My brother, Charley, came to my New Year’s Eve dinner party despite his worsening stomach condition. To cheer everyone up, I treated Beard, the Lehmanns, and Charley and Kate (who had been chipper but formal in my company since my unfortunate visit to her on 29 October) to a pantomime at the newly reopened Gaiety Theatre just before the dinner party proper.
My New Year’s Eve dinner party should have been a success: I had helped Nina Lehmann find a new cook, and this person had been on loan to prepare a fine French meal for us; I had supplied plenty of champagne and wine and gin; the pantomime had put us in a generally relaxed mood.
But the long night of forced amusement was a dismal failure. It was as if each of us had somehow suddenly become capable of peeking through the veil of time to see all the bad things that would happen to us in the year to come. And our obviously strained attempts at revelry were not aided by my servants George and Besse’s equally obvious eagerness to finish their duties and be away in the morning to Besse’s parents’ respective Welsh deathbeds. (Their daughter, Agnes, was upstairs in bed with a vicious case of croup, so did not add her usual plodding clumsiness to the evening’s service.)
So thus it was I awoke with a roaring headache on New Year’s Day noon, rang for George to bring me tea and draw a hot bath for me, and then—when no one came—remembered with a curse that the three had already left for Wales. Why had I let them go when I needed their services?
Plodding around the cold house in my robe, I found all vestiges of last night’s party tidied up, everything cleaned and put away, the teakettle ready to be put on to boil, and an assortment of breakfast choices ready for me on the kitchen counter. I moaned and made only the tea.
The fireplaces had all been set but not lighted, and I had to fumble with forgotten flues before I had flames going in the parlour, study, bedroom, and kitchen. The sunlight and unusually warm weather that had made the entire Christmas week seem so strange had fled as the new year came in—it was grey, windy, and sleeting outside when I finally parted the drapes to peer out.
After finishing my mid-day breakfast, I considered my options. I had told George and Besse that I would probably spend the week at my club, but a query at the Athenaeum two days earlier had informed me that there were no rooms to let to members until the sixth or seventh of the month.
I could always return to Gad’s Hill Place, but Dickens was performing his murder before the unsuspecting public for the first time at St James’s Hall on Tuesday, 5 January, and then resuming his tour to Ireland and beyond—this abominable New Year’s Day I was suffering through was a Friday—and I knew his household would be in a buzz of preparation and rehearsal until then. I had Black and White to write, Fechter was in London right then, and the distraction and isolation of Gad’s Hill were the last things I needed.
But I needed servants, food prepared, and the company of women.
Still brooding about this, I wandered the empty house, finally looking into the study.
The Other Wilkie was there in one of the two leather chairs by the fire. Waiting for me. Just as I had expected him to be.
I left the study doors open, since there was no one else in the house that day, and took the other chair. The Other Wilkie rarely spoke to me anymore, but he did listen well and sometimes he nodded. Other times he might shake his head or give me a bland, noncommittal look that I knew from Caroline’s comments about my own expressions meant disagreement.
Sighing, I began telling him about my plans to kill Charles Dickens.
I had been going on in a normal voice for ten minutes or so and had just gotten to the part about Mr Dradles finding the empty space between the walls of the crypt under Rochester Cathedral and the efficacy of the lime pit on the puppy’s carcass when I saw the Other Wilkie’s opiate gaze shift up and focus on something over my shoulder. I quickly turned in my chair.
Agnes, George and Besse’s daughter, was standing there in her robe and nightgown and tattered slippers. Her round, flat, homely face was so pale that even her lips were white. Her gaze moved between the Other Wilkie and me, then back and forth again. Her small hands with their bitten nails were raised like a puppy’s paws. I had no doubt whatsoever that she had been there for a while and had heard every word I’d said.
Before I could speak, she turned and ran to the stairs, and I heard the slap of her slippers on wood continue on towards her room on the third floor.
Panicked, I looked back at the Other Wilkie. He shook his head more in sadness than in alarm. His expression alone told me what I had to do.
EXCEPT FOR THE FIREPLACES, the house was now dark. Outside, the Christmas week that had been so warm was ending on a New Year’s Day night ice storm. I kept rapping on Agnes’s door.
“Agnes, please come out. I need to speak with you.”
No response but sobbing. The door was locked. Candles were lit in her room, and from the shape of the shadows glimpsed in the crack under the door, she had pushed some heavy bureau or washstand up against that door.
“Come out, Agnes, please. I didn’t know you were here, in the house. Come out and talk to me.”
More sobbing. Then—“I’m sorry, Mr Collins… I ain’t dressed. I ain’t well. I didn’t mean to do nothing wrong. I ain’t well.”
“Very well, then,” I said calmly. “I’ll speak to you in the morning.”
I went back down to the dark parlour, lighted some candles, and found the note I’d missed earlier in the day. It was from George and had been left on the manteclass="underline"
Mr Collins, Sir:
Our daughter Agnes is sick. She was coming with Besse and me to Wales but we did think better of it early this Morning, as the Poor Child has Fever. It would Not Do, we think, to bring High Fever to two Death Beds.
So with your permission, Sir, we leave Agnes behind under your Care and Protection until next Tuesday, when I (George) hope to Return to Your Service, no matter what the Disposition of Besse’s parents’ Fates be.
She can cook for you, Sir. (Agnes) After a fashion. And though that will not be up to Your Standards, she will keep the place Clean if you choose not to spend all the time at Your Club. At the very least, Mr Collins, she will let the Burglars, as she Recuperates and carries out her Humble Duties, know that the House is not Empty in your Absence.
Yours O’bdtly,
George
How had I not noticed the paper hours earlier when I had wrestled with the flue and lit the fire? I started to throw the note into the fire but then thought better of it. Careful not to wrinkle it, I set it back on the mantel where I had found it. What to do?
Too late for that now. I needed to deal with this first thing tomorrow. And for that I needed money.
I WOKE AT dawn on Saturday, the next morning, and thought about the situation. As the grey light grew stronger in the room—I’d left the heavy drapes pulled back the night before for just that purpose—I noticed that there was a tidy stack of the Other Wilkie’s notes on the straight-backed chair near the door. I hadn’t noticed them the day before, but they had probably been written that night, since Frank Beard had been kind enough, in the early morning hours after our New Year’s Eve dinner party, to inject my morphine before he’d left. Most of my Droodish dreaming and dictation occurred while under the influence of morphia.
There was no immediate urgency. I kept telling myself this. Whatever the dull-witted girl had overheard was safe within these walls until her parents returned—or at least until George came back.