby or Benedict or Bertrand, my dear Wilkie, did you imagine that I had insinuated myself into the position of guardian for poor young Dickenson and then murdered him for his money?”