Drood, Page 78

  Dickens merely shrugs. “Should someone enter the graveyard, you can still shoot me and make your escape through the sea grasses and back to your carriage waiting nearby.”

  “They would find your body,” I say in flat tones. “And you would be buried in Westminster Abbey.”

  Dickens laughs then. It is that loud, unselfconscious, carefree, and infectious laugh that I have heard from him so many times before. “Is that what this is about, my dear Wilkie? Westminster Abbey? Does it calm your fears any that I have already stipulated in my will that I demand a simple, small funeral? No ceremonies at Westminster Abbey or anywhere else. I make clear that I want no more than three coaches in the final funeral procession and no more people at the burial than those three small coaches can carry.”

  My pounding pulse—and now pounding headache—seem to be trying to synchronise with the distant pounding of surf on a sandbar somewhere to the east, but the irregular rhythm of the wind denies the syncopation.

  I say, “There will be no funeral procession.”

  “Obviously not,” says Dickens and infuriates me with another small smile. “All the more reason to grant me this one, last kindness before we part company forever.”

  “To what purpose?” I ask at long last.

  “You spoke of each of us solving a mystery tonight. Presumably my mystery to be solved is what—if anything—there might be after the instant of one’s death. But what is yours, Wilkie? What mystery did you wish to have solved this beautiful evening?”

  I say nothing.

  “Let me venture a guess,” says Dickens. “You would like to know how The Mystery of Edwin Drood was to have ended. And perhaps even learn how my Drood connects to your Drood.”

  “Yes.”

  He looks at his watch again. “It is only ninety minutes before midnight. I brought a flask of brandy—at your suggestion (although Frank Beard would be horrified to know this)—and I am sure you brought some refreshment for yourself. Why don’t we find a comfortable seat somewhere in this place and have one last conversation before the bells in that tower toll my appointed day?”

  “You think that I will change my mind,” I say with a malicious smile.

  “In truth, my dear Wilkie, I do not for a second believe that you will. Nor am I sure that I would want you to. I am very… weary. But I am not averse to a final conversation and taste of brandy in the night.”

  With that Dickens turns on his heel and looks amidst the surrounding stones for some place to sit. My choice is either to follow his lead or shoot him there and drag his corpse the many yards to the waiting lime pit. I had hoped to avoid this last indignity for both of us. And, in truth, I do not mind the idea of sitting for a few minutes until this temporary light-headedness passes.

  THE TWO FLAT GRAVESTONES he chooses for our chairs, separated by almost four feet of a longer, wider headstone that might be a low table, remind me of the day in this very churchyard when Dickens played waiter to Ellen Ternan, her mother, and me.

  After receiving permission, Dickens removes his brandy flask from his jacket pocket and sets it on the table-stone in front of him and I do the same with my silver flask. I realise that I should have patted the Inimitable’s pockets when I first aimed my pistol at him. I know that Dickens keeps his own pistol in a drawer at Gad’s Hill Place, as well as the shotgun with which he murdered Sultan. Dickens’s apparent lack of surprise at the purpose of our “mystery outing” makes me think that he might have secreted a weapon on his person before coming out to the coach… and this might explain his otherwise inexplicable insouciance.

  But it is too late now. I shall just keep a careful eye on him for the short time remaining.

  We sit in silence for a while. Then the bells in the looming tower strike eleven, and my jagged nerves leap to the point that I almost accidentally pull the trigger on the pistol I am still aiming at Dickens’s heart.

  He notes my reaction but says nothing as I lay the gun along my upper leg and knee, keeping it aimed at him but removing my finger from the inside of what Hatchery called, I believe, the “trigger guard.”

  Dickens’s voice after the long silence makes me jump in my skin again. “That is the weapon that Detective Hatchery showed us once, is it not?”

  “Yes.”

  The wind rustles grasses for a moment. As if afraid of this silence, as if it is weakening my resolve, I force myself to say, “You know that Hatchery is dead?”

  “Oh, yes.”

  “And do you know how he died?”

  “Yes,” says Dickens. “I do. Friends on the Metropolitan Police Force told me.”

  We have nothing else to say on this topic. But it leads me to the questioning that is the only reason Charles Dickens remains alive this final, extra hour. “I was surprised that you used a character—obviously a detective in disguise with his huge head of false hair—named Datchery in Edwin Drood,” I say. “Such parody of poor Hatchery, especially given the… ah… lamentable details of his death, hardly seems sensitive.”

  Dickens looks at me. As my eyes have adapted to the churchyard darkness, so far from the nearest streetlamps or the windows of inhabited homes, the headstones around us—and especially the flat one of light marble lying between Dickens and me like a games table upon which we have laid our final hands in poker—seem to be reflecting the moonlight into Dickens’s face like weak imitations of the focused gaslights he had rigged for his readings.

