She had seen his relationship with poor, bedevilled Madame de la Rue as something suspect. Dickens informed her years later that she should have known—had she been a good and true wife she would have known—that his helping the poor woman had been the purest expression of his own innate creativity and nobility. His ability to mesmerise others, much like his ability to write great novels, was part of the firmament of character that was his greatest gift.
But now Dickens the minor master of Magnetic Influence had met the ultimate Master.
As I finished my breakfast at the club and folded my newspapers and left my napkin on the chair and found my hat and cane and went to the door, I had no doubt whatsoever that Dickens had been travelling into London every week on the train that terrified him into sweats to learn more about mesmerism from someone.
And it seemed to make sense that this someone was named Drood.
WELL, MR COLLINS. What a pleasant coincidence,” said a brusque voice behind me as I walked up Chancery Lane towards Lincoln’s Inn Court.
“Mr Field,” I said, half-turning and nodding but not stopping, omitting the “Inspector” before his name by choice.
He either did not notice the omission or pretended not to. “It is a lovely autumn day, is it not, Mr Collins?”
“It is.”
“It was a pleasant day yesterday as well. Did you enjoy your outing to Chatham and Gad’s Hill?”
I double-tapped my stick on cobblestones. “Am I being followed, Mr Field? I thought you had a boy waiting on Melcombe Place and Dorset Square for any message I might want to send you.”
“Oh, I do, Mr Collins,” said Field, responding only to my second question. “The lad Gooseberry is there now, waiting patiently. He can afford to be patient, since I pay him to wait. My own profession does not allow for such patience without severe penalties. Time, as they say, is money.”
We passed through Lincoln’s Inn Fields. John Forster had lived here during his many years as a bachelor, and I always wondered if it was mere coincidence that Dickens had given the villainous lawyer Tulkinghorn in Bleak House Forster’s old address.
When we passed through the Fields and reached Oxford Street, we both paused on the kerb as some dray waggons rumbled by. Then we had to wait for a line of carriages. Field removed his watch from his waistcoat and checked it. “Eleven twenty-five,” he said. “Miss R— should be on the outskirts of London by now, on her way back to Yarmouth.”
I gripped the cane as if it were a club. “So you have people following all of us,” I said through gritted teeth. “If you’re paying your operatives to do that, Inspector, then you are wasting both time and money.”
“I agree,” said Field. “This is why your information will liberate both of us from wasted time, Mr Collins.”
“If you had me followed yesterday,” I said, “then you know everything I know.”
Field laughed. “I can tell you the route you and Mr Dickens took on your three-hour walk, Mr Collins. But I cannot report even the gist of your conversation, although I know that the two of you were talking—or rather, Mr Dickens was talking—for most of the way back from Cooling Marsh.”
I admit that a flush of real anger crept up from my collar to my cheeks at hearing this. I did not remember seeing any other pedestrians during my walk with Dickens. Yet some blackguard had been hovering nearby the entire time. I felt guilty and exposed, even though Dickens and I had been doing nothing more sinister than taking an afternoon constitutional. And how did Field know that Martha had left on the 11:15 train, only ten minutes before the infernal inspector announced it to me? Had one of his operatives rushed pell-mell from Charing Cross Station to inform his meddling and blackmailing superior of this vital fact? Were his agents signalling to him even now from some alley in the direction of Gray’s Inn or Seven Dials? The anger continued to rise until I felt my heart pounding beneath my starched shirt.
“Do you want to tell me where I am headed now, Inspector?” I demanded angrily as I turned left and began striding briskly towards the west on Oxford Street.
“I would imagine that you are headed to the British Museum, Mr Collins, there possibly spend time in the Reading Room, but more likely to peruse Layard’s and Rich’s Ninevite and the ethnographical collection from Egypt.”
I stopped. The hairs on the back of my neck were standing.
“The museum is closed today,” I said.
“Yes,” said Inspector Field, “but your friend Mr Reed will be waiting to open the side door for you and to give you a Special Visitor’s ticket.”
Taking a step towards the husky sixty year old, I said very softly but very firmly, “You are making a mistake, sir.”
“Yes?”
“Yes.” I squeezed the head of my cane until I imagined that I could feel the brass bending. “Your blackmail will not work with me, Mr Field. I am not a man who has much to hide. Either from my friends and family or my reading public.”
Field raised both hands as if shocked by the suggestion. “Of course not, Mr Collins! Of course not! And that word… blackmail… is far from anything that can pass between two gentlemen such as ourselves. We are simply exploring areas of mutual concern. When it comes to helping you avoid potential difficulties, I am your obedient servant, sir. Indeed, that is my profession. A detective uses information to help men of parts, never to harm them.”
“I doubt if you could convince Charles Dickens of that,” I said. “Especially if he were to discover that you are still having him followed.”
Field shook his head almost sadly. “My aim is precisely to help and protect Mr Dickens. He has no idea of the danger he is in because of his intercourse with this fiend that calls himself Drood.”
“From what Mr Dickens tells me,” I said, “the Drood he has met is more a misunderstood figure than a fiend.”
“Indeed,” murmured Field. “Mr Collins, you are young. Relatively young, at least. Younger than Mr Dickens or myself. But do you remember the fate of Lord Lucan?”
I stopped by a lamp post and tapped the paving stones with my stick. “Lord Lucan? The Radical M.P. who was found murdered years ago?”
“Horribly murdered,” agreed Inspector Field. “His heart ripped out of his chest as he was staying alone at his estate—Wiseton, it was called—in Hertfordshire, near Stevenage. This was in 1846. Lord Lucan was a friend of your literary acquaintance and Mr Dickens’s old friend Edward Bulwer-Lytton, Lord Lytton, and Lord Lucan’s estate lay only three miles from Lord Lytton’s own Knebworth Castle.”
“I’ve been there several times,” I said. “To Knebworth, I mean. But what can this ancient murder have to do with anything we are discussing, Inspector?”
Field set his corpulent forefinger alongside his nose. “Lord Lucan, before he assumed his title after his older brother’s death, was a certain John Frederick Forsyte… rather the black sheep of his noble family, even though he had received a degree in engineering and privately published several books based on his travels. There were rumours that, in his youth, Lord Lucan had married a Mohammadan woman during his extended stay in Egypt… and perhaps even fathered a child or two while he was there. Lord Lucan’s terrible murder occurred less than a year after the man calling himself Drood first arrived at our London docks in 1845.”
I stared at the ageing detective.
“So you see, Mr Collins,” Field said, “it is quite possible that you and I could be of great assistance to one another should we share all information we have. I believe your friend Mr Dickens is in great danger. Indeed, I know that Mr Dickens is in danger if he continues to meet with this fiend called Drood. I appeal to your responsibility as the great author’s friend to help me be his protector.”