The old detective looked insufferably pleased with himself, which at first seemed odd, since after my telling him that nothing untowards had happened in my home the previous 9 of June, the trail of Drood had gone very cold indeed. But one of the first things that the inspector told me as we walked over Waterloo Bridge into a breeze carrying light snow, our collars turned high and Field’s heavy wool cape flapping about his shoulders like the wings of a bat, was that the Metropolitan Police had captured a Malay suspected of murder. The Malay, it turned out, was one of Drood’s lieutenants and was being interrogated “briskly” in a deep cell even as we walked. Early information from the interrogation suggested that Drood may have moved from Undertown and was hiding in the surface slums of London. It was only a matter of time, Inspector Field informed me confidently, before they would have the best lead on the Egyptian murderer that they had obtained in decades of ceaseless effort.
“So the police are sharing the information with you,” I said.
Inspector Field showed his large, yellow teeth in a smile. “My own men and I are carrying out the interrogation, Mr Collins. I still have many close friends on the force, you see, even if the commissioner and those higher up continue to treat me with less than the respect I have earned.”
“Does the current chief of detectives know that one of Drood’s top lieutenants has been captured?” I asked.
“Not yet,” said Field and set that corpulent forefinger of his alongside his nose. “Now, you may be wondering why I have called you for this meeting on such a bitter cold day, Mr Collins.”
“Yes,” I lied.
“Well, sir, it is with some regret that I have to declare that our long working relationship is at an end, Mr Collins. It grieves me to do so, but my resources are limited—as you might imagine, sir—and from this point on, I shall have to focus those resources on the End Game with the monster Drood.”
“I am… surprised, Inspector,” I said while wrapping my red scarf higher around my face in order to hide a smile. This was precisely what I had expected. “Does this mean that there will be no boy waiting near Number Ninety Gloucester Place to carry messages back and forth between us?”
“It does, alas, Mr Collins. Which makes me remember the sad fate of poor young Gooseberry.” Here the old man amazed me by removing a huge handkerchief from his coat pocket and blowing his glowing red nose repeatedly.
“Well, if our working relationship must end…” I said as if filled with reluctant sadness.
“I am afraid it must, Mr Collins. And it is my opinion, sir, that Drood no longer has use for our mutual friend Mr Charles Dickens.”
“Really?” I said. “How have you deduced that, Inspector?”
“Well, first of all, there is the fact of last June’s anniversary of the Staplehurst meeting passing without Drood making any effort to contact Mr Dickens, or vice versa, sir.”
“Certainly your cordon of trained operatives made such a rendezvous impossible for Drood,” I said as we turned our backs to the wind and began our walk back over the bridge.
Inspector Field coughed a laugh. “No chance of that, sir. Where Drood wants to go, he goes. Five hundred of the Metropolitan force’s finest would not have prevented him from meeting with Dickens that night—in your very house, sir, if necessary—if he had wanted to be there. Such is the diabolical nature of the foreign monster. But the final and absolutely convincing factor in deducing that Mr Dickens is no longer of service to Drood is the simple fact that the writer is in North America now.”
“How is that a convincing factor, Inspector?”
“Drood would never have let Mr Dickens go so far if he still had use for him,” said the old detective.
“Fascinating,” I murmured.
“And do you know what that use was, Mr Collins? We have never spoken of it.”
“I had never considered the matter, Inspector,” I said, happy that the frigid air on my exposed cheeks would hide the blush of a liar.
“Drood was considering having Mr Dickens write something for him, sir,” announced Inspector Field in a tone of revelation. “Under coercion, if necessary. I would not be surprised if Drood caused the entire tragedy of the train wreck at Staplehurst precisely to put England’s most famous novelist under his thrall.”
This was nonsense of course. How could even the “foreign monster” of the old detective’s imagination have known that Dickens would not be killed in the terrible plummet of first-class carriages from the incomplete trestle? But all I said was “Fascinating.”
“And can you guess, Mr Collins, what it is that Drood would have had Mr Dickens pen and publish for him?”
“His biography?” I ventured, if only to show the old man that I was not a complete dunce.
“No, sir,” said Inspector Field. “Rather, a compilation of the ancient pagan Egyptian religion with all of its wicked rites and rituals and secrets of magick.”
Now I was surprised. I stopped and Inspector Field stopped next to me. Closed carriages passing had their side lamps lit, even though it was only mid-afternoon. The taller buildings along the river here were mere blue-black shadows with lamps burning in them as well.
“Why would Drood have a novelist write up the details of a dead religion?” I asked.
Inspector Field smiled broadly and tapped his nose again. “It ain’t dead to Drood, Mr Collins. It ain’t dead to Drood’s legion of London Undertown followers, if you take my meaning, sir. You see that, sir?”
I looked towards where the inspector was pointing, northwest along the river’s edge.
“The Adelphi Theatre?” I asked. “Or the site of the old Warren’s Blacking Factory beyond? Or do you mean Scotland Yard itself?”
“I mean all of it, Mr Collins. And more—stretching down to Saint James Palace and back up Piccadilly to Trafalgar Square and beyond, including Charing Cross and Leicester Square back along the Strand to Covent Garden.”
“What of it, Inspector?”
“Imagine a huge glass pyramid there, Mr Collins. Imagine all of London from Billingsgate to Bloomsbury to Regent’s Park being huge glass pyramids and bronze sphinxes.… Imagine it if you can, sir. For Drood certainly does.”
“That’s mad,” I said.
“Aye, Mr Collins, it’s as mad as a hatter’s Sunday, sir,” laughed Inspector Field. “But that’s what Drood and his crypt-crawling worshippers of the old Egyptian gods want, sir. And it’s what they mean to get, if not in this century then the next. Imagine those glass pyramids—and the temples, sir, and the secret rites in those temples, with mesmeric magic and slaves to their mental influence—rising everywhere you look in that direction come the twentieth century.”
“Madness,” I said.
“Yes, sir,” said Inspector Field. “But Drood’s madness makes him no less dangerous. More so, I would say.”
“Well then,” I said as we reached the end of the bridge again, “I am well out of it. Thank you for all your care and protection, Inspector Field.”
The old man nodded but coughed into his hand. “There is one last detail, sir. One unfortunate by-product of the end of our working relationship, as it were.”
“What is that, Inspector?”
“Your… ah… research, sir.”
“I don’t quite understand,” I said, although I understood perfectly well.
“Your research into the Undertown opium dens, sir. Your Thursday trips to King Lazaree’s den, to be precise. I am sorry to tell you that I can no longer offer Detective Hatchery as your personal guide and bodyguard.”