  “Not a parody,” he says. “An affectionate remembrance.”

  I sip from my flask and wave that away. It is not important. “But your Drood tale is less than half done—only the four monthly instalments have seen print and your entire manuscript to date is completed to only half the length of the full book—and yet you have already murdered young Edwin Drood. Asking as one professional to another—and as one with decidedly more experience and perhaps greater expertise in writing about mysteries—how can you possibly hope to sustain interest, Charles, when you have committed the murder so early in the tale yet have only one logical choice for the murderer… the very clear villain, John Jasper?”

  “Well,” says Dickens, “as one professional replying to another, we must remember that… wait!”

  The pistol jerks up in my hand and I blink away distraction as I aim the muzzle at his heart some four feet away. Has someone entered the graveyard? Is he trying to distract me?

  No. It appears that the Inimitable simply has been struck by a thought.

  “How is it, my dear Wilkie,” continues Dickens, “that you know of Datchery’s appearance and even of poor Edwin’s murder when these scenes, those numbers even, have not yet appeared and… ahh… Wills. Somehow you got a copy of the finished work from Wills. William Henry is a dear man, a trusted friend, but he has not been the same since that accident, what with all those doors creaking and slamming in his head.”

  I say nothing.

  “Very well, then,” says Dickens. “You know of the murder of young Drood on Christmas Eve. You know of Crisparkle’s discovery of Edwin’s watch and tie-pin in the river, although no body is found. You know of the suspicion falling on the fiery-tempered young foreigner from Ceylon, Neville Landless, brother to the beautiful Helena Landless, and of the blood found on Landless’s stick. You know of Edwin’s engagement to Rosa having been broken off and you know of Edwin’s uncle, the opium-eater John Jasper, fainting after the murder when he first learns that there had been no engagement and that his obvious jealousy had been for naught. I currently have six of the contracted twelve instalments written. But what is your question?”

  I feel the laudanum warmth in my arms and legs and I grow more impatient. The scarab in my brain is even more impatient than I. I can feel it scurry back and forth past the inside of the bridge of my nose, peering first from one eye, then from the other, as if jostling for a better view.

  “John Jasper did the murder on Christmas Eve,” I say, waving the pistol just a trifle as I speak. “I can even name the murder weapon… that long
black scarf you have taken pains to mention at least three times so far for little reason. Your clues are hardly subtle, Charles!”

  “It was to be an overly long cravat or neck tie,” he says with another damning smile. “But I changed it to the scarf.”

  “I know,” I say impatiently. “Charley told me that you emphasised that the cravat must be shown in the illustration and then told Fildes to change it to a scarf. Neck tie, scarf, it makes little difference. My question remains—how can you possibly hope to keep the readers engaged for the full second half of the book if we all know that John Jasper is to be revealed as the murderer?”

  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 Lawles
s 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.”

  Helena Landless, not Lawless, I think, noting Dickens’s confusion of his own characters. Ellen Lawless Ternan. Even in this last unfinished fragment of a failed book, Dickens cannot restrain himself from connecting the most beautiful and mysterious woman in the novel with his own fantasy and obsession. Ellen Ternan.

  “Are you listening, my dear Wilkie?” asks Dickens. “You look as if you may be on the verge of dozing.”

  “Not at all,” I say. “But even if John Jasper is actually Jasper Drood, the murder victim’s older brother, what interest will that be to the reader who has to suffer through another several hundred pages of mere confession?”

  “Never mere confession,” chuckles Dickens. “In this novel, my dear Wilkie, we shall be in the mind and consciousness of a murderer in a way that no reader has ever before experienced in the history of literature. For John Jasper—Jasper Drood—is two men, you see—two complete and tragic personalities, both trapped in the opium-riddled brain of the lay precentor of the Cloisterham…”

  He pauses, turns, gestures theatrically to the tower and great structure behind him.

  “. . . of the Rochester Cathedral. And it is within those very crypts…”

  He gestures again and my dizzied gaze follows his gesture.

  “. . . those very crypts where John Jasper / Jasper Drood will hide the quick-lime-reduced bones and skull of his beloved nephew and brother, Edwin.”

  “This is sh——,” I say dully.

  Dickens brays a laugh. “Perhaps,” he says, still laughing under his breath. “But with all the twists and turns ahead, the reader will be… would have been… delighted to learn of the many revelations that lie… would have lain… ahead in this tale. For instance, my dear Wilkie, our John Jasper Drood has committed his murder under the influence of both mesmerism and opium. The latter, the opium in greater and greater quantities, has been the trigger for the former—the mesmeric command to murder his brother.”