“By all means,” I said again, although with less conviction this time.
He surveyed me with eyes at once analytical, amused, and mocking. “I thought perhaps a quick trek past Cobham Wood and then to Chalk and Gravesend and home again.”
“Ah,” I said. That would be twelve hard miles. “Ah,” I said again and nodded. “But what about your guests? And children? Is this not the hour you usually play with them, amuse them, show the guests the stables?”
Dickens’s smile was mischievous. “Is there another invalid in the family today, my dear Wilkie?”
I knew that by “family” he meant the Collins family. It seemed he would never cease the harping on my younger brother’s presumed illness.
“A minor disposition,” I said brusquely. “The rheumatical gout which pursues me from time to time, as you know, my dear Dickens. It chooses to be a bit difficult today. A shorter romp would suit me.” A slow walk next door to the Sir John Falstaff Inn would have suited me perfectly was the message I intended to send.
“But your gout is not in your legs, is this not true, my dear Wilkie?”
“That is largely true,” I said, unwilling to tell him that this gout hurt every part of my person when it spread as it had threatened to that morning. Without the early double doses of laudanum, I would have been in bed. “It tends to afflict my eyes and head the most.”
“Very well,” sighed Dickens. “I had hoped for a walking partner today—the Forsters are my guests this weekend and John has given up all exertion since coming into his wife’s fortune, as I am sure you know—but we shall make a short outing of it, you and I, just over to Chatham and Fort Pitt, through Cooling Marsh and home. I shall make up the difference this evening, alone.”
I nodded, although still without enthusiasm. That would be six miles and more with Dickens’s unrelenting pace of four miles per hour exactly. My head and joints throbbed in anticipation.
IT WAS NOT as bad as I had feared. The afternoon was so pleasant, the air so cool, the scents so invigorating, that I kept up with Dickens as he led the way down the road to a lane, from lane to path, from path to grassy ruts along a canal, from the canal tow path through autumn fields of grain—taking care never to tread on a farmer’s crop—and from the field to shady forest trail, then back to the roadside again and onward.
During the first half hour of silent walking—or rather, my silent walking, since Dickens chatted amiably the whole way, discussing Forster’s increased Podsnapperies, the problems within the Guild, details of his son Alfred’s business ineptitude and his daughter Mary’s diminishing prospects for marriage, grousings about the Negro uprising in Jamaica that still rankled him, observations on his youngest son Plorn’s apparent laziness and lack of intellectual depth—I spent my time nodding and thinking of how to trick the information desired by Inspector Field out of Charles Dickens.
Finally I surrendered that approach and said, “Inspector Field came to visit me yesterday.”
“Oh, yes,” Dickens said casually, his blackthorn rising and falling with his stride. “I assumed that to be the case.”
“You’re not surprised?”
“Hardly, my dear Wilkie. The wretched man was here at Gad’s Hill on Thursday. I assumed that you would be his next victim. Did he threaten you?”
“Yes,” I said.
“With what, may I ask? He was quite clumsy and heavy-handed with his minor attempts to blackmail me.”
“He threatened me with public exposure of… my domestic situation.” The only thing I was secure about at the moment was that Dickens did not know—could not have known—about the existence of Miss Martha R—. Inspector Field obviously knew, but it would not have been in his interest to tell the Inimitable.
Dickens laughed easily. “Threatened to tell the world about your Landlord and Butler, eh? Much as I had guessed, Wilkie. Much as I had guessed. Mr Field is a bully but—as is true of so many bully boys—not the ripest grape on the vine. How little he knows of your free spirit and disregard for society’s opinions if he thinks that such a revelation would cause you to turn traitor. All of your friends know that you have skeletons in your closet—two delightful and witty female skeletons, to be precise—and none of your friends gives a fig for the fact.”
“Yes,” I said. “But why is he so eager to have this information on Drood? He acts as if his life depends upon it.”
We passed from the road to a path that wound its way through and around Cooling Marsh.
“In a very real sense, our Mr Field’s life does depend on discovering whether Mr Drood is real and where to find him if he is,” said Dickens. “And you notice that I refer to our blackmailing friend as Mr Field, not Inspector Field.”
“Yes,” I said as we stepped gingerly from stone to stone in an especially swampy part of the path. “Field mentioned to me that his title was honourary now that he does his detective work in private life.”
“A self-appointed honour that the Detective Bureau of Scotland Yard and of the Metropolitan Police do not appreciate, my dear Wilkie. I’ve kept some tabs on our Mr Field since I—if you forgive the immodesty—immortalised him as Inspector Bucket in Bleak House or even earlier, in my admiring little essay about him, “On Duty With Inspector Field,” in our Household Words in 1851. He left his official capacity shortly after that, you know… 1853, I do believe.”
“But you admired him then,” I said. “At least enough to create a fascinating character out of him.”
Dickens laughed again as we turned back around the marsh towards distant Gad’s Hill. “Oh, I admire many people for their potential as characters, my dear Wilkie, yourself not excluded. How else could I have suffered the Podsnapperies of Forster all these years? But there has always been the pungent scent of the schoolhouse bully hovering about our dear Mr Field, and bullies always tend to overreach and be called to task.”
“You’re saying that he is out of favour with Scotland Yard and the Metropolitan Police,” I said.
“Quite so, Wilkie. Did you happen to follow the notorious Palmer poisoning case some time ago… my, a decade ago now. How time, to coin a phrase, does fly. At any rate, did you follow that in the papers or at the Club?”
“No. I can’t say that I did.”
“No matter,” said Dickens. “Let us just say that our retired Inspector Field was involved with the sensational murder case, was quite popular with the press, and insisted on using the title Inspector Field. In truth, Wilkie, I believe our corpulently digited friend actively encouraged the press and populace to believe that he was still affiliated with the Metropolitan Police. And his successors there, the real police detectives and inspectors, did not appreciate it, Wilkie. Not one small smattering did they appreciate it. So they stopped his pension.”
I stopped in my tracks. “His pension?” I cried. “His bloody pension? The man interrogates you and tries to blackmail me, all for a… bloody… pension?”
Dickens obviously was irked to be thrown off his walking rhythm, but he stopped, hacked at some weeds with his blackthorn, and actually smiled. “Yes, for his pension. Our fauxinspector acquaintance has his Private Enquiry Bureau and makes some money through it—indeed, I paid a pretty penny for our hulking friend Hatchery’s one night of effort on our behalf—but you may remember me once telling you, Wilkie, how… avaricious is not too strong a word, I think… avaricious this former policeman named Field was, is, and ever shall be. He cannot abide not receiving his pension. I do believe he would murder to get it back.”