He pointed at me. “Did you see Drood? Were you in his presence?”
I blinked. I remembered being awakened from my slumber on the subterranean brick wharf—my watch showed that it was twenty minutes after the sunrise above, after the time at which Hatchery had said he must leave—when Dickens returned in the flat-bottomed boat with the two tall and silent oarsmen. He had been gone for more than three hours. Despite the real danger, despite the real risk of being attacked and eaten by the wild boys, I had dozed off while sitting cross-legged there on the damp bricks, the loaded and cocked revolver still on my lap.
“I saw no one of Mr Drood’s alleged description,” I said stiffly. “And that is all the information I intend to impart on this subject, Inspector Field. As I said and shall repeat to you for the last time, it was Mr Dickens’s outing, his research, and if he chooses not to share the details of the evening, then I am, as a gentleman, bound to a corresponding silence. I wish you good day, Inspector, and also wish you good luck on your…”
I had come around the desk and opened the door for the ageing inspector, but Field had not budged from his place standing by my desk. He smoked the cigar, looked at it, and said quietly, “Do you know why Dickens was in France?”
“What?” I was sure that I had heard wrong.
“I said, Mr Collins, do you know why Charles Dickens was in France this week past?”
“I have no idea,” I said, voice almost brittle with irritation. “Gentlemen do not pry into other gentlemen’s travel or business arrangements.”
“No, indeed, they do not,” said Inspector Field and smiled again. “Dickens was in Boulogne for a few days. More specifically, he divided his time between Boulogne and the tiny village a few miles south of Boulogne, a place called Condette, where for some years, since 1860 to be precise, Mr Dickens has leased the former modest chalet and gardens of a certain Monsieur Beaucourt-Mutuel. This chalet in Condette has been the frequent residence of a certain actress, now twenty-five years of age, named Ellen Ternan, along with her mother. Charles Dickens has enjoyed their company at Condette—some of the visits have been up to a week in length—more than fifty times since he purportedly leased, although in truth purchased, the chalet in 1860. You may want to close the door, Mr Collins.”
I did so but remained standing by the closed door, thunderstruck. Counting Ellen Ternan, her mother, Dickens, and myself, there were no more than eight people in the world who had any hint of the chalet in Condette or the reason for Dickens’s many visits there. And were it not for my brother Charles’s being married into the Dickens household, I would never have learned about it myself.
Inspector Field resumed his pacing, his finger by his ear as though he were hearing facts whispered to him from the digit. “Miss Ternan and her mother live full-time in England, now, of course, since the Staplehurst accident in June. We can assume that Mr Dickens was winding up their affairs—and his own—at the chalet in Condette during his recent four days in Boulogne. To do this, Mr Dickens had to retrace—precisely— the same route that he took when the Staplehurst accident occurred. We both know, Mr Collins, that this could not have been easy on Mr Dickens’s nerves… which have not been strong since the accident.”
“No,” I said. What in the blazes did the man want?
“After his time in Boulogne,” continued the apparently indefatigable old man, “Dickens went on to Paris for a day or two. A more suspicious mind than mine might suggest that the Paris trip was to cover his tracks, as some detectives like to say.”
“Inspector Field, I do not believe that any of this is…”
“Not to interrupt, sir, but you should know—for future reference as you talk to your friend in the immediate days to come—that it was while in Paris that Mr Dickens suffered a brain haemorrhage of some apparent severity.”
“Dear God,” I said. “A brain haemorrhage. I’ve heard nothing about this. You are sure?”
“One cannot be certain of such things, as you know, sir. But Mr Dickens was struck down in Paris, was carried to his hotel room, and for some hours was quite insensible—incapable of either responding to his interlocutors or of speaking any words that made sense. The French doctors wished to have him in hospital, but Mr Dickens put it down to ‘sunstroke’—his phrase, sir—and merely rested one day in his Paris hotel and another two in Boulogne before returning home.”
I went back around the desk and collapsed into my chair. “What do you want, Inspector Field?”
He looked at me and his eyes widened with innocence. “I told you what I not only want, but require, Mr Collins. Any and all information that you and Charles Dickens have on this personage called Drood.”
I shook my head wearily. “You’ve come to the wrong man, Inspector. You shall have to return to Dickens to learn anything new about this phantom Drood. I know nothing at all that can help you.”
Field was nodding slowly. “I will indeed return to talk to Mr Dickens again, Mr Collins. But I have not come to the wrong man. I look forward to great cooperation from you in my Droodian enquiries. I fully expect you to get the information I need from Charles Dickens.”
I laughed a trifle bitterly. “And why would I betray a friend and his trust to funnel information to you, Inspector—by honourific only—Charles Frederick Field?”
He smiled at the thinly veiled insult. “The maid-servant who answered the door and showed me in, Mr Collins. She is very attractive, despite her age. Also a former actress, perhaps?”
Still smiling myself, I shook my head. “As far as I know, Inspector, Mrs G— has no history whatsoever upon the stage. If she had, it would be none of my business, sir. Just as it is none of yours now.”
Field nodded and resumed his pacing, smoke trailing above and behind him, his finger back alongside his beak of a nose. “Absolutely true, sir. Absolutely true. But we can assume, nonetheless, that this is the same Mrs Caroline G— whom you first started recording in your bank account as of 23 August, 1864—just a little more than a year ago, sir—as having received twenty pounds from you. Payments that you have made every month since then through your bank?”
I was weary of this. If this despicable little man was truly attempting to blackmail me, he had chosen the wrong writer. “What of it, Inspector? Employers pay their servants.”
“Indeed, sir. So I am told. And besides Mrs Caroline G—, her daughter, Harriet, I believe her name is—same name as your mother’s, sir, which is a pleasant coincidence—also receives payments from you through your bank, although in young Harriet’s case, and I believe you sometimes call her Carrie, and I believe she only recently turned fourteen years of age, sir, in young Harriet’s case the expenditures go towards her private education and music lessons.”
“Is there a point to this, Inspector?”
“Only that Mrs Caroline G— and her daughter, Harriet G—, have been listed in city census and household tax records as having been both lodgers in your home and maid-servants in your employ for some years now.”
I said nothing.
Inspector Field quit pacing and looked at me. “All I am pointing out here, Mr Collins, is that few employers are so generous as to, first, employ former lodgers when times go hard for them and then to put one’s young maid-servant through a fine school, much less hire rather high-priced musicians to give them music lessons.”
I shook my head wearily. “You may abandon this sad attempt at ungentlemanly leverage, Mr Field. My domestic arrangements are known to all of my friends, as is my resistance to marriage and towards the more unimaginative versions of middle-class life and morals. Mrs G— and her daughter have been my guests here for some years, as you well know, and my friends accept it. Caroline has been at my table helping me entertain for years now. There is no hypocrisy here, nor anything to hide.”