Mamie nodded. “I think I have seen the man you mean at the house. He was a very persistent and dedicated follower of father's methods. Even when father was delayed for their appointments, he would sit outside the study for hours.”
“Do you know his name?” Osgood asked.
“I am afraid I don't,” Mamie said, with a sigh. “Father was a mesmerism fanatic of no mean order and believed it a remedy for any illness. I know of many cases, my own among the number, in which he used his power in this way with perfect success. He was always interested in the curious influence exercised by one personality over another.”
“Now, Sir Osgood.” Katie, bored with the exchange, examined the publisher flirtatiously. “Where were you when a girl was to find a husband?”
Rebecca seemed as embarrassed at the question as Osgood. Katie raised an eyebrow to show she had noticed this.
“Miss Sand,” sharp-tongued Katie said, “do you not think Mamie should look just smashing in a bridal gown on the arm of a man like this?”
“I suppose so, ma'am,” Rebecca replied demurely.
“You are the sort of girl who thinks well of weddings, Miss Sand?” Katie pressed.
“I don't think much of weddings at all,” Rebecca replied.
Mamie interrupted the awkward moment. “Mr. Osgood and Miss Sand have come all the way here for business, Katie, and to find out more about The Mystery of Edwin Drood.”
“What a bore business is,” said Katie, snapping her fingers. “Oh, very well. Do you really want to find your way through the tangled maze and arrive at the heart of the mystery? If you want to know about Drood's ending, simply buy me a new ribbon for my hair! We are auctioning all mine.”
“Oh, don't always tease everyone, Katie!” Mamie cried.
“I'll tell them then,” Katie said while coyly wrapping one of her red ringlets around her finger. “Drood will be dead or alive; Rosa will marry Tartar or become a nun; Dick Datchery will find Drood's body or find Drood playing cribbage in a cellar with Rosa's guardian, Grewgious. I don't know the first thing about it! And that is the answer to the riddle.”
“What do you mean?” Osgood asked.
“The old Beadle, faithful little Aunt Georgy, my wayward brothers, none of those dear creatures know how it was to end because Father didn't wish them to know-he didn't wish anyone in the universe to know except himself, Mr. Osgood. It was a game for him, you see. He always loved to surprise us and was completely thorough when he had set his mind on it.”
BACK AT THE Falstaff Inn that same evening, “Sir Falstaff” brought tea to Osgood as he sat contemplatively by the fireplace downstairs. Rebecca had retired to her room to read. Sir Falstaff's mind seemed to wander and the tray slipped, shattering the pot and cup.
“I apologize, Mr. Osgood,” the landlord said after the shards had been swept away and the spilled tea mopped by his sister. He seemed saddened by something other than the broken porcelain.
Osgood followed the landlord's gaze and found its focal point. It was one of the leafy purple flowers left at the Abbey: Osgood had taken it with the intention of asking one of the street vendors that sold plants to identify it for him.
“This is an ugly thing, isn't it, Sir Falstaff? I'm sorry for gracing your table with such a shockingly nasty weed,” he said. “Are you unwell? Shall I fetch some ice water?”
The trembling man waved him away. “Mr. Osgood, did you not know? That… that is an opium poppy! It feels like I have been struck in the heart by a bludgeon.”
“I did not know!” Osgood said apologetically, though he still could not comprehend the proprietor's reaction.
The landlord gazed with a doomed expression into the small fire, and removed his cap and folded it over his lap. “You couldn't have known, Mr. Osgood. Many years ago, I learned to hate that vile plant. My son had only twenty summers to his name and his faculties of judgment, and it was to the evil seduction of that plant that we buried him. The house was so empty without him. That is why, after he was gone, I moved here with my sister from our home in town to manage this snug little inn: to give other people pleasure when you have lost all of your own is a small miracle.”
Osgood crumpled the flower into the pocket of his vest as casually as possible. Poor Sir Falstaff did not move at all, his expressionless face hanging low.
“But what's this? Enough of that solemn manner.” The landlord suddenly rose from his chair, putting his hat and cheer back on. “Yes, enough of that, how about some ale to pluck us up?”
The next day, Osgood again took the noisy train to Charing Cross. Osgood planned to attend the auction at which the belongings from the Gadshill estate were to be sold to benefit the Dickens family.
He had left himself enough time to reach the auction house on King Street well before the announced start at “one o'clock precisely.” Besides, thought Osgood, it was the day of the annual Eton and Harrow cricket match, which would clog the streets. His sense of frustration had seemed to mount by the hour. He had less and less faith that the mesmerism patient would show himself again, but the opium poppy had made him think of the Oriental statue of the opium smoker from Dickens's summer study. Was that what Dickens had gazed upon when writing the scenes of opium smoking in The Mystery of Edwin Drood? Was that object the source of his ideas? If so, Osgood wanted another chance to examine it carefully.
The large auction room at Christie, Manson & Woods was a historic institution in London and dusty and grimy enough to prove it. To Osgood's surprise, the hot room was overfilled by noon. Nor was it only the usual lofty collectors, mercenary dealers and commission agents: shoulder to shoulder with men and women of society in fine summer linen, the room contained multitudes of people in the plainer garb of the working classes. Looking around, it seemed every character from every Dickens novel, aristocrat and common, pompous and inconspicuous, had come to life and come straight to Christie's with their purses open.
Osgood saw that he could not swim upstream through the eager crowd to either of the green cloth-covered tables closest to the auctioneer. Instead, he found a vacant chair near the auction clerk's table.
Osgood circled two items in his catalog. His neighbors in the chairs around him peered at one another jealously, certain each was there exclusively for whatever object among Dickens's personal effects they had already set their heart on. Osgood's eyes also met those of Arthur Grunwald, the actor from the Surrey, who nodded to him dramatically as though one of them were to die today or at least tomorrow. He wore a wide scarf even though it was hot and sticky.
One of the first items brought between the two tables was the picture of the Britannia from Gadshill.
“Depicting the vessel in which Mr. Dickens first went to America. Engraved in the popular edition of American Notes…” intoned Mr. Woods, the auctioneer, from his rostrum.
Competition was fierce. “Eighty guineas!” “Ninety!” “Ninety-five guineas!” “One hundred guineas, one hundred and five!” “Going, going… . gone!”
Mr. Woods's hammer came down. The first few dozen lots were portraits and paintings priced out of the range of the amateur bidder. Then Mr. Woods announced they would move to the “decorative objects late the property of the gentleman deceased.” In this class of object, the general Dickens fanatic could be far more competitive. Mr. Woods's well-bred face, in fact, seemed to betray his utter amazement at how high the numbers could go for worthless tidbits that simply had been touched by one man's fingers. Elaborately dressed women lifted their opera glasses and leaned side to side for better views